The child abuse that is religion

[Manifestor_of_Light]

107. What about insisting on "breaking a child's will"??

There are books by Christians about how to deal with a strong-willed child, which consists of smacking them if they so much as crawl off a blanket to explore before they can walk. Making a child be obedient at all costs? Obedience because the parents insist that they are always right? You get the Nuremberg Defense which didn't work. "I was only following orders".

Telling a child, or any person, they are worthless sinners going to hell, just because of a story about a woman eating an apple in a mythical garden, tempted by a talking snake? That is emotionally and mentally abusive and can drive some people to suicide.
You'll never be perfect like Jesus, you'll always make mistakes, so why go on living if you're failing to live up to those impossible standards of perfection?

John Bradshaw, Ph.D. has several books about dealing with the inner inadequacy that most people have from their values instilled by their parents. People get addicted to certain behaviors and ideas because they have an emptiness in their soul and have never been loved "for being the very one you are". The parents don't say "I love you no matter what". The parents say, "I will only love you if you act a certain way. They eat too much, work too much, have too much sex, obsess on being religious, going to church and praying, and insist on looking perfect to the outside world when everyone inside the family is hurting terribly.

He expanded on the work of Alice Miller and Jean Piaget with BRADSHAW ON THE FAMILY, HEALING THE SHAME THAT BINDS YOU, and HOMECOMING:RECLAIMING AND CHAMPIONING YOUR INNER CHILD.

Alice Miller, who is German, came up with the idea that the "poisonous pedagogy" in which the parent is always right, and physical abuse of children is considered necessary to make children behave, is what turns out little Nazis in which the highest value is obedience. Not thinking "Is this right or wrong?" but "Mother and Father are always right and I must do what they say, or I will be beaten."

I recommend these books by John Bradshaw highly. When a person feels like they are inadequate and failures, these modes of thinking are often the reason. Putting original sin and substitutionary atonement on a kid is a heavy burden. It means that they will never feel like they are adequate or live up to the impossible standards their parents set for them. That's emotionally abusive to children and adults as well. Original sin and substitutionary atonement are the basic foundational beliefs or starting premises of Christianity. So Christians start out being told they are not good enough, that they are bad people and sinners. The emphasis on sin makes some people obsess over every single thing they do as a big deal moral decision. Everyone has to make moral decisions in their daily lives, not just Christians.

The idea of ideas spreading through millions of people, through mass media, for example, or societal teaching, and a very small percentage of those people will become terrorists, whether blowing up the Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Muslim suicide bombers, or killing abortion doctors to save babies, or killing liberals, as happened in a Unitarian church in Knoxville, is known as stochastic terrorism.