Religion - That Old Chesnut

My ex comes from a fairly strict catholic background. Which effectively means that her family demonstrates to the entire world that they're great Christians and then, while nobody's looking, do the exact opposite of what you'd expect of people following Christian principles. Oh, sure, they give a good amount of money to the church, they even make sizable donations to various church-led charities, and their names appear on the various lists that the church puts out to show who's giving what. What great catholics they are; what great Christians. Of course, my ex mother-in-law can screw her husband's best friend behind his back but as long as she donates and goes to confession it'll wipe the slate clean.

To lay it out there, I do not believe in God. I also believe that organized religion is a terrible institution that is primarily geared to put the fear of hell (literally and metaphorically) into people to get them to do, en masse, exactly what the church wants them to. This had it's place thousands of years ago when the church was effectively the government and the ideas behind republics, democracies, and elected parliaments were just beginning to take shape. But not today.

Anyway, before I get off on too much of a tangent, I was reading a book. It's called "God is not Great" by Christopher Hitchens. It's a fabulous book and the girls saw me reading it. Naturally inquisitive, they asked me what is was all about. So, I told them.

My ex insists that the girls go to catholic religion classes once a week after school. She also sent them, without my knowledge, to a week long camp that was put on by the catholic church. Suffice to say, the brainwashing is fully operational.

My 8 year old is very smart. Both the girls are smart, but because the eldest is 2 years older she's at a point where she can apply more reason to what she hears. She asks some great questions and concludes that there is no such thing as God either. I warn her that this is just my opinion and the opinion of the writer of the book. What she needs to do is to always keep an open mind and inquire for herself. I must admit, when she said that she was going to go to her next religion class and tell the teacher that there was no God a shiver ran down my spine and could only imagine what would happen the day after that conversation took place.

The scary part of all this was my 6 year old. She said there absolutely was a God and he's in all of us. She said that she had proof because when she was at the camp she was afraid of jumping in the 5' end but the teacher told her God would help her float so if she believed then she would float. She jumped in, floated, and now believes that God did this. Another miracle.

Here's the deal - my 6 year old can swim about 5 feet before she runs out of steam and starts to go under. She's less than 4' tall. And now she thinks that God is a flotation device. How completely fucked up can these people get? I'll go along with the classes and offset what they say with my own input so they can make their own mind up but when it comes to telling them complete bullshit that could effectively put their lives at risk I have to draw a line.