Let's discuss the "harmfulness" and the "falsehood" second. We're going to discuss the idea you seem to have about isolation from non-religious people first, since it seems to be based upon a stereotype of Christians just being people in back-woods with buck teeth or something. Yes, I've met some of those too, a small family I stayed with when I was organic farming for WWOOF in Washington state, who were hardcore conservatives and had a small farm where they had kids memorize the Bible by rote. These are not typical Christians.
You mind if I use my own family as an example?
I grew up in a small town, before atheism was basically telling people that they couldn't wish ppl "Merry Christmas" because some people might be offended. You know, the 80s. It wasn't a religious school just a regular school. If I was at all sheltered from non-Christians it was because my town was mostly religious to start with. Most places in the 1980s aside from big cities were probably this way. However, we moved to another town when i was 11, and I got to meet many different types of people some of them religious, so not. I went to public school after maybe 3 or 4 years of junior high at a religious school. And it was only incidentally religious, they taught us math and science, we read normal books, the only actual difference was a Friday morning worship which was maybe 45 minutes where the pastor kinda repeated the same message every week (he didn't really care too much so our lesson was "God loves you, and wants you to love him." His main church was top priority, they just gave him a few extra bucks). For high school, I went to a regular public high school. For college, I went to a Ferrum, which had a chapel, but for most people they didn't go. I went. I at no point remember being told "don't associate with nonbelievers." I on the other hand, learned that Christianity is in the world but not of the world, meaning I go to work, go to the bank, live a normal life but don't necessarily share the "whoever has most stuff wins" values of the secular world. My best friend left the church because those people were dicks to her (I do not have any expectation of church people being more perfect than other ppl, as this is not the point). My second best friend was in Germany where the church literally has a tax, so most people are not churchgoers.
On the other hand, my sister, a "ChristmasEaster worshiper" and much more leftist than we are, seems to keep us at arms length, and is always sorta like she's afraid someone else will somehow corrupt her children or something, minimizing the number of visits, and keeping herself and her children too busy to go visit the grandparents.
So uhhhhh what's this "sheltering" that you speak of? Because it seems as though I'm perfectly okay with hanging with people who don't necessarily believe like me. Yet, when I look at your own complete ignorance about what Christianity looks like, I'm not sure you've ever really noticed a real Christian.
As to whether Christianity is harmful or not, let me put it this way. The second best friend? Tried to commit suicide, cut all ties with me when I tried to tell her there's more to live for, and she may in fact be dead now. Timothy 4:4 says that faithless people are under a powerful delusion, and I've seen this firsthand. "I'm just a tiny person in a vast universe. I don't matter to anyone, unless I'm powerful or rich or important, so I need to make the most of things. And if I die tomorrow, well that's it. I'll be gone and no one will care." This was basically the mentality that I saw.
This is
false. She mattered to me. And there is more to life than just what she could see, which at that point was just a dark tunnel. She ignored many good times, that in a very limited timeframe of knowing her that I saw personally, to only see the darkness. To tell herself that her
entire life was bad. And as you can see, it's not only false but
harmful. You are telling kids that this life, this sorry excuse for existence is all you have, so you had better live it right, or that's it. You're screwed. You have just told kids that such a thing as Jesus is not even a hope, that nobody (not even a regular human) will ever come to help you, and if life is rough which it inevitably will be, that there is no chance of a better world (not even one you make).
How is that not brainwashing/child abuse?
Some tales about the Crusades and the Witch Hunts, and you've decided Christianity is harmful. But you have no idea how depressing and soul-destroying unbelief can get. I do, because I got to find someone who was destroyed by it. And I had no idea how to save her.
The truth is, atheism for all of its (mostly self-promoted) claims of fact, presents a disturbingly pessimistic view of reality that just isn't real. Just watch any reality show, and you'll see people struggling and fighting with each other. But here's the thing. Those reality shows aren't actually reality. A real job cannot involve just one person being fired, and all the rest go through some screwy contest. Nor does a real date work like Bachelor (you typically choose one there but you don't parade around an entourage like this). And a real life Survivor situation would require teamwork or everyone probably dies. The world atheism teaches about is a "dog-eat-dog" world. But dogs don't actually eat dogs. Here's another thing. These shows are very fake.
