Dr. Marlene Winnell

This is a CNN interview on December 14, 2007, where Dr. Winnell explains how toxic Christianity contributed to Mathew Murray's shooting spree on December 9th.

Secular Parenting is better

Some wisdom on the art of secular parenting, via the Kiosk at the Secular Web:

It starts off with:

Earlier this year on the way home from school, she told me about a chat she'd had that day with Mrs. W, her teacher at [her] Lutheran preschool. "I told Mrs. W I think God is just pretend. But I said I'm still thinking about it. And I asked if she thinks God is pretend."

I looked at her in the rearview mirror, munching on the apple I'd for once remembered to bring for her snack, so beautifully innocent of the fact that she had stood with her little toes at the edge of an age-old chasm, shouting a courageous and ancient question to her teacher on the far rim. My daughter, you see, hasn't heard that there are unaskable questions.

"So what'd Mrs. W say?"

"She said no," Laney said, matter-of-factly. "She said, 'I think God is very real.'"

"Uh huh. Then what did you say, Laney?"

"I said, 'That's okay--as long as you're still thinking about it, too.'"

It closes by noting that:

I often find myself humbly suggesting that it is possible to raisechildren every bit as ethical, caring, loving, humane, inspired and well-adjusted without religion as with it. In reality (my favorite place to be, after all) I don't believe parenting without religion is merely "as good" as parenting with it. I think it is immeasurably better. I think it blows the doors off religious parenting in everyrespect--powerful inquiry, reasoned ethics, ecstatic inspiration, cosmic humility and profound humanity--and I am floored by my good fortune to live in one of the few human generations to date when raising children without religious indoctrination is a practical possibility.

-- Dale McGowan, Parenting Beyong Belief

False reasons given for why people become atheists

Religious theists sometimes try to dismiss atheism and atheists by claiming that people only become atheists due to bad experiences as kids with false or bad religions. This myth allows theists to imagine that atheists' experiences with "false" religion has nothing to do with their own "true" religion, that atheistic critiques of religion don't really impact their own religion, and that if atheists only learned about "true" religion then they would abandon their atheism.

None of these beliefs are true — at least in the sense that there is a necessary logical progression involved. We must, however, grant that there are some strong correlations involved. People who grow up in a very positive religious environment are probably less likely to question the religious beliefs they are taught and abandon their religion, much less theism itself. Such an event is possible, but it is less likely.

Similarly, a person who grows up in a home where religion is used as a tool for abuse and control may be a bit more likely to question the foundations of that religion. This, then, can more readily lead them to give up the religious beliefs taught to them and perhaps even belief in God as well. Once again, such a result is not guaranteed because there are many who do not follow that path, but it isn't uncommon either.

Austin Cline writing on About.com

Myth: Atheism is Caused by False Religion, Bad Experiences with Bad Religions

Go here for the entire article:
http://atheism.about.com/od/knowledgeofreligiongod/a/BadReligion.htm

Child Militants in Pakistan Conned into Suicide

Boys of all ages are subject to exploitation at madrassahs, say child rights groups
PESHAWAR,
26 May 2008 (IRIN) - Authorities are investigating allegations that militants running some madrassas (Islamic schools) in Swat Valley, north-western Pakistan, are recruiting and training children as soldiers. According to local newspaper reports, the police are questioning six men accused of such offences.

The Swat Valley area, some 160km northeast from Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) capital Peshawar, has seen intense fighting between militants and government forces since November 2007.

However, an agreement was finalised on 21 May between representatives of the militants and government officials in NWFP, under which it is hoped peace will return to the area.

Shaukat Salim, the district coordinator of the Child Rights Committee (CRC) of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), an Islamabad-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), told IRIN that child militancy had been on the rise in the area.

Child militants caught

Salim said that about 25 to 30 madrassa students, aged between seven and 15, had been used by leaders of extremist outfits in Swat to carry out attacks. These children have been detained by security forces and are being held at Swat District Jail.

According to Salim, six others students from a madrassa in the Kabal tehsil (sub-district) have been apprehended by the police for their alleged involvement in an attempted suicide attack.

Salim also cited the story of Abid, 12, who he said had been forced to wear a suicide bomb jacket with which he was to blow up the district courts. He was also caught and is among those being held at Swat jail, Salim said.

http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78400

Corporal punishment key reason for school dropouts

For the complete story go to:

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?ReportId=78275

LAHORE,
18 May 2008 (IRIN) - Quite often, Bilal Javed, 10, stands opposite the school he once attended and peers past the gates. An able pupil, who excelled at mathematics during his five years in school, Bilal misses lessons. But he has not been to school for four months and says he is "too scared" to venture through the entrance again.

Bilal's father, Asad Javed, 33, explained: "My son was good at his work and we were eager he gain an education. But one day he was beaten so badly by his science teacher, who hit him with a shoe, that he came home badly bruised and in great pain”.

“I had to give him a painkilling tablet so he could sleep," said Asad, who works as a cleaner.

The boy was punished for talking in class. He has, since then, refused to return and his parents say they are helpless.

"We want him to be educated, but we don't want him to be beaten up," said Bilal’s father, who himself went to school for only three years.

According to the Islamabad-based Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC), a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) advocating the rights of children, 35,000 high school pupils in Pakistan drop out of the education system each year due to corporal punishment.

Such beatings at schools are also responsible for one of the highest dropout rates in the world, which stands at 50 percent during the first five years of education, according to SPARC.

Recovery advice from an old apostate to a new apostate

The following advice was posted on a Mormon recovery site. (go to http://www.secularearth.com and look in Support/Apostate Alley for a comprehensive list of Mormon recovery sites.)

1. Identify and question all the rules you've ever been taught about what's good and bad. Understand how you make those judgments and insist on solid reasons for making them in the future.

2. Identify and question your core beliefs about yourself and how they affect your behavior. If you have any or all of these, work on losing them:

a. Nothing really bad can happen to me, because I'm a good person and/or there's this benevolent force that watches over me.

b. I deserve to be punished when I'm bad.

c. If something goes wrong, it's probably at least partially my fault.

3. Develop the habit of questioning others' behavior and motivation before your own.

4. Don't assume that there's a universal set of rules that everyone is or knows they should be playing by. In fact one to four of every hundred people, depending on which expert you choose to believe, actually lack the conscience that you just naturally operate by. They ignore "the rules" and either try to hurt others or just don't care if they do. Joseph Smith was one of them, and I suspect every single one of his successors has been as well.

5. Watch out for the way of thinking where you believe what people say based on words and feelings, and insist on proof that something is right or true instead of proof that it is wrong or untrue.

6. Learn about and practice critical thinking. It's a discipline with a specific set of skills that you've been conditioned to avoid.

7. Remember, skepticism is good. You might find an online skeptics' group and just observe how the members think and talk about things. There are pompous asses everywhere - especially online, where many of them find the attention and respect they don't get in the physical world - but those for whom skepticism is a way of life can teach you a lot.

The stupidity, as you call it, is really insidious. It got me big time, some 20 years after quitting the church. I don't even think it was a church thing, necessarily, but the church didn't help. I got a lot of dumb ideas from it
and from parents who got their dumb ideas from it.

I just quit and never thought much about it until a profoundly awful, nearly ruinous life experience forced me to. The suggestions above are the product of that thinking. You have an advantage in that you're thinking about it now, before someone else comes along and really sticks it to you. That's what happened to me.

I felt stupid, too, until I discovered the vast secret club of people who'd had the same experience. Then I realized I'm just a person who was in a particular place at a particular time, with a particular set of beliefs about love and the world and myself, who happened to meet a person who took advantage of those beliefs.

If you were a convert, you could say the same thing about the church. If not, you were born into a cult started by a con man. It IS a scam. You know this already. For me, just admitting I'd been scammed was a major hurdle.

Smart people get scammed every day, in and out of the church. It can happen to anyone, and anyone who doesn't know that is a prime target. Understanding how it happens and how susceptible you are is a serious advantage in life.

Leaving a religion has costs

If you're like everyone else, you weren't told all of the weirdness at the beginning.

At the beginning, it seemed like a very reasonable, family-oriented church. The weirdness came in tiny bits and pieces, and, before you knew it--there it was!

Or, if you grew up in the church, how could you have known differently?

Don't blame yourself for not seeing past what you were given; 32 years ago, the internet did not exist, and research was difficult (if not impossible). Who would think that a CHURCH was lying to them?

You'll feel better, in time.

The Political Consequences of Child Abuse

Alice Miller
The Journal of Psycohohistory
http://www.psychohistory.com/htm/06_politic.html

In the lives of all the tyrants I examined, I found without exception paranoid trains of thought bound up with their biographies in early childhood and the repression of the experiences they had been through. Mao had been regularly whipped by his father and later sent 30 million people to their deaths, but he hardly ever admitted the full extent of the rage he must have felt toward his own father, a very severe teacher who had tried through beatings to "make a man" out of his son. Stalin caused millions to suffer and die because even at the height of his power his actions were determined by unconscious infantile fear of powerlessness. Apparently his father, a poor cobbler from Georgia, attempted to drown his frustration with liquor and whipped his son almost every day. His mother displayed psychotic traits, was completely incapable of defending her son and was usually away from home either praying in church or running the priest's household. Stalin idealized his parents right up to the end of his life and was constantly haunted by the fear of dangers that had long since ceased to exist but were still present in his deranged mind. The same might be true of many other tyrants. The groups of people they singled out for persecution and the rationalization mechanisms they employed were different in each case, but the fundamental reason behind it was probably identical. They often drew on ideologies to disguise the truth and their own paranoia. And the masses chimed in enthusiastically because they were unaware of the real motives, including those operative in their own biographies. The infantile revenge fantasies of individuals would be of no account if society did not regularly show such naive alacrity in helping to make them come true.

Comment:
Theists try to claim that atheist tyrants took more lives that Christian tyrants. Who can count up all the bodies on both sides? This article by Alice Miller probably comes closer to explaining the atrocities committed by communist tyrants, who were coincidentally atheists. Alice Miller is credited with being the first person to correctly identify the relationship between abused children and the abusers they go on to become. The entire article is noteworthy for original thinking and research.

Multinational, comparative legal study on the rights of children

The Law Library of Congress published this study. For details go to:

http://www.loc.gov/law/help/child-rights/index.html

Ancient civilizations entrusted heads of families with omnipotent authority over their children. The rather common underlying legal assumption was that children lack the capacity to discern correctly between prescribed behavioral standards, a condition that made them legally comparable to property and therefore sellable. Academicians have debated on the boundaries of patria potestas (currently translatable into parental authority). As an example, the Roman 12 Tables assigned this power to the fathers. Strict interpreters sustained that this authority was extreme and a remnant of pre-existing “practices of barbarous origin and primitive character” (Table VI, Law I, II and III. S.P. Scott, The Civil Law, Vol. XII, 64-65 (The Central Trust Company 1932)). A more conciliatory approach interpreted the precepts as having gradually evolved to restrict irresponsible and abusive exercise of such authority.

It was not until the 20th Century that the legal status of children was subjected to serious reviews and corrections. The idea that children have rights finally emerged and were embodied in Family Codes and Code of Minors. They were enacted to recognize children as “developing beings whosemoral status gradually changes” thus demanding a realistic understanding of their interests within the families and the larger social context (Introduction to Philosophical Views of Children: A Brief History in the Moral and Political Status of Children (David Archard & Colin Macleod eds., 2005)).

Children hold our hopes for a better future. Their status has been a subject of concern for lawmakers, scholars, judges, lawyers, and common citizens. National laws and regulations as well as international treaties have been dedicated to children with increased interest during the last century.

Camp Quest is unique

Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States for the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view.

The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.

Camp Quest was first held in 1996 and until 2002 was operated by the Free Inquiry Group, Inc. (FIG) of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. The idea for the project originated with Edwin Kagin and he and his wife Helen served as Camp Directors for the first ten years of the original Camp Quest, retiring at the end of the 2005 camp session.

Go here for complete information and the location of all the camp grounds in the USA.

http://www.camp-quest.org/

Have we made much progress since 1880?

Jacob Middleton examines how the Victorians’ obsession with death extended to
terrifying their children in order to prepare them for the grave…

By Jacob Middleton
May 2007

In 1880, the philosopher Alex­ander Bain complained about the way in which Victorian society discip­lined its children. While he saw many meth­ods as ineffect­ual, he reserved his great­est hostil­ity to what he dubbed “spiritual, ghostly, or super­natural terrors”. 1 Bain was a rationalist, heavily influenced by the utilitarian philo­sophers of the early 19th century, and his hostil­ity towards what he regarded as super­stition is therefore hardly surprising. What disturbed him most, however, was not the nature of this means of disciplin­ing children, but its ubiquity; in a society that wished to regard itself as rational and modern, most children were frightened into quiescence by the threat of supernatural terrors.

The period in which Bain was writing was one in which corporal punishment of children at school and home was habitual and the treatment to which many children was subjected was considered, even then, to be cruel and demeaning. Moreover, super­natural retrib­ution had long been considered an accept­able means of disciplining children. In The History of the Fairchild Family, probably the most successful children’s book in Victorian Britain, death is painfully visited upon those who disobey parental authority. A child might find itself burnt to death for the sin of vanity, while
illicitly consuming preserved fruit would “merely” result in a near-fatal fever. 2 Such punishments were regarded as natural consequences of disobedience, a divine retribution.

You can read the rest of this fascinating article at:

http://www.forteantimes.com/features/commentary/443/pass_grade_in_passing_on.html

Scots humanists ask for equality in education

HSS Launches Education Campaign in The Herald

Families who don’t believe in God failed by education, Humanists say
By Andrew Denholm, Education Correspondent, The Herald, 23.04.08

Families who don't believe in God are being failed by Scotland's education system, it was claimed yesterday. The Humanist Society of Scotland (HSS) warned that both lessons and events such as assemblies in non-denominational schools were largely directed at those who had a Christian faith.

This Saturday, the society will launch an education campaign, founded on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which calls for the humanist view to be more widely recognised.

The (Humanist Society of Scotland) HSS will publish new curriculum material for religious and moral education lessons as well as advice to schools and parents about balancing Christian assemblies and visits from ministers with secular alternatives.

Bob McKay, education officer with the HSS, said: "The convention affirms the right of all children to an education that respects both their own cultural values and those of others.

"In Scotland, all parents have the right to raise their children in the religion of their choice, and send them to school in the expectation that their faith will be respected - which is as it should be.

"But no provision of any kind is made for the one in three Scots who have no religious belief. At present, all they can do is ask that their children be withdrawn or excluded from religious activities, which is quite simply inadequate and unfair."

Full article is here:
http://www.humanism-scotland.org.uk/news/hss-launches-education-campaign-in-the-herald.html

Excerpt of Quaker Speech

From a speech entitled, "Should Quakers Receive The Good Samaritan Into Their Membership?" given in 1954 by Arthur Morgan. What he had to say about hereditary religion still applies today.

It is my personal feeling that Christianity at its best has greater value than any of the other great religions, but that most religions, large and small, have values that we might acquire with profit. It is my opinion, too, that the life outlook and teaching of Jesus were very different from the religion which now bears his name. If it should be true that Christians do have the one true faith whereby men may be saved, then perhaps they should keep their present attitudes, though the heavens fall. But what if they are mistaken? Suppose we consider that possibility.

A small proportion of people acquire their major life convictions through a process of intense objective inquiry and reflection. Most of us, on the other hand, get our underlying convictions chiefly by social inheritance or by the accident of circumstance. Most followers of Islam are born of Moslem parents. The same is true of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Shintoists and others. Each believes he or she has the one true faith and that others are misled by error. This is a very significant fact, of which we seldom get the full implication.

It is the general policy in each religious faith to endeavor to teach children the essentials of the faith and to surround them with such a climate of indoctrination that they will have no inclination and almost no capacity to question it or to depart from it. This is such an old, deep rooted tradition in nearly all religions that we accept it as natural, and we do not realize how it may perpetuate error and maintain barriers between peoples. This purpose of indoctrination commonly is furthered by the influences of parents and of the religious community, and in many cases by the prevailing social atmosphere. Where such influences are fairly cumulative, a natural result is that a very strong sense of inner assurance is developed concerning whatever faith is involved. It often is immune to any contrary influence.

Continues at the paragraph starting --- The result is illustrated

http://www.universalistfriends.org/quf1998.html

Indian Baby Dropping Ritual Video

This practice is just wrong on so many levels. The Indian authorities must put a stop to this.

Media urged to play role for promoting child rights awareness

This article appears in the Pakistan Associated Press web site:

http://www.app.com.pk/en_/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=36879&Itemid=2

ISLAMABAD,
Apr 30 (APP): Media must play an active role in promoting awareness among people regarding child rights protection and human rights.

This was observed by the participants in a media consultation on Consequences of Corporal Punishment arranged by Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (SPARC) held here on Wednesday.

The consultation was arranged to discuss the hazards, and alternatives to corporal punishment. The event began with a Song on Juvenile Justice produced by SPARC.

National Manager Promotion, SPARC, Ms. Fazila Gulrez briefed the participants about reasons and consequences of Corporal punishment.

Elaborating the causes, she said that the basic reason of these punishments are lack of education and awareness about the impact such punishments create on the mental growth of child.

As a result of punishment and physical abuses, children lose their interest in study and some times they adopt rebellious attitude which is a serious threat to their future.

In public schools, it has been observed that teachers use to behave harshly to make child more disciplined ignoring the consequences of such attitude and there is need to train the teachers for treating children keeping in view the individual differences and psychological needs, she added.

Fazila Gulrez said that domestic violence can include physical, verbal, sexual or emotional abuse. Children who witness regular acts of violence have greater emotional and behavioral problems than other children. Even very young children can be profoundly frightened and affected.

A child growing up in an abusive household learns to solve their problems using violence, rather than through more peaceful means as some of the long-term effects may include copying their parental role models and behaving in similarly destructive ways in their adult relationships,
she said.

Children may learn that it is acceptable to behave in a degrading way to other people, as they have seen this occur in the violent episodes they witnessed. Appropriate support and counselling will help children grow up learning not to abuse others, she added.

(Please go to the Pakistan AP web site for the complete article)

Let´s get serious Pope Benedict

Excerpt from http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/matthew_harwood/2008/04/a_prayer_for_the_prey.html

Prior to being Christ's Vicar on Earth, Pope Benedict's previous incarnation was the Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who led the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which centuries before took the biblical command to "not suffer a witch to live" seriously and went by a different name: the Holy Office of the Inquisition.

As defender of the faith, Ratzinger could have amended the Vatican's Crimen Sollicitationis [Crime of Solicitation], which originally drew guidelines for how the
church dealt with priests that used the confessional booth to solicit sex from parishioners, even the young. In 2001, Ratzinger revisited the document in a confidential letter to bishops reminding them of the strict penalties whistle blowers faced if they took the matter outside the church.

As David France reported in his book Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal, any accusation against a priest for paedophilia, as long as the allegedcrime wasn't more than 10 years ago, would trigger a church trial. The rub, however, was that the lawyers and jurors would all be priests sworn to secrecy. "Appeals," France wrote, "would go directly to an ecclesiastical tribunal in Rome, under Ratzinger's authority." More damning, priests that took part in the proceedings could not talk about them, the Irish Examiner reports, until 10 years after the child abused reached adulthood.

Lawyer Thomas O'Shea, who represented three young men allegedly olested by a former Houston seminarian, noted in the article that the Vatican's secrecy oath ensures that the statute of limitations for such crimes will have already run out in the US if any priest decided to speak out after his secrecy oath expired. The church rejected O'Shea's accusations and said Crimen Sollicitationis merely clarifies internal procedures. Nowhere in the policy are the victims and their rights mentioned, says canon lawyer Father Thomas Doyle.

Ratzinger had the power to change these polices but did nothing. He still does, Doyle told the BBC nearly two years ago, and advised that the church's policy should be: "[F]ull disclosure to the civil authorities, absolute isolation and dismissal of any accused and proven and convicted clerics, complete openness and transparency, complete openness of all financial situations, stop all barriers to the legal process and completely co-operate with the civil authorities everywhere."

Religious objectors abuse their children

NOTE: I am posting this letter that was written in 2003 only to help reveal the attitude of our government here in the 21st century. To think congress would even consider such legislation is a mark of just how corrupted our system has become in the service of religion. I will follow up to find out what happened to the legislation. Perhaps this travesty was defeated. We can only hope so.





Letter from a Former Amish Child Sawmill Worker to Congress

United States Senate
Washington,DC

United States House of Representatives
Washington, DC
October 21, 2003

Senators and Representatives:

I was born and raised Amish. Both my brother and I were forced at a very young age to work in a sawmill that was owned and operated by our Amish uncle. As soon as we left elementary school at age 14 it was decided by various leaders in the community that we would work on the sawmill because our family was poor and needed the money. We protested this decision, but our protests were overruled by the leaders in the Amish community.

The sawmill work was extremely dangerous and strenuous. We worked around saws, belts, cables and other power equipment used to move and cut logs. We rolled heavy logs onto carriages where they were clamped and cut. We lifted and carried boards weighing hundreds of pounds. Often times we had to step over tracks while carrying these boards, which created risks for slipping or twisting. My brother and I were lucky in that neither of us suffered a serious injury, but to this day I have back problems due to the two years of hard physical labor that I did on that sawmill.

My brother and I each earned less than minimum wage in these jobs, about $20 per day. The days were at least 8 hours long, and often 10 hours. We did not receive any of this money as it was paid directly to our parents.

Our experience in the sawmill convinced me that sawmills are completely inappropriate places for children to be working. There was nothing about our Amish upbringing that made the sawmill any less dangerous for us than it was for children of other religions. I am now 31 years old, a toolmaker and a father of two young children. There is no way I would allow my children to work in a sawmill and I am grateful for laws that prevent all children, regardless of faith, from working in sawmills.

For these reasons, I was shocked and dismayed when I read news articles stating that Congress was considering a change in the law that would allow Amish sawmill owners to employ Amish children as young as 14, while preserving child labor protections for children of other faiths. This would be a tragic mistake, as Amish children need these protections at least as much as non-Amish children. Amish children, because of their parents’ financial condition and the lack of educational opportunities, are particularly vulnerable to exploitation by sawmill owners. I had also thought that the U.S. Constitution would prohibit such blatant discrimination based solely on a child’s religion.

I do not think that the safety provisions included in the proposed legislation will make these jobs safe for children. Sawmills are inherently dangerous for children and cannot be made safer by simply limiting the use of power equipment or the distance between the children and such equipment, or requiring adult supervision I had all those things on the sawmill, and it was still much too dangerous for children.

I applaud those Senators and Representatives who are standing up for Amish children and ask you to please continue your opposition to this proposed legislation. I implore others who might be considering the proposal to reject it and maintain current child labor protections for Amish children as it is for any other child, regardless of religion. I speak for many Amish children who have no choice in this matter, because for them it is futile to speak out. Thank you for listening to my concerns.

John Miller
Mansfield, OH

Christians want us to believe there is nothing wrong with Christianity

Monique Davis is a Christian. A mature representative, in the Illinois legislature. This person in probably every other aspect of her life is normal, possibly a loving protective mother. She has served in the legislature since 1987. Apparently in all these years she served honorably or she would not have been re-elected so many times.

Except.

Her religion has turned her into a raving lunatic. The hate filled diatribe she directed to Rob Sherman, a well respected Atheist activist, can only be attributed to religious bigotry. Such bigotry had to be carefully inculcated by clerics and the people around Ms Davis. It also traces to the overbearing attitude of privilige Christians in the United States have adopted over the years. They seem to completely forget that there are other faith groups in our country and that tens of millions of Americans check the "None" box. Perhaps Ms Davis is feeling stressed because finally Americans are stepping back and considering just what kind of country we became by according Christianity so much deference and respect for so many years.

Ms Davis must do the honorable thing and resign. Or, the Illinois legislature can force her out. Either way, a person who demonstrates such lack of self control and such misbegotten feelings can no longer claim a right to serve her state.

Here is the diatribe:

"The following exchange between atheist activist Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove and Ill. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) took place Wednesday afternoon in the General Assembly as Sherman testified before the House State Government Administration Committee.[...]
Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him. We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy -- it’s tragic -- when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight. They want to fight prayer in school.
I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know?
I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous--
Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am?
Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat!
Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court---
Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon."

Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune, April 3, 2008

List of children's rights organizations

A
Abundant Life Foundation
Action on Rights for Children
B
Berkshire Industrial Farm
C
Canadian Children's Rights Council
ChilOut
Child Rights Information Network
Child Watch Phuket
Child Welfare League of Canada
Child Workers in Asia
Child advocacy 360
Childline India Foundation
Children First Now
Children's Aid Society (Canada)
Children's Defense Fund
Children's Rights Project, UWC
D
Defence for Children International
Development and Education Programme for Daughters and Communities
E
ECPAT
Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism
F
Fight Against Child Exploitation
First Focus
Free The Children
I
International Children's Peace Prize
International Falcon Movement
K
KidsRights Foundation
N
National Safe Place
P
Pies Descalzos Foundation
R
Red Hand Day
S
Stand for Children
Stop Child Executions Campaign
T
Terre des hommes
The Global Fund for Children
W
Watchlist (NGO)

For hypertext links go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Children%27s_rights_organizations

The secret downsides to religion no one admits to

The following is quoted from a personal narrative of a person who I say was wounded by organized religion. Two factors are relevent: organized religion plants the concept that human life has a transcendent purpose that one can only understand via religion. So even in this case the person escaped the yoke of Catholocism he was still compelled to search for something to assuage his need for transcendental answers. Admittedly, this is not how he describes his search, but this is at bottom the hole he was trying to fill. "I need (sic) some faith...didn't I". Secondly religion often creates friction between family members who are at odds about religion. This man is fortunate his wife is in agreement, but he knows he has to face his other family members with the truth of his status and he knows this is going to be unpleasant. In many ways, he is faced with the same dilemma a gay person is faced with when their family members are say very conservative.

After college I still went to church in Columbia, South Carolina. I wasn't very comfortable with the more conservative church there. A priest in a homily once referred to NPR as "National Communist Radio". I didn't like the fundamentalization of the Catholic Church, so I went less and less.

I then began looking around at other faiths. I read Taoist and Buddhist literature. I attended a UU service a couple of times and even visited a Zen Buddhist temple. I began meditating and did some Tai Chi. I liked a lot of it, but it wasn't really right for me. But, I need some faith...didn't I?

Last spring I began reading a lot of the atheist bloggers over at ScienceBlogs. Pharyngula and Dr. Joan Bushwell's Chimpanzee Refuge
stick out the most in mind. At first the outspoken atheism rankled me quite a bit. I really liked their writing in general, though. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that atheism was a real option. I started thinking "Why not?", and it short order I had accepted that I was an atheist. It was months later that my wife and I really talked about the issue. Apparently she had gone through a similar crisis of faith, and had given up on God soon after I had. It was a great discussion. I still haven't talked to my family about it. I don't know how they will react, but I am not looking forward to it. The conversation has to happen soon, though.

http://exchristian.net