Baby Bible Bashers

Shadow Leader

Shadow Leader

At the Start
Joined
Nov 9, 2003
Messages
9,884
Did anyone else see this?!

It could only happen in America - the exploitation and brainwashing of these kids was horrendous. I missed the first bit so missed most of the story about the first kid; the girl in Rio seemed happy enough - that said she lives in a very Catholic country.

The third kid however, I really feel for. A little blonde haired child, aged no more than around 7 or 8, of a redneck family with an exceptionally bigoted father. The father is driving the kid's bandwagon and subjected the poor lad to preaching in Washington and New York, for God's sake! In NY the crowd were laughing openly at him before rowing openly with the father and the surrounding adults who were stating that homosexuals, fornicators, adulterers, yada yada were going to hell.

It was disgusting to see these redneck, racist, bigoted fools brainwashing this poor child. I know who I think should rot in hell.....
 
I watched most of it, but switched off before the end. They were horrible brats with manipulative parents. The programme was a bit of a waste of time really. If I'd have known what it was going to be like, I wouldn't have watched any of it.

Btw, SL, what is (or are) "yada yada"?
 
In the Irish media a few weeks ago there was a bit of a controversy about rosary beads being sold in the Protestant Cathedral in Dublin.Bloke from the North rings up a radio show complaining and amongst other things said every time the Catholic mass is said Christ is crucified again.Does anyone honestly believe that-he made a right plonker of himself.The strange thing was that he is a senior civil servant at Stormont.
 
Sorry Ven - "yada yada" is another way of saying "etc".

I agree that the programme wasn't that great but I think it really went some way in showing how downright dangerous, stupid, narrow minded, bigoted and horrendous small town America can be.
 
Originally posted by Shadow Leader@Feb 15 2008, 10:07 PM
Sorry Ven - "yada yada" is another way of saying "etc".

I agree that the programme wasn't that great but I think it really went some way in showing how downright dangerous, stupid, narrow minded, bigoted and horrendous small town America can be.
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As W has proven, there is very little difference (apart from wealth) between a Christian Extremist and a Muslim Extremist.

Most of small town America is 'real cute'. It's really only when you go down south, mainly to the poorer confederate states, (the ones who only 'officially' allowed non-whites to sit on the same bus as the whites 40-odd years ago) that you still find pockets of extreme behaviour such as this that is considered normal.

My friend Darren and I have driven a whole load of the USA (37 states in all) and have only once come across such a place - Two Dogs, Benton County, Arkansas. No more than 2 shops, a small diner, a church and a petrol station. Having only stopped to buy some water, we were treated to the full song and verse of how great Benton County was. "The only draaaa caanty in Arkansaaa", said one rather rotund lady. "And in Two Dawgs, there ain' no blacks neeether!", said the other. I'm not bloody surprised.... they'd have far more sense than to stay in a dry county surrounded by bigots like these.

To give you an idea of the surrounding area..... as we drove on, we were following the school bus (no overtaking at any time !) at around 20 mph as it dropped kids off home. Each stop was about 5 miles on from the previous, and each kid had to walk about a mile down a dirt track to their parents farmhouse.
 
It's always struck me as something of an irreconcilable contradiction that a country who owes so much of its wealth and prosperity to the name of science and technology exploration, is positively medieval in so much of its outlook, preferring to place great faith in things which have absolutely zero grounding in science, and believe as fact such palpably stupid notions that women were created from a mans rib etc

We might very well look at Muslim countries, and find their fundamentalist obessession both worrying and beyond rationale inquisition, but America exhibits many of the same dogmatic traits, just that they fly under a different banner. Their currency has 'in God we trust' emblazoned upon it, their Presidents routinely implore God to bless their country, and there was even a case a few years ago of a non believing Congressman who fellow congressman tried to have expelled from office because he'd admitted to finding the evidence based in evolution more compelling than creation :eek: Imagine how we'd denounce Iran as being primitive if one of their MP's was expelled from parliament for questioning the legitimacy of Islam.

In many respects the rhethoric remains hopelessly marooned in the 11th century. Even their wonderful President talked about "going on a crusade" and remarked "how can we lose with God on our side" shortly after 9/11. The weaponary might have changed but the under lying medieval sentiment belongs to an altogether other time
 
TV is about extremes. The middle doesn't matter. I have spent some years in USA including some of the Southern States. There are as many bigots and nutcases in Mullingar or Chipping Sodbury.

There was a show about a 4YO Indian kid running marathons recently. Do we think all Indian kids run extreme distances? No. You will not see a documentary called "This is Gupta. He never runs anywhere."

Don't rush to condemn the whole based on a tiny slither of a sample.
 
I'm full of pointless sayings, Ven!

AC, I appreciate what you are saying but it also goes some way (along with a lot of other stories that come out about the place) to illustrate the way certain parts of the good ol' US of A think. The kid bible bashers apart, there does seem to be plenty of hick, redneck and extreme thinking going on, especially in the southern states. There's a lot of truth in the view that Christian extremists are just as dangerous as extremists from other religions also.

I agree absolutely with Warbler that it seems incredible that a country which is supposedly one of the most technologically advanced, modern and wealthy, can still have such prevalent mediaeval attitudes in some regions. That said I realise that this country isn't a lot better in some places but it doesn't seem to go quite so far as some of the southern states in the US, places like Alabama for example.

The thing I found most amusing about the programme was that the New Yorkers were simply gobsmacked - they started off laughing their backsides off at them before a few people started getting antsy with them, accusing them of being racist, homophobic bigots.
 
Originally posted by an capall@Feb 16 2008, 06:53 AM
There are as many bigots and nutcases in Mullingar or Chipping Sodbury.

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Maybe, but i think our bigots are a little more benign at least.
 
Originally posted by Colin Phillips@Feb 16 2008, 11:15 AM
Ah! so British/Enlish bigots are not so bad as foreign bigots???? :P
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I doubt they`re as well armed as our American cousins. Before my time, but were there any instances of our West Indian friends being strung up in the 60s by the Surbiton branch of the KKK?
 
Unfortunately christianity also breeds a lot of hypocrites, especially within certain denominations of "christianity."

I myself am a christian, however I do not lose sight of the big picture called reality. God said we should love "everyone," however the current christian concept I seem to be feeling at my church and which is wrong is that we should only love those who have dedicated their lives to Christ, and not those who haven't been Saved. Or we should stick our noses up in absolute disgust at those who choose to be homosexual, because its against what is written in the Bible.

Yesterday was a prime example of reality versus religion. I used to go to a christian network group after work every Wednesday evening. Unfortunately they brought it back a day early, and also at a time rather inconvenient for myself, when I always work back late on Mondays and Tuesdays. I told one of the chicks that unfortunately it does not fit in with my agenda, to get a rather funny e-mail saying "In your walk with God, cell is the most important part of life. Can you not change your day to work back because cell is more important than work."
I said "Unfortunately my priorities have to be in order first, and work happens to be the main priority at the moment."
 
Apologies for a post after a few beers...... (and I'm going to get some stick for this) but I believe the Bible (and other similar scripts) was written by the leaders and civil servants of the time to create structure and order in society.

As time has passed, what was needed for said structure and order in society has changed, but religion has not necessarily changed with it. (When were the last re-writes of the Bible or the Koran ?)

Hence we are left with the last few people hanging on to the every word of an old book that represents their religion, often in a desperate way, to make people sit up and listen.

Everyone has a right to believe in your God, but they don't have to cling to 2000 year old books.
 
Well said, Cricket - unlike you to be able to even switch on a computer after a few beers mind - it's usually all you can do to make it home!!!!

Everyone has a right to believe in your God, but they don't have to cling to 2000 year old books.
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Or, more to the point - don't ram it down everyone else's throats either. Not least when it's done in a poor attempt to make people see the error of their ways [according to said religious folk doing the ramming].
 
Originally posted by an capall@Feb 19 2008, 06:29 PM
Or we should stick our noses up in absolute disgust at those who choose to be homosexual
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GA, did you use the word 'choose' in that sentence deliberately?
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I said choose because that is the way most christians see it. They believe homosexuals choose to be gay.

Unfortunately that idealism, in my belief is wrong, having grown up with a gay man in my immediate family and with one of my best friend's being gay. The only choice they have to make is to let people know, yes they are gay.
 
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