Let’s hope! Religion continues to support damaging and outright dangerous cognitive and behavioural disorders.

I completely agree that fundies are terrified of knowledge — whether it’s science or the expert conclusions of biblical scholars. I also agree that this rigid thinking is the result of childhood indoctrination. Why else would IDiots be fighting to insinuate creationism into science curricula?

I think that the motivation is not merely habit — it is highly emotional. It is also deliberately anti-factual, and, most important, illogical. They are trained into illogic and this fallacious thinking is reinforced by Bible quotes.

Successful religions have set up clever reward and punishment systems. Community is the most mundane, but is probably essential for many. An eternal afterlife with a loving SkyDaddy who punishes one’s enemies is an obvious incentive. The flip side is the prison door. They fear what they are instructed to fear.

However, based on long observation of how fundies think, I conclude that much of the emotional appeal lies in certainty and the assurance that rule-following renders one RIGHT and morally SUPERIOR. (Excuse the caps. They seemed appropriate.)

It always reminds me of prefects in a school playground. Not a highschool playground. Not a primary school playground in North America. No, a school playground for children up to age 11. That’s the moral level at which these authoritarianism-oriented folk function.

Ugh!

1st Chaplain’s do no aprove Religious or Non-Religious programs.

That is the Commanders. That is why the Chaplain’s program is called the CMRP (Commanders Master Religious Program).

If the Major was in command at that time he was well within the responsibilities of his command to cut the meeting.

2nd Not that he needs to be a DFGL but AR 165-1 Ch 5 section 5 requires a great deal more then that to be classified as a Faith Group Leader. 1st and formost they have to be recognized by a group as their proponet.

http://www.apd.army.mil/pdffiles/r165_1.pdf

I cannot speak to the supposed “forced” participation I don’t have enough info.

I was the child of a divorced mom who had only an 8th grade education (and I came late to realize that she is one of the wisest people I have known). For as far back as I can remember (age 3? 4?) she said I must get a college education. In that aspect, certainly, the Jesuits are correct.

From her, though, I have also learned that book larnin’ isn’t the whole answer (though it helps reading copiously can do the same job). Mom was no feminist; just a gentle, wise, and loving person who taught me the most just by being the kind of person she was.

We all cannot escape being products of our genetics, our environments, whether human or nature (odd to make a difference in that huh!), but even more… I believe we are products of something else which is uniquely ours… unique to each and every human since homo erectus and perhaps before…

At least to this day, in spite of breeding and inbreeding, science does not claim that any living thing is a natural clone of any other. OK… so, if we accept that each of us is instilled at conception with a quality that has not been precisely duplicated… we have to realize we do possess that hackneyed word: we are special.

And one other thing we have, and this is legendary in most cultures: we have free will IF we choose… and that choice in itself prooves that premise.

And so perhaps, like me, others reading this might recall the clusters of things that shaped us, what we are today. Or, are not.

St. Francis was a wise man, but, I hope without offending, I believe that those first seven years are indeed vital.. but they are only stepping stones. The real man or woman is what we choose to make of oneself across the divide to and through adulthood.

Most of us can’t help avoid skidding on one or two of the wet stones and go plop but we don’t just stay there; we can’t. Getting up is what we do, figuring which stone to avoid next time. We might make waves… let them be the best waves we can make because they are our waves. Let them do us proud.