Guess what. A recent study reveals that most kids age eight to twelve years old aren't exactly buying into the whole biblical worldview thing, and only three percent of them embrace all these seven cornerstones of a biblical worldview. These cornerstones include beliefs in God, sin, and trusting the Bible. Only about a third acknowledge their sins and seek forgiveness, and just over a quarter do what they believe God wants to. The study also suggests that kids beliefs are influenced by
adults, and most adults aren't exactly devout believers. So it seems like the younger generation is forging their own path when it comes to faith. Let's see where their journey takes them. This article is from The Christian Post by Ryan Foley on October twenty third, twenty twenty three. And you know, this reminds me a lot of kind of my journey. You know, when I started off in my youth just believing what I was told, and then grew up, got older, was less devout, and I think I just kind
of adopted more worldviews that were kind of all thrown together. But before we get into really what I feel I want to see how this article struck the one and only Kelly Laughlin. Kelly, what do you think? Wow, I didn't know you're going to throw it right to me. I one of the things that I that's my bad, Kelly, because I meant to throw out to Cydney and I skipped throw it to her. Oh yeah, okay, I've found it interesting. No, go ahead, you go, you
go okay? No, no, please please you Yeah. One of the most striking quotes from this article was thirty five percent of the lessense thing that sin is real and significant. We are all sinners by choice. And this, to me is the most harmful aspect of this religion because not only it is totally illogical contradictory because you cannot be responsible for something you are born with.
That just doesn't make any sense, but it removes any self worth to individuals, and at the same time, it steals victim blaming too the into the equation, and that's something that's extremely harmful to a society at large and
to individuals also, and it's very very damaging on the psychological level. It also hits home because I have a person who is close to me who is being harmed by their parents because of their religious beliefs, and those religious beliefs they prevent the parents from seeking any hell because they believe that well, because
they believe they can't be harming their child. You know, if I'm guided by the law, then I cannot do anything wrong, basically, And so with everything that's going on right now in the world, every time we speak, especially in the ACA, every time we speak about religion, we often speak about the me in death that it causes. But I think we need to speak more, much more about the hundreds of millions in history who were
miserable, sometimes for their entire life, because of the religion's dogmas. I think that's something we need to emphasis because sometimes death is not the worst thing that can happen to you, a lifetime of misery because of because of a belief, Sometimes it can be worse. And that's why we need to fight those beliefs and those indocrination techniques that we see talked about in this article. And yeah, I think that's why I'm here, especially myself, and I
guess that it's the same for you guys. Kelly. You know, one of the things I found finding about the article was that the same organization have published these seven Cornerstones of a Biblical worldview. The Cultural Resource Center at Arizona Christian University is also the same organization that as young people aren't abiding by them. You know, first they're like, hey, everybody follow these rules, And in a few months later they're like, hey, this is bullshit.
Nobody's following these rules. We want them all to follow. And I just thought that was just kind of funny that. And I had never heard of the seven Cornerstones before in my life, so I had to go look them up, and to be honest, I wouldn't abide by them either. You know, quick rundown orthodox biblical understanding of God. All human beings are sinful by nature. Knowing Jesus Christ is the only means of salvation. The entire Bible is true, reliable, and relevant, and is a moral guide.
Absolute moral truth exists, and that truth is defined by God. The ultimate purpose of human life is to no love and serve God. Success on earth is being understood, is consistent obedience to God. There you go, all seven of them. Every Sunday on the Collins Shows we hear Christians calling in trying to make one of these points and just being ridiculed by the hosts. I don't know why this organization and doctor Barne I would have the idea that
rational people would listen to these things and abide by them. And let's face, the kids are getting educated a lot faster and a lot more intricately, is now, that's not the word of They're getting a lot more education, a lot faster than they did when I was a young, young lad. And a lot of these people, I'm sure Barne is my age, you know, a lot of these older guys are like, hey, how come these kids don't buy into this bullshit anymore? And yeah, I can see
why, Aaron. The internet Internet's been a great thing for learning things that you weren't necessarily taught by your parents and sometimes your school. Depending where you live, the internet can be a bad thing. You can go out there and learn about things that are patently not true, you know, flat earth and things like that. But you can also come to YouTube and find videos about the history of the Bible and how and why it was compiled and put
together. You can find, you know, all sorts of fun stuff about challenging your dogmatic beliefs that you've been you've been taught, and you know, I like these numbers aren't as low as I'd like them to be, but they're low enough that I kind of like them. The one number that was concerning me, with sixty nine percent of people believe still believe in God, I wish I wish that was a little bit lower, because there's just there's just I learned, you know, a few years ago and I started watching
ACA shows. There's just no evidence. There's no good reason to believe that God exists. And which God are you going to believe? The God of the Bible or the one of the other hundreds of thousands, of hundreds or thousands of gods that people have proposed. I'm encouraged because historically the truth seems
to win out over long periods of time, over lifetimes. And you know, if you look at something like homosexuality, you know, fifty years ago it was considered a mental illness you had to be cured from it, and now it's understood that's just how you are, that's just how we come into the world as human beings. And they're even Christian secx that have pastors and
priests that are gay. That's a lot, that's a big change in fifty years, and same sex marriage is now legal in the United States by law, by law passed by our Congress amazingly, but not by a Supreme Court
decree. And yeah, I'm just I'm so these numbers are the trend is encouraging to me, Jimmy, Well, what we see in this article really shouldn't be a surprise to any of us, because we all know that children are likely to reflect their parents' viewpoints, and they're often shielded from what the Bible actually teaches anyway, So I don't believe that children, many children would think on their own that it's okay to own other human beings or that women
should marry their rapists. Right, So that those might be complex concepts for a lot of youth, But I think without outside influence, those kinds of things really wouldn't resonate with a normal person. And I use normal loosely. But reacting to the research in this article, doctor George Barna, a veteran evangelical poster, insisted that we know what practices are most effective at developing young disciples. Yeah, exactly, to the points that have already been made.
You know, children are being educated quicker and to better quality. And so the thing that it would take, or what it would take to develop young disciples, is for parents to step in and thwart that education and really hamper the potential that their children can have. And Barna continues, any parent can be part of the solution if they so desire. It starts with the commitment to raising a spiritual champion, whatever that means, which requires a solid plan
that the adult consistently implements. The plan calls for a steady diet of teaching, discussing and modeling biblical principles, and evaluating how well the child is doing and understanding and applying those principles. What this article is really uncovering is that religion is having trouble holding on to their congregations because they are getting older, more educated, and leaving the church and they don't have their parents to really
lie to them and beat them down. And even the parents are leaving. It's precisely what the evangelical post during this article states that in order to raise young disciples, children need a mass of parents, grandparents, pastors, teachers, coaches, and other influencers. And that's just not happening. Right. These people are necessary, right, It takes a village kind of thing to prioritize biblical teaching in order to brainwash their kids essentially, and even this evangelical
doctor Barna notices that people are less willing to do that. We're moving on, and I say, we, you know, just us as a people in general from religion. If you look back decades ago, ninety percent of American society claim to be religious, Aaron said, sixty nine percent. Only
sixty nine percent today identify as religious. I had seventy. But even those who cling to these dog was as it seems like it's dissipating, they actually were also seeing this increase in people considering them spiritual, which is kind of annoying because we don't really know what that even means. But I'll take it
as a win. You know, if somebody is gonna leave their religion and they're going to adopt other worldview kind of you know, kind of positions and merge these different things that they're learning and consider themselves spiritual, then hey, you know that is those are potentially less children being molested in cathedrals, and maybe you know, less women being oppressed because those traditional mindsets aren't being enforced and so that's that's my take on how I see religion going and how it
relates to children. So, Cindy, what are your thoughts on that. Yeah, we know that if if we forbade religion to be taught to children before the age of eighteen, for example, region would disappear in a couple generations. We know that there is a reason why parents want to teach their religion to their children's because it's the it's the only way to have them believe
it's all these nonsense at a very young age. And it's so hard, especially in the US, where this idea that parents have almost limited rights regarding their children, it's almost impossible to have this discussion. But we need to find a way to protect children, and one of the ways is to give them access to as much education as possible. And as you said, the internet does that, and the ACA shows and other platforms on the internet they
also participate in providing this education. But we need to try and make it more palatable and more accessible to children because they are the primary target of Christians and so we need to find better ways to protect them. Kelly, I agree, I agree, that's yeah, I totally agree. One in fact, Barnie said that these influencers really love or care about young peop people, then following through with effective discipline disciple making practices should not be a significant obstacle.
Really, I mean loving and caring about young people, that's teaching them they're in an abusive relationship with an imaginary being. It's just it doesn't make any sense to me. And and like Principal two and three, really are they sound like the language that are an abused partner with domestic partner would say, it's really, really horrible. Everybody has mentioned something about people leaving religion, and I was wondering everybody thought was the reason for that. I'm an
XRFR agent recovering from religion. I've talked to people. I talked to a lot of people on discord about it, so I have some personal views on it. No data to give you or anything, but I was wondering, you know, I'd like to hear what everybody else thought, and then I'll give you some of my personal experiences. So, Aaron, what do you think is causing this movement away from religion. I think it's just we're learning
so much more about the way the world works. We have no you know, uh, and we have a lot more knowledge now about where uh these religions come from and why they exist. And for me it was finally, I mean, I I was religious, even if I left the church, I still believed in God. I was just angry and didn't want anything to
do with him anymore. And it wasn't until I started listening to ACA shows where I realized, Oh, there's this thing called evidence, and there's actually no evidence that God actually exists, because uh, it's all yeah, there's just there's just no evidence that God is actually real. And that's what kind of of it? What do you think it is making these young people leave? Though you think it's that that, I think there be I think I
think it's the internet personally. I think they're being exposed ideas on the Internet, on YouTube, on TikTok or wherever they're looking there. You can't you can't have an insulated kid anymore. They're they're going to go to school and they're going to watch videos, and they're gonna be on YouTube, and they're going to come across things and there, and it's yeah, and it's just like a like Daniel said in the Bible, it's like a stone rolling down
the hill. I'm just getting more and more momentum, and it's it is, it's just gonna get more, more, more and more momentum. And who knows what this who knows what the religious landscape in this country, in this world is going to look like in fifty one hundred years. Yeah, yeah, I'm optimistic. And and to continue on that to piggyback, if
you will. The kids are recognizing the bullshit, and it's because they're maybe through the internet, but uh there, their guard is let down a little bit and they're starting to see that there are other people out there that they are accepting of and their faith. This dogma tells them that they can't be accepting of them. And I think a lot of the kids would just choose their friends over this ridiculous ideology that can't be proven true. Right, And
one thing that helps that along is the lack of consistency in religion. There are so many holes and just we covered one just in this show already because the article, or in this segment, I should say, the article said that we are all sinners by choice. Well I'm really never heard that. I always heard growing up that we were naturally sinners, right, I mean, we're bad people. That's it. We're bad people. And it's not by choice. It's because of the choices that were made by Adam and Eve
and we've just inherited that. And we're gonna think ugly things and do ugly things, and we always have to ask for forgiveness. But we have a choice. That's news to me. And so that is just one minuscule way that things just don't line up, But that is consistent across the board.
They never line up. And I think as children are exposed to more learning methods, to more ideas, to more people that are unlike themselves or unlike their community, they're starting to see these inconsistencies, you know, and in a greater variety. So, yeah, the world is shrinking. The world is much smaller than it used to be. Right, it used to be you know, one hundred two years ago, you were never exposed to anything but your tribe in your town or wherever you live. And now our tribe
is the whole world. You know, you get to see what's going on all over the world in the news, on the internet, everywhere, and so you get to see all the different ideas and all the different things, and just like, huh, interesting, not everybody's a Christian, not everybody's a Muslim, not everybody's this or that, right, Interesting, He gets kind of get your thinking, Cindy. Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that idea. Exposition to uh, two different ideas is also education.
So yeah, that's that's part of the of the idea. I one of the things that I heard a lot was educational experience. Like kids would say, I have a friend who is gay, because the younger generation is a lot more open about being gay and realizing this person is not a bad person. And yet all these religious people I know are condemning this person for being bad and they're a good and they're a good person, you know. And that was one of the things I heard. And another thing that I heard
a lot was hypocrisy. Those people over there, what they're doing is really bad, but when we do the same thing, it's in the name of God, so it's all right. And those were the two things that the two things that I heard the most from people and still do on discord. So I thought, you know, but but I I think you're right. I think education is a big part of it. I think that's where we're headed, that maybe, hopefully more and more and more KIP kids will be
coming to their senses and reject these bad, outdated teachings. Hopefully, and we want to hear more from you, a lot more from you, so leave a comment below, email us at nonprofits at Atheist Typhooncommunity dot org