Posted on 06/30/2010 8:24:37 PM PDT by KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle
"He's got the whole world in his hands?" To one atheist, it's more like ‘He's got the whole world under his thumb."
David Smalley, the editor of American Atheist magazine and a self-described "civil rights activist," wrote in a personal blog post June 7 that Christian daycare "a form of child abuse."
"In short, by starting your child off in a Christian environment, you are heading them down a path of forced ignorance," Smalley wrote. "At least let your child begin in a secular world, and if he or she chooses Christianity after an age of accountability, then so be it. But forcing them to learn things as fact that you don't even know to be true is a form of child abuse: inducing psychosis with thoughts of good and evil watching over them, as if they are constantly being graded or evaluated."
Smalley further stereotyped and generalized religion-based childcare by suggesting "it's bad for positive self-esteem, and slows social development later in life."
American Atheist magazine is published by American Atheists, which calls itself "the premiere organization laboring for the civil liberties of Atheists, and the total, absolute separation of government and religion."
Smalley's post appeared on his blog, Dogma Debate. He also hosts an Internet radio show of the same name.
I doubt militant atheists believe most of what they say and write about the evils of religion and the church. They are emotionally and socially stunted people, for the most part. They just enjoy getting a rise out of people by being provocative; like your average maladjusted seventh grader.
Of course he is probably demanding more than that - but I'm not going to read his stupid blog to find out.
I also can't help but notice that in every article I see about atheism or a particular atheist, every other sentence seems to remind the reader that the subject of the piece is an atheist. Why do they need such reinforcement? A lack of faith perhaps?
Wasn’t it Stalin who said “give me the children and I will rule the world” or words to that effect?
IMHO being raised by political Atheists is child abuse. You are taught cynicism is the natural state of mind for people and attacking anyone’s and everyone’s faith is a proper form of discourse.
To be raised in hate and intolerance must be the worst of all worlds...
Eff you, Mr. (aptly-named) Smalley. This agnostic is sick and tired of the likes of little you and your scurrilous screwing with the Christian culture upon which this amazing country was founded. The world is a better place thanks to Judeo-Christianity but I suppose you’re just to hip to recognize that. Or, more likely, you’re not very well-read in history.
I sure wouldn’t be in your shoes, when you face the Father...Repent and come back to YOUR Father!
We know where this clown got this pap, from God's enemy. But God says:
Raise up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.
Dogshite Debate is it?
I bet he was an on site contractor for Kim Jong-Il’s concentration camps in NK sure looks like it to me
“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe to stumble, it would be better for him if, with a heavy millstone hung around his neck, he had been cast into the sea.”
Mark 9:24
Amen!
Good name for it, ‘cause that’s what it is.
Bring it, Smalley, you bigoted heathen. This is a battle I want to have: parents have the right to give their children religious instructions. This one goes all the way to the 1st Amendment. Go ahead, fake some standing and sue a parent. Bring it, baby. You will get smacked down by the Supreme Court so fast your head will spin.
Yeah—how dare anyone teach little children to “love thy neighbor as thyself”!
Such pettiness considering the state of the country right now. He needs to be slapped by Betty White and told to STFU.
I used to brag to Christian friends that should I ever set foot in a church that God would send lightning to strike it. I was about as hateful towards Christianity as one could be.
Fortunately as a child my dear Grandpa and some cousins took me to their churches which planted a seed deep within me.
A few years ago that seed started to grow. I found out that God had never given up on me. He was just waiting for me to surrender to Him.
You are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG Mr. Smalley. Christianity isn't child abuse. Its pure unadulterated love from our Lord and Savior.
I thank Heavenly Father every single day for the seed that he planted and the person in my life that he sent to me to get it to start growing.
But the atheists and “free thinkers” are something else. I remember several years ago at a Promise Keepers conference, for two days in August we filled up a 45000 seat stadium plus the field (and it was HOT down on the floor). Those who attended endured that heat because we wanted to be there, and to us it was worth our time, the heat, and the price of admission.
Meanwhile a large group of so-called free thinkers stood outside the event and protested for the duration, for what reason I still don't know. During lunch break an equal number of us went out to greet them and offer them some lunch, and engaged in some conversation. And it was funny - their vision of what was going on inside was nothing like the actual event.
I suppose there are some converts who have a genuine beef with one church or another, it certainly happens, but it was clear to me these guys had no idea what it really means to have belief and faith in God, and the sense of comfort and security it brings, and the valuable life lessons we learn from the bible and our religious leaders.
My testimony is (and it may seem weak to some but it is mine and tough if you don't like it) that because human beings are uniquely capable of willful and conscious acts of evil, it is good that we have adopted belief systems to help serve as a moral compass. In much of the world we follow the common Judeo-Christian theme and it serves us well, providing the punishment/reward incentive and a promise. Whether or not you want to believe the promise, whether or not God is real, if you want to believe in just the here and now and no hereafter, the rewards and punishments are real and in life they will enforce themselves with or without faith in God. So there is no logical reason to begrudge the faithful our observance of that, or to deny us the right to teach our children likewise.
And there are honest atheists, not motivated by politics, who don't devote their lives to preaching against religion because they understand that.
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