I refuse to mock

[toddaa]

Unlike most godless heathens, I did not take much opportunity in the past few weeks to heap scorn and ridicule on the followers of Camping. I was raised in a Brethren family and end times belief traces its roots back to JN Darby, the founder of the modern day Brethren. If you want to know where the word "rapture" comes from, read Darby.

I lived most of my childhood and teenage years with the constant dread of the rapture leaving me behind in the back of my mind. When I was in junior high, while most kids were worried about acne and gawky awkwardness towards the opposite sex, I spent sleepless nights dreading that I would awaken to find my family gone. By my senior year in high school, I had given up trying to keep track of how many times I had prayed the sinner’s prayer and accepted the fact that I was never going to be one of God’s chosen. I was going to Hell. I put up a good front to all my friends and family, who thought I was born again, but I knew I was damned. I just did not believe that I was saved.

I left adolescence in a state of abeyance between belief and doubt, but the balance began to tip. Slowly at first, but accelerating over time. I was headed for a crisis of faith: the first Iraq war. All the prophecies that filled my head from a life time of apocalyptic indoctrination came to a final end watching Bernie Shaw on CNN dodge SCUD missiles under a desk. Babylon attacking Israel. Tribulation had begun.

And then, it was over. I was no longer a Christian. I still suffer from anxiety disorder and insomnia, but I no longer fear damnation. I guess you could call that progress.

Now, it may be fun to laugh at Camping and followers, calling them dupes, suckers, losers, or sheep, but you need to understand that a lifetime of indoctrination is what leads people to fall for this nonsense. Some of these people are going to go through some horrendous depression in the weeks to come. I wouldn’t be surprise if there are more than a few suicides as a result. But I don’t blame them. I don’t even blame Camping. They all suffer from a disease. A horribly debilitating disease that has tormented them from the first moment they began to reason.

I refuse to make fun of them, call them stupid, or call them suckers. That would be no different from laughing at someone with AIDS or cancer. These people, whether they give up their myths or not, are going through hell. A very real and very ugly hell. All will be scarred for life. Some worse than others. And most of them, whether you like a godless scumbag like myself saying it, had no choice in the matter.


Now, queue up the inevitable, "but they weren't real Christians."

[ZombieHorde]

1. You won't mock the religious, you will just compare religion to AIDS and cancer.

R/T has to be the funniest forum on DU.

[Boojatta]

7. The difference between an intense debate and a flame war ...

is that, in a flame war, people who are participating in the discussion, rather than merely their ideas, are targets of attack.

To hint that religious doctrine is comparable to AIDS or cancer is to attack ideas, not people.

[toddaa]

16. I was purposely ambiguous

But I guess that's not allowable on DU. Religious indoctrination is not the same as religious doctrine. One is voluntary, the other isn't. Knowing the difference is sometimes difficult, but not impossible.

[toddaa]

13. Indoctrination =/= Religion

I practice religion. One of these days I might go pro.

[notadmblnd]

2. Whatever....

:shrug:

[BlueJazz]

3. I understand ...but a part of me still dislikes them because of all the damage they do.

They Vote and that's the real Crime/Sin.

[Warpy]

4. Oh, I let them have it before the great letdown

in the vain hope that some of them would wake the hell up before they lost everything.

I'm not laughing at them today. Some of them have lost everything and kicking them while they are down is not something I want to do.

The ones I do resent are the main stream religious officials at all levels who have failed for decades to repudiate heresies like Darby's "rapture" out of a false sense of Christian solidarity.

Because reasonable and responsible people have failed to speak up for so long, a lot of desperate and unhappy people are getting suckered by Camping, Moon, and the rest of the sleazy religious far right.

[toddaa]

15. If I had a time machine

I'd go back to the source and relentlessly mock and ridicule Darby. Hate is too soft a word to describe how I feel about that fucker.

[Jim__]

5. It's always easy to recognize that someone else is deluded.

Much harder to recognize our own delusions.

[cleanhippie]

10. Says the guy who believes in the supernatural.

Deluded, indeed.

[Jim__]

11. I don't believe in the supernatural. - n/t

[cleanhippie]

17. Oh, no?

My mistake. I thought you were a religious follower. My apologies.

[Poll_Blind]

6. I have no problem with your personal narrative, but your last two paragraphs aren't a...

...convincing defense. And that's what it is, technically, a defense. An attempt to ameliorate some of the responsibility for their actions, specifically.

I'm not saying you're wrong, because I've heard similar attempts to re-frame the behavior from others who have come from situations which many of us would find repugnant. I, myself, have probably used such an ameliorative argument in regards to racism in the South, which I grew up in, was exposed to, and rejected even at a fairly early age. And if someone were saying to me (on that topic) what I'm saying to you (on this one) it would rankle me quite a bit. I'm being honest there.

But that little preamble aside, I reject the assertion that indoctrination can be factored in when we are talking about behavior which reaches a level of hysteria that is both metaphorically and tangibly dangerous. Or, if you follow Middle East politics, I don't begrudge that Jews and Non-Jews should be raised with deep suspicion or possible hatred of The Other but the moment that crosses from an ideological viewpoint into physical violence, I no-longer cut them any slack.

As you probably know, a woman slit her two daughters' throats and her own yesterday or the day before in order to avoid the pain the presumed Rapture would cause them. Is mental illness fully to account for this? Or a lifetime of Indoctrination?

Those are probably very gray areas without absolutes but I will not spare that woman (as an example, but not an exclusive one) any mercy in the eyes of my perception of Justice or in my heart's judgement. While I still recognize indoctrination as a factor, it is a faint footnote.

Now, when you say that you don't blame them and you don't blame Camping. even what I feel is my most-thoughtful and holistic response is to shake my head in disagreement. Parts of my upbringing were in a religious semi cult-like environment and I do understand how all-pervasive it is. But, again, to chalk this up to a "disease" of sorts crosses all lines that I can see reasonably supported by evidence.

Like any cult, and I classify this as a cult, attempting to explain away this level of behavior (and by adults, some of them leaders within their group(s) no less) lets them and anyone else in these types of cults off the hook far too easily. Again, show me (or anyone) real evidence as to why they should be cut these breaks and I and others will be willing to entertain the concept for the sake of discussion, at least.

But I cannot write off the behavior so easily and I (and I hope, the legal system) hold its practitioners (at whatever level in the organization they reside) to full account for their actions. And outside of the legal system, my ridicule.

The world is a giant footrace of competing ideas and I have no qualms tripping the practitioners of some especially odious ones, mocking them and drawing as big a crowd as I may to join in. Cross-burners, Religious Scammers, Saucer Cults- these are just some of the branches I have actively worked to, in my own tiny little unimportant way, saw off of the tree of human thought and, barring that, to convince others that those beliefs are as disgusting as I find them.

PB

[toddaa]

14. "Blame must be assessed"

I say this often at work. In IT, there's always something that goes wrong and it seems that they only way to get on with solving the problem is to first get over the hurdle of finding fault. On my whiteboard I have written, "What would Matthew Hopkins do?" Tacky hacker humor.

I am not suggesting that Camping not be held accountable, but to say that the man was in full faculty of his mind is questionable. His reaction to his failure suggests that he, like his followers, really believed he'd be face to face with Jesus right now. Indoctrination can lead to mental illness. Or it can exacerbate it. Mental illness, which is also treated as something to be laughed at and mocked, is just as disgusting to me as laughing at someone trapped in a lifetime of mental torment. I've stopped using the phrase "drink the koolaid" after reading the testimony of the survivors and family members of the Jim Jones Massacre. Having a family background in cults, I've grown to hate that phrase. If you've not experienced coercive indoctrination, you probably will never understand what's wrong with it.

The challenge is to break the chain of mental abuse, without impeding on people's freedom of thought. I wish knew how to do it for everyone. Meditation helps me, but it's note a panacea and it's certainly not something that can be forced on anyone.

[GeorgeGist]

8. As you know ...

there is a cure for religion.

[cleanhippie]

9. Your post bolsters my opinion that religious indoctirination is child abuse.

ANd it should be stopped.

[provis99]

12. a little something for the fundamentalists:

[ChadwickHenryWard]

18. This kind of indoctrination is enequivocably child abuse.

Instilling the fear of hell in a child is one of the worst things one can do. In the 1800s, there was a nervous disorder known as "neurasthenia" that was caused by belief in hell. Only people of a Calvinist or Puritan background got it, and it disappeared after the anti-Calvinist "New Thought" came about. The disorder was never properly studied because it was gone before the advent of modern medical science, but the best understanding we have is that living in constant mortal terror does serious damage to the nervous system, like in PTSD.

The believe in hell causes untold suffering.

[DirkGently]

19. The IDEA deserves mockery, because it's as destructive as you say. The hope would be to divorce it

from the people who give it power. The Rapture stuff is as pernicious as mythology gets. And it's only a boiled-down version of the overriding appeal to "Listen to us / do what we say / you'll be rewarded when you're dead" that colors so much of religion, particularly Christianity and radical Islam.

While we're laughing at another end-of-the-world-that-wasn't, maybe something will penetrate regarding the entire horrific worldview that depends on ignoring the world as it is (and praying for its destruction) and handing over your reasoning and ethics and money for a promise of a better life ... once your life actual is over.

If all the people who have been convinced that they're going to Heaven would consider the possibility that they're not, perhaps they'd be more interested in making their and our brief lives here on Earth better.

[PassingFair]

20. +1000

I'm glad for the most recent rapture, as it
allowed for conversations about the meaning,
uses and the future of religions.

It has allowed us, for instance, to look
at this indoctrination and ask questions
about the benefits of threatening children
with the torments of hell, etc.

My husband went through catholic schools
K-12....he related to me for the first time
this weekend (we've been married for 22 years)
that he was raised with threats of hell for
masturbation, etc. and that he still has nagging
guilt for simply being HUMAN.

I personally think we are mentally evolving
away from a need of religions.


Thanks, Mr. Camping! For creating the impetus for
discussion.

[Iggo]

21. I'll stop mocking them when they renounce their hateful ways. (n/t)

'Til then, HAHAHA at all them dupes, suckers, losers, and sheep.

They hate gay people that much? Fuck 'em.