called guardians of a child act in this manner? They should have been charged w/ child abandonment, but I'm sure w/ all of the drama going on, you were all shell shocked by how the parents acted towards their daughter.

child protective services, but she had an aunt who was willing to take her in, so we went that direction. That turned out to be the right move, in the end. The girl finished high school and became a beautician. After that, we lost touch with her.

I never did understand the mindset that could do that to a child. I never will.

I know lots of parents and children that are estranged from each other over religion. It usually takes the form of either homosexuality or what they view as promiscuous behavior and goes downhill from there.

Kinda sad when your imaginary friend means more to you than those you brought into the world.

That Christianity can be taken to that kind of extreme place casts a shadow on the whole thing, I believe. And denominations we consider to be more or less mainstream sometimes have extreme things in their histories. Martin Luther's vile antisemitism and the RCC's support for the Inquisition and murderous "Crusades" come to mind. And then, there were the Salem witch trials and the witch burnings in Europe. Add to those things the genocidal activities of Christianity against indigenous peoples all over this planet, and the toxic brew isn't all that tempered by later dilutions of reason.

In sum, I believe religion is a negative influence on society, generally. Here and there we can find churches doing good works and being supporting of social goods, but then we turn around and find a story like the one I just told. The church belonged to by the people in that story was a pentecostalist denomination that seems to me to have lost its humanity altogether. Their connection to the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount no longer exists. They have abandoned all that is decent in the Gospels and replaced it with all that is intolerant and evil.

Sexual abuse of children that gets covered up and ignored. That happens in all denominations, frankly. It's an endemic evil caused by false trust in leadership of churches. There is no denomination that does not have an abusive history, somewhere along the line.

A pox on it all, I say.

I'm sure there are those who credit their religion for their good deeds, but such people would probably be doing such things with or without religion. So it may be true that organized religion facilitates such things, but it's really a very inefficient way to do it given most of their resources are going to other things.

If one imagines a world without organized religion, people would still be forming benevolent secular organizations to help other people. You'd still have people donating and volunteering to those organizations. The difference would be you wouldn't be expending a lot of resources doing things that really have absolutely nothing with helping anyone.

So even if you disregard all the bad things that organized religion does, which is significant, you are still left with a poor substitute for doing anything truly meaningful.

Chocolate and peanut butter have nothing on those.

One is never quite sure...