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Be very concerned when certain groups of people consider themselves untouchable and their ideas sacrosanct. Religious belief on the right and on the left (gender religiosity) is poisonous for a society that values free speech and communication.
What? The religious using coercive tactics to harm children. Unpossible.
From Wikipedia:
Kidnapped for Christ is a documentary film that details the experiences of several teenagers who were removed from their homes and sent to a behavior modification and ex-gay school in Jarabacoa, Dominican Republic. The film was directed by Kate Logan. Tom DeSanto, Lance Bass and Mike Manning are the executive producers.
The documentary details the experiences of several teenagers who were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to Escuela Caribe at their parents’ behest. The film focuses on the plight of a Colorado high school student, David, sent to the school by his parents after he told them he was gay. The film also documents the experiences of two girls: Beth, who was sent to the school because of a “debilitating anxiety disorder”, and Tai, who was sent for behavioral problems resulting from childhood trauma.
The Bible Reloaded provides commentary on the actual film.
Our imperial conquests in the Middle East are, of course, busily blowing up in our face. The new normal is a murderous state of higgledy-piggledy brought on by us wiping out the quasi-stable societies that had kept the peace (of sorts). Because nothing says we love peace like bombing the shit of a country we now have religious extremists attempting to establish a new Caliphate in the ruins of our bastion of democratic freedom imperial conquest.
So anyhow, once you cripple the umbrella of supports (infrastructure and otherwise) that keep a civil secular society running it comes as no surprise that the radically religious and their magically-shitacular beliefs will step up and fill the gap left, cue ISIS.
Now, back here in secular society the moderate religious factions (read: kept in check by secular society) are distancing themselves from the ISIS’s murdery-behead-a-thon, clear evidence of what happens when you let the radical religious run society.
However, the moderates ensconced in secular society are unsatisfied with their usual level of bollocks and feel the need to up their game.
Apparently, suckering children into going to war zones is on Islam’s approved list of shitty things to do to people.
“Two Austrian teens got way more than they bargained for when they abandoned their homes and families to become “poster girls” for ISIS terrorists, and now they desperately want to come home.
Samra Kesinovic, 17, and friend Sabina Selimovic, 15, would love to press the undo button on the last six months, during which they traded their comfortable existence in Europe for a life of evil engineered by terrorists.
Hmm. I wonder who could have persuaded these two children to renounce their families and go to a war zone.
“The teens apparently were lured to ISIS by propaganda preached at their local mosque.
Clerics told them that the only way to know true peace was to head to Syria and take part in the holy war, officials said.
The girls had started lecturing schoolmates about their lifestyle and were even suspected of being behind a vandalism attack at their school calling for jihad.”
Was there any surprise? Pushing extremism in the ‘religion of peace’ (except when it’s not) was the modus-operendi – at least in Australia. But let’s hear from the children in their own words:
“That’s a change of heart from the April note they left behind for their parents that read: “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah, and we will die for him.”
Because a focus on the afterlife as opposed to the only one you’ll have here in reality, is always a great go-to strategy.
“Now Kesinovic and Selimovic have had enough and are eager to return to their families, according to CEN. The girls reportedly managed to get word to their families they want to come home. But reports also said the teens don’t feel they can flee because too many people now associate them with ISIS savagery.“The main problem is about people coming back to Austria,” said Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck. “Once they leave, it is almost impossible.”
You knowthat feeling when you are well and truly being screwed in the deepest, blackest, pit of shit imaginable? Take that feeling and multiply it by 10, or heck even go logarithmic. Imagine now being a pregnant child in a war zone surrounded by (and married to) people who want to die for their bearded imaginary friend in the sky.
Made of Awesome? You betcha!
All of this, made possible by religion.
[H/T to Bleatmop for bringing this article from the New York Post to my attention.]
Dear Religious people,
Have you thanked your local atheist today? If not, you should because atheism and by extension secular society, is saving you from the immoral loopy shit your bronze age beliefs demand. The latest demonstration of how immoral and barbaric religion is comes to us from the Sudan. (read more about Mariam at Al Jazeera)
“Mariam Yehya Ibrahim, a Sudanese mother, doctor and Christian, has been sentenced to flogging and death unless she recants her Christian faith. She is 8 months pregnant and has a two-year-old son. Please, join the international community in asking Sudan not to execute her for being a Christian.”
Wow.
You “go hard” there Islam – the religion of peace and friend to women across the globe.
“Ibrahim is charged with adultery on the grounds that her marriage to a Christian man from South Sudan is considered void under Shari’a law, for which the penalty is flogging. She’s also charged with apostasy, or abandonment of religion, for which the penalty is death.”
Well you can see the problem here, obviously, that if you decide to change from one fatuous belief system to another, the penalty is death. Funny we don’t hear about these sorts of things in North America. You can thank god that the United States wasn’t founded as christian nation – if it was, this sort of egregious crime against humanity would be common place in the lower 48 all the time.
You know why it isn’t? (hint: rhymes with ‘Fecularism’)
The very secular foundations of society that the christian right is chipping away at are the very same foundations that are preserving the “not-allowing-stupid-religious-shit-to-go-down” haven that Americans inhabit.
Witness the fucking evilly deranged face of theocratic rule and tell me that this is what you want for your society? Getting a little closer to god gets you a little closer to barbarity. How depraved must one be, in the pursuit of a religious based society, to somehow think that theocratic rule is good?
“Mariam is the daughter of a Christian woman and Muslim man. She was raised Christian after her father left. However, Sudanese law mandates that children born to Muslim fathers are considered Muslim.
The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice, and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion is abhorrent.”
This does NOT happen in modern secular society.
Your pious objections to secularism are noted; you can now sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and think about the good that secularism has done for you and your freedom to believe in vacuous mythology of your choice. Maybe, just maybe, instead of campaigning for and electing people with ‘good christian values’ you could decide to support someone that is defending your very (comfortable) way of life, here in reality, where it matters.
Continue to erode the secular aegis at your own peril.
Lastly, get off your damn knees, stop praying, and go do something useful for once – sign the petition to save Mariam’s life.
How far have we fallen? Is there a bottom to the well of stupidity that christianity is? I keep expecting one day that people will grab a clue, catch on to the devious mind-fuck of organized religion and simply say, “Enough.”
That fabled day seems to be moving into the future – outpacing our best attempts ever to reach it. Why? Because we need to believe so desperately in magic that we throw Reason right out fracking window. Critical thinking, rationality, skepticism? Defenestration for the lot of you! Jebus trumps all your asses!
Discern4’s video is light-hearted but the it does not answer the question that is begging to be answered: who responds to this bunk? Who twizzles the the holy tassels of jesus in hopes of having their debt magically cleared?
I know who.
Desperate, ignorant people. The very same ones religion has been ‘praying’ on since the beginning of our history. The practice is immoral and has no place in a civilized society (yes dear reader you get to fill in the blanks for the indeterminate referal in the the sentence – whatever you pick will work, trust me).
Late to the party as usual, this mash-up of Sam Harris laying the smack down on christianity is too good not to post.
It is thoroughly amusing to watch discern4 commentate on a pair of thoroughly delusional Chick Tracts. The tracks focus on the topics of rock and roll music and a topic that apparently has me hellbound for sure, and that would role playing games aka Dungeons and Dragons. It is amazing what deluded people think is toxic and horribly wrong. What is even more scary is seeing it codified and distilled into a pure form of fear based propaganda.
I found the last part of the video disturbing as discern4 relates a story about how he had his own cleansing bonfires in which he burnt the works of Satan – video game advertisements from a gaming magazine, and a Christian book about Witchcraft(!). I generalize this episode to the horror inflicted on children who are taught stories of hellfire, demons and damnation; as if they actually existed. These so called “Biblical truths” are such a grand collection of half-baked pigshit encrusted goose-featherings – that on their very best day they make not a whit of sense – it is this delusional mendacity of these “truths” that has the power to ruin peoples’ lives.
It is unconscionable.
And for what? Propping up a creaky system of beliefs that does not conform with reality? Laying claim to ignorance as if it were some sort of meritorious badge of honour? My mouth dries with disdain when I see the biblical language crop up, my blood pressure rises when the religious, with that infuriating supplicating temerity, dare to lecture on the topic of morality. Gaaah!
But enough of my rant , enjoy the video. :) (bonus points if you catch the racism regarding rhythmical instruments.)
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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