Here's something that is falsifiable and true: the teen suicide rates in the oppressive and orthodox 1950s were much lower than they are in the "liberated" times today. I cannot and will not claim that this can be reduced to belief in a higher power (I would tend to be skeptical of such a just-so argument that fits my worldview without additional data). And in fact, my main point in the GP was not that people should believe in a higher power (though I do think that), but that I hope the younger generation can learn to reject these destructive status games that undeniably cause immense suffering and deprive children of their childhoods.

Furthermore, our culture today routinely indulges in unfalsifiable claims that carry heaps of baggage. What is worse: eternal punishment that you are quite certain is not real, or the very real temporal punishment that can and has ruined lives in response to even inadvertent stumbling through cultural minefields?

> IMO [baggage like eternal punishment is] one thing plaguing plenty of teens in rural parts of the US. They need fewer overseeing eyes, not more.

This may be true as a trend, and insofar as it is, it is lamentable. But it is not nor has it ever been my way. I am here to show love and mercy, to serve and to desire justice; I am not here to pass judgment or hector. And part of that is speaking to what I believe and what I have experienced.