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The Troubled Teen Industry / Re: Choice
« on: November 13, 2006, 11:28:15 PM »Quote from: ""Guest""
Quote from: ""psy""I must also epphasize the element of choice in this. Christians believe one must ask Jesus to "come into their lives". Nobody is ever forced to do it and people are not ostracized if they choose not to. Yes it means your Christians friends will bug you about it from time to time but it is hardly program style coersion.
The emotional attack of "you'll go to hell if you do not" is still present...
IMHO the biggest reason people turn to religion is the overriding terror of annihilation that believers have. Well, that and hell for the mental midgets, but whatever.
Well duh. When i was four this was tried on me and it worked. By the time i was 10 i had realized it was bullshit. Not everybody buys that "hell" crap. I didn't for a simple reason, the logic does not add up:
A: Bible Says God is Just (gravity of crime = gravity of punishment)
B: Hell is eternal and thus infinite punishment.
There is no infinite crime (common friggin sense). so if A is true, B cannot be. (unless the inverse is true, god is not just, and thus we should kill him) But of course i'm questioning "god's wisdom" if i argue this to Christians.
There are a lot of people who will sit through these things and think what's being said is horse shit. Sure the existance of hell is a scary thing for kids, but not all of them believe what they are told. I just thought they were a bit wacky. For this reason, I thought whatever brainwashing my school, Benchmark Young Adult School, could throw at me, would magically bounce off. Wrong. Religion maybe be 10% proof kool-aid but Lifespring / Propheets / Raps, and the rest of the programs tools, will break even the most hardened.
Sleep deprivation, hunger, guided imagery, NLP, trances to remember / re-experience traumatic events, disclosure circles, pile-ups, Raps, dirt lists... These things are the tools of true brainwashing.
Even if religion was brainwashing, there are no practical ways to outlaw it and doing so, i feel, would be crossing the line. People have a right to their beliefs, and i don't think it's right to sit back and say "this is how they are and it's wrong". Everybody's religion / culture / whatever always has odd aspects when looked at from an outsider's POV. It is rather pointless to discuss whether or not something is "brainwashing" when stopping/banning it would be an infinately worse violation of ethics.
I have experienced both these "jesus camps" and a CEDU clone program and i tell you there is no comparison possable. Programs attempt to permanantly alter your thinking, your thought process, your loyalties, and your very image of yourself, not merely your beliefs.