RELIGION DOES HARM TO CHILDREN 

ABUSIVE DOCTRINES
 
Christianity teaches the good news or gospel, that is its essence. But what is this good news? It is that God has saved us from sin and its penalty. You cannot have the good news without knowing and being grateful for what you have been saved from: eternal torment in Hell. So it follows that people should be warned about Hell before invited to receive the good news. It follows that children should be indoctrinated about Hell. How can you really accept God’s salvation right if you don’t know that salvation is from Hell? To abandon Hell or to say nothing about it is to fail to teach the gospel.
 
The New Testament claims to be for everybody even children and it speaks of Hell in frightening terms. Jesus spoke of Hell in his sermons to crowds which must have included very young children and older children of about 8 to 12 too. Women that wanted to hear him certainly took all their young children with them. In those days, a female child was a woman at 12 and forced to marry and have babies. Jesus did no protesting against that at all though he did plenty of complaining about the scribes and the Pharisees and people not believing in him. Instead he said knowing that a child of 12 hasn’t the consent to get married properly that a woman who divorces her husband commits adultery. To the honest mind these girls were not married at all both because they were forced and because they were so young and because if their husbands really wanted and loved them they would not be making them pregnant at such a young age. Jesus recognising them as married indicates approval for the abuse of these girls. The point is Jesus was capable of wanting children to be taught about Hell and scared half to death. We see from the evidence that he actually taught them the doctrine. Even in apparitions of the Virgin Mary no effort is made to censor the message. At Fatima, she showed three very young children a vision of Hell in all its horror. She supposedly did the same thing at Medjugorje.
 
It is accepted by everybody these days that teaching children who are so vulnerable and impressionable and who take all they believe on authority is child abuse. Christianity is a religion of child abuse and it is no wonder so many of its clerics couldn’t keep their trousers on when alone with a child.
 
Love the sinner hate the sin is the chant of all those who have concealed the clerical abuse of children. If you pretend that a sin is a thing and an action that isn't an expression of what a person is or what kind of character that person has, you will find it easy to cover up for paedophile priests in the name of love. You have to pretend like that in order to be able to love the sinner for loving the sinner and hating the sin is impossible. The office monster who plots to get you fired is hating you but loving you in the sense that he wouldn't kill you or hit you so love sinner and hate sin doesn't have anything to say at all to those who wish to learn what doing right is and what wrongdoing is.
 
Many Church doctrines, the doctrine that Jesus was nailed to the cross by our sins, that we were born at loggerheads with God, that we and the people we love can go to Hell forever, that Jesus let demons into people and later put them out for show are horrific. The Church might say that Jesus put demons in and removed them for a complicated good purpose but when we don’t know Jesus like we would any ordinary person would it be right to trust him? We gauge other people on what we see when we don’t know them very well for what else can we do? The doctrine that God loves us is scary because this love involves using evil on us or letting it happen which is the same thing for God makes all things.
 
It is child-abuse to expose children to these teachings. And they have to be exposed to them for Jesus commanded it. Anybody not just children can be damaged by them and still the Church and its Jesus say, “Go teach all nations”. Also if it is right to teach the gospel, then the unpalatable doctrines should be taught first for Jesus forbade being deceitful which includes a ban on being manipulative so that people know exactly what they are getting into. To trust God means you have to know the horrifying stuff first for otherwise you can’t make an informed decision for Jesus.
 
The clergy preach doctrines that make severe demands on the flock and they ask that one give all to Jesus Christ. They say that the most important man ever gave his life because he refused to stop preaching the good news. They praise him for that. It follows then that the Church and the priests should live up to a harsher standard of holiness than they do. They should live in huts and eat frugally and give all they have to the poor. They should be happy to report paedophile clergy to the police. They should be happy to resign if they fail to report. They should be happy to confess.
 
To tell a child that the Bible or Church has the word of God is dangerous. That book is full of unedifying material such as God commanding murder and genocide and Jesus’ insane teachings. The Catholic Church claims to be infallibly guided in interpreting what God says and the interpreter is more important than the revealer and has the most power. It is the clergy then that gets the power through religion and they get it over innocent people and children and that is reprehensible.
 
Most Christians claim that they don’t have to keep the Law that God gave Moses in the Old Testament of the Bible.
 
This book commands murder and genocide and killing heretics and those who don’t belong to the “true faith” for God commanded it and God must be obeyed for God is never wrong. The Bible is more explicit and clear on this being God’s will than the Koran. The fact that some Christians assume these teachings are the Old Law the Jewish Law and Jesus has given us a new law means nothing for the new law doesn’t forbid these murders. Also Judaism which is the religion of the Old Law is the one true faith. All Christians believe that except they add their own faith is the fulfilment of Judaism, the completion of the true religion. There are two true religions and you have to belong to the most up to date one which is Christianity. Logically if you can’t get people converted to Christianity you have to advise them to go to Judaism instead. This means that the Christians are claiming that the true faith has the right to kill and stir up religious wars if God commands it for they and Judaism are the one religion except that Christians are up to date. They are taking responsibility for those murders. It also means that Christians if they should give any religion freedom should give it to Judaism and insist that Judaism has its legal rights to stone homosexuals and adulterers and so on. Christianity is a murderous religion in a real sense. One of its principal doctrines is the doctrine of St Paul that if you get circumcised you are bound to keep the entire Law of Moses so it is valid today. It’s still in force. Paul declared that it is because the Law is right and valid that we need Jesus to save us from its condemnation. Most Christians hold that though we are condemned for breaking the Law and it is valid we are not bound to keep it for Jesus did a lot of the keeping for us. That means then that in principle Christians are not opposed to fanaticism. They are only opposed to it when they think Jesus took care of that obligation for us. Religion like that is dangerous and it is trying to push people towards the borders of religious lunacy. It is particularly dangerous for the impressionable. It desensitises those who are against fanaticism.
 
The atonement doctrine in teaching that Jesus died to save us implies that if you could get hold of the baby Jesus you would save the world by cutting his throat. It blesses child sacrifice or at least sees this evil as a beneficial thing. The pagans thought that the slaughtering of babies was a beneficial evil.
 
To instruct and indoctrinate a child in even the more seemingly innocuous doctrines of these sources is dangerous for you are saying that what you tell them is the word of God meaning that there are other doctrines not so harmless from the same source that must equally be inspired by God. To tell a child then that God says he loves them is to lure the child into acceptance of an authority that will sooner or later expose them to harmful doctrines and distorted thinking. To hang on to the good they have learned and the comforts they have got in religion they will have to learn to stomach and accept and even like the bad parts as well. To tell a child that the Church and the Bible is true and from God is trying to awaken their curiosity about them so that they will find out about the nasty side and likely embrace it. To teach a child religion is child abuse. Would you teach your child that Hitler meant well even if they are not told exactly what he got up to? Of course not. Have some respect for your child. Do not let their Christian teachers and the parish priest pollute them.
 
To induct a baby or child into a religion by baptism by which religion claims the right to indoctrinate the child when she is in a vulnerable position is child abuse. The child could have a very different faith if it was a different religion. The purpose of the whole thing is to make the child narrow-minded with the result that the child will tend to be suspicious of or even hate members of different religions. A man believes that God wants children to be treated this way will naturally have problems seeing molesting children as wrong.
 
Most paedophiles think that they didn’t do wrong by sexually abusing children and blame society for the psychological damage that some victims experience. Any religion that abuses children is encouraging this.
 
What children need to learn is the basics of right and wrong and not nonsense that God saved them at their baptism and gives them his son in holy communion and that priests forgive sins. The nonsense that Catholic children are exposed to at 7 or eight years of age when they are taken for their first holy communion is disgraceful. Many children are disturbed at the teaching of the Church that the wafer is really a man's flesh and blood. They will take that very literally. They will think that God is tricking them so that they don't taste the meat and blood. The mystery has been used by some priests to argue, "Let me touch your body. It might feel wrong but it is actually right. Don't you see that you can't understand what I want to do to you just like you can't understand what happens at communion?" Children do not have our kinds of fears and so do not need a God to console them in relation to suffering and death. The reason the clergy wants to manipulate them to adopt the God belief is to intimidate them for children do fear magical beings that may come to scare them or punish them.
 
Christianity and Islam claim that their faiths save people from eternal punishment in Hell at death. If believing in these faiths helps avoid this, the worst imaginable disaster, then it follows that these faiths should be so reasonable and good that they should be able to withstand even the most thorough critical examination and the emphasis should be on the bad or scary side and not on the good side. This is logical. The most important thing is avoiding Hell so when bad leads to Hell people should be able to check the religions out for themselves and should not be encouraged to believe until they do it. But both religions care very little for evidence. The evidence is distorted and known only to some theologians and most theologians have open or hidden abhorrence for this distorting. For example, when the Bible seems to Christians to say there are three Gods, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and also says there is only one God the Christians solved the contradiction by saying there are three persons in God. So they only assume there is no contradiction and this assumption is what they stake their faith on not evidence. To do that in the face of possible damnation in Hell is downright evil! It would be impossible for a child never mind a mature adult not to hate people who are perceived as helping the Devil try to get people into Hell.
 
Also, children can spot things adults don’t. Jesus and Moses taught on divine authority, “Love your neighbour as yourself,” very obviously says that you must put the welfare of everybody around you on the same level as you do your own which means others come first for you are one person but they are many. You are expected to sacrifice yourself but not them so in practice it really means, “Let others walk all over you.” Children know that lies like that you can condemn the sin but not the sinner are lies for sin is a bad act that expresses the kind of person you are and so cannot be treated as separate from the person. To discipline your child for lying makes the child feel abused and feel that you are a bad hypocrite when you pump the lies of religion into her or him.
 
To tell children that God exists is to abuse them because since God is presented as the best thing and being possible the attraction and devotion to him should be like a drug addiction. That is what religion is for, creating a psychological addiction so that you are at the mercy of prophets, popes and Bible interpreters. All addictions are for making you lose emotional and rational control.
 
Religion is intrinsically violent. It seeks to compel people to believe and do certain things. Often this is done in a subtle way by conditioning the victim but this is still violence. To tell people that x, y, z is their duty or they must or have to do things or believe things like religion does is trying to force them if they are weak enough and people sense that which is why they do not take kindly to such maltreatment. It is trying to make them feel guilty and suffer if they choose to differ. Instead of guiding people to see right and wrong for themselves religion issues commands and duties. It is a terrible misdeed to expose children to religion.
 

Conclusion
 
It is time to get tough. Use your public representative and write to her or him. Make her or him see the dangers of religion for children and eventually the law of the land will preserve them from the pestilence of religion.