Posts by Matthew Young35

The school system carries an undeniable authority.
Through organized indoctrination, children are fed a steady diet of fairy tales and falsehoods.
It’s irrelevant whether the majority buys into these myths or not.
They are nothing more than fairy tales.

We are raising generations of narrow-minded religious zealots. You see sixteen-year-olds recoiling at homosexuality and lecturing others on the sanctity of marriage. For crying out loud—sixteen or seventeen-year-old kids are preaching about the sanctity of marriage!
Back in my day, kids that age were out making mistakes and hoping they didn't screw up too badly (usually they did), rather than acting as guardians of marital sanctity.

For twenty years now, we've been breeding generations of closed-minded fools.
There is more religious instruction in our schools than there is math or computer science.
But hey, since most people are Catholic, I guess it’s fine.

Maybe we can just pray our way back to an economic recovery.

shadowcrane91 said:Look, I never said the majority is always right. But it’s a fact that things usually go down the way the majority wants them to, even when that crowd is dead wrong...
Why not???

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Name me one single country where things work the way the minority dictates. Just one.

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One day, you might find yourself standing alone as the minority on an issue that actually matters to you. Honestly? I truly hope the majority dictates your path instead.
I really do wish that for you.

But I certainly don't wish it for your children, if you have any. For the sake of your kids, I hope you're always part of the majority.

shadowcrane91 said:And why is religious education being blamed for this now?
No matter what country you travel to, things are going to work the way the majority wants them to...

Or am I wrong?

I mean, maybe there's some random country out there where the majority actually thinks like you...
But damn... not here.

Who exactly are you to try and force me out of the country where I was born and raised—a place I love, despite being full of hypocrites like yourself?
If you're so unhappy, why don't you move? Take your "majority" with you.

Frankly, I couldn't care less about your personal views or your beliefs.
You exert pressure on atheists, yet when you do, couldn't you at least show a shred of intellectual integrity and admit it?
If that's how it is, go ahead: write Catholicism into the Constitution as the official state religion. Stop playing these games and trying to indirectly impose it on everyone else.

It’s honestly nauseating. It isn't even the Catholics that bother me; it's people like you who hide behind the crowd. Is it a psychological necessity? Some sort of inferiority complex? You seem to think everyone has to be just like you. Everyone has to believe in the same fairy tale.

shadowcrane91 said:Not really, but I also don't see a single damn good reason why we should scrap religious education in schools just to accommodate a minority...

If someone doesn't like it, they won't enroll their kid, and boom—problem solved.

The same goes for me; if I were living somewhere else where a different religion was dominant, I'd definitely be demanding they cater to us instead of forcing us to conform to them...
What a joke.

My ass is "solved" by not enrolling kids in religious classes.
In many, many cases, that is exactly when the trouble starts.
Where is the child supposed to go during those hours? Who is watching them?
The kid ends up isolated and stigmatized by their peers.

I am not asking you to conform to me. I couldn't care less what you believe. As far as I'm concerned, you can believe in fairies for all I care—it’s no different than believing in angels, Svetovid, Fury, or Shiva. Honestly, I don't give a damn.
That is, until it bleeds into official state institutions that are mandatory for everyone, including me and my child.
Ultimately, why should my child be legally required to attend a school where the Church has a hand in things? They don't have to take the religion class, sure, but the clergy are present in the teachers' lounge through those instructors; they participate in the very decision-making processes of the school.

In the end, it boils down to this: you are the majority, so you do whatever you want. And if you are the minority? Well, screw you—either adapt or get screwed one way or another.
I'm done with a state like that. We might as well just declare a Catholic version of ISIS and call it a day; everyone will be happy (except, of course, for those who don't believe in the nonsense written in the Bible).

shadowcrane91 said:Look, as someone who actually practices their faith and hangs out in religious circles, I have never—and I mean *never*—heard anyone talking trash about people... not from adults, not even from kids.
So, if there are people out there being hateful, they definitely aren't actual believers; they're just "believers" on paper.

Claiming that America is a Catholic nation and that minorities must bow down to the majority is nothing less than an insult to everyone who isn't Catholic.
It’s a direct slap in the face to me, as an atheist.

No. No, I don't want to "adapt" to you.
God doesn't exist, Jesus was never real, evolution is a fact, and humans and primates share common ancestors.

Get lost. I refuse to conform to your fairy tales just because you happen to be the majority on some arbitrary list.

I mean, seriously? Adam and Eve were the first humans and had sons named Cain and Abel. Then Cain kills Abel and wanders off to find a wife.
Who the hell did he marry???
I refuse to buy into such idiocy, no matter how large your majority might be.

That’s really all there is to it.
We live in a Catholic nation, and if you aren't Catholic, you simply have to adapt to the culture.
It isn't as if the Church isn't already making an effort to implement this.
I hope it's clear to you why geneticists like myself are so opposed to it.

I'm trying to picture an argument with this one:

Walter Grant5 said:How can you even have someone working in D.C. who doesn't understand the topic being debated? Everything is connected. One Rep's area of expertise is indirectly tied to another's. In my book, a Representative needs to be well-versed in all political domains.

Does a professor have to show up to a meeting if the topic has nothing to do with their field? Yeah. They do.

And it’s not really "punishment." They get their base salary, and if they work hard, they can pull in some extra through various ways. People don't even get overtime pay here, yet we have to force him to actually do his job. It's ridiculous.

Can they just show up and not vote?

They can.
But by showing up, the opposition would essentially be handing the majority exactly what they want on a silver platter. Is that really the goal?
In this specific instance, staying away from the polls isn't about being lazy. It’s a calculated move in a larger political battle within Congress.

Congress is a peculiar institution.
I understand the frustration of watching an empty chamber on TV, but what actual value would be added by having someone sitting there who hasn't the slightest clue about the topic at hand? Congress passes laws governing virtually everything; naturally, no single representative can be an expert on every subject.
When matters of genuine national importance hit the floor, the chamber isn't usually quite so vacant.

In any case, the recent trend of criticizing members for missing sessions or abstaining from votes is, frankly, nonsense.

Absence from Congress can simply be a tactical move in the opposition's parliamentary struggle.
The best recent example occurred when the opposition boycotted a session, leaving the ruling Republicans without a quorum to pass some piece of nonsense. It is a perfectly legal maneuver within our legislative system.

Would you really want the opposition to face financial penalties just for engaging in political maneuvering?

Who actually gives a damn about those big shots?
Would they even consider banning them?
And honestly, that’s just the state of things in America today—discrimination at every single turn.

mellowotter36 said:I want to throw a bit of a curveball into this discussion. About six months ago, everyone on this thread was laughing at the idea of terrorists tagging along with migrants—as if they’d all just fly in on commercial airlines. Meanwhile, those very same individuals were busy picking up burner phones at a T-Mobile store somewhere in the Midwest.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/paris-terror-links-phone-investigation/1071895

Regarding the link provided:

"French counter-terrorism investigators have requested that Samsung, Google, Apple, and telecom providers like Verizon and AT&T provide, based on MAC addresses, data regarding the mobile devices used by the terrorists in the apartment, including their identities and specific details from their online accounts."

The whole thing is utter nonsense.

crimsonstag12 said:It’s funny how this topic is just being buried under a blanket of media silence lately. The emotional vultures like Jerkov aren't circling anymore, and all that performative whining and manufactured outrage has vanished. Now, news only breaks when things hit the fan—like that mess in El Paso the other day. I remember seeing a report on BuzzFeed about migrants breaching the border, and it was barely online for an hour before they pulled it down. Clearly, Matthew realized that letting that story breathe would trigger the kind of comment section chaos he’s trying to avoid.

We’ve basically ended up with a situation straight out of China, where the powers that be just don't want the public debating certain topics...

Something is definitely brewing in the pressure cooker...

Everything Angela Merkel is doing is just handing fuel to those looking for a reason to get the USA out of the UN.

You argue, you write—who is there to stop you?

But if you think something is simmering in that pot, you aren't wrong. Fascism, racism, and religious intolerance. And they aren't even trying very hard to hide it.

Karen Richardson3 said:So, I actually found a list online that’s pretty much like what you’d see on Wikipedia:
http://www.vjeroznanci.com/content/v...lang,american/

The internet basically points out that religious education isn't even part of the curriculum in schools in France, Canada, Bulgaria, or Albania.
Could that be true for the Czech Republic and Estonia too?

It seems like France is its own unique case, while the rest falls into that group of former communist nations.
In most other places, public schools either teach religious culture or dedicated religious studies.

I just wanted to point out that using the US as an example of how shameful Church influence on the state can be doesn't really hold water when you look at the bigger picture. It feels like this pattern exists everywhere. Most people are believers, whether they stick to it because of deep-seated convictions or just because it's the tradition they grew up with.
Honestly, if we held a national referendum on having religious education in our schools, I bet a huge majority—probably over 80%—would vote YES.

The only real "battleground" here is demanding that the government provides actual childcare or supervision for the kids who aren't enrolled in those classes, because saying "well, religion class is just the first period, so they can show up later" isn't a practical solution for a little first-grader (I mean, I'm personally not going to drop my kid off at school at 7:40 AM just because of a schedule conflict).
Everything else is just shouting into the wind.

Of course. As long as the Catholic majority continues to operate from a position of sheer force, these arguments remain hollow. The Church will always fall back on the same old playbook: "We are the majority, so we get our way. If you actually care about your children's future, enroll them in religion classes."
That is how it looks from an atheist's perspective.

Michelle Nelson4 said:LOL, have you actually looked at any other subjects besides religion class? Every kid in school gets hit with a heavy dose of Catholic indoctrination regardless of whether they signed up for theology or not.
Personally, I think just reading the Republican Party platform during first grade is enough to realize we'll have more than plenty of time to discuss these topics later on, even if my child skips the religious lessons. I honestly believe this approach will lead to a much stronger foundation for my kid by the end of elementary school—they'll understand what faith preaches and why we don't necessarily subscribe to it, rather than just blindly accepting whatever was taught when they were little.😁

I think you're right, but that’s beside the point for now.

Karen Richardson3 said:I mean, come on—look at the crowd of people coming over from the online version of the New York Times, just like us here, arguing that in a secular country like America, there’s no place for religion classes tucked away inside the regular school day.
I just scrolled through the last three pages, and that’s basically the whole argument.

I felt like I had to chime in because this line of reasoning is honestly pretty shaky, and it leads to this weird conclusion that our country is somehow backward just because religious studies exist in schools at all.
I can't wrap my head around why people who actually study this stuff—people who should know how things work globally—are spreading this kind of propaganda. Honestly, I can't tell if they're being malicious or if they're just completely clueless.

The thing is, in plenty of other developed countries, religious education or religious culture is actually mandatory, though they do allow students to choose ethics as an alternative.

One thing that hasn't changed my mind, though, is the idea that the government (not the Church or individual believers) is the one to blame for failing to provide a place for kids who don't attend those religious classes.

Back in my last post a month ago, I mentioned that the state really ought to ensure every school has a library that stays open throughout the entire school day, giving kids a place to go while they wait. I’m especially thinking about the younger kids here.

I don't have an answer for why this isn't being fixed, or why we still have kids waiting around in hallways (which, if I recall correctly, is actually against school regulations).

Because the real solution isn't cutting religious education out entirely; it's demanding that the government handle the logistics for the kids who aren't enrolled in it.
Why didn't the previous administration tackle this issue?
It feels like the ruling class benefits from keeping the problem alive—one side gets to complain, while the other side doesn't actually have a problem to begin with.

Religious education and religious culture are absolutely not the same thing.
I would support a curriculum focused on studying the world's various faiths—even if there was a specific emphasis on Catholic traditions. However, I cannot get behind religious instruction itself.

I don't have any issue with teaching kids about various religions—call it religious studies or cultural history, whatever you want to label it. My problem isn't with the academic side; it's with the actual practice of religion and the attempt to indoctrinate children within the school system.
Who wants that? If people want to practice their faith, they can head to their churches, mosques, synagogues, or even those places where Satanists gather to do whatever it is they do.

Karen Richardson3 said:This whole article is incredibly biased and just flat-out dishonest.
It feels like it was engineered specifically to stir up an outrage mob, baiting people into clicking and venting in the comments just so Bloomberg could rake in the ad revenue.

Perhaps the piece is indeed "biased" or even false, but let’s look at the reality here. The fact remains that children who aren't being taught Catholic ideology in school are being discredited in a million different ways.

Sandra Johnson58 said:I mean, the guy's got a solid career behind him, so why jump into this mess? Who knows, really.

Lol
I mean... It looks great on a CV to have been the damn Prime Minister.
He'll collect his payout eventually, don't you worry about that.

Noah Ross7 said:Does his wife actually listen to little Ugljes?

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She’s just your typical wife—currently sitting in a jail cell because she forgot to pay for an item at Target.
As for little Ugljes, he took a beating and is currently behind bars. He decided to speak up during class. Still, I have a feeling they'll let him back out next year.