It baffles me how we as a society still allow these religious groups to inflict upon children the lies that they hand out. It’s severe, it has a life long impact on them, it is untruthful, and leaves them unprepared for life.

It may sound extreme, but you would take a child from a home where they were doing crack… why not take the child from the home where they lie to them about the nature of the universe and the world they live in?

Unbelievable. Now religion is crack. I would venture to say that throughout history, religion has done more for the preservation and advancement of man and humanity than any atheistic worldview has, and there have been “atheists” for as long as there have been religions. In fact, in any society that has tried to supplant religion with rationalist atheist social constructs has met with dismal failure.

You like to talk about the separation of church and state, then turn around and lament that the government doesn’t rip children away from religious parents and raise them in some faux utopian societal education camp. Well you are precisely the REASON for the separation of church and state -to prevent some power hungry, pseudo intellectual, self-aggrandizing fascist from establishing his own state religion, whether that be atheism or any other religion. The purpose was to protect the freedom of religion, not to protect the government from having religious members. In fact, the Constitution pre-supposed a public morality motivated by religiosity, though not of any particular stripe.

Further more, what is the lie? The idea of a Creative Intelligence is no less tenable than the notion of the Big Bang or whatever the human explanation de’rigeur for the origin of the universe is. Many if not most hard scientists confess to leaning more and more toward the idea of Creative Intelligence, even if they do not have more dogmatic religious beliefs.

The Columbine trench coat mafia didn’t believe in God. They were atheists. They even killed one student because she said she believed in God. Why did they do this? Because they were angry.

This has been clearly shown as nothing but Christo-urban myth!

[quote]That night, I mentioned to my wife that it was probably religious in nature. She asked me why, and I told her that I always attribute violence to reiligion until I have evidence to the contrary.
[/quote]

I don’t understand how any intelligent person can resonably believe that religion is the CAUSE of violence. It seems obvious that it’s often a SUBJECT but rarely a CAUSE.

Most wars are about border disputes. If I follow I AM’s line of reasoning the cause of war is borders. If we get rid of borders then we won’t have any wars. Simplistic, huh?

Moreover, some of the great monsters of human history–Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot were confirmed atheists. They weren’t religious yet they were horrifically violent.

It seems obvious that the problem with people like Lenin, Stalin or Pol Pot is that they were egotistical, selfish, greedy, and merciless. These are all characteristics that almost all religions decry. I know few religions that advocate greed or selfishness or anger.

[quote]Now, I’m no therapist, but that anger is there. She’s simply not allowing herself to xpress it, and it will eat away at her until she does.[/quote]

How should she “express” her anger? Kick some chairs and scream? Anger is expressed in violence and hostility. Maybe this the cause of violence in the world. People shoot and kill other because they are angry.

The Columbine trench coat mafia didn’t believe in God. They were atheists. They even killed one student because she said she believed in God. Why did they do this? Because they were angry.

There are many documented cases of people who have genuinely forgiven someone who has killed their child. I know of one story where a mother who lost her only son was able to forgive the killer, befriend him, and visit him in prison regularly. Yes, and all because of the mythical “judean hippie” from antiquity.

Yeah, the Amish are a great bunch. Quilts, barn raisings, incest…

It may sound extreme, but you would take a child from a home where they were doing crack… why not take the child from the home where they lie to them about the nature of the universe and the world they live in?