And my mother wonders why I’m agnostic
This was one of the fundamental experiences of whiplash that shot me straight out of the Christian community. Giant pile of child-fucking hypocrites.
Meh for me it was the child fucking.
How is this a shitpost?
I literally told my mom that I was affected by doge spending cuts in multiple ways that make my current life unmaintainable. I can’t afford a 400% in my insurance premium. I use buses and doge cut the grant to my city that kept them fully operational; my city cut routes and reduced buses on the routes they tried to keep on top of freezing the wage for their workers for 4 years of the worst inflation America will see. And she’s just like “I’ll vote for Trump again, at least he is not a woman”
Reminds me of being a pastor’s son at ~5 and asking the Sunday School teacher if Satan could be saved, since God wants everyone saved. I was sincere–it troubled me that there was a creature that was without hope. Now I understand I should be happy that fucker is burning eternally. He should’ve never messed with God! That’s just normal adult stuff! You live and learn!
Holy shit, I’m not religious at all, but 5 year old u/potoooooooo is the CUTEST fucking thing.
Ugh, children really are innocent/wholesome, and its the adults around them that inject poisonous ass ideas into their minds.
Buddhism has a more Christian example of Christ-like behavior concerning a “living being Satan”. That is to say, if “living being Jesus” was real, he would be a Bodhisattva, perhaps akin to Kṣitigarbha.
In the story, Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha vowed:
“Until the hells are empty, I will not become a Buddha.
Only when all sentient beings are saved will I attain enlightenment.”
It is a vow to never abandon any being regardless of their state.
I like that idea. Boundless love and compassion doesn’t stop at the bounds of some hell. It is boundless. It has boundless time, so it will spend an eternity reaching out to even cyclic hells.
Nice. I like 99% of what I’ve encountered from Buddhism.
Like so much else, the religion in theory strays from the religion in practice
U Rarzar works for the Ma Ba Tha (Association for the Protection of Race and Religion), a Buddhist organization comprised of both monks and laity. The organization is well-known for its social welfare programs and its advocacy of Buddhism. It is also known for its persecution of the Rohingya Muslims. Buddhist organizations such as the Ma Ba Tha have circulated pamphlets and flyers espousing the dangers of Islam and the imminent Muslim threat. U Rarzar is in charge of the organization’s bi-weekly magazine. In his mind, Muslims, no matter their ethnicity, are a threat to Buddhists. According to U Rarzar, “Muslims and ISIS are the same. It is just the difference of a name."
I said 99% for precisely that reason. Because I haven’t encountered much of it, but know it exists. Now I read another article, so let’s say like 94% now.
I’m a Buddatheist who grew up with both cultural Catholicism and later Christian Evangelicism.
I like how this hints at the nature of the self. If I leave someone behind am I not also leaving myself behind?
For me, ethical acts are those that increase the freedom of the self and others. We all suffer. That’s a fact of life. If we dissolve our concept of the self and acknowledge our link to others and the world itself we can see ourselves more as threads going through human experience. If we are kind to ourselves and “others”, we have a better chance at reducing that suffering.
Imagine the time a stranger forgot their wallet and you paid for their coffee. A version of that experience could still exist in that person’s mind long after you die. It could get blended with other experiences and reinterpreted. It could be told as a story to a friend who was inspired by the act. The cascading effects of that person being properly caffeinated on that day could have world changing effects. In a similar way, I carry the shared experiences of my own ancestors and even strangers who have shared their stories with me. They are still alive as a small part of me because my true self is humanity or even some animating life force of the universe or something like that and the name that people call me just refers to the limited perspective and incomplete view I have of existence. Essentially I see existence as blinders limiting my perspective like a race horse, but the true self is a satellite view of the track. When I act, I do so based not only on my experience, but the collective experience of every perspective and experience that has been conveyed to me in every way, but I am still one human body, in physical space, subject to time. I hope that when I die, those blinders will be lifted and I’ll exist as pure conscious perception of everything that ever was is and will be. Able to see through anyone’s eyes, in any time. To feel any and every feeling felt my an animal or human. To view the entirety of existence as a completed masterpiece from outside time itself.
You can probably see why I like the Buddhists.
I find that when you acknowledge the interconnection of things compassion becomes easier.
I hope that people rediscover that within themselves and others.
I will join the first religion that allows me to re-unite with my beloved cat, after I die. Stupid christianity tells me that my animals don’t have souls, when in fact, they are far better beings than most humans.
Buddhism sounds like this incredible ascetic ideal to the Westerner, until you hear about Buddhist terrorists.
Buddhism in the western world is a sanitized and very narrow part of the positive aspects of the religion. Like taking the teachings of Christ and ignoring absolutely everything else about Christian religions and what they have actually practiced.
Really if you look at any religion and pick only the good parts of their teachings, it doesn’t matter much which one you choose as they’re basically all promoting nice things like love, compassion and self-control. The problem is none exist in a vacuum; they’re all affected by their histories and the societies where they’ve been practiced, and knowing humans… it’s always a huge mess no matter where you are.
I find that when you acknowledge the interconnection of things compassion becomes easier.
A universal truth.
Of course! Because heaven and hell are made up and facts don’t matter!
That’s an interesting take.
Let’s confine the statement to the bounds of a materialist’s reality for a moment and see how it holds up.
A child somewhere in the world just had their arms blown off withnessing their mother and father evaporating before their eyes. In the mind of this child, is it in: a) normal Earth life b) heavenly Earth life c) hellish Earth life
A woman somewhere just discovered their partner has been cheating on them with just about everything that moves, and they have HIV. She has always been loyal for all the many years they’ve been together. In the mind of this woman, is she in: a) normal Earth life b) heavenly Earth life c) hellish Earth life
A soldier somewhere just fired on a little kid they mistook for an enemy. They go to sleep that night haunted by what they’ve done, finally realizing they are the bad guys and everything they are is a lie. They’ve done unspeakable horrors to so many innocent people, and it is all rising to awareness. Is this solder’s mind in: a) normal Earth life b) heavenly Earth life c) hellish Earth life
Heaven and hell are manifested here in Earth within the hearts of all beings.
You’re talking about two different things. They were talking about heaven and hell as real, physical places that you go to after you die. You are using heaven and hell as metaphors for the real things that happen in life.
They are the same thing.
Lucifer/Satan never even actually kills anyone in the Bible, whereas Yahweh commits literal genocide on multiple occasions.
It should also be noted that the serpent never even told Eve that she should eat the fruit, just that she COULD.
Side note that always puzzled me… 1) why would God create a tree that has fruit that teaches you the difference between good and evil? 2) why would god put this tree in the garden in the first place? 3) why would anyone (particularly an omniscient) ever think that the people who have no concept of right and wrong (before eating the fruit) are going to be able to resist it? And finally, 4) WHY IS KNOWING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL A BAD THING??
It’s all just so fucking idiotic that it hurts my brain.
If we believe that the various Satans (in the original Hebrew, literally “adversary,” and rendered without the definite article so there are probably multiples of them) are in fact one and the same with the Devil (singular), this link-up doesn’t even occur until the Book of Revelation which is firmly a new testament thing and wholly unsupported by any of the old testament or ancient Hebrew sources from which it’s derived. Making all the assumptions required on basis that this is so, then whoever he was killed a lot of people in Revelation. But not until then.
In old Hebrew tradition, the Satans are sort of the prosecuting attorneys for god. They work for him in order to tempt the faith and righteousness of various people. Several mortal people are also given the moniker of “Satans” when they’re working against the interests of god or various other individuals.
Meanwhile, the notion that Lucifer is also one and the same with the Devil or any kind of Satan is a much later interpolation made when the church(es) of the era wanted to insert a bogeyman into their religion and they needed a justification for it, some time in the AD 200s. Lucifer is identified as the king of Babylon, a mortal, when he has attracted god’s ire in his sole appearance in Isaiah 14. The situation has become so warped that his name was finally removed in the New International Version of the bible and he’s simply referred to as the “morning star, son of the dawn.” (Isaiah 14:12, if you want to go have a look.)
Modern pontificates will also insist that the king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28 is also somehow the Devil, which is dubious. Even if he were, and god were speaking allegorically for precisely half of his rant as we are thus demanded to believe, god smokes him at the end of the passage anyway so it’s a moot point.
Maybe.
On the other hand, there’s no actual evidence that any of this is real in any way. So there’s that…
Oh, one other point of order on that as well: Obviously even if it’s not all bullshit (spoiler: it’s all bullshit), Revelation is supposed to be a prophecy of the end of times which obviously hasn’t happened yet. I’m pretty sure we would have noticed if it did, what with the sounding of the seven trumpets, the worldwide earthquake, the 200 million horsemen slaying a third of mankind, etc.
So even if it’s all somehow inerrantly true, the Devil hasn’t killed anyone yet.
Revelation just reads like a dude who got dosed and is tripping without knowing why. John probably ate some bad mushrooms.
Also, if I recall, many people attribute his apocalyptic vision to what was happening in Rome at the time with Nero.
The biggest one for me was, “Why doesn’t he want them to know they’re naked?”
He gets all pissy because Satan ruins his perverted, non-consensual peep-fest and decides to curse literally everything for all time. Fucking gross.
Yeah. He loves you so much. But also, if you don’t do exactly as he says, you will literally burn in a lake of fire for all eternity. Why? Because a couple people ate some fruit that I tempted them with and, let’s be real, always knew they were going to eat anyway.
That’s an abusive relationship if I’ve ever seen one.
Don’t even get me started on how stupid it is that he had to send himself to earth, as his son, to die painfully, in order to save humanity? Like what dude? Do you not literally make the rules? Why would you make it so you have to do such bizarre convoluted shit? Just wave your hand.
Also weirdly into the importance of being willing to sacrifice your children as an act of necessity sometimes (literally both Abraham and Jesus, plus the plagues, David, etc…).
“The plagues will continue until morale improves” kind of vibe, hey?
Yeah… If you start looking at the Bible with Yahweh as the bad guy, and Lucifer as, maybe chaotic good or just chaotic neutral, it starts to make a little bit more sense.
Edit: To be clear, it’s still all bullshit lol
lmao Satan is chaotic neutral and God is lawful evil. Jesus, assuming his character is different from Yawheh, is neutral good.
IIRC, Yahweh evolved out of El, who the OG hebrews considered the best god of the Canaanite pantheon.
The Old Testament starts making more sense when you realize that there were other gods in the pantheon at one point. Like all the whining about Ashera is because she was El’s ex.
He did. Pretty much everything about that shit was taken from somewhere else.
Christianity stole from Zoroastrianism too.
…and that’s how I converted to Gnosticism.
Mmmm, love a good gnocchi!
Jesus was a manual laborer who became homeless to travel and preach his message. He made a point to spend time with lepers and the dregs of society, tax collectors being the worse of them all, because they served the occupying army.
His message was for everyone to love each other. It wasn’t open to interpretation. He made no exceptions. The less fortunate and oppressed were even more deserving of love and support from individuals and from the community.
It was open to interpretation from the very beginning. Exemplified in the fact that the four canonically approved gospels (we will ignore all the non-canon gospels) are contradicting each other in various ways.
Fine if you choose the interpretation in your comment, but perhaps it would be even better not to let your life be ruled by what random persons made up in their fan fiction 2000 years ago?
None of the four gospels are in contradiction at all with what Nobody@anarchist.nexus said. Not sure what your point is
I’m sorry but in which one of the “canonical” Gospels does Jesus say fuck the poor and love yourself more than anyone else?
I mean if you believe in God knowing everything and everything is happening because of his will, then that gives you the ability to rationalize everything, doesn’t it?
Oh you have cancer? God gave it to you, if you didn’t deserve it he’d have cured it. Done, use that everywhere: poor, homeless, immigrant, race, sick, traffic, lightening, flood, airplane crash, school shooting, …
That’s why blind faith is dangerous. And the idea of afterlife because they just do whatever now.
All to true.
You know how the Romans collected taxes in there less “Roman” providences? They have rich guys a contract to basically raise taxes and the rich guys payed up front what was owed for their division of it. Then they were allowed to collect taxes beyond what they paid the Romans to make a profit. This is mainly why they were hated so much. Many people might imagine some official going around and collecting taxes fairly, but the reality was they were operating much more like a Mafia extorting protection money out of people, and taking more then most people owed, often to peoples ruin or near ruin. You can also imagine how nepotic this becomes. People who have loyalty to the dominant ruling class would often catch a break, while those disfavored by the dominant faction would often be harassed.
Well that would certainly explain why the tax collectors get such a bad rap in the Gospels.
It’s also the origin of some anti-semitic tropes. After Christianity rose to prominence in the Roman Empire, Christians considered lending money with interest to be a sin, so they were forbidden from working related jobs. This resulted in Jews, who were forbidden from owning land and many other professions, taking up the role of merchants, money lenders, and tax collectors. In the Christian view of the time, they were doing the “dirty work” because they were immoral and sinful, and the nature of the work made them easy scapegoats for many of society’s ills. The reputation has followed Jews into modernity.
I’m honestly not sure how you’re helping defeat any stereotypes here because no one was even talking about Jews until you brought it up.
You know Christianity is an offshoot of Judaism, right? How early roman christians viewed and treated Jewish people is reasonable context to include in a conversation about the history.
Sure it is, in the same way that Satanism is an offshoot of Christianity, I guess.
Perhaps that is not how it is practiced these days, but that IS how Christ intended it to be. Just read Matthew 23 in case you have any doubts. If that is not a scathing repudiation of any Rabbinic teaching that was around at the time, then IDK what is. If you can find a more eloquent way to say “shove all this crap up your own ass and die from it”, I can’t wait to hear it.
Remember, they had the guy killed just for saying that.
It wasn’t open to interpretation.
And yet, 2000 years later, here we are.
Thats what happens when people decide to interpret. Suddenly Jedus is white, despite that making NO sense, and the bible gets a sequal full of contradictions.
Jedus Chrisp
The problem is that you actually read the Bible. These “Christians” never have. They interpret all right but read…nah.
Apparently they even have apps now that will pull out random quotes from their Bible to justify their attitudes.
This isnt entirely true. In the fundie circles i grew up in, it was heavily encouraged to ready the bible cover to cover as many times as possible, on top of that required to memorize entire chapters. They know whats in there and they dont care. Thats even scarier imo.
Social media, that’s why. The brain being cooked in dopamine all the time by algorithm and fake news fries the brain. People forgot how to be nice.
No one forgot how to be nice. They just dont have to be online, because they know they can get away with being a cunt. Social media has outed a lot of people for being cowards.
There are anecdotes of people changing for the worse. I remember a poster who said his parents became Trump supporting bigots, even though growing up they taught OP not to be racist.
I have no doubt thats true. The problem is that people are complex and just because they support one thing, doesnt mean they support all things. Id bet if you asked most people in 2016 why the voted for Trump, most would say something about the state of politics and “draining the swamp” sounded like a good thing.
I guess its up to you if you see a difference between not caring/not being aware and supporting. I suppose the end result is the same, but it might make a difference when you talk to them?
I saw someone else post in here about talking to their dad about the someone being raided by ICE. The dad said “maybe they were criminals?” and the commenter then launched into a tirade swearing and abusing their own father. Now, maybe the dad was a big Trumper, I dont know. The comment didnt make it clear. But IMO, if you want to change peoples minds or open their eyes past what their own self interest, then calling them names is the wrong way to go. Its only going to force them to double down, and well, we already saw what happens then. We got another 4 years of Trump…
Social media has really made it so that most of us, are just unfiltered mega cunts. We dont talk to people most of the time. We talk at them, looking for any kind of small mistake, so we can jump on them and abuse them. Looking at Reddit for example when Trump won, when Brexit happened, when Trump won again, and you can see the utter shock and surprise because the echo chamber convinced them that they were in the right, and everyone else was wrong. IMO, what happened was that anyone who supported Trump or Brexit was just shouted down, abused, called names. So no one ever took the time to explain to them why these things were bad. One of the worst things that ever became popular to say on line was “Its not my job to educate you!”.
Maybe the poster you remember, wasnt being 100% honest. Maybe his parents became Trump supporters because they fell for his bullshit? Maybe they supported some idea of what he was saying(draining the swamp/lowering taxes/etc etc) and the other stuff they didnt know about or care about? We need to learn to talk to each other again, without being snarky, or cunty, or even just feeling attacked because someone disagrees with us. We need to get out of the habit of assuming the worst, and a lot more of us need to get out of the habit of taking out years of repressed anger from being bullied onto other social media users.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk lol. Sorry about the long read. Have a great weekend!
Grew up in the south before social media existed. It’s the cause of a lot of problems, but this one predates it by a wide margin. It definitely made it worse, but there is no greater hate than Christian love.
Ain’t no love like Christian hate!
“The others” were meant to “those who deserving”.
It’s not that you’re not supposed to care, it’s that you’re supposed to despise with blood thirsty hatred the out group, and take pleasure in their suffering.
MAGA christians are fucking evil. I’ve experienced a few of these people firsthand. They’re cruel as fuck to their core.
Christianity is OK, until it interferes with a billionaire’s interest…
This is kind of like game of thrones when the lannisters aligned with the church. Inevitably, the fanatics try to seize power.
But, in GoT, the Lannisters were the fanatics
I think they’re referring to the later plotline when that old preacher dude makes a power grab and has Cersei walk through town naked and shit.
Honestly it’s been so long since I’ve seen it (and even longer since I read it) so I’m prob getting it wrong.
that old preacher dude makes a power grab and has Cersei walk through town naked and shit.
Cersei had committed a litany of horrific crimes and was forced to pay penance. The walk of shame was intended to reprimand her and to wake her up to the degree to which her people reviled her for her corrupt leadership.
She could have come out of it wiser. She could have returned to the palace, experienced contrition, and looked to repent further for her abuses and excesses. Instead, she bombed the church and killed thousands of people.
I don’t know how else you describe that except as fanaticism.
She wasn’t a fanatic, she was cold and calculated.
The “fanatics” were the religious faction that was gaining power.
She wasn’t a fanatic, she was cold and calculated.
Eh. She was detached (often because she was drunk) and ruthless. But she was also obsessed with the Targaryans, initially because Rhaeger rejected her for Lyanna Stark but eventually because she needed to justify incest with her brother. She was absolutely a fanatic. A racial purest, obsessed with the perpetuation of her bloodline. The “at least she was a loving mother” line others attributed to her was far more about her fixation on continuing a permanent line of Lannisters.
The “fanatics” were the religious faction that was gaining power.
The Sparrows were a branch of The Church of the Seven composed of impoverished working people ravaged by the endless wars between the Houses. They were certainly orthodox in their beliefs. But the “fanaticism” tended to be described as disrespect for the aristocracy and militant organization outside of the major Houses.
Hell, the most notable aspect of the Sparrow leadership was that it was not beholden to the throne. The High Septon under King Barathon was as much a party to the intrigue and debauchery as anyone else in the council, and this passed as normal behavior. He wasn’t above having people tortured or executed for apostasy. He just knew when to look the other way as it served the King. Breaking from the corrupt practices of the captured church was only labeled “fanatical” in so far as it ran afoul of the demands of a weakened central government.
Stannis and the Red Lady were significantly more fanatical in practice, given the number of people they burned alive and the amount of out-and-out witchcraft they performed. The Sparrows were just factional in so far as they refused to “bend the knee” in the same way as their predecessors.
As I said, It’s been years (decades even? fuck) since I’ve read the books and watched the show, so I’m a bit out of my league here.
I will concede your points as the material is clearly fresher in your mind.
It sounds like all the positive things Christians say about themselves for are just marketing
South Park just tackled this very issue. Don’t worry, Jesus is a chud now
Dammit. Back in my day, Jesus was just a humble public access TV host.
This Old House?
Took me awhile but I finally got the reference.
That was a huge plot point in the new South Park.
It was also a huge plot point of the Bible.
Could you point out where?
But America wasn’t a thing or even an idea when the Bible was written.
(I totally get what you are saying, though.)
Not if you’re Mormon!
Um. Ackshually 👆🤓 the Mormons are KJV only loyalists, so their Bible does indeed predate the USA.
The Book of Mormon, however, does not (unless you’re Mormon, in which case you believe it was translated from the golden plates, engraved ~400AD and based on earlier plates which Mormon (the person) and his son Moroni found and compiled). Think of it more as an addition to, rather than replacement of, biblical canon.
I will now remind the teacher that they did, indeed, forget to collect the homework. I have an appointment with a locker, after all.
Hasa diga eebowai.
