2 out of 3 ain't bad.

Doing #2 twice a day doesnt count as "2 out of 3"

Reminds me of the South Park episode when everyone arrives at hell to find out the Mormons were right.

thats a questionable assertion considering many (most?) of us started getting brainwashed before we can even remember things

Well if that is the case, we might as well be vehemently against any and every socially conditioned behavior.

The point is, I think, no one puts a gun to your head and forces you to go to church. And if they do, they are no different than the state that libertarians oppose.

i mean hopefully parents aren't threatening their kids with guns, but how many 5 year olds are allowed to stay home alone while the rest of the family is at church?

Well sure, but that certainly isn't such an institutionalized enforcement. I mean, that seems more like an individual basis kind of thing. One that libertarians (even religious ones) could be opposed to.


EDIT: Also, the correct number is 42 obv.

sure. i was just commenting on whether or not its actually a choice if you've been subtly indoctrinated since you were a child. i would certainly assume someone like bigdaddydvo is more capable of making these choices for himself than most, at least based on his posting. i have certainly wondered how many religious folk actually explored other religions and came to a rational decision vs. just going along with the rest of the family their whole lives.

Well, humans seem to love bandwagon jumping. It is like a favorite pastime of the species. No political movement/opinion/action will probably ever get rid of this.

Afterall, what is "religion" but the frozen thought of mankind out of which they build temples?

FWIW, here is my story writ quickly:

My mom is something of a reformed hippy and as a kid we cycled through several (Christian) churches. She additionally dabbled in NEw Age spirituality, i.e. the heady days of New Age Shirley MacClaine. She eventually settled on the Catholic Church and I was baptized into the Church at age 7 or 8. I was made to go to Church until my Confirmation (which I wasnt forced to do) and after that churchgoing was my choice. I drifted away from the Church throughout college until into my first Navy deployment. At that point I became more serious about the whole religion and Catholicism thing. In the interim I had done a lot of dabbling in Eastern religion/philosophy.

So Ive done a fair amount of exploring and studying.

Have you ever heard of a person who was an atheist despite growing up going to church?

OK then.

cf previous discussion of fatties and willpower.

Yeah, brainwashing your kids into being religious falls into the category of "things I wouldnt wish on my kids or my friends kids" but not in the category of "things we need to use guns to stop from happening."

thats totally irrelevant. those people would likely have become atheists no matter what IMO. im sure there are also atheists with atheist parents that would have believed in jesus had their folks been catholic. my entire point is that so many people just believe whatever they are taught from a young age without question, which IIRC is a large argument against state-sponsored education and the incentives they have to promote the state, amirite?

who said anything about stopping parents from taking their kids to church?

WAT

how can it not be relevant?

You're asking if "brainwashing" removes a choice but we find people leaving religions and even groups that mainstream americans would refer to as brainwashing cults all the time. The fact that most believe what their parents believe doesn't mean there's not a choice involved there.

open-minded people are going to be open-minded no matter what their background is, but most people go along with the crowd. as much as we refer to "sheeple" in this forum i really don't see the confusion.

Physicist A might not believe in gravity, but if Physicist B only does believe in gravit because he's been pro-gravity brainwashed his whole life, he's going to be equally useless when it comes to constructing rockets.

True but irrelevant.

so this thing you were getting all worked up about, it doesn't matter?

look on my face when this thread becomes RGT:

I look like that rest of that obv.

So my wife saw a women possibly get molested and followed on the bus today and demanded pepper spray. Got her this pink keychain thing. This whole situation makes me uncomfortable, but I trust her to use it properly.

I'm one of the rare religious ACers... I don't see it as being all that strange. Yes, I was indoctrinated (brainwashed if you prefer) into religion at an early age, just as I was indoctrinated with the belief in the virtue of the state. I'm still religious, I think, because I require more evidence to adopt a new belief (or drop an old one) than I do to maintain a current belief. So, while I fully admit that if I had not been exposed to religious indoctrination at an early age, I probably would not be convinced to convert to religion now, now that I have the religious belief I am going to require strong evidence for me to change that belief. I don't see how such evidence could realistically be discovered. On the other hand, once I started thinking seriously about government and political philosophy (and reading posts on this forum), it quickly became obvious to me that my belief in the virtue and necessity of the state was completely wrong, so I became an AC convert.

I should add that being religious doesn't really "hurt" me an any way. That is, my religion doesn't really forbid me from doing anything that I would want to do if I were an atheist, and I think believing in God is comforting and helps relieve some morality-related cognitive dissonance. So I view it as a net positive in my life.

Are you sure it isn't just that you don't like paying taxes?

Because that's what all this AC stuff seems like to me. I mean I don't like going to work or cleaning the washroom but it all has to be done, you know? Perhaps I'd find some solace in whining about it though, who knows.

my fiancee had one for a while after getting her purse stolen at the mall.

note: don't hover over the sink and spray it to see if it works. it sprays HARRRRRRRD and ofc it bounced around everywhere in my face. coughing/crying for minutes. i was surprised it didn't hurt, but it definitely made me incapable of doing anything other than trying to breathe/see.

Yeah, that's exactly it. You figured us out.