Evangelical Indoctrination of Children

It's nothing more than Authoritarian ethics at work, where "God" acts as the authority. Moral values are literally subject to the whims of the Authority; performing action A may be considered ethically wrong today, but tomorrow the exact same act under the exact same circumstances can be considered ethically wrong if the Authority says so.Moral value systems do tend to come from one's parents. If a child is specifically instructed during the formative years that "God's will" is good and anything against that is bad, then it should be expected that rape, murder, theft, lying, torture, and anything else would be considered good if it's done in accordance with God's perceived wishes, or to further what is perceived as God's plan.Authoritarianism literally requires that the moral judgments of everyone other than the Authority are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you or I think something is good or bad; if it's against God, it's bad, even if it saved a thousand lives.Personally I find it to be a reprehensible system of ethics (and it seems you agree), but that's the system set down in the Bible. It's difficult to overcome tradition that strong.

News flash:Christians are not a homogenous group. There are Christians who do behave this way. I've personally met several.It's impossible to represent all Christians, simply becasue they believe in so many different things. Some don't beleive in Hell at all; others believe in salvation by works even for unbelievers, while others believe in salvation by grace for only believers.Have you ever heard of Hell House?They're a fundamentalist Christian group that hosts a haunted house on Halloween that specifically targets young people in an attempt to scare them for Jesus. They literally put on ridiculous little plays about the consequences of sin and tell all of the kids (mostly adolescents and teens) that they're going to Hell unless they accept Jesus.I'm very glad yo hear that you, ochave, are not one of the fire-and-brimstone, scare-em-to-Jesus Christians. But it's ignorant to the point of stupidity to insist that these reports are somehow atheists masquerading as Christians. There is no evil atheist conspiracy to make Christians look bad; we aren't the tools of the Devil, we aren't attempting to subvert you or tempt you from the One True Path, and we aren't coming for your children. We simply don't believe what you believe, and some of us think that your beliefs are a bit ridiculous, even harmful in some cases. We certainly aren't engaging in some mass conspiracy to defame Christians.The bad Christians do more than enough of that all on their own. All we ever do it point them out.

You, sir/madam, are a sociopathic nutjob.That "trash" is a group of human beings.

You continue to reaffirm my previous estimation of your character.No, ochave. Most human beings are not trash. They're people. They have hopes, dreams, opinions, feelings, philosophies, flaws, and merits just like you an I do. Nobody's perfect, but very few deserve to be referred to as "trash."

...I don't believe we can find common ground on this, ochave. Your system of ethics is too different from mine. I value all human life, and devalue only those lives that cause catastrophic harm to the rest of us.You seem to place a very low value on the majority of people. Value assessments (ie, person A is not trash, person B is trash, etc) are by their very nature subjective. There's nothing objective about the process.All value of human life is arbitrary - we decide what we do and do not value. We decide what system of ethics to follow based on the convictions of our own consciences.I am primarily a Utilitarian, and I view ethical distinctions in terms of net harm or benefit to society. I would consider only those individuals that cause overwhelming harm to society (Hitler, etc) to be "trash." Most people seem to cause no more or less harm or benefit than anyone else, including me. This causes me to value all human life equally...and in teh vast majority of cases I can no more call one person "trash" than I can call myself a "saint."This ethical system appeals to my basic sense of fairness and empathy. It causes me to treat others in a way that I would prefer to be treated were our roles reversed. It causes me to be tolerant if not always accepting of other people's views and choices (ie, I may express disagreement or even revulsion at another person's beliefs, but I don't advocate banning opinions or religions simply because I strongly disagree with them).I'm not sure what ethical system you use...but any structure that identifies most human beings as "trash" is repulsive to me, and that's all you've given me so far.

Quite to the contrary - you've been presented with several examples, including video evidence of Christians using scare tactics to gain converts or reinforce the convictions of the faithful.You've simply chosen to ignore those examples, and instead focused on one-line responses and repeating yourself ad nauseum. Your debate tactics remind me of Pee-Wee Herman: "I know you are but what am I" and "lalalalala, I can't hear you!" spring immediately to mind, with a healthy dose of broken record mixed in.