I'm new to this site and I was wondering if I could get theist and atheist viewpoints on this topic.
I am a new college student, but I have been an atheist for years. I'm closeted, because my parents told me to my face that they would disown me if I gave up religion. I went to a baptist school for twelve years, and suffered many instances of trauma as a result. I got diagnosed with PTSD yesterday caused by this. I'm going to get to the point, so that I don't bore the potential readers with my sob stories.
My question(s) is for theists. Why do you think that religion is good when there are kids all over America suffering in schools like I did? I feel like I'm am spending all of my time licking my wounds in my dorm instead of enjoying what it is like to be a college student. Do you believe that this is good for people's mental health? I have been told many times that I should just let people believe religion, because it's good for people. I am not convinced. What is the quota of people needed to be achieved in order to be labeled a force of good for mental health? Has religion met this? Do you understand that something you're enforcing is mentally and emotionally depriving many people around the country or do you think otherwise?
As for atheists, has anyone else suffered a mental disorder as a result of fervent indoctrination? I feel completely alienated in the south. Even fellow atheists are not damaged mentally and emotionally like I am, as far as I can see.
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If you really want to hear from religious people as well as athiests. You need to post in the debate room rather than the hub.
To answer your Question.. No, but I feel for you. It sucks that you've had to put up with your current circumstances. I spent my teen years and most of my 20's so far in the South. Luckily for me, my experience was altogether a good one. Athiesm + my openess about it hasn't affected my personal life, but it has put me through some internal struggle in my professional life and overall dating activity.
I'd agree with you by saying it is mental abuse. Not to trivialize your experience, but the problem is that parents (even yours) are only repeating what was done to them. They literally think they're saving youbfrom some eternal damnation. They know no better.
They were actually raised a different religion, and they moved away from our family by about a four hour drive. Both of them became Jesus loving born again Christians. My dad's family are drunk rednecks and my mom's are Mormon conspiracy theorists. I would be doing the same thing as them, and they don't see the hypocrisy in their anger.
I see what you're saying, but indoctrination is indoctrination. The specific religion is not really here nor there. Indoctrination is something forced on kids regardless. Normally through fear. Punishment (hell) and reward (heaven) is psychologically a childs level of reasoning. Young Children can be controlled with a punishment and reward system. Why do you think it's necessary to be "born again" as adults? So people can continue to subscribe to religion with no question. Questioning = disobedience = Hell. What a wonderful lesson for kids. Mental child abuse for sure.
Well I was very depressed when I was religious mainly because I had a Catholic friend who tragically died in a car accident and my pastor told me he was in hell right now. He also told me to fear demons,ghosts and Angels. It also felt like surveillance cameras are permanently watching you.
Want to see christian child abuse, just watch Jesus Camp. The only thing missing was the guns.
Hi, GayAtheist. Yes. That is the answer to your question to Atheists. Any person ever raised in religion has been abused, and a great many of us have been damaged and scarred permanently by that multi-millenia project. Abuse need not be intended abuse, but it is abuse all the same. Parents who unknkowingly abuse their children were indoctrinated in the same way when they were kids, and their parents before them. It is not malevolent. It is delusion.
The effects are shared by billions. And in the US we have our own chracteristic symptoms of that abuse. Sexual neuroticism where we operate in a permanent state of shame and self loathing is common to Americans in the Bible Belt. We are reproductive beings whose lives revolve around sex, yet a sexually healthy life is condemned by the frigid, neurotic theocrats who claim authority over our societies and lives. And the constant drumbeat of sinful, fallen man in need of forgiveness and salvation from our vile plight infects all those within its grip. Whomever it was that assured you that a christian upbringing had no effect on their lives was either a true Rock of Gibraltar in the world of humans or is a person who has not fully counted the cost of that religious indoctrination. You have a vast sea of similarly afflicted persons keeping you company, so don't feel alone. I'm with you and billions of others are silently and perhaps unknowingly with you as well.
I recommend that you search on Youtube for one of Christopher Hitchens' many presentations on his book, "God Is Not Great, How Religion Poisons Everything." And take heart. You're not alone.
Religion and religious dogma certainly results in child abuse sometimes.
I told my parents, they are under absolutely no circumstances to tell my son anything about the hell myth, because it's psychological torture. The kind of abuse that can haunt someone for a lifetime.
You're a great parent for that. Totally agree.
I'd really like you to read this thread so that you understood what I'll say next...
http://www.atheistrepublic.com/forums/debate-room/i-did-something-cruel-...
... Leaving aside the morally disgusting of what is related in that thread, It's good to make it clear that children, especially between 3 and 10 years old, are very impressionable and credulous, that's the reason why Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, Aesop, etc, are usually the most aided authors at bedtime of our children in those ages. This maxim doesn't go unnoticed for religions, especially for the three of the book: Islam, Christianity and Jewish religion and all the sects they drag.
Psychologically it's the difference between amazement and horror. Let us give an example. If a four-year-old boy is sitting at the table eating anything and his father is sitting in front of him drinking coffee while Mom does something in the kitchen to his back and, suddenly, mom begins to levitate, the child will look at her, open his eyes wide and point it, the father will turn and die of a heart attack. That's why children are so important to religions, they take advantage of their capacity for wonder when say that a burning bush spoke to Moses on the mountain and said "Luke, I'm your father"... ehm, wait, it wasn't that... ah, yes, "I am God".
When these children realize that there're no unicorns, dragons, fairies, blue princes, they also question the rest of the fantasy, gods, virgins, miracles, and if their parents or their catechists tell them that Part is certain and discover books of history where it is clarified that Nero had no fucking idea of what a Christian was and was one of the most beloved Roman emperors, that the Coliseum was built when he had already died and that Herod the Great dies Four years before the supposed birth of Jesus, let's not talk about Genesis, Adam and Eve, the serpent and find in any second-hand book on science the irrefutable evolutionary fact... well, little happens to your mental balance when you grow up.
And YES, of course, from my point of view, all of the above is child abuse, and note that I've not spoken of physical abuses to minors, which also occur, alas, in ALL religions.
I really sorry for everything you've been through and everything you're going through.
Godsfavorite. You're so adorable.
I'm from a very open family. Where almost every family member has a different religion. My dad is atheist, mom and step-dad is wiccian and step mom is pegan. My grandparents are Catholic. My mom and dads thing has always been that if someone wants to talk about god and such they will as long as you don't go over board BH rubbing it in their face and saying things like you will go to hell.
But as for your question both my parents were forced to go to a Catholic school at one point and how harsh and the fact they were so strict and couldnt understand that young children can't comprehend something so "important as god" it broke them and they wanted to have nothing to do with it and came to hate it.