(In responce to "My son is an atheist)
They hear this garbage at school, other places, and among their peers. It seems to be the cool thing right now for kids to claim to be atheist. Just keep loving your son and praying for him. He belongs to Jesus and no one can snatch him from Jesus's hand.
59 comments
Atheistic peer pressure?
That's a new one.
Yeah because nobody would find the bible stories unbelievable if there weren't a roving band of atheists secretly brainwashing children at school.
If your kid is such a devout Christian, why did he ever have doubts or decide that he was an atheist? Didn't you take him to church on Sunday?
"He belongs to Jesus and no one can snatch him from Jesus's hand."
Wait, isn't that exactly what you're so scared about?
Bro, deny the existence of your lord and we'll like you more, oh, and shove this pencil up your nose, yeah.
...he's fucking doing it!
I know one other atheist at school, and as far as I know she's never tried to recruit the Catholic girl that sits with us at lunch. Or anyone else.
So is this just happening in other places?
Your son is developing a mind of his own, something that seems to have escaped you. Good for him.
Jesus is imaginary, or at best 2000 years dead, so he can't be holding anyone's hand.
Just like it's trendy and fashionable to be gay, and people support Obama for now other reason than because it's in right now, and anybody with a thought that doesn't match one of yours must be a mind-controlled drone, right?
Funny thing is that they would see nothing wrong with kids preaching Jesus to everyone at school or anywhere else.
And nice how they say "claim to be atheist" as if nobody's really an atheist and especially not kids since they can't think for themselves.
While some kids do go through an atheist phase (without actually being atheists) to "rebel" against their parents, no one can "snatch a kid from Jesus' hand". If he really is atheist, it's because he made up his own mind about how he sees the world, not because of peer pressure.
Really? I had a much different time in school. Elementary, High school, and college. In elementary school everyone was religious (it was a public school by the way). In fact some kids there didn't accept evolution. In my admittedly Catholic high school I was one of only two kids who openly admitted to being atheist. Luckily in my college, NO ONE CARES about religion. Besides if Jesus' hold was so strong then why did the kid become an atheist?
Just imagine it being cool to believe in reason and facts and not to have imaginary friends. Damn! That WOULD be cool.
Your own Bible says that apostasy is the only unforgivable sin. If the Bible is true, that means there is nothing anyone can do to save your son from eternity in hell.
He belongs to Jesus and no one can snatch him from Jesus's hand.
Then why are you fuckers so worried?
And not only is it ok to be an atheist, the moment one realizes everything he has been taught his whole life is a huge fucking lie, the liberation is positively orgasmic.
I'm sad to say we probably have some of that "anti-religious" peer-pressure here.
Religion is just not something we speak about, it's a personal matter. We'd rather discuss politics. After all, we have 7 different parties in our congress so there are lots to discuss. No black or white here, we have blue and light blue, yellow, green, red and even redder. Oh, on second thought I do think the Christian Democrats use the color white. (That's one of our most right-wing parties, btw.)
Here it can be harder to "come out" as a Christian, than as gay. When we think Christian, we think goody-goody, with slightly otherworldly voice, too polite, too nice - do you know what I mean? Jehovah's witnesses, like?
It's probably not easy for a little religious kid in the school ground, sadly. Kids can be really mean, they don't need a reason to pick on somebody, really.
Responses in same thread:
"I have had struggles with my almost-14 yr old son too."
Now THAT is good news. Even a 13 yo kid can see that the Raptards are full of shit.
"Thank you to all who prayed for my son, it means so much to know you are willing to do this. I cannot thank you enough. "
Wow, they were willing to close their eyes and think words in their heads. Just remarkable. How did they ever find the inner strength to make such a sacrifice?
But wait, I'm an atheist and I'm not cool at all.
Dammit, I wish I could have found out about this back in high school.
"He belongs to Jesus and no one can snatch him from Jesus's hand."
Except, apparently, Charles Darwin, Harry Potter, Disney, Pixar, Richard Dawkins, Barack Obama, Billary Clinton, Feminists, Gays, the Liberal Media, Muslims, Catholics, Mormons, Pokemon and Tickle-me Elmo...
Do you guys not even read your own site?
Haha, this sounds like my parents. I told my dad I was an atheist, and he said, "No you're not, you're an agnostic, which is a confused Christian." Um yeah, thanks Dad!
But that's the thing about faith, isn't it? Someone who doesn't believe in God can often be convinced by those who do. Believers of one faith can be swayed to another. But while they are seeing the world through the delusion of faith, it will always prevent the person from acknowledging atheism is a legitimate point of view. Their own perceived experiences leads them to believe some higher power is real, and they'll always trust that more.
In all cases I've ever heard of, it is the individual themselves that take the first step by questioning whether their faith is a real experience or just something they like to believe. Then they take the next step of looking for answers. Which eventually compels them to seek out the furthest extreme, atheism, to test beyond a doubt what's real and what isn't.
TL;DR: The point is that atheists cannot take faith away. De-conversion can only become a possibility once there is a change of mindset within the individual they themselves had to initiate.
Sorry, but if that kid became an atheist, peer pressure had little, if anything, to do with it.
Ime it was the exact opposite. I was one of the few openly atheist people in my high school, and I was frequently confronted by other students who wanted to know "Why don't you believe in God?!", teachers frowned on me for expressing atheist or antitheist opinions, etc. etc. And btw, I graduated high school last year, so it's not like this happened in the '60s or something. Also:
He belongs to Jesus and no one can snatch him from Jesus's hand.
This statement is just... incredibly creepy. Jesus sounds like a slavemaster or something.
I just want to say, to all those who've told of atheism as a tiny, sometimes taunted, minority in school...
It wasn't like that for me going to school in Australia during the '90s. Mostly, religion wasn't a mentioned thing. It would have been "uncool" to mention that you were part of any faith group, Christian and atheist included. (Excuse my clumsy phrasing, I don't mean to imply that atheism is a faith.)
I can't say for certain, but I think the a lot of people would have identified with atheism during high school. (I think in primary school such issues are a bit hard to comprehend.)
Have hope, it is possible for schools and students to be fairly secular.
I don't know, dumbass. I knew there were people who didn't believe in Jesus when I was younger, but I didn't know what they were called.
I'm pretty sure no one was whispering in my ear that "the Bible is evil", when I decided to become an Atheist.
Gee, when I was in High School the few times my teachers find out I was an atheist I was condescend to, and at my HS there was a group of kids that started an after-school prayer club. Said club would meet in the first class room you saw upon entering the school's front doors.
I'm in my mid 20s so i still remember school reasonably well and as far as I recall, religion never played any part in any interactions between students. Whether you were "cool" or not depended on other, much more superficial things.
Most kids that want to rebel from fundie parents go full fledged Satanist don't they? Damn, they've locked me out again. Is anyone else having this issue? or have they IP banned me?
Why not freak mom out by wearing pentagrams, black clothes and hanging out in the basement?
If no one can snatch your son from Jesus' hand, then why do you get so fired up about D&D, Pixar, and atheism? You are so going to Hell for lying.
I cannot tell you how sick I was of hearing "You're not atheist, you're agnostic" from most of my relatives after a while. Eventually they came to understand this, but I still get the occasional anti-atheist e-mail from my one bitch aunt.
Back in high school, you could get away with not being religious, though I used to get in fights with the scary-Christian girls in one class.
My brief and abortive stint in college was unmarred by religious fights, aside from my one encounter with a creepy purity-fixitated Christian.
Short version: Can't pass judgment on this one until we know where her son's in school. But I still doubt the atheists have enough leverage to pressure anyone.
@nichevo: Same. A modern Aus public school, though it had prayer groups and the odd proselytizer, most people there couldn't give two shits about your religious viewpoint or lack thereof and discussing it made you somewhat of a bore.
The only hardship I suffered as an Atheist at school was that the stupid ass religious studies teacher found out about it and was always trying to convert me and my other friends to Christianity whenever he passed us during lunch break.
Yeah, why would any kid want to be an atheist when they could go to church every Sunday morning for an hour or two, denounce video games or movies because they're evil, denounce popular music for overt messages of sex or having secret Satanic messages, and participate in exciting bible-study classes once a week? Listening to your parents talk about how evil the world is and how Jesus is coming to take you up into the sky any moment is far more fun than hanging out with your friends.
Maybe the son has a brain in his head and he doesn't blindly think the same thing you do just because you want him to?
Let the kid decide for himself, for fuck's sake.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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