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It sure is weird stuff like drugs and sex are temptations from the devil, but opportunities to do horrible things for personal profit is straight from God no question.
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Sep 9, 2015 17:09
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Radish posted:It sure is weird stuff like drugs and sex are temptations from the devil, but opportunities to do horrible things for personal profit is straight from God no question. It's prosperity gospel bullshit. If you're righteous enough God will reward you. If you have no opportunities and are not being rewarded you are obviously not righteous. So the rich are obviously good Christian folks that we should give more money too and the poor should be punished severely. QED.
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Sep 9, 2015 17:29
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ToxicSlurpee posted:It's prosperity gospel bullshit. If you're righteous enough God will reward you. If you have no opportunities and are not being rewarded you are obviously not righteous. So the rich are obviously good Christian folks that we should give more money too and the poor should be punished severely. QED. What if they're rich from drug trafficking or pimping? How does God feel then?
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Sep 9, 2015 17:54
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PT6A posted:What if they're rich from drug trafficking or pimping? How does God feel then? Indeed God works in mysterious ways.
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Sep 9, 2015 18:10
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God wouldn't have created coca plants and people that want to shovel cocaine up their noses and put them on two completely different continents if he didn't want someone to traffic between the two. Remember that Noah was a drunk when God told him "listen dog there's poo poo much better than alcohol now build a go-fast boat and yell 'gently caress the Coast Guard'" [Miami 19:78]
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Sep 9, 2015 18:18
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ToxicSlurpee posted:(ignore the ones that are, they obviously suck at being Christian so they still count) Pat Robertson and Haiti's culture of poverty
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Sep 9, 2015 18:52
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Didn't he say that Haiti was getting its comeuppance because they practice voodoo there?
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Sep 9, 2015 20:14
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http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/09/09/megyn-kelly-interview-ben-carson-kim-davis-jailing-surge-polls I've heard this used as a code word before. Judeo-Christian doesn't mean "Jewish and Christian" I'm assuming, correct? Because I've met Jewish people and they rarely sound anything similar to say, Mike Huckabee.
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Sep 10, 2015 00:01
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FuzzySkinner posted:http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/09/09/megyn-kelly-interview-ben-carson-kim-davis-jailing-surge-polls Judeo-Christian means Christian, but Jews are ok, I'm not an anti-semite! But in terms of policy or theology or anything at all: White American Christian.
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Sep 10, 2015 00:05
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Have you ever noticed that poor countries are like always not Christian? Slightly off-topic, but I would genuinely be interested to see a breakdown of how the world's wealth is divided amongst its religions.
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Sep 10, 2015 00:25
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Travis343 posted:Didn't he say that Haiti was getting its comeuppance because they practice voodoo there? The Haitan Revolt prayed to Satan to help overthrow their gentle, caring , kindly Christian slave masters and God finally gave them their commupance by throwing an earthquake their way about 130 years later.
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Sep 10, 2015 00:42
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FuzzySkinner posted:http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/09/09/megyn-kelly-interview-ben-carson-kim-davis-jailing-surge-polls That term actually only kind of sort of refers to the religions. Mostly it's used to say that America was founded on "Judeo-Christian philosophy." It's used to handwave away Christmas being a fundamentally religious holiday but still federally recognized as not actually a religious freedom issue. It's also used in some rather awful logic in many ways. The idea here is that America is based on Judeo-Christian philosophy (as in, based on rules and traditions that trace back to ancient Israel) and Christian values. Which is, well, kind of actually true. Most of our founders were Christians of various flavors. The problem is that this is used to justify keeping draconian/fundamentalist laws that have no place in a secular government. "Well the Bible says the gays are icky so we have to ban gays because we're based on Christian teaching." It's a thinly veiled "we're a Christian nation anyway so there" bullshit argument.
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Sep 10, 2015 01:09
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ToxicSlurpee posted:So what you're saying is that it's 100% luck, really. There's two kinds of luck, Vagina lottery luck, which is the 99%, and the 1% is like some kid from Podunk Delaware coming to Hollywood and becoming a huge star or some CS student coming up with a billion selling app in his dorm room.
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Sep 10, 2015 01:38
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FuzzySkinner posted:http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/09/09/megyn-kelly-interview-ben-carson-kim-davis-jailing-surge-polls It's basically a racist Sam Huntington Clash of Civilizations type designator to define the US as a white evangelical protestant nation, but also that Israel somehow is also evangelical protestant in disguise and is therefore our closest ally in fighting the Arab untermenschen and should have our unquestioning, absolute support always and forever. It's a big neocon thing icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 04:33 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 04:30
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It's neat how not a single person in the United States who acts morally follows Scripture without first having to hand-wave away the negative stuff away while claiming Jesus was the perfect Teacher or something despite the fact that real people have existed who've proposed more-or-less the same ideals. It's especially telling how this thread half-heartedly defends Catholics for not being biblical literalists, yet misses the notion that The Church is more interested in promoting misogyny and backwards views of sexuality based more on the arguments of Francis of Assisi than anything that actually exists in Scripture. Or that they're total hypocrites for saying that certain parts of the bible that they admit are questionable due to human infallibility are nonetheless correct based upon interpretations that use said fallible document as their only source. It's all even more amusing when the Catholics assert that denying rights to gays is so integral to their worldview that they'd rather deny children a home than allow a gay couple to raise them. Which isn't to say that Evangelicals and their ilk aren't worse or anything. As a person raised in both the rural and suburban United States by family attending several competing biblical-literalist denominations of Christianity who also went on to marry an Apostate Jehovah's Witness... organized religion is bullshit at best and dangerous in general.
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Sep 10, 2015 05:09
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I am a professional Jew-Knower and I can tell you that all the Jews I know hate the term "Judeo-Christian."
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Sep 10, 2015 05:17
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A Terrible Person posted:It's neat how not a single person in the United States who acts morally follows Scripture without first having to hand-wave away the negative stuff away while claiming Jesus was the perfect Teacher or something despite the fact that real people have existed who've proposed more-or-less the same ideals. To be honest we all know that the Catholic Church has some lovely views on some things but we have to give them credit for actually, you know, giving a poo poo what Jesus taught and being charitable. Catholicism is not very happy with the "gently caress the poors" ideal of evangelicalism. The current pope has actually been pissing people off by saying a good Christian will be kind and charitable to literally everybody, all the time, without question and that this inequality stuff is getting out of hand. We aren't going to convince them that teaching "gay sex is a sin" is a bad idea but they are, at the very least, not openly advocating for murdering the gays. The Catholic view is actually that it's possible to be gay and not sin relating to it. It's actually possible to be a gay Catholic. However, gay sex is a sin (they believe that all recreational sex is a sin) so you shouldn't do it. As in, you can be gay, but be celibate if you are. It isn't the thought that is the sin but the action. At the same time though they're teaching that it is a sin they're not advocating the ludicrous levels of gay bashing that American conservative Christians are getting up to these days.
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Sep 10, 2015 05:24
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ToxicSlurpee posted:We aren't going to convince them that teaching "gay sex is a sin" is a bad idea but they are, at the very least, not openly advocating for murdering the gays. The Catholic view is actually that it's possible to be gay and not sin relating to it. It's actually possible to be a gay Catholic. However, gay sex is a sin (they believe that all recreational sex is a sin) so you shouldn't do it. As in, you can be gay, but be celibate if you are. It isn't the thought that is the sin but the action. At the same time though they're teaching that it is a sin they're not advocating the ludicrous levels of gay bashing that American conservative Christians are getting up to these days. I thought the point was evangelicals are crazy because they don't have a drat thing to back them up. Which is true. Same thing can be said about the Catholics, though. And since when is the standard person supposed to be held to higher regards than the clergy? Especially when they have NOTHING to back up their views? I mean, poo poo; they threw First Sin out when they accepted evolution. What the gently caress was Jesus supposed to die for? The denial of birth control? The spread of AIDS? Keeping children in foster care because potential parents aren't celibate enough? It's a challenge to hold one group to task for not understanding scripture while giving another group a pass for the same thing simply because they have money to throw around.
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Sep 10, 2015 05:51
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A Terrible Person posted:I thought the point was evangelicals are crazy because they don't have a drat thing to back them up. Which is true. "Don't look for consistency in religion." - George Carlin
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Sep 10, 2015 05:54
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Fair enough. It's just weird seeing people admit that the historicity and consistency of Scripture is dubious at best, recognize a variety of decent philosophers who espouse similar views with half the controversy, and yet still default to Jesus and Christianity as defacto moral standards because Jesus may have been a good person if he actually existed. It's almost as though they don't recognize their own arguments.
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Sep 10, 2015 06:21
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Fighting Trousers posted:I'd be interested to read a Buddhist reading of Job. He suffers horribly, and when he finally cracks and wishes he'd never even been conceived, God shows up and basically says, "Show of hands. Who here created the universe? What makes you think your life is so important?" It's a very 'all life is suffering' mindset. One really important thing to remember about Job is that when it was written, the tri-omni-god hadn't really been formalized into Jewish faith yet. God was the greatest, and beyond all human competition, but he was not yet being regarded as literally and totally omnipotent. The phrase I like to use is that the Yahweh of Job is omnicompetent; at any given task, he is the most excellent, but not completely unstoppable or all knowing. That being set up, there's a reason in the story that God is mentioning Job to the guy in his court who tests peoples' faith and asking 'Hey man, can we find a way to test this dude? What do you think of him?' and it's that God legitimately doesn't know yet. Job is seriously one of the best books in the bible and has both a very interesting character study, some really good theology, and a lot of uncomfortable questions to be raised about the nature of faith and the standing doctrine that good people get good things and bad people get bad things. The whole prosperity gospel thing that got brought up earlier? The current form is new-ish, but it's an old idea made new and part of Job was attacking the ancient version of it. We will forever have the idea that the powerful deserve their power because God wills it and it is a reward for their virtue because the powerful will always want God to be cool with what they do and have.
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Sep 10, 2015 07:30
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How are u posted:Judeo-Christian means Christian, but Jews are ok, I'm not an anti-semite! But in terms of policy or theology or anything at all: White American Christian.
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Sep 10, 2015 08:32
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A Terrible Person posted:Jesus may have been a good person if he actually existed. I wish other atheists wouldn't do this poo poo. Carrier, Price, and their ilk are considered to be crackpots by mainstream historians. You don't buy into the crackpot view when creationists do it, but jump right on the bandwagon when its a fringe view you like.
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Sep 10, 2015 09:36
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How are u posted:Judeo-Christian means Christian, but Jews are ok, I'm not an anti-semite! But in terms of policy or theology or anything at all: White American Christian. Coming from an outside point of view (I'm an ex-Wiccan now-atheist), Judeo-Christian means that the society is broadly 'culturally christian' - including the old testament. Meaning that without having to believe anything, Christmas and Easter are celebrated (with presents and chocolate) and the phrases that have entered common usage are still there- including all the references in Shakespeare etc - without a basic understanding of the bible as literature rather than scripture a lot of our culture doesn't make sense (I'm from the UK, not the US, so religion isn't anything as big a Thing here). Renfield fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Sep 10, 2015 |
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Sep 10, 2015 23:01
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A Terrible Person posted:organized religion is bullshit at best and dangerous in general. </thread>
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Sep 11, 2015 03:42
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Colbert did a pretty interesting (out of character) interview on his faith. http://saltandlighttv.org/witness/colbert.php https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF5tudIqN7w http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/09/stephen-colbert-opens-up-about-his-devout-christian-faith-islam-pope-francis-and-more.html quote:..."Faith ultimately can’t be argued, faith has to be felt,” continued Colbert. “And hopefully you can still feel your faith fully, and let your mind have a logical life of its own, and they do not defy each other, but complement each other, because logic itself, I don’t think, for me, and you know—Aquinas might say differently—logic itself will not lead me to God. And, so, hopefully I can use my mind to make my jokes, and not deny my love for God at the same time.”
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Sep 13, 2015 23:08
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Nckdictator posted:Colbert did a pretty interesting (out of character) interview on his faith. He's been at it for a while now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oASYa-Wkroc
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Sep 13, 2015 23:27
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Sorry to bump this dead rear end thread but this is likely the best place to ask this question. I'm pretty uninformed about this but from what I understand, much of the evangelical Christian support of Israel comes from a belief in a prophecy that requires Israel to exist in order to bring about the rapture. What I'm trying to understand is why evangelicals wish for the rapture to happen. If a believer died today and lived a good life in the eyes of God, wouldn't they go to heaven already? So what use is the rapture for anyone?
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Jul 14, 2016 20:04
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They're accelerationists who want to burn it all down.
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Jul 14, 2016 20:13
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Plus they get to be right, while all the non-believers get to stay behind for the tribulations. Their last words as they get carried bodily into heaven will be "I told you so  ".And then they get dropped back right where they were, naked, for being prideful.
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Jul 14, 2016 20:22
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It's like a bubble of some sorts. Every possible thing that doesn't fit within that bubble is characterized as being "worldly", "evil", "corrupting", "satanic" , etc. Anything that doesn't expressly say "JESUS" in it is condemned as "secular". I hold a lot of anger towards being in that bubble growing up sometimes.
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Jul 14, 2016 20:47
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birds posted:Sorry to bump this dead rear end thread but this is likely the best place to ask this question. Death is scary, man. If we can make the rapture happen in our lifetime then the Good and Right people get to skip that whole "death" thing and go straight on to heaven! Others are just horrible, nasty jerks who read the story of Noah and think "you know it'd be great for that to happen again but way worse." Super evangelical people are often just downright mean, sadistic, nasty people who love the idea of seeing people they don't like suffer. It's part of why they love the prosperity gospel so much; bad people have lovely lives on Earth then even worse in Hell. Good people have pretty good lives on Earth then way better lives in Heaven. There's actually another step removed from that; one of the common teachings among evangelicals is that you pretty much always have the option of repenting, confessing your sins before God, saying you're sorry, and being OK in His eyes if you mend your awful ways. You have that option until you die. You don't get that option when the rapture hits. At that moment God judges you; if you are a bad you're hosed. Lastly it also has a certain appeal thanks to how the apocalypse works. At some point the anti-Christ will give his mark to people. If you refuse you automatically go to Heaven no matter how awful you are. It gives them an easy out because sometimes they realize they're awful sinners but don't want to go through the effort of not being terrible people. Granted in other cases they don't exactly want the rapture to happen in their lifetimes. However, they believe that it will and thus believe that planning for the long term is pretty stupid (hence their hate for environmentalism) and are so hardcore about saving souls now. If America can enact theocracy soon and force everybody to behave in a Good and Christian Way then we can save all those souls and get more people into Heaven. That's a Good Thing worth paying literally any price for.
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Jul 15, 2016 00:02
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Lastly it also has a certain appeal thanks to how the apocalypse works. At some point the anti-Christ will give his mark to people. If you refuse you automatically go to Heaven no matter how awful you are. It gives them an easy out because sometimes they realize they're awful sinners but don't want to go through the effort of not being terrible people.
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Jul 15, 2016 00:07
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Guavanaut posted:Have they applied this to Pokemon Go yet? I know they did for social security numbers, barcodes, magnetic credit cards, and RFID chips (although not QR codes afaik, maybe because nobody used them). No. That won't be a "mark of the beast" but they've already started screaming about how it's the devil's influence and is encouraging kids to conjure demons and whatever. It isn't something that anybody is forcing on anybody else it's just a popular thing they don't understand. Those other things were things that just started to appear on absolutely everything before long. It's kind of hard to get by in modern society without plastic money these days and stuff like bar codes are everywhere because of how drat useful they are.
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Jul 15, 2016 00:40
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I suspect they can't bear the thought of themselves dying while the world and humanity continue to exist and change for decades and even millennia afterward. (Not least because it would disprove their belief that Right Now is the most crucial, most pivotal, most important time in the history of the world.) It's more comfortable to imagine that the world dies pretty much the same time they do.
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Jul 15, 2016 00:41
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For some reason, Millenniallism is really attractive to the human psyche. Mishima believed that art came from the male will towards death. It pops up in all sorts of places throughout history. Id like to say it is most prevalent in authoritarians following super authoritarians or Prester Janes whole Narrativist hypothesis but part of me feels like that is overly infantilizing.
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Jul 15, 2016 03:35
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Back in the late 90's before my atheist days, I used to try really hard to be a Christian. Even then I knew evangelical Christianity was a lovely religion for lovely people. I remember driving behind a car with a bumper sticker that stated "Warning: In case of rapture, this vehicle will be unoccupied" and thinking, "nope, not with that attitude." Even as an atheist, I'm not necessarily against religion, if it helps you be a good person, I can't knock you for it. The problem arises from when you use it as a crutch to make you feel good about being a lovely person. I've always viewed the whole forgiveness bit as being "hey, don't be a dick, but we're people, so it's ok if you gently caress up once in a while, just don't make a habit out of it." I work with someone extremely evangelical, and he has to tell everyone about his faith in god. It's really fascinating to see that he can't grasp the concept of his ex-wife filing an appeal, but still bringing his kids over for his visitation. Of course he also spends a lot of time scheming about how to screw over his ex-wife in their custody battle. Not only that, he can't seem to claim an original thought for himself, it's always God talking to him, and 90% of what he tells everyone he prays about is equivalent to trying to convince god to do his laundry for him. It's just maddening how ignorant people can be about things, and claiming how good and righteous they are, as they continue to do lovely things, just because they put their "faith" in god. Back to the rapture. I ran some calculations on it, and I came up with if it happened today on a global scale, only about 620 people in the US would disappear. That's enough to have a few missing persons reports, and otherwise no one would really notice, life would go on, and lovely people would continue to do lovely things, and pray for forgiveness, rinse and repeat. On the other hand, 144,000 was a bigger deal back in Ancient Rome (when revelations would have been written), it was about 14% of the population. Scaled up to the 2014 approximate population of the USA, that would be the equivalent of about 46 million people just vanishing at once. Of course the victims who want this stuff to happen, really can't comprehend much beyond the tiny world they live in, as the people at the top preaching these things to them are just in it for the money and the power and know much better.
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Jul 15, 2016 14:37
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Death is scary, man. If we can make the rapture happen in our lifetime then the Good and Right people get to skip that whole "death" thing and go straight on to heaven! Interesting. The benefit of avoiding actual death is the reason my evangelical roommate gave me too. Also because of the belief that God will create a new world free of evil or something like that. Do you know if hoping for or trying to make the rapture happen is a thing that evangelicals believe God wants them to make happen or is it all just out of human selfishness?
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Jul 15, 2016 14:45
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birds posted:Interesting. The benefit of avoiding actual death is the reason my evangelical roommate gave me too. Also because of the belief that God will create a new world free of evil or something like that. Do you know if hoping for or trying to make the rapture happen is a thing that evangelicals believe God wants them to make happen or is it all just out of human selfishness? Human Selfishness, always bet on selfishness
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Jul 15, 2016 14:47
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Iron Crowned posted:Human Selfishness, always bet on selfishness Not just that but believing that God approves of their selfishness and that. They genuinely believe that because they are awesome in their faith that them being selfish is just being rewarded. Same goes for how they justify being uncharitable prices that live upper middle class lives while supporting policy that fucks the poor. They are typically profoundly awful people who found justification.
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Jul 15, 2016 17:51
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