Thought this was a great article. I haven’t researched it to the degree that this author has, so I can’t speak to the complete accuracy of what he says. But he makes a great case, and it’s the same view I’ve held for a while.
The ancient Persians had a significant impact upon some of the core myths that underscore Judaism and Christianity. Among other things, Judaism and Christianity owe thanks to the Persian priests of Zoroaster for the light versus darkness motif, the belief in an impending apocalypse, and the messianic dogma. But above all, both Jews and Christians should thank Persia for the Devil himself. I think it’s fair to say that had they not adopted this fictitious character from the Persians, they might not have succeeded with such ease in persuading and maintaining their frightened and superstitious flocks.
The religion of Zoroaster, or Zarathustra, received its name from a Magian Priest by the name of Zoroaster (Greek)/Zarathustra (Persian), who was a loyal servant of the “one true” Persian God Ahura Mazda, or Ormuzd. Ormuzd was commonly referred to as the “The Holy Spirit” in the pre-Christian portions of the Avesta.(1) This…
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Finding Truth 
You reply was quite long so I will address only the points I feel relevant if you don’t mind. Please excuse the editing, there is no intent to cherry pick.
I’ll have to watch the videos later, but thanks for sharing them.
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Oh, and I had no other religion in mind.
I just mean that I didn’t leave religion to jump back into the “religious mindset” that I feel like you have against religion, with an unhealthy hatred, where you take any argument against it, whether reasonable or not, and not only run with it, but curse any who disagree with you to any degree.
It’s that religion-like position I have no interest in aligning with.
I don’t believe that a parent teaching their religion to their children is abuse, and I think to suggest such is both desperate and absurd.
I think whatever “damage” it causes is typically negligible and shared by all. Everyone experienced the same “damage” through religion or by some other life experience that’s common to all men, and i think it’s akin to sun damage or old age – it happens to everyone, so yeah, while that sucks… get over it.
And I see that we disagree there. Ok. I’m fine with that.
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The topic at hand is whether teaching/indoctrinating Hell is abuse. It is inappropriate to move the goalposts, William.
A condescending hand wave comment. Yes, negligible in a great many people who likely do get over it.
But do we write off those that don’t as collateral damage? ”Tough titty for you, ”Fish Face!”
And what about those that remain in fundamentalist religions who continue to indoctrinate this shit into the next generation and the next ad nauseum?
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I’m not the one who moved that goalposts. Earlier it was you who said how obvious it was that the teaching of hell didn’t exist in isolation and couldn’t be separated from itstuff religion.
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Look, I haven’t moved any goalposts, and I still stand by hat I’ve said.
And we disagree.
You think I’m wrong and oI think you are, yet, somehow, the world keeps Turing.
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Sorry, you were trying to isolate the teaching of Hell from religion in general. Or at least this is how it came across..
It has to have a foundation, obviously, but as I tried to point out the versions/interpretations of Hell differ depending on which cult of Christianity a believer adheres to.
While I do concur that all religion is abuse this is not specifically what our discussion is about.
You should actually do a Google search and check out the different opinions and read some of the mind blowing things certain fundamentalists write about ”teaching” 5 year old kids that they will burn in hell for eternity if they do not comply with ”God’s Laws” etc
Some really sick people out there.
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🙂
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I am afraid this is about more than just our opinions, William. Evidence supports the assertion that it is abuse.
I did not make the initial claim or report the first case, or medically diagnose the first victim.
This condition was here a long time before I arrived on the scene.
You want to challenge me? Great.
But also have the integrity to refute the medial diagnosis while you’re at it.
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Neat. But I still disagree.
I wasn’t harmed by hell. It didn’t abuse me. So no matter what conclusion some unknown person reaches, even if it’s packaged as if it were some universal medical consensus, which it isn’t, I’m still not convinced.
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I wasn’t harmed by hell. It didn’t abuse me.
And, IMO, herein lies the problem. You weren’t affected so it’s troublesome/impossible for you to imagine that others could/might be affected.
Is it so difficult, william, to admit there may be, possibly could be, others who were so impacted by the warnings of hell that it created mental and emotional problems in their adult life? And thus, it could be considered childhood abuse by those who have studied such matters?
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@William
I don’t really care if you are convinced or not, to be honest.
And you obviously didn’t pay too much attention to the videos either, by the sound of it.
And there are a lot of similar ones if you were truly interested.
Those reading along will read the responses and evaluate for themselves.Yes,some will consider my forthright stance objectionable but those who are a tad more sympathetic to the abuse, or have personally suffered will recognize your intransigence and somewhat callous attitude and may well consider the epithet ”Dickhead” fully deserved.
After you pull your head out of the sand make sure you get all the grains out of your ears,okay?
Super!
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Nan,
I think it’s like a scraped knee. I think those do hurt. I think for someone who’s not experienced anything worse, or has never really considered that anyone else has experienced much worse things, might feel like it’s a terrible injury.
But, while I can imagine some pain there, I still have a very difficult time thinking it’s actually as bad they make out.
Could I be wrong? I know I could be, I just know that with everyone out there who’s been taught that hell was real, the amount of people who act like it’s so harmful are a minority, and I still suspect that they are overly sensitive and exaggerating the effect. It;s not unheard of for people to overreact, is it?
Is it so hard to imagine that some people inflate their problems and think they’re worse than what they are?
And I think it’s laughable to assert that Kent or anyone else has abused their children by teaching them about hell or any other aspect of mainstream christianity. I think it reeks of desperation. I think it falls on deaf ears and actually does more to turn people off to what else you might say because now they just think you’ll say anything that comes to mind, whether that’s actually true or not.
And I think calling it abuse is pointless. Even if you wanted child services to go and rescue these poor victims, saving them from their abusive, hell teaching parents – they won’t.
Go ahead and call it abuse if you like. I don’t agree and I think if this is someone’s problem, then they’ve actually had a pretty cushy life, so good for them.
I think think that calling it abuse and letting your heart bleed for them only enables them to keep from functioning.
Yeah, i think people need to toughen up. I don’t apologize for that. I don’t think that’s lack of compassion, I think sometimes people need a hand to help them up, but sometimes what would help them better is to show them that they actually stand up on their own, because one day no one else may be there to help them.
I think suffering so much from being taught about hell is just as silly needing a god to have morals or purpose.
But again, it looks like we disagree and I’m running out of ways to say it.
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I haven’t watched your videos yet, or read your link yet, Ark. I’ll get to them when I get to them. But like you with unklee’s articles on prayer, I just don’t really care that much, and it would still take more than a few random videos and an article to sway my opinion on this.
So share the links all you like, I’ll get to them when I don’t have better things to do, is all I can promise.
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Okay, I’ve finally caught up on all the comments since last week. I think I see where both sides are coming from, so maybe I can help bridge the distance a little.
Being taught about Hell was tough on me. I really took it to heart that most people I had ever known were probably going to Hell, and I kind of thought that I’d probably wind up there myself. I believed it 100%. I don’t think I’d say I suffered any real trauma over it — I just viewed it as a very unfortunate aspect of reality.
When I stopped believing, I very quickly stopped being afraid of Hell. Once I understood that it was logically and textually incoherent, it lost all its power over me. But that’s just how my brain works. I know that it’s a completely different story for some people, so I can recognize that, for them, it really does merit the label “traumatic.” I think it ranks far, far above a skinned knee.
On the other hand, I also see what William is saying. Sometimes, children learn about death first hand, due to losing a parent or sibling, etc. No one wants that to happen, but sometimes it does, and people have to deal with it. Granted, therapy often helps, but it’s still an issue that has to be dealt with.
I think William’s saying that religious parents teach their children about Hell because they believe it would be far more dangerous to the child if they didn’t. They probably don’t enjoy teaching about Hell, just as they wouldn’t want to tell a child that a parent had died. They simply view it as a necessity.
When we say that teaching a child about Hell is abusive, it implies that something should be done about it. Well, what? I think all we can do is continue to discuss religious beliefs with those who are willing, in the hopes that it will lead to more non-believers. Or at the very least, that it will lead to believers who are more moderate.
But if we focus on saying that teaching about Hell (or religion in general) is abusive, William’s right that it doesn’t really gain us anything. The Christian already doesn’t agree with us, and we aren’t giving them any data that might cause them to question their beliefs. We need to explain why Hell isn’t really taught in the Bible, why the notion of it is totally illogical, and why other aspects of Christianity completely fail. Maybe then we’ll actually make a dent in the number of kids who are taught that Hell is a real place.
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I’ve been away for a few days…
William: “LOL, people need therapy because they were taught about hell?”
You think that is funny, William? I went through HELL trying to leave Christianity because of my intense fear that I and my children would burn in Hell. You must not have been raised fundamentalist. You have no idea the psychological trauma that fundamentalist children experience regarding their indoctrination.
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There are a zillion places and people who do demonstrate that the Christian version of Hell is simply nonsense, but children are unlikely to be swayed by any of this even they come across comprehensive evidence that demonstrates why.
Unless they have serious reason to doubt their parents, in all honesty who are the going to believe?
If they are part of a tight knit community, as you were, where all adults feel the same and all peers as well, then this is what they will fully accept .You did.
The degree of trauma will impact differently on everyone.
This does not detract that it is abuse and is recognised as such.
William is trying to assert that it isn’t really abuse and people must just get over it.
This is akin to telling a manic depressive or someone suffering from bi-polar that they are
just feeling a bit under the weather and they must put on a happy face and pull themselves together.
While the doctrine is an integral part of the Christian faith and taught as such to kids it should always be viewed as abuse.
If religious leaders were to openly condemn the practice/doctrine then maybe suh condemnation would carry a bit more weight.
Until then ….
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But most of the religious leaders aren’t going to condemn it because they think it’s true.
From a fundamentalist’s point of view, it’s child abuse to not tell children about the “dangers of Hell.” I don’t think we want to get into a situation where the government can take children away from people who aren’t teaching their children the correct things, because it’s very easy for those kinds of things to backfire.
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Nonsupernaturalist, I was raised fundamentalist. It was taught all about hell and christianity and had it force fed down my throat as a child. I believed it all. I have children and had them when I was a believer, so when I thought it was real, i taught it to them as well, because that’s what parents do.
The prospect of dying isn’t nice either, but i don’t fall apart over that either, and think some things maybe just suck, but sucking doesn’t always equate to abuse or substantial trauma.
Yeah, I know what it’s like. yeah, I think that saying it’s laughable or worthy of therapy is laughable. But that is from my perspective, sure – who else’s perspective can I give that through?
You and I must be different. I have a hard time seeing your difficulties with it, while you have a hard time understanding how someone can get over it pretty easily. I don’t know the answer,
I probably shouldn’t mock or belittle, that’s unfair of me, and not helpful. Sorry. And you probably shouldn’t say people like Kent are abusing their children.
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@William
Your arrogance is telling. I offer links, provide videos and you can’t be bothered to spend five minutes watching them? Because you have ”better things to do”? Yet you do have the time to post an endless stream of derogatory comments backed by nothing else but you unqualified opinion?
Yeah, I think that qualifies as being a Dickhead.
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“If religious leaders were to openly condemn the practice/doctrine then maybe suh condemnation would carry a bit more weight.”
of course! Why didn’t anyone else consider having religious leaders condemn the teachings of their own religion?
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Arrogant? Well maybe at times… but coming from you? Like, are you serious?
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So some of you have a hard time seeing this from William’s perspective, and he has a hard time seeing it from the perspective of someone who has been traumatized by the doctrine of Hell. He has at least acknowledged that now.
Can we just leave it at that? And can we please dispense with the name-calling? It’s never helpful, and I find it really tedious.
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Very serious. Your attitude is also condescending and callous. But mostly stubborn born out of willful ignorance.
You come across in a similar vein as a Creationist when they demand ” Were you there?”
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I don’t have a hard time seeing it from his perspective at all, Nate.
His view is: It didn’t affect me so therefore it can’t be that bad and likely exaggerated and I am not going to be swayed by a link or a video. Yet he shows no inclination at all to watch or read.
How is one supposed to interpret such an attitude?
What would he tell a kid?
”It’s all make believe – get over yourself already.”
Yeah, that’ll help!
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