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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (14260)	3/16/2011 9:11:07 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

LOL! You really wear your pain! “For ages the adage "Spare the rod and spoil the child" prevailed in the treatment of children. Tender tots were unmercifully beaten by cruel parents. The wide leather strap was an essential part of the household. If there were no family skeleton in the closet. you would be sure to find the child-beating strap there. "If we did not beat the child and put 'fear' into him, how else were we to make him 'good' and have 'respect for his elders'?" was the argument that triumphantly maintained this brutal system. In the days gone by, and I am not so sure that they have passed, the religious-minded could not conceive of any other method of correction. To spare the rod and spoil the child was a sacrilege and an unpardonable act in the sight of God. Part and parcel with this method went the fear implanted in the imagination of the child by the weird and frightful tales of the "bogey man" and the terrifying ghosts. This fear implanted in the mind of a child is just as poisonous as the venom of a snake. To-day psychology has corrected this brutal and barbarous method in connection with the training of children. Intelligence and its application were the solution, and no greater triumph has been achieved by science than has been accomplished in the realm of child training. And although there are many still tainted with the Biblical notion of physical punishment in the treatment of children, no truly civilized man or woman to-day would use such a heinous method. And yet in the New York Times for August 22, 1925, the Reverend R. M. Bradner, assistant minister, St. George's Church, New York City, made a plea to go back to this barbarous custom in the treatment of children. And just as the child does not need something to put fear into him as a corrective, neither do adults need the "fear of something" to keep them good. Fear, "fear of God" or any other fear, is a negative and destructive force no matter how it is applied. Courage is the watchword and intelligence the key to proper conduct. In the larger realm of human misconduct, punishment as a corrective to fit the crime is an altogether different principle from fear as a deterrent with the subsequent "forgiveness" after the act without the slightest understanding of wrongdoing or of rectification. The knowledge of the right and the mental strength to follow that right is the ultimate end and goal of education. To commit your crime, "to confess your sins and be absolved of the deed," may be a satisfactory religious doctrine, but it is inimical to justice and human welfare. I know a man who used to beat his child. The strap was used with much force and vigor without the slightest feeling of compunction. And when I told him he was committing a grave wrong in beating his child he looked at me in blank amazement. I had actually astounded him. He was stunned and speechless. He thought that the beating of his child was as right and as essential as the rising and the setting of the sun and as natural as that night should follow day. His father beat him and no doubt his father was beaten by his paternal ancestor and so it was established beyond the peradventure of a doubt that the corporal punishment of children was not only the only possible method, but was a parent's inalienable and unforfeitable right. I analyzed his case and told him to make a "pal" and confidant of his boy. I told him he could accomplish much more by kindness and with love in a spirit of understanding than by any other method. Although his face still wore that amazed and stunned look, he promised to try my suggestions; and now after a lapse of nearly three years he boasts of never having struck his child during that period and confesses he owes me a debt that he can never repay. And yet -- and this is the humorous part -- he still looks upon my "infidel" opinions as being something beyond the realm of understanding, despite the fact it was an "infidel" who brought the light of understanding to his "enlightened" Christian mind. History proves that it has invariably been the infidels who have been the humanitarians, the torchbearers, the pathfinders not only of progress but also of human understanding, of love and of sympathy. And if Progress is the aim of mankind, if Liberty is its goal, and Freedom its destiny, then the Bible as a sacred book must go, religion as superstition must cease, and the church as an institution must be abandoned. Are not the words of Professor Garrett P. Serviss, worth quoting here? "The only real road to settled peace is that of science; politics will never hit it, nor dogmatic religion either. Science is, in its very nature, universal. It interests all civilized nations alike. It has no favorites, and no preferred views. Its aim is absolutely single, viz, the uncovering of the truth. Knowledge is power -- not partial but complete power, which cannot make war upon itself. "Mankind has tried the other two roads to peace -- the road of political jealousy and the road of religious bigotry -- and found them both equally misleading. Perhaps it will now try the third, the road of scientific truth, the only road on which the passenger is not deceived -- like a skittish horse with blinders. Science does not, ostrich-like, bury its head amidst perils and difficulties. It tries to see everything exactly as everything is." Abundant evidence and prison statistics are available to prove the prevalence of the moral and ethical misdeeds of the religious elect. Reference to them is constantly found in the daily papers. “ Joseph Lewis