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Permalink Reply by Nelson on June 5, 2009 at 4:13pm

this movie is absolutely horrible. i'm a grown man and i no qualms with telling you i literally cried the first time i saw it. all those children having their wonderful burgeoning minds raped... ugh. it still bothers me but now i get so angry. and then people will ask, "if you're an atheist why do you care about religion at all?"

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Permalink Reply by Skycomet the Fallen Angel on June 5, 2009 at 4:54pm

I know... but I tell ppl that ask that question that I care about religion b/c religion FORCES me to care about it by deliberately attempting to impinge on my rights.

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on June 5, 2009 at 5:03pm

...and then there's the suicide bombers, the withholding of medical care from sick kids, the abuse at the hands of priests and the cover ups of the church hierarchy, the murder of abortion doctors, pretty much the entire middle east, and the way our foreign policy is infused with Evangelical Christian Zionism just to name a few others. not to mention the teaching of silly Christian dogma in science classes, god claims on our currency, the pledge of allegiance, the Evangelical culture in the military, and the persecution of service men and women who don't fit the mold or refuse to be forced into that mold; hell, just the fact that there are chaplains in the service of the military, etc, etc, etc!

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Permalink Reply by Dave G on June 6, 2009 at 12:23am

Yeah, pretty much. The damage that people like this cause just angers me to no end.

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Permalink Reply by Skycomet the Fallen Angel on June 6, 2009 at 3:33pm

PS... There's a bunch of Christians who claim that Christianity isn't a cult... well... you can show this to them! Sure, not ALL of christians are like this, but there are enough of them to be freakin' scary.

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Permalink Reply by Skycomet the Fallen Angel on June 13, 2009 at 1:17pm

RAmen to that!!! *Clapping hands*. I grew up in a Christian family and they sent me to "Sunday School" and "Bible Study" and "Bible School." I still carry some emotional scars from the experience... and my family aren't even fundies!

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Permalink Reply by S S Tragus on December 19, 2009 at 11:06am

I must concur with the psychological, emotional and social damage it inflicts. I also experienced it -- not speaking in tongues, mind you, as the brand of fundamentalist Christianity forced into my brain was against that -- and lived with the torments of guilt and fear, praying on and off throughout my day for forgiveness in case I had done or said or thought something, even entirely un- or subconsciously that was sinful, because any second Jesus could come and take us.

At five years old I had a nightmare I still remember of demons encircling my crib because I had forgotten to pray before falling asleep. I realise now that the demons looked just like my childhood drawings, with circles for head and body and sticks for arms and legs and a cone for the nose. But they were evil, all black with glowing red embers for eyes.

And don't get me started on how hormones factored into the equation. Masturbation became at once obsessively alluring and repulsive -- I'd masturbate, sometimes with rationalisations that I wasn't really doing it, that it just happened, that I was just taking care of an itch, and then be tormented by guilt, praying for forgiveness. It became a vicious circle. The sin of sex was so ingrained in me, even at a very young age, that I hated sitting on someone's lap for fear that they might feel and hence visualise my ass or genitals on their laps. Oh, and peeing in a public place had to be done silently, against the side of the bowl above the water's edge, so that people wouldn't imagine my penis. Ridiculous, huh? But that's the power of brainwashing on a child.

The nightmares, recurring from time to time throughout my childhood and adolescence, finally stopped when I was fed up and left the church -- not religion, yet, as I was now on a spiritual quest -- at 17. The perpetual guilt and obsessive praying continued as I studied world religions, with a focus on Hinduism and Buddhism, at university (my first BA). It finally ended when, not long after a trip to India where we stayed at an ashram and witnessed again the ridiculous extent to which people go in their quests, and the mind-blowing gullibility and flakiness, my partner and I left religion for good. We actually discussed it on the way home on the plane.

I'm sure there is still damage, but leaving religion helped a great deal in healing and moving beyond. The problem with this kind of demonstration is that, as splintered as Christianity is, Christians will simply look at this and say 'those guys are extreme... we are not like that', and ignore the fact that these fundamentalists are following most closely the dictates of their religion and their (un)holy book.

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Permalink Reply by Kirk Holden on November 7, 2009 at 2:31pm

The only cure for this is the adolescent trinity - hormones, drugs and sex...

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Permalink Reply by Skycomet the Fallen Angel on November 18, 2009 at 4:23pm

LOL!!! XD!! That may be true....

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Permalink Reply by Skycomet the Fallen Angel on November 18, 2009 at 4:29pm

P.S. I "found" Atheism with only 1/3 of these things, my hormones... although I think they had little to do with it... lol.
My virginity's still intact and I haven't tried any drugs... yet, unless you count boose. LOL... that I do like. I've never been drunk, because I live with my parents and just might give them a heart attack! lol. Although I'm thinking of trying it! ^_^ I KNOW that I'm a light weight, and I suspect that I'm the kind of drunk that laughs at everything, and [if I get too drunk] might jump on a table and start dancing while taking my clothes off [I hope the latter doesn't happen... lol].

I'm thinking about trying getting just a little drunk, just enough to feel giddy and not so much that I do something incredibly stupid.

;)

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Permalink Reply by Skycomet the Fallen Angel on June 5, 2009 at 4:21pm

OMG!!! It's like watching "Lord of the Flies!!!' Have any of u read that book? They're having a mass seizure or something!!

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Permalink Reply by Nelson on June 5, 2009 at 4:24pm

i think it's standard English curriculum in most states in the US, or at least it was when i was in school, so a lot of people will have read it.

yeah, what goes on in that movie is just awful.

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