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Rachael Slick, daughter of Matt Slick, the founder of Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, wrote a guest post on the Friendly Atheist blog.
I found it a fascinating account of a harrowing upbringing in an ultra-religious, fundamentalist Christian family.
From the piece:
Quote:
Obedience was paramount — if we did not respond immediately to being called, we were spanked ten to fifteen times with a strip of leather cut from the stuff they used to make shoe soles. Bad attitudes, lying, or slow obedience usually warranted the same — the slogan was “All the way, right away, and with a happy spirit.” We were extremely well-behaved children, and my dad would sometimes show us off to people he met in public by issuing commands that we automatically rushed to obey.
What struck me about this young woman, aside from her intelligence and courage, was the lack of rancor when discussing her father and her upbringing. She exhibits a rather curious detachment. At first reading, I considered it a very mature, forgiving stance but upon further thought, I wonder if she might be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
What's important though, is she left a terrible situation and is happy today. I would hope that all children trapped in such a situation fare as well.
Quote:
Freedom is my God now, and I love this one a thousand times more than I ever loved the last one.
Last edited by TroutDude; 12-06-2014 at 02:55 PM..
Reason: Added quote
Tacky, dude. Pretty tacky. How do you know she's telling the truth? But you are using this account (of which you have no way of verifying) to make statements regarding him and his parenting.
I'm sure NO kid has EVER made a false statement or alleged abuse that didn't actually happen regarding their parents, huh?
Tacky, dude. Pretty tacky. How do you know she's telling the truth? But you are using this account (of which you have no way of verifying) to make statements regarding him and his parenting.
I'm sure NO kid has EVER made a false statement or alleged abuse that didn't actually happen regarding their parents, huh?
If you have a problem with the source, Vizio, perhaps you should write to her. The article includes a link to her address.
Tacky, dude. Pretty tacky. How do you know she's telling the truth? But you are using this account (of which you have no way of verifying) to make statements regarding him and his parenting.
I'm sure NO kid has EVER made a false statement or alleged abuse that didn't actually happen regarding their parents, huh?
If you are trying to draw an analogy between her story and the typical atheist's refusal to accept christian testimony of miracles, you are doomed to fail.
Miracles, being extraordinary events, require extraordinary proof. Child abuse is, sadly, not particularly extraordinary. Although I am sure there have occasionally been false statement of abuse, I doubt that it happens often. Most reasonable people will not throw that false accusation out.
I find it reasonable to believe that a person was abused as a child. I do not find it reasonable to believe in undocumented medical miracles.
What struck me about this young woman, aside from her intelligence and courage, was the lack of rancor when discussing her father and her upbringing. She exhibits a rather curious detachment. At first reading, I considered it a very mature, forgiving stance but upon further thought, I wonder if she might be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Maybe, but she IS estranged from her father. She just strikes me as discrete; she sticks to the facts and does not mince words, but neither does she assassinate character. It's the right way to handle something like this. There's no telling how much private, personal pain is behind that story, and it's no one's business but hers anyway.
Of course. And Hitchen's brother is a dedicated believer - led to a predisposition for religion by a dislike of the Soviet system (whose dogma happened to be atheistic rather than theistic - though in N Korea it looks like the cult of Chairman has become a heavenly Emperor religion) and finally frightened into faith through hellthreat, the sad, sad, man.
That is why counting conversions either way is as pointless as the great Atrocity debate. Numbers do not prove correctness. Facts and reason prove correctness.
O 'Hair's son and Matt Slick's daughter (how delightful that the name Slick may now become quite respectable ) may meet in Fair debate, and if they both argue their case to the best that either can be argued, she will beat him hands down. That's the real and only point.
"I still remember sitting there in my dorm room bunk bed, staring at the cheap plywood desk, and feeling something horrible shift inside me, a vast chasm opening up beneath my identity, and I could only sit there and watch it fall away into darkness. The Bible is not infallible, logic whispered from the depths, and I had no defense against it. If it’s not infallible, you’ve been basing your life’s beliefs on the oral traditions of a Middle Eastern tribe. The Bible lied to you.
Everything I was, everything I knew, the structure of my reality, my society, and my sense of self suddenly crumbled away, and I was left naked.
I was no longer a Christian. That thought was a punch to the gut, a wave of nausea and terror. Who was I, now, when all this had gone away? What did I know? What did I have to cling to? Where was my comfort?
I didn’t know it, but I was free." (Rachel Slick).
The awful home life she had, she accepted. Loved it even. The best debating skeptic apologists did was more like a game. Her Faith was presumably a sure base to retreat to, even if the other side won (1). But it was her own doubts that did for it.
Someone like to post the reasons why O'Hair's son became Christian? I should love to know.
Rachael Slick, daughter of Matt Slick, the founder of Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry, wrote a guest post on the Friendly Atheist blog.
I found it a fascinating account of a harrowing upbringing in an ultra-religious, fundamentalist Christian family.
From the piece:
What struck me about this young woman, aside from her intelligence and courage, was the lack of rancor when discussing her father and her upbringing. She exhibits a rather curious detachment. At first reading, I considered it a very mature, forgiving stance but upon further thought, I wonder if she might be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
What's important though, is she left a terrible situation and is happy today. I would hope that all children trapped in such a situation fare as well.
Her father sounds like an abusive control-freak bully.
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) may meet in Fair debate, and if they both argue their case to the best that either can be argued, she will beat him hands down. That's the real and only point.
