5/27/09

Atheist Re-Education Camp for Children

FYI: this post has been moved here.

24 comments:

  1. Some Atheists will complain they grew up being afraid of going to Hell. OTOH I knew of a young woman raised an Atheist who grew up being afraid of death & oblivion. Her parents told he when you die you are simply gone. She imagined since she was "just a brain" (& of course even after death some electrical activity lingers)she might be semi-concious lying in her grave as she rotted.

    Yikes!!!!

    At least the Theist kid can be told to trust in God's Grace & He/She would never know Hell. What does the Atheist kid have to look forward too? Literally Nothing.

    Child abuse indeed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. How ironic that they complain about indoctrination and not letting kids decide, yet here they are doing the same thing. Wow. Hypocrisy at its finest here.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Apparently, the adult indoctrinators do not know the difference between a necessary being and a mockery.  
    Apparently neither do you. There is no such thing as a "necessary being."

    ReplyDelete
  4. Apparently neither do you. There is no such thing as a "necessary being.
    I think the babies that go into depression because their mothers died (they don't even EAT) would argue that there is such thing as a "necessary being." Atheist logic strikes again.

    ReplyDelete
  5. TD: physiologically necessary in your particular case, yes, I agree. But I don't think that was what Mariano was talking about in the quoted segment.

    ReplyDelete
  6. MM: A necessary being, as the article implies, is a being such that the existence of the universe depends on. It is indisputably foolish to believe that something came from nothing.

    You could argue the eternal universe, but there is little evidence of that - in fact, if the universe was eternal, it would be in a state of heat equilibrium (making life impossible). Therefore, it is necessary to define the universe as being a finite universe.

    A finite universe has a beginning - but who, or what, made it? That Maker is the necessary being.

    ReplyDelete
  7. I would say its indisputably foolish to believe in anything for which there is no evidence. Such as a necessary being, for instance.

    That something must come from something else is a habit of thought from mundane experience, or an inference, which is usually disallowed as logically impure and unreliable in these sorts of conversations. Especially so when applied to situations far from the experiential domain from which it was derived.

    It seems to me you just make up rules when and as you need them to defend the conclusion you want to reach.

    ReplyDelete
  8. TD: physiologically necessary in your particular case, yes, I agree. But I don't think that was what Mariano was talking about in the quoted segment.
    well perhaps you should be a bit more precise with what you say?

    ReplyDelete
  9. I would say its indisputably foolish to believe in anything for which there is no evidence. Such as a necessary being, for instance.
    There is plenty of evidence, there is historical evidence, testimonial evidence, and eye witness evidence.

    Do you believe that something comes from nothing? if you do then it would be quite ironic that you say it is indisputably foolish to believe in anything for which there is no evidence, but there is no evidence, NOT A SHRED OF IT, that states 'something comes from nothing.' So you're either being a hypocrite, stating it is wrong to believe in God(which you claim there is no evidence)but it is ok for you to believe that something came from nothing despite there not being any evidence, OR your entire comment here:
    That something must come from something else is a habit of thought from mundane experience, or an inference, which is usually disallowed as logically impure and unreliable in these sorts of conversations. Especially so when applied to situations far from the experiential domain from which it was derived.

    It seems to me you just make up rules when and as you need them to defend the conclusion you want to reach.
    means nothing at all! since you know there is no evidence that suggests something can come from nothing, and you do not believe something comes from nothing, thus your entire comment is completely irrelevant and means nothing whatsoever.

    Atheist logic strikes again.

    ReplyDelete
  10. A kids camp should be for fun, maybe a little ethics and not to be indoctrinated with any set of ideals Atheist or Religious

    ReplyDelete
  11. My parents did not raise me either a theist or non-theist, yet at age six I distinctly remember my commitment to theism as I studied a multicolored insect. Coupled with the love I felt for my parents and friends, Theism was axiomatic. And to this day (46 years later) I see no good reason not to be theistic; no reason to abandon my initial impression of creation and the sense of obligation I felt then, and yet feel toward its Creator.

    ReplyDelete
  12. The question is not whether I believe something comes from nothing, its whether something must come from something else. If that is true then the "necessary being" isn't necessary after all since something else must have made "The Maker". And so on.

    Put another way, if "it is indisputably foolish to believe that something came from nothing", then it must be indisputably foolish to believe that the "necessary being" didn't come from something else. That's all I'm saying.

    ReplyDelete
  13. I see this site is still hard at work spreading their propaganda.

    I'm so looking forward to that post about Hitler and the Bible too! More propaganda to laugh at!

    No one is being indoctrinated you morons! It's just a camp where other kids who disbelieve can have fun- just without the pedophile priests trying to stick their hands down the kid's pants!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Kids dont believe or disbelieve unless indoctrinated by elders they simply observe and try to have fun. We dont seem to have the problem of having to set up our own theme camps in Australia in fear of religion. They are simply camps and this must be yet another American thing.
    If you suffer Priest paranoia choose another from the thousands available.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Theological Discourse:

    Currently I cannot explain why the universe exists rather than not existing, nor can I explain why the universe is as it is, rather than some other way.

    It seems that you think you have a satisfying answer with your God hypothesis.

    However, can you explain why God exists rather than not-existing, or why God is the way she is rather than some other way?

    Asserting that God exists as she does "necessarily" may seem to you clever and satisfying, but not to me.

    Just as you would not find my assertion that the Universe exists as it does "necessarily" to be a clever or satisfying explanation. But I would never make such an assertion.

    I am comfortable with uncertainty. I do not pretend to know things I don't.

    ReplyDelete
  16. I can only speak from a Deistic viewpoint but
    Its an opinion and observation just like yours.
    Our minds are obviously limited but it is innate that most suspect a mysterious order and purpose to universe, without having being indoctrinated by an organised religion.

    Im sorry if the perception of others troubles you

    ReplyDelete
  17. "but it is innate that most suspect a mysterious order and purpose to universe, without having being indoctrinated by an organized religion."

    I agree. Multiple psychological studies of human children show that they have an innate intuitive tendency for superstitious beliefs.

    Similar studies demonstrate superstitious behavior in pigeons.

    So you share an intuitive superstition with pigeons and human toddlers. Congratulations. You should realize that intuitions come from our limbic system, a primitive portion of the brain that originated in reptiles.

    You should also realize something else. If four hundred years of science has taught us anything, it has taught us that our intuitions are almost always dead wrong.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Oh an expert on conciousness and mind. I didnt realise one existed YET.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Oh and please tell me what beliefs pigeons may share

    ReplyDelete
  20. Following the publication of this article in the Independent, I wrote a short post on my blog to further explain my reasons for sending my children to Camp Quest, that are not covered in the article.

    Link below

    http://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2009/04/thanks-for-spelling-my-name-correctly.html

    ReplyDelete
  21. At one point I would have offered that the owner of this blog and those posting comments are the ones requiring re-education -- since they evidently cannot read for comprehension yet.

    It is also evident that the little you learned about Camp Quest (damned little, despite the amount of information available) has been twisted in your infant mind and spewed back onto your pages in a most unrecognizable form.

    The only data that connected in what passes for your mind, is that "atheist" was used in the same article as "Camp Quest" therefore leading you to the false conclusion that Camp Quest turns children into atheists.

    This is not the case. Children who leave Camp Quest as atheists were atheists when they arrived. Agnostics leave as agnostics, Catholics and Protestants and Jews leave as Catholics, Protestants and Jews.

    Camp Quest encourages children to ask questions their teachers would never allow. Camp Quest allows children a place where is is okay to not believe in God or gods or other supernatural things.

    You should quit lying about things youknow nothing about.

    ReplyDelete
  22. In other words, it's a camp where it's ok to be an angsty post-Gen X goth kid. And you win Monopoly money with a picture of Darwin & Dawkins signing the Humanist Manifesto on the back (because of course, nothing is being promoted here belief-wise - it's purely accidental that these two paragons of objectivity and antitheism are associated with the camp).

    Given the overly-cheery comment from one of the Harris/Klebold Alumni above, I have high hopes that these camps will be churning out (churning out, like sausage) some really outstanding examples of societal politeness and nihilistic good will - after all, those Nietzschean Youths are just itching to liberate the masses from religion! Huzzah....

    And who knows!, Al-Qaeda may have some real competition for recruitment on its hands if ever these Brights decide to move on from armchair philosophizing to Finnish schoolyard weapons training.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Looks like kh123 has a weirdly active imagination, full of paranoid delusions.

    Ironic that he should mention politeness and good will in a blog that attacks and disseminates false information about a necessary child-care organization.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Fundamental Christians are the ones that decided Darwin was an enemy and are fighting the theory of evolution even though they have no other worthwhile theory to compete with it since ID is not a biological theory or even scientific (it is a philosophy if anything). Also the theory of evolution doesn't disprove or even try to disprove anything in the Bible (unless you read the Bible literally which is a silly thing to do), and most Creationists/ID supporters don't even seem to understand what the scientific definition of a theory involves. Evolution is an example of critical thinking that has been made a symbol of atheism by the religious right, hence its use in the camp.

    Why do you feel so threatened by this camp that you had to post this? You obviously would be happy if it was shut down, yet no-one has said that the Christian camps should close. Hypocritical much? Plus a lot of these kids are under attack at school and other places by Christians simply because they think rationally. Why shouldn't they have somewhere they can go and be themselves?

    ReplyDelete