theophiles.org - New Wave of Atheistic Ads Aims at British Children

New Wave of Atheistic Ads Aims at British Children

Written by laika

Wednesday, 18 November 2009 14:40

At BBC:

The group behind a controversial atheist bus-poster campaign is urging parents not to label their children with their own religious faith.
The British Humanist Association (BHA) has launched a series of billboard advertisements in capital cities.
The posters are part of a campaign to challenge state-funded faith schools.

Comments

OrionBlastar - Don't tell us how to raise our kids

|2009-11-19 00:08:37

you fascists. We'll raise them the way we want to raise them because it is the right way.

State-funded faith schools have just as much right to exist as State-funded non-faith schools. So stop your religious bigotry and stop bashing religion and religious people and schools, and start minding your own business instead.

Children naturally want to be in the same religion as their parents, it is part of evolution. This goes for other stuff as well. For example I am into computers and video games, so my son wants to be into computers and video games the same as me.

Suggesting that children not have the same religion as their parents will break up families, and force a lot of infighting, and intolerance, and cause dysfunction and a lot of arguments. British families will decay and so will the British society and culture. What complete and total manipulative bastards they must be to even suggest that! Pardon my swear words here, but I couldn't find a more fitting word that was not a swear word.

SteveGus

|2009-11-19 07:51:06

I suspect that the transmission of religious beliefs from parents to children is a bit more complicated than that.

Still, while there have been officially atheistic societies, there have never been societies free from totemism and ritual. You proclaim that there is no God; you end up revering the incorrupt corpse of Lenin. (From a Christian perspectivem, I think totemism and ritual are enemies: these symbols of social cohesion identify an Us and a Them, while we are called on to worship in spirit and in truth --- i.e. without these local, cultural trappings.)

You can say you got rid of God; it's somewhat harder to get rid of the totems and rituals. Christians have been struggling with them for two millenia, with various and always imperfect results. But sweeping away the familiar ones only risks their replacement with new ones, and that is not necessarily an improvement.

OrionBlastar - re:

|2009-11-20 02:27:55

SteveGus wrote:

Worshiping Lenin's Corpse is Communism, and Communism doesn't promote the belief in God, but in the state, otherwise it is an Atheist type religion. Atheism has turned into a religion these days, one that does not worship God but nature or the universe instead. Since Communism failed, Secular Humanism or Humanism was developed to take the place of Communism but even Secular Humanism is failing. Many European nations have a form of secular humanism but lack religious tolerance and discriminate against religious people:
http://www.usccb.org/sdwp/international/helsint...

http://www.bashy.dk/uk/foredrag/religious_intol...

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hf...

http://www.religioustolerance.org/rt_euro.htm

A person can be non-religious and not revering the corpse of Lenin, but be far left of Lenin's beliefs and discriminate against religious people or be intolerant of religious people. Without being communist, or anything else, just being a bigot towards religious people.

MakaDad

|2009-11-19 12:57:28

Children naturally want to be in the same religion as their parents, it is part of evolution.

Insert pic of Inigo Montoya here.

That word...

OrionBlastar - re: Wrong again MakaDad, ever get tired of being w

|2009-11-20 02:18:34

MakaDad wrote:

Children naturally want to be in the same religion as their parents, it is part of evolution.

Insert pic of Inigo Montoya here.

That word...

Careful there, your ignorance is showing.

http://atheism.about.com/od/evolutionreligionre...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10...
http://www.livescience.com/culture/etc/090512-the -evolution-religion.html' title='Visit
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10...
http://www.livescience.com/culture/etc/090512-the -evolution-religion.html'>
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10...
http://www.livescience.com/culture/etc/090512-the -evolution-religion.html

Evolution and religion can coexist, despite what your ignorance thinks.

http://thankgodforevolution.com/

As part of evolution, there is a social aspect to it called social evolution in which children want to do what their parents do, and believe in what their parents believe.

Social evolution is a sub-discipline of evolutionary biology that is concerned with social behaviors, i.e. those that have fitness consequences for individuals other than the actor. Social behaviors can be categorized according to the fitness consequences they entail for the actor and recipient.

MakaDad

|2009-11-20 11:01:37

Again, your links show that you have completely missed the point.

What is the purpose of a link dump that says that religion and evolution can co-exist? When did I say they couldn't? You're so aggressively jumping on the "War Against Christianity" at every possible chance that you're fighting shadows that aren't even there.

The statement "children want to be the same religion as their parents, it's part of evolution" is a bizarre misinterpretation of the concepts involved, no matter how many articles you can google that have "religion" and "evolution" in the titles.

Sigh. Tweaking you to see you twitch and jump at totally imaginary battles was fun, but now it's just getting repetitive and sad.

OrionBlastar - re: Actually you are out of line

|2009-11-21 18:38:32

MakaDad wrote:

It is natural to have children want to follow their parents in religion, philosophy, career, and many other things.

Just admit you don't know what social evolution is, nor how to raise a child. Neither do these people who did this stupid campaign.

Evolution and religion can co-exist, and natural selection has such things as technology and religion necessary for survival. That is step one that I have with proving that children will pick the same religion as their parents. There were other links but Theophiles ate them due to the buggy forum software, such as your post being off of my comment.

I never said there is a war against religion. Those are your words, not mine. I did say that religion was being attacked, and this campaign is one example, but it is not using science, nor logic, nor reason, nor common sense, nor critical thinking and is full of logical fallacies much like your comments. You last comment was a personal attack on me, and only contributes noise to the discussion. Since children are under age 18, they are minors and thus legally they have the parents make the decisions for them. But in most cases the children want to be the same religion as their parents, when they are not it causes family issues and might lead to a dysfunctional family.

There has been a connection to science and religion since over 12,000 years ago with the Ancient civilization of Mu.

It is you who is waging war with phantoms, phantoms of your own ignorance. You refuse to accept the truth, and you attack me because you think you can get away with it. You think you are clever or funny, but you are in reality just pathetic.

OrionBlastar - I speak from experience

|2009-11-21 19:14:28

http://www.christian.org.uk/news/humanists-targ...

Saying this is an attack on religion is not my idea, but the idea of many others.

This is an attack on faith based schools. I'll have you know that in the USA we have Non-Christians in Catholic based schools with no troubles at all. Thai Buddhist children attend the Catholic schools but are not in the church services and other religious aspects. I've been to the Thai Temple myself and am learning about Buddhism and Meditation and the Thai language.

My son is free to choose any religion he wants, he could have been Buddhist, but he chose Catholic religion the same as me and his mother. His mother was once Buddhist but converted to Catholic when she came back to the USA to live with her father, she was 18 and she chose it over Buddhism. Her mother is still a Buddhist. But being different religions caused them to become dysfunctional and break up the family, my wife's mother took the kids back to Thailand to raise as Buddhist and their father sent them money, etc. They were born in the USA, baptized, and then went back to Thailand to grow up Buddhist. My brother-in-law is Buddhist and he is a good man, I wouldn't try to convert him or anyone else for that matter.

Any scientific evidence of "brainwashing", no? Any legal proof that the child's rights have been violated, no?

Any proof that people who believe in God are worried too much and don't enjoy life, no?

"There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

Notice how they say probably, as in they have no proof that there isn't a God, and that they are trying to convince religious people to give up the belief in God because they claim, there probably isn't one. Well me and billions of other religious people don't worry and enjoy life because we believe there is a God.

OrionBlastar - A few of the missed links

|2009-11-21 20:17:36

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_origi...

There is an evolutionary origin of religions and even a gene that allows certain people to become religious. This was one of my links that Theophile's forum ate on me.

So there is a link of choosing a religion to evolution.

If a child has the religion gene passed on by their parent, they will choose the parent's religion as they will have had the same religious revelations as the parent did at that age.

http://www.gwu.edu/~ccps/pop_rel.html

Task of religious Institutions in strengthening families. Of which those faith based schools are a part of.

In 1995 a study was done in faith based Catholic schools verses public secular schools:
http://www.familyfacts.org/findingdetail. cfm?finding=7699

This finding looks at the relationship between attending a Catholic school and the likelihood of dropping out of school.

Quote:

Attending a Catholic school is associated with a decrease in the likelihood of dropping out of school. For sophomores, there was a decrease of 10 percentage points, even when controlling for self-selection (i.e. more promising students choosing to attend a Catholic school).

Sample or Data Description
12,000 seniors and 15,000 sophomores from the “High School and Beyond 1980” (for education attainment estimates). For denomination and earnings: General Social Survey (1973-1980) national sample of about 1,500 men and women aged 18 and over.

Source
Sander, William, The Catholic Family: Marriage, Children, and Human Capital , (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press 1995), pp. 100.

FindingID: 7699

It is not Christianity that is being attacked here, but all religions in the logical fallacies that children are a) brainwashed, and b) have their freedoms violated but lacks any credible evidence of such things. Dr. Richard Dawkins should know better than that, and he should follow logic, reason, critical thinking, and especially the scientific method, but sadly he nor anyone at the BHA seem to be doing that at all.

metallurge - re:

|2009-11-23 13:37:07

MakaDad wrote:

Sigh. Tweaking you to see you twitch and jump at totally imaginary battles was fun, but now it's just getting repetitive and sad.

Yeah, we really do better without this kind of thing. You yourself can see where it has led. Nowhere good. It would be best if there were an apology from both sides, and we all just move on.

OrionBlastar - re: re:

|2009-11-23 18:43:44

metallurge wrote:

[quote=MakaDad]Sigh. Tweaking you to see you twitch and jump at totally imaginary battles was fun, but now it's just getting repetitive and sad.

Yeah, we really do better without this kind of thing. You yourself can see where it has led. Nowhere good. It would be best if there were an apology from both sides, and we all just move on.[/quote]

I hereby issue a public apologize to MakaDad for my comments and behavior in this thread.

MakaDad

|2009-11-20 10:40:25

You're funny.

emperorbma

|2009-11-20 14:30:37

out of curiosity: To whom was this one addressed...

MakaDad

|2009-11-20 17:53:40

To OrionBlastar, before decided to be a tad more verbose, and then realized I added a comment instead of replying.

Which is of course, the law of internet forums. If you are writing anything snarky, there must be a glaring error which requires a repost or a correction.

emperorbma

|2009-11-20 19:28:08

Naturally. I kind of figured you meant OrionBlastar, but I wanted to be sure.

OrionBlastar - re:

|2009-11-21 18:40:15

emperorbma wrote:

Naturally. I kind of figured you meant OrionBlastar, but I wanted to be sure.

Yeah I become a punching bad for the anti-religious type. This is just one in a serious of personal attacks he has done on me. He thinks they are funny, but they are not, and only shows how ignorance and pathetic he really is in real life.

OrionBlastar

|2009-11-21 18:40:44

Er punching bag, so much for a typo.

emperorbma

|2009-11-21 23:16:38

I must have missed the subtext, but I'm not sure how MakaDad's Princess Bride reference amounted to an attack on you by the anti-religious.

OrionBlastar - re:

|2009-11-23 12:12:11

emperorbma wrote:

I must have missed the subtext, but I'm not sure how MakaDad's Princess Bride reference amounted to an attack on you by the anti-religious.

It was a personal attack that meant I didn't know what I was talking about. That I was that guy in the Princess bride that kept saying "Inconceivable". That is a personal attack, my friend.

OrionBlastar - The Princess Bride

|2009-11-23 12:29:02

The name of the character I am compared to is called Vizzini, and he is a Roman Catholic Sicilian, and a bad stereotype of Catholics that the Anti-Religious use to attack Catholics with.

One of his henchmen is named Inigo Montoya and he notices Vizzini say "Inconceivable" when the Dread Pirate Roberts (aka Wesley) get out of his traps he lays for him, including throwing his henchmen at him like the Giant. So Inigo Montoya says "That word, I donno think it means what you think it means."

I've had it used on me before, and yes it is a personal attack and yes it is Anti-Catholic aka Anti-Religious.

metallurge

|2009-11-23 13:31:55

For what it's worth, OrionBlastar, I also think you overreacted. I will not say that there was no provocation. Of course there was. But let's be clear. You came at this with some preconceptions, and he triggered something that was already there.

In my own experience, it is a better thing to just not be drawn into the reaction they seek.

OrionBlastar - re:

|2009-11-23 18:47:53

metallurge wrote:

My Scizoaffective Disorder can do that at times. October, November, and December are bad months for me because my SAD cycles into bad cycles due to the holidays, the extra expenses (insurance payments for the house and cars, tax time as well coming up), and this time of year last year I was in a hospital and it brings me bad memories.

He himself said he tweaked me and taunted me, which is not a good thing to do to someone with schizoaffective disorder as we tend to react as I did.

I am trying to learn meditation to combat this, and not feed the trolls so to speak, but meditation takes at least six years to learn and master to get me at that level that the tweaking and taunting and trolls don't bother me anymore. I also have a major mood disorder, and my anger gets the better of me.

emperorbma

|2009-11-23 14:44:34

Interesting. I hadn't realized there was that much negative connotation. I mean, Princess Bride is obviously a bit of a playful lampoon but I didn't realize it could be offensive to some people.

OrionBlastar - re:

|2009-11-23 18:52:12

emperorbma wrote:

Interesting. I hadn't realized there was that much negative connotation. I mean, Princess Bride is obviously a bit of a playful lampoon but I didn't realize it could be offensive to some people.

People often take stereotypes from movies, books, etc and use them as personal attacks on other groups. Like when Al Josten did Black Face, it was offensive to African-Americans but most of the nation didn't find it offensive until decades later. The old 1930's and 1940's cartoons were full of stereotype characters and eventually became banned.

Would he like it if I called him a 'Scrooge' and say insert the "Ghost of Christmas yet to come" here, or say he is a Grinch and insert a picture if a heart three sizes too small? No because I don't stoop to those levels, when I am snarky I try to avoid stereotypes and try to make it funny without tweaking or taunting someone or trolling them and laughing at the reaction and say they are "funny".

emperorbma

|2009-11-23 19:02:16

I can certainly respect that people will be offended by caricature and I don't condone rude and willful offensiveness. However, I've also observed that people have gone overboard in some cases by jumping at shadows of caricature that were not meant or intended to be an offense. I think that an excessive degree of political correctness can also undermine effective communication and if people aren't careful with their reactions to other people's expression it may result in a society where we cannot discuss much of anything at all.

(After all, is not the strategy the ACLU uses to remove Christian elements from culture? Yet, I digress...)

At times, I am left to say as the cynic Voltaire, "I do not agree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it." It's the boon and bane of this thing we call "freedom of speech..."

OrionBlastar - On a more serious related note

|2009-11-23 18:56:41

in the USA we have the closing of Catholic private schools because parents are pulling out their children because of statements made by Dawkins and the BHA, as well as the Freedom from Religion group that if parents loved their kids they would pull them out of faith based schools and put them in public schools that are not faith based.

So we have Catholic schools closing down, and eventually it leads to closing down Catholic churches as well. We didn't have this before, and now we are dying in a way.

I won't say we are in a war, as I believe wars are fought with weapons and tanks and other stuff, but there are attacks on faith based schools and religions enough to cause economic damage now and the closing of schools and churches. This is an economic attack and it seems to be working.

emperorbma

|2009-11-23 21:18:59

Quote:

I won't say we are in a war, as I believe wars are fought with weapons and tanks and other stuff

The Bible has no qualms about calling it a spiritual war which, in fact, it is. You are correct to say that we are not fighting against flesh* with weapons of the flesh. Rather, we are fighting against the principalities and powers of darkness* which deceive against God... against sin, death and the power of the devil himself. Against this, we have been equipped by Christ with the shield of faith*, which extinguishes our adversary's fiery darts*, and the Word of God which slays all falsehood. In fact, Christ Himself says "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." (Matthew 10:34) Not the sword of bloodshed, but the sword of truth....

Quote:

2 Corinthians 10:3-6
For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ

The Church Militant theme is not merely an invention of the Crusades, although it was sadly warped, abused and perverted away from its true meaning then and at other times. Nonetheless, the concept of spiritual warfare dates well before Christ Himself, having been described throughout the Prophets who foretold of the Messiah's coming. Indeed, the pen, the tongue and the Book are the weapons that we are called to wield. Jesus Christ driving out the minions of the adversary is not a weak and non-compelling act. There is most assuredly the force of a sword the likes of which this world has yet to fully comprehend.

* - Direct paraphrase of Ephesians 6.

OrionBlastar - re:

|2009-11-24 10:19:37

emperorbma wrote:

Well maybe I did overreact, but comparing people to villains in movies is not a nice thing to do, is it?

metallurge - re: re:

|2009-11-24 11:39:18

emperorbma wrote:

I can certainly respect that people will be offended by caricature and I don't condone rude and willful offensiveness.

OrionBlastar wrote:

Well maybe I did overreact, but comparing people to villains in movies is not a nice thing to do, is it?

He answered this already in his very first sentence. That said, I personally do not see Vizzini as much of a villain. I rather like him. And anyway, I didn't interpret the Inigo Montoya reference as an implied Vizzini reference at all.

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Our valuable member laika has been with us since Thursday, 03 April 2008.

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