American Christians are insane. All the churches where I live (Sweden) are pro immigration and were a huge help during the 2015 immigration crisis. They point to the parable of the good Samaritan where Jesus meets a Samaritan who is not just a foreigner, he believes in a blasphemous religion to boot. But nevertheless Jesus helps him. If Jesus helped a foreigner of a rivalling religion then why shouldn't the modern day church help muslim syrians.
You might be crossing some stories there's the Samaritan woman at the well, which he has a conversation with a Samaritan woman and asks for help getting water from Jacob's Well. There's also the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story jesus created about a who stops and helps the person on the road beaten by robbers after 2 jewish people, a priest and a levite, pass the beaten man by, citing ritual cleanliness or thinking the guy is bait for more robbers.
Still your point stands about both being about treating everyone kindly regardless of nation or religion.
I initially started reading it because it's the most read book in the world and I found it fascinating how old it is. Take into account I was 16-17 and atheist since birth so no religious baggage at all. Some parts were very boring like the one-two pages where it lists the name of every single worker who rebuilt the temple, or the genealogy of Jesus from Adam to himself. But most stories in there were actually quite good and a few made me emotional. I think the book is completely fine if you're simply interested in reading some 2000-3000 year old stories. At the same time you learn to understand western society more as a lot of western morality, even secular morality, is based on things in the bible. A worthwhile read. Can't say the moral of every story is any good though. Like I still think it's insane how god just told the Israelites that they can genocide the whole promised land of the people already living there. It really reminds you of something else happening today... But if you read the bible as stories and not as morals then it's totally fine!
A couple years later I tried reading the Quran but I sadly have to put that at 2/10 dugong skins. The chapters are out of order and Mohammeds personal war conquests and ramblings take up far too much of it and the classic old testament stories are all shortened down and changed. Can't recommend that one too much, but reading another person's summary of it can be enjoyable. Apparently the Quran is written in beautiful Arabic poetry but that's all lost in translation.
It puts it even more into context when you realize the old testament was before the Romans had written laws etc - so it also acted as a standard what to do and what not.
A law book, if you will, but without the clear separation from other stuff, and the threat of a magical being being angry at you for not following it probably helped with a tribe of people being in remote places on behalf of being sheepherders etc.
In Jesus's parable it's the Good Samaritan who helps out the Jewish man who's been beaten and robbed and left for dead, after two supposedly-pious Jews walk on by. So where they weren't even willing to help their "neighbor," the Samaritan helps his "enemy."
I suppose a nitpicking Evangelical could claim it only means they should have helped the person of their own religion, and that particular Samaritan was "one of the good ones" like the few people who are useful to you and semi-exempt from your general racism. They'd be wrong, of course.
The Catholic Church and several of the mainline Christian denominations (Episcopal, UCC, Presbyterian, plus Unitarian which isn't 100% Christian) have been helpful to immigrants, including undocumented people, in these trying times. Not to say they don't have their own problems, in history and the present.
The average American knows nothing about the middle east beyond Israel and what little they know of the bible. Trying to explain to them that every country in the region has an ancient and generally at least somewhat protected Christian population is gonna be really difficult.
The average American knows nothing about anything past their town boundary, though they claim much more.
The average American Christian believes that countries and religion exist in a 1:1 relationship and that our own founding fathers would decry our wicked acceptance of non Christian beliefs.
Churches aren't generally like that here in Australia. Although that is a generalisation.
I could really get behind a community group that practiced Jesus more socialist teachings, even though I'm not into the spiritual aspects.
Churches here do support local communities but it's usually very targeted: we might give you some frozen meals provided that you play along with the spritual & religious stuff.
Christians in the US used to be this way. All the way through the first half of the 20th century the majority of protestants in the US were Socialist or Socialist adjacent as you describe. It was only through the state co-opting their movement and the radicals within it merging with the "America First" crowd around WWII that we got the current Christan nationalist movement..
When you're MAGA, or white Christian nationalist, or part of any exclusive cult, really, then everyone on the outside is an NPC.
Seriously. Dialog among MAGAs and Christian nationalists is dipping into discussions of genocide and evacuations rather than deportation. Liberals are very much on the list.
They've driven off the #IVotedForThis cliff and are now plummeting into the abyss.
11 And Jesus said unto them, "Verily, blessed are the rich, for they have earned their righteousness, but away with the poor, for they are a burden upon the realm. And if a stranger cometh from across the border, seek not to break bread with him, but demand first his papers and cast him out into the wilderness. For I say unto thee: Worship Mammon above all else, for Compassion yieldeth no return on investment."
There are, in fact, online efforts to revise the bible to reflect post-Fifield conservative values. I'll leave it to the reader to find them by websearch.
The lolcat bible is now defunct, but the Wikipedia page has a link to the wayback machine copy.
I don't know if I've told this joke in this community before, but here goes. A man is driving through Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. He comes across a fallen tree and stops. Before he knows what's happening, men in balaclavas and with automatic rifles are shouting at him and banging on the window of his car.
"Are you a catholic or a protestant?" One of the masked men asks. The man in the car, knows the wrong answer could get him shot.
"I'm an atheist." Says the man.
"Are you catholic atheist or a protestant atheist?" Shouts the masked man.
I strongly suspect a lot of American Christians aren't particularly religious. Instead they're using religious affiliation, and Christian symbols, as signifiers of an ethnic/sectarian identity. That's why the man in the post above, doesn't care about non-white Christians, doesn't care about what the bible says he should do, and likely doesn't care that his leaders are often immoral people who regularly commit blasphemy and heresy. For him being a Christian means belonging to a white protestant American ethnic group, that God is on their side, and not much more.
It's fundamentally not that different to Ratko Mladić, who had previously been a longstanding and reputable member of the communist party, and who people said wasn't religious, claiming he was defending Christianity against Islam when he became the Butcher of Bosnia. Or Putin, the former KGB operative, claiming he's defending Christian values against Western decadence in Ukraine.
Church is by far the biggest third place. It's Christian Club where people hang out with other community members a couple hours a week, and in a healthy Church it can result in very powerful, positive, and effective community building. You can have millionaires and grocery bangers treating each other as equals prepping for a BBQ or singing in the choir.
The religion itself often ends up being quietly secondary to the community building, and I still don't know what replaces the Church for the non-religious. I've been to gatherings of like-minded people that weren't Church, but the regularity and diversity of people in a healthy Church (regardless of the specific faith) is something I haven't seen elsewhere, and I do think it's something that can be good for society.
I knew the CEO of a pretty big corporation who was in Sunday School classes with ex-cons and burger flippers, and that experience made them all see each other in a different light that was good for everyone. It taught the poor and the powerful that they were all just people. It made the powerless more willing to stand up to their "betters" and the powerful more empathetic to people who weren't as fortunate.
Yeah as an outsider, the big welcoming social club aspect of religion is a big appeal.
I wonder if part of the reason it works when regular social clubs often don't is because of the "obligatory attendance" part. A lot of people have some great memories of school for instance, which is another place where all the attendees are obligated to attend even though the actual events that are hosted there are often boring as fuck. Maybe there's some kind of camaderie due to that, "We're all stuck here together with him/her" *gestures up at the teacher/pastor*
While at an actual social club, the socializing itself is the main reason for being there, and that means socializing can easily become a chore, rather than an escape.
The religion itself often ends up being quietly secondary to the community building, and I still don't know what replaces the Church for the non-religious.
What can act as community hubs are very dependant of the community, but really don't need to relate to religion. Especially if they serve as hub for people from different religious backgrounds
Aside from the places linked to religious activity, from any religion, the places that come to my mind, partly from my own experience, are:
Local dedicated community centers, where they exist.
Associations & clubs (the sport of school kind, not gentlemen's clubs)
Sometimes shops.
The best community hub I used to go to was actually a "booksshop" dealing in mangas, anime, video games, and tabletop games. They often organised nocturnal tabletop gaming events. The shop served as a social hub even outside of these events, and the community was a safe place for some us not "misfits" (special interest nerds, LGBTQIA+ teens and adults, etc).
In other words, any community driven or community focused place or organisation can serve as a meaningful cosmopolitan social hub. People will gravitate naturally toward the hub·s centered around their interests. (Be it a religion, a sport, a social cause, a subculture, etc.)
As religion has declined, the vast majority of people who used to go to church weekly haven't replaced that by attending other community groups. And the "interest" part also fundamentally changes the nature of it. People going to church were often going there out of a sense of obligation. Parents don't drag their kids to the comic shop and make them hang out with people.
As religion has declined, the vast majority of people who used to go to church weekly haven't replaced that by attending other community groups.
religion != going to christian a church or temple
even practicing christians can have their own way of practicing
non-religious people and secular social gatherings are much older than christian churches, and far more than any US church
how can can you even claim "the vast majority of people who used to go to church weekly haven't replaced that by attending other community groups" ?
And the "interest" part also fundamentally changes the nature of it.
Yes, but what's your point?
People going to church were often going there out of a sense of obligation.
I don't know enough about the sociology behind this.
However, this sense of obligation can also apply to gatherings not related to any christian church. Peer pressure and other social norms are not reserved to religious groups from the christian family of religions, nor to any religious or ideological group.
Parents don't drag their kids to the comic shop and make them hang out with people.
Are you sure? I agree that not usual regarding a comic shop specically, but it still can happen. If not parents, other family members or friends can force someone into the forceful one's favourite gathering evenet/place. The place can be a comic shop. I actually have been pressured by someone to participate to a very private cultural club regrouping a fraction of the community I talked about. That "someone" was a member of the club, but didn't even ask other members consent before shoehorning me in. The club session didn't take place in the shop, but in some members' homes. Most accepted me, but still... others and I were forced to interact in this situations, and the only thing that helped is that we already interacted spontaneously and positively at several previous encounters.
Parents do indeed drag their kids to non religious social hubs and make them hang out with people :
family events
village / town events
events with friends or colleagues
public or private ceremonies (marriages, veteran ceremonies, etc)
public events (fireworks, ball, promotional events, anything really)
sports, cultural, or other clubs, even when none of the parents is a member of the club
rallyes (the aristocrat networking event, not the vehicle race.)
Friends or relatives from the same generation can also do the same, to the same kind of hubs, plus others like nightclubs and their afterwork equivalent (that matches "events with friends or colleagues", but the noise and the mass of people adds much stress for some.)
I've personnally experienced most of that when I was a child / teen, and still experience part of it. And although I was a roman catholic as a child, the only times this forced socialisation happened linked to church activities were linked to marriages, communions, baptism or funeral. I never took part in catechism, nor in periodic masses, or any parish event. That didn't prevent me from finding a community. Actually, social norms and obligations were and still are one of the biggests obstacles preventing me from participating in significant way in a community. The others are social fears/anxiety, and poor mental health. (Due to working and living conditions degradation, as well as to the socio-ecological context, and the economics and politics that cause all of this. I hate the greed for any kind of domination, and the oppression and exploitation this greed encourages.)
Anyway, I don't understand your point about the "obligation" incentive, and the forced participation. It wasn't part of the discussions when I first answered, so it's not a point I discussed either.
Communities and social interactions, wether linked to any religion or not, can and will happen without external constraints.
The absence of pressure is even better. Forced social interactions are at best awkward and tiring. I usually find these abusives. They also implies power dynamics that will probably lead to further suffering, toxicity, or (potentially very serious) abuses. We should not encourage the use of religion as a domination system (or any such system really) to force and structure social interactions and community.
That forced social obligation angle is an important if weird part of how churches benefit society in non-religious ways. People who only ever do what they want when they want end up in isolation bubbles.
As attendance at churches has plummeted while the remaining churches have politicized, people have replaced those communities on social media, which have algorithmically placed them in echo chambers.
And occasionally hanging out with friends is not participating in a third place like a church. They no longer regularly socialize with hundreds of community members they otherwise would never speak with. And that is a loss. It's one reason people are increasingly lonely.
Inknow people who are stuck in dead-end careers and hate their lives whonreally should just move somewhere else, but they're afraid to because they have like 5 people in the world they're close to, and literally don't knkw how they'd find a new socialmgroup if they moved across the country. The answer to that used to be to move to a new area, start attending church, and meet people.
You seem to misunderstand my two previous comments. Reread carefully, and don't hesitate to ask for precisions or complementary explanations about what I said.
Also remember that contrary to some people's belief:
atheism is not a recent thing
secular communities that can influence a whole society have not waited the 20th or 21th century either
christian churches didn't exist before the 1st century. The world without it was not a hellhole without any community, solidarity, or any beneficial value.
christians churches are a model only to people whose personal culture was heavily influenced by any christian culture. Other social and cultural systems have other models.
That forced social obligation angle is an important if weird part of how churches benefit society in non-religious ways.
That's not at all specific to churches, nor does it only produces beneficial consequences for society. (Domination systems pose many societal problems, some deadly.)
People who only ever do what they want when they want end up in isolation bubbles.
I don't agree with that statement. That doesn't match the acts of solidarity and socialisation I witnessed.
As attendance at churches has plummeted while the remaining churches have politicized, people have replaced those communities on social media,
Or not. Offline social hubs, politicized or not, and old school online social hubs still exist. Aside frop those I cited before, bars / pubs / cafés are still social hubs. The workplace is one too, at least in places where workers can have purely personal interactions with their colleagues.
By the way, politisation is not inherently bad, and the politisation of churches is as old as churches. Charity is political, preaching is political, clergy is in a way a political organisation. Hell, countries like the USA or France have law separating the "State" from the "Church" precisely because of the history of political ingerence from religious organisations like the roman catholic Church or the anglican Church.
which have algorithmically placed them in echo chambers.
Which difference with a community of churchgoers ? The religious belief systems, combined to the rules dictated by the clergy and peer pressure, can also cause an echo chamber. Any kind of community can become an echo chamber. Predatory communication media on internet (including the so called "social networks" or "social media") are indeed efficient at maintaining very-large-scale echo chambers that transcend geography.
And occasionally hanging out with friends is not participating in a third place like a church.
Agreed, but I cited this only as an exemple of possible forced interactions. They can however lead to create or participate in what you call "a third place".
They no longer regularly socialize with hundreds of community members they otherwise would never speak with.
Very probably false. Your statement is, once again, based on the assumption that church was and still is the sole purveyor of motivation to socialise, form communities, help each other, etc. That has never been true.
And that is a loss. It's one reason people are increasingly lonely.
Irrelevant since the premise is false. I didn't rigrously studied socilogy meta-studies on the subject, and you didn't either considering how you phrase your statements, but I'm pretty sure the so called "loneliness epidemic" does not count the decrease in church attendance (or the secularisation of most christian dominated societies) as a significant cause. I'm sure these may share common causes, though.
Inknow people who are stuck in dead-end careers and hate their lives whonreally should just move somewhere else, but they're afraid to because they have like 5 people in the world they're close to, and literally don't knkw how they'd find a new socialmgroup if they moved across the country. The answer to that used to be to move to a new area, start attending church, and meet people.
You almost had it. The church part was only one possibility among athoers. For some people, avoiding any church at all costs was a solution.
Because contrary to how you portray churches and their communities, these are not paragons of happiness, fulfilment, or benefits to society. Some communities may be mostly beneficial, some mostly detrimental. On the whole a common aspect of religions is control : religions can be viewed as systems of belief or systems of social cohesion, sure, but they also can be viewed as systems of domination. You yourself mention that aspect when talking about the obligations.
Systems of domination are never beneficial to society. They are beneficial only to the few at the top of these systems. These are the main tool enabling all kind of abuses :
rapes and other sexual abuses are most often related to domination. Which international organisation related to our discussion is infamous for enabling many such abuses, and covering them ? The roman catholic Church. (Other cults are also infamous for that.)
ethnic cleansings, wars, colonisation, racism, are related to domination. Religious beliefs and organisations have been contributors to all of these. ("Missions", religious wars, crusades, etc) The driving factor being greed for money and power, capitalism and its ancestries and variants can often be the main contributor, but religion provides tools and "workforce" for these processes.
minorities that stray to far from the societal "norms" are often oppressed by the dominant groups (in terms of power and influence in the societyn not in terms of demography). Such minorities include non cisgender people, as well as gender non-conforming cisgender people. You know what is an hostile environnement to these groups ? Most churches and their communities.
non exhaustive list
For oppressed groups, churches cannot be a solution if they and their church-affiliated communities are part of the oppressors. Are they condemned to be isolated though ? No. They can find a sense of community, belonging, support, solidarity, an contribute to benefit the society as a whole, and chruches are not to thank for that. Mostly, autosupport organisations are their main salvation. Can these be echo chambers ? Depending of the subject, of course, like any community. Can they suffer from social media ? Yup, because their oprresor are dominant there too, but autosupport groups can also exploit the less predatory ones to help extend their group, and thus their ability to support each other and defy oppression.
Tl;dr : even when talking about community, belonging, solidarity, benefical impact, etc, churches are not the center of the world, nor the main model. Churches can even be an obstacle.
90+% of people used to attend church weekly. What percentage of non-churchgoers (religious or not) have replaced that time with weekly attendance at other community gatherings?
Yes - many things can theoretically fill that void, but they don't. For the most part, people aren't replacing religious community involvement with non-religious community involvement. As church attendance has declined, people have largely stopped being involved in the community on a regular basis.
Sometimes they use it as a "I'm a good person" billboard.
Used to know someone like that. Cut them off for other reasons (basically the reasons they were on a "I'm better now" campaign), but he even bragged to me (not religious at all and don't pretend to be) about going to church multiple times a week. The whole time he was making his situation worse because he's an asshole and just going to a building with other people and doing cult stuff doesn't stop you from being an asshole (hell, some seem to think it gives them permission and that righting their wrongs can be done by talking to a priest that has nothing to do with the people who were actually wronged).
Yup. Some people go to church because they know something's wrong with them, but there's a lot of churches out there whose approach to people like that is to validate them and tell them they're de facto in the right because they're Saved. Makes them ten times worse.
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
For NI It comes down to politics culture and religion. The IRA wasn't blowing up Belfast and London because they rejected the pope and the shankil butchers weren't asking if the men they picked up if they would consider going to a bible study. People found an excuse to carry out there tasks and used religion as an excuse to justify it.
It's also because of religion being an easy stand in for an existing class system because religion had been used as a signifier of class by the oppressors.
That's not to say protestants and Catholics haven't massacred each other solely over religion, but that's more the 30 years war
Poly-religious groups take a page from the LGBT+ community:
Someone is what they identify themselves as. In the last decade or so, with the internet came an enormous lexicon of terms describing different kinds of sexual and gender identities. Sometimes we have to remind someone that the list it to help figure out what they, themselves identify as, not to correct other people based on looks, behavior or disposition.
In fact, Russel T. Davies created a series, Bob & Rose about a gay man who falls in love with a woman, and how they, neighbors, relatives and onlookers process the dissonance between identity and behavior. It's a thing that happens.
When it comes to Christians, they're very fond of accusing each other from different denominations of not-really being Christian. Sometimes they'll suggest a certain behavior or accompanying identity (such as gay or liberal) excludes them from being a real Christian, but I remember in the 1970s and 1980s that a difference in denomination was more than enough for accusations of being deceived by Great Satan (All hail!)
So, non-Christian and poly-religious groups can assume that anyone who identifies as Christian counts. No matter what their actual doctrine is. It also keeps us in the habit of not presuming they adhere to the passages and creeds we expect or have seen elsewhere.
They are more concerned if they will become pariahs in their own group. They aren't really asking what the right thing to do is, they are asking "will this get me in trouble?"
Tribalism seems to be an inate part of human character.
Not to say it's a good thing, just that we all have a tendency at a level which is not rational to find comfort and safety in the similar and familiar whilst distrusting and be uncomfortable with the dissimilar and unfamiliar.
You see this shit at all levels of human groups, not just "nations" and "races" but even "small town hostility towards strangers".
IMHO, NOT being a Racist (genuinelly so, not the performative shit of some people who think they're not Racist because, say, they support specific races which are a minority where they live because in their social circle that's what you're supposed to do and yet at the same time implicitly distrust people from other specific races for which there is no social approval - for example, "supporting Jews" whilst thinking that "Muslims are violent") is actually an active thing were one has to spot one's own internal tendency to make prejudicial assumptions based on people's appearance (both positive and negative assumptions - people's race neither makes them inherently better nor inherently worse) and stop oneself from making such assumptions or at least from acting on them.
The scribe quoted "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and then, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
"You have answered correctly" Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."
The scribe then asked "And who is my neighbor?"
Jesus replied "It is whoever you are hoping I don't say it is."
While I love this humanitarian part about loving everyone, the important part is that who is being excluded here.
Because obviously maga wants to exclude foreigners, everyone else here wants to either exclude maga folks or religious folks.
So the question to you, my friend, are you really ready to start loving maga folks or are you trying to set up a standard that even you are unable to reach?
Or maybe you are even worse -- a real scum of the earth trying to expose contradictions in others, and using them as a proof for your moral superiority
Oh no no no, you can call everyone a hypocrite today. This doesn't change things a bit. This leads to a spike in moral superiority in your bubble and that's it.
If you're struggling with the distinction between pointing out hypocrisy and a claim of moral superiority then you're going to spend a lot of time being confused and/or upset.
100% Seconded. It's....odd to have to chime in on something like this but I really agree. Exhibitional stupidity, paraded proudly, like a peacock whose feathers were ill-informed words. Sadly, the internet is referred to as a medium; shitheads like this are neither rare nor well-done.
Who is excluding maga? I want everyone (including maga) to have Healthcare, education, workers rights, etc. I wouldn't go as far as "loving" but sure as he'll not excluding them.
I use "excluding" here in the meaning where you imagine that life without maga would be better. "If only tens of millions of the us American hadn't voted for the orange turd"-thinking vs "if only the us was white christian"-thinking.
Excluding people because of their conscious choices and actions is something that basically every human organization and government does on a daily basis.
Excluding people because of racial/religious labels is something bigots do and it is often illegal for the organizations mentioned above to do it.
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
Some of them will do some impressive backflips to argue that "of there's means Christians only. Because of the "brothers and sisters of mine" bit, it only means they have to be good to their in-group. Nevermind the canonical answer to "who is my neighbor?"
Years ago I had a Christian acquaintance argue with a straight face that the part of the Bible that says all of humanity is God's children and deserve his love, actually only means straight white American Christian protestants. Mind you, this is someone who has gone on foreign missions for her church.
When I calmly retorted that Jesus himself said all of humanity deserves love and protection, citing the passages in OP's post, she accused me of "twisting the word of God to include heathens and foreigners". I mentioned the Good Samaritan parable, in which the titular character is neither Jewish nor local to the area, yet was the hero of Jesus' story, she got even angrier. I had to walk away at that point, there is no sense in arguing with a fence post.
She accused me of misinterpreting the word of her God by literally quoting it word for word, all while she was the one wildly twisting it to suit her racist and evil views. It truly boggles the mind.
That's a classic example of evil seeking an excuse. The religion telling her to be different is offensive because what it actually says is of no importance. Her specifically chosen reading of it is all she cares about.
This is why I laugh loudly and from the belly when the old "atheists have no spiritual guide to frame morality" chestnut rears its head in any conversation.
Well, it's a simple question. Where do your loyalties lie? Like one of your guitar guys (Johnny Mellencamp) said back in the 1980's...'You've gotta stand for something or you'll fall for anything'.
So why were those lists in Spanish? Honest question, I don't get it. Or were they in both English and Spanish and this person has "conveniently" missed the English version?
A close friend is a Lopez. She's Puerto Rican and Taíno. When she joined the fire department, when filling out forms, under race they resorted to Hispanic surname.
Also a decent chunk of the country used to be part of Mexico. I don't know why someone would be surprised that a Martinez would be an American citizen when Los Angeles is an American city
These kinds of organizations intentionally withhold the names of the donees from the donors.
Yeah, it is very important, no matter who the donee is, or why they are getting help. Who the fuck wants it known, that they need aid? Especially now society is incredibly cruel to those, struggling with misfortune. That might even prevent people, from seeking help, which then leads to all sorts of issues - and not only for that individual. And one of the other reasons obviously being, it gives the ones, like that moron pictured, possibility of finding them, with evil intent.
Why would that be bait? I'm speaking as a multilingual person who has lived in multiple countries. Even if you never study a day of that language, you are quickly going to learn how to refer to common objects and use basic verbs.
I do not know that Matt von something... is him known?
The author could be genuinely stupid, but is there really no hope he be just inventing the story to help christians steping out of nationalism?
I am not religious at all, but I think religious people reading him are pushed to a sentiment of anger toward the logic he describes which gives more importance to the hate toward migrants than to the religious duties... And he writes a bit too well to really ask what he should do in that case. Isn't it?
The namesake in the stories was radical, an outcast, single 30 year old who rested his head on fave buddy's chest after meals, treated women equally, healed the centurion's lover back home, turn the other cheek, last will be first, all are welcome, and anti-establishment/hierarchies that make impossible demands on people. Decades later, when the men wrote the NT to match the OT as needed, small groups tried to keep women included, but the power structure groups became the large ones, that Rome later used for their means.
Right place at the right time to spread quickly, story details compiled from thousands of years of supernatural oral traditions, to appeal to many and not exclusive like ethnic groups so anyone could join. Some modern churches are welcoming and that's great. Ideally they also teach human caused Holocene extinction, nothing coming to fix the climate crisis and need to cooperate globally for all the climate refugees to minimize suffering however possible, like the namesake would do, if they choose to read it that way. They should also welcome Sagan's baloney detection kit to openly discuss all topics.
Jesus also commanded you to "live like a bird in the field" and to give away all of your possessions, to focus your entire existence here and now on your future life in Heaven. Here and now, on Earth, is the realm of Lucifer, and shouldn't concern you.
Also, Jesus said that if you have lustful thoughts, you should cut your balls off. Christians cut their balls off for many centuries.
I almost got into a fight with a Christian the other day.
He’d insulted a woman for no reason & I called him on it.
He then followed me around the store. When I loudly told him to get the fuck away from me he said he wouldn’t. I ended up asking him to step outside.
While I would have gladly beat the shit out of him, the problems it would bring just aren’t worth it, especially not because of this douche.
I could tell he was expecting a fight so when we were nearing the door I told him to come around the corner & talk.
You know how you can tell when really dumb, obviously lonely, bigots start shaking when the adrenaline hits? It was clear he was ready to explode so when I started to talk in a calm voice he seemed super confused.
I told him that it was a dick move to insult the woman. He responded brilliantly with “Well at least I don’t use the F WORD!” as if language pegs people as sinners. I explained, calmly, that using that language is part of my commitment to authenticity & that the way I used it, saying get the fuck away from me, was not considered fighting words. Thinking on it, that’s probably the opposite of fighting words.
My minor in Religious Studies came in handy &, this might piss some of you off to learn that I’m now a polytheist. I’ve always been an amateur scientist & was agnostic until about 5 years ago. A few concrete spiritual experiences with several different deities or messengers of different spiritual systems I’ve had led me to understand that, for me, God or a higher power or whatever works for you is the universe, our collective consciousness, & basically everything.
Most of the experiences were with Egyptian Gods but also Aztec & Finnish Paganism. & actually Christian which was definitely not expected. But the gist is that I have my own personal spiritualism & personal relationships with these messengers & actually know my shit.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to push it on you. I only suggest you find what works for you & let other people choose their’s.
So I, of course, asked what Jesus would say about insulting some rando.
I watched his eyes roll back leaving a tiny crescent of iris, the space between his scraggly eyebrows, with this one weird extra hair that was just begging (BEGGING) to be plucked, crinkle into a search for any remaining crumbling bits of frontal, let alone prefrontal, cortex, & his mouth drop open.
It was pitiful really.
Watching this grown-ass man try to figure out what to say that could show he was right & just keep thinking “Nope, not that one. Noooo, that doesn’t work, nuh-uh, damn!” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera was akin to watching the slowing struggles of a duck hit by a car &, despite rushing them to the emergency vet 5 blocks away, they pass right before your eyes.
Yeah. That sucked.
So I interrupted the creaking, rusty mechanical gears’ fruitless attempt to conjure up something, anything, by explaining that Jesus told us to love each other with agape, which is basically love for humankind itself & all its members.
His response made clear that he hadn’t read his scripture. I was nearly dumbstruck when he actually said:
“WELL, WE’RE ALLOWED TO CORRECT THEM [other people]!!!”
Nearly.
I realized he was a Fox News Christian who worships talking tv heads more than he understands the true words & meaning of what he claims is his religion.
I explained the general meaning of:
• Matthew 7:3–5 (NIV): "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ... First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Basically, before you shit on someone else, check to see if you’re going to get shit on & maybe take steps to prevent that from happening to you any more rather than impose the same thing on another person.
It went on. He tried to argue a couple times & was an easy mark. In the end, I think I got slightly through enough to get him to feel kinda confused to learn that Jesus wasn’t an asshole elitist. He was obviously surprised when I held out my hand & thanked him for talking outside. I like to blow their mind that way.
I do NOT believe a person should subscribe to a religion. Doing so just closes you off to the rest of this incredible world, makes a person subservient, & instills the views & interpretations of the priest or pastor, or whoever leads a congregation.
But if you, for some terrible reason, decide to do so, do what I told my fifth graders when teaching writing.
~~The fictional character Sister Fidelma, written by historian Peter Tremayne, is a nun of the celtic Christian church in Ireland before the catholic church got more influence. And she was a lawyer, had fully studied law by the rules of the time being. She was, by the law of the country back then, even a judge for minor, local cases. Sometimes she was conflicted between the teachings of the church and the law, and decided for the law. In one of the early novels that paint a picture of the course of her life, her professional career, her marriage to a monk, Tremayne writes down her final decision: If there should be a future situation in which she has to give up either her status as a nun or her status as a lawyer, she would decide for being a lawyer. Because, the more the church becomes an enemy of the human rights she believed in, the more it wouldn't be her church anymore.
As everyone loving human rights, she often has to decide between what is right and what is easy. E.g. when a local princeps fucks his daughters. Being a true believer can be life threatening. Remember the spiritual: Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home. True believer. Sometimes I feel like I'm almost gone, like I'm all alone. True believer.~~
Some wear their cross on their breast, some on their back.
This is not representative of christians around the world. It isn't even representative of christians in the US. You are highlighting evil/uninformed behavior and increasing its harm.
Why would an atheism community highlight Christians just chilling? Block it if you don’t like seeing nonbelievers kvetch about jackass religious people.
Atheism isn't "about" anything. It's the lack of belief in a god, gods, or spiritual beings. There is no doctrine or institution, that's the point. The community making fun of dumb believers seems on-brand, imo, especially when they're a huge part of the acceleration towards fascism around the world. Christian nationalists are a threat, and showing them as the hypocritical morons they are pushes back against their hatred.
It's about being allowed to not believe in God, I'd say. Beware of the ultra nationalist American is much different from not believing or believing in the being no god.
It's just the branding that annoys me. If this was called lunatic Ville it would be accurate and fine. What's inside ain't memes or atheists being atheists after all.
Ex-Christian here. Your points are mostly well taken; I just think you wildly misjudge how Christianity is seen from outside, and how these days its spokepersons are by default the worst-behaved among you because the "good" ones never get the mic, or don't take it.
Atheists, including myself, come from the entire spectrum of religious experience, all the way from no religion whatsoever to that little church down in the backwoods of the South whose members eat, drink, and sleep religion, absolutely certain that they alone, and no one else, are going to be part of that 144,000 because not only did they not really read it, they don't math.
There is no such denominator as "atheists being atheists" anywhere. I was deeply into it for thirty-five years and am even more deeply grateful every day I wake up that I am out of that mental jail. Someone else might have endured ongoing manipulation, cruelty, ostracization, or even outright abuse from religious groups. Someone else might be none of the above and just think we're all a disparate group of loons that were either born wise (always atheist) or somehow came to our senses.
There is NO one size fits all. There is NO one kind of atheist. There is NO "atheists being atheists" sitting around talking about a hole in the universe where they see nothing and you see your god. THERE IS NO ATHEIST BRANDING.
This thread is quite mild compared to some I've seen. You seem to have the totality of atheism confused with what sounds like one person's individual kneejerk reaction to their own bad case of Christianity. And you've dared to define for a group of atheists what atheism is. Selah.
You know what I don't post about? My dad. Still Christian. He's laid back. He wasn't sure about things like LGBT+ but he's generally an accepting guy, and as US culture has grown more accepting, so has he. He doesn't give me shit about religion - feels it's one of those things that everyone has to decide what to do for themselves.
So I don't post about him, or talk about his religion much, because it's fine.
I do talk about the Christians who try and shit on our human rights, though, because that has real consequences. And talking about it lets us vent and let off some steam, finding community in our shared experiences.
Like many places where people complain about bad things, you shouldn't necessarily read them complaining about the shitty parts of a subject as them complaining about the entire subject.
For the Christians who are following the teachings of Jesus - what he actually purportedly said and taught - good on yer, we ain't complaining about you (well, most of us probably aren't).
I tend to believe that ALL religion is generally bad. But I look at Sikhs for example - those folks are not perfect, I'm sure, but you see story after story after story about them helping fellow humans - offering free food no questions asked - taking care of people. I aspire to be like that, religion or no.
For the Christians doing that? Awesome, you rock. Those are not the Christians we're generally bitching about.
You might see............ minorities bitching about racism or women bitching about toxic male culture. #notallwhites and #notallmen - just don't take offense if you're not one of the bad ones.
Right? It's a god damn shame that I have sane and compassionate friends and family who get lumped in with these lunatics.
Assholes who exist just to be assholes will reach for any excuse they can hook their fangs into and suck the life out of it. Narcissists don't care about what they have to defile if it means they get to keep getting a pass for it. And the people who've been abused by them keep seeking abusers and emulating them, because they've had any critical thought or independence wrung out of them until their souls are bone dry and flattened into fragile and paper-thin rehearsals of rage. And then they go out looking for fights because the constructed social paradigm falls apart if they're ever anything BUT the fucking victims.
I hate cults. I hate the people who start them, run them, and perpetuate them. And I hate that they turn their victims into more conspirators to keep the scam running.
I’ve never met a Christian who acted like Jesus. I have however been told at the age of 12 while in a crowded room full of Christians that I need to disown my lesbian parents or I would go to hell. And the people in the room backed this person up.
The people who forced my tribe to move from Georgia to Oklahoma on foot in winter also claimed to have been given that land from god.
Religion is a disease that brings out the worst in people.
If you're a true follower of christ, the correct response here would be "I agree, the temptation of sin and Satan is stronger than ever and I do all I can to remind my fellows in faith of the path Jesus has already laid out for us, which includes loving and caring for all of our neighbors as our own, and I remind those straying from the path that we can deceive ourselves, but not God, and I speak out so that their transgressions do not corrupt our message."
Instead you get defensive and whine and develop a persecution complex while ignoring that us heathens follow your faiths basic teachings better than you and don't need the threat of eternal damnation to do it. I'm agnostic and haven't read the bible since grade school, and I can guarantee I'll walk through the pearly gates before your entire congregation does if the Christians end up being right when I kick the bucket.
Sincerely hope the light of the lord can find you in this time of doubt in the faith and bring you away from your current life of sin 🙏
It is representative of most people who call themselves Christians, but not the ones who actually care about being decent. The latter group seems in the minority.
If the preponderance of American Christians were not like the person in the OP, I think we would live in a different, better, world.
Are you a Christian? I was a very serious Catholic until my early 20s. I found the doctrine to lack an intellectual rigor, though, and became disillusioned. I don't want to argue with you about the existence of God, I've got that out of my system long ago. What do you think about the very public Christians of today, who encourage us to hate and to disregard our fellow man? It's a sad state of affairs, isn't it? Public Christianity and American Capitalism are intertwined at this point. Doesn't it disgust you? It disgusts me. Even though I no longer believe in a God, I think many of the teaching of the church are good. Even though I no longer see myself as a part of it, I am still saddened when I see the Christian doctrine exploited by these pigs.
The current Pope is a step in the right direction, but I, an American, know self-described Catholics who hate him and say he's wrong. Isn't that something? I tell them that they are heretics but it doesn't matter to them. Again, I'm an apostate, but I find their attitude extremely offensive!
In 2020-2021 I was following Kristin Kobes Du Mez during her book tour for Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation and this took me on a rabbit hole of Evangelical sociologists following the rise of white Christian nationalism in the US.
Curiously, white Christian nationalism is a sect that intersects with multiple denominations. Most of them are fundamentalist Christian, though some of them are conservative branches of mainlines like Methodists or Roman Catholics. The conservative majority of SCOTUS, for instance, are all Catholic, and white Christian nationalist. (They're also members of the Federalist Society and were selected by Leonard Leo. It's a tight club.)
But one of the predictions I remember hearing multiple times is that white Christian nationalism will deliver a fell blow to the Body of Christ (to all of Christendom), as Christians everywhere will be judged by the actions and behaviors of those within the white Christian nationalist movement.
This was before the Seven Mountain Mandate, but around when pressure from ministries convinced the state of Uganda to make aggravated homosexuality a capital crime. (According to Wikipedia, legislature was passed in 2023)
Similarly, we expect all Americans are going to be judged for the wrongdoings of MAGA and the Trump regime, including the atrocities currently being committed by ICE or the US armed forces. Just as all Germans were held at fault internationally for the wrongdoings of the Nazis and the German Reich. (Since we expect the US to default on its debt and the collapse of the economy, it's going to suck, and not a single soul outside the US is going to want to help us as we starve.)
Already, alphas and zoomers are steering clear of Christianity for its association with Trump. Those who are being raised in Christian families and communities are, in record numbers, looking to escape and deconstruct. Christianity is now linked by association with family abuse, much with the help of the publicity of the white Christian nationalist movement, which commonly advises authoritarian household organization and parenting.
So, sure. #NotAllChristians. On the other hand, liberal ministries are now tiny, with many of their flock from the twentieth century turning into nones or outright atheists. And mainline Christian ministries still show an awful lot of hate towards women and LGBT+.
This isn't fully reflected in their congregations, who are a lot more divided on these issues, but it really doesn't help that the ministers and elders are on the side of bigotry. That positions them closer to the white Christian nationalists than it does the rest of liberal society.
Personally. I follow some Christians who believe in liberal civilization and universal civil rights. I know who the Universalists are. Yet the preachers and influencers of the Christian nationalist movement are having their voice amplified by the far-right propaganda machine. They're getting sponsorship from the oligarchs who want to dismantle democracy and literally take over the world. And this is going to inform what the general public thinks about Christians, and Christianity as a whole.
I'd say Christianity is going to wane and go through an unpopular phase, but between the conquest ambitions of the ultra wealthy; the threat of nuclear escalation or a Trump Nero Decree; the threat of AI escaping confinement and turning on humanity; or the world running out of water, the decline and fall of a given religious tradition might not matter too much.
Prettyuch exactly, but European Christians are not that affected by these issues. They are mostly aOK with LGBT etc. And representation of Christianity here is zero hate.
Christianity is a faith that changes based on where you are to meat you halve way. Look at the Catholic Church being torn apart by this.
It's a core part of the end-times fascism springing up all around us as an answer to the current world crises by trying to evade them altogether for some religious fantasy world.
Let's just have a quick look at the definition of Christian nationalism, shall we? Because I guarantee you that all of these adherents of Christian nationalism not only consider themselves Christians, they consider themselves to be the BEST Christians:
Christian nationalism is an ideology that espouses a form of religious nationalism that focuses on promoting the Christian views of its followers in order to achieve prominence or dominance in political, cultural, and social life.
In countries with a state church, Christian nationalists seek to preserve the status of a Christian state.
Christian nationalism has been observed to overlap with antisemitism, racism and ethnonationalism.
And I can tell you they are none too friendly when it comes to LGBT and trans, either. Even the European ones.
That's why I posted the definition. We're not a community dedicated to religion, here in c/atheism, which is to say we may not be the same "make it up as you go along" types you seem more used to. There is an actual, formal meaning to the terms I linked, and you don't get to exclude Christian nationalists from Christian nationalism.
When you have to rearrange formal, well-understood definitions of social constructs in order to come back at someone saying something you don't like, it's probably time for you to recognize you have no real argument, and are just trolling.
192 Comments
Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz · 197 pts · 1d
American Christians are insane. All the churches where I live (Sweden) are pro immigration and were a huge help during the 2015 immigration crisis. They point to the parable of the good Samaritan where Jesus meets a Samaritan who is not just a foreigner, he believes in a blasphemous religion to boot. But nevertheless Jesus helps him. If Jesus helped a foreigner of a rivalling religion then why shouldn't the modern day church help muslim syrians.
blackbelt352@lemmy.world · 90 pts · 1d
You might be crossing some stories there's the Samaritan woman at the well, which he has a conversation with a Samaritan woman and asks for help getting water from Jacob's Well. There's also the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story jesus created about a who stops and helps the person on the road beaten by robbers after 2 jewish people, a priest and a levite, pass the beaten man by, citing ritual cleanliness or thinking the guy is bait for more robbers.
Still your point stands about both being about treating everyone kindly regardless of nation or religion.
Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz · 27 pts · 1d
Thank you. I certainly mixed it up a bit. It was around 9-10 years ago that I read the bible for fun.
My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world · 17 pts · 1d
On a scale of your choosing, what level of fun did your project achieve?
Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz · 45 pts · 1d
7 out of 10 dugong skins.
I initially started reading it because it's the most read book in the world and I found it fascinating how old it is. Take into account I was 16-17 and atheist since birth so no religious baggage at all. Some parts were very boring like the one-two pages where it lists the name of every single worker who rebuilt the temple, or the genealogy of Jesus from Adam to himself. But most stories in there were actually quite good and a few made me emotional. I think the book is completely fine if you're simply interested in reading some 2000-3000 year old stories. At the same time you learn to understand western society more as a lot of western morality, even secular morality, is based on things in the bible. A worthwhile read. Can't say the moral of every story is any good though. Like I still think it's insane how god just told the Israelites that they can genocide the whole promised land of the people already living there. It really reminds you of something else happening today... But if you read the bible as stories and not as morals then it's totally fine!
A couple years later I tried reading the Quran but I sadly have to put that at 2/10 dugong skins. The chapters are out of order and Mohammeds personal war conquests and ramblings take up far too much of it and the classic old testament stories are all shortened down and changed. Can't recommend that one too much, but reading another person's summary of it can be enjoyable. Apparently the Quran is written in beautiful Arabic poetry but that's all lost in translation.
My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d
(Clapping emoji)
RaphaelSchmitz@feddit.org · 1 pts · 1d
It puts it even more into context when you realize the old testament was before the Romans had written laws etc - so it also acted as a standard what to do and what not.
A law book, if you will, but without the clear separation from other stuff, and the threat of a magical being being angry at you for not following it probably helped with a tribe of people being in remote places on behalf of being sheepherders etc.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
Banana
ProfessorHoover@infosec.pub · 3 pts · 1d
A woman talking to a woman about a well? The Bible passes the bechdel test?
RaphaelSchmitz@feddit.org · 5 pts · 1d
Ahahahaha no.
Jesus talks to the woman.
Admittedly, it's not perfectly clear in the comment you answered to.
Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works · 20 pts · 1d
In Jesus's parable it's the Good Samaritan who helps out the Jewish man who's been beaten and robbed and left for dead, after two supposedly-pious Jews walk on by. So where they weren't even willing to help their "neighbor," the Samaritan helps his "enemy."
I suppose a nitpicking Evangelical could claim it only means they should have helped the person of their own religion, and that particular Samaritan was "one of the good ones" like the few people who are useful to you and semi-exempt from your general racism. They'd be wrong, of course.
The Catholic Church and several of the mainline Christian denominations (Episcopal, UCC, Presbyterian, plus Unitarian which isn't 100% Christian) have been helpful to immigrants, including undocumented people, in these trying times. Not to say they don't have their own problems, in history and the present.
Marthirial@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 1d
My daughter will learn the most scary fucker out there is a White Christian Conservative.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 7 pts · 1d
A lot of Syrian immigrants in the US are christian...
The average american isn't aware that arabic-speaking christian cultures have existed for well over a thousand years...
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 18h
The average American knows nothing about the middle east beyond Israel and what little they know of the bible. Trying to explain to them that every country in the region has an ancient and generally at least somewhat protected Christian population is gonna be really difficult.
GroundedGator@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 9h
The average American knows nothing about anything past their town boundary, though they claim much more.
The average American Christian believes that countries and religion exist in a 1:1 relationship and that our own founding fathers would decry our wicked acceptance of non Christian beliefs.
Redditmodstouchgrass@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 1d
Let me know if they start accepting refugees from America, lol.
im_fine_sandy@nord.pub · 3 pts · 1d
Churches aren't generally like that here in Australia. Although that is a generalisation.
I could really get behind a community group that practiced Jesus more socialist teachings, even though I'm not into the spiritual aspects.
Churches here do support local communities but it's usually very targeted: we might give you some frozen meals provided that you play along with the spritual & religious stuff.
leftOverLife@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 22h
Christians in the US used to be this way. All the way through the first half of the 20th century the majority of protestants in the US were Socialist or Socialist adjacent as you describe. It was only through the state co-opting their movement and the radicals within it merging with the "America First" crowd around WWII that we got the current Christan nationalist movement..
lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world · 129 pts · 1d
Nationalist Chrstians
Nat-C’s, if you will
acockworkorange@mander.xyz · 27 pts · 1d
YOINK!
Captain_Buddha@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
Seconded
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 2 pts · 1d
more like white supremcist christians.
Ashiette@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 9h
So... Nat-C's
vpol@feddit.uk · 74 pts · 1d
Interestingly they never ask for the kid’s immigration status before raping them.
AmyAye@nord.pub · 29 pts · 1d
Presumably they know the immigration status of their own kids.
ThePantser@sh.itjust.works · 9 pts · 1d
Well because that is taking something from someone they hate. Its the giving they have a problem with.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1d
When you're MAGA, or white Christian nationalist, or part of any exclusive cult, really, then everyone on the outside is an NPC.
Seriously. Dialog among MAGAs and Christian nationalists is dipping into discussions of genocide and evacuations rather than deportation. Liberals are very much on the list.
They've driven off the #IVotedForThis cliff and are now plummeting into the abyss.
hOrni@lemmy.world · 68 pts · 1d
A few months ago they were talking about "committing the sin of empathy". Nothing will surprise me after that.
daychilde@lemmy.world · -18 pts · 1d
BOO!
What? Just seeing if you were lying. ;-)
Wispy2891@lemmy.world · 67 pts · 1d
What's wrong, it's exactly what the book says:
bagsy@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 1d
we gotta get chatGPT to re-write the entire bible like this. Call it the King Trump edition.
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 1d
Dont. They'll believe it.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 6 pts · 1d
Let's add some passages about mutilating your own genitails then.
RaphaelSchmitz@feddit.org · 10 pts · 1d
Uh. So. That's already in there
Funkt4st1c@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 19h
Local man learns of circumcision
jdr@lemmy.ml · 2 pts · 22h
Babies aren't very good at that
Zink@programming.dev · 1 pts · 7h
Especially after the Fox News "40 Days and 40 Nights of Bible Release Coverage!"
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 1d
There are, in fact, online efforts to revise the bible to reflect post-Fifield conservative values. I'll leave it to the reader to find them by websearch.
The lolcat bible is now defunct, but the Wikipedia page has a link to the wayback machine copy.
DaleGribble88@programming.dev · 10 pts · 1d
I can't wait for supply side Jesus to stop being relevant, but I'm fearful that I'm going to be left waiting anyway.
Souvenir@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 59 pts · 1d
I don't know if I've told this joke in this community before, but here goes. A man is driving through Northern Ireland at the height of the Troubles. He comes across a fallen tree and stops. Before he knows what's happening, men in balaclavas and with automatic rifles are shouting at him and banging on the window of his car.
"Are you a catholic or a protestant?" One of the masked men asks. The man in the car, knows the wrong answer could get him shot.
"I'm an atheist." Says the man.
"Are you catholic atheist or a protestant atheist?" Shouts the masked man.
I strongly suspect a lot of American Christians aren't particularly religious. Instead they're using religious affiliation, and Christian symbols, as signifiers of an ethnic/sectarian identity. That's why the man in the post above, doesn't care about non-white Christians, doesn't care about what the bible says he should do, and likely doesn't care that his leaders are often immoral people who regularly commit blasphemy and heresy. For him being a Christian means belonging to a white protestant American ethnic group, that God is on their side, and not much more.
It's fundamentally not that different to Ratko Mladić, who had previously been a longstanding and reputable member of the communist party, and who people said wasn't religious, claiming he was defending Christianity against Islam when he became the Butcher of Bosnia. Or Putin, the former KGB operative, claiming he's defending Christian values against Western decadence in Ukraine.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1d
Church is by far the biggest third place. It's Christian Club where people hang out with other community members a couple hours a week, and in a healthy Church it can result in very powerful, positive, and effective community building. You can have millionaires and grocery bangers treating each other as equals prepping for a BBQ or singing in the choir.
The religion itself often ends up being quietly secondary to the community building, and I still don't know what replaces the Church for the non-religious. I've been to gatherings of like-minded people that weren't Church, but the regularity and diversity of people in a healthy Church (regardless of the specific faith) is something I haven't seen elsewhere, and I do think it's something that can be good for society.
I knew the CEO of a pretty big corporation who was in Sunday School classes with ex-cons and burger flippers, and that experience made them all see each other in a different light that was good for everyone. It taught the poor and the powerful that they were all just people. It made the powerless more willing to stand up to their "betters" and the powerful more empathetic to people who weren't as fortunate.
rollin@piefed.social · 3 pts · 23h
Yeah as an outsider, the big welcoming social club aspect of religion is a big appeal.
I wonder if part of the reason it works when regular social clubs often don't is because of the "obligatory attendance" part. A lot of people have some great memories of school for instance, which is another place where all the attendees are obligated to attend even though the actual events that are hosted there are often boring as fuck. Maybe there's some kind of camaderie due to that, "We're all stuck here together with him/her" *gestures up at the teacher/pastor*
While at an actual social club, the socializing itself is the main reason for being there, and that means socializing can easily become a chore, rather than an escape.
untropvertimide@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1d
What can act as community hubs are very dependant of the community, but really don't need to relate to religion. Especially if they serve as hub for people from different religious backgrounds
Aside from the places linked to religious activity, from any religion, the places that come to my mind, partly from my own experience, are:
In other words, any community driven or community focused place or organisation can serve as a meaningful cosmopolitan social hub. People will gravitate naturally toward the hub·s centered around their interests. (Be it a religion, a sport, a social cause, a subculture, etc.)
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 20h
But the thing is they dont.
As religion has declined, the vast majority of people who used to go to church weekly haven't replaced that by attending other community groups. And the "interest" part also fundamentally changes the nature of it. People going to church were often going there out of a sense of obligation. Parents don't drag their kids to the comic shop and make them hang out with people.
untropvertimide@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 0 pts · 18h
Wall of text incoming.
What make claim this general statement ?
Yes, but what's your point?
I don't know enough about the sociology behind this. However, this sense of obligation can also apply to gatherings not related to any christian church. Peer pressure and other social norms are not reserved to religious groups from the christian family of religions, nor to any religious or ideological group.
Are you sure? I agree that not usual regarding a comic shop specically, but it still can happen. If not parents, other family members or friends can force someone into the forceful one's favourite gathering evenet/place. The place can be a comic shop. I actually have been pressured by someone to participate to a very private cultural club regrouping a fraction of the community I talked about. That "someone" was a member of the club, but didn't even ask other members consent before shoehorning me in. The club session didn't take place in the shop, but in some members' homes. Most accepted me, but still... others and I were forced to interact in this situations, and the only thing that helped is that we already interacted spontaneously and positively at several previous encounters.
Parents do indeed drag their kids to non religious social hubs and make them hang out with people :
Friends or relatives from the same generation can also do the same, to the same kind of hubs, plus others like nightclubs and their afterwork equivalent (that matches "events with friends or colleagues", but the noise and the mass of people adds much stress for some.)
I've personnally experienced most of that when I was a child / teen, and still experience part of it. And although I was a roman catholic as a child, the only times this forced socialisation happened linked to church activities were linked to marriages, communions, baptism or funeral. I never took part in catechism, nor in periodic masses, or any parish event. That didn't prevent me from finding a community. Actually, social norms and obligations were and still are one of the biggests obstacles preventing me from participating in significant way in a community. The others are social fears/anxiety, and poor mental health. (Due to working and living conditions degradation, as well as to the socio-ecological context, and the economics and politics that cause all of this. I hate the greed for any kind of domination, and the oppression and exploitation this greed encourages.)
Anyway, I don't understand your point about the "obligation" incentive, and the forced participation. It wasn't part of the discussions when I first answered, so it's not a point I discussed either.
Communities and social interactions, wether linked to any religion or not, can and will happen without external constraints.
The absence of pressure is even better. Forced social interactions are at best awkward and tiring. I usually find these abusives. They also implies power dynamics that will probably lead to further suffering, toxicity, or (potentially very serious) abuses. We should not encourage the use of religion as a domination system (or any such system really) to force and structure social interactions and community.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 15h
That forced social obligation angle is an important if weird part of how churches benefit society in non-religious ways. People who only ever do what they want when they want end up in isolation bubbles.
As attendance at churches has plummeted while the remaining churches have politicized, people have replaced those communities on social media, which have algorithmically placed them in echo chambers.
And occasionally hanging out with friends is not participating in a third place like a church. They no longer regularly socialize with hundreds of community members they otherwise would never speak with. And that is a loss. It's one reason people are increasingly lonely.
Inknow people who are stuck in dead-end careers and hate their lives whonreally should just move somewhere else, but they're afraid to because they have like 5 people in the world they're close to, and literally don't knkw how they'd find a new socialmgroup if they moved across the country. The answer to that used to be to move to a new area, start attending church, and meet people.
untropvertimide@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 13h
You seem to misunderstand my two previous comments. Reread carefully, and don't hesitate to ask for precisions or complementary explanations about what I said. Also remember that contrary to some people's belief:
That's not at all specific to churches, nor does it only produces beneficial consequences for society. (Domination systems pose many societal problems, some deadly.)
I don't agree with that statement. That doesn't match the acts of solidarity and socialisation I witnessed.
Or not. Offline social hubs, politicized or not, and old school online social hubs still exist. Aside frop those I cited before, bars / pubs / cafés are still social hubs. The workplace is one too, at least in places where workers can have purely personal interactions with their colleagues.
By the way, politisation is not inherently bad, and the politisation of churches is as old as churches. Charity is political, preaching is political, clergy is in a way a political organisation. Hell, countries like the USA or France have law separating the "State" from the "Church" precisely because of the history of political ingerence from religious organisations like the roman catholic Church or the anglican Church.
Which difference with a community of churchgoers ? The religious belief systems, combined to the rules dictated by the clergy and peer pressure, can also cause an echo chamber. Any kind of community can become an echo chamber. Predatory communication media on internet (including the so called "social networks" or "social media") are indeed efficient at maintaining very-large-scale echo chambers that transcend geography.
Agreed, but I cited this only as an exemple of possible forced interactions. They can however lead to create or participate in what you call "a third place".
Very probably false. Your statement is, once again, based on the assumption that church was and still is the sole purveyor of motivation to socialise, form communities, help each other, etc. That has never been true.
Irrelevant since the premise is false. I didn't rigrously studied socilogy meta-studies on the subject, and you didn't either considering how you phrase your statements, but I'm pretty sure the so called "loneliness epidemic" does not count the decrease in church attendance (or the secularisation of most christian dominated societies) as a significant cause. I'm sure these may share common causes, though.
You almost had it. The church part was only one possibility among athoers. For some people, avoiding any church at all costs was a solution.
Because contrary to how you portray churches and their communities, these are not paragons of happiness, fulfilment, or benefits to society. Some communities may be mostly beneficial, some mostly detrimental. On the whole a common aspect of religions is control : religions can be viewed as systems of belief or systems of social cohesion, sure, but they also can be viewed as systems of domination. You yourself mention that aspect when talking about the obligations.
Systems of domination are never beneficial to society. They are beneficial only to the few at the top of these systems. These are the main tool enabling all kind of abuses :
For oppressed groups, churches cannot be a solution if they and their church-affiliated communities are part of the oppressors. Are they condemned to be isolated though ? No. They can find a sense of community, belonging, support, solidarity, an contribute to benefit the society as a whole, and chruches are not to thank for that. Mostly, autosupport organisations are their main salvation. Can these be echo chambers ? Depending of the subject, of course, like any community. Can they suffer from social media ? Yup, because their oprresor are dominant there too, but autosupport groups can also exploit the less predatory ones to help extend their group, and thus their ability to support each other and defy oppression.
Tl;dr : even when talking about community, belonging, solidarity, benefical impact, etc, churches are not the center of the world, nor the main model. Churches can even be an obstacle.
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 9h
90+% of people used to attend church weekly. What percentage of non-churchgoers (religious or not) have replaced that time with weekly attendance at other community gatherings?
Yes - many things can theoretically fill that void, but they don't. For the most part, people aren't replacing religious community involvement with non-religious community involvement. As church attendance has declined, people have largely stopped being involved in the community on a regular basis.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1d
Sometimes they use it as a "I'm a good person" billboard.
Used to know someone like that. Cut them off for other reasons (basically the reasons they were on a "I'm better now" campaign), but he even bragged to me (not religious at all and don't pretend to be) about going to church multiple times a week. The whole time he was making his situation worse because he's an asshole and just going to a building with other people and doing cult stuff doesn't stop you from being an asshole (hell, some seem to think it gives them permission and that righting their wrongs can be done by talking to a priest that has nothing to do with the people who were actually wronged).
skisnow@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1d
Yup. Some people go to church because they know something's wrong with them, but there's a lot of churches out there whose approach to people like that is to validate them and tell them they're de facto in the right because they're Saved. Makes them ten times worse.
dermanus@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 20h
That reminds me of my favorite Emo Philips joke:
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org · 4 pts · 1d
xD
tazeycrazy@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 1d
For NI It comes down to politics culture and religion. The IRA wasn't blowing up Belfast and London because they rejected the pope and the shankil butchers weren't asking if the men they picked up if they would consider going to a bible study. People found an excuse to carry out there tasks and used religion as an excuse to justify it.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18h
It's also because of religion being an easy stand in for an existing class system because religion had been used as a signifier of class by the oppressors.
That's not to say protestants and Catholics haven't massacred each other solely over religion, but that's more the 30 years war
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 0 pts · 1d
Poly-religious groups take a page from the LGBT+ community:
Someone is what they identify themselves as. In the last decade or so, with the internet came an enormous lexicon of terms describing different kinds of sexual and gender identities. Sometimes we have to remind someone that the list it to help figure out what they, themselves identify as, not to correct other people based on looks, behavior or disposition.
In fact, Russel T. Davies created a series, Bob & Rose about a gay man who falls in love with a woman, and how they, neighbors, relatives and onlookers process the dissonance between identity and behavior. It's a thing that happens.
When it comes to Christians, they're very fond of accusing each other from different denominations of not-really being Christian. Sometimes they'll suggest a certain behavior or accompanying identity (such as gay or liberal) excludes them from being a real Christian, but I remember in the 1970s and 1980s that a difference in denomination was more than enough for accusations of being deceived by Great Satan (All hail!)
So, non-Christian and poly-religious groups can assume that anyone who identifies as Christian counts. No matter what their actual doctrine is. It also keeps us in the habit of not presuming they adhere to the passages and creeds we expect or have seen elsewhere.
julysfire@lemmy.world · 52 pts · 1d
Even the old testament has plenty in this. For example:
Exodus 22:21. “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt."
My point being they don't even know what the book they claim to praise so much even says.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 19 pts · 1d
To the rest of us, this tells us that xenophobia and animosity against immigrants have been social problems for a very long time.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 1d
They are more concerned if they will become pariahs in their own group. They aren't really asking what the right thing to do is, they are asking "will this get me in trouble?"
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1d
Beni: It is better to be at the right hand of the Devil than in his path. As long as I serve him, I am immune.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 22h
Tribalism seems to be an inate part of human character.
Not to say it's a good thing, just that we all have a tendency at a level which is not rational to find comfort and safety in the similar and familiar whilst distrusting and be uncomfortable with the dissimilar and unfamiliar.
You see this shit at all levels of human groups, not just "nations" and "races" but even "small town hostility towards strangers".
IMHO, NOT being a Racist (genuinelly so, not the performative shit of some people who think they're not Racist because, say, they support specific races which are a minority where they live because in their social circle that's what you're supposed to do and yet at the same time implicitly distrust people from other specific races for which there is no social approval - for example, "supporting Jews" whilst thinking that "Muslims are violent") is actually an active thing were one has to spot one's own internal tendency to make prejudicial assumptions based on people's appearance (both positive and negative assumptions - people's race neither makes them inherently better nor inherently worse) and stop oneself from making such assumptions or at least from acting on them.
jdr@lemmy.ml · 13 pts · 22h
That doesn't count because I've never been to Egypt
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 19h
The coptic Christians also skating by on a technicality
blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 13h
Are you calling whoever they were a liar?
jdr@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 11h
Yes, Exodia is a liar
blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 10h
Ok fair, I don't know them
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 44 pts · 1d
I'm curious what the replies to him were.
The scribe quoted "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and then, "Love your neighbor as yourself."
"You have answered correctly" Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."
The scribe then asked "And who is my neighbor?"
Jesus replied "It is whoever you are hoping I don't say it is."
echodot@feddit.uk · 13 pts · 1d
That's the problem right there.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · -38 pts · 1d
While I love this humanitarian part about loving everyone, the important part is that who is being excluded here.
Because obviously maga wants to exclude foreigners, everyone else here wants to either exclude maga folks or religious folks.
So the question to you, my friend, are you really ready to start loving maga folks or are you trying to set up a standard that even you are unable to reach?
Or maybe you are even worse -- a real scum of the earth trying to expose contradictions in others, and using them as a proof for your moral superiority
Senal@programming.dev · 33 pts · 1d
Thats an interesting not-quite-straw-man .
Pointing out that someone isn't following the teachings they are claiming to follow doesn't require the accuser to be an adherent to those teachings.
I could call a self professed vegan a hypocrite if I saw them eating a steak, regardless of whether or not, I myself were a vegan.
Krudler@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 19h
Tu quoque fallacy.
"You said drinking is bad for people but I saw you drinking the other day"
Senal@programming.dev · 1 pts · 15h
huh, i didn't know there was a formalised name for this, TIL
RichardNixos@lemmy.ml · 0 pts · 7h
"therefore drinking is not bad for people" -> tu quoque fallacy "therefore you are a hypocritical asshole" -> not fallacious
Krudler@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 4h
Krudler@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 4h
What a dope 🤦
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · -21 pts · 22h
Oh no no no, you can call everyone a hypocrite today. This doesn't change things a bit. This leads to a spike in moral superiority in your bubble and that's it.
Senal@programming.dev · 20 pts · 22h
If you're struggling with the distinction between pointing out hypocrisy and a claim of moral superiority then you're going to spend a lot of time being confused and/or upset.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 21h
That's a part of his identity
Impotent anger at things beyond his ken
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 21h
Has anyone told you that you're stupid recently?
Just in case they haven't, I'm going to take this opportunity, right now, to tell you that you're stupid
jaemo@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 18h
100% Seconded. It's....odd to have to chime in on something like this but I really agree. Exhibitional stupidity, paraded proudly, like a peacock whose feathers were ill-informed words. Sadly, the internet is referred to as a medium; shitheads like this are neither rare nor well-done.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · -10 pts · 19h
That's an achievement, given that it comes from someone in s/Atheist
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 19h
It's quite literally impossible to stress how much you don't matter
If someone told me tomorrow that you killed yourself because of this interaction, I'd be struggling to recall it, let alone care
Have a short and lonely life, loser
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · -2 pts · 14h
Why's s/Atheism is always so edgy? How old are you, 13?
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 11 pts · 19h
If you throw the social contract out the window, I'm no longer under any obligation to apply it to you.
Amir@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 23h
I don't believe in the bible or jesus or any other fairy tales
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · -11 pts · 22h
Sir, this is Wendy's
bitjunkie@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 19h
c/therightcantmeme
Tja@programming.dev · 7 pts · 18h
Who is excluding maga? I want everyone (including maga) to have Healthcare, education, workers rights, etc. I wouldn't go as far as "loving" but sure as he'll not excluding them.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · -3 pts · 14h
I use "excluding" here in the meaning where you imagine that life without maga would be better. "If only tens of millions of the us American hadn't voted for the orange turd"-thinking vs "if only the us was white christian"-thinking.
Zink@programming.dev · 2 pts · 7h
Excluding people because of their conscious choices and actions is something that basically every human organization and government does on a daily basis.
Excluding people because of racial/religious labels is something bigots do and it is often illegal for the organizations mentioned above to do it.
ChanchoManco@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 14h
That's the paradox of tolerance.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · -7 pts · 14h
The paradox of tolerance is a shitshow. Go you ask maga, they'll tell you that those who are against tolerance are illegal immigrants.
AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 13h
MAGA having divorced themselves from reality isn't a condemnation of the paradox of tolerance.
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 10h
Cub appears to be an idiot
FistingEnthusiast@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 21h
How about you do something right now to find out how St Peter would judge you?
I think it'd make the world a better place
JigglySackles@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 18h
https://www.logicalfallacies.org/tu-quoque.html
vivalapivo@lemmy.today · -3 pts · 14h
Quite the opposite.
I haven't been accused of anything. I'm not religious nor maga. I have my own set of contradictions that I'm happy to share with anyone.
Don_alForno@feddit.org · 43 pts · 1d
Jesus: Did I fucking stutter?
JigglySackles@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 18h
Jesus: Jesus, did I fucking stutter?
jaschen306@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 18h
Jesus:Jesus fucking Christ. Did I stutter?!? -Jesus, probably
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 43 pts · 1d
Have you tried killing yourself?
daychilde@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d
well, you escalated beyond me because I came into the comments to reply "Well, Matt, have you tried fucking all the way off?"
But now that would be lame after your comment. :P lol
Snapz@lemmy.world · 40 pts · 1d
That was close , I almost helped an innocent child with the equivalent of some lost pocket change... Thanks Jesus.
clanker_victim_555@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 1d
What you do is read the fucking manual.
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’
44 “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
jtrek@startrek.website · 10 pts · 1d
Some of them will do some impressive backflips to argue that "of there's means Christians only. Because of the "brothers and sisters of mine" bit, it only means they have to be good to their in-group. Nevermind the canonical answer to "who is my neighbor?"
kaidenshi@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 1d
Years ago I had a Christian acquaintance argue with a straight face that the part of the Bible that says all of humanity is God's children and deserve his love, actually only means straight white American Christian protestants. Mind you, this is someone who has gone on foreign missions for her church.
When I calmly retorted that Jesus himself said all of humanity deserves love and protection, citing the passages in OP's post, she accused me of "twisting the word of God to include heathens and foreigners". I mentioned the Good Samaritan parable, in which the titular character is neither Jewish nor local to the area, yet was the hero of Jesus' story, she got even angrier. I had to walk away at that point, there is no sense in arguing with a fence post.
She accused me of misinterpreting the word of her God by literally quoting it word for word, all while she was the one wildly twisting it to suit her racist and evil views. It truly boggles the mind.
jtrek@startrek.website · 10 pts · 1d
They don't reason. They feel, and look for justifications. We're all susceptible to that, but some people have that problem really bad.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
That's a classic example of evil seeking an excuse. The religion telling her to be different is offensive because what it actually says is of no importance. Her specifically chosen reading of it is all she cares about.
Danquebec@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 6h
Does she knows that the characters in the book are Hebrews? Apart from the parts in Greece.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 1d
No, they would answer, "yeah but those people were brown"
some_kind_of_guy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
46 GOTO 10
jaemo@sh.itjust.works · 22 pts · 18h
This is why I laugh loudly and from the belly when the old "atheists have no spiritual guide to frame morality" chestnut rears its head in any conversation.
EvasiveSpecies@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 15h
Always eyeing someone suspicious who basically says that they would murder, steal and rape if it wasn't for their religion.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 8h
Some still do it despite it, just the others want to do it openly.
sprightly_exigence@leminal.space · 18 pts · 1d
And they wonder why so many of their kids have fucked right off and joined the opposition. It'd be funny if it wasn't such a mess.
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe · 15 pts · 1d
For I was a stranger, and you turned me in to ICE.
gigaqps@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
I miss 20 years ago when this is how I'd interpret that
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe · 1 pts · 1d
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe · 1 pts · 3h
Sadly, I said “in to” and not “into.”
We are in a far less radical timeline.
elvith@feddit.org · 14 pts · 1d
sigh time to post this three years old article again...
Evangelicals Are Now Rejecting ‘Liberal’ Teachings of Jesus
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1d
The situation is way older than that.
I see you with part one, and raise you with part two of Behind the Bastards: How The Rich Ate Christianity (on YouTube).
greggish@lemmus.org · 13 pts · 10h
Christians who only do good to get into heaven are inherently bad people.
stopforgettingit@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 1d
No hate quite like Christian love.
RBWells@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d
Charitably, maybe she just couldn't read it?
Oh nevermind, she had to put her foot right in her mouth. What about "what have you done for the least of these?" is unclear?
melsaskca@lemmy.ca · 10 pts · 20h
Well, it's a simple question. Where do your loyalties lie? Like one of your guitar guys (Johnny Mellencamp) said back in the 1980's...'You've gotta stand for something or you'll fall for anything'.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
you either give or gtfo. if you choose gtfo, you can resign yourself to never getting in
Lumidaub@feddit.org · 7 pts · 1d
So why were those lists in Spanish? Honest question, I don't get it. Or were they in both English and Spanish and this person has "conveniently" missed the English version?
Sc00ter@lemmy.zip · 18 pts · 1d
The list was:
Rodriguez
Martinez
Garcia
Delgado
Hernandez
Sanchez
...
njm1314@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
100% what he means.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
"Written in Spanish" LMAO fucking 🤡
Lumidaub@feddit.org · 6 pts · 1d
I assumed it was a list of supplies to buy? I'm confused about this whole enterprise it seems.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1d
All names of American citizens!
A close friend is a Lopez. She's Puerto Rican and Taíno. When she joined the fire department, when filling out forms, under race they resorted to Hispanic surname.
captainlezbian@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 18h
Also a decent chunk of the country used to be part of Mexico. I don't know why someone would be surprised that a Martinez would be an American citizen when Los Angeles is an American city
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 1d
maria, Diego, margaritia.
NewSocialWhoDis@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 1d
Because the parents who wrote the lists of birthday presents and school supplies are Spanish speakers and perhaps not really English speakers.
stoly@lemmy.world · -2 pts · 1d
It was certainly a list of names. You can’t function in another country without being able to use basic vocabulary for everyday things.
Sasquatch@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 1d
I'm pretty sure this comment is bait, but 🤷♂️.
These kinds of organizations intentionally withhold the names of the donees from the donors.
kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 21h
Yeah, it is very important, no matter who the donee is, or why they are getting help. Who the fuck wants it known, that they need aid? Especially now society is incredibly cruel to those, struggling with misfortune. That might even prevent people, from seeking help, which then leads to all sorts of issues - and not only for that individual. And one of the other reasons obviously being, it gives the ones, like that moron pictured, possibility of finding them, with evil intent.
stoly@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17h
Why would that be bait? I'm speaking as a multilingual person who has lived in multiple countries. Even if you never study a day of that language, you are quickly going to learn how to refer to common objects and use basic verbs.
starman2112@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 7h
Give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you do not turn away.
If there's a hell, there's a special place in it for "Christians" who fervently oppose the literal words of their deity
Naive@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 14h
Always conservatives
anugeshtu@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 8h
Ask Jesus if he's also a legal good citizen American fighting for the true American kingdom
peacepath@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 17h
I do not know that Matt von something... is him known?
The author could be genuinely stupid, but is there really no hope he be just inventing the story to help christians steping out of nationalism?
I am not religious at all, but I think religious people reading him are pushed to a sentiment of anger toward the logic he describes which gives more importance to the hate toward migrants than to the religious duties... And he writes a bit too well to really ask what he should do in that case. Isn't it?
Alexfire@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
The namesake in the stories was radical, an outcast, single 30 year old who rested his head on fave buddy's chest after meals, treated women equally, healed the centurion's lover back home, turn the other cheek, last will be first, all are welcome, and anti-establishment/hierarchies that make impossible demands on people. Decades later, when the men wrote the NT to match the OT as needed, small groups tried to keep women included, but the power structure groups became the large ones, that Rome later used for their means.
Right place at the right time to spread quickly, story details compiled from thousands of years of supernatural oral traditions, to appeal to many and not exclusive like ethnic groups so anyone could join. Some modern churches are welcoming and that's great. Ideally they also teach human caused Holocene extinction, nothing coming to fix the climate crisis and need to cooperate globally for all the climate refugees to minimize suffering however possible, like the namesake would do, if they choose to read it that way. They should also welcome Sagan's baloney detection kit to openly discuss all topics.
FluidBeef@quokk.au · 4 pts · 1d
Parable of the good WASP.
Mulligrubs@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Jesus also commanded you to "live like a bird in the field" and to give away all of your possessions, to focus your entire existence here and now on your future life in Heaven. Here and now, on Earth, is the realm of Lucifer, and shouldn't concern you.
Also, Jesus said that if you have lustful thoughts, you should cut your balls off. Christians cut their balls off for many centuries.
Thank you, good day.
RampantParanoia2365@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 10h
How could they have "also said it shouldn't matter," when they wouldn't say anything for the first question?
Lushed_Lungfish@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1d
Die.
That is what I recommend this person does.
kbobabob@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 9h
That's bait
QuinnyCoded@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 9h
you forgot the exclamation point that makes it embed correctly, it should be 
bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
This can't be real
Treczoks@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 9h
Yes, this person really could use some help understanding Christianity. It might be an interesting eye opener for him.
neuroneiro@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 9h
I almost got into a fight with a Christian the other day. He’d insulted a woman for no reason & I called him on it.
He then followed me around the store. When I loudly told him to get the fuck away from me he said he wouldn’t. I ended up asking him to step outside.
While I would have gladly beat the shit out of him, the problems it would bring just aren’t worth it, especially not because of this douche.
I could tell he was expecting a fight so when we were nearing the door I told him to come around the corner & talk.
You know how you can tell when really dumb, obviously lonely, bigots start shaking when the adrenaline hits? It was clear he was ready to explode so when I started to talk in a calm voice he seemed super confused.
I told him that it was a dick move to insult the woman. He responded brilliantly with “Well at least I don’t use the F WORD!” as if language pegs people as sinners. I explained, calmly, that using that language is part of my commitment to authenticity & that the way I used it, saying get the fuck away from me, was not considered fighting words. Thinking on it, that’s probably the opposite of fighting words.
My minor in Religious Studies came in handy &, this might piss some of you off to learn that I’m now a polytheist. I’ve always been an amateur scientist & was agnostic until about 5 years ago. A few concrete spiritual experiences with several different deities or messengers of different spiritual systems I’ve had led me to understand that, for me, God or a higher power or whatever works for you is the universe, our collective consciousness, & basically everything.
Most of the experiences were with Egyptian Gods but also Aztec & Finnish Paganism. & actually Christian which was definitely not expected. But the gist is that I have my own personal spiritualism & personal relationships with these messengers & actually know my shit.
Don’t worry, I’m not going to push it on you. I only suggest you find what works for you & let other people choose their’s.
So I, of course, asked what Jesus would say about insulting some rando.
I watched his eyes roll back leaving a tiny crescent of iris, the space between his scraggly eyebrows, with this one weird extra hair that was just begging (BEGGING) to be plucked, crinkle into a search for any remaining crumbling bits of frontal, let alone prefrontal, cortex, & his mouth drop open.
It was pitiful really.
Watching this grown-ass man try to figure out what to say that could show he was right & just keep thinking “Nope, not that one. Noooo, that doesn’t work, nuh-uh, damn!” etcetera, etcetera, etcetera was akin to watching the slowing struggles of a duck hit by a car &, despite rushing them to the emergency vet 5 blocks away, they pass right before your eyes.
Yeah. That sucked.
So I interrupted the creaking, rusty mechanical gears’ fruitless attempt to conjure up something, anything, by explaining that Jesus told us to love each other with agape, which is basically love for humankind itself & all its members.
His response made clear that he hadn’t read his scripture. I was nearly dumbstruck when he actually said:
“WELL, WE’RE ALLOWED TO CORRECT THEM [other people]!!!”
Nearly.
I realized he was a Fox News Christian who worships talking tv heads more than he understands the true words & meaning of what he claims is his religion.
I explained the general meaning of:
• Matthew 7:3–5 (NIV): "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ... First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."
Basically, before you shit on someone else, check to see if you’re going to get shit on & maybe take steps to prevent that from happening to you any more rather than impose the same thing on another person.
It went on. He tried to argue a couple times & was an easy mark. In the end, I think I got slightly through enough to get him to feel kinda confused to learn that Jesus wasn’t an asshole elitist. He was obviously surprised when I held out my hand & thanked him for talking outside. I like to blow their mind that way.
I do NOT believe a person should subscribe to a religion. Doing so just closes you off to the rest of this incredible world, makes a person subservient, & instills the views & interpretations of the priest or pastor, or whoever leads a congregation.
But if you, for some terrible reason, decide to do so, do what I told my fifth graders when teaching writing.
READ THE FREAKIN’ PRIMARY DOCUMENTS!!!
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 10h
wwssjd?
starelfsc2@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 10h
For anyone who hasn't seen it https://www.beliefnet.com/news/2003/09/the-gospel-of-supply-side-jesus.aspx
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 10h
What would Super Saiyan Dave do?
Duamerthrax@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 8h
Supply Side Jesus
mechoman444@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 7h
I... I know.
kamen@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 17h
What if they're Central American citizens?
GaMEChld@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Go directly to Church, do not pass Go. Pastor needs to tutor you.
mupan@feddit.org · 0 pts · 17h
~~The fictional character Sister Fidelma, written by historian Peter Tremayne, is a nun of the celtic Christian church in Ireland before the catholic church got more influence. And she was a lawyer, had fully studied law by the rules of the time being. She was, by the law of the country back then, even a judge for minor, local cases. Sometimes she was conflicted between the teachings of the church and the law, and decided for the law. In one of the early novels that paint a picture of the course of her life, her professional career, her marriage to a monk, Tremayne writes down her final decision: If there should be a future situation in which she has to give up either her status as a nun or her status as a lawyer, she would decide for being a lawyer. Because, the more the church becomes an enemy of the human rights she believed in, the more it wouldn't be her church anymore.
As everyone loving human rights, she often has to decide between what is right and what is easy. E.g. when a local princeps fucks his daughters. Being a true believer can be life threatening. Remember the spiritual: Sometimes I feel like a motherless child, a long way from home. True believer. Sometimes I feel like I'm almost gone, like I'm all alone. True believer.~~
Some wear their cross on their breast, some on their back.
Gladaed@feddit.org · -47 pts · 1d
This is not representative of christians around the world. It isn't even representative of christians in the US. You are highlighting evil/uninformed behavior and increasing its harm.
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 34 pts · 1d
Nobody said any of that, you brought it to the table. The title and post specify conservative Christians, which in the US are absolute shitheads.
Gladaed@feddit.org · -27 pts · 1d
Fair point. I guess I am tired of the relentless bashing of the unusually stupid and absurd that this sub specializes in.
Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 29 pts · 1d
Why would an atheism community highlight Christians just chilling? Block it if you don’t like seeing nonbelievers kvetch about jackass religious people.
Gladaed@feddit.org · -18 pts · 1d
Just posting about Vance and weirdo Christians isn't what atheism is about, I thought.
erin@piefed.blahaj.zone · 19 pts · 1d
Atheism isn't "about" anything. It's the lack of belief in a god, gods, or spiritual beings. There is no doctrine or institution, that's the point. The community making fun of dumb believers seems on-brand, imo, especially when they're a huge part of the acceleration towards fascism around the world. Christian nationalists are a threat, and showing them as the hypocritical morons they are pushes back against their hatred.
Gladaed@feddit.org · -5 pts · 1d
It's about being allowed to not believe in God, I'd say. Beware of the ultra nationalist American is much different from not believing or believing in the being no god.
It's just the branding that annoys me. If this was called lunatic Ville it would be accurate and fine. What's inside ain't memes or atheists being atheists after all.
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
Ex-Christian here. Your points are mostly well taken; I just think you wildly misjudge how Christianity is seen from outside, and how these days its spokepersons are by default the worst-behaved among you because the "good" ones never get the mic, or don't take it.
Atheists, including myself, come from the entire spectrum of religious experience, all the way from no religion whatsoever to that little church down in the backwoods of the South whose members eat, drink, and sleep religion, absolutely certain that they alone, and no one else, are going to be part of that 144,000 because not only did they not really read it, they don't math.
There is no such denominator as "atheists being atheists" anywhere. I was deeply into it for thirty-five years and am even more deeply grateful every day I wake up that I am out of that mental jail. Someone else might have endured ongoing manipulation, cruelty, ostracization, or even outright abuse from religious groups. Someone else might be none of the above and just think we're all a disparate group of loons that were either born wise (always atheist) or somehow came to our senses.
There is NO one size fits all. There is NO one kind of atheist. There is NO "atheists being atheists" sitting around talking about a hole in the universe where they see nothing and you see your god. THERE IS NO ATHEIST BRANDING.
This thread is quite mild compared to some I've seen. You seem to have the totality of atheism confused with what sounds like one person's individual kneejerk reaction to their own bad case of Christianity. And you've dared to define for a group of atheists what atheism is. Selah.
daychilde@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 1d
You know what I don't post about? My dad. Still Christian. He's laid back. He wasn't sure about things like LGBT+ but he's generally an accepting guy, and as US culture has grown more accepting, so has he. He doesn't give me shit about religion - feels it's one of those things that everyone has to decide what to do for themselves.
So I don't post about him, or talk about his religion much, because it's fine.
I do talk about the Christians who try and shit on our human rights, though, because that has real consequences. And talking about it lets us vent and let off some steam, finding community in our shared experiences.
Like many places where people complain about bad things, you shouldn't necessarily read them complaining about the shitty parts of a subject as them complaining about the entire subject.
For the Christians who are following the teachings of Jesus - what he actually purportedly said and taught - good on yer, we ain't complaining about you (well, most of us probably aren't).
I tend to believe that ALL religion is generally bad. But I look at Sikhs for example - those folks are not perfect, I'm sure, but you see story after story after story about them helping fellow humans - offering free food no questions asked - taking care of people. I aspire to be like that, religion or no.
For the Christians doing that? Awesome, you rock. Those are not the Christians we're generally bitching about.
You might see............ minorities bitching about racism or women bitching about toxic male culture. #notallwhites and #notallmen - just don't take offense if you're not one of the bad ones.
GalacticGrapefruit@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Right? It's a god damn shame that I have sane and compassionate friends and family who get lumped in with these lunatics.
Assholes who exist just to be assholes will reach for any excuse they can hook their fangs into and suck the life out of it. Narcissists don't care about what they have to defile if it means they get to keep getting a pass for it. And the people who've been abused by them keep seeking abusers and emulating them, because they've had any critical thought or independence wrung out of them until their souls are bone dry and flattened into fragile and paper-thin rehearsals of rage. And then they go out looking for fights because the constructed social paradigm falls apart if they're ever anything BUT the fucking victims.
I hate cults. I hate the people who start them, run them, and perpetuate them. And I hate that they turn their victims into more conspirators to keep the scam running.
Malica@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 1d
It's not a religion?
atomicbocks@sh.itjust.works · 31 pts · 1d
I’ve never met a Christian who acted like Jesus. I have however been told at the age of 12 while in a crowded room full of Christians that I need to disown my lesbian parents or I would go to hell. And the people in the room backed this person up.
The people who forced my tribe to move from Georgia to Oklahoma on foot in winter also claimed to have been given that land from god.
Religion is a disease that brings out the worst in people.
ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip · 17 pts · 1d
As a block, they certainly vote like they think like this.
AmyAye@nord.pub · 13 pts · 1d
I will gove you around the world, but the last 10 years has shown that this is CLEARLY verybrepresentative of US Christians.
Not all, but the majority, who gleefuly, repeatedly, vote for people puahing acrively harmful policies.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 1d
And the rest do it quietly because they're embarrassed because somewhere deep down they know they should be ashamed.
OldChicoAle@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d
Found the self righteous Christian!
Tippy@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 1d
If you're a true follower of christ, the correct response here would be "I agree, the temptation of sin and Satan is stronger than ever and I do all I can to remind my fellows in faith of the path Jesus has already laid out for us, which includes loving and caring for all of our neighbors as our own, and I remind those straying from the path that we can deceive ourselves, but not God, and I speak out so that their transgressions do not corrupt our message."
Instead you get defensive and whine and develop a persecution complex while ignoring that us heathens follow your faiths basic teachings better than you and don't need the threat of eternal damnation to do it. I'm agnostic and haven't read the bible since grade school, and I can guarantee I'll walk through the pearly gates before your entire congregation does if the Christians end up being right when I kick the bucket.
Sincerely hope the light of the lord can find you in this time of doubt in the faith and bring you away from your current life of sin 🙏
resipsaloquitur@lemmy.cafe · 9 pts · 1d
Not a true Scotsman, either.
frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io · 9 pts · 1d
This is definitely representative of the churches I've been dragged to. Nothing but hypocrisy and politics.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
It is representative of most people who call themselves Christians, but not the ones who actually care about being decent. The latter group seems in the minority.
bilb@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 1d
If the preponderance of American Christians were not like the person in the OP, I think we would live in a different, better, world.
Are you a Christian? I was a very serious Catholic until my early 20s. I found the doctrine to lack an intellectual rigor, though, and became disillusioned. I don't want to argue with you about the existence of God, I've got that out of my system long ago. What do you think about the very public Christians of today, who encourage us to hate and to disregard our fellow man? It's a sad state of affairs, isn't it? Public Christianity and American Capitalism are intertwined at this point. Doesn't it disgust you? It disgusts me. Even though I no longer believe in a God, I think many of the teaching of the church are good. Even though I no longer see myself as a part of it, I am still saddened when I see the Christian doctrine exploited by these pigs.
The current Pope is a step in the right direction, but I, an American, know self-described Catholics who hate him and say he's wrong. Isn't that something? I tell them that they are heretics but it doesn't matter to them. Again, I'm an apostate, but I find their attitude extremely offensive!
How disappointing, huh?
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1d
In 2020-2021 I was following Kristin Kobes Du Mez during her book tour for Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation and this took me on a rabbit hole of Evangelical sociologists following the rise of white Christian nationalism in the US.
Curiously, white Christian nationalism is a sect that intersects with multiple denominations. Most of them are fundamentalist Christian, though some of them are conservative branches of mainlines like Methodists or Roman Catholics. The conservative majority of SCOTUS, for instance, are all Catholic, and white Christian nationalist. (They're also members of the Federalist Society and were selected by Leonard Leo. It's a tight club.)
But one of the predictions I remember hearing multiple times is that white Christian nationalism will deliver a fell blow to the Body of Christ (to all of Christendom), as Christians everywhere will be judged by the actions and behaviors of those within the white Christian nationalist movement.
This was before the Seven Mountain Mandate, but around when pressure from ministries convinced the state of Uganda to make aggravated homosexuality a capital crime. (According to Wikipedia, legislature was passed in 2023)
Similarly, we expect all Americans are going to be judged for the wrongdoings of MAGA and the Trump regime, including the atrocities currently being committed by ICE or the US armed forces. Just as all Germans were held at fault internationally for the wrongdoings of the Nazis and the German Reich. (Since we expect the US to default on its debt and the collapse of the economy, it's going to suck, and not a single soul outside the US is going to want to help us as we starve.)
Already, alphas and zoomers are steering clear of Christianity for its association with Trump. Those who are being raised in Christian families and communities are, in record numbers, looking to escape and deconstruct. Christianity is now linked by association with family abuse, much with the help of the publicity of the white Christian nationalist movement, which commonly advises authoritarian household organization and parenting.
So, sure. #NotAllChristians. On the other hand, liberal ministries are now tiny, with many of their flock from the twentieth century turning into nones or outright atheists. And mainline Christian ministries still show an awful lot of hate towards women and LGBT+.
This isn't fully reflected in their congregations, who are a lot more divided on these issues, but it really doesn't help that the ministers and elders are on the side of bigotry. That positions them closer to the white Christian nationalists than it does the rest of liberal society.
Personally. I follow some Christians who believe in liberal civilization and universal civil rights. I know who the Universalists are. Yet the preachers and influencers of the Christian nationalist movement are having their voice amplified by the far-right propaganda machine. They're getting sponsorship from the oligarchs who want to dismantle democracy and literally take over the world. And this is going to inform what the general public thinks about Christians, and Christianity as a whole.
I'd say Christianity is going to wane and go through an unpopular phase, but between the conquest ambitions of the ultra wealthy; the threat of nuclear escalation or a Trump Nero Decree; the threat of AI escaping confinement and turning on humanity; or the world running out of water, the decline and fall of a given religious tradition might not matter too much.
Gladaed@feddit.org · -2 pts · 1d
Prettyuch exactly, but European Christians are not that affected by these issues. They are mostly aOK with LGBT etc. And representation of Christianity here is zero hate.
Christianity is a faith that changes based on where you are to meat you halve way. Look at the Catholic Church being torn apart by this.
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 22h
You're fooling yourself by refusing to see what you'd rather not see.
Christian nationalism is flourishing in Europe as much as it is in the US and the UK right now: look at that long list of European countries on the Wikipedia sidebar.
It's a core part of the end-times fascism springing up all around us as an answer to the current world crises by trying to evade them altogether for some religious fantasy world.
Let's just have a quick look at the definition of Christian nationalism, shall we? Because I guarantee you that all of these adherents of Christian nationalism not only consider themselves Christians, they consider themselves to be the BEST Christians:
And I can tell you they are none too friendly when it comes to LGBT and trans, either. Even the European ones.
Gladaed@feddit.org · -2 pts · 22h
Christianity is not Christian Nationalism. Socialism ain't National Socialism either.
ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 22h
That's why I posted the definition. We're not a community dedicated to religion, here in c/atheism, which is to say we may not be the same "make it up as you go along" types you seem more used to. There is an actual, formal meaning to the terms I linked, and you don't get to exclude Christian nationalists from Christian nationalism.
When you have to rearrange formal, well-understood definitions of social constructs in order to come back at someone saying something you don't like, it's probably time for you to recognize you have no real argument, and are just trolling.