My friend Hemant Mehta – the Friendly Atheist ( http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/) – posted this video – about how to tell you are in an abusive relationship.
Interesting – having been in an abusive relationship – I literally didn’t catch on until the very end what he was getting at. I thought I was odd that Hement kept referring to the abuser as a “he” as both men and women can be abusive in relationships. But then I thought – how brilliant that Hemant is talking to women being abused by men. A woman can’t do this because we need to hear it from a nice guy – that yeah – our guy is in fact abusive and we should dump him.
So – the end shocked me. View the video here:
Now – let’s discuss. It’s interesting for me – because I was never indoctrinated. But I saw a presentation by Sarah Morehead – with Recovering from Religion (http://recoveringfromreligion.org/) Her presentation was all about how religions groom people to need them in the same way abusive people groom their victims to “need” them. It’s frightening really.
I don’t normally post about religion and I don’t normally post stuff I consider to be anti-religious – because – I am only anti-religious when religion is anti-human and most religion seems to me to be fairly benign. However, the indoctrination techniques, precisely because they are abusive – are abusive. And I think we all, non-believers and believers alike – should own up to that and perhaps – say – it’s not ok. If a religious belief can’t stand on it’s own and it has to abusively groom and indoctrinate it’s adherents – then perhaps we should stop calling them adherents and start calling them victims.
Interesting – having been in an abusive relationship – I literally didn’t catch on until the very end what he was getting at. I thought I was odd that Hement kept referring to the abuser as a “he” as both men and women can be abusive in relationships. But then I thought – how brilliant that Hemant is talking to women being abused by men. A woman can’t do this because we need to hear it from a nice guy – that yeah – our guy is in fact abusive and we should dump him.
So – the end shocked me. View the video here:
I don’t normally post about religion and I don’t normally post stuff I consider to be anti-religious – because – I am only anti-religious when religion is anti-human and most religion seems to me to be fairly benign. However, the indoctrination techniques, precisely because they are abusive – are abusive. And I think we all, non-believers and believers alike – should own up to that and perhaps – say – it’s not ok. If a religious belief can’t stand on it’s own and it has to abusively groom and indoctrinate it’s adherents – then perhaps we should stop calling them adherents and start calling them victims.
No comments:
Post a Comment