WTFery about brainwashing kids w/stuff
Sep. 20th, 2007 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
misscamHmpf. Why am I awake? Oh, right. Work. Work which today is basically watching the phone while everyone is away and zilch else to do. (Seriously, I even asked for stuff to do, but no.) Time to stalk my flist?
(And I know I am late with fic - sorry! Got distracted by helping someone move, work, WoW (yay netherdrake) and autumn. Oh yeah. It's autumn in Norway and I am getting rained on. Brrr. I shall try to refocus.)
So during the weekend I watched a program about 'Kids on Fire' Bible camps in the US and got scared out of my brains. Kids being indoctrined, fundamentalism-is-the-only-way, thinking prayer solves everything, the hostility to science and firm conviction evolution is a fraud, the pushing of children into advocating anti-abortion, the firm belief in Satan - this world boggles me.
Okay, being an atheist I suppose I am not in the best position to understand it in the first place, but there was a time I really, really wanted to be religious. There is a comfort in it. I did seek it once - I just found that belief in a God was not something I had. It doesn't bother me that friends are religious - only if they attempt to push it on me. (Similarly, I don't try to 'save' them into atheism. You have to make your own mind up about these things.)
But the world the program was showing was something far away from the religion I am used to. It was that children were being not taught about the faith, but indoctrined, using methods that usually decribe sects. (Mass meetings, brainwashing techniques, no contact outside your own movement.) When one mother were homeschooling a seven-year-old boy and saying "You see now why evolution is wrong?" I think my brain kinda fell out. I know it did when the same woman openly admitted she was incotrinating the kids and claiming this was good. Then they showed scenes from a camp.
...
What the fucity fuck with a side of mcfuck? Seriously, the stuff they showed was scary. And eerily reminicent of some things.
Hitlerjugden, thought I. Not because I compare Christianity and Nazism, but because I compare the methods. As the woman running it herself admitted, what you learn at seven stay with you for life. And these kids were sent out to preach and convert and were encouraged.
They even referred to it themselves as an army. Kids. An army of God, yeah, but you know what? Proclaiming to do something in the name of God has never been a guarantee it is a good deed. The Al Qaeda did their shit in the name of Allah, but just as many would use Allah's name to condem them. (I'll use basical moral indignation - get stuffed,, you revolting men using religion to excuse your dickheadness.) God is not your get-out-of-jail-free card.
I get worried when people think they can do no wrong because they represent their God. It worries me a great deal when they start teaching kids the same. It scares my poor widdle brain a great deal when independence of thought is seen as an enemy.
Why are you doing this to kids?! I mean, there's a huge difference between teaching and indoctrinating. You're not giving them faith. You're giving their brain a straightjacket and everything outside it is Satan.
Surely someone choosing to believe of their own free mind would please a deity more than someone only believing because he's been brainwashed? I really, really don't get it.
Am I just better off not understanding this?
Other stuff:
- Albin the albino moose is spared again. Awww. Also aww is Future Queen Ingrid Alexandra. She's really starting to grow :)
- Rosenborg managed a draw with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, to much amusement for many Norwegians and non-CHelsea fans. Also beacuse apparently Swedish expert commentator Glenn Hysén promised to crawl 120 kilometres if Rosenborg were to get points from the match. Glenn? Start crawling. 8He's apparently agreed to keep his promise if the distance is reduced. Heh.) Day after teh match, Chelsea coach buggers off. I guess he wasn't good enough at turning the omelette. Ah, football. I wub thee.
- Heh, yet another comm has 'borrowed' Page-A-Mod. Suppose I should be flattered so many like my idea - even a community owner I know loathes my gutts has snagged - though renamed it, of course.
- People of Supernatural fandom, is the chick of this wank as fandom batshit as she seems? Because wow.
- I read on the train to and fro work and since I read fast, I go through a lot of books. I quite often buy cheap books at a place in Oslo central station and the guy working mornings there now recognises me and makes comments about my book buying. I find this bemusing.
- I loves NRK for sending The Daily Show five times a week now. Give me a hug, you big state-owned channel. YOU BRING ME THE AWESOME.
- Robert Jordan died??? Wow. I started reading Wheel of Time when I was a lot younger and though I did lose interest in it, I do have fond teenage memories of it - and it was the series of books that got my brother reading, for which my mother is enternally grateful. (Now he reads a lot.) :(
- "I steal your fics because I'm whacky like that!" Bitch, please.
I need lunch now.
(And I know I am late with fic - sorry! Got distracted by helping someone move, work, WoW (yay netherdrake) and autumn. Oh yeah. It's autumn in Norway and I am getting rained on. Brrr. I shall try to refocus.)
So during the weekend I watched a program about 'Kids on Fire' Bible camps in the US and got scared out of my brains. Kids being indoctrined, fundamentalism-is-the-only-way, thinking prayer solves everything, the hostility to science and firm conviction evolution is a fraud, the pushing of children into advocating anti-abortion, the firm belief in Satan - this world boggles me.
Okay, being an atheist I suppose I am not in the best position to understand it in the first place, but there was a time I really, really wanted to be religious. There is a comfort in it. I did seek it once - I just found that belief in a God was not something I had. It doesn't bother me that friends are religious - only if they attempt to push it on me. (Similarly, I don't try to 'save' them into atheism. You have to make your own mind up about these things.)
But the world the program was showing was something far away from the religion I am used to. It was that children were being not taught about the faith, but indoctrined, using methods that usually decribe sects. (Mass meetings, brainwashing techniques, no contact outside your own movement.) When one mother were homeschooling a seven-year-old boy and saying "You see now why evolution is wrong?" I think my brain kinda fell out. I know it did when the same woman openly admitted she was incotrinating the kids and claiming this was good. Then they showed scenes from a camp.
...
What the fucity fuck with a side of mcfuck? Seriously, the stuff they showed was scary. And eerily reminicent of some things.
Hitlerjugden, thought I. Not because I compare Christianity and Nazism, but because I compare the methods. As the woman running it herself admitted, what you learn at seven stay with you for life. And these kids were sent out to preach and convert and were encouraged.
They even referred to it themselves as an army. Kids. An army of God, yeah, but you know what? Proclaiming to do something in the name of God has never been a guarantee it is a good deed. The Al Qaeda did their shit in the name of Allah, but just as many would use Allah's name to condem them. (I'll use basical moral indignation - get stuffed,, you revolting men using religion to excuse your dickheadness.) God is not your get-out-of-jail-free card.
I get worried when people think they can do no wrong because they represent their God. It worries me a great deal when they start teaching kids the same. It scares my poor widdle brain a great deal when independence of thought is seen as an enemy.
Why are you doing this to kids?! I mean, there's a huge difference between teaching and indoctrinating. You're not giving them faith. You're giving their brain a straightjacket and everything outside it is Satan.
Surely someone choosing to believe of their own free mind would please a deity more than someone only believing because he's been brainwashed? I really, really don't get it.
Am I just better off not understanding this?
Other stuff:
- Albin the albino moose is spared again. Awww. Also aww is Future Queen Ingrid Alexandra. She's really starting to grow :)
- Rosenborg managed a draw with Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, to much amusement for many Norwegians and non-CHelsea fans. Also beacuse apparently Swedish expert commentator Glenn Hysén promised to crawl 120 kilometres if Rosenborg were to get points from the match. Glenn? Start crawling. 8He's apparently agreed to keep his promise if the distance is reduced. Heh.) Day after teh match, Chelsea coach buggers off. I guess he wasn't good enough at turning the omelette. Ah, football. I wub thee.
- Heh, yet another comm has 'borrowed' Page-A-Mod. Suppose I should be flattered so many like my idea - even a community owner I know loathes my gutts has snagged - though renamed it, of course.
- People of Supernatural fandom, is the chick of this wank as fandom batshit as she seems? Because wow.
- I read on the train to and fro work and since I read fast, I go through a lot of books. I quite often buy cheap books at a place in Oslo central station and the guy working mornings there now recognises me and makes comments about my book buying. I find this bemusing.
- I loves NRK for sending The Daily Show five times a week now. Give me a hug, you big state-owned channel. YOU BRING ME THE AWESOME.
- Robert Jordan died??? Wow. I started reading Wheel of Time when I was a lot younger and though I did lose interest in it, I do have fond teenage memories of it - and it was the series of books that got my brother reading, for which my mother is enternally grateful. (Now he reads a lot.) :(
- "I steal your fics because I'm whacky like that!" Bitch, please.
I need lunch now.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-21 08:00 am (UTC)Norway does have variety in beliefs, particulary in Oslo, but what I am unused to is the... Public pushing, I suppose. In Norway, faith is like sex. It's generally assumed you might have it in some way or another, but you don't go around asking details unless it's someone you know.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-13 08:06 am (UTC)In Norway, faith is like sex. It's generally assumed you might have it in some way or another, but you don't go around asking details unless it's someone you know.
I love this. What a great line, for what I consider to be a really good way of doing such things.