Saturday 17 July 2021

Brainwashing The Young With Religion

I am not much of a religionist, taking the view that if you don't try and ram your God down my throat i won't ram my Atheism down yours but it seems i can't go down town now without someone trying to give me leaflet inviting me to some religious service or other but recently there has been one of these new happy clappy Churches in the shopping center singing about God and Jesus and those sort of things.
I usually ignore them and politely refuse their leaflets unless they try and engage me in why i'm a sinner or how Jesus somehow saved them and he can save me also and then i engage and back and question why they believe in something which they have no proof for.
Today's band was a young man and woman singing about Jesus who had beside them a small baby in a buggy and i thought that kid has no chance, religion is going to rammed into him from the start.
At an early age the human brain is shaped and moulded by the parents and it is the parents who teach them that playing with fire is dangerous, not to put things in their mouths, don't talk to strangers, there is a God who made the Universe and you will go to hell if you are bad and they will go to Church, Mosque or Synagogue where that message is constantly reinforced and the child is conditioned to refuse to believe anything other than that and they grow up with a firm belief that is how things are.
They will pray for something, an A in geography or to win the 100m Sports Day race and it happens, hooray, God answered the prayers but we know he never, it wasn't someone up above changing things just so you get what you prayed for but they won't think about it intellectually, it was God because they prayed for it as they were told from the beginning.
Religion at the basic level doesn't affect me, i find it rude and annoying when they come up to me and try to persuade me that they are right and why i should believe them but i just say every religion there has ever been, and there has been thousands who have all said 100%, absolutely, guaranteed no doubt about it, unquestionably their God is the one, so why should i believe you with your leaflet over any of the other ones who are as certain about it as you are?
What does affect me is when religion becomes a fixture at a higher, more powerful level with real control over other people, it affects me then when one religion decides their God is the right one and the rest are evil and should go to hell and they are going to help their God send them to hell by blowing them up, shooting or stabbing them or throwing them off tall buildings and it wasn't that long ago that Christians were doing all the above and invading nations to instill their religion on them. I have yet to hear of a war waged by one nation to instill atheism on another one.  
Hitler had a belt with 'God Is With Us' on the buckle and said by killing Jews he was 'doing God's work' and i am not saying that kid in the buggy today will end up trying to do God's work by killing infidels, but there is a good chance that they will grow up with a less than healthy attitude towards some other members of society such as Homosexuals or women undergoing abortions.
They may not, they may grow up, think about it, look at the evidence for themselves and decide the whole idea of religion and a God creating the Universe is nonsense but they are fighting against the tide from a very young age so it is unlikely they will ever escape their upbringing, not impossible, but it doesn't happen that often.
Being an Atheist doesn't mean i wouldn't take note if someone did come up to me with irrefutable proof of God then i would say brilliant, all those other religions over the last 4,000 years WERE wrong and this is the biggest breakthrough in human history but nobody has yet, all they have to try and persuade me is the belief passed down from their parents who got it from their parents and backwards through the generations.
The test is, if nobody ever mentioned religion, atheism or anything to do with heaven or hell to a child, would they reach that conclusion themselves without the details and constant reinforcement of their elders? Highly unlikely which shows that religion is a man made construct so believe what you want and even sing about it in shopping centers but remember that some of us set the bar a little higher for the burden of proof than you obviously do for our beliefs.

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