What is CATCHER all about?
Join the Catcher campaign today!
Campaign Against Targetting of Children by Evangelistic Religions
All over the world, children are taught to believe in the most ridiculous things in the name of religion; invisible beings and places, talking animals, dead people walking around, people walking on water... the list is endless. In human history there have been literally thousands of gods/goddesses and thousands of religions. All of them claim to know absolute truth - yet all of them disagree with each other.
Unfortunately, religion is taught to children when they are very young, so it becomes deeply engrained in their minds and forms part of their identity. It is very difficult (though not impossible) for a person to realise the absurdity of these beliefs once they have been absorbed in childhood. Quite clearly, if a person grew up hearing nothing of invisible beings in the sky, they would only laugh if told about them as adults.
Throughout history, the most outrageous deeds have been committed by people convinced that their own dogma was correct. This includes not just religious but political dogma too.
Any system that prioritises its dogma above human life is dangerous.
All religion puts gods and invisible beings ahead of human life - it says that a person can be told what to do by an imaginary being. This leaves that person wide open to being manipulated by religious leaders. By definition, religious faith is the opposite of reason. It demands that you believe things which have no good evidence or even likelihood of being true. It twists the mind to make the believer reject and ignore any evidence that would contradict their particular received beliefs. A responsible adult should always question received beliefs, but religion inculcates a taboo against this questioning.
For these reasons, religion is a form of child mental abuse. It is still tolerated widely because the parents themselves underwent the same process as children. It is seen as "normal", much the same way as spanking children was seen as normal 50 years ago.
Religion protects itself by cloaking itself in morality - but the core of religion is faith - not morality. Any non-religious person knows that you don't have to believe in invisible beings to be a good person. There is nothing good, or wise, about believing in something for which there is no evidence.
Ultimately, religion resorts to sticks and carrots to persuade people to be good. With threats of an eternity of agonising torment, religions terrorise the minds of young children. This is the most evil doctrine ever constructed by Man: it threatens to torture people even after their death.
CATCHER is a campaign which does not seek to change the law: it is a fundamental human right to teach your children anything you like. However, we aim to raise awareness of the way in which religions target children for their proselytisation - through sunday schools, holiday clubs, shows and Faith Schools. The biggest slice of the budget of an organisation like "Scripture Union" is spent on producing literature and outreach to young minds.
