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Christians are fucking ghouls.
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Have never met one that wasn’t truly awful! But maybe that’s just Texas.
You’ve probably met many who weren’t awful at all. But being not awful, you likely wouldn’t even be aware that they are Christians.
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Yea, don’t lecture me on my experience as a neurodivergent gay man in Texas. Even the more low key Christians still get heinous when you hold hands with your boyfriend.
Don’t equate your limited geographical experience to a far reaching universal trend. Could be a vocal minority, could be just your region, could be recency bias.
I literally said in my original comment that “Maybe it’s just Texas.” Which acknowledged my limited geographical experience. I was literally making a comment on my own personal experience, not a universal truth. Please read.
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Southern evangelicals are definitely the worst of the bunch, but up north there are some pretty cool Christian organizations. My fav is the Moravian church, which sprouted from an internal crisis in catholicism once they started printing the Bible in languages other than Latin.
The Moravians basically came to the realization that what the church said and what the Bible said weren’t congruent. So they decided to reinterpret the Bible, but couldn’t agree on anything but Jesus prob wanted people to help others. So the whole church is based around disregarding theological conflict and instead just focusing on serving the community.
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Judging a privileged social caste is absolutely fine. What’s next, you gonna defend whites against racism? 🙄
I appreciate this rational take. As a Christian, I disagree with the “persecuted Christianity” narrative that the Roman Catholic Church aggressively pushes. Just like the above commenter is likely focusing on the vocal minority and ignoring everything else, I think the Catholic Church is focusing on the vocal minority and pushing this narrative for their own gain. And statements like the above commenter serve to reinforce that.
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Can confirm am in Texas and family are ghouls
if you think texas is bad, try oklahoma. There’s a reason it’s considered the buckle of the bible belt.
in my (limited) experience, catholics tend to be less shitty than protestants, with the whole ‘prove your faith with deeds’ thing.
Also depends if you meet just one Christian and have an honest respectful conversation.
Or a mob of Christians trying to out-Christian one another
I do agree that not all Christians are inherently bad people, but I would be lying if I said I don’t lose respect for anyone who can follow and worship such an awful and evil being as the Christian god.
There isn’t just one christian god. Who the christan god is depends on which accounts you consider.
It’s easy to read the old testament, read the post-gospel books, listen to the 2000 years of doctrine, and come away with the opinion that the christian god is evil. If you just read the gospels though, and accept that part of the message is: “I’m throwing out the old deal, the new one is Love One Another,” it’s harder to maintain that argument.
I was raised Lutheran, and am currently a philosophical agnostic. I know people who have an internally consistent belief in a good and loving christian god based on how they interpret the entire body of work (they’re well studied). I also believe their definitions of “good” and “loving” would align with yours.
New thought just now:
- If the christian god is a singular entity and is evil, then it must exist
- If it doesn’t exist as a singular entity, the only thing to criticize is people’s conception of it
Sorry for the long reply. You got me to extend my thinking and that came out in the comment.
I’ve never understood how one can just throw out half their holy book because their God (supposedly) decided to change the rules. This does not change the fact that he (supposedly) did these evil acts. If you just ignore the parts of the bible you don’t like, God’s a pretty great dude! An argument against Yahweh’s character does not change depending on which parts of the bible are still valid, unless your claim is that the old testament was never valid. In which case, why believe any of it?
Regardless, even the new testament depicts a despicable being. Would it not have been easy, as an all-powerful and all-loving god, to tell people not to own slaves? But no, instead in the new testament slaves are told on multiple occasions to obey their masters. One can preach about love all they want, but when their holy book endorses slavery, I cannot take them seriously.
Regarding your last point, that’s just false. I can criticize the Joker as being evil for killing hundreds, thousands of people. That doesn’t mean the Joker or Batman are real. That’s because I’m criticizing a being described in a story, not something I believe is real.
Edit: I, too, will extend my thinking here. If you believe in an all-powerful and all-knowing god, you need not even look any further through scripture for evidence that he is an evil being. He had the power to create any world with full knowledge of what would be to come, and the world he chose to make was this one. One rife with childhood cancer, slavery, starvation, torture, and natural disasters. This is not a world created by an all-loving being.
It’s ok to be wrong.
This is the internet. Anyone who’s perceived as being wrong will be persecuted.
Fun fact, the origin story for Satan that so many churches point to just isn’t in the Bible.
The entire concept of hell is basically just fan fiction.
The entire concept of religion is a fan fiction.
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Most Christian ideas about hell are from Dante and Milton laundered through loony toons. And in Milton’s version, Satan is the protagonist.
I had to explain to someone here on Lemmy that Satan in Job is a rival god, rather than the Satan Christians think, of since it came from before Judaism was monotheistic. The word literally just means ‘adversary.’ Job is about two gods having a wager. But Christians (and the rest of the western world by extension) are ignorant of the fact that the largest role anyone called Satan has in the Bible has nothing to do with Christian mythology.
And then they decide to conflate the serpent in the Garden of Eden with Satan because reasons.
Edit: Note to self. Do not try to write longer posts with your phone.
Do you have something to read up on there? That sounds interesting.
This is from college classes decades ago, so I can’t find you something offhand. I would definitely have been able to tell you more back in the 1990s.
Edit: I do remember that Job starts out with God gathering his sons together. I think possibly the adversary is meant to be one of these sons, who would obviously be gods themselves. But they are interpreted as angels today. Again, because reasons.
Obligatory HAIL SATAN
Remember to reapply your sataniser after each encounter with a cult member.
And God was the one who never suggested equality but subservience for women.
I think I’ll go with the prince of darkness … HAIL SATAN!!
And history is usually written by the victor; so how do we know that God is the actual good guy, and not just the asshole who won and told everyone how cool he is and how shit the other guy was? I mean, God’s done some pretty fucked up shit and he’s killed more people than Satan ever did.
I’ve been saying this for a decade+
If I was evil, I would write a book saying how good I am and trying to indoctrinate myself into people.
Satan is most likely the good guy who rejected his racist, facist father.
I mean, if that was God’s plan, he did a piss poor job. The Bible makes him look like a narcissistic petulant child.
So, like Trump, Musk, Putin, Kim Jong-Un,…?
Pretty much every (wanna-be) dictator was/is a narcissistic petulant child.Yup, exactly.
Nobody ever accused him of being good at it
A church has no right to tell me how to treat others when it’s named after a sex position.
As a member of the “church of the subgenius”, I’m curious about that position.
Good guy Lucifer. Punishes evildoers for all eternity, but somehow he’s the bad guy.
Christianity is a cult and a scam.
Sometimes even good people fall for it. The good ones have enough reason to be loud and shut the bad ones up. But that not going to happen. It’s a toxic support system that they can’t go against or be kicked out.
Christianity needs to disbanded just like every cult denying reality and hurting others.
Yikes, talking about hitting AND completely missing the point
Of course it’s a Baptist church with a sign like that. Guarantee you it’s in a sundown town, too.
If you worship a cosmic tyrant don’t be upset if some people balk at the idea.
I don’t understand if that sign is pro or against Satan
Don’t judge an entire group by the loud assholes they have within when the good ones have no reason to be loud.
Yeah, judge them by their (in)actions and how they treat others.
…huh, still not super great on the whole. One of the many reasons I left the church…
Damn right 😎
Yeah I’m sorry, but when I know you’re religious, any religion, I’ll think less of you. I won’t treat you any different, hell, I will go out of my way to try and show respect for your dumbass skydaddy beliefs, but yeah, I’ll think less of you because frankly, you are. You’re stuck with the mindset of a 5 year old
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I think this conversation is way more black and white than it needs to be.
You can love and respect someone while thinking that that one belief is really stupid. In fact shockingly stupid. (Not saying religion is shockingly stupid)
I am sure, your best friend once said something or did something that you judged them for negatively. Made you think less of them. While loving them as a whole.
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Yeah the child thing is embarrassingly the kind of thought process that a child would have. An adult can’t be flawed, is famously a thing a lot of children think of their parents at first. And it isn’t proper, which is why I said the conversation doesn’t have to be so black and white. Ironically this paragraph isn’t nice either.
I am not sure if “thinking less of them” should be read as “less than me”.
Anyway I don’t have an issue with you. I just thought the conversation is very hostile when your point seems to be about appreciating others and welcoming difference. It seems to be a waste of your energy and time.
Take care!
Edit: if you are wondering why I focused my critic on you. They didn’t seem interested in a conversation anyway. I mean “sky daddy”?
Religion is shockingly stupid. If you weren’t indoctrinated from birth it’s all really fucking weird.
You can think that way but it isn’t what I wanted to say, which is what I said.
No reason to be hostile. You ain’t winning when you are.
I was in no way being hostile. It’s just a statement of fact.
Today is Monday, the temperature outside is 47F, and believing religion is stupid.
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