I need your ideas on how to protect kids from a former spouse that has gone into a new fundie religion.  NOTE:  This is not my family, all is well – yeah!

Names and other information are changed to protect the innocent.  I will use gender neutral names because it’s not about sex.

I have a friend; let’s call him or her “Pat”.  Pat used to be married to Sam.  They got divorced a couple of years ago and spend almost equal time with the two kids – Riley (8) and Payton (12).  Everything was going well, until Sam joined a new church.  It’s one of those hard core fundie churches.  They read their version of the bible literally and tell you what you have to do all of the time.  Sam is now spending a lot of time trying to get the kids to join in the madness.

Pat does not want the kids to thinks the same way Sam does and is not sure how to stop it.

Here are the suggestions that I have made.  Please let me know if you have any ideas to add.

1) Don’t say that Sam is stupid of batshit crazy.  This may encourage to kids to pick a side.  If you are the one calling names – it may not be your side.

2) DO NOT under estimate the power of the fundie church program to suck the kids into the madness.  You must take action and help the kids.

3) Expose the kids to other religions.  Take them to different churches when you have them on Sunday.  I suggested UU, Jewish, Islam, Methodist, Catholic etc…

4) Introduce the kids to optical illusion.  Classic stuff as well as videos by Richard Wiseman.

5) Buy some magic tricks.  Teach them that things are not always what they appear to be.

6) Listen to Letting Go of gOd by Julia Sweeney.

7) Watch Religulous (maybe too much for young viewers?)

8 ) Rent any movies you can find about Greek and Roman mythology.

9) Encourage the kids to ask questions – lots of questions.

10) Teach them about science and the scientific method.  Watch shows like “Evolution” and “The Universe”.   Make sure they know how the world really works before Sam explains it fundie style.

Do you have any other ideas?

Can’t they be both?  Stupid and Evil!

Part 1  (NSFW)

Part 2

Good News from my friend in Arkansas. (tip to Darrel)

The Arkansas Society of Freethinkers and Secretary of State Charlie Daniels today filed a proposed settlement of the society’s lawsuit over the state’s initial refusal to allow it to erect a winter solstice display along with the Christmas decorations at the Capitol. A judge earlier had ordered that the display be allowed during the holiday season.

In the settlement, the state agrees to a constitutional violation, says it will provide equal access to the Freethinkers in the future and says it will pay more than $25,000 in attorney fees to the ACLU cooperating attorneys who brought the case.

Here’s the proposed consent decree PDF, which a judge must approve.

I still can’t get over the fact that the guy’s name is Charlie Daniels.  Here are some details from last year.  Here is a photo of the display

Canadian Pastor John Van Sloten finds gOd in Metallica.  He noticed that his congregation was shrinking and there were few young people.  So he started talking about pop culture.  He then went see Metallica live and he was hooked.

When Metallica played their rock ballad “Nothing Else Matters,” Van Sloten noticed that the venue seemed suddenly church-like, and he knew he had to preach about Metallica.

Was it just a moving experience that was shared by the entire community or was it gOd speaking to him?  I guess he was so moved that he wrote a book about it.

Unlike some of those books, “The Day Metallica Came to Church” gets motivation from pop culture, and the author says some are not so comfortable with that.

Well, at least we can see Metallica!  Van Sloten seems to think he can here gOd through Metallica.

Despite Van Sloten’s idea of God speaking through everything, contradictions seem to arise, considering several of Metallica’s members (and other subjects of his preaching) are non-Christian or non-religious altogether

Hmmm…. Maybe gOd is telling Van Sloten to become an atheist!