The thoughts of a 7 year-old kid:
"At the end of the service, the Pastor calls forward people who want healing, cos Jesus healed the sick when he was on Earth. But the same cripples go forward every week. And I asked my mom: "maybe this isn't working?" I got in big trouble for asking that."
Ok, maybe Peter isn't PC by calling handicaps "cripples". That can be forgiven since he's 7. And he has since then been updated on what not to say. He posed a fair question though.
This is the branch of Christianity Peter has to endure:
"The Pentecostal family of denominations form one branch of conservative Protestantism within Christianity. A major defining feature of Pentecostalism is their belief in Glossolalia -- the ability to speak "in tongues". Another is the unusual freedom and spontaneity exhibited during their religious services. Otherwise, their beliefs and practices are similar to those of other conservative Christians. They strongly oppose abortion access, equality for sexual minorities, and same-sex marriage." source:
religioustolerance.orgWhy do parents have a free ticket to abuse children's minds like this? Clearly, brainwashing isn't owned by this particular sect alone. Many religions are guilty of this.
Oh, and why we're on the topic of religion: The Catholic Church was in the headlines a few months back with child abuse cases. What's going on with that? I say high time to impeach the Pope. According to articles I've read in the New York Times and Spiegel International, the Pope, formerly known as Cardinal Ratzinger, had direct knowledge of abuse cases in the US, Ireland, Germany and Austria. It's time to pull back the curtains and reveal what lies underneath. Centuries of corruption, deceit, misogyny and lies need to be tackled head on.
And I don't care if I felt sorry for the Pope while I watched about 63 seconds of the Summer Mass........those kids, who were abused and muzzled with threats, deserve retribution. We are in the year 2010. This is like major future space age time. The Catholic Church is still in the 16th century when it ruled supreme. Lets get with it and blast this hoax into the 21st century.
Children need to be educated, not brainwashed. I'm not against family traditions and values, but listen, and listen good, if your kid still has the ability to ask a simple question without fear of being blasted.
Fear everyone's worst enemy. If a religion works with fear, then it's not a religion. It's propaganda.
UPDATE - 21 months ago
"I verily believe that the great good which has been effected in the world by Christianity has been largely counteracted by the pestilent doctrine on which all the Churches have insisted, that honest disbelief in their more or less astonishing creeds is a moral offense, indeed a sin of the deepest dye, deserving and involving the same future retribution as murder and robbery. If we could only see, in one view, the torrents of hypocrisy and cruelty, the lies, the slaughter, the violations of every obligation of humanity, which have flowed from this source along the course of the history of Christian nations, our worst imaginations of Hell would pale beside the vision."
Thomas Henry Huxley