"He's got the whole world in his hands?" To one atheist, it's more like ‘He's got the whole world under his thumb."

David Smalley, the editor of American Atheist magazine and a self-described "civil rights activist," wrote in a personal blog post June 7 that Christian daycare "a form of child abuse."

"In short, by starting your child off in a Christian environment, you are heading them down a path of forced ignorance," Smalley wrote. "At least let your child begin in a secular world, and if he or she chooses Christianity after an age of accountability, then so be it. But forcing them to learn things as fact that you don't even know to be true is a form of child abuse: inducing psychosis with thoughts of good and evil watching over them, as if they are constantly being graded or evaluated."

Smalley further stereotyped and generalized religion-based childcare by suggesting "it's bad for positive self-esteem, and slows social development later in life."

American Atheist magazine is published by American Atheists, which calls itself "the premiere organization laboring for the civil liberties of Atheists, and the total, absolute separation of government and religion."

Smalley's post appeared on his blog, Dogma Debate. He also hosts an Internet radio show of the same name.

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