As an aside, I was homeschooled in high school. I think homeschooling is good if the district one is in is crap (like mine). However, I guess I assumed one ought to be intelligent to homeschool their children. You obviously don’t share this view.

I would otherwise agree with you, if it weren’t for the whole superiority complex thing.

The thing that’s wrong with this analogy is that non-Christians don’t have just one or two bad experiences with Christians, and certainly not on purpose. Non-Christians don’t tend to just waltz into the restaurant. Christians seem to make it their job to seek out those who don’t care for their low-quality food and tell them how badly they’re eating.

(Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.

(Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NLT)

If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.

(Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB)

“When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house. But before she may live there, she must shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive’s garb. After she has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife. However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion.”

(Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment.

Genesis 19 (NLT)

1 That evening the two angels came to the entrance of the city of Sodom. Lot was sitting there, and when he saw them, he stood up to meet them. Then he welcomed them and bowed with his face to the ground. 2 “My lords,” he said, “come to my home to wash your feet, and be my guests for the night. You may then get up early in the morning and be on your way again.”

“Oh no,” they replied. “We’ll just spend the night out here in the city square.”

3 But Lot insisted, so at last they went home with him. Lot prepared a feast for them, complete with fresh bread made without yeast, and they ate. 4 But before they retired for the night, all the men of Sodom, young and old, came from all over the city and surrounded the house. 5 They shouted to Lot, “Where are the men who came to spend the night with you? Bring them out to us so we can have sex with them!”

6 So Lot stepped outside to talk to them, shutting the door behind him. 7 “Please, my brothers,” he begged, “don’t do such a wicked thing. 8 Look, I have two virgin daughters. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do with them as you wish. But please, leave these men alone, for they are my guests and are under my protection.”

“The Bible doesn’t make much sense…I don’t understand hardly any of it! I’ve recently been realizing that not everything in the Bible is historically accurate, and that is a real shock to me. I’m still dealing with that. All I really know is that God IS real.”

Unfortunately, your sense of identity and perception is obviously deeply rooted in your chosen religion. Your above statement appears unwilling to explore the logical conclusion of the ‘evidence’ you seem to have found against your belief, despite believing the foundation of your religion to be in at least some part untrue.

I guess the essence of identifying yourself with any religion lies with the neccessary agreeance with its fundamental proof (ie the bible). The bible claims to be the word of god – written by man, but inspired and guided by the hand of god and thus making all of its versions and translations 100% accurate.

(2 Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”)

If there is a single claim in the book that turns out to be untrue, does this not mean that there are possibly more? I mean come on. It claims that god created the universe, all of life and that he has a grand master plan for all of the billions of people alive (and the countless billions that came and will come), is able to create unimaginably complex systems (food chains, cellular mechanics etc) BUT he makes mistakes in THE evidence that is supposed to convince people that this is all true? I would expect better from such a ‘perfect’ being.

The reality is that you are likely (thats likely, not certain) to hold the same religious ideas as those in your immediate vicinity ie. your family, neighbours, school friends etc. At what point did you ‘choose’ to become a christian? Was it after you read the various texts offered by the various religions of the world and came to the conclusion that this particular choice MUST be correct? Or was it more of a case that everyone around you believed it and told you it was true so you just naturally assumed it to be true – a view that was continually reinforced from a very early age (where your ability to criticaly and objectively analise claims is virtually non existent.)

Do you think a child born and raised in afghanistan by devout muslims, living in a society where islam is accepted to be the ‘infallable word of god (or allah)’ is likely to be a muslim? Do you think this child ‘chose’ to be a muslim, or is merely upholding the ideas that they were told were true.

What are the chances that in such circumstances, they would identify themselves as being a christian. Or a Buddhist? Or a Hindu? Or a Mormon? Or a scientologist? Or a Jew? I would argue that as they were bought up in an environment where it was assumed and accepted that a particular viewpoint is true (not restricted to religious views), there is an almost zero probability that that person would believe otherwise.

This is primarily becuase their whole sense of identity, their perception of reality is framed within the boundaries of their core beliefs. Belief in ideas (particularly religios) become so ingrained that it is almost impossible to shake – even when presented with overwhelming proof that the claims made by the text their religion is based on are untrue. So ingrained infact that they recognise the new evidence – as it is sitting right infront of them – AND the old ‘truth’ as both being true even though they are mutually exclusive.

Do you find it at all interesting that there are multiple religions that claim to be the ‘one true god’? Lets say that one of them is categoricaly undeniably true. That means _by definition_ all of the other ones are wrong. Believing what you do, can you imagine the impact it would have on your sense of identity, your very perception of the world around you if it were unqestionably proven to you that your religion was false? This is why a persons religious beliefs are so hard to shake. It is not easy to wake up one day and discover that everything you KNEW was true was completely false.

Lets take judaism, christianity and islam as a small selection of the plethora of monotheistic religions and their variants out there. Lets say, judaism is unquestinably proven overnight to be the one true religion and all others false. Can you imagine the massive reveberations that would ripple across the world if two thirds of the poplulation of this planet discovered that THE thing they believe as unquestinably true, was not?

I encourage you to let your curiosity take you where it wants to go, to allow your mind to question things that dont seem to make sense. To not fear finding out that your basic assumptions about existance could be wrong. To use the only things that you can KNOW are true (your 5 senses, although they can be tricked a little) and explore the world around.

The world is a far more interesting and magical place when you realise that everyone else is a person – just like you – with real thoughts and real feelings and not just a member of some book club that requires them to wear funny hats.

Opinions are not fact. Ask questions, demand answers!

Thank you, for spelling it out so clearly. The ridiculousness of it all is a bit overwhelming so I find it sad that so many families are living through the depression and sadness caused by these beliefs.