Yeah, pretty scary isn't it, Kat? I remember encountering similarly bizarre nonsense in my first excursion to Sunday school when I was very young. My mother sent me there in her usual pathetic concern to do what "everyone else" was doing and thereby not offend anyone...even though my family was already atheistic to all intents and purposes...not officially, mind you, we just were, that's all.

I'd already read some stuff at home about the dinosaurs, the past geological ages of the Earth, evolution, and a whole lot of other basic science stuff...so I was shocked and downright horrified at what they were telling me in that Sunday school class with the various Bible stories.

I came home afterward and complained loud and long about it, and my mother never sent me back. That was a wise decision on her part, because a skeptic like me would have created no end of trouble in that Sunday school...and that would have led to just the kind of social embarrassments my mother was so desperate to avoid, and then she would have pulled me out of there anyway. ;-)

I just naturally tend to question the bland assumptions and rules of any smug and established authority system whether it be...

1. religious
2. governmental
3. scientific
4. scholastic
5. medical
6. military
7. and whatever else ya got! ;-)

The fact is, I distrust the lockstep thinking of people in large groups...specially when they lay down a whole bunch of rules for their followers to obey.