The Pew Research Center has some really interesting research on religious knowledge in the US from June 2010.




Why is it, do you think, that Agnostics and Atheists score highest on the number of questions correctly answered?

-efm

hmmm.... knowledge is power?

Because we're different religiously in a way that many don't approve of, and often called on to defend our views. It gets really old after awhile though. I personally prefer to just let people do their own thing.

Who pissed in your Wheaties?

WTF does ANY of this have to do with healing from CSA?

Why do you come into this form just to piss on us? If I incorporate spirituality into my healing WTF does it matter to you? I don't think you are very comfortable with who you are...OR you believe a nexus between homosexuality and CSA.

Why do you give a flying fk? A question you can't answer...I know...so sad...

I care because I'm trying to understand. As a man being actively oppressed by religions in our society, and a survivor of religious sexual abuse, I'm trying to understand why there is so much passion for judgement from those who are religious to make the lives of others so much more challenging.

I'm trying to figure out if, in the case of Christianity, it's an ignorance of the gospels, a conviction that one is saved and others are not, or some other factor that results in the lives of good people being made harder than they really need to be.

It was the comments and actions of several folks in other threads that started this line of thought for me. It struck me as odd that atheists and agnostics would be better able to answer questions on religion than many of those who are religious, and that those who are religious seem less knowledgable and, in my experience, show less actual compassion to others than atheists who are generally painted as amoral and untrustworthy.

It's a conundrum that I'm grappling with as I go through the process of defecting from my church to protect myself from it's cruelty, hypocrisy and injustice.

-efm

See, I'm not surrounded by those factors and dont see them. Gay marriage is accepted by states all around me and the churches I attend teach from the bible and judje not. They are affirming and accepting of whomever walks in the door. I can't get them to look at or discuss CSA but they are great with everone else.

I'm sorry you got abused through the church. I understand the grappling then. For me it was older boys, so I grapple with human nature.

Deleted. Realized post wasn't directed at me.

Robbie,


That sounds great, and highly atypical in this country. I live in one of the most supposedly liberal places in the nation and don't feel that level of support. Can you tell me what state you are in please? I want to check and see if your state and those that surround you have workplace protections, transgender protections, and the many other things apart from marriage equality that help bring the pendulum closer to equality.


What are you asking them to do, and how are you asking them to do it? If there is a post that lays this out, please point me to it. Are you the only voice asking for this conversation? Is the context of this CSA/ASA within your church or broader society? Are they ignoring you outright? Giving you reasons why they won't address the issue?

Once I know more, I'd be happy to work with you on a letter to send to them, and the higher church structure, making a clear, formal, and public request for the issue to be addressed.


Hearing religious people hold forth on how their gods and their churches can provide men healing for and from CSA and ASA while these same churches simultaneously downplay the abuse and enable and protect these pedophiles and rapists from discovery and facing justice is difficult to understand. It's a greater challenge to understand where religious people find the license and the hubris to assume the prerogatives of a god to sit in judgement on others, but not the corresponding qualities of infinite compassion and forgiveness for their fellow man.

There are many people who have heard a true message of compassion and love through religion and who try to live true to that, but there are also many who heard a message of us and them, of good and bad, of black and white, and who wield their imperfect understanding of a god's will as a weapon against others.

I welcome the former as my kin, but my conscience will no longer brook my silence on the unloving and indiscriminate actions of the latter.

-efm

The faith people put in atheistic evolutionary belief which frees them from any 'oughts' or 'shoulds' regarding sexuality and gender is given dominance in many areas of life. It claims it's authority from it supposed 'knowledge', 'fact', 'reason' , rather than 'religion' which is now defined as un-reasonable and based on no evidence.

I am convinced sex was designed and we are to follow the Maker's instructions for it's use, then we have an idea about function and disfunction. If, as we are being bullied to believe through some psduo-scientific dogma, sex is 'free' from any creator, designer, maker's instructions, anything goes. Humanistic theories, shifting dunes, try vainly to draw lines about healthy and not healthy.

Blind guides mishandling The Maker's instructions VS Blind guides rejecting and reacting to the idea of a maker with instructions. What a choice!


Bullies come in 'religious' and 'non-religious' forms. It was a sunday school teacher, a daughter of a respected founder of a church who changed my life at 4/5, but plenty of non-believers had their turn.

Let's give each other room........as a 'believer' i have been trained well to never push my views on anyone, especially here...

"my conscience will no longer brook my silence on the unloving and indiscriminate actions of those" who hold to the popular mega myth of evolution.

As i have said in another post, i seem to be needing these 'enemies' of 'faith' to help me free from the abuse and lack of wisdom within the various religious circles i mix in (christian, Jewish, etc). It seems i have much to learn from un-believers. This place as uncomfortable as it can be, as a reflection of society regarding belief, is a haven for me.

If we give each other respect (ie no attacks) there will continue to be room for us all from our various perspectives. There will always be a tension but that is ok?

CJ