One small example of why so many of us are fed up with religion:

My son is on a Little League All-Star team. He was selected as one of two boys from his team to recite a Little League pledge. (He didn't know the content ahead of time). Now, I can see them pledging to uphold sportsmanship standards, etc., before a game. But -- what was he told to repeat? This:

"I trust in God
I love my country
And will respect its laws
I will play fair
And strive to win
But win or lose
I will always do my best."

Can someone tell me WTF a professing of belief in a god has to do with baseball? Why not just have them start with the "I will play fair" line?

Our family does NOT believe in a god. Why can't kids just play baseball and not have this crap shoved down their throats? Why are so many people so insecure that they feel the need to have other people parrot their beliefs in invisible dieties?

:grr:

Actually, I'd be classified as a devil worshipping pagan, but, that's beside the point.

dogma, though!

Three boys, all kinds of sports in all kinds of venues. Not one of them ever had to recite a pledge. What the hell is this?

Sheesh.

My kids never played on an actual Little League team, none were available. It was usually a local group that got together and created sports, or sports in school. Now it mostly goes through the Boys Girls Club here, although I think kids' softball is still separate and not Little League.

http://www.littleleague.org/Learn_More/About_Our_Organization/pledge.htm

about this being for fun and sport!

Waaay too many people (starting with the parents) take this shit waaay too serious.

it's sad, because i remember as a kid that sports were meant to be a way to build teamwork and stuff like that.... not what i see it today. i try to teach my kids that any game you play should not be about winning so much as it is about having fun and playing fair. if you win fairly, then you can really feel good about yourself. but the most important thing is having fun playing.... or why bother.

Is it a god that values sportsmanship?

You know ... The one that everyone says we couldn't have done it without. I just could never figure out what that god had against the other team.

...and they started off with not only the national anthem but a Christian prayer. That really has no place at a sporting event.

I'm a motorsport guy - Cheap ceremony has been a staple of carnivals, fairs, races and shows for centuries in America. The trick is doing it with the right touch, and ALWAYS being inclusive, not exclusive - that's where Little Leauge and the Boy Scouts fail.

Forcing a profession of faith is where I draw the line in my own mind. Rev. Buddy Earl's "invocation", asking for a safe day and a good thought - I got no problem, fits right in. Making the kids/players/drivers profess specific beleifs of religion, and shunning/excluding those of different beleif - that is the very definition of Un-American!

The first three lines look like a fundy add-on (the same way under God was patched into the Pledge of Allegiance). Your instincts are probably right on the money. The pledge did probably begin: "I will play fair..." Not much of a consolation I know, but Xtians killed non-believers for centuries for not knowing the words.

The stuff about fair play and sportsmanship, and maybe even following the rules of the game would be fine. But the kids aren't getting ready to go on a crusade. Leave the first three lines off.

would collapse.

Unless one grows up with magical beliefs, the odds of ever choosing to believe, once grown, are slim.

Edit to add: Welcome to DU, Blue For You.:hi:

wanna guess how many go to church today??? they may call themselves 'catholic' but i haven't seen a one of them in church since my brother got married. i don't know if that was a catholic church, though it was in church. I have five siblings btw.... while three of them married in a church, three of us did not... and none of us go to church currently. and i can assure that i will NEVER set foot in a catholic church except for a family wedding..... and i sure as hell won't participatet in the services, though i can bet that my body will still automatically want to respond as it was trained to do. I did, in april, participate in a thing at my dad's bedside before he died.... but that was for him and out of respect for him and his beliefs. i remember remarking at how all of us seemed to have trouble remembering the words to the 'our father'. and how dad seemed to get us to participate in church after all those years of trying to get us to go.

and he will be one of us at sixty.

Thats an old jesuit saying.
Advertisers call it branding.

all the other crap we have to go through all the time.

It's just wrong.

I forgive us for when we didn't know it was wrong. I can't tolerate people now who don't understand that it is wrong in this day and age when the country is so full of all cultures, religions, and other beliefs.

I think the ACLU should be called in on this one.

Whether to recite the Little League Pledge, play or sing the National Anthem, or say a prayer, is entirely up to the local league’s board of directors. While many local leagues and districts include a recitation of the Little League Pledge in ceremonies, it is not, and has never been, required to be recited by any person involved with Little League Baseball or Softball.

http://www.littleleague.org/Learn_More/About_Our_Organization/pledge.htm

That said, I don't think that "I trust in God" has any place in the Little League Pledge, and I happen to believe in God.

...And sent to President Eisenhower at the time. The same President Eisenhower who inserted "under God" into the national Pledge of Allegiance, his action often attributed to the United States' Cold War desire to confront the "Godless Commies" at every opportunity. So that's what the mindset was in certain quarters during the '50's.
I've always thought the Pledge of Allegiance was much better before they dragged God into it...and I feel the same way about this Little League thing.
My childen both played in Little League and never came across this pledge.

aren't that important. I wonder myself why god has to be brought into every damned thing. even if i did believe in it, I do not think it has any place in everything. Just like the pledge of allegiance... i refuse to say the under god part... and i feel uncomfortable with my daughter saying it as well. god and religion should be personal things and have no place in a public forum imo. I have always believed that a person's relationship with god should be a private thing and not something spouted out all over the place.

a.k.a. religion.

Where do you live? I can't imagine them trying that one here in the northeast...

communities set up their own sports leagues which are part of Little League. Any kid is allowed to play, girls & boys play on the same teams, AND the emphasis is on having fun (they don't keep track of the score - although I'm sure some parents do).

which is the precursor to the Little League World Series.

The teams are selected from local leagues (I don't know who picks the kids, but I assume it's the coaches) to play at the district level, typically broken into age groups 9-10 and 11-12. The winners of the district tournaments go on to regional, then state. State champions play for the titles of the national regions (which is why you see "West," etc. on, say, a California team's jerseys in the LLWS).

This is one of the many fucked-up things about Little League. Your kid could play on his league's champion team but find himself excluded from the tournament because he's not picked as an all-star.

The kids are selected for this post-season All-Star thing based on coaches picking a few from each of the regular season team. I'm not a sports person at all, but baseball is something my husband and son do and have really bonded over. If it were up to me there would be no score-keeping at all at these games! I'm so non-competitive.

track of the score, too. I guess you just build up your son's self-confidence and make him realize how baseball goes does not determine who he is. Anything that gets kids off the couch is good, even if not as perfect as one might wish!

I did sports but was pretty pathetic at it. But it was good exercise, and it taught me the value of working hard at something I would never excel at (but could improve at - so I was doing it for myself, not for the accolades).

to the overtly religious that is most infuriating. It's like being hit up side the head with the god stick without warning. It is rude.

I'm agnostic/atheist... but if it were my child, I'd let him/her say the stupid pledge.

It's not worth the ridicule he/she would receive for not saying it in my opinion.



I TOTALLY agree with you.. but times are changing and this shit won't happen in the future. As long as your son understands what's going on, I wouldn't worry about it.

before the start of the game (after they'd introduced the players) and say it. My son did say the words, because it was just a repeat-after-me kind of thing, but later he told me how ridiculous he thought it was. He was pretty pissed off.

Read it, it will restore your faith in logical thought.

So it was written in 1954 by people who cannot imagine that there are people who would object to the line 'I trust in God'.

It was originally written to replace the American Pledge of Allegiance. A way to include the rest of the world.

http://www.littleleague.org/Learn_More/About_Our_Organization/pledge.htm

I fixed it for you

Keep your religion to yourself. Don't shove it on other people.

I didn't say I'm suffering. But it does piss me off.

Such arrogance on the part of these local Little League people to try to get everyone to march in lockstep with their god agenda.

Or just that the religiosity was so over the top that the atheists that did exist stayed deeply in the closet and kept their mouths shut like good little heathens should?

And until you walk a mile in an atheists' shoes, shut the fuck up with the sarcastic "gosh, that's horrible the way you suffer because of religion." It's offensive to those of us who DO suffer because of the religious around us.

... I've heard this story before.

Once when I was a kid, another kid from the neighborhood was rounding up kids to attack this 'evil archer dude'. Some bigger kid carrying a bow and arrows had walked by earlier. When I asked what the archer had done I was told that he had given my friend a dirty look. I was astounded that he wanted to attack this kid because he didn't like the way he looked at him.

The complaint is over-wrought sometimes. It does not fit the seriousness of the incidence. So a bunch of religious people want to include god in little league baseball. Why is that so intolerable? Mainly because the person complaining HATES religion. If there was not hate in your heart, you could ignore such a small problem.

Perhaps that was difference in my atheist years. I thought religion was wrong and stupid, but I never hated it. So its pervasiveness never made me do more than roll my eyes.

I say over 8 because I am not exactly sure when I started or when I stopped. So I have already walked more than a mile and do not remember any suffering from that period. Well, except for toothaches, boredom and datelessness, but such is life.

Those were the good ole days after all. :eyes:

I keep forgetting how magical that time was in US history.

No mention of Jesus or even Yahweh.

What they call the "sexual revolution" of the 1960's was about a great deal more --

it was an attack on authority, patriarchy and its own invention ... organized

patriarchal religion. It was an attack on capitalism, our system of health care --

having babies at home -- moving to fresh foods and leaving canned foods behind --

and certainly a move toward peaceful solutions and ending our love of guns/weapons/wars/

MIC.

It was a huge threat to patriarchy and its organized one-male-god religion --

Eventually, the GOP gave start up funds to the Christian Coalition to get it started.

Patriarchy can't survive without a "god" which says that males are superior and what they

say goes.

as to what is important. I'd rather have kids learn to find strength from within themselves.

If they don't play well, do they perceive that as god ignoring them?

I learned that wathcing Major League.

was written in 1954. Just cut out the first part. I see no reason for your LL guy to state that he trusts in God or Santa Claus or anything else that would be a lie.

He sees you when your sleeping.
He knows when you're awake.
He knows if you've been bad or good.....

religious belief or non-belief, dontcha think? I mean -- what is the point of mixing that into kids' baseball?

Those supernatural deities who control luck, winning streaks, no-hitters and so on. (One of them has sole responsibility for toying cruelly with Mets fans). They are no relation to the old guy with the white beard who is in charge of the non-baseball stuff.

ALWAYS.

That makes just about ZERO sense (are there lots of little leaguers committing crimes on the playing fields these days? Stealing a base doesn't count ya know!

Seems to me someone just wanted "I trust in God", and decided that was too obvious an add-on to the other stuff...so they came up with this other lame stuff.

Oh, brother!

Oy vey. :eyes:

a bunch of Christians will promptly raise ten kinds of hell about how you're persecuting them for their faith and violating their freedom of religion!

Oh, the irony.

I trust in the Flying Spaghetti Monster,
May we all be touched by his noodly appendages...
and leave out the god carp?

Now pasta worship I understand. Ditto for cat worship and sun worship. All three definitely exist and clearly bring good things to life. :)

President Obama gave a shout out to us who had no special religion in his Inaugural Address.

What if a Little Leaguer is a Buddist, Muslim, or Wiccan, etc, etc, etc?

Hi Cha! :hi:

it~ :hi:Arugula Latte~