Communism As Religion

Communism is Religion

Posted by Daniel G. Jennings

One major argument that apologists for religion like to make against proponents of secularism, humanism and religion is to equate all opponents of religion with Communism and the numerous crimes against humanity perpetuated by such monsters as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot and Fidel Castro. The best argument against these people of faith is a simple one, far from being a humanist or rationalist belief system, Communism was and is a religion.

Like all religions, Communism is irrational, dogmatic and based on faith rather than science. Just like Christianity and Islam, Communism had its Holy Books which were treated as Holy Scripture, namely the writings of Lenin, Mao, Marx and others–all of which were far from scientific. Karl Marx, who was treated by Communists as a genius, was actually a small-time journalist whose writings are a collection of prejudices, generalizations and editorializing. Marx held and promoted some beliefs which were later disproved by science, for example Marx taught that many human characteristics we now know to be inherited through genetics were caused by environmental factors. When scientists in 1930s Russia pointed this fact out, Stalin reacted by throwing the scientists into the gulag just like the Church imprisoned Galileo. Just like fundamentalist Christians who promote creation science, Stalin (himself the recipient of an “education” in a Christian seminary) backed a charlatan named Lysenko who came up with a completely false science of genetics that fit squarely with Communist dogma and then banned the teaching of genetics because it contradicted Communist dogma.

As with Christianity and Islam, Communism attracted followers by promising a pie-in-the-sky heaven to the faithful. The difference being that the Communist heaven would be sometime in the future when all people would be happy and equal under Communism rather than after death. This magical future was conveniently pushed farther and farther into the future so that Communist leaders could “explain” to the average people impoverished by their wonderful system why they hadn’t yet achieved utopia. It might also be pointed out that the Communists never actually said exactly how this utopia would be created–just as Christians and Moslems can present no evidence of life after death.

Like most religions, Communism operated on irrational faith; people in Communist countries had to have absolute faith in the Communist system and its leaders. Thinking for oneself was strictly verboten in Stalin’s Russia, Mao’s China, and Ho’s Vietnam. Those who questioned Communism and its leaders were treated as heretics by the Communist state.

Far from being an example of the evils that occur when religion is removed in society, Communism is a perfect example of the excesses and horrors that result when religion is allowed to take over a society. The Communist Party acted just like the church had in Medieval Europe.

Just like the Church in Medieval Europe, the Communists tortured and killed those who refused to adopt the official faith. Just like the Church, the Communists promoted the belief that governmental authorities were all-knowing, all-powerful and sanctioned by God, and the idea that refusing to bow to authority was a sin.

Just like the medieval church, the Communist Party promoted the idea of saints, people whose total devotion to the Communist cause was a good and holy thing and entitled them to be worshiped. The difference was that the Communists substituted Communist leaders like Mao and Stalin for the saints. The Communists even revived the bizarre medieval practice of worshiping the dead bodies of the saints; they built massive mausoleums in which they placed the embalmed bodies of their dead leaders and forced their people to worship them.

Just like the Russian Orthodox Church, the Communists also created icons, pictures of Communist leaders whom people were to worship. In North Korea, for example, it is even a crime to destroy a picture of the late dictator Kim Il Sung.

The Communists also revived the horrendous medieval practice of the Inquisition, an official body to hunt down and eliminate heretics, in the form of the purge trials and the various secret-police forces. Hundreds of thousands of people in Communist countries were tortured, brutalized and murdered by such bodies.

Just like the church before them the Communists tried to force their captured enemies to repent their “sins.” After the fall of Saigon, 600,000 Vietnamese were forced into concentration camps called reeducation centers to learn Communist dogma. Just as the “First Holy Roman Emperor,” the religious fanatic Charlemagne, tried to forcibly baptize German pagans captured in his wars, captured American soldiers in the Vietnam and Korean wars were also forced to admit the “truth” of Communism.

As if bringing back the Inquisition wasn’t bad enough, the Communists also revived the witch hunt. Like other people of faith, the Communists blamed the failings of their system–not on their own loony dogma–but on hidden enemies who were secretly sabotaging Communism so as to prevent the Communists from creating a utopia. In 1930s Russia, tens of thousands of innocent people, many of them good Communists, were falsely accused of being foreign agents and “wreckers” who were sabotaging the Stalinist system, and then executed or thrown into the gulag–where many of them died from torture, forced labor and starvation. Those killed in this purge included several of the Red Army’s top generals who were falsely accused of being enemies by Communist courts using information provided by the Nazis (thus leaving Russia unprepared in 1941 when it’s real enemies attacked).

It must also be noted here that it didn’t take the Russian Communists long to revive another old evil of the church: anti-Semitism; by the early 1950s, Stalin was blaming Russia’s problems and his own bad health on the Jews. Just as the Medieval Christians blamed plagues and the black death on Jews secretly poisoning wells, so Stalin blamed his ill health on Jewish doctors who were trying to poison him.

In the 1960s, Mao went Stalin one better. When the Chairman’s brutal attempt to create the Communist heaven on Earth, the “Great Leap Forward,” failed miserably, resulting in the worst famine in human history, Mao blamed–not himself or his faith–but the Chinese people for not having enough faith in Communism (much as Hitler had blamed the German people and not his own incompetence, arrogance and stupidity, for his defeat in World War II). Mao then turned vast numbers of Communist fanatics, known as Red Guards, loose to punish the Chinese people for not showing enough faith in Mao and Communism. Just as the Medieval witch hunters burned little old ladies at the stake for owning cats, Chinese people were beaten up and terrorized for such crimes as owning birdcages or wearing makeup in the so-called Cultural Revolution. Many great treasures of China’s past were destroyed by Communist thugs during the Cultural Revolution (just as the Taliban blew up Buddhist statues in Afghanistan).

The excesses in Soviet Russia and Red China have been repeated in almost every other Communist country. Almost every Communist regime has behaved like a religion that is in a manner completely irrational and paranoid. The major difference between the Communist fanatics and the Christian fanatics of the inquisition was that the Communists had access to modern technology, weaponry and systems of government that enabled them to kill far more people far more quickly. Had the inquisition access to the same technology as the Communists, its body count would have rivaled that of Stalin and Mao.

Far from being an example of what happens when religion, faith and God are removed from society, Communism is a perfect example of what happens when society is turned over to religion. People are deprived of their basic freedoms, science and scholarship are suppressed, and average people are tortured and murdered for not displaying sufficient faith.

It must also be said here that Christianity did little or nothing to stop Communism or the horrible crimes the Communists committed against humanity. Russia was the most religious country in Europe in 1917 yet the Church was unable to stop the Bolshevik takeover. If Christianity is such a powerful force for morality, why couldn’t the Orthodox patriarchs and bishops have simply ordered the Russian people not to follow Lenin and Stalin’s orders? Why weren’t the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church able to appeal to the piety of Joseph Stalin, himself a product of an Orthodox seminary, and get him to recant Communism? Far from protecting Russia’s people from Communism, the Orthodox Church did little but have the Russian people sit and pray to icons for the end of the Communist system.

It was not the Orthodox Church or its leaders that formed the main resistance to Communism in Russia, it was humanists and rationalists who refused to bow to irrational Communist beliefs. For example, the great scientist, Andre Sakarov, and many other Russian intellectuals, refused to go along with the Communist assault on the human mind. Later on, more enlightened and intelligent Soviet leaders, such as Mikhail Gorbachev, undermined Communism by allowing people to question and challenge its basic assumptions. Just like Christian and Islamic dogma, Communist dogma can’t stand up to a close examination based on reason and the scientific method.

It was the secular, democratic, capitalist societies in the United States, Japan and Western Europe–which are based on humanistic and rational values–which ultimately proved to be the undoing of Communism. The irrational, faith-based, Communist system simply couldn’t compete with the rational, secular United States and its allies. By basing their societies on faith rather than on reason, thus being in no position to change or adapt their system to meet future challenges, the Communists thereby sowed the seeds of their own destruction–except, of course, in countries such as Vietnam and China where Communist leaders have quietly abandoned Communism and adopted capitalism in order to preserve their own skins and line their own bank accounts.

Far from being an example of a godless society, Communism is a perfect example of the dangers which religion poses to human freedom and humanity’s future. Those Americans who want to establish an official religion should take a hard look at the history of Communism, for any country that establishes an official religion and a faith based system will end up just like the Communists–in the ash heap of history.

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Religion Aids Criminals Justify Their Crimes

New Study Suggests Religion May Help Criminals Justify Their Crimes

By Justin Peters

An inmate reads his bible at the minimum-security facility known as the Carol Vance Unit, March 24, 2001, near Houston, Texas.

Photo by Joe Raedle/Newsmakers

In 1996, noted criminologist Jewel asked a question that has long haunted those hoodlums prone to pondering the existential consequences of their actions: “Who will save your souls after those lies that you told, boy?” For generations of American crooks, the answer has been “religious do-gooders.” As a 2006 Federal Bureau of Prisons report put it, “faith groups have become involved in offering formal programs within prison to bring about not only the spiritual salvation of the inmates but their rehabilitation in the profane world as well.” The idea is that spiritual rebirth may help tame the criminal impulse, and set wild hearts on the straight and narrow.

Maybe not. A new study in the academic journal Theoretical Criminology (hat tip to the Vancouver Sun) suggests that, far from causing offenders to repent of their sins, religious instruction might actually encourage crime. The authors surveyed 48 “hardcore street offenders” in and around Atlanta, in hopes of determining what effect, if any, religion has on their behavior. While the vast majority of those surveyed (45 out of 48 people) claimed to be religious, the authors found that the interviewees “seemed to go out of their way to reconcile their belief in God with their serious predatory offending. They frequently employed elaborate and creative rationalizations in the process and actively exploit religious doctrine to justify their crimes.”

First of all, many interviewees had only a vague notion of the central tenets of their faiths. Take, for example, an 18-year-old robber whose “street name” was Que:

Que: I believe in God and the Bible and stuff. I believe in Christmas, and uh, you know the commitments and what not.

Int: You mean the Commandments?

Que: Yeah that. I believe in that.

Int: Can you name any of them?

Que: Ahhh … well, I don’t know … like don’t steal, and uh, don’t cheat and shit like that. Uhmm … I can’t remember the rest.

Often, the authors found, these knowledge gaps were self-serving. “God has to forgive everyone, even if they don’t believe in him,” insisted one 33-year-old enforcer for a drug gang, with a vested interest in avoiding damnation for the murders he had committed. A 23-year-old robber called Young Stunna suggested that the circumstances of his upbringing would absolve him of his crimes: “Jesus knows I ain’t have no choice, you know? He know I got a decent heart. He know I’m stuck in the hood and just doing what I gotta do to survive.”

Indeed, many of those surveyed used their understandings of faith to justify their own criminal behavior. A 25-year-old drug dealer called Cool suggested that God doesn’t mind when you do bad things to bad people:

Also another thing is this; if you doing some wrong to another bad person, like if I go rob a dope dealer or a molester or something, then it don’t count against me because it’s like I’m giving punishment to them for Jesus. That’s God’s will. Oh you molested some kids? Well now I’m [God] sending Cool over your house to get your ass.

In the end, the authors found, “there is reason to believe that these rationalizations and justifications may play a criminogenic role in their decision making.”

A couple points. First, this is a really small sample size, and it’s possible that if the authors had surveyed more people over a broader geographical area, their results would have been different. Second, as the authors themselves acknowledge, criminals certainly aren’t the only ones who tend to misunderstand religious teachings, or to contort them for their own benefit. Granted, there aren’t usually violent consequences when your Aunt Sue misunderstands something in the Bible; the worst that happens is that she’s just a little more unbearable at Thanksgiving dinner. But, still, the Theoretical Criminology study shouldn’t be interpreted as conclusive evidence that faith-based outreach and rehabilitation programs are worthless.

But the point is, neither is there conclusive evidence that religion on its own actually helps rehabilitate criminals. This becomes a policy question when we’re talking about prisons. As that Bureau of Prisons report put it, while “religious programs in the correctional setting have been the single most common form of institutional programming for inmates,” nobody really knows whether those programs are effective. There’s not much good data. People tend to use tautological arguments to support religion-based rehabilitation programs. That’s not good enough. If we’re going to talk about whether religion helps rehabilitate criminals, we need to insist on data. Don’t just take it on faith.

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Religion Should Be Criticized

Sometimes religion should be criticized

Posted by: American Humanist Association

Most people, understanding good manners, have distaste for those who are vocally critical of the religious beliefs of others. Theological decisions are recognized as deeply personal, and common decency dictates that we respect the rights of others to believe what they wish, assuming those beliefs cause no harm to others.

The vast majority of humanists, even those actively engaged in the secular movement, share the general public’s sentiments on this issue. Live and let live, right?

We should realize, however, that the social norm that discourages the criticism of religion can work to the great advantage of religious political activists. Social conservatives, for example, righteously claiming the highest moral authority grounded in religion, knowing that criticism of religion is considered off-limits, can demand that their policy positions be given legitimacy even when those positions lack any rational basis.

To read the rest of this Psychology Today article by AHA President Emeritus David Niose clickhere.

Relate

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7 Reasons Why Religion Is a Form of Mental Illness

7 reasons why religion is a form of mental illness

Article by Sweet  Tea The Southern Skeptic Fairy

I would like to propose that religious beliefs be placed in the DSM as a category of mental illness for the following reasons:-

(1) Hallucinations – the person has invisible friends who (s)he insists are real, and to whom (s)he speaks daily, even though nobody can actually see or hear these friends.

(2) Delusions – the patient believes that the invisible friends have magical powers to make them rich, cure cancer, bring about world peace, and will do so eventually if asked.

(3) Denial/Inability to learn – though the requests for world peace remain unanswered, even after hundreds of years, the patients persist with the praying behaviour, each time expecting different results.

(4) Inability to distinguish fantasy from reality – the beliefs are contingent upon ancient mythology being accepted as historical fact.

(5) Paranoia – the belief that anyone who does not share their supernatural concept of reality is “evil,” “the devil,” “an agent of Satan”.

(6) Emotional abuse – ­ religious concepts such as sin, hell, cause feelings of guilt, shame, fear, and other types of emotional “baggage” which can scar the psyche for life.

(7) Violence – many patients insist that others should share in their delusions, even to the extent of using violence.

Faith and Foolishness: When Religious Beliefs Become Dangerous

Faith and Foolishness: When Religious Beliefs Become Dangerous

Religious leaders should be held accountable when their irrational ideas turn harmful

By Lawrence M. Krauss

A church tower in Budva, Montenegro.

Image: iStockphoto

Every two years the National Science Foundation produces a report, Science and Engineering Indicators, designed to probe the public’s understanding of science concepts. And every two years we relearn the sad fact that U.S. adults are less willing to accept evolution and the big bang as factual than adults in other industrial countries.

Except for this time. Was there suddenly a quantum leap in U.S. science literacy? Sadly, no. Rather the National Science Board, which oversees the foundation, chose to leave the section that discussed these issues out of the 2010 edition, claiming the questions were “flawed indicators of scientific knowledge because responses conflated knowledge and beliefs.” In short, if their religious beliefs require respondents to discard scientific facts, the board doesn’t think it appropriate to expose that truth.

The section does exist, however, and Science magazine obtained it. When presented with the statement “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals,” just 45 percent of respondents indicated “true.” Compare this figure with the affirmative percentages in Japan (78), Europe (70), China (69) and South Korea (64). Only 33 percent of Americans agreed that “the universe began with a big explosion.”

Consider the results of a 2009 Pew Survey: 31 percent of U.S. adults believe “humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.” (So much for dogs, horses or H1N1 flu.) The survey’s most enlightening aspect was its categorization of responses by levels of religious activity, which suggests that the most devout are on average least willing to accept the evidence of reality. White evangelical Protestants have the highest denial rate (55 percent), closely followed by the group across all religions who attend services on average at least once a week (49 percent).

I don’t know which is more dangerous, that religious beliefs force some people to choose between knowledge and myth or that pointing out how religion can purvey ignorance is taboo. To do so risks being branded as intolerant of religion. The kindly Dalai Lama, in a recent New York Times editorial, juxtaposed the statement that “radical atheists issue blanket condemnations of those who hold religious beliefs” with his censure of the extremist intolerance, murderous actions and religious hatred in the Middle East. Aside from the distinction between questioning beliefs and beheading or bombing people, the “radical atheists” in question rarely condemn individuals but rather actions and ideas that deserve to be challenged.

Surprisingly, the strongest reticence to speak out often comes from those who should be most worried about silence. Last May I attended a conference on science and public policy at which a representative of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences gave a keynote address. When I questioned how he reconciled his own reasonable views about science with the sometimes absurd and unjust activities of the Church—from false claims about condoms and AIDS in Africa to pedophilia among the clergy—I was denounced by one speaker after another for my intolerance.

Religious leaders need to be held accountable for their ideas. In my state of Arizona, Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, recently authorized a legal abortion to save the life of a 27-year-old mother of four who was 11 weeks pregnant and suffering from severe complications of pulmonary hypertension; she made that decision after consultation with the mother’s family, her doctors and the local ethics committee. Yet the bishop of Phoenix, Thomas Olm­sted, immediately excommunicated Sister Margaret, saying, “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s.” Ordinarily, a man who would callously let a woman die and orphan her children would be called a monster; this should not change just because he is a cleric.

In the race for Alabama governor, an advertisement bankrolled by the state teachers’ union attacked candidate Bradley Byrne because he supposedly supported teaching evolution. Byrne, worried about his political future, felt it necessary to deny the charge.

Keeping religion immune from criticism is both unwarranted and dangerous. Unless we are willing to expose religious irrationality whenever it arises, we will encourage irrational public policy and promote ignorance over education for our children.

This article was originally published with the title Faith and Foolishness.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Lawrence M. Krauss, a physicist and science commentator, is Foundation Professor and director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University (www.krauss.faculty.asu.edu).

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It Can Be Confusing to Find the One True Religion

It Can Be Confusing to Find the One True Religion

Many of God’s Rules Are Contradictory.  Help Us Lord!

 

– by Gad Saad, Ph.D.

 

 

I have often had conversations with religious people about their utter convictions that their religious narrative is THE correct one (as opposed to the narratives stemming from the other 9,999 religions).  Usually, the response is one that defines the meaning of a tautology:  “I know that it is the true narrative because my religion is the revealed truth.” Nice!

Suppose that a Martian had moved to Earth recently.  He is shopping for the one true religion.  Let’s see where this exploration takes him.  As a logical and rational Martian, he begins by asking a few basic questions to get the ball rolling.

Can I drink alcohol?  It depends on who the true God is.

Can I eat prosciutto?  It depends on who the true God is.

Can I eat some fried rice with shrimps?  It depends on who the true God is.

Can I listen to music?  It depends on who the true God is.

Can I turn on the computer to work on Saturday?  It depends on who the true God is.

Can I have more than one wife?  It depends on who the true God is.

Can I masturbate?  It depends on who the true God is.

How easy is it to obtain a divorce?  It depends on who the true God is.

What should the punishment (if any) be for homosexuality? It depends on who the true God is.

Can one commit suicide?  It depends on who the true God is.

Can I take prescription drugs if I am sick?  It depends on who the true God is.

Are particular animals considered sacred?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is there one God or multiple Gods?  It depends on who the true God(s) is/are.

Does hell exist?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is premarital sex allowed?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is the sun divine?  It depends on who the true God is.

Can I be reincarnated?  It depends on who the true God is.

How should women dress?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is male circumcision a Divine obligation?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is female circumcision a Divine obligation?  It depends on who the true God is.

Has the Messiah revealed himself?  It depends on who the true God is.

Can I buy indulgences to “fast-track” my dead ancestors into Heaven?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is it important to always be aware of where you are standing in relation to the Cardinal directions?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is there a direct representative of God on Earth?  It depends on who the true God is.

Are atheists going to hell?  It depends on who the true God is.

How easy is it for me to join your religion?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is it blasphemous to have a tattoo?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is there such a thing as a sacred river?  It depends on who the true God is.

Should I seek revenge on my enemies?  It depends on who the true God is.

Are we close to Armageddon?  It depends on who the true God is.

Do some souls reside on other planets?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is the wearing of leather shoes prohibited on particular days?  It depends on who the true God is.

Are pilgrimages a Divine obligation?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is apostasy permitted?  It depends on who the true God is.

Is evolution true?  It depends on who the true God is.

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Don’t Replace Religion; End It

Don’t Replace Religion; End It

Penn Jillette is the author of “Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!” and “God, No!“

Religion cannot and should not be replaced by atheism. Religion needs to go away and not be replaced by anything. Atheism is not a religion. It’s the absence of religion, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Religion is not morality. Theists ask me, “If there’s no god, what would stop me from raping and killing everyone I want to.” My answer is always: “I, myself, have raped and killed everyone I want to … and the number for both is zero.” Behaving morally because of a hope of reward or a fear of punishment is not morality. Morality is not bribery or threats. Religion is bribery and threats. Humans have morality. We don’t need religion.

Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.

Religion is faith. Faith is belief without evidence. Belief without evidence cannot be shared. Faith is a feeling. Love is also a feeling, but love makes no universal claims. Love is pure. The lover reports on his or her feelings and needs nothing more. Faith claims knowledge of a world we share but without evidence we can share. Feeling love is beautiful. Feeling the earth is 6,000 years old is stupid.

Religion is often just tribalism: pride in a group one was born into, a group that is often believed to have “God” on its side. We don’t need to replace tribalism with anything other than love for all humanity. Let’s do that, okay?

Religion also includes fellowship, joy, compassion, service and great music, and those can be replaced by … fellowship, joy, compassion, service and great music.

Atheism is the absence of religion. We don’t really need atheism. We just need to get rid of religion.

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“Dr House” On God, Reason and the Religious | Quotes and Video Clips

A selection of humorous and entertaining video clips, with Dr House commenting on God, religion and faith!

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Facebook: What Fears You Faced Based on Religion

Facebook: What fears you faced  based on religion

by Sean Faircloth

I wanted to cry reading several posts volunteered on our official Foundation Facebook page about childhood experiences and religion. Thank you everyone who told of your experiences. A recent comment in a Catholic publication implied these are isolated incidents. Maybe we all can take a step back, read the comments below, with compassion in our hearts, and face the reality that children are quite often deeply harmed by religious dogma. It is immoral and unacceptable. Under the leadership of our Executive Director, Elisabeth Cornwell, we are working at the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science to overcome this great injustice and do so based on reason, and based on basic human decency.  Read the comments below. Some will break your heart. The last one from Amy Milligan breaks mine.

So many of you, by overcoming these horrors, have set an example for those of us who were never religious. If you can overcome, we can support you and work together for a better world in 2013 and beyond.

Thank you so much. It is such an honor to be involved in this deeply compassionate cause. Read on. — Sean Faircloth, Dir. of Strategy & Policy, author of Attack of the Theocrats, How the Religious Right Harms Us All and What We Can Do About It.

You can leave comments here or on the RDFRS Facebook page

The comments below are just a few of the many

Laura Rhodes I was brought up by a conservative southern baptist mother and atheist father. As a child I was indoctrinated into a “hellfire and brimstone” religion that taught me anyone that didn’t accept Christ as lord and savior would burn in eternal damnation. Every night for years I laid awake praying that god would convince my dad to become Christian so when I died we would be together in eternity. I remember having nightmares about his damnation. It wasn’t until high school I was able to leave the church and denounce all the nonsense I’d been fed as a child. To this day I consider myself a recovering Christian and as a result do not allow my child to be involved in Christian churches or organizations. No child should have to suffer the abuse of organized religion and carry lifelong scars from it

Karin Petersson I often looked at the sky, terrified the clouds would part, Jesus return to bring “home” the ones who was pure at heart, leaving me behind…

Amanda Bond Warner I was told to never bring home toys or books that belonged to my school friends and never to purchase things second-hand (like at yard sales, the Good Will, etc) because the owner or previous owner could be involved in spiritistic practices and attached a demon to the object. Once the demon has entrance to the home, it would torment and rape me, my mother, and sister. I was 6 when I was told this.

Trevor Buvyer I was invited to watch a Church production called “Hell’s Fire and Heaven’s Gates”, depicting the deaths of several people. Those who were believers were shown to ascend to heaven where Angels sang, those who were not, were hauled down underneath the stage by a man dressed as the devil with flames shooting up and terrifying music. I accepted Christianity out of pure fear. It was a horrible experience.

John Ashley When I was seven..I was told by a teacher in a Morman sunday school class that my grandparents,who weren’t Morman, could not go to the same heaven that I and other Mormans would be allowed into….so I told the teacher that I wasn’t going if they couldn’t go..She then put me outside the classroom on a chair in the hall and told my father what had happened.When I got home my father gave me a beating..Merry xmas

Susanna Sharp-Schwacke Because of teenage indoctrination, I suffered from absolute terror of the “End Times.”

Anita Wittig I was told similar to what the 7 year old in the story did. Went to church and school at the same damnable place, a church filled with pedophiles, con artists, and perverts..I learned early into my teens that nothing is as it seems, that there is an agenda behind each and every one of these losers, and that heaven and hell are states of being and mind here on earth.

Jacob Wagner It was always, and still is, difficult to discuss being gay (at least between family members, as they are very religious). Back when I was a Christian, I tried to suppress many feelings to stay “normal” and out of Hell. Now that I’m an atheist, I’m much more comfortable with myself and discussing such things as homosexuality.

Melissa Glenn My best friend in 2nd/3rd grade came from a home that didn’t go to church or practice religion. I tried to tell her about jesus and all that but she didn’t believe. I remember being 8 years old, crying, praying on my knees for god to let my best friend take my place in heaven. What kind of 8 year old should have to worry about the eternal torture of her best friend?

Martin Navnihal Lochner Our politics taught us that we are Gods people and that we must suppress the heathen that represent all the other races and orientations..a mix of nationalistic autocratic rule with apocalyptic theology crushed my spirit until I one day discovered a book called ‘ straight and crooked thinking by a Mr Thouless..’ It saved me by my own effort. I have been excommunicated by my family,crucified by our Church and lonely in community because of reason over myth… I am ok…

Samantha Fischer I was raised a Catholic and, though I have long since renounced that faith, I am still haunted with guilt for my supposed life “sins” that are contrary to the Catholic Church’s dogma: divorce, child out of wedlock, promiscuous behaviour, being “mean” and not “polite and respectful” (ie. speaking up for myself), etc. In fact, as a result of this guilt, the mental illness I suffer from often becomes aggravated and I am in some peril when I dwell on what I’ve done “wrong”.

Jennifer Darden horrible nighmares that if I didn’t “speak in other tongues” from being “filled with the Holy Spirit” that I would spend an eternity damned to hell. along with the ridiculous rules that I couldn’t watch tv, couldn’t wear pants, cut hair, etc. so happy to be out of such an oppressive religion. out of religion, period actually. along with most of my family, who no longer believe in a judgmental god.

Hal Molitor - I remember my sister returning from her Catholic grade school sobbing horribly because our parents were going to Hell because they were not married in the Catholic Church.

Gordo Clayton A woman I used to be very close to was raised in a deeply religious, very harsh, fundamentalist Christian family. Growing up, she was utterly terrified of that one Bible quite that says if you doubt God even for a moment you are doomed to Hell. Of course, tell a brain not to think of pink polar bears, that brain is going to envision pink polar bears. She had an instant of “what if” doubt at a young age and was absolutely traumatized up until she became an adult. She told me when she was a kid she’d lie awake in her room for hours, reading frivolous teen magazines, until exhaustion finally took over and she fell unconscious. This went on for years. This child was abused, without a doubt.

There was also a bunch of Rapture fear thrown in there too, but I gotta keep this thing under a million words. However, I want to say that when she told me her story a few years ago, that’s when I went from being a timid, apologetic atheist to being a militant atheist.

Rachel Wilde My niece (age 12) recently returned home from catholic school in tears because her class mates told her she would burn in hell as she is not a baptised catholic.

Allison Underwood Raised a Calvinist and believing in predestination, I always feared Hell when I was growing up, and the powerlessness I had in my own salvation was overwhelming at times. There’s no way of knowing whether or not you were Chosen until you’re at the Pearly Gates, and you’re either let inside or cast down to Hell. How do you find comfort in those thoughts?

Dan Allford Even now as an atheist adult I still get a pang of fear and doubt: what if the christians are right and I burn in hell for eternity? It’s still an uncomfortable thought for me, aged 38. Then I remember what I’ve seen, learned myself and experienced directly – and the notion of hell becomes rudiculous again. Children don’t have the strength of character to resist these superstitious, religious notions. I feel enormous pity for them.

Angela Darst Blais My mother became a Jehovah’s Witness when I was 5. I grew up thinking the world would end before I grew up. Armageddon would come and I and everyone else who didn’t believe would be killed, our flesh falling off as we watched. Talk about traumatized.

James Willis I had exactly the same speech given to me by someone who resmebled and sounded just like a car salesman. Turns out he was the pastor, I still have a recurring nightmare that scares me awake sometimes of loved ones dying by fire. Please stop this madness towards children. Lets keep them truly innocent by having a “religious” age of consent where it is illegal to have your parents force the archaic religion on you when your not old enough to understand right from wrong, let alone Jesus from Allah, or Krishna from Buddha. KEEP CHILDREN INNOCENT UNTIL THEY CAN CHOOSE FOR THEMSELVES.

Robert Miller We had to take my 5 y. o. brother off of life support after a car accident. A Pentecostal preacher told my grieving mother that because he was so young he was not accountable for his faith, but that my mom’s faith must have been lacking. He told her that if her faith had been stronger Satan would not have been able to take my brother as God promises long life. My mom was shattered.

Jen Martin I felt left out as I had not been “saved” and took the lord’s supper (southern baptist) at about age 9. Two “friends” convinced me that I was going to hell and there was no way out of it, not even salvation, since I had taken of the lord without being worthy (i.e. being saved). The mother of one confirmed this interpretation of the bible, directly stating that I had no hope of salvation. This family justified a lot of questionable teachings to children. On a lighter note, I did find it funny that their daughter, the one in the story above, refused to kiss her boyfriend for months because she was convinced she would get pregnant (we were around 16). I had some laughs over that one. I guess had she allowed her daughter to attend sex education, she would have known (but that would take the “fear factor” out of life, right?). I have many stories similar to this… all in the life of a southern baptist.

Pete Simms I was forcibly exorcised for being gay at fourteen and told that I am going to hell. eight suicide attempts later and at 40 I am still dealing with the fallout so yes understand completely the little girls fears. hell is a scary place to damage a young mind with.

Joshua Torres Demons! This put so much fear in me. I have religious family members to this day said they met angels and demons. As a kid I always worried if one would visit me or attack me. Or even possess me! This made sleeping scary.now as a adult and one who doesnt believe that. No fear

Brian C Findley Being gay, I learned that I was an abomination and for nearly a decade i believed it. Only after my suicide attempt did i learn to love myself again.

Shanta Sultana Horrific fear is implemented on Muslim children, from a very early age children start to imagine the detailed stories of hell fire they have been tought about and its an excellent way to abuse and control children. Little girls especially. However the same fear disables the mind and toungue and Muslims stay in a pack and promise never to speak about the abuse. instead become PR mad nation. Whenever someone points out the truth its propaganda by the west, perhaps Penguin publishing company (figure that out!) or the Church etc.

Eddie Mcclanahan My Father was a Baptist minister, I am gay and always have been, so trust me growing up I had many sleepless nights.

Ross Moorhouse I was a fundie Christian till I saw the light. I am ashamed to say I used to preach about people going to hell. I no longer follow the god of bloodshed and murder nor his so called book.

Fred Akman sorry this is a bit longer than requested.. I was confronted at YMCA camp in Greensboro, NC after moving there from Los Angeles. A Young kid got up in my face when he found out I was Jewish, yelling that I couldn’t just turn my back on Jesus, he had died for my sins and I was going to hell. When I told him I was Jewish and didn’t believe in Jesus, he assaulted me. The camp did nothing about the attack after it was reported by my parents, so I stopped going to camp there. The same kid went to my high school, where he did the same thing to a gay student. This time I got in between and verbally wiped the floor with him and made him look really stupid, I didn’t hear any more out of him during high school. I became an atheist around the same time as the second incident, though I had been one inside since around 3rd or 4th grade (at a religious school). After leaving high school I began fighting to keep religion out of school and maintain separation of church and state, as well many other causes while I work towards my eventual PHD.

Mike Ahern Good Friday Catholic prayers for the Jews. Every Catholic congregation in the world prays for the conversion of the Jews so that they may be redeemed.

Linda Selzer My mother grew up in Austria with a Catholic mother and a Jewish father. In those days religious training was part of schooling, so my uncle went to a Jewish school so he could be Bar Mitzvahed and my mother went to Catholic training, When she was 10 her father died, and the nuns told her she had to pray every day for her father because he was Jewsih and therefore burning in hell. Becoming an atheist at the age of 12 is what eventually saved her.

Kaveh Haddadi I had the same experience, as a kid in my homeland Iran I’ve been told to follow the rules made by religion and it could even cover the rules made by our teachers. Failing to obey those rules, having a doubt about god or even about the supreme leader would lead to hell, I remember how it affected our childhood. fear of thinking and illusion were the smallest consequences of this method for us children. Thank you Mr. Dawkins, you’ve gifted the valuable act of thinking without fear to many Iranians, we owe you a big one.

Ashley Alderman After suffering complications (retroplacental hemorrhage and an incompetent cervix), I had my pregnancy terminated at age 20. I’ve been told repeatedly that I’ll burn in hell for it, even though the complications weren’t my fault. I’ve always questioned religion, but the fear of “hell” was so deeply embedded in my mind that I prayed for “forgiveness” night after night. I am SO glad that I broke free from those chains.

Bonny McCurdy My older brothers friend committed suicide in high school, I was so so sad for such a long time because I was taught that he was most definitely in hell. It was several years later that I realized it was all nonsense. Why do people teach their children such damaging lies? I will never understand.

Lainey Head Kloes I was kicked out of a catholic private school because I believed in science more than mandatory bible class. They called me a heathen at 11 and I’ve been atheist ever since..

Phillip Jones When i was in Primary school, my 5th grade teacher screamed at me about how I am born stupid and i should repent and devote my life to learning the ways of Jesus, or my family and friends would be sent to Hell.

At 23 and an Atheist, I still have re-occuring nightmares about my family and friends burning in a Lake of Holy Fire or dying in all sorts of gruesome manners. I’m on medication for my night terrors and I hope they leave my mind before i shuffle off this mortal coil and my natural materials go back into the universe.

Devin Kennedy Not exactly the same, but I was told as a child that “little boys who ask questions don’t get into heaven.”

Rachel Shockey I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family. My whole life was based on Christianity. At the age of 6 I became “saved”, only because the thought of hell terrified me. I wanted to avoid it at all costs. Throughout my childhood and teenage life I often wondered if I was really saved. And I would pray again to be “saved”. Looking back I now realize those were the start of my doubts about my faith. But it took till I was 16 to really question everything. When I finally told my family, at age 17, that I no longer considered myself a Christian, it was a family crisis. Although it hasn’t been easy being the only nonbeliever on both sides of the family, I’m glad I had the courage to not be influenced by irrational fears.

Bill Melton I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian (Nazarene) environment, and began having anxiety attacks at about 6 years old. I knew I was going to Hell because I had crushes on other boys, among other naughtinesses. One day at about that age, I came home from school to an empty house. I knew that my family had been taken in the rapture and left me behind. I carried the anxiety long after I realized that the myths were just that. Encouraging a child to envision him/herself being eternally tortured for being human is child abuse.

Chris W James In the church I went to as a child, they had a baptism tank to dunk ppl in. Being 5 years old, I asked my parents what the tank was about. After explaining to me briefly it was to “save souls from hell and eternal torment ” I let my mind wander and conjure up horrific images of a horrible place with torture, blood, demons etc. After service we talked in the parking lot, like most do, and a man with a Polaroid camera showed us these pictures of Jesus floating in the sky. My dad bought one for $5 and kept it in the glove box, assured that the end was nigh and we better get our house in order. I had terrible dreams of the devil coming for me, and that her lived in the water tower at my school, which was walking distance from the house. For awhile there I even wet the bed. My uncle finally told me it all wasn’t true, and things were better.

Wayne Stremski Catholic School, 1966, sixth grade, Confirmation time. I procrastinated on the coloring book of Jesus and the apostles I was assigned, not completing it. The lay teacher told me that I would not be confirmed because of that. I sweated through three days, too fearful to tell my parents – or even my friends. I thought the teacher was going to tell the bishop to walk right past me and not confirm me in church on Sunday. But when I was indeed confirmed, and the bishop slapped my face, well that started me thinking. 40 years later I figured it out for good. I am an atheist.

Aimee Eisiminger Sleepless nights….praying feverishly for forgiveness for the smallest of transgressions. At one point I started to believe that I must be a demon because I kept transgressing. I was simply following my nature but religion kept telling me that my nature was evil.

Boris Warszawski When I wasn’t 18 yet I was still forced to go to church. I got out of it by volunteering during the mass by teaching children the gospel in an age appropriate manner. The kids would draw or make crafts after the lesson. I was surprised when a little boy stole a girls crayon and she didn’t mind. I told her it was very nice of her. She replied, “Oh, I’m not being nice, he’s just gonna burn in hell”. The boy cried for the rest of the lesson and I was flabbergasted at how religion is taught to our youth.

Derek Rowe As a child raised in Mormonism, I was taught the following:

There are three different heavens. If I ever left Mormonism, if I did not marry in a Mormon temple, if I drank coffee or tea, if I drank alcohol, if I participated in any sexual act before marriage, if I did not continuously give 10% of my income to the Mormon church, I would be separated from my family members in the afterlife in a lower heaven while they enjoyed the highest level of heaven without me.

Stacey Silverman We live in the bible belt (Texas) and my 8-yr old daughter was told by her classmates on the playground that she would be going to hell since she doesn’t believe in Jesus. Dawkins is absolutely right. This is traumatic for a child to hear and she was upset for several days.

Petra Roesner I was “born into” the evangelical church in Germany, and for many years was told exactly that, that I would burn in hell for eternity and suffer terrible pain if I were to reject the church’s teachings. As if those words were not enough, we (in Sunday school) were shown horrific pictures that depicted human suffering in hell, resulting in many nightmares as I grew up. When I was 14 I was forced to participate in the traditional ritual of being “confirmed,” because it was what was expected from me by my family. Two weeks after that, I rode my bike to the courthouse and filed papers that I was officially leaving the church. As a mother, I have encountered one child in particular, who has told my boys that they would go to hell if they don’t believe in Jesus, had their character attacked for knowing about religion but not being religious (which would ultimately be their choice). As a result of this taunting or religious bullying, my younger son was afraid to go to sleep and had nightmares. Needless to say, they are not playing with this child anymore.

Mary Charles Severinghaus As a small girl, I lay in bed trembling and crying in terror if the sunrise were red. We had been taught by the nuns at our Roman Catholic school that the “unrevealed secret” of Our Lady of Fatima was that the end of the world would be preceded by a red sunrise. My parents wouldn’t listen to me, so I bore that burden by my scared little sad self for years.

Jennifer Bisson My sister died in a car accident at a young age. Afterwards I couldn’t even count how many people told me (@14 years old) she died because my family didn’t pray enough or because my family was not more active in church.

Vicki Burns-Hufstetler Very similar story- at 9 my father told me my beloved grandfather was going to hell for not believing as we did. They had also terrified me into thinking that Jesus would return at night- and i wouldn’t be ready. Worrying for mine and my Padaddy’s eternal souls caused me to be plagued with middle of the night panic attacks into my late teens. I educated myself and am now free

Buddy Brown Yeah I grew up in Oklahoma, as Christian as possible. When I was younger I wanted to be a missionary and spread the word of God. I used to be terrified of every little thought I had. I used to cry at night fearing that while I dreamed id have a dirty thought and miss the rapture. I used to physically hurt myself to do my best to prevent myself from thinking sexual thoughts. The fear of hell was horrible. It dictated every aspect of my life. The way I acted, dressed, thought, everything. I was as Christian as possible. In my teens I managed to get some time to think for myself. I got into a pretty bad car wreck. I certainly would’ve died were it not for the doctors and medical advancements… Not god. Yet over and over god kept getting the praise for my survival. I was bed ridden for quite a while and did plenty of reading. I had a biology textbook with me and read it as unbiased as I possibly could, and that was that. No more christianity for me. I’m now slowly working to try and become a biologist. And so much happier with my quality of life. Everything is better. Life is sweeter. And knowledge, not dogma, is what I strive for.

Angela Amira Petite A Priest told my infant school assembly that parents who had disabled children were evil and were being punished by god. My sister of course experienced significant brain damage through meningitis and became disabled. I was escorted shouting and crying from that assembly.

Eleanor Tagart I remember being in tears as a child because I was taught in school that unbelievers won’t go to heaven and that meant my mum wouldn’t be there.

Sondra Cevelin I was raised Agnostic, but my parents always let me go to church groups with school friends when I was a child. I remember a youth group leader asking me once why he never saw my parents on Sundays. I told him they didn’t believe in God, and he gave me a big hug and told me “I’m so sorry they won’t be in heaven with you”. I was absolutely devastated. I cried and prayed For them every night. At 8 or 9 years old, my parents were my whole world, and the thought of them burning in hell forever was terrifying. I brought it up with my dad, and he explained to me why I shouldn’t have believed it, but that only made me feel worse. I eventually got old enough to know better, but I vividly remember the terror I felt, and I would never wish that feeling on anyone, especially a child. That is why now that I have kids of my own, they are not allowed to go to church groups with friends. The last thing I want is my children crying themselves to sleep in fear over my soul.

Kirsty Moss I had a christian and atheist upbringing, my mother was a devout christian, my father an atheist. I remember long fitful nights terrified by the thought of my father being sent to hell simply for not believing. Funny thing was, he is a warm gentle beautiful soul with a strong moral compass and generous nature. An awesome nurturing and respectful father and husband. My mother was deeply depressed, volatile, angry and unhappy. The irony only dawned on me when I was substantially older and wiser. Not that I blame my mother. I believe (though I’m not 100 percent sure) that the church made her depression that much worse by its belief that to seek treatment was to admit to not being a good enough christian to fight off the ‘demon of depression’.

Melissa Glenn Idk if there is much to elaborate on.

I was raised baptist. If you didn’t believe in god you were going to hell. My best friend, when I was 8, didn’t believe in god. I tried to tell her about god but she wouldn’t believe. I was terrified for her. I prayed and cried on my knees for god to let her into heaven and I would go to hell in her place. I didn’t want my best friend to burn forever.

* * * * * *

What is really messed up about it is that I think at the time I was hoping that giving up my “spot” would be considered selfless enough to get us both in. Then I felt immediate shame and guilt once I realized that god could read my mind and would think I was actually being selfish and trying to trick him and that we would both go to hell because of it.

Isaiah Copp Raised as a evangelical/pentocostal I dealt with severe guilt and shame, mostly due to sexual maturity. Every time I had an erection, sexual thought, or masturbated I was taught that I was essentially crucifying and breaking the heart of Jesus over and over…Feeling insane with guilt for torturing such a beautiful saviour, I sought counsel and was told that I had demons in my soul fighting for my etenal existense….this is total psycological abuse…

Lm Brown That happened to me when President Kennedy was killed: A neighbor told five-year old me that he was going to Hell because he was Catholic. Christianity never had a real chance with me after that.

Desiree Nicole Maslen Being told a friend was going to hell was the least of our worries as children of my parent. That fear was just normal every day pain that we would never know the people around us when we went to heaven because none of them were as good christians as my mother. Our torture was being molested and beaten, if you can call it beating when you black your childs eyes and touch them and verbally bludgeon them into submission and fear every day…then you clench the deal by telling them baby jesus will cry if you ‘lie’ to the police or the school teachers so they think your mother is doing bad things.

Jessica Lynn-Lato As a child my Sicilian grandfather told me that anytime bad things happened to me – a cut or bruise, disappointment, death of loved ones, etc – God was punishing me for something bad I had previously done.

Kenneth Jones I feel ashamed to be subscribed to the Richard Dawkins foundation for reason and science. I hate this religion bashing.

Shouldn’t we be promoting reason, science and tolerance.

Also I am sick of comments like “god is bullshit” shows just as much intelligence and reasoning as those with unproven faith.

Elyse Schuler-Cruz I was raised Catholic, and went to Catholic schools. I was afraid of physical intimacy until I was in my mid 20s. Even after I stopped believing that kissing with tongue was akin to premarital sex, I still had trouble becoming comfortable with sexuality. Sometimes, I find myself feeling guilty about things I do with my husband even though I know better. Hell, my husband and I are pretty vanilla by any standards except religious ones.

Sam Jacob Simply put I lived in fear as a child, I was never clear on what might send me to hell and what not. I had a friend who went to vacation bible school with me and he woke up screaming for months because he was having dreams that he was burning in hell. I felt so bad for him. Religion is CHILD ABUSE.

Mackenzie Maxwell I grew up Mormon. When I was 6, the Sunday school teacher told me that people who smoke would not make it to Heaven. My grandfather smoked back then. I had nightmares for weeks. Then I decided that if the people I love aren’t going to Heaven, I don’t want to go to Heaven either.

Daniel Villalobos I was told by the pastor of my baptist church that God can see me everytime & everywhere. That’s really fuck me up when I come to that age when kids start to masturbate. Sounds funny: IT WASN’T.

Gary Harmon I have a mental disorder which makes me paranoid, anxious, prone to mood swings and delusions. As a child, my religion both fed and subdued my mental disorders: God is always watching you. Thirty years later, I had to be hospitalized due to a mental breakdown. I told the doctors that my greatest fear was going to Hell, despite being an Atheist. But there’s no such thing as Hell. Some childhood monsters follow you forever.

Thema Modisi When I was a kid I we carpooled with this family that were Jehovah’s Witnesses. They gave me these Watchtower booklets to read. I remember reading a story about a girl who forgot to bless her food before she ate. Unfortunately for her there was a demon curled up in a piece of lettuce on her plate and after eating it she became possessed. I remember praying everynight after that for God to bless everything i would eat the next day. I was terrified the same would happen to me. One day when I was 13 I got tired of being afraid and I embraced atheism.

Chelsea Leah Johnson I had a lot of insomnia when I was ten because I was afraid of hell. I couldn’t bring myself to accept that any of the bible stories or god or jesus were real. I thought I HAD to accept it and I really tried, but I just couldn’t.

Phil Peron I have many childhood memories of being awakened by horrifying nightmares of hell and damnation. Felt more like terrorism. Even if God exists, It wouldn’t be worth worshipping. What an abhorrent being. Needless to say I won’t be subjecting my own children to this rubbish.

Hiroki Burke A belief in God made my adolescence a lot more confusing and frightening than it needed to be.

I had an interest in Biology and Evolution, and struggled to reconcile what I learnt about those with what I was being taught in religious education class. I was also struggling with my sexuality, which my religion teacher taught was a way for God to test our faith, and that God would still love us, so long as we never acted on any sexual feelings towards other men that we may have had. I interpreted this as God’s way of punishing me for having doubts and I would need to get rid of my doubts in order to get rid of my attraction towards other men and become ‘normal’.

Eventually, I got the courage to ask…why was God punishing me, and did he have good reason? Sure, I was having doubts. But how could I not? Everything I was learning about God simply didn’t match what I was learning about the real world. I was trying to reconcile it, I was TRYING to believe in God, I WANTED to believe in God. Was it really just for God to punish me when I actually wanted to serve him?

It finally occurred to me that, even if God did exist, he was a being that was not kind, was not just, was not something I wanted to spend eternity with after my death, and certainly wasn’t worthy of worship. It gave me the freedom to look at the world and myself with clear eyes and question my morality. Rather than just accepting that being Gay is wrong because my religion teacher said so, I was finally able to ask… “is it? If so, why? How is my being gay harming anyone else?”

Without religion, I would not have had to go through years of believing that I was a bad person. Believing that I was being punished for questioning the existence of my apparent creator.

I would have been able to develop a strong understanding of morality long ago. Religion doesn’t encourage understanding of morality, rather, it suppresses it by teaching the faithful obedience and submission.

Jaden Martinez I use to live in Wisconsin, America from birth to seven years. I was born into a heavily religious family, my grandma was a deep believer and grandpa was a paster. I would attend church services and was scared to death by the thought of burning in hell if I did not follow gods word. I did everything right, praying every night before bed and not saying a single swear word. My life was devoted to god until I entered pubescents. I started having feeling for girls, impure thoughts would come into my head almost all the time. I would try and fight these thoughts, I even looked into seeing a doctor about it. After a few years my worries increased causing me to be extremely anxious. I became mentally ill and had an episode that lasted nearly six months. When I was a child my mum told me that the devil would put a gun to my head and if I believed in god enough he would save me. In hospital I feared this was going to happen to me. The unpear thoughts lead me to believe I had evil me so I would hurt myself to try and get it out this resulted in me trying to take my life as a sacrifice so god would forgive me.

After a lot of counselling and help I got better. I have excepted myself and left religion behind me.

All this time I thought being gay was an illness but really it was the fear of gods word.

Lindsey Thompson I went through 10 years of undiagnosed Bipolar Hell. My parents took me to Christian counselors instead of psychiatrists, who told me that my depression came from sin and that if I truly repented in my heart, I would be healed. I began cutting and branding myself with hot metal in an attempt to prove to God that I was willing to suffer like Jesus suffered. When I attempted suicide at age 22 I was finally properly diagnosed in the psych ward. My church excommunicated me. I now lead a happy, stable life with medication and without God.

Kedar Anil Gadgil as a kid being raised to be hindu, i was convinced by adults that if i didn’t do something, or did something, or did something wrongly, etc…any infraction of the arbitrary code of ethics and ritual requirements…i would be reborn (in my next birth) as an ant (to be crushed) or a frog (living in mud and dirt) or a donkey (overloaded and abused)…etc…i was told that because in my past births (as ‘lower’ animals), i did good deeds, i have been ‘rewarded’ with a human birth…and that the ultimate goal is to be so good in this life that the lord shall have mercy on my poor soul and break the cycle or birth and death, and offer me a privileged place at his feet for eternity…!!! i have had many a sleepless nights trying to hope (and pray) that some random act of ommission or commission i did during the day didn’t break some arbit rule, and that if it did, hoping the lord would forgive my transgressions…

Tom McEvoy entered catholic school in’55..kindergarten….. 2 nuns for teachers…. I remember them holding big yard sticks….. they told me anyone who didn’t go to our church will burn in hell. 5 yrs old. Child Abuse…..

Anna Gardner I am still plagued with guilt even though the rational side of me tells me to stop being so silly. It is an intense fear. A fear of simply acting like a human. Afraid to think outside the box. Belittlement, shame..ugh I can’t express it correctly. These are deep-rooted feelings that come frombing told my whole life that I had better get my act together or face the deepest darkest pit. It still hurts.

Victoria N Finney There aren’t enough words for what I went through as a young bisexual girl in a Christian boarding school. I wanted to die. Anything would have been better than the hatred and condemnation I was surrounded by, even death.

Kristie Keller Starting from the time that I was about 7 or 8, I was told that my dad would go to Hell unless he accepted Jesus as his savior before he died. Because of this, I would sit in fear with my hand on the phone in case he fell off a ladder while changing light bulbs in our vaulted ceilings. Eventually I decided I’d rather not believe in Heaven if it came with the possibility of Hell. But that was only a decade later.

Diana Szymiczek At around 12 years old my Born-Again Christian neighbour stopped by to see me (she was the same age), and she heard my brother listening to AC/DC’s “Highway To Hell”. She turned to me and said “your brother WILL go to hell if he listens to that music”, and left. I cried for days. This is a girl who burned her bible after she lost a competition to win a new house, because the bible “told me if I wanted it I would win it”.

Jennifer Blaesing I remember being so terrified about feeding into temptation that it would lead me to become possessed by demons or the devil. We were told that temptations to sin were whispers from demons so I felt like they were constantly trying to control my mind. I’d lay awake petrified at nights agonizing over the idea that I cannot defeat them. I felt like I was the perfect candidate for possession because my mind was so weak.

Anneka Padrón Having been told that people who didn’t believe Christ was the Savior, and knowing that Jews denied he was so, I told a little girl in my 2nd grade class that she was going to Hell. She was so upset by this statement that she cried the rest of the day. To this day, I still feel guilty over this. This poor girl probably went home terrified. I know kids say mean things, but the things I told her were just me repeating what my mom told me. Ugh, I’m so glad I came to my senses.

Amy L Milligan I was raised as a Jehovah Witness. To keep young children in line we were told that god only loves children who obey their parents, study the bible, and attend the meetings without disruption. We were told stories of people harasses by demons who have to call on gods name to get freedom. Not having faith in god or worshipping him correctly results in demonic possession and harassment that is anything from physical harassment to your life being filled with terrible tests if faith. However they also teach that if you do worship in the most faithful way you will also be harasses by demons as proof that you have gods approval much like Job. Many if their teaching are in contradiction. So as a result, I had nightmares into adulthood of dark beings chasing me and pinning me down and no matter how loud I screamed gods name I couldn’t get away. I would wake up screaming and crying. 15 years ago my brother (22 at the time) was kicked out of the religion for being possessed by demons because he heard voices and thought people were following him. A year later he committed suicide. He was never directed to mental healthcare, it is never discussed and the “elders” who remove people from the congregation for these offenses are not trained in mental healthcare. They are janitors, construction workers, etc…regular men making dangerous judgements. About a year after that I left this cult, tired of the guilt, shame, and fear. For this I was excommunicated (they call it disfellowshipped like my brother) and deserted by all my family and friends. It took about 5 years to deprogram and I still struggle to understand how in this century a religion can proliferate such ignorance and fear. Currently I am a well educated Atheist, having nightmares on occasion but I no longer hold any fear of spiritual beings of any kind.

 continue to source article at facebook.com

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It’s Irrational To Be Religious

Jared Diamond: It’s irrational to be religious

Supernatural beliefs might not make sense, but they endure because they’re so emotionally satisfying

BY JARED DIAMOND

(Credit: Reuters/Enny Nuraheni)

Excerpted from “The World Until Yesterday”

Virtually all religions hold some supernatural beliefs specific to that religion. That is, a religion’s adherents firmly hold beliefs that conflict with and cannot be confirmed by our experience of the natural world, and that appear implausible to people other than the adherents of that particular religion. For example, Hindus believe there is a monkey god who travels thousands of kilometers at a single somersault. Catholics believe a woman who had not yet been fertilized by a man became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy, whose body eventually after his death was carried up to a place called heaven, often represented as being located in the sky. The Jewish faith believes that a supernatural being gave a chunk of desert in the Middle East to the being’s favorite people, as their home forever.

No other feature of religion creates a bigger divide between religious believers and modern secular people, to whom it staggers the imagination that anyone could entertain such beliefs. No other feature creates a bigger divide between believers in two different religions, each of whom firmly believes its own beliefs but considers it absurd that the other religion’s believers believe those other beliefs. Why, nevertheless, are supernatural beliefs such universal features of religions?

One suggested answer is that supernatural religious beliefs are just ignorant superstitions similar to supernatural non-religious beliefs, illustrating only that the human brain is capable of deceiving itself into believing anything. We can all think of supernatural non-religious beliefs whose implausibility should be obvious. Many Europeans believe that the sight of a black cat heralds misfortune, but black cats are actually rather common. By repeatedly tallying whether or not a one-hour period following or not following your observation of a black cat in an area with high cat density did or did not bring you some specified level of misfortune, and by applying the statistician’s chi-square test, you can quickly convince yourself that the black-cat hypothesis has a probability of less than 1 out of 1,000 of being true. Some groups of New Guinea lowlanders believe that hearing the beautiful whistled song of the little bird known as the Lowland Mouse-Babbler warns us that someone has recently died, but this bird is among the most common species and most frequent singers in New Guinea lowland forests. If the belief about it were true, the local human population would be dead within a few days, yet my New Guinea friends are as convinced of the babbler’s ill omens as Europeans are afraid of black cats.

A more striking non-religious superstition, because people today still invest money in their mistaken belief, is water-witching, also variously known as dowsing, divining, or rhabdomancy. Already established in Europe over 400 years ago and possibly also reported before the time of Christ, this belief maintains that rotation of a forked twig carried by a practitioner called a dowser, walking over terrain whose owner wants to know where to dig a well, indicates the location and sometimes the depth of an invisible underground water supply. Control tests show that dowsers’ success at locating underground water is no better than random, but many land-owners in areas where geologists also have difficulty at predicting the location of underground water nevertheless pay dowsers for their search, then spend even more money to dig a well unlikely to yield water. The psychology behind such beliefs is that we remember the hits and forget the misses, so that whatever superstitious beliefs we hold become confirmed by even the flimsiest of evidence through the remembered hits. Such anecdotal thinking comes naturally; controlled experiments and scientific methods to distinguish between random and non-random phenomena are counterintuitive and unnatural, and thus not found in traditional societies.

Perhaps, then, religious superstitions are just further evidence of human fallibility, like belief in black cats and other non-religious superstitions. But it’s suspicious that costly commitments to belief in implausible-to-others religious superstitions are such a consistent feature of religions. The investments that many religious adherents make to their beliefs are far more burdensome, time-consuming, and heavy in consequences to them than are the actions of black-cat-phobics in occasionally avoiding black cats. This suggests that religious superstitions aren’t just an accidental by-product of human reasoning powers but possess some deeper meaning. What might that be?

A recent interpretation among some scholars of religion is that belief in religious superstitions serves to display one’s commitment to one’s religion. All long-lasting human groups — Boston Red Sox fans (like me), devoted Catholics, patriotic Japanese, and others — face the same basic problem of identifying who can be trusted to remain as a group member. The more of one’s life is wrapped up with one’s group, the more crucial it is to be able to identify group members correctly and not to be deceived by someone who seeks temporary advantage by claiming to share your ideals but who really doesn’t. If that man carrying a Boston Red Sox banner, whom you had accepted as a fellow Red Sox fan, suddenly cheers when the New York Yankees hit a home run, you’ll find it humiliating but not life-threatening. But if he’s a soldier next to you in the front line and he drops his gun (or turns it on you) when the enemy attacks, your misreading of him may cost you your life.

That’s why religious affiliation involves so many overt displays to demonstrate the sincerity of your commitment: sacrifices of time and resources, enduring of hardships, and other costly displays that I’ll discuss later. One such display might be to espouse some irrational belief that contradicts the evidence of our senses, and that people outside our religion would never believe. If you claim that the founder of your church had been conceived by normal sexual intercourse between his mother and father, anyone else would believe that too, and you’ve done nothing to demonstrate your commitment to your church. But if you insist, despite all evidence to the contrary, that he was born of a virgin birth, and nobody has been able to shake you of that irrational belief after many decades of your life, then your fellow believers will feel much more confident that you’ll persist in your belief and can be trusted not to abandon your group.

Nevertheless, it’s not the case that there are no limits to what can be accepted as a religious supernatural belief. Scott Atran and Pascal Boyer have independently pointed out that actual religious superstitions over the whole world constitute a narrow subset of all the arbitrary random superstitions that one could theoretically invent. To quote Pascal Boyer, there is no religion proclaiming anything like the following tenet: “There is only one God! He is omnipotent. But he exists only on Wednesdays.” Instead, the religious supernatural beings in which we believe are surprisingly similar to humans, animals, or other natural objects, except for having superior powers. They are more far-sighted, longer-lived, and stronger, travel faster, can predict the future, can change shape, can pass through walls, and so on. In other respects, gods and ghosts behave like people. The god of the Old Testament got angry, while Greek gods and goddesses became jealous, ate, drank, and had sex. Their powers surpassing human powers are projections of our own personal power fantasies; they can do what we wish we could do ourselves. I do have fantasies of hurling thunderbolts that destroy evil people, and probably many other people share those fantasies of mine, but I have never fantasized about existing only on Wednesdays. Hence it doesn’t surprise me that gods in many religions are pictured as smiting evil-doers, but that no religion holds out the dream of existing just on Wednesdays. Thus, religious supernatural beliefs are irrational, but emotionally plausible and satisfying. That’s why they’re so believable, despite at the same time being rationally implausible.

Printed by arrangement with Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. from “The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?”by Jared Diamond. Copyright © Jared Diamond, 2012.

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20 Percent of Americans Don’t Believe in God–So Why is Our Congress So Religious?

By Alex Kane           

20 Percent of Americans Don’t Believe in God–So Why is Our Congress So Religious?

The new Congress includes a Hindu, a Buddhist and someone who doesn’t identify with any religion, but the majority of members remain Christian.

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

The new, 113th Congress that was sworn in last week may be more religiously diverse than any other session, but the body as a whole is more committed to religion than the U.S. population. New data analysis  released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life bears this out.

When the new Congress gathered last week in Washington, D.C., a Hindu and a Buddhist were sworn in–a first in U.S. history. Rounding out the religious diversity in the new Congress is Kyrsten Sinema, a representative from Arizona, who is not religious at all (she d oesn’t identify with the terms “non-theist, atheist or nonbeliever”).

But Congress remains more religious than Americans are. As  the Pew Forum states, “perhaps the greatest disparity, however, is between the percentage of U.S. adults and the percentage of members of Congress who do not identify with any particular religion. About one-in-five U.S. adults describe themselves as atheist, agnostic or ‘nothing in particular’– a group sometimes collectively called the ‘nones.’”

Those numbers are a striking contrast to the religious beliefs of Congress. The majority of Congress remains Protestant–56 percent, to be exact. 30 percent identify as Catholic, with Mormons, Jews and other religious minorities rounding out the list. Still, the Pew Forum notes that “the proportion of Protestants in Congress has been in gradual decline for decades, and the number in the 113th Congress is lower than the number in the previous Congress (307), even if the difference in percentage terms is slight.”

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Atheists Are Better for Politics Than Believers. Here’s Why

Atheists are better for politics than believers. Here’s why

As my term as British Humanist Association president comes to an end, a few words of advice to my successor, Jim Al-Khalili

Polly Toynbee

Illustration by Noma Bar

‘If you’re not religious, for God’s sake say so,” we implored, and many did. Over a quarter of the population registered as non-believers: more might have done were the census question unambiguous about whether it meant cultural background or personal belief. My term as president of the British Humanist Association ends this month, but gladly I hand over to Jim Al-Khalili, the distinguished professor of physics, writer, broadcaster and explainer of science. With atheism as the second largest block, he will be in a stronger position to see that unbelievers get a better hearing.

Rows over gay marriage and women bishops bewilder most people. With overwhelming popular support for both, how can abstruse theology and unpleasant prejudice cause such agitation at Westminster and in the rightwing press? Politics looks even more out of touch when obscure doctrine holds a disproportionate place in national life.

The religions still frighten politicians, because despite small numbers in the pews, synagogues and mosques, they are organised and vocal when most of the rest of society lacks community voice or influence. Labour was craven, endlessly wooing faith groups – David Blunkett wishing he could “bottle the magic” of faith schools.

With a third of state schools religious in this most secular country, Michael Gove not only swells their number but lets them discriminate as they please in admissions. As he is sending a bible to every English school, the BHA is fundraising to send out its own Young Atheist’s Handbook to school libraries. Government departments are outsourcing more services to faith groups in health, hospice, community and social care.

But of all the battles Jim Al-Khalili confronts, the most urgent is the right to die. Powerful religious forces block attempts to let the dying end their lives when they choose. Tony Nicklinson was the most public face of thousands in care homes and hospitals condemned to what he called “a living nightmare” by 26 bishops and other religious lords who say only God can dispose – the Bishop of Oxford decreed: “We are not autonomous beings.” The public supports the right to die, but many more will drag themselves off to a bleak Swiss clinic before the religions let us die in peace.

Sensing the ebbing tide of faith since the last census, the blowback against unbelievers has been remarkably violently expressed. Puzzlingly, we are routinely referred to as “aggressive atheists” as if non-belief itself were an affront. But we are with Voltaire, defending to the death people’s right to believe whatever they choose, but fighting to prevent them imposing their creeds on others.

The Abrahamic faiths, with their disgust for sex and women, still exert deep cultural influence. When David Cameron claimed “we are a Christian country”, there are certainly enough cultural relics in attitudes towards women and gays. Baroness Warsi’s letter expressing alarm that schools might teach gay marriage equality causes tremors of that sexual disgust branded into the souls of all three major monotheistic faiths. Are there many gay couples perverse enough to yearn to be married inside religions that abhor them? Humanists can offer them heartfelt celebrations.

In the Lords this week, by a whisker, section 5 of the Public Order Act was amended to remove the offence of using “insulting words or behaviour within hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harm, alarm or distress thereby”.

An extraordinary alliance of extreme religions wanting the right to preach fire and brimstone against gays joined with free thinkers wanting the right to be rude about religions. Liberty and the Christian Institute were on the same side against the government, which was defeated. Now the Commons will have to decide. Some religions argue they have a God-given right not to be caused offence, to give legal weight to fatwas against those who offend their prophets. But in the rough and tumble of free speech, no one can be protected against feeling offended. Jim Al-Khalili can expect all manner of attacks, but no protection for his sensibilities.

For instance, he might take offence at the charge that without God, unbelievers have no moral compass. Hitler and Stalin were atheists, that’s where it leads. We can ripost with religious atrocities, Godly genocides or the Inquisition, but that’s futile. Wise atheists make no moral claims, seeing good and bad randomly spread among humanity regardless of faith. Humans do have a hardwired moral sense, every child born with an instinct for justice that makes us by nature social animals, not needing revelations from ancient texts. The idea that morality can only be frightened into us artificially, by divine edict, is degrading.

The new president will confront another common insult: atheists are desiccated rationalists with nothing spiritual in their lives, poor shrivelled souls lacking transcendental joy and wonder. But in awe of the natural world of physics, he’ll have no trouble with that. Earthbound, there is enough wonder in the magical realms of human imagination, thought, dream, memory and fantasy where most people reside for much of their waking lives. There is no emotional or spiritual deficiency in rejecting creeds that stunt and infantalise the imagination.

Liberated by knowing the here and now is all there is, humanists are optimists, certain that our destiny rests in our own hands. That’s why most humanists are natural social democrats, not conservatives.

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Strange Gods: The Religious Right’s Offensive Response To The Tragedy In Connecticut

Strange Gods: The Religious Right’s Offensive Response To The Tragedy In Connecticut

by Rob Boston in Wall of Separation

As soon as we start talking about official prayer in public schools, we also start talking about which religion, what prayer and whose God. The God that gets talked about or promoted in your school could easily be the God that is worshipped by people like Mike Huckabee and Bryan Fischer.

As soon as I heard about Friday’s horrific school shootings in Newtown, Conn., I knew it would only be a matter of time before some Religious Right extremist blamed it on the lack of mandatory prayer in public schools.

It didn’t take long. First out of the crazy box was former Arkansas governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.

“We ask why there is violence in our schools, but we have systematically removed God from our schools,” Huckabee said during an appearance on the Fox News Channel. “Should we be so surprised that schools would become a place of carnage?”

He added, “We’ve made it a place where we don’t want to talk about eternity, life, what responsibility means, accountability — that we’re not just going to have be accountable to the police if they catch us, but one day we stand before, you know, a holy God in judgment. If we don’t believe that, then we don’t fear that.”

Not to be left out of the Nitwit Sweepstakes, the always-offensive Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association quickly chimed in with this gem: “You know the question’s gonna come up, where was God? I thought God cared about the little children, God protected the little children. Where was God when all this went down? And here’s the bottom line: God is not gonna go where he’s not wanted.”

Fischer continued, “Now we have spent, since 1962 – this, we’re 50 years into this now – we  have spent 50 years telling God to get lost, telling God, we do not want you in our schools, we don’t want to pray to you in our schools, we don’t want to pray to you before football games, we don’t want to pray to you at graduation, we don’t want anyone talking about you in a graduation speech. We’ve kicked God out of our public school system. And I think God would say to us, ‘Hey I’ll be glad to protect your children, but you’ve gotta invite me back into your world first. I’m not gonna go where I’m not wanted. I am a gentleman.’”

People sometimes ask me why Americans United is so adamant about keeping organized, school-sponsored forms of prayer and religious worship out of public education. On occasion I encounter those who assert, “What’s the harm in a little prayer or talk about God? Isn’t it good for kids?”

Huckabee and Fischer are walking examples of the harm. Remember, as soon as we start talking about official prayer in public schools, we also start talking about which religion, what prayer and whose God. The God that gets talked about or promoted in your school could easily be the God that is worshipped by people like Huckabee and Fischer.

Personally, I have no use for the God of the Religious Right – and I don’t think I’m alone there. The God of the Religious Right allows 20 children and eight adults to die in a school because he’s in a snit over his alleged expulsion from public education.

The God of the Religious Right is mean, petty, vindictive and not very ethical. The God of the Religious Right is all hate and retribution, with no love and acceptance. The God of the Religious Right, in my opinion, is not worthy of our worship.

This is America, and supporters of the Religious Right are free to worship that God. Members of that movement are free to approach that God in fear – never joy – as is their wont. But let’s be clear: They want to use our public schools, a taxpayer-supported institution that serves children of many faiths and philosophies, to push that God on your children, mine and everyone else’s. They have no right to do that.

The good news is that millions of Americans reject the God of the Religious Right.  They reject a God based on fear, division, violence and retribution. The God that many Americans worship is so far removed from the God of the Religious Right that we can’t paper over the difference by pretending it’s a minor theological tiff and that, at the end of the day, most Americans worship the same deity.

No. The entity Huckabee, Fischer and their allies tremble before and beseech is so alien to most of the devoutly religious people I know that they would not even recognize it as God.

(Millions of Americans also know that in the wake of a tragedy like this, the proper response is  words that offer comfort, not divisive displays of ignorance.)

So let us make no mistake: When Huckabee, Fischer and their allies speak of bringing church and state closer together or removing a few bricks from the church-state wall to allow “a little religion” into our schools, this is the God they would set loose. This is the God they would preference by law. This is the God they would force you to support. This is the God they would foist onto your children.

If this isn’t your God, or if you’re one of the many Americans who recognize no God, you must speak out against offensive Religious Right foghorns like Huckabee and Fischer. You must challenge those who exploit sorrow for political gain.

And you need to stand up for the one thing that keeps the God of the Religious Right from becoming the government’s favorite: the wall of separation between church and state.

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Mark Twain On Religion

“Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.” – Mark Twain

Jewish Baby Penis Sucking Ritual Health Hazard | Herpes Transmission | Baby Deaths

Study Indicates That Herpes Frequently Sheds And Can Be Transmitted Even When Mohel Is Shows No Symptoms Of The Virus

“At least 70% of the population shed HSV-1 asymptomatically at least once a month, and many individuals appear to shed HSV-1 more than six times a month. Shedding HSV-1 is present at many intraoral sites, for brief periods, at copy numbers sufficient to be transmitted, and even in seronegative individuals.”

Metzitzah b’peh done in Israel, where it some Zionist Orthodox and Modern Orthodox mohels do the controversial oral sucking procedure, despite its risks to the baby.

Just in case your haredi rabbi says there is no evidence that herpes can be transmitted by metzitzah b’peh (MBP) – the direct oral-to-genital sucking done by many haredi mohels to the baby’s bleeding penis after removing its foreskin – even though babies have died and been maimed by herpes infections transmitted through MBP, or if he says that a mohel who has no outward signs of herpes can safely do MBP, you can cite this study, which shows both claims of your rabbi to be false:

Abstract: Asymptomatic Shedding of Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV) in the Oral Cavity
Howard E. Strassler, DMD

Jan. 27, 2009
Inside Dentistry

Miller CS, Danaher RT. Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod. 2008;105(1):43-50.

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate the rate of herpes simplex virus (HSV) shedding from the oral cavity, because recent studies suggest that shedding is more frequent than originally reported. Factors that could influence the rate and duration of shedding from the oral cavity were examined.

Methods: Existing epidemiologic data from 22 reports of HSV shedding from more than 3,500 individuals were analyzed with regard to demographics, frequency of sampling, and methodologic assays.

Results: HSV-1 was more likely to be detected than HSV-2 in the oral cavity of asymptomatic persons (7.5 odds ratio, 95% confidence interval 4.4–12.8; P < .0001). The rate of shedding was highly variable among individuals, ranging from none to 92% of the days tested, and occurred in seropositive and seronegative individuals. In cell culture studies, the rate of detection on a single day was 6.3%. Polymerase chain reaction studies provided a different picture. HSV-1 DNA was present in 97 of 180 patients (53.9%) at multiple visits, with a rate of daily detection of 33.3%. The mean duration of shedding was between 1 and 3 days, but more than 3 days in about 10% of the patients.

Conclusion: At least 70% of the population shed HSV-1 asymptomatically at least once a month, and many individuals appear to shed HSV-1 more than six times a month. Shedding HSV-1 is present at many intraoral sites, for brief periods, at copy numbers sufficient to be transmitted, and even in seronegative individuals. The dental implications of these findings are discussed.

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is a significant human pathogen infecting most individuals early in life, predominantly at mucosal surfaces after exposure to infected secretions. It has been implicated in a range of diseases including labials and stomatitis, blinding keratitis, and, rarely, encephalitis. According to the data, more than 70% of adults have neutralizing antibodies and serve as reservoirs of the virus. The authors have done an excellent systematic review of the rate of shedding of HSV from the oral cavity. Asymptomatic shedding is generally defined as the presence of HSV in the absence of clinical lesions. Based on this review, the frequency of HSV shedding at virus numbers sufficient to be transmitted are significantly higher than most clinicians would suspect. These high frequencies of asymptomatic shedding suggest that HSV-1 is not as dormant during latency as previously believed. This translates to the fact that even without clinical lesions, the dentist, dental hygienist, and chairside assistant are at risk. This data emphasize the importance of being diligent in maintaining proper infection control procedures (eye protection, gloves, mask) when performing routine dental examinations and procedures. All efforts should be taken to minimize splashes and splatters of oral fluids even in the absence of HSV oral lesions. Also, medical conditions, eg, immunosuppression and traumatic oral surgical procedures, increase the likelihood of virus shedding in the oral cavity.

Howard E. Strassler, DMD
Professor and Director of Operative Dentistry
Department of Endodontics, Prosthodontics and Operative Dentistry
University of Maryland Dental School
Baltimore, Maryland

Baby Dies of Herpes in Ritual Circumcision By Orthodox Jews

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/baby-dies-herpes-virus-ritual-circumcision-nyc-orthodox/story?id=15888618

Baby’s Death Renews Debate Over a Circumcision Ritual

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/08/nyregion/infants-death-renews-debate-over-a-circumcision-ritual.html

How 11 New York City Babies Contracted Herpes Through Circumcision

http://healthland.time.com/2012/06/07/how-11-new-york-city-babies-contracted-herpes-through-circumcision/

Neonatal Herpes Simplex Virus Infection Following Jewish Ritual Circumcisions that Included Direct Orogenital Suction — New York City, 2000–2011

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6122a2.htm

NYC Puts at Least One Restriction on Mohels Sucking Freshly Circumcised Baby Penises

http://gawker.com/5947500/nyc-getting-closer-to-banning-adults-from-sucking-freshly-circumcised-baby-penises

Banned Herpes Mohel Still Circumcising Babies

http://gothamist.com/2012/03/14/authorities_investigating_herpes_mo.php

Circumcision’s Deadly Fault Line: Rationality vs. the Metzitzah B’Peh

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/10/circumcision-s-deadly-fault-line-rationality-vs-the-metzitzah-b-peh.html

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Disgusting Jewish Superstition Kills Another Baby

Family Of Dead Baby Killed By Bris Stonewalls Cops, Health Department

An infant died at Maimonides Medical Center on Sept. 28 from herpes contracted from metzitzah b’peh performed during a bris milah, circumcision. But the family of the dead boy is refusing to cooperate with the investigation into their son’s death.

Family stonewalling authorities after newborn dies from herpes contracted in ritual circumcision Sources in Orthodox Jewish community say baby’s parents were related to herpes-infected rabbi who did circumcision By Simone Weichselbaum And Reuven Blau • NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

An infant died at Maimonides Medical Center on Sept. 28 from herpes contracted during a ritual circumcision.

Authorities are being stonewalled by the family of a newborn boy who died after contracting herpes through a controversial religious circumcision ritual, the Daily News has learned.

Multiple sources in the Orthodox Jewish community said the 2-week-old boy’s parents were related to a herpes-infected rabbi who conducted the circumcision according to tradition — using one’s mouth to remove blood from the wound.

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office is investigating the death and trying to identify the rabbi, or mohel, but family members have not been cooperative, sources said.
“You guys are barking up the right tree,” a law enforcement source said of word that the mohel was related to the boy. “But we don’t know yet who did what.”

City health officials have criticized the religious practice, saying that putting the open wound into contact with the mouth of the rabbi carries “inherent risks” for the infant.

The unidentified infant died at Brooklyn’s Maimonides Medical Center last Sept. 28. An autopsy listed the cause of death as “disseminated herpes simplex virus Type 1, complicating ritual circumcision with oral suction,” according to a spokeswoman for the city Medical Examiner.

Mayor Bloomberg Tuesday vowed to work with the Orthodox Jewish community to prevent future tragedies.

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Right Wing Jewish Bigot Pamela Geller’s Ghoulish Obsession

Pamela Geller’s Ghoulish Obsession With ‘Honor Killings’ Takes an Ugly Turn

Jewish bigot Pamela Geller exploits a murder to spread hatred

Via:-Charles Johnson

Anti-Muslim hate group leader Pamela Geller has seized on the murder of a 20-year old Muslim woman in Michigan, labeled it an “honor killing,” and is now planning to hold a “conference” using the murdered woman’s name — against the wishes of the woman’s family, and even though they say it was the act of an abusive stepfather, not an “honor killing” at all. And to make it even more disgusting, Geller is calling her hatefest a “human rights conference.”

It’s hard to imagine someone so twisted and dysfunctional that they’d intrude on a family’s grief over a murdered child, and use the victim’s name against the family’s wishes. But Geller is defiantly determined to exploit this murder for all the bigoted hatred she can wring out of it: Slain Woman’s Name on ‘Human Rights’ Conference Upsets Her Family.

Jessica’s murder made international headlines. She left Minnesota to escape an allegedly physically and mentally abusive stepfather, but in April of 2011, her stepfather, Rahim Alfatlawi, drove from Minnesota to her grandmother’s Warren home and shot her in the head.

Her family calls it an awful tragedy, but others are calling it an honor killing.

“We know that this is a practice under Islamic law. The honor killing is the final act. People know very little of the terror … that these girls live under,” said Pamela Geller.

She is the head of Stop the Islamization of America. Geller is hosting a conference on the anniversary of Jessica’s death in Dearborn. It’s called the Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference.

“We cannot sanction this gendercide. We cannot sanction the diminishment and dehumanization of women. We must speak up,” Geller said.

We asked Jessica’s stepmother, Cassandra Mokdad, whether her murder was an honor killing. “Absolutely it was not,” she said. She told us this disgusting act had nothing to do with Islam, a religion she said Jessica practiced proudly.

“It was nothing about religion or anything. It was just about a sick human being,” Mohammed Mokdad said.

“He wanted to have a relationship with Jessica as more than her stepfather. He wanted to have a more romantic relationship with her,” Cassandra Mokdad explained.

“She’s using Jessica as her poster child for anti-Islam.” Even the Macomb County Prosecutor on the case said Alfatlawi murdered Jessica because he was obsessed with her, not the religion, and Jessica’s family wants her name taken off the conference.

“She’s using Jessica as her poster child for anti-Islam,” said Cassandra Mokdad.

“What gulls me is that there is this prohibition on discussing it and the ideology that inspires honor killings,” Geller explained.

She said this conference will happen and the name won’t be changed.

“We’re definitely going to have this conference and it will not be stopped. Their directing their barbs at me. I didn’t kill Jessica. I’m trying to save the next girl. They should be helping me save the next girl,” said Geller.

“Absolutely I’ll go. I won’t let her sit there and misuse Jessica’s name, and I will let her know exactly how I feel,” Cassandra Mokdad told us.

But wait — the story gets even more repellent, because Geller and her followers bullied and harassed the management of the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, Michigan into giving her a conference room for free to hold this ugly hatefest, after they canceled a previous Geller hatefest. Unbelievable.

Here’s a page with contact info for the Dearborn Hyatt, if you’d like to let the management know how you feel about this disgusting event: Detroit Metro Hotel – Detroit Michigan Hotels – Hyatt Regency Dearborn. They backed down and tried to appease Geller, and as a result she’s now using their facilities to exploit a murdered woman against her family’s wishes.

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Republican Gomorrah | Jane Smiley Reviews

Jane Smiley Reviews “Republican Gomorrah”

By Max

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jane Smiley on Republican Gomorrah: “Terrific…but appalling.”

Jane Smiley’s review, from the Huffington Post:

About twenty years ago, I read an article about a death row inmate who had shot a clerk in a convenience store. The way the murder was presented by the man on death row was mysterious–his hand just rose up and the gun went off. Shooting the clerk in the face in the midst of a robbery wasn’t in fact his fault. He never said, “I shot a man.” It just happened.

I thought of that man while reading Max Blumenthal’s terrific, but also, of course, appalling new book, Republican Gomorrah. Apparently there isn’t a single person in the present incarnation of the Republican party who does anything. Things happen–God does it. Satan does it. No Republican is an agent of his or her own success or failure, sin or redemption. It just happens.

The consequences of this lack of responsibility are there for all to see–screaming threats, guns at rallies, unhinged behavior every time a Republican doesn’t feel the way he or she wants to feel, absolute sense of powerlessness leading directly to an absolute will to power. Because that was the thing that struck me about the murderer in the 7-11–he had the power and in his own last moments, the clerk knew it. But the killer, no matter how well armed, never felt it.

Republican Gomorrah is a frightening book because it is clear to all of us on the outside that the various Republican operatives who surround James Dobson and his ilk have no consciences and will stop at nothing. They invoke the name of God for purposes that shame God absolutely–hurting, destroying, maiming, and damning others who either don’t accept their beliefs or don’t acknowledge their power and righteousness. Of course that is frightening.

 

But Blumenthal’s cast of characters, beginning with Dobson and his prodigal son, Ryan, and including John Hagee, Sarah Palin, Ralph Reed, Charles Colson, Judith Reisman, Christina Regnery, Donald Wildmon, et al. strike the reader as above all else very small–egocentric, narrow minded, uneducated, selfish, and resentful. Each of these qualities is destructive in and of itself. The combination is turning out to be coercive. Even those of us who are immune to the emotions these people play upon are getting more and more nervous about the power that they wish to exert.

Blumenthal does two things that no one else I have read manages to do–the first of these is that he organizes the network. He shows how Ted Bundy is connected to James Dobson is connected to Gary Bauer is connected to Erik Prince is connected to Ralph Reed is connected to Jack Abramoff is connected to Tom Delay is connected to Tony Perkins is connected to David Duke is connected to Mel Gibson, and so forth, and in the course of tracing these connections, he informs us, or reminds us, of the crimes and misdemeanors these people have committed.

Two of my favorites are James Dobson’s son Ryan’s messy divorce (Dad seems to have paid the settlement–did he not dare to discipline? Or did he discipline too much?) and David Vitter’s habitual recourse to a brothel in New Orleans where Republicans “wanted to be spanked and tortured and wear stockings–Republicans have impeccable taste in silk stockings” (the madam is talking about men). Republican Gomorrah is full of crimes–both those we’ve already heard of, such as Abramoff’s and Ted Haggard’s, and those we haven’t (there is good evidence that Texas billionaire T. Cullen Davis, funder of the right wing Council For National Policy, ordered hits on his estranged wife, and succeeded in murdering his step-daughter and the wife’s boyfriend).

This aspect of the book reminds me of a Scottish novel called The Private Memoirs And Confessions Of A Justified Sinner by James Hogg, in which, once a man believes he is among the saved, he can commit any sin he wants to and be sure he will go to heaven. Once Davis was “saved,” for example, he said, “My goal is to get to heaven. I’ll do anything it takes to get there, and I’m not going to let anything stand in my way.” He must have thought getting to heaven was just another power play.

And power plays are the key to right wing psychology. Right wing psychology is the other thing that Blumenthal has to offer. At the periphery of this world is your run-of-the-mill bully, a man like Jack Abramoff, whose brutality is well remembered by his high school classmates, but who sang like a bird once he was caught. At the center of is James Dobson, a much more destructive figure than Abramoff, who advocates, in the strongest terms, child beating, and not only child-beating, but dog-beating. At one point he brags about going after the family canine (who weighed twelve pounds) and engaging in “the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast.” As for children, the goal is to keep beating the child until “he wants(s) to crumple on the breast of his parent.” In other words, Dobson is a proud sadist who thinks sadism is kind of funny, and who, over the years, has successfully advocated sadism as the only workable form of child-rearing.

It order to understand the deeply disturbing effect Dobson and his theories have had on our culture, Blumenthal cites Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom, about the psychology of Nazism and authoritarianism, and Eric Hoffer’s The True Believer. Insofar as he finds the documentation, Blumenthal points out how many of these powerful Evangelical Christians were beaten and abused as children (including Dobson). It’s a high number. The beatings, often arbitrary, cruel, and frequent, were then, in many cases, backed up with constant lessons about God–that he is arbitrary, that he is cruel, that he demands obedience above all things, and that he surpasseth understanding. The point of these exercises is to establish the powerlessness of the child, his shame and guilt as a worthless sinner, and his absolute fear of thinking for himself. He will then take his place in the hierarchy and thereby reinforce the existence of the hierarchy.

Blumenthal goes pretty far with this psychology, but, in my view, not far enough. I’m sure he was reared by liberal parents, who gave him a sense of responsibility, curiosity, and autonomy, and since he is only in his thirties, I don’t think that he really empathizes with the tortured and damaged souls that he has been interviewing and watching for the last few years. I don’t think he understands their fear–how deep it is, how constant it is, and how arousing it is. I don’t think, in fact, that Max Blumenthal looks within and sees evil. I think he looks within, and says, “I’m okay; you’re okay.” That’s the goal of liberal parenting, and as we can tell by statistics he cites concerning unwed pregnancy, divorce, and occurrence of STDs, liberal parenting works–atheists and agnostics, for example, have a much lower rate of divorce than Evangelicals, and states that have sex education in the schools, rather than abstinence-only education, have lower rates of teen pregnancy.

But a child who is beaten enough eventually comes to understand two things above all–that the world makes no sense (and so why try to make sense of it?) and that the world is so dangerous that to be oneself, or even to try to figure out what oneself might be, is a death-defying exercise. There is safety only in two things–conforming to a group and, as a part of that group, dominating and even destroying other groups. The rules of the group can be anything at all, as long as the members of the group abide by them. And other groups have to abide by them, too, or the painful and arbitrary rules that group abides by are meaningless. The beaten child’s sense of terror can only be assuaged by evanescent feelings of power, because in relation to his parents and to God, he is defined as powerless. When he “crumples” on the “loving” breast of his parent (and in my view a person who administers a beating to a living being who is 1/16th his size doesn’t know what love is) he accepts his powerlessness and he also accepts that power is what defines this life. That’s where your freedom and mine come in.

Many of the Evangelicals Blumenthal discusses are Christian Dominionists–that is, they differ from the Taliban only in their choice of doctrine. Their uses of that doctrine (to dehumanize women and other groups, to never share power, to control every aspect of every life within their power, and to create society as a steeply hierarchical structure with them at the top) are those of the Taliban.

It’s an eye-opener to read about R.J. Rushdoony, son of Armenian immigrants who fled the Armenian genocide of 1915. You would think that a man whose family escaped mass murder would go on to espouse peace, love, and understanding, but Rushdoony went the other way, taking literally the 613 laws in the Book of Leviticus. In his book, The Institutes of Biblical Law, he advocates capital punishment for “disobedient children, unchaste women, apostates, blasphemers, practitioners of witchcraft, adulterers,” and homosexuals. Gary North, the Presbyterian Christian Reconstructionist, is his son-in-law, and, while not backing down on the mass death penalty, advocates stoning rather than burning at the stake, because stoning is cheaper (and of course that is a factor, because there would be a lot of people to exterminate). As for who would be doing the killing (of you and me, if they could catch us), well, Christians would, but not because they wanted to. Ever unable to accept responsibility, they assign agency to God, who wants us killed, who will beat us until we “crumple” on his “loving” breast, a God who has given us all sorts of talents, skills, and interests, but is, like these Christian Dominionists, interested only in power. I believe his motto is “Adore me or I will hurt you.”

Can you believe in a God so small? When I was a parent of young children, I, too, got frustrated, and I, too, thought a spanking might be a good thing. I soon realized that my motives for administering physical punishment were highly suspect–more anger and frustration than care for the child or knowledge about effective methods. I then saw a show about child-rearing, in which a woman who firmly believed in child-beating aroused far more resistance in her beaten daughter, and had much more family disruption, than the parents who ignored the tantrum and then used the technique of redirection to train their toddlers. Works with horses, dogs, and other animals, too. It was then I decided that if I, in my human weakness, could put two and two together concerning free will and proper behavior, surely God could, also. I didn’t want to believe in a God who was a smaller being than myself. And I don’t.

The ray of hope in Blumenthal’s book is that the right-wingers he talks about tend to be so psychologically unstable that they don’t have much staying power–think Ted Haggard. But they have numbers. The bad thing about that is that they could take control. The defeat of Sarah Palin, Conrad Burns (R-MT), George Allen (R-VA), Rick Santorum (R-PA), James Talent (R-MO), and Mike DeWine (R-OH) brought us “back from the brink” according to the website Theocracy Watch. But only back from the brink. The good thing is that they would not be able to maintain what we call a government for very long (see George W. Bush). The bad thing is that they would destroy the country as we know it while they were trying. If I take the long view, well, I think, Stalinism lasted about 25 years, Nazism 12. The Iranian Mullahs have been at it for 30 years. Russia and Germany survived, Iran might, as well. But generations were lost in all these places. And Stalin and Hitler didn’t have nuclear weapons.

I think about the 22-year-old clerk in that convenience store, looking down the barrel of that pistol. He probably had no idea that his killer had no sense of agency, hardly even knew what he was doing, was seeing his hand as separate from himself. But I have to feel sorry for the killer, too, subject to feelings that he could not label that were terrifying and overpowering. I bet he was beaten, shamed, and neglected as a child. I bet, afterward, he wished someone, somehow, had stopped him.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/republican-gomorrah_b_290293.html

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Alleged White House Shooter Inspired by Alex Jones

The deranged far right inspires another violent nut

Imagine our surprise (NOT!) that the accused White House shooter Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez drew some of his inspiration from the crazed conspiracy ravings of Uber Nut Alex Jones!

Jake Chapman is also scheduled to make the trip to Washington. The AK-47 that Mr. Ortega is accused of using to fire on the White House was registered to Mr. Chapman, who said in an interview that he is known to friends as “the gun guy.” He said that he sold the gun to Mr. Ortega in March for $550 and that he believed it was the first gun Mr. Ortega owned.

Mr. Chapman, 21, said he had not heard Mr. Ortega talk of taking violent action. But more than a year ago, he recalled, Mr. Ortega and others watched an antigovernment film on the Internet called “The Obama Deception,” which was written, directed and produced by Alex Jones, a Texas-based conservative talk show host who has espoused a number of conspiracy theories involving the federal government.

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Obama, Assassination, and the Antichrist Conspiracy

Obama, Assassination, and the Antichrist Conspiracy

Chip Berlet on the connections

Randall Gross Nov 19, 2011

[Link: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/11/19/153758/35/Front_Page/Obama_Assassination_and_the_Antichrist_Conspiracy]

Even if the shooter is a thorough crackpot his delusions did not form in a vacuum. Hate sites like Prison Planet, Atlas Shrugs, and Farrah’s World Net Daily all do most of the heavy lifting for these conspiracy theories and delusions. Oprah is not a hate site, but she does her share of aiding and abetting delusion with promotion of pseudoscience and magical thinking disguised as pop pscyh self help, so it’s really not a contradiction that he addressed a video to her, even though many on the right will grasp at that and say aha!

The alleged shooter charged with attempting to assassinate President Obama, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, apparently thinks our Commander in Chief is an agent of Satan in an End Times war. Sarah Posner has explained the basics in an article “‘Obama the Antichrist’ and end-times doctrine.” I warned about the possibility of the demonization of Obama leading to more violence in a book chapter published in 2010 “The Roots of Anti-Obama Rhetoric.” Here is a slightly revised version of what I wrote:

Many Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. Others are convinced he was not born in Hawaii and is thus not eligible to be President. Some say Obama is the Antichrist of Biblical prophecy.

A September 2009 poll in New Jersey found that 14% of Republicans believed that President Obama was the Antichrist—Satan’s agent in the End Times according to one reading of the Bible’s Book of Revelation. Another 15% thought it might be possible.

The results across political allegiances, however, were also troubling; with 8% of respondents statewide saying they thought Obama was the Antichrist and 13% stating they “aren’t sure”. The poll also found that “21% of respondents, including 33% of Republicans, express the belief that Obama was not born in the United States”.

According to the pollster, these are “eye popping numbers” (“Extremism in New Jersey”, 2009). The mobilization of apocalyptic expectation among Christian Evangelicals in the United States has been shown to be an effective mobilization strategy by the Christian Right and allies in the Republican Party (Boyer, 1992; Fuller 1995). This is especially true among fundamentalists (Barron, 1992; Mason, 2002; Berlet, 2008). This millenarian mood is spread from religious into secular communities, often through conspiracy theories (Brasher, 2000).

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• Idaho man charged with trying to assassinate Obama (mercurynews.com)
• http://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/crazy-for-god-religious-right-insider-exposes-evangelical-insanities-1-in-3-conservative-religious-nuts-truly-believe-obama-is-the-anti-christ/
• http://theageofblasphemy.wordpress.com/