Ronald Lindsay, president of the Center for Inquiry, has a column in the Huffington Post about the importance of coming out as an atheist — and the differences between coming out as an atheist and coming out as gay. While there are some similarities in terms of countering public misconceptions, he points out that there are big differences as well:
So there’s little question that encouraging fellow atheists to come out is a good thing; we will not make substantial progress unless people do come out, and coming out is a tactic that will have some success.
However, here I have to register a note of caution. I don’t think coming out will have the same level of success for atheists as it’s had for LGBT individuals. Why? Because even after we come out, some fear will persist. For some, the level of fear, the sense of being threatened, may actually increase.
There’s a big difference between being gay and being an atheist. Someone can persuade you to be an atheist; no one is going to persuade you to be gay (no matter what the extremist anti-gay propaganda says).
I don’t foresee a best-selling book entitled “The Straight Delusion” or “Heterosexuality Poisons Everything.” The LGBT community wants acceptance; they don’t want to persuade others to join their “team,” and even if they had that objective, they would strive for it in vain.
By contrast, the amount of literature that has been produced in the last decade criticizing religious belief is extensive and continues to grow. Moreover, these critiques of religion seem to have had some effect.
Of course, many atheists have little or no interest in persuading the religious to abandon their beliefs. They merely want to be treated as equals and to end the influence that religion has on public policy. That doesn’t matter. The realization that many atheists once were religious and then “lost” their faith has an unnerving effect on some of the religious. How far will atheism spread? Will I be next? Or my children?
Gays are different, but they don’t send the message that heterosexuals are mistaken about their sexuality. On the other hand, not only are atheists different, but explicitly or implicitly, they are telling the faithful that they’re mistaken about a core commitment (for some the core commitment) of their lives. As the number of open atheists increases — and this seems likely — we can expect some religious to become more defensive, more strident in promoting their beliefs. They will regard themselves as under attack.
These differences can be both positive and negative in terms of public acceptance and resistance.
42 comments
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d cwilson
June 11, 2012 at 2:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But don’t Jews and Muslims say the same thing to Christians and vice-versa?
Ray Ingles
June 11, 2012 at 2:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, one of the problems is that many wingnuts really do think ‘the gay’ is catching, and actually claim to wonder, “Will I be next? Or my children?”
David C Brayton
June 11, 2012 at 2:52 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For a second there, I though this was gonna be a story about Lindsay Lohan. Darn.
tacitus
June 11, 2012 at 3:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s also different because the percentage of gays in the American population is, by necessity, capped at a small minority, but the number of atheists — or, more realistically, the number of non-believers — can, and is likely to continue to grow to the point where they outnumber religious conservatives.
Hence, unlike gay Americans, non-believers are indeed an existential threat to the power of the Religious Right, at least in terms of their extreme social conservative agenda. It’s happened in most other democratic nations, and it can happen here too, in time.
harold
June 11, 2012 at 3:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
This is why I have a very hard time using the term “atheist”, even though I have no interest in religious or supernatural beliefs.
I’ve had enough people scream hysterically in face that it’s a “straw man” that atheists “deny the possibility of god” that I’ve almost started to call myself an “atheist”.
This guy’s entire column is that “straw man”. He says that atheists tell all religious people that they are wrong.
Designer almighty, which is it?
Let the flames begin.
Doug Little
June 11, 2012 at 4:09 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’m confused isn’t the Gay Agenda all about teaching Teh Gay to conservatives children. Someone please correct me.
Doug Little
June 11, 2012 at 4:14 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
tacitus @4
FIFY
melody
June 11, 2012 at 4:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
He’s not saying that all atheists literally go around telling theists that they are wrong. He’s saying that atheists’ belief that there is no god, and frankly their mere existence, is a threat to the theist’s beliefs.
heddle
June 11, 2012 at 5:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Which is utter nonsense. Your disbelief in god does not concern me, bother me or threaten me. Atheists need to disabuse themselves of the notion that there are large numbers of Christians who dwell on their existence. In fact, there is a small number of noisy Christians who “fear” atheists. For the rest of us: you aren’t on our radars.
Doug Little
June 11, 2012 at 5:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well not for the chosen few, right heddle. Everybody else can go suffer eternal torment.
heddle
June 11, 2012 at 5:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Doug Little,
For the same reason that we don’t care if you think we are fools, you shouldn’t care if we think you are hellbound.
raven
June 11, 2012 at 5:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, if the fundie xian death cultists would just stay under their rocks and tell their lies to each other, no one would give a rat’s ass what they believe. Free country and all that.
I certainly don’t spend a lot of time telling Alien Abductees, the fairies are in the garden again crowd, or Bigfoot fans they are wrong.
But they won’t do that. The death cultists want us to live under rocks too and lie a lot. Not to mention being afraid of the demon haunted Darkness.
We have far better goals and ways of spending our time.
Gretchen
June 11, 2012 at 6:12 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Heddle said:
How about theists disabuse themselves of the notion that our lack of belief earns us a fate of eternal torture first, and then they can stop either empathetically trying to save us from it or sadistically enjoying it? That is, after all, the top reason they give for any such dwelling.
dogmeat
June 11, 2012 at 6:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Heddle,
I can tell you, quite honestly, that the majority of Christians that I know personally, and who are aware that I am an ateist, are put out at the least and often horrified that I am an atheist. This runs a gambit from Catholics to Episcopalians to Baptists and Mormons. Generally it is the more conservative Christians who are horrified, but not always.
I’ve had people tell me that they will “have to help me,” I’ve had people leave little “prayer tokens” at my desk, in my mailbox, etc. I even had a parent come in and meet with administration to decry my “teaching of atheism,” which was truly fun given that I wasn’t even an atheist at the time.
So, again, I disagree with your claim that it is only a tiny but vocal minority who “fear atheists.”. That isn’t supported by the evidence, either anecdotal or data driven. You might not care, but many of your fellow Christians do care, and care very much.
iknklast
June 11, 2012 at 6:35 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Heddle, here’s something for you to disabuse yourself of – that moderate to liberal Christians really don’t care if they’re friends are atheists. My friends will ask what I believe; when I tell them I don’t believe, they go all “witness” and “testify” on me, even if they’ve never been inside a church in their life, and haven’t prayed in years.
And many of my liberal Christian friends are indeed thinking about atheists these days – because we’re no longer quiet. If you don’t think about atheists, what are you doing here? You, like so many others, just had to come to an atheist site to lecture us about how wrong we are about…(fill in the blank – it happens nearly every day).
The fact is, atheists that are living happy, fulfilled lives without killing anyone or raping children are a distinct threat to those people (many of them very casual in their beliefs) who belive God is necessary to keep people from leading miserable, unfulfilled lives of murder, rape, and pillage.
How would you like it for someone to intrude uninvited in a conversation you were having with another friend, and say how sorry they are that you have no joy in your life? Why? Because she heard us talking about non-belief. No God – No Joy. That’s BS, and it disturbs even my most liberal of friends to find out that, in fact, I do have joy in my life, and lots of it.
heddle
June 11, 2012 at 6:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
dogmeat,
They care and evangelize for sure–but they do not dwell on atheists collectively–as some sort of group that opposes us that we should fear. I can provide you with about ten years of sermons from three different churches I attended. I challenge you to find one that mentions “athiests” as any sort of opposition group.
I stand by my claim that atheists as a group are not on our radars. I have no idea why the myth that we are afraid of you is so attractive to you (well, I have some idea) but that’s what it is–a myth. You are just not scary.
heddle
June 11, 2012 at 6:47 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ll take stereotypes for $2000.
The truth is quite different. What I often hear is Christians (pastors) complaining that we Christians do not lead lives that are distinguishable from unblelievers.
Gretchen
June 11, 2012 at 6:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Not afraid per se, heddle, more like mistrustful. But yes, it’s a real prejudice whether you share it or not. And no, it doesn’t need to be preached from the pulpit in order to exist.
Doug Little
June 11, 2012 at 6:55 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well when you believe in an invisible genocidal maniac that condemns good people to eternal torment if you don’t obey and worship it I can understand your point. Nothing is more scary than that. Pity it has no basis in reality, kinda like the boogy monster.
Doug Little
June 11, 2012 at 7:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
No actually I do care, it’s kinda creepy to me that you wouldn’t have a problem with the condemnation of people in general to eternal torment, you are either don’t care or revel in it.
Gretchen
June 11, 2012 at 7:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“For the same reason that we don’t care if you think we’re a bit silly, you shouldn’t care if we think you deserve to be stabbed through the eye repeatedly with an ice pick.”
Sastra
June 11, 2012 at 7:41 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
heddle #16 wrote:
I don’t think that’s quite the point — that the people themselves are necessarily feared as people. The opposition isn’t atheists — it’s atheism. Have you never heard a sermon that promotes faith in God? The alternative to be avoided is atheism. Do not become an atheist. Fear that.
I think there are large numbers of Christians who dwell on the importance of keeping their faith in God, promoting their faith in God to others, and believing in the existence of God. And as long as the majority view “God” as an objective fact about reality (and not simply a poetic device or metaphor which can morph to fit any reasonable position), then they will fear the arguments of those who argue otherwise. They will fear what will happen if those arguments ever persuade either the majority — or people they care about — or them.
When I say they will “fear” the arguments, I don’t mean to imply that I visualize them quaking in their boots and scrambling away frantically from the logic and reason. But I think they will not only be antagonistic against them in the usual way people are against any opposing view, but in a way that takes into account that the view being argued against is their identity. Everything is supposed to ride on it. It is the purpose and meaning of life.
If, given this, you think the atheist minority explicitly pushing against faith — either verbally, or by providing the coveted “positive example in how they live their life” — is not going to be seen as an opposition group, then I think you’re too optimistic about human nature in general, and what happens when religious identities are threatened in particular.
laurentweppe
June 11, 2012 at 8:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh Come On: Everyone knows that it’s writting for Vanity Fair and not his outspoken atheism which doomed Hitchens to eternal torment: atheism? A personal choice. Working for Fashionistas are Serious Business Magazine? Do not think the Lord will let this go unanswered, Sinner.
Sastra
June 11, 2012 at 8:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
From Lindsay:
Didn’t some article recently come out in (I think) Skeptic magazine explaining the results of a study which seemed to show the opposite? As I recall, part of the experiment involved taking a group of college freshmen and giving them multiple choice questions on how fair, kind, honest, etc. they thought atheists were. Half of them were told beforehand that 2% of the students in the college were atheists; the other half were told that 45% of the students in the college were atheists.
The group which were told that there were many atheists gave more atheist-positive answers than those who were told atheists were a small minority, statistically. Iirc, both groups were mostly religious, mostly Christian. If Ron is right, then one would expect it to have gone the other way around.
Of course, Ron Lindsay did say “SOME religious” would become more defensive. Which is probably hard to argue with, given the latitude there.
I personally think an increase in “Reasons Not to Believe in God” will lead to an initial increase of “Reasons to Believe in God,” followed by “Some Reasons Why I Believe in God,” with “Why Belief in God Needs Faith” hard on its heels, culminating in “Why Having Faith Shows You Have a Good and Loving Heart.” Unlike atheists, heartless monsters whom we don’t fear.
tacitus
June 11, 2012 at 8:06 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Dwelling” isn’t the issue. Of course most Christians don’t go around fretting about the atheist next door all the time, any more than most non-NYC baseball fans spend their all their time dwelling on how much they hate the Yankees.
When nearly 50% of Americans would disapprove of their child marrying an atheist and almost 40% of Americans believe that atheists don’t share their American values, and over half of all voters say they would never vote for an atheist as President, don’t tell me that there isn’t a very large number of American Christians (likely a majority) who harbor a deep-seated mistrust of atheists and their motivations.
There are many things American Christians don’t dwell on all the time, but they still go out and vote in very large numbers in support of conservative Christian issues when the opportunity arises, and are willing to be swayed by the demagogues who demean and deride all things secular as evil and anti-American.
Even on a personal level, there are likely hundreds of thousands of non-believing Americans who have either paid a personal price for coming out, or would do if they chose to do so. There may not be the same threat of overt prejudice and persecution that gays have faced, but there are many whose marriages and family relationships have been destroyed when they have revealed they are not believers.
No doubt their religious spouses/parents/children/siblings/friends rarely “dwelled” on atheism either, but it’s a different matter when they are forced to deal with the issue head on — and that’s where the real problem lies.
Wowbagger, Vile Demagogue
June 11, 2012 at 8:07 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
heddle wrote:
Then why is there always such outrage when atheist groups attempt to put up billboards with statements as innocuous as “Atheists exist”?
tacitus
June 11, 2012 at 8:16 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
For the majority, I suspect that’s true. What is likely to happen, though, is that the most vocal minority of Christians will ratchet up the volume in an attempt to stem the crowd. They will fail, eventually, but it could be a long time coming in this country.
However, wholesale changes in belief systems appears to be very much a generational thing — every generation for the last 60 years has been markedly less religious than the previous one, even as the beliefs within each generation remain constant as they age. If 10% of a generation were non-believers in their early 20s, then around 10% are still non-believers in their 70s.
This means that more and more parents are having to deal with children who are non-believers. Even if they don’t come out as atheists, the parents have know their kids don’t hold the same religious fervor as they do, and with the exception of those who chose religion over family, they will eventually come to terms with it as it becomes more commonplace — just as Americans have adjusted to the reality of gay and lesbian offspring.
I think that will somewhat ameliorate the push back from the wider Christian community, over time, and that has certainly been true in other countries who have already pretty much made this transition. However, none of these places is as conservative as America, so I expect the process to be longer and messier in the USA as a result.
iknklast
June 11, 2012 at 9:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wowbagger:
“Then why is there always such outrage when atheist groups attempt to put up billboards with statements as innocuous as “Atheists exist”?”
Because the billboards put the atheists on their radars, and then they have to deal with the fact that we exist, that they can’t answer our arguments, and all they have is empty faith.
Meanwhile, they cruise around atheist sites trying to convince the atheists that hang out there how much they aren’t really interested in us as a group; they just HAD to come onto our sites to tell us that, because if they stayed out of our business, we might conclude that they do have an interest in us. Logical, no? No.
Wowbagger, Vile Demagogue
June 11, 2012 at 9:44 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
iknklast wrote:
Why heddle in particular comes here (and other atheist blogs) has always been a mystery. It can’t be because he’s worried about atheists turning people away from Christianity – as a Calvinist he believes that you don’t choose to have faith, you have it thrust
intoupon you and can never give it up; by definition that means there are no ex-Christians, and anyone who’s deconverted was never really a Christian in the first place. Similarly, he knows that presenting arguments for Christianity is pointless, because it’s magic fairy dust that makes Christians, not logic, evidence or reason (I have no argument with the latter, of course).I don’t really know what that leaves, though given heddle’s backstory (IIRC) involves him waking up one day after being sneakily enfaithed by the big guy during the night, seeking out the denomination he liked that most and eventually choosing Calvinism – and, given that Calvinism is the one that favours the capacity to debate internal consistency (in a twisted sense) over possessing compassion, strength of character or basic human decency, you can probably draw your own conclusions as to what sort of person that indicates he is.
Michael Heath
June 11, 2012 at 9:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Christians are obsessed with getting atheists back into the closet far more than converting them. My experience is they’re far too fearful of atheists to directly confront them and make their proselytization pitch. I’ve had a few recent attempts where they didn’t know my beliefs, each time I countered with questions Socratic style I was quickly met with silence, and this was from pastors who are very boisterous about promoting their Tea Party political religionism within the community. [They don't know what I believe because I avoid such discussions, in these cases I merely started asking them questions.]
I think Christians also prefer the closet for atheists because they vastly prefer the worldview that that those who are raised to be Christian and leave the church “backslid”. That fantasy presumes that the so-called backslider still believes in God and its nature as preached in the church and for various reasons these backsliders are ‘rejecting God’ and not belief in God. The backslider assertion is therefore supportive of the Christian premise regarding the existence and nature of God as they understand it, where they behave as if the evidence were overwhelming (and dishonestly and abusively attempt to indoctrinate their children to believe the same).
To confront the fact some people abandon faith for reason and evidence, that they don’t backslide but instead progress to a higher standard of truth, has them totally relying on a most absurd set of logical fallacies. They simply have no compelling defense, at least I’ve never encountered one. “Too smart for his own good”, “he just hates God”, continually conflating the more compelling watchmaker god arguments with the Christian god, or the incoherent, “to reject belief in God would have us all succumbing to tyrants like Stalin or Mao” – the last one being a Rick Warren favorite.
And the argument that Christians rarely consider atheists, what a hoot. As dogmeat noted and tacitus elaborates, Christians find atheists more untrustworthy than any other demographic group – including Muslims, and on a par with rapists according to a 2003 Pew survey (Gallup regularly polls about atheism). A popular boogeyman when I was young were “secular humanists”, who where conflated with atheists. Conservative Christians send their kids to so-called denomination-sponsored colleges who continue to indoctrinate rather than educate (and rarely do any research) precisely because they’re scared of atheist professors. When I attended Michigan State U. I was shocked at how many profs felt the need to claim during class they were Christians – albeit the none inerrantist type, an obvious attempt to communicate to students that just because they were profs at a self-proclaimed liberal university was not evidence they were atheists.
KG
June 12, 2012 at 8:08 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well for you, specifically, that is quite obviously false. For whatever reason, you spend a considerable amount of time arguing with atheists – and much of that by your own choice.
KG
June 12, 2012 at 8:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The polling evidence already mentioned shows that this is simply false. I have no idea why you are afraid to admit this fact (well, I have some idea), but that’s what it is – a fact.
harold
June 12, 2012 at 9:05 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The results described are exactly congruent with what other studies of human – or even animal – behavior would predict. They are also exactly congruent with what is happening in other societies.
However, there are two complicating factors.
One is the use of religious language as a proxy for political language in the US. This is true to a lesser extent in other societies, but it’s extremely strong here. “Conservative Christian” means “conservative”, and “conservative” means “right wing authoritarian”. Religion can create bigotry, but it’s also often adopted as a hypocritical justification of pre-existing bigotry. Some atheists may be libertarians, but almost none of them by definition are Fox/Limbaugh/Tea Party Republicans, because that platform includes explicit claims that God doesn’t like certain people. A sign promoting atheism says nothing about Rush Limbaugh, and it’s absurd to think that Rush Limbaugh is religious in any meaningful way, yet people who love Rush Limbaugh will recognize a sign promoting atheism as implying “don’t vote for the Tea Party candidate”.
The other, larger problem for atheists who want acceptance is what would be described as “movement hijacking” in another context. I can easily change the result of Sastra’s experiment. Have an extremely abrasive speaker harangue the students (and whether you think these things are “true”, or whether you think any atheist says these things, is irrelevant to the point I am making right now) that all religion is evil, all religious people they know are complicit with child abuse, religion is uniquely responsible for all the problems in the world, that all religious people are irrational and intellectually dishonest, and so on. Again, you may claim that you say all of these because you think them true, or you may claim that no-one ever says all of these, that in not my point right now. My point right now is that having such a speaker will create anti-atheist results even if the experimenter says that a large proportion of the room is atheist.
Fact – millions of people are relatively intellectually honest, oppose child abuse, oppose inquisitions, but have a more or less positive view of not necessarily coherent moderate religion. Religion is a set of shared rituals and/or supernatural beliefs which grant group membership when adopted, and which usually deal with the issue of death in some way.
Another fact – deliberate abrasive confrontation has its uses, but persuasion is not one of them. “I’m an atheist, but I respect your rights and have highly similar basic ethical principles to you” is persuasive (I’m not talking about whether you think it’s “true” here). It puts a human face on atheism and breaks down fear of atheists as an unfamiliar outgroup. “I’m an atheist and I consider you evil and intellectually dishonest and have contempt for you” is simply not persuasive. Whether it’s true or not, it unequivocally generates defensiveness. It may be good for kindling a blazing sense of self-righteousness, but it isn’t much good for creating more atheists, or more acceptance for atheists. I’m not arguing against ever saying the second thing. I say such things about hopelessly unethical far right authoritarian ideologues all the time. My goal there is to isolate them. They can’t be persuaded so I resort to fair criticism. There’s nothing controversial about what I’m saying here. There are communication techniques that make a group more acceptable and unthreatening to other groups, and there are communication techniques that enforce narrow group identity, acceptance dependent on conformity, and confrontation with other groups. It’s everyone’s right to use either, but it’s not rational to use one, and claim to want the techniques of the other.
In other contexts, there’s a very strong tendency for “movement hijackers” to avoid engaging the true strong enemies of the issue they claim to represent, and instead to turn on potential allies. I’m not sure whether this is cowardice, or (more likely) an authoritarian-minded effort to sharply define the purity required for the ingroup, by attacking “the person who is most like us but slightly different”. Again, it’s fine for setting up a narrow, hyper-conformist, clique-like ingroup, but it’s harmful if the goal is public acceptance of the issue the group claims to promote.
I glance at “why I am an atheist” from time to time on another blog, and it’s often, understandably, “because I belonged to a very repressive homophobic congregation, and eventually I hit adolescence and discovered I was LGBT”. In other words, they weren’t initially persuaded by atheists, they were excluded by their original ingroup. But what happened to the straight members of that repressive, authoritarian, right wing sect? Did they ever get a positive message that there was life outside the bigotry?
laurentweppe
June 12, 2012 at 10:03 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, of course: it’s a reverse “Kill all the wicked Infidels” speech: all the non-sociopaths in the room are going to clench their teeth. In fact, most atheists themselves will clench their teeth when they hear this kind of speech.
democommie
June 12, 2012 at 10:07 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“any more than most non-NYC baseball fans spend their all their time dwelling on how much they hate the Yankees.”
Wrong, WRONG, WROOOOOONG!!!
Every morning when I get up, my waking thoughts, my daily routine and my pre-sleep checklist include HATIN’ ON THE YANKEES! Oh, you said, “most”; I’m sorry, carry on.
Michael Heath:
“I merely started asking them questions.”
ixnay on the estionsquay*
* It is my firm belief that pig latin must follow the same sort of wordchitecture as good, MurKKKan english. There gotz to be a “u” after “q”. Otherwise, Al-qeda wins!
kermit.
June 12, 2012 at 2:58 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Heddle, go tell it to Jessica Ahlquist.
heddle
June 12, 2012 at 3:48 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
KG,
The polling data, accepted at face value. shows that theists find atheists untrustworthy. I said nothing about that. I said that we do not fear you (why would we?)–nor do we think about you much (as an opposition group.) Big difference.
Also, Michael Heath’s assertion:
is just that, an assertion. I believe an actual survey would indicate that the majority students attend Christian colleges (mistakenly, in my opinion) primarily because they want to be immersed in a so-called “Christian world-view.” Not because they are afraid.
I know you want to be scary, but you ain’t. Only Christians are a danger to Christianity–atheists are impotent.
Michael Heath
June 12, 2012 at 8:29 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Me earlier:
heddle quotes me:
heddle then responds:
I was referring to the fear of these kids' parents, i.e., "they're" is these kids' parents not these young people. I've never concluded or even imagined Christian students would fear their profs.
Having said that I personally know many Christians who attended religious universities partly [largely?] out of fear. Some even had full-ride scholarships offered by Ivy League schools which they rejected; so their parents and them paid big bucks for an incredibly poor education while a world-class education was roofed for a pittance but was rejected. I have observed these young people fearing legitimate places of higher learning based on the threat of cognitive dissonance and their standing within their social groups, the latter which is promoted as correlative to eternal damnation. I.e., beliefs change, your ostracized from your social groups, and your insurance policy avoiding eternal damnation may be revoked.
Another large part is the indoctrination foisted on these kids has me convinced they’re emotional maturity is stunted, they’re simply not ready to take on a different world. A world which they were also indoctrinated to despise which would require them to be high on the scale of emotional maturity to tackle rather than merely average for their age.
Doug Little
June 12, 2012 at 8:46 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Wow that’s some weapons grade indoctrination right there. How fucking deep down the hole do you have to be to pass on a great education, even forgetting about the fact that it is payed for.
dogmeat
June 13, 2012 at 9:34 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Cowardly harassment is evangelizing and caring? Did you not read my comment, or did you just skim through it and filter it through your Jesus-glasses?
Three churches? Seriously? There are nearly half a million churches in the US and you want to claim that the sermons from three are representative? You’re really pushing it on this one Heddle.
Actually I’d prefer you didn’t think about me at all, didn’t harass me, and just left me the hell alone.
dogmeat
June 13, 2012 at 9:40 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Actually, I often ask my students why they go to specific schools. Over the last ten years, I’ve had a large number of students say quite the opposite; instead of wanting to be immersed in the “Christian world-view” most of them were going to substandard colleges because their parents didn’t want them to go to a better secular school. They might give the answer you expect in a survey, but I suspect that many of those who give that answer do so because it is the expected answer.
Michael Heath
June 13, 2012 at 7:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
dogmeat writes:
This is related to my earlier point that the children of conservative Christians aren’t as emotionally ready for a secular school as kids not abused and indoctrinated by their parents’ faith community. That even if they had the gumption to go to a secular university, many aren’t simply prepared to go a secular university in a different town; they’ve been developed to stay in the cocoon that a church college provides.