Religion has very little to do with this case, it just makes it more sensational. The people who encouraged this obviously unhappy girl could have helped her in many other ways. Their solution was incredibly immature.

The Mennonite group exhibited the problem solving skills of third graders. Okay, that might be an insult to third graders, sorry.

As an atheist, I do not see this as a reason to castigate the religious, only the stupid.
Unfortunately, the poster called Dominion also falls in this category since he thinks atheist=pimp.

This girl’s plight is unfortunate, but as I said, you don’t really care about her, opportunists like you only care about how you can use her sad story as a weapon against people who have nothing to do with her problems or yours. Is this what you’d call atheist compassion? Such a thing is surely as common as this event, perhaps I should check under my bed for the Mennonite boogeyman.

The STORY is unremarkable since there are so many others like her and in even worse circumstances. You don’t care about them either, you only make such a fuss because you hate the 80% of us who believe in God. That’s your figure, maybe a little high, maybe YOU’RE a little high…

There are a certain kind of atheists who ‘help’ girls run away from home all the time…they’re called ‘pimps’.

Citation seriously freaking needed for your claim that all pimps (or even a majority of them) are atheists. Since you are referring to a criminal activity, it is worth noting that atheists are disproportionately underrepresented in American prison populations. [http://www.skepticfiles.org/american/prison.htm]
[http://www.freethoughtpedia.com/wiki/Percentage_of_atheists]

Even so, on the basis of just raw population statistics, any given U.S. pimp has an 80% or better chance of being Christian — a bad Christian, perhaps, but a Christian nonetheless according to his own beliefs. If you’ve got some sort of data to the contrary, lay it on us.

Christians, by the way, consider Mennonites to be heretics, but you wouldn’t care about that.

Why should we? Virtually every branch of Christianity considers virtually every other sect to be heretical, but they still qualify as Christian by some measure (even if largely by self-description). Despite the phrasing of your statement, there is no well-defined, monolithic group called “Chistians” — and certainly none that you have any authority to speak for.

You care about sensationalizing an otherwise unremarkable story.

“Unremarkable”? The girl is effectively kidnapped from her parents (by what you yourself consider a false religion), and you call this “unremarkable”? So much for Christian compassion.

~David D.G.

You’re welcome.

Nobody said anything about enforcing atheism. I say, give them the tools of knowledge and reason and let them decide. Still, this emphasizes my point about children not having religious freedom until they are adults.

You talk about outlawing fairy tales and ghost stories, but we teach them that these things aren’t real; that they are just stories in books. We [the collective we; perhaps they, rather] teach the children that the bible is true and god is real. People don’t base whole moral belief structures on fairy tales and ghost stories. That’s the big difference.

You say that religious freedom is having the freedom to raise your family in your religion. Maybe so, but whose freedom is it? Certainly not the children’s. They aren’t given the evidence and allowed to decide for themselves. They are told what to believe from the time they are babies.

At the time of his suicide, my ex had had at one point had Federal charges for transportating a minor across state lines for illicit purposes. They were dropped because this 17 year old girl had a bad rep despite his also facing charges for child molestation and attempted child molestation. (2 girls got away and told.) I’m equally disgusted that the Federal charges were dropped based on this “bad” girl mentality. The ex was 33 at the time.

Call me jaded.

I don’t agree that parents are interferring with religious freedom bringing their kids to church. I protect their right to despite being terrified by buybull stories myself growing up. We can’t enforce Atheism and have religious freedom too. Not allowing someone to raise their child in their faith is interferring with religious freedom.

However, just as there are limits on all our freedoms, this does need to have a line drawn from crossing over into the realm of physical abuse or even severe mental abuse (just telling the scary stories doesn’t do that if you ask me or do you propose also outlawing fairy tales and ghost stories and not letting the kids have any fun). If you pray your kid to death instead of seeking medical attention that is obviously needed, beat them because the buybull says spare the rod, practic exorcisms, and so on, yeah, then we need to interfere. But only then.

Of course, I would never have allowed my daughter to attend church except for funerals and weddings. My rule was always if you want to go to church, you can go when you’re 18. It didn’t become an issue because she never wanted to but I’d have held firm if she had.