+The Need for Litigation Against the Church+

 

Criminal Law is for protecting the innocent and punishing the guilty.

The Criminal Law can't punish every wrong.  It should restrict itself to social wrongs such as stealing or rape and so on.  Religion should only be taken up by Criminal Law if it sends people out to murder or rape or steal.  Otherwise it should be let alone. Criminal Law seeks a verdict of guilty or not guilty and the verdict must be established beyond all reasonable doubt.  Only the state can take a criminal law case against a person or persons.

Civil Law is not for punishing the guilty but for protecting the innocent and deals with private disputes - disputes between persons.  It results in compensation or damages being awarded.  Any wrong can be grounds for a Civil Law case.  Religion should be taken up under Civil Law when it does wrong - when the action is wrong not illegal.  Civil law seeks a verdict of liable or not liable and has a lesser standard than beyond all reasonable doubt.  Slander is not a crime but if religion slanders atheists, atheists have a right to seek compensation from religion.

A man who sleeps with a girl who is only a few months underage will be a criminal and go to jail.  A man who sleeps with a girl who is two years underage will get the same fate.  Is this fair?  It is possible for a child to be more damaged by a religious upbringing than by being sexually molested.  One is a crime and the other is not.  It is possible that if religion declines enough in the future, the Law will start making actions such as religious indoctrination of children illegal or criminal.  The point is that Criminal Law has the right and freedom to do that if it so chooses regardless of the opposition.  Even if it doesn't have the moral right it has the legal right to do it.  The Law has the right to make immoral Laws up to a point for it is decided by fallible people and we live in an imperfect world.  The Law is based on the idea that regulating society comes first and it must do that as it sees fit and it must be respected even if it is wrong and it states too that there will be casualties no matter what kind of laws are made.  Nothing is perfect.

Religion pays lip service to the Law.  It is lip-service for it believes the Law has no right to start censoring religion or preventing it from engaging in manipulative activities such as indoctrinating children or threatening them that they will be sent to Hell forever if they don't believe in God.  Religion is intrinsically treasonous.  On that basis, it could get into big trouble with Criminal Law.  Its treasonous nature certainly warrants that it be looked upon by disfavour in the Civil Courts.

It is possible to imagine a state where stealing is made a matter for the civil courts and a private dispute.  The division between crimes and matters for the civil court is more or less arbitrary.  You are a criminal if you are caught stealing a toothbrush but you are not a criminal if you shamelessly trick a senile parent to bequeath all their property to you.  Religion has poor loyalty to the Law when it would refuse to approve if the Law forbade Hell to be mentioned to little children as the Law threatens to pursue it through the criminal courts.

Religion makes misrepresentations.  A misrepresentation is something that is said to persuade a person to make a contract which they wouldn't do if they were told the truth - it is making a person mistakenly believe they should ratify the contract.  Even if the victim accepts the contract, the victim is not bound by the contract if misrepresentations were made.  Religion makes misrepresentations to persuade people to go to it for baptism.  Baptism contracts the recipient to God, or more accurately the religion for people only worship what others say God is like.  The contract is made for the baby by godparents at baptism and adults make their own contract.  Misrepresentations are a legal matter.  And especially considering that baptism seeks to make the baby a member of the baptising Church in the eyes of the law.  The failure of the Church to provide any evidence that baptism does any supernatural good shows that baptism is a very manipulative and cheating contract.

The doctrine of strict liability is now built into the law.  It means you can be liable for some damage THOUGH YOU WERE NOT NEGLIGENT.  This being so, how much more should clergy and religion teachers be sued for damaging and misleading people?

Suing the Church

You can sue the Church yes.  That is your right.  But can you win?  That is the most important question.  If you are rich you may not care if you lose as long as you have made your point.

Should the ex-religionist sue their faith on the basis that they gave it money to support it believing it to be the truth when it was not the truth?  Should the Church be made to return the money?

The Plaintiff suing the Church would need to prove that:

1    The defendant made certain representations to the plaintiff, presenting them as facts

2    In so doing, the defendant intended the plaintiff to believe the representations

3    In so doing, the defendant intended the plaintiff to part with something of value

4    The representations made by the defendant were false

5    The defendant knew, at the time of making the representations, that they were false

6    The plaintiff, relying on those representations, parted with something of value

7    The plaintiff, in so relying, was acting reasonably

8    The plaintiff suffered damage as a result

 

1, 2, 3, 6 and 8 could be established by the plaintiff. There is some difficulty with 4, 5 and 7.

4 has a few difficulties.  The Courts usually refuse to declare any religious belief to be true.  Getting it to declare a religious belief to be false is near-impossible.  But that will change as secularism grows more powerful and more regarded by society.  The stance of the courts is unacceptable.  The Christians produce many books on the resurrection claiming that the evidence for the resurrection would stand up in court.  If they are so confident then they should campaign for change.  For the Catholic, Mormonism is a counterfeit of Christianity. Would the Church not want the court to be able to prove that?  If the Catholic Church is the true Church it has the copyright on Jesus.  Then the Bible is its book and not the Protestants or the Mormons.  The religions should be suing one another!

The idea of God and Jesus being the Son of God are treasonous.  An all-good God would naturally have to come before all things and if the law ignores him or violates his rules the law would need to be opposed and Christians should endeavour to rip it down and replace it with rule by Christianity.  If Christianity is the one true faith and best for us all it has the right to run the country because it is the best and because it is God's representative.

Religion feigns horror when somebody shoots abortion doctors dead thinking this is saving the lives of babies.  But its doctrine that some lives may be sacrificed for the preservation of more lives implies that this is right.  Religion condemns the killings of the doctors insincerely.  Its other teachings prove this.  The state that allows abortion should see religion for what it is.  A secular state by being secular is suggesting that human thinking as opposed to divine or religious thinking is most important.  This in fact is a declaration that religion is considered to be unnecessary and possibly harmful.  Thus the courts as being among the arms of secularism should start being willing to declare religious beliefs to be false.

It is feared that Church lawyers might argue that you joined or accepted the religion not because of facts but because of its spiritual claims.  If that happens and you can't prove them wrong then the court can do nothing.  Spiritual stuff is very subjective.

Such a claim would infer that the faith is unreasonable and fanciful and has no concern for facts.  No faith can afford to make such a claim.  Each faith wants to be seen as sensible and concerned with evidence for any faith that is not is plainly immoral and deceitful and causing unnecessary separation and division in society.  Religion teaches that spirituality is useless unless backed up by facts.  Catholicism would say that baptism is worthless if Jesus never rose from the dead.  Spirituality that comes from believing lies is held to be false spirituality.  So even if the lawyers say the religion made religious and spiritual claims to you but not factual ones it shouldn't be a problem.  They should lose for they are virtually saying the religion is false!  A religion that makes hard demands on your intellect and emotions and life in general and has no evidence to support its claim to be divine revelation simply can't be true! 

Religious claims is another term for spiritual claims. 

5 is widely thought to be open to the problem that you can't prove that the people who converted you to the religion knew it was false and were lying to you.  They won't admit it if they were lying.  They would be lying to you if they suspected it was untrue as well.

But if you think about many religious doctrines such as the sin is hateful and the sinner is not  you can see the faith is based on self-deception.  To hate the sin and not the sinner is to pretend that the sin is an entity.  It is not.  Actions are not entities.  The doer of the action is the entity.  The sinner is the sin.  It is just a language device that talks about the sin as if it were not the sinner.  In so far as you hate the sin you hate the sinner. 

Christianity teaches that sin deserves to be hated.  To say you love the sinner and hate their sin is simply to say that the sin deserves to be punished and hated but the sinner doesn't which makes no sense.  The rule is not practical, not helpful, and not honest.  It is bad enough for unbelievers and atheists to accept the rule but for god believers to attribute the rule to God and say God keeps it is extreme blasphemy.  It is like saying that it is not a sin to drink the blood of babies and then to allege that God wants it drunk.  They say there is no love of neighbour unless you love God above all things first.  They ridicule God and disguise it as reverence so belief in God makes them hate sinners more not less.

 

If sin deserves to be hated then the person committing it deserves to be hated.  It is only people that can deserve things.  To say sin deserves to be hated is to urge people to hate the sinner.  Criminal law needs to recognise that Christianity, Judaism and Islam are inciting to hatred and violence and deal with them accordingly.

 

Jesus' teaching that we must love enemies and hate their sins means that we are to pretend that when we hate people that it is their sins and not them that we hate and when we find we hate them we are to feel guilty and seek repentance.  That teaching is not guidance, it is continual mental and spiritual torment.

Think about how people tend to imagine they believe in religion just because they were born into it.  That shows faith to be self-deception.  They mistake assumptions and things taken for granted for beliefs.  There is a huge difference.

Another proof is how religionists hoard wealth despite religion being against it and saying that hoarding the wealth is starving the poor. 

Another proof of the deceit of religion is how religion can make extreme and extraordinary claims without backing them up with proof.  The more bizarre or extraordinary the claim is, the more extraordinary the quality and perhaps quantity of evidence you need to back it up. 

Religion claims to be a form of love.  This claim is easily disproven.

The self-deceiver who promotes his faith of self-deception lies to themselves and others. 

If you accuse the religion of lying, is it up to the religion to prove it was not lying or up to you to prove that it was lying?  It is up to you for you are the Plantiff.

The court will often have defendants who lie but nobody can prove it.  But they can still be found guilty of lying if their lies are absurd or very implausible.  Then the court assumes they are lying even though it cannot prove it.  Religion can be found guilty of lying on that basis.

With 7 there is the problem of how you can say the religion that converted you tricked you if you had access to books and the internet where you can discover refutations of its claims.  In that case you were a fool and fooled yourself or let yourself be fooled.  It can be said that the law was not intended to protect fools from their own stupidity.  That is a valid point.  It cannot be applied to children.  It cannot be applied to people in poorer parts of the world who are the victims of religion.  They can't get access to correct information about why the faith is wrong.  You should be able to sue your religion for lying to you when you were a child when that lying did you harm.  If you suffered from psychological problems or schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and religion got into your system you have a case for arguing that it took advantage of you.  Very old people as well would have a good case for claiming to have been fooled by the Church.

If people are fooled by the Church and they can sue the Church should spouses sue their husbands or wives for fooling them into marriage?  Would people suing everybody not clog up the legal system?  If they pay for the cases themselves the legal system will make a profit and there will soon be courts everywhere.  There are not enough court cases anyway in this anarchic society of ours.  The legal system gives us all the right to sue for slander even if it means there will be a deluge of such suits.  It is only fair.

The Roman Catholic Church is one religion that says that if you do not pay money for the support of the Church you will suffer for it forever in Hell.   One of the commandments of the Church is, "To contribute to the support of our pastors."  The Church has its own set of commandments.  To break them seriously is to commit a mortal sin.  For example, if you give no money to the Church its a serious sin and so deserves  Hell.

So anyway its either pay up or risk hellfire.  Is this extortion?

Some say it is not.  They might point to the example of an insurance seller who says to you that if you do not buy his policy your family could starve when you die.

But we need insurance.  We do not need the Roman Catholic Church.  Many spiritual people manage well without it.

We know the insurance seller is telling the truth.  We cannot know that there is a Hell.  Thus the insurance seller is not threatening us but informing us. The Church is threatening us not just as much as the insurance seller would be if he said he would return some day to burn out our car if we didn't purchase insurance from him.  It is threatening us far more!

We would consider a Satanist to be extorting money if he said he was going to curse you if you didn't pay up.  This would indeed be a crime!  The Roman Catholic Church is in a worse position.  What worse extortion could there be than saying God might take your life and damn you to Hell forever for your sin of neglecting to pay the Church is so serious?  If that is not extortion then what is?

It seems that you would need to convince the Court that it was reasonable for you to believe what the Church was saying about everlasting hell starting at death and that it is the fate of those who do not pay money to the Church.

If God really runs the Church, he can look after it.  The Church can look after itself.  There is just no excuse for any religion teaching that failing to pay it money is a serious sin that deserves Hell.  It is vindictive never mind extortionate!  So it is not reasonable for you.  You have silenced your horse sense!

If we forget that, it would be impossible to prove that it is reasonable for you to believe for religion is not reasonable.   The Christian religion claims to be reasonable.  Suppose you want to sue it.  It would be unable to tell its lawyers to try and defeat your case on the basis that you were behaving unreasonably by joining it or sticking with it if you were initiated as a child. 

Now a child or poor person or person who is not very well educated can argue that they reasonably stuck with religion and believed its lies.  But even then the argument will not ring true in relation to a religion that threatens its members with hellfire if they don't "contribute to the support of their pastors".

The courts will see a person who was part of say a big Catholic community as acting reasonably when believing in and paying to the Church.  It is not reasonable.  It can't be reasonable to follow a Church or religion just because everybody else in your locality does.  The Catholic Church claims to be a reasonable faith or a faith that makes sense.  It cannot agree then that the Hindu is being sensible in following the Hindu religion just because his village does it.  However, the courts will not blame a person for being fooled by the Church when they are part of it because everybody else is and they are copying their example.

You can sue the Church for emotional distress.  You would need to prove that the Roman Catholic Church intended to cause such distress.  This is easily proven.  Even if the Church does not abuse you, if you read the Bible which the Church says is infallible and you suffer trauma through perusing its teachings the Church is still accountable.  When you believe the Bible doctrine that people who teach different beliefs from the orthodox beliefs are leading their followers to everlasting Hell you will be traumatised and tormented by hatred.  The Church commands that you hate the sin which is a very stressful doctrine.  Jesus said that even if you do all God asks you must still think of yourself as worthless.   He said that we must start with love of God.  That is the greatest commandment he said.  So starting with love of your baby is condemned.  Teachings like that are warped and unnatural.  There are many harmful teachings in the Church. 

Compassion means you suffer in sympathy with those who suffer.  Compassion for someone that was inflicting the suffering on themselves would be ridiculous.  It would be insulting them by inferring they are insane or something.  Or it would be false compassion.  Or both.  Christianity teaches that if you commit the sin of homosexuality and never ask for pardon from God, you will be damned forever to the sufferings of Hell should you die and it is all your own fault.  It is important that the state realises that such teachings are not compassionate and indeed cannot be.  They are vindictive.  They are incitements to hatred no matter how much the believers pretend that they love the people they condemn as sinners in danger of Hell.  Legal proceedings must be initiated.

Teachings such as that gay people are not good role models for children and so should not be employed as teachers need to be stamped out by law. 

Christians cannot officiate at gay weddings.  They will say that they have no objection to somebody else officiating at the ceremony.  If a gay wedding is so bad that they have to put in a conscientious objection, then how can they say it is acceptable for somebody who is not a believer to celebrate the ceremony?  That is like saying that you will not shoot your grandmother but have no problem with somebody else doing it.  The true Christian will ask the celebrant not to perform the wedding and say why.  The point is that having a little bit of discrimination makes no sense.  It has to be all or nothing.

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Religion itself admits that religion is a dangerous thing.  Roman Catholicism says that is one reason why it is so important to be in the one true Church.  But, however, that faith is harmful itself. 

We regard the killer of prostitutes as warped even if he does it to clean up the streets and to save lives of men catching venereal disease.  He will go to jail longer if he killed them reluctantly and apologetically than he would if he were overcome by hatred and eradicated them.  It is important to remind the courts that if a smiling and seemingly kindly religion does harm through its doctrine that does not indicate that the religion never meant to do harm.  The father that beats up his tenacious daughter to stop her going with a man who will probably make her pregnant is still committing an offence despite claiming to be doing it in love.

What the father does is to be condemned.  The father is more justified in what he does than the Church is.  The father knows his daughter's welfare is in danger.  But the Church hurts people over ideas that there is absolutely no evidence for.  Or ideas it doesn't offer strong enough evidence for.  You need absolute proof that eternal torment exists before you can risk disturbing a child by telling him or her that it exists.  Otherwise all you are doing is child abuse.  The Church has to approve of such abuse for its New Testament has Jesus teaching the doctrine openly when children were about.  The apostles did the same.  The Church believes a child can go to Hell at seven years of age so it claims a moral obligation to warn the child.

The priest who tells children that bringing a bad name on the Church is a grave sin for people need the Church to go to Heaven and scandal turns them away from her seems to be saying something good.  If he says that to the children to deter them from revealing that he has been sexually molesting them it still seems to be a good thing to say.  It is like a good thing, a truth, that he is taking advantage of.   

There are many examples of the Church using doctrine and its teaching to hurt people and doing this without the smiles and the sweetness.  An example would be when the priests order that a person who has changed religion must be excluded from their family.   Or when Pius IX kidnapped a Jewish boy who he later adopted for he was baptised and so obligated to be raised in the Catholic Church.

What about free speech?  Has the Church the right to tell your beloved father and mother they will go to Hell forever unless they repent of their sin of living together without being married to each other?  Yes - legally though not ethically.  But you could sue the Church for saying such a thing about you without proof - its very serious slander to say you are living such a bad life that you should be tormented forever.  Free speech implies that you wish to consent and bear any legal difficulties your exercise of free speech will cause.  If you go to court for something you say, that does not mean that what you said was forbidden or illegal.  It only means that somebody was hurt by it and seeks damages.  Speech that incites to hatred should be considered to be under civil law, not criminal law.

You should be able to sue the Church for requiring your parents to have you baptised and indoctrinated and/or you can sue the Church for baptising and indoctrinating you.  Indoctrinated means that you are exposed to only one religious point of view and are encouraged or required not to doubt it.  The Christian faith regards doubt as a very serious sin - it attacks faith and all the ideas built on it.  If you doubt something God has said you automatically call everything else he has said into question.  For example, Roman Catholicism says the worst fate possible is going to Hell to suffer forever.  If you doubt the Church you must doubt that too and so are committing a serious sin for questioning such an important warning.  You become as evil as a murderer in your heart if you doubt that murder is wrong.  Doubting then would deserve Hell. 

Here is a table showing how a Roman Catholic dogmatic upbringing amounts to child abuse.

DOGMATIC UPBRINGING	NON-DOGMATIC UPBRINGING
Claims religious indoctrination is acceptable for children are indoctrinated anyway - for example, in geography at school	Claims that religious indoctrination is wrong for it cannot be verified as geography can.  Claims that accidental indoctrination is one thing but deliberate is another and is unacceptable.  Claims that religious belief depends on indoctrination more than any other kind of instruction given to the child.  Claims that it depends on wilful and deliberate indoctrination. We know there is such a thing as subtle abuse.  If religious indoctrination, even in a mild form, doesn't qualify then what does?
It is child abuse not to indoctrinate your child against the errors of non-Christians.  We must prepare the child for a merciful judgment and saying nothing means the child could grow up to die estranged from God and sentenced to everlasting torment	Anybody can invent a religion that makes similar threats.  Naturally the Christian has to teach that indoctrinating children is saving them from the everlasting torment of Hell.  This definitely implies that raising a child as undecided or as an unbeliever is child abuse of the most horrific kind.  Christianity slanders and rouses hatred against those who don't share its twisted views on raising children.  Their doctrine of eternal torment in Hell certainly implies that the Law should not tolerate any indoctrination except their brand of religion.
Lots of people claim that their religious upbringing never did them any harm and was good for them	But many disparage their religious indoctrination.  Also it depends on the religion.  A Buddhist indoctrinating a child will not do the same harm as a Fundamentalist Christian or Muslim indoctrinating a child will.  It also depends on what the child is being told.  A heretical Christian who teaches the child that God is our friend and sends nobody to Hell and that there is no Hell for God is so forgiving will do no harm to the child.  But then the harm is being evaded because the Christian is really being her or his own religion and not a true Christian.  Real Christians harm. Indoctrination is bad.  To say it is not as the dogmatists do, is simply to claim that the end justifies the means.  The manipulation of children is wrong no matter how good the results are.  The victims should be disturbed by it.
If children are not taught to believe what we believe, they will believe any rubbish.  We abhor superstition.	It is true that many people get alienated from their religion and soon start looking to mediums and tarot cards to find meaning in life.  They are merely exchanging one superstition for another.  To a Protestant, Catholic miracles are superstition.  To Catholics Islamic miracles are superstition.  Miracles are not really any different from magic.  Christians say that Jesus rising from the dead by God's power is a miracle.  If a witch did it, they would be saying it was magic.  They are being arbitrary.  They are being superstitious.
The child must be baptised and made a member of the Church without his or her consent	Consent is all important.  The child will not feel, "I am better than Zainab next door for she was never baptised to put God's spirit in her" if he or she is not baptised.  Religion collects people into a community that separates from other communities in the name of dogma - in this sense it is worse than racism.  The person who separates from members of his own race will find it easy to start discriminating against and distancing from people of other races!
Baptism turns the sinful child into a holy person	The child doesn't have to pretend baptism made a difference.  Catholicism should be sued for making claims about the supernatural power of baptism to make a person very good and holy and yet if you compare baptised and unbaptised people you see little difference.  This is deliberate spiritual deception.  The Church could be sued for the return of the baptismal fee or quackery.
The child needs God	The child does not - it does not have the fears than an adult has of suffering and death.  A child can have fantasy friends if lonely.  Nobody has the right to invent needs for other people.  That is child abuse.
The child will be baptised and psychologically pressured into holy communion if necessary	The child is not initiated into any religion but encouraged to make her or his own decision later in life.  Atheists should not force atheism on their children or indoctrinate them against religion
The child is told that the Roman Catholic religion is the only right one, the only reliable one	The child is taught about different religions and none.  The child is encouraged to pick what he or she likes out of them provided it is helpful to her or him becoming a decent person.  All pros and cons will be brought before the child.  It should not be about making the child an atheist or anything.  It should be about informing the child and supporting the child.
The child will be urged to thank God at meals and pray in accordance with the rules of the Church	There will be no pressure either way
The best child, at least potentially, is a Catholic child	The best child is a child who is willing to learn and improve and to decide because he or she thinks about people before he or she thinks about God or religious rules or religious organisations
The child is taught that the rules of the Church and the commandments of God tell us how to behave	The child is taught to understand why he or she must behave in a good way.  If the child understands, the child will see guidance as loving and not as authoritarian and something to be rebelled against.   If the child does wrong, he or she will feel that he or she can be a better person using his or her inner resources.  Experiencing the confidence that comes from learning for yourself instead of being dictated to, the child gets a boost in the motivation to do better.  A child that finds wisdom instead of other people trying to manipulate the child to have their ideas of wisdom has the self-confidence to overcome the failure.
The child may be tormented by thoughts of loved ones going to Hell to suffer forever at death.  Religion is quite happy to teach the doctrine of Hell even to toddlers - Jesus said that everybody must be taught.  His role and message are all about this Hell for he said he came to stop some people going to Hell.  To not know it is to fail to understand him.	It would be impossible to put a child through that torment!
If a child grows up to reject the faith, we don't try to compel her or him to return.  Therefore our indoctrinating children isn't wrong.	Yes but what about now?  You still take and seek an unfair advantage.  The child can suffer grave trauma later in life as he or she tries to extricate himself or herself from the faith especially if that faith claims to be essential to genuine goodness and if it says people go to Hell if they leave it.  Are you saying it is okay to do wrong to a child now for later he or she can get over it?
You can commit a sin that deserves unending torment in Hell and this torment will start at death	You can't be that bad.  Religion slanders you.  It accuses you without proof.  Sue it!  You need absolute proof before you can accuse anybody of being capable of wallowing in hate and sin and evil in Hell for all eternity.  If you are undecided about whether or not there is such a fate, then you can't choose it.  It is safer not to be a Christian!  If you believe that murder is sometimes right, that belief will make it worse for you in court not less when you are on trial for murder.  But that is because the law is dealing with a difficult situation and can't encourage people to believe murder is right.  The Law would agree that if you commit murder really and sincerely believing that it is right it still has to regard you as a criminal and subject to a life sentence.  It agrees you haven't chosen jail but you still have to endure it.  You are treated as if you have chosen it.  If you don't believe in an eternal Hell you cannot choose it.  God doesn't need to put you in Hell as if he were a Criminal Court trying to make the best of a bad situation in an imperfect and flawed world.  All he needs to do is keep you away from his saints in Heaven.  So if you sin grievously and die, you are not trying to abandon God forever unless you believe you are!  If there is a Hell, then the message of Jesus Christ is putting people in it!
Loving God comes first and love your neighbour as yourself is secondary - this is what Jesus taught	In other words, religion and belief in God are more important than you!  Somebody failing to believe in God is worse than a baby dying of cancer.  The child must spurn such notions.  The child must see himself or herself as a special person and honour himself or herself accordingly and because he or she sees himself or herself as a gift he or she is keen to help others.  Start with proper self-love not the love of God.  The child will believe that if he or she does wrong, nobody should say the worst thing in it was how he or she offended God! That attitude promotes a lack of sensitivity to human suffering.
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God", none of them have done good none at all must be believed for God said it in scripture	Atheists are or may not be fools and many of them are upright people.  The Bible is inciting to hatred and the Church should be sued for saying such things.  The Church is provoking believers to anger against unbelievers and Christians who become unbelievers.  If they can't be angry with us then they can never be angry!  Presumably if a Christian lashes out it is the atheists fault for human nature can only take so much provocation!
False religion does harm to children by indoctrinating, the true religion does not	All forms of religious indoctrinating of the child are manipulative.  They are abusive in that sense.  To tell a child that he must love God as much as Jesus said, that he has original sin, that people go to Hell at death if they don't believe or obey God, that God may hurt and kill people and that he must be very upset by any sin he sees is strong child abuse.

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A class action means when a group of people with much the same complaint sue the defendant.  This would be a good route to take when suing the Church.  It is best to have a group bearing the legal costs rather than one person in case the suit will be lost.

The Church will fight hard if sued for causing distress, teaching misleading doctrine, extortion and fraud and can afford very good lawyers - better ones than the plaintiffs.  But if the Church is sued where there is great hostility to religion the Church would be bound to lose.  The best lawyers cannot save it if it is guilty and it can be proven.  It could be easily proven in Court for example that the Bible is not infallible and that the Church is lying by calling it the word of God and the truth.  It is just a matter of looking at the text.

Proof that the Suit can be won!

The state cannot assume any religion to be true for the state is not about looking after religion but the people.  Religion must be treated by civil law as a human creation.  Religion had a lot of influence over the state in the past and there are some residues of that in the law.  That is why religion can get special treatment.

Children or naive people or disturbed people who are damaged by the Roman Catholic should be able to sue the Church for damages.

People damaged by the lies of the Church are reluctant to take the Church to court as the Church can afford better lawyers than they can.  Also they are afraid that their neighbours will think they are weird.  In fact, the only reason the Church does not destroy more people is because many of its members who think they believe do not believe and haven't noticed.  If the parish priest really thought you were going into grave danger of everlasting Hell say by taking a homosexual lover or joining the Jehovah's Witnesses he would at least go to your door and ask you if he could talk things over with you.  Yet he claims to believe that you are going into such danger.  The Bible commands the ministers of the Church to snatch the erring from the flames - see the Epistle of Jude.  If the priest really believed in Hell - not just thought there was a Hell - he would be at your door begging and pleading with tears in his eyes.  Most religious people mistake feelings for faith.  Also, if you have evidence for something you may still only think it is true, assume it is true, not believe it is true.  This makes it all the more confusing.

None of that absolves the Church when true believers come along and are destroyed by their faith.

Small sects can be sued and often are.  But just because the Church is big and powerful doesn't give it an exemption!  It is disturbing how Catholicism and Protestantism and Mormonism were strongest and most popular when they spat hatred and vengeance and worshipped at the throne of a shocking fundamentalism.  When they calmed down they were deserted in droves and the remaining people had little fervour.  Jesus was very scathing and sarcastic and threatened those who didn't please him with everlasting torment and all this, according to the gospels, didn't impair his popularity.

Freedom of religion should not mean that abusive religions should get away with it. 

Freedom of speech should not mean that anything at all can be said with impunity.  Say what you will but be aware that somebody has the right to sue you for saying it.  It is not a crime to use or misuse freedom of speech but it can lead to you being sued for damages.

Criminal law and civil law are different.  If you commit murder you will be subject to criminal law.  If you libel somebody you have not committed a crime.  The victim however can sue you for damages under civil law.  We encourage people to take civil cases against the Church.  That is the best way to expose the Church for what it really is.

By the Church we mean the priest and bishops and nuns who make and promote Catholic teaching.

Here are some examples of things that the Church should not get away with.

The Church accuses children of original sin,  an estrangement from God carried from conception that needs to be forgiven in baptism.  This is abusing the child by slander.  Too many forget that the weakness we are born with is not believed to be original sin but a result!  This mistake blinds some to what baptism is really about, slandering the child on religious grounds and then lifting that slander.

The Church forbids idolatry - it wants prayer done its way.  People have little fetishes and superstitions.  Some people like to pray to a dead grandparent as if to a god.  Others like to pray to a statue.  Others may pray to the deceased family pet.  You can get comfort by praying to anything.  You don't need faith in God.  The Church does not care about what works for you.  It ignores the fact that the one religion cannot be right for everybody for people are so different and have different quirks and needs.  It is just bigoted and controlling.

Nobody trusts God completely.  A child can't trust God very well for he or she knows little about him and he seems invisible and aloof.  Yet children are praying for bicycles.  They know some children get the bicycles and others don't.  They don't trust God to be good though they may trust him to help them get the bicycle.  They are encouraged to pray.  Are they not then being led to, "Dear God, give me the bicycle and let somebody else do without?"  If they don't say that they will say it and intend it in their hearts!

Children can be traumatised by prayer when they see it is not answered.  They will think, "What is wrong with me that God wouldn't help me?"

The Church causes suspicion against those who are not baptised.  Baptism is supposed to make you clean and fit for Heaven and heals the tendency to evil in you meaning that an unbaptised person is not as trustworthy as a baptised one.  The Church may say a baptised person can do greater evil than an unbaptised.  That solves nothing.  The point is that the Church says unbaptised people have more of an excuse for being evil and untrustworthy than the baptised.  They are saying the baptised sin in spite of their power not to while it can only be expected that the unbaptised sin.  The doctrine of the power of baptism implies that with religions without valid baptism, the proper approach is to judge them with cynicism.  It is best to assume then that they invent their God and he is a mental idol even if he resembles the real God.  It is possible to be attached to the concepts of God and not to God.  This is idolatry and is far worse than the obvious idolatry of praying to images.  It is worse for it is insidious and subtle.

The Church urges parents to have babies baptised with a view to bringing them up to agree with the Church.  The Church is conditioning those children.  If the faith was really true and really credible or persuasive, it would not need to use such underhand tactics.  Children do not need to be raised as Catholics.  Lots of good children are not.

Many modern religions don't have this manipulative approach at all.  Wicca for example refuses to accept new converts easily.  It demands of them a lot of thinking and soul-searching and research before it will accept them.  It wants them to be sure.  It believes that if they really want to join the religion they will persevere.

The Church agrees with the racism of the Old Testament that the Jews were the chosen race of God.

The Church tells children that the bread of communion is the literal body of Jesus.  They will see this as eating real flesh with God making it look and taste like bread and tricking their senses.   This can be and should be disturbing for a child.  Doctrines like that can lead the child to a dangerous and disturbing belief in magic.  Religious children have been known to jump out of speeding cars and plunge into dangerous rivers over it.

The teaching that Jesus is fully in all the wafer makes it fully plain that children can believe that Jesus' penis is in their mouths when they receive communion.  The Eucharist can be described as being Jesus' penis.  The Eucharist certainly implies there is no problem with child sex abuse.  This is religious style sex abuse.

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The Church forces children to confess "serious" sins in confession under pain of going to Hell forever.  This is intimidation and a desecration of the child that must be condemned in the strongest possible terms.

Children can be traumatised at the thought of Jesus being able to watch them in the bath.  Little girls feel Jesus can see up their skirts.  Indeed they should be traumatised.  The only solution is to keep Christian influences away from them.  The time I believed in spiritualism, it disturbed me to think that the spirits were there watching my intimate moments.

The Church traumatises the relatives of suicides by saying that eternal Hell is possible for all of us.

Religion has sins that have some overlaps with human decency but they add in a whole lot more sins which puts a burden of guilt and self-criticism on the religious person.  The sins include suspecting that Mary was not sinless, the pope is not infallible and so many others.  Not going to Mass on Sunday is a sin.  Jesus said that the biggest and most important commandment was to love God with all your heart and soul and mind.  God wrote the Bible so you should rather read his book than any other.  Loving yourself and your neighbour was only secondary in importance.  So if you would not jump into a tank of boiling oil and be crucified as a martyr of God then you break the greatest commandment and thus commit the greatest sin.  This is a huge burden.  People will fail and give up. 

 Religion should not be asking people to do other than what they would do if they were good unbelievers.

The doctrine that we can go to Hell at death forever and if we do there is no hope for us plainly suggests that you have no right to the proof of this doctrine.  They say that for it cannot be proven.  Yet people say you can commit a sin that deserves it!  They are accusing you without proof!  You need absolute proof before you can suggest people can commit a sin so bad as to go to Hell.

The morality of the Church is so ludicrous that the Church tends to fail to practice it consistently. A child talking to her doll and asking it for help is idolatry for the pagans just thought of gods as superhuman entities or entities that were just like ourselves but could do different things.  Private detectives have to tell lies to do their job and can be good Catholics though the Church forbids all lies.  If you commit a sin that deserves Hell you would be mad if you thought such a hypocritical religion that would approve if you went there cares much about you!

Children are told that Jesus died for their sins for nobody else could save them meaning that the child must feel responsibility for crucifying Jesus.

The Church traumatises people dying in car accidents who panic because they know they will not have a priest to anoint them and absolve them.

The Church traumatises mothers and fathers who lose a baby to a painful illness by saying that God takes ultimate responsibly for this for he rules all creation and must have a reason for letting this happen.  This adds the trauma of wondering why it happened and struggling against anger with God to the shock and despair.

The Church says that if a couple having a baby would be a health disaster, that the couple should trust in God and use natural family planning which lets him send a baby if he wishes.  The law might say that if disaster ensues that the couple must take responsibility for listening to the Church and though the Church teaching is nonsense it is not the Church's fault that it went wrong.  Where do you draw the line with an excuse like that?  If a doctor gives you a pill and tells you to trust him and the pill gives you brain damage no court would expect you to excuse him by saying you decided to take the pill and he didn't shove it down your throat.  The doctor did not threaten you to take the pill.  But the Jesus of Catholicism threatens you with punishment in this life and the next if you ignore the family planning rules of the Church. 

It is interesting how the Church would argue in court that the couple were to blame for the disaster for nobody forced them to obey her and yet she says that pharmacists should leave their jobs rather than give a girl the morning after pill.   It does not say that giving her the pill is putting it into her hands and out of the pharmacist's.  It does not say that she and not the pharmacist is responsible for taking it or not.

The Bible is not edifying reading for ordinary people and children.  It is full of gore and presents the world with a God who wants people butchered for not respecting him.  Children can be disturbed by it and it does make a child feel that violence is fine and those who criticise violence are the bad ones.  It did that with me as a child.

A revelation from God passed down from the Church can't have the same authority as a revelation from God to you.  So if you hear God talking to you and you should obey revelation, then you should do whatever the voice says.  If it tells you to kill your neighbour you must do it because God has authority over life and death.  He has the right to take life and delegate that right.

The Church should be able to provide evidence that the healing power of its sacraments work.  It can't.  It is being paid for quackery.  The Church is being paid to tell the truth and it isn't doing it.  It is telling lies, half-truths and defaming people and so on.  It is treating guesses and assumptions as truths when they should be treated as what they are just guesses and assumptions.  To say my religion has spiritual power to heal the soul of evil and another does not is defamation. It is accusing other religions of being bad even if they are not deliberately bad.  Either way they are just as much being called dangerous.   It should be considered defamation until the Church provides sound research to back up its claims.  What happened to innocent until proven guilty you may say?  But that is what defamation is, saying things without very very strong and persuasive proof about people that cast them in a bad or dangerous light.

The sick and dying are dragged to miracle sites and nothing happens.  They may not even get any spiritual or emotional healing.

Catholicism claims to be infallible in teaching faith and morals.  This is really fabricating a God out of human ideas about morality.  It is making a god out of human philosophy - it is men inventing a God and getting you to bow down before it.  For example, people disagree on whether or not sex outside marriage is okay.  The Church says that killing a prisoner to take his organs to save the lives of a number of decent people in urgent need of transplants is wrong.  A Utilitarian who thinks the greatest happiness of the greatest number would disagree. The Church excommunicates you under canon law for saying the Virgin Mary was conceived in sin but there is no excommunication for murder.  Despite the evidently human origin of Catholic morality, they make a God of it and make it the word of God when it is not which is the utmost in blasphemy and idolatry.

The Church lies that the Bible and Church teaching are true knowing fine well that they are not and they are not infallible.  Yet they exalt the man-made laws of the pope though they hurt people.  It is only too well known that a religion, once well established, being obviously deceitful and false won't do it much harm.  Take the Mormon Church surviving the fact that its scripture the Book of Abraham was not a translation from Egyptian papyri but a fraud though it is supposed to be the word of God.  Take the Jehovah's Witnesses saying Armageddon will happen before the 1914 generation will die out.  Take the Roman Catholic Church surviving the fact that it says miracles show the Church is true when the Church pays no attention to miracles that contradict the teaching of the Church - is that biased or what!

If a social club said and did some of the things the Church says it would be closed down.

The Church is totally arrogant.  It does not say, "We are so sure of our rules and their goodness.  Keep them and if they fail sue us!" 

Suppose it can't afford to encourage people!

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