Baseball is just a game and television is just entertainment. When religious beliefs are widely understood to be “just beliefs” and therefore nothing to take too seriously, your statement will make sense.

O RLY? Do you know how much money is spent on cramming sports brands down the throats of a glaze-eyed and gullible public around the world? Do you know what happens to boys who don’t want to play catch with Daddy or play sports in school? It’s absolutely a sick cult based on desperate clinging to manhood rituals.

Do you know how many hours per day Americans spend watching television, being bombarded with messages about how ugly and poorly dressed they are and how happy they’d be if they would only just buy whatever is being pimped on screen? After sleeping and work (and not always that) people spend more time staring at the TV than anything else that they do in life. You don’t think that that incessant bombardment of commercially-oriented cultural propaganda has a bigger effect on people than the religion that they think about once a week?

Virtually every aspect of our lives is an inducement to conform to financial/sexual/ethnic/whatever stereotypes, of which religion is only one.

This is like the baseball comments earlier. Manufacturing a like of baseball in a child can still be perceived as harmless due to the severity of belief in religion and it’s effect on world politics. Therefore, maufacturing a religious belief is not something to be taken lightly – which I think is a main cause for outrage of this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRZdpZ1ju0s

Its best to watch the baby preacher first.

Most religious people that I know were born to religious parents.

You obviously have not met anyone who is “Born Again” (Christianity) or “Baal Teshuvim” (Judaism). There is 100% nothing that hammers home the brain washing aspects of religion than to watch someone go down either of these paths. Any other faiths have equivalents to this?

Oh this kid. Clearly learned behavior. And the fear I used to have of writing/typing God (instead of the more supposedly modest “G-d”) thankfully subsided in my 20s since I only went to Hebrew school a few years. And more of a Yiddish Hebrew school at that.

I pity this poor kid.

O RLY? Do you know how much money is spent on cramming sports brands down the throats of a glaze-eyed and gullible public around the world? Do you know what happens to boys who don’t want to play catch with Daddy or play sports in school? It’s absolutely a sick cult based on desperate clinging to manhood rituals.

Hear, hear! And not to say other countries don’t have issues with masculinity, but the U.S. has an odd way of assimilating immigrants based on this. Which also means bullying “others” because of this.

I like watching sports, but I’m not into blind team loyalty. I like the game and I like the players. And man, I cannot tell you how many times I have been given crap for saying something like “Ugggh, but that guy was good…” or “You know, we sucked. They were better…”

This is *way* less creepy and destructive than taking your kids to the mall or letting them watch TV, IMO.

Children are shaped by the environment their parents provide. I’d love to know what people think the alternative is.

FWIW, the existence of Atheists is proof that kids have a choice to reject their religion later in life. Chill out.

And I know this might seem amazing to people but there IS a middle ground between ZOMG CRAZY RELIGIOUS PARENTS and ZOMG RAGING ATHIESTS.

My parents are Roman Catholic. Its actually kind of situational these days, but it was a big thing when I was a kid. We had religion classes, we did all the RC things like Baptism, Communions and Confirmation.

However, despite all this, I am not Roman Catholic. Haven’t been since I was 13 and started questioning things and searching for something that had meaning to me. Now, I’m a pagan with an eclectic tradition studying Shiatsu, Reiki and and alternative medicine. One of my sisters is catholic, one is questioning.

Do people go over the top? Yes. On both sides. I have to say, some of the most obnoxious people I’ve ever met are Atheists. Surprisingly, most of the super religious people I’ve met have at least understood the nature of faith, even when its not their own.

Hell, I had a therapist who was a Messianic Jew who was more respectful about my beliefs than most atheists.

Anywho, the kid is adorable and dancing. I enjoyed it.

The good news is that the church is mostly deserted. This baby might the last parishioner.

Have you ever met a teenager? I don’t think any amount of indoctrination can circumvent the processes of growing into adulthood and making your own choices.

This makes these obsessions trivial in comparison to religious tribalism.

I think you miss the point. I can attest that my parents bought whatever baseball teams jacket they could find from local discount stores. Being immigrants and poor, warmth was more important than team loyalty. When they got me a Mets jacket back in the 1970s, I was beat up and harassed. My friends who didn’t? The retarded hispanic classmate, black classmate, and the very cute deaf girl… A group that similarly got crap all the time for doing nothing else but being different.

Oh yeah, this all happened to me in 1st and 2nd grade. Also known as when I was 6 and 7 years old.

What are the recording people, presumingly the parents or church people, about to do with this material, impress their fellow believers during some sunday tea hour how dedicatedly the kid is worshipping Gawd? Would anybody of the receivers suggest that something is going very very wrong here, and that the presence of the holy spirit(tm), anticipated, real or projected, is something that should at least be PG-rated? I think not. And I have been there.

Raise kids in these mindnumbing ecosystems of both lack of common sense and lack of wise religious reflection (no serious god could ever support such action), and they will gladly evolve as sectarian idiots that carry belt bombs, slit people because they are possesed, or shed venom on Focks news – or at least will remain hurt for their remains lives, never fully getting over it, yet in a “god-loving” way. I told you, I have been there.

Hallelujah!

lakata, I’ll say it (again): Adorable worshiper baby worships adorably. The horror is baffling; it’s how I would expect the right to respond to a picture of a child in an anti-war t-shirt. ZOMG NOT ONE OF US!

Religion can have a place in human affairs. A faith can save a psychology from devouring itself. And, for the “manly” types, softness does not have to equal weakness.

As for the baby in the video above, she doesn’t have the least clue what she’s doing, she’s just imitating the adults and while that look on her face may seem “old”, “robotic”, or “depressed” I guarantee you she’s just as happy as a toddler can be, because she’s playing a game. Not that I think her parents should try to force the faith on her, but in theory she’ll grow up and have just as much chance to question herself and her outlook on the world as any of you.