Hey, Joe, remember "We want your children?" Here's a little material for which you can press the <Next> key and claim you never saw.
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"We're going after the next generation - and their kids," proclaimed Robert Schuller at the 39th anniversary celebration of the founding of his ministry. "We've got to get the kids whose parents don't want religion."
*-*-*-*-* Y O U H A V E B E E N W A R N E D ! *-*-*-*-*If you are one of the millions of Americans who rightfully thinks that religion (as Thomas Edison put it) is all bunk - if you are a parent who doesn't want religion - then let it be known that your children and grandchildren are specially targeted by the peddlers of superstition.
Age old institutions that once used the coercive powers of the state to enforce their doctrines of damnation and a grovelling attitude toward make-believe still use any means at their disposal to spread the sickness.
"We've got to get the kids whose parents don't want religion."
There you have it. The habits of the past continue into the present, and aggresive religions haven't changed their spots, just their methods.
While these institutions have spent most of their time competing among each other for social and political power, today there are more people than ever who do not subscribe to any religion, and who positively do not want anything to do with such nonsense whatsoever.
But now these institutions, old and new, are making special efforts to go after your children. Using their tax-free multi-billion dollar influence, they "fish" for those susceptible to their specially designed marketing of the same old superstitions in attractive new packaging.
But even if you know that they're after your children, what can you do?
No, there's no pat answer being offerred here; I don't claim to have all the answers, and besides, what I'm interested in are the ideas and considered opinions of those readers and regular participants of the HolySmoke forum on the matter.
What do you think can be done?
What have you done in the past, and what would you do in the future? Do you think that countervailing institutions are important, and if so, how so?
Any and all perspectives are respectfully requested.
[Commentary courtesy of Robert Curry]