"Multiple pastors tell me, essentially, the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount, parenthetically, in their preaching'turn the other cheek'[and] to have someone come up after to say, 'Where did you get those liberal talking points?'" Moore said.
"When the pastor would say, 'I'm literally quoting Jesus Christ' ... The response would be, 'Yes, but that doesn't work anymore. That's weak," he added. "When we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we're in a crisis."
If someone asked me what Trump sounded like I would never think about a lion. His voice is nasally and weak. That part reminded me a lot more of Hitler yelling into a microphone
Ehh, isn't the antichrist supposed to be a nearly impossibly attractive person, in charisma and looks? A lot of people either hate him or are entirely indifferent and the reasons don't seem to be religiously motivated.
This is still what baffles me. We aren't losing our country to a charismatic, two faced mastermind. We're losing our country to a fucking obvious loser. He's literally so bad it's hard to parody him since even the parodies are tame in comparison to what he actually does. It's ridiculous
isn’t the antichrist supposed to be a nearly impossibly attractive person
Premillennial dispensationalism/rapture theology is a group creative writing exercise with little relevance to the text. The prophecies in Daniel refer to the Greek king Antiochus, which is clear when one reads chapters and not verses (unfortunately uncommon in your typical Protestant church…) Revelation is referring to emperor Nero.
Really, it’s more that folks like Hal Lindsey popularized the concept by traumatizing children in church basements that’s given it the culture cachet.
As others have said, that part's more modern. But also, look at what's going on, a lot of people hate him, but he has some sort of charisma to draw so many people to lockstep with him.
And one of the big things in revalations about the antichrist is that a lot of Christians will follow him because their faith is tainted and corrupted
Yeah I'm not a Christian, and I know many Christians hate the "reasonable hope for salvation of righteous nonbelievers" thing, but I'll say this, I've got a strong suspicion that if I'm wrong about the veracity of Christianity then Jesus will still prefer my behavior to the maga christians'
Prosperity gospel has been shitting on the red text of Christ for decades now.
Jesus hated wealth inequality. The only group he said would never enter heaven were the wealthy ("easier to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven", in other words, it isn't possible for the rich to enter heaven). Jesus also violently flipped tables and whipped the wealthy to drive them out of temples.
So conservative "Christians" abandoned the teachings of Christ many decades ago.
The actual story of the money changers is worse than most people know.
See, as part of their religious observance, the ancient Hebrews made a pilgrimage to the Temple. This was a mandatory part of their faith, much like the Hajj is for modern Muslims.
Those who were too poor to bring their own sacrifice could buy one at the Temple, but the Temple didn't take the coin of the realm (the Roman coins), they only accepted Shekels.
So, the Money Changers. They set up in the Temple itself and were fleecing pilgrims of all their money.
In comes Jesus, who flipped tables and broke out the whip, and less than a week later he was crucified.
And this is the only part of the bible that I believe is 100% historically accurate. A peace loving Rabbi threw a fit over the Money Changers and was crucified for it.
The sacrifices at the temple were expected to be pretty much perfect, and had to be found acceptable by the temple priests. So the merchants would get "pre-blessed" sacrifices that they would sell at exorbitant prices to the pilgrims, who would have the sacrifices they brought deemed "inadequate" by the priests.
So if you brought an animal sacrifice, you'd still have to buy another (costly) animal. If you brought money, you'd be forced to exchange it at a significant loss.
The whole thing was an obvious scam, and Jesus was killed over it (and the rest of his message). I don't believe he was God Incarnate, but I'm still a big fan of Jesus the man.
I'm pretty confident that all would have gone about the same way in this era.
Yeah, it was the moneychangers and the stall keepers that tolerated them.
It was a religious duty to contribute money for the upkeep of the temple. So people would come from out of town and try to hand over their cash and the priests would say "we can't accept foreign coinage... go talk to that dude over there with the heavy pockets, he'll help you". And the moneychanger would convert their currency, but not without keeping a fat percentage for himself.
The lesson (as I read it) is that setting yourself up as a gatekeeper and forcing people to pay you in order to do the right thing is an especially odious behaviour, even if it's legal.
Yeah - stuff we consider the canon was essentially wrapped up by about 100 CE.
The gospels were likely individuals taking other written material that was circulating around the time, and making their own little compilation based on the theological points that they wanted to make.
It’s really clear when you read the gospels and know the order. Mark was probably first, Matthew and Luke pull heavily from Mark and share something from something we call “Q” and maybe a “saying source.” Then John was written last.
It’s really clear when you look at the differences between the scene where they go to get Jesus’s body. In Mark - it’s just a guy who tells them Jesus isn’t there. Matthew has an earthquake and an Angel, Luke has two angels, John has Jesus himself say hi. John is where you get the most “divine” Jesus - because it really does seem that at first Jesus was understood as a mortal man speaking for God, but later influences from Greek philosophy and thoughts about “spirit” slowly turned Jesus into God.
And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.
And Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how difficult it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” And they were exceedingly astonished, and said to him, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.” Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”
Mark 10:23-31
Historical Jesus was not on team money and power I don’t think.
Seems like it would be pretty difficult to get a camel through a needle eye. (That “oh he was actually referring to a gate” is modern horseshit apologetics designed for rich Christians to justify having money btw, totally made up.)
I guess we're going to get more denominational splits based on if Jesus' teachings about loving others is Biblically accurate. Yet another reason why he isn't coming back.
I've heard the distinction described as "it's a cult when the founder is still around making stuff up, it becomes a religion after he dies and his followers are left to continue doing that in his name."
I think his point is that humans are meaningless little things made just to be in the image of "God" and should "get over themselves" since it's all about God and not at all about humanity.
Seemingly, that somehow doesn't apply to having him shut up and stop making it about himself.
Yeah, I came across some article he wrote. He basically said if he hates someone, they deserve it because god says so, and if anyone disagrees with him, they are making it about "them" and not Jesus.
He evidently (understandably) got blowback on Twitter back in the day, and wrote some word vomit that sums up to "No no, you don't understand, what I said is not as bad as you think it is (it's sooooo much worse)"
Every time I see that I'm so skeeved out. Like I understand needing to close your heart's empathy to deceivers. It's something I've had to do with abusers who play on pity. But this is language that you use to prepare people to do evil
My sister once told my mom that empathy is what's ruining this country. It's not even like it was a misinterpretation/misunderstanding, that's almost word for word how she said it. I can't fathom how someone comes to that line of thinking.
The problem is that's actually the opposite of how that works. If you refuse to care for the weak in your community, you foster this atmosphere of sociopathy and mistrust that causes the group to destroy itself.
Why the hell do you think there are only two Sith in Star Wars?
I can not understand how people can be social darwinist and still support inheritance, even tax free inheritance. If you want just the fittest to survive, everyone needs to start the same. Same education, same situation at home, same connections of the parents. Social darwinist should support that all children are taken from their parents and be brought up in the same orphanages and are given exactly the same tools.
That said, I can not understand social darwinists at all. Whoever is dumb enough to support this idea is hurting the herd and according to social darwinists...
When I confronted my very Repub dad about the discrepancy between inheritance being okay and giving poor people things for free was bad for them because bootstraps etc, his reaction was "It's their money, they can give it to whoever they want."
But I don't see why social darwinists would support raising children under identical conditions. A level playing field isn't part of their creed. They just don't believe in hampering the superior to take care of the inferior. My dad left me and my sister ample inheritances, and if anything I think he would see that as a sentimental flaw he was entitled to. But if he thought we were the type to blow the money on blackjack and hookers he probably would have donated it to Republicans, thinking that in the long run it was best for us..
I can tell you pretty easily but that won't stop you from pretending to be surprised for internet points next time
Conservative empathy is reserved only for close associations, it is a crisis management mode that modern doomteller media actively stokes with imaginary threats of immigrants and trans people so it is ALWAYS on
In times of crisis, humanity's generosity contracts as we have to do the cold calculations over limited resources and the fact that we do NOT value every person equally.
Example: If I only had enough food for me and one other person, I would not give that food to a bigot because that food is better served in the belly of a progressive
It's just that they are triggered into this mode at all times and their circle of empathy is basically only family and friends, but deep down it is always only just them if times get hard enough
You saw the same behavior in times of famine all across the world
Proverbs 14:31
Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.
Deuteronomy 15:7
If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them.
Luke 14:13-14
But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
Luke 12:15:
Then he said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.”
1 John 4:20
If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
1 John 3:17
But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?
John 13:34
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Matthew 25 (separation of the sheep and the goats) is pretty much the only time Jesus straight-up threatens people with Hell, and he's basing it on the treatment of the poor, sick, and social outcasts.
5 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.[a] 6 You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.
I mean I've seen some random Instagram stuff where Republicans think that Jesus would not allow immigrants into this country. It truly is another level of delusion at this point
Was curious and went looking. Is this what you're referencing? I'm not sure since it doesn't sound like they were made just to drum up outrage, they were just inherently shitty because they're AI users who suck at pretending to be people.
I can't find it anymore, but there was an AI they created that specifically was spouting Russian misinformation to drive engagement. People found it, watched it, and then found others. I'll keep looking.
These AI entities are designed to boost interactivity and engagement, aligning with Meta's push towards generative AI. While the innovation promises enhanced social media experiences, it also raises significant concerns over data privacy and the potential misuse of user-generated content for AI training. Join us as we explore the implications of this bold move by Meta
Yeah, the widely practiced "Prosperity Gospel" stuff is like a religious studies PhD designed the most anti-Christian form of Christianity for a thesis, and suddenly people started picking it up and running with it.
Ohhh, friendo, there's about 500 million Christians in Africa that are heavily besieged by Evangelicals pushing this for the political clout. It's rampant.
Plus, that Joel Osteen guy peddled a version of this hard.
On a similar note, the old testament had a historical purpose - to unite disparate tribes and create a national identity against the threat posed by the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires.
The new testament is just a collections of writings and letters. We have no idea who wrote them, they lied on the cover saying the texts are written by the apostles. And by a pretty arbitrary process, a bunch of priests picked their favorite writings and made them into a cannon.
If the same thing happened today, nobody would believe them outside maybe a fringe cult.
Perhaps partly, my personal belief is the is traces back to early tribal days. I believe the first cultural leaders likely struggled with retaining control and authority at a certain point. After all, there is only so much you can threaten people with to keep them in like. The worse of which is death. A sufficiently motivated person may not care about their physical well-being if they want to achieve a important enough goal. Create an invisible "soul" and a space wizard that determines if that soul gets bliss or torture after death and it adds a new level of control.
Problem with that hypothesis is that pre modern people treated death very differently with in many places it was quite literal and physical, for example in ancient Germanic societies they thought of the underworld as someplace only the dead could travel to as in the actual corpses went to the underworld at night and returned to their grave during the day. Hell we can even see the ideas of the soul being refined during the Hellenic period with most philosophers settling on it being an "animating force" which is vague but about right with the ancient Greeks. The idea of the soul is probably relatively recent IE middle stone age at the earliest, and probably evolved out of far more ancient animistic traditions.
The problem is, from what I've heard, the black plauge killed all the good priests. Since they were the ones to go and read a person's last will and testament, they would also end up catching the plauge a lot of the time. So eventually all the smart and respectable priests died, leaving them desperate for anyone. So from then the churches have been lead by undesirable
What? Priests before the plauge were the ones who could read and write, and were chosen to be good carriers of the message. And those people, thinking they were doing the right thing by helping the dying go to heaven, caught the disease which wasn't known as the black plauge yet.
They were wiped out almost immediately because of it. The churches then went to the second options, which followed soon after. It kept going until the churches were desperate for anyone to go a say the last rites.
So yeah then malicious people ended up taking over, but nature definitely caused the change.
It is funny how I said the second stringers died soon after the first and you just completely disregarded that
The churches then went to the second options, which followed soon after. It kept going until the churches were desperate for anyone to go a say the last rites.
Your point is correct, no church was infallible before the plauge happened. I'm just stating the plauge made it exponentially easier for infiltration to occur as those opposing it were literally dying trying to be good people.
**But if God intended that the Negro race should be Segregated in Africa
then why did He curse the children of Ham and decree that they should be the
servants, or slaves, ot the other races?’’
God did not. Canaan was the only one specifically cursed to be a ‘‘servant
of servants’’ (Genesis 9:20-27). Even if we admit the possibility that all
his descendants were included in the curse (the best Bible scholars disagree
on this point). we must still remember that Canaan was only one of the four
sons of Ham and therefore he fathered only a MINORITY of the black race. And
as I said before, even that servile minority were to live in a different
part of the country from the Hebrews (Genesis 10:19).
It cannot be positively proven from the Scriptures that the Negroes were
cursed to be black because of Nimrod’s rebellion or because of Ham’s sexual
laxity at the time of his father Noah’s drunkenness. But there are some
verses that seem to leave that implication. For example in Jeremiah 13:23
we read, ‘*Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?
then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.’’ Here the black
Skin of the Negro is obviously a symbol of evil. This verse also shows that
God meant for that skin to STAY BLACK and not be blended into a Thousand
shades of mulatto.
The notion that the Negroes of this country have INHERITED the “‘deep
Sunburn’’ that their forefathers are said to have suffered in Africa is ridiculous. Sunburns are not inherited, no matter how deeply they penetrate,
not even by the first generation, not to mention the tenth or twelfth
generation.
If we are to reject the curse of Ham and the rebellious leadership of
Nimrod as explanations of why God made the‘Negro black then there is only
one other possible explanation to be found anywhere in the Bible or out of it: THE GOOD LORD WAS SO ANXIOUS FOR THE HAMITES TO BE SEPARATED AND SEG-
REGATED PEOPLE THAT HE MADE THEM RADICALLY DIFFERENT IN THEIR APPEARANCE
FROM THE PEOPLE OF ALL OTHER RACES. He made their skin color different for
for the same reason that He made their language different and for the same
reason that He assigned them a different habitation.. At least we would be much kinder and more charitable to our colored friends if we gave that
explanation.
The southern Bible doesn't read like yours and mine does, they made some notes in the margins.
With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him.
Daniel 11:32
He will cause deceit to prosper, and he will consider himself superior… He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them.
Daniel 8:25, 2 Thess 2:10
… a despicable person will arise… a man of contempt… to whom the royal honor has not been rightfully conferred. He will slip in when least expected and will seize the kingdom through flattery and intrigue.
Daniel 11:21
After an alliance is made with him he will practice deception, and he will go up and gain power with a small force of people.
Daniel 8 and 11 here are talking about a prophecy that has already “been fulfilled” - common in the Bible to make these kinds of retroactive prophecies. The bad guy being described there is Antiochus.
Not really, from context pretty sure it’s one of those “ex post facto” prophecy things.
This is why people should read books of the Bible and not verse. Random bits out of context are used to imply so much BS.
Now then, I tell you the truth: Three more kings will arise in Persia, and then a fourth, who will be far richer than all the others. When he has gained power by his wealth, he will stir up everyone against the kingdom of Greece. Then a mighty king will arise, who will rule with great power and do as he pleases. After he has arisen, his empire will be broken up and parceled out toward the four winds of heaven. It will not go to his descendants, nor will it have the power he exercised, because his empire will be uprooted and given to others.
The king of the South will become strong, but one of his commanders will become even stronger than he and will rule his own kingdom with great power. After some years, they will become allies. The daughter of the king of the South will go to the king of the North to make an alliance, but she will not retain her power, and he and his power will not last. In those days she will be betrayed, together with her royal escort and her father[ and the one who supported her.
One from her family line will arise to take her place. He will attack the forces of the king of the North and enter his fortress; he will fight against them and be victorious. He will also seize their gods, their metal images and their valuable articles of silver and gold and carry them off to Egypt. For some years he will leave the king of the North alone. Then the king of the North will invade the realm of the king of the South but will retreat to his own country. His sons will prepare for war and assemble a great army, which will sweep on like an irresistible flood and carry the battle as far as his fortress.
None of this is connected to Revelation, which was written centuries later.
This isn't really new though, it's just saying the quite part out loud. always-has-been.gif.
Neoliberalism is the cause of the decay and paved the way for fascism. If you let large conglomerates own everything including news media and social media and then sell access to spew vile hate speech and disinformation to people, the current result is to be expected. It's actually kind of refreshing that they actually come out and say it.
These people also don't believe in equality, they believe inequality of humans is fundamentally morally correct. Neoliberals believe in inequality based on class/wealth, fascists believe in inequality based on identity like race or gender.
There’s an argument going around evangelical circles that "empathy" is more dangerous than compassion, with the analogy of jumping in to save someone in quicksand, but getting stuck yourself (empathy) vs throwing someone a rope and keeping your footing (compassion). Like if you understand a bad person's thinking too much, you are dragged into their sin.
There’s even a tinge of women being more empathetic and "susceptible" than men.
It’s how it sounds.
Dig into the argument, and they all eventually end up focusing on dangerous progressive causes as tempting Christians, basically, and it feels like they're trying to twist scripture into current MAGA doctrine. JD Vance (a Catholic, not evangelical IIRC) said something related on immigration, that loving your family and those close to you comes before loving distant neighbors, which the Pope very pointedly refuted.
Yeah, glad to see the specific instance but after trying to search I see this seems to be a broader doctrine. That you would absolutely hate people who "deserve" to be hated, accordingly to the viewpoint of whoever is preaching regardless of whether that person's situation actually affects anyone other than themselves.
It's kind of like the evil twin of "be tolerant, except of intolerance": "be tolerant only of intolerance"
Cowards fear empathy and maim their own capacity for it, because experiencing the pain of others hurts. Being surrounded by extreme, intolerable pain is the most difficult part of being vegan.
Thanks for that. Having read it, though, I think it's likely that I'll forget about the details soon enough to continue nothing-ing her comics. The whole argument feels silly from the periphery.
Because literally none of us gives one damn shit what the difference between a deacon and a priest is. They're both trying to sell everyone the idea that they're magical friend in the sky wants all of us to obey a bunch of rules that were written almost two thousand years ago and contradict themselves constantly.
I bet it would shock you to find out that the existence or lack thereof of an Abrahamic god is irrelevant to me.
Or, to use crayon terms: It really doesn't matter to how I live my life if He exists or not. I choose to live as if He does and it has benefited me immensely. If somehow direct material proof of the nonexistence of god appeared tomorrow, or even the opposite, I will still live my life as I have been.
My main point is that the abandonment of cultural sacredness is why we are descending into fascism right now and you whiny little ratheists are a big part of the reason
You really have no idea how many progressive Christians you piss off with your wide-assed brush you keep painting us with
I'm not religious, but it was cringe because they were reveling in thier ignorance right before paroting common online reductions of faith. "Obey your sky daddy's rules" and all that. Seems trite. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
my theory is the oppression religious arrogance is now getting its comeuppance. everyone who grew up with religion can now talk freely about how fucking stupid it is without their father or mother whupping their ass--theres no surprise to this.
what the fuck are you even on about? Religion has been trash talked pretty consistently since the 90s
I have an alternate hypothesis: atheism is the first rebellion, a private rebellion, as all the simmering resentment of being under their parents' thumb is transferred to the ultimate example of authority. They attribute every shortcoming of perceived justice (remember they are kids, their concept of justice is 'I should be treated special') on the head of an apparently absent, indifferent, or even malicious god.
And the 'freedom' of being finally able to shout out against that perceived indifferent authority brings a sense of heady and powerful liberty like baby's first beer
And I think young atheists get addicted to that thrill, to be able to shout out against power, but just like every other addiction you never quite get the same thrill as that first delicious moment of rebellion
So they have to start finding it elsewhere, and usually it's arguing with theists because frankly, it's easy to do and win. they define 'win' being as 'upsetting the theist while appearing intellectual' and practice a set of boilerplate arguments quick-tabbed to whip out at any of several theological conversation hooks
The problem with that is, again it's an addiction. It makes people do stupid things to satisfy it, like saying incorrect things with undeserved boldness
no ones shouting against religion, theres too much risk being assaulted by some zealot. people are just talking about it on the internet. and for the record. religious people literally go door to door to influence us, they are the reason why we have anti-abortion laws, they are the reason why trans people have to fucking hide their identity for fear of being murdered, they are the reason we have wars.
people talk a lot about 9.11 and how islam is to blame. people talk about how ww2 was about targeting Jewish people. religions literally cause wars. its not real. and people who defend it are silly stupid heads with poopy on their heads (kidding here, I know plenty of spiritual people who are kind and great) but the evil out weights the good.
you have some good points and i respect that. but i--grown under a strict religious parental figure do not understand how people cant wrap their head around your concept of disrespect of religious things. if god brings you peace of mind, thats awesome. just don't force it on anyone else
and people who defend it are silly stupid heads with poopy on their heads
Fuck off in every way you are capable of, then fund a study group to discover new and interesting ways to fuck off, then do them
All at once.
I am so fuckdamn tired of this constant casual marginalization, the abandonment of the sacred culturally is 50% of the reason we are descending into fascism and yet you rancid heathens sit there all smug in your own pile of rhetorical shit thinking it is progress
There were once concepts in our culture that were unassailable, protection for women and children, the enshrinement of personal privacy, and of universal human dignity.
The thing is, ALL of these protections rolled down from the idea that 'Human life is sacred because it is a creation of God', and A WHOLE FUCKTONNE of our Bill of Rights are based on this (despite what all of you whiny separation of powers people claim), so when you unroll the idea of God, then anything that was protected is now subject to attack
But you will whine 'Nonono Angry_Autist, it was those evil Skybeard believing repugnicans that overturned RvWade!'
Only because they knew that no one holds womens' rights scared anymore, because no one holds ANYTHING sacred anymore, because without an objective measure of ethical good, everything is just relative cultural custom and just as unimportant.
You can SEE that in how ambivalent they are over the rising number of innocent women dying from easily treated miscarriage complications
But STILL you don't understand just how devastating descending into moral relativism has been, and will fight against ANYONE who tries to show you your complicity in the current era of strife
History is basically thousands of years of horrors during which people mostly believes their deity approved of all the awful things they did. It isnt the decline of the sacred that opened up this particular can of worms.
If anything its a swing towards authoritianism as a reaction to a whole host of factors.
Changing demographics making white people and men afraid of losing their privileged position
Decline in relegion making the remaining faithful fearful of living in a world where most disagree with them
Apathy on the left due to left wing figures desire not to rock the boat and pwrsue real change
Centralization of media by a handful of people with interests more aligned with the right followed by decades of brainwashing
A characteristic figure to be the focus of the above
Rising inequality to put pressure on the common folks.
Its weird to live in a world where the atheists overwhelmingly voted for normalcy and the devout voted 70% for fascism and still see godless people blamed for what you voted for.
"all men were created equally--oh except black people we are enslaving them" didnt thomas jefferson fuck his slaves and keep his own children as slaves or some shit?
the never ending hypocrisy from religion is why you get what you get. No longer getting graded on a curve is not persecution. you are just fragile. Also please, take it easy. im not against you. I think religion has many good things in them, but when christian schools have mass graves in them from the aboriginals they kidnapped they deserve a bit if scrutiny, right? when muslim schools destroy gays, when ethno-religious states conduct genocide? it deserves some scrutiny and shouldn't be surprised when people talk about it.
Sorry about not knowing the intricacies of your imaginary friend's club. BTW, claiming that your imaginary friend is the only one that's real is pretty arrogant too.
Both are ordained ministers, the preist just leads the parish, and the deacon helps the preist lead a parish. Hierarchically they are adjacent. Why are you so confident of my religion?
Basically your side believes in 100 kinds of magic and fairy tales, at least in America the majority of self described Christians believe that the earth is less than 10k years old wished into being by what amounts to a prick of a genie and a non trivial minority of these folks believe the Earth is flat.
After spending their life talking to believers who might as well be actual adult Santa worshippers its easy to be both arrogant and a bit confused by the non imaginary part of the holy heirarchy.
It is true that I personally do not find most of her recent political comics to be particularly funny or insightful--which is fine, she does not have to draw to satisfy me--but there are plenty of her comics which are not about politics but about cats or silly reflections on life, especially before Trump got elected.
So in short, thank you very much for your comment because it totally inspired me to check this person out and find comics of theirs that I enjoyed! 😀
Look, on many things, we probably agree. Maybe even more important things.
And I don't even love this comic, its just, fine, its whatever.
That said I upvoted this comic to spite you and your comment here, because I don't like your sentiment that people can't like and share things that they like because your hipster instinct kicked in.
Humor is fairly subjective. You don't want content because you don't like it? That's fundamentally against the concept of what Lemmy represents. This isn't a website to cater to your whims.
I’m not sure I follow. This doesn’t seem “obviously botted” to me. Is it not possible that different people find different things funny and we don’t all share one common sense of humor?
(Or, I suppose, that comic strips can have value beyond humor.)
Evangelicals Are Now Rejecting 'Liberal' Teachings of Jesus
And people dont understand why I say the orange clown is an Antichrist and may be the Antichrist.
The doomed by a perfect circle is very disturbing accurate.
https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/
Came here to share the same article.
It's truly uncanny
I reckon it has a lot to do with personality traits of evil people
Yeah, while there are a few odd specifics that line up, most of the predictions are just describing the personality traits of a tyrant.
If someone asked me what Trump sounded like I would never think about a lion. His voice is nasally and weak. That part reminded me a lot more of Hitler yelling into a microphone
That's also how I interpret the traits.
It's common warning signs but using colorful language.
That guy is still in a doomsday cult in his head.
Ehh, isn't the antichrist supposed to be a nearly impossibly attractive person, in charisma and looks? A lot of people either hate him or are entirely indifferent and the reasons don't seem to be religiously motivated.
I just settle with him being a douchebag.
Don’t forgot about how all his weird followers depict him in their fan art though…. They seem to at least perceive him as exactly that.
This is still what baffles me. We aren't losing our country to a charismatic, two faced mastermind. We're losing our country to a fucking obvious loser. He's literally so bad it's hard to parody him since even the parodies are tame in comparison to what he actually does. It's ridiculous
Most people are not sharp enough to see that.
We are doomed by the cuts to education they made 40 years ago
Premillennial dispensationalism/rapture theology is a group creative writing exercise with little relevance to the text. The prophecies in Daniel refer to the Greek king Antiochus, which is clear when one reads chapters and not verses (unfortunately uncommon in your typical Protestant church…) Revelation is referring to emperor Nero.
Really, it’s more that folks like Hal Lindsey popularized the concept by traumatizing children in church basements that’s given it the culture cachet.
As others have said, that part's more modern. But also, look at what's going on, a lot of people hate him, but he has some sort of charisma to draw so many people to lockstep with him.
And one of the big things in revalations about the antichrist is that a lot of Christians will follow him because their faith is tainted and corrupted
Yeah I'm not a Christian, and I know many Christians hate the "reasonable hope for salvation of righteous nonbelievers" thing, but I'll say this, I've got a strong suspicion that if I'm wrong about the veracity of Christianity then Jesus will still prefer my behavior to the maga christians'
Prosperity gospel has been shitting on the red text of Christ for decades now.
Jesus hated wealth inequality. The only group he said would never enter heaven were the wealthy ("easier to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven", in other words, it isn't possible for the rich to enter heaven). Jesus also violently flipped tables and whipped the wealthy to drive them out of temples.
So conservative "Christians" abandoned the teachings of Christ many decades ago.
Not just the wealthy, but people who were using the temple as a place of business (and likely ripping people off on interest)
The actual story of the money changers is worse than most people know.
See, as part of their religious observance, the ancient Hebrews made a pilgrimage to the Temple. This was a mandatory part of their faith, much like the Hajj is for modern Muslims.
Those who were too poor to bring their own sacrifice could buy one at the Temple, but the Temple didn't take the coin of the realm (the Roman coins), they only accepted Shekels.
So, the Money Changers. They set up in the Temple itself and were fleecing pilgrims of all their money.
In comes Jesus, who flipped tables and broke out the whip, and less than a week later he was crucified.
And this is the only part of the bible that I believe is 100% historically accurate. A peace loving Rabbi threw a fit over the Money Changers and was crucified for it.
I had understood it to be even worse:
The sacrifices at the temple were expected to be pretty much perfect, and had to be found acceptable by the temple priests. So the merchants would get "pre-blessed" sacrifices that they would sell at exorbitant prices to the pilgrims, who would have the sacrifices they brought deemed "inadequate" by the priests.
So if you brought an animal sacrifice, you'd still have to buy another (costly) animal. If you brought money, you'd be forced to exchange it at a significant loss.
The whole thing was an obvious scam, and Jesus was killed over it (and the rest of his message). I don't believe he was God Incarnate, but I'm still a big fan of Jesus the man.
I'm pretty confident that all would have gone about the same way in this era.
Yeah, it was the moneychangers and the stall keepers that tolerated them.
It was a religious duty to contribute money for the upkeep of the temple. So people would come from out of town and try to hand over their cash and the priests would say "we can't accept foreign coinage... go talk to that dude over there with the heavy pockets, he'll help you". And the moneychanger would convert their currency, but not without keeping a fat percentage for himself.
The lesson (as I read it) is that setting yourself up as a gatekeeper and forcing people to pay you in order to do the right thing is an especially odious behaviour, even if it's legal.
Technically the Bible had been changing since Jesus's death
The gospels were probably not written until many decades after his death.
Yeah - stuff we consider the canon was essentially wrapped up by about 100 CE.
The gospels were likely individuals taking other written material that was circulating around the time, and making their own little compilation based on the theological points that they wanted to make.
It’s really clear when you read the gospels and know the order. Mark was probably first, Matthew and Luke pull heavily from Mark and share something from something we call “Q” and maybe a “saying source.” Then John was written last.
It’s really clear when you look at the differences between the scene where they go to get Jesus’s body. In Mark - it’s just a guy who tells them Jesus isn’t there. Matthew has an earthquake and an Angel, Luke has two angels, John has Jesus himself say hi. John is where you get the most “divine” Jesus - because it really does seem that at first Jesus was understood as a mortal man speaking for God, but later influences from Greek philosophy and thoughts about “spirit” slowly turned Jesus into God.
Visions of religious leaders sitting in golden chairs and crying out for donations....
How did we get here? It's not a mystery, it's a cautionary tale.
Mark 10:17-22
Mark 10:23-31
Historical Jesus was not on team money and power I don’t think.
Seems like it would be pretty difficult to get a camel through a needle eye. (That “oh he was actually referring to a gate” is modern horseshit apologetics designed for rich Christians to justify having money btw, totally made up.)
I guess we're going to get more denominational splits based on if Jesus' teachings about loving others is Biblically accurate. Yet another reason why he isn't coming back.
The real reason.
Same flawed logic the Russian Orthodox Church used to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Their new Jesus is Trump.
"I hate you guys, kill yourself" said Jesus probably during daylight saving time because he didn't sleep enough.
Fair enough, that's enough to make me give up on humanity.
I hear he also dropped the n word a couple times on Twitter but he was taking Ambien so it wasn't his fault.
Also, Jesus was so just of full love when they did the Nazi salute twice.
The only difference between a religion and a cult is time
I've heard the distinction described as "it's a cult when the founder is still around making stuff up, it becomes a religion after he dies and his followers are left to continue doing that in his name."
Number of followers helps too.
I have as much authority as the Pope. I just don’t have as many people who believe it.
George Carlin
The difference is sincerity.
Apparently started from a hate ministry in 2021... Dude named James White on Twitter.
"When you start with man as image-bearing creature of God, you can understand why sympathy is good, but empathy is sinful.
Do not surrender our mind to the sinful emotional responses of others."
The sinful emotional response caused by losing your home after the landlord tripled the rent
I don't get it, "image-bearing creature of God"??
Asking religion to make sense is like asking a fish to describe outer space.
I think his point is that humans are meaningless little things made just to be in the image of "God" and should "get over themselves" since it's all about God and not at all about humanity.
Seemingly, that somehow doesn't apply to having him shut up and stop making it about himself.
Yeah, I came across some article he wrote. He basically said if he hates someone, they deserve it because god says so, and if anyone disagrees with him, they are making it about "them" and not Jesus.
He evidently (understandably) got blowback on Twitter back in the day, and wrote some word vomit that sums up to "No no, you don't understand, what I said is not as bad as you think it is (it's sooooo much worse)"
So then... We don't need to apply empathy to whoever that guy is.
Who’s her?
Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. She asked Trump to have mercy for immigrants and pissed him off.
Every time I see that I'm so skeeved out. Like I understand needing to close your heart's empathy to deceivers. It's something I've had to do with abusers who play on pity. But this is language that you use to prepare people to do evil
Notably, I don't think folks would consider Christian teaching would not explicitly declare that you should hate (that part is usually just implied).
Generally what they say is that while you shouldn't just yield and let "bad" people walk all over you and society, you shouldn't "hate" them either.
This sounds like Warhammer 40K flavour text. How can anyone write this and think that they are the good guy?
"Thou shalt not even try to be a decent person"
the 11th commandment I guess
My sister once told my mom that empathy is what's ruining this country. It's not even like it was a misinterpretation/misunderstanding, that's almost word for word how she said it. I can't fathom how someone comes to that line of thinking.
To me it feels like social darwinism mentality - the belief that helping the weak survive weakens the herd. AKA "hard choices".
The problem is that's actually the opposite of how that works. If you refuse to care for the weak in your community, you foster this atmosphere of sociopathy and mistrust that causes the group to destroy itself.
Why the hell do you think there are only two Sith in Star Wars?
I can not understand how people can be social darwinist and still support inheritance, even tax free inheritance. If you want just the fittest to survive, everyone needs to start the same. Same education, same situation at home, same connections of the parents. Social darwinist should support that all children are taken from their parents and be brought up in the same orphanages and are given exactly the same tools.
That said, I can not understand social darwinists at all. Whoever is dumb enough to support this idea is hurting the herd and according to social darwinists...
When I confronted my very Repub dad about the discrepancy between inheritance being okay and giving poor people things for free was bad for them because bootstraps etc, his reaction was "It's their money, they can give it to whoever they want."
But I don't see why social darwinists would support raising children under identical conditions. A level playing field isn't part of their creed. They just don't believe in hampering the superior to take care of the inferior. My dad left me and my sister ample inheritances, and if anything I think he would see that as a sentimental flaw he was entitled to. But if he thought we were the type to blow the money on blackjack and hookers he probably would have donated it to Republicans, thinking that in the long run it was best for us..
Elon Musk is how.
This happened a while before he came out as a right wing nut job and was embraced by conservatives
He literally said this two weeks ago. " The death of the West is due to too much empathy." Paraphrased, of course.
Yeah but what does that have to do with the other posters sister saying it a while back?
I can tell you pretty easily but that won't stop you from pretending to be surprised for internet points next time
Conservative empathy is reserved only for close associations, it is a crisis management mode that modern doomteller media actively stokes with imaginary threats of immigrants and trans people so it is ALWAYS on
In times of crisis, humanity's generosity contracts as we have to do the cold calculations over limited resources and the fact that we do NOT value every person equally.
Example: If I only had enough food for me and one other person, I would not give that food to a bigot because that food is better served in the belly of a progressive
It's just that they are triggered into this mode at all times and their circle of empathy is basically only family and friends, but deep down it is always only just them if times get hard enough
You saw the same behavior in times of famine all across the world
Empathy is the enemy of the the manipulative. Their shallow and transparent manipulations wont get past someone with even a small amount of it.
True for some. Others specifically exploit your empathy by centering it on themselves, red herrings, or subverting the action it motivates.
Proverbs 14:31 Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.
Deuteronomy 15:7 If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them.
Luke 14:13-14 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.
Luke 12:15: Then he said, “Beware! Guard against every kind of greed. Life is not measured by how much you own.”
1 John 4:20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
1 John 3:17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?
John 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
Matthew 25 (separation of the sheep and the goats) is pretty much the only time Jesus straight-up threatens people with Hell, and he's basing it on the treatment of the poor, sick, and social outcasts.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+5&version=NIV
Turns out you can fit pretty much the entirety of Christian morality inside of a fortune cookie and the rest is just window dressing.
If Jesus ever returned, evangelicals will try to crucify him
Remind me which level of Hell the hypocrites are in? Is it higher or lower than the one reserved for Jesus now?
I mean I've seen some random Instagram stuff where Republicans think that Jesus would not allow immigrants into this country. It truly is another level of delusion at this point
Don't forget that Instagram is owned by Meta. They've admitted to making people up to get more engagement and rage bait.
Was curious and went looking. Is this what you're referencing? I'm not sure since it doesn't sound like they were made just to drum up outrage, they were just inherently shitty because they're AI users who suck at pretending to be people.
I can't find it anymore, but there was an AI they created that specifically was spouting Russian misinformation to drive engagement. People found it, watched it, and then found others. I'll keep looking.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2025/01/02/meta-opens-floodgates-on-ai-generated-accounts-on-facebook-instagram/
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/meta-wants-more-ai-bots-on-facebook-and-instagram.html
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/03/business/meta-ai-accounts-instagram-facebook/index.html
Edit: Here's one: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/03/11/1020600/facebook-responsible-ai-misinformation/
Edit 2: Another: https://www.npr.org/2024/05/14/1251072726/ai-spam-images-facebook-linkedin-threads-meta
Edit 3: The best one: https://opentools.ai/news/facebooks-ai-generated-people-future-of-engagement-or-privacy-pitfall
TYVM, I've got some reading to do lol
Yeah, the widely practiced "Prosperity Gospel" stuff is like a religious studies PhD designed the most anti-Christian form of Christianity for a thesis, and suddenly people started picking it up and running with it.
Ohhh, friendo, there's about 500 million Christians in Africa that are heavily besieged by Evangelicals pushing this for the political clout. It's rampant.
Plus, that Joel Osteen guy peddled a version of this hard.
Who's the other guy?
So no empathy for Elon Musk and his crybaby butthurt feelings? Fine by me!
On a similar note, the old testament had a historical purpose - to unite disparate tribes and create a national identity against the threat posed by the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires.
The new testament is just a collections of writings and letters. We have no idea who wrote them, they lied on the cover saying the texts are written by the apostles. And by a pretty arbitrary process, a bunch of priests picked their favorite writings and made them into a cannon.
If the same thing happened today, nobody would believe them outside maybe a fringe cult.
PRIESTS made a cannon out of BOOKS‽ That's some Warhammer shit.
Seriously though, it's canon.
Not according to my head-cannon.
Easy there, Tankmon
Perhaps partly, my personal belief is the is traces back to early tribal days. I believe the first cultural leaders likely struggled with retaining control and authority at a certain point. After all, there is only so much you can threaten people with to keep them in like. The worse of which is death. A sufficiently motivated person may not care about their physical well-being if they want to achieve a important enough goal. Create an invisible "soul" and a space wizard that determines if that soul gets bliss or torture after death and it adds a new level of control.
Problem with that hypothesis is that pre modern people treated death very differently with in many places it was quite literal and physical, for example in ancient Germanic societies they thought of the underworld as someplace only the dead could travel to as in the actual corpses went to the underworld at night and returned to their grave during the day. Hell we can even see the ideas of the soul being refined during the Hellenic period with most philosophers settling on it being an "animating force" which is vague but about right with the ancient Greeks. The idea of the soul is probably relatively recent IE middle stone age at the earliest, and probably evolved out of far more ancient animistic traditions.
The problem is, from what I've heard, the black plauge killed all the good priests. Since they were the ones to go and read a person's last will and testament, they would also end up catching the plauge a lot of the time. So eventually all the smart and respectable priests died, leaving them desperate for anyone. So from then the churches have been lead by undesirable
That sounds like blaming nature for human maliciousness.
What? Priests before the plauge were the ones who could read and write, and were chosen to be good carriers of the message. And those people, thinking they were doing the right thing by helping the dying go to heaven, caught the disease which wasn't known as the black plauge yet.
They were wiped out almost immediately because of it. The churches then went to the second options, which followed soon after. It kept going until the churches were desperate for anyone to go a say the last rites.
So yeah then malicious people ended up taking over, but nature definitely caused the change.
Malicious people infiltrate structures with strong authority all the time. They just need time to work their way up, not a plague.
It is funny that you think shitty priests were just hanging in the wings as second stringers.
It is funny how I said the second stringers died soon after the first and you just completely disregarded that
Your point is correct, no church was infallible before the plauge happened. I'm just stating the plauge made it exponentially easier for infiltration to occur as those opposing it were literally dying trying to be good people.
*plague
15 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.
19 Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.
20 Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.
Republicans would be very upset with you using the bible against them, if they had ever read the bible to know what it said.
The usual response is "you only know a few cherry picked quotes, and would burst into flames if you actually read the whole thing" blah blah blah.
The next usual response is "Oh, I appreciate the warning from when you gave it a go."
I get so tired of faith being used to hurt.
I could say "I read it all years ago, have you?". Grew up in an evangelical church that encouraged us to read it surprisingly.
https://archive.org/stream/god-the-original-segregationist-by-carey-l.-daniel/God%20the%20Original%20Segregationist%20by%20Carey%20L.%20Daniel_djvu.txt
The southern Bible doesn't read like yours and mine does, they made some notes in the margins.
interesting read, thanks!
With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant, but the people who know their God will firmly resist him.
Daniel 11:32
He will cause deceit to prosper, and he will consider himself superior… He will use every kind of evil deception to fool those on their way to destruction, because they refuse to love and accept the truth that would save them.
Daniel 8:25, 2 Thess 2:10
… a despicable person will arise… a man of contempt… to whom the royal honor has not been rightfully conferred. He will slip in when least expected and will seize the kingdom through flattery and intrigue.
Daniel 11:21
After an alliance is made with him he will practice deception, and he will go up and gain power with a small force of people.
Daniel 11:23
He will try to change the set times and the laws.
Dan. 7:25
Daniel 8 and 11 here are talking about a prophecy that has already “been fulfilled” - common in the Bible to make these kinds of retroactive prophecies. The bad guy being described there is Antiochus.
That is just Daniel 8. Daniel 11 could reasonably be talking about modern times
Could literally be talking about billions of people from a period spanning thousands of years.
Which is why some people still hold it up as a valuable text. It's a well written book of scams to keep the ignorant masses in line.
It is, in essence, a compilation of the vague shite that "fortune tellers" spew to the marks looking to be told what they want to hear.
Not really, from context pretty sure it’s one of those “ex post facto” prophecy things.
This is why people should read books of the Bible and not verse. Random bits out of context are used to imply so much BS.
None of this is connected to Revelation, which was written centuries later.
I feel like there's a single word to sum up one who's teachings are directly opposed to those of Jesus 🤔
"See, if I put my arm through the sling here and reach down a little, all you have to do is shrug your shoulder. I call it the reverse Dutch rudder."
"Unh, ugggh, oh my me! The second coming is at hand!"
This isn't really new though, it's just saying the quite part out loud. always-has-been.gif.
Neoliberalism is the cause of the decay and paved the way for fascism. If you let large conglomerates own everything including news media and social media and then sell access to spew vile hate speech and disinformation to people, the current result is to be expected. It's actually kind of refreshing that they actually come out and say it.
These people also don't believe in equality, they believe inequality of humans is fundamentally morally correct. Neoliberals believe in inequality based on class/wealth, fascists believe in inequality based on identity like race or gender.
The true sin is ignorance and neglect.
The mindset of magatards.
Anyone have the background link explaining this?
Not a pastor, but this is what a certain used car-company salesman is spouting:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge/index.html
There’s an argument going around evangelical circles that "empathy" is more dangerous than compassion, with the analogy of jumping in to save someone in quicksand, but getting stuck yourself (empathy) vs throwing someone a rope and keeping your footing (compassion). Like if you understand a bad person's thinking too much, you are dragged into their sin.
There’s even a tinge of women being more empathetic and "susceptible" than men.
It’s how it sounds.
Dig into the argument, and they all eventually end up focusing on dangerous progressive causes as tempting Christians, basically, and it feels like they're trying to twist scripture into current MAGA doctrine. JD Vance (a Catholic, not evangelical IIRC) said something related on immigration, that loving your family and those close to you comes before loving distant neighbors, which the Pope very pointedly refuted.
I posted a comment here with the context
https://sopuli.xyz/comment/15650366
Yeah, glad to see the specific instance but after trying to search I see this seems to be a broader doctrine. That you would absolutely hate people who "deserve" to be hated, accordingly to the viewpoint of whoever is preaching regardless of whether that person's situation actually affects anyone other than themselves.
It's kind of like the evil twin of "be tolerant, except of intolerance": "be tolerant only of intolerance"
Cowards fear empathy and maim their own capacity for it, because experiencing the pain of others hurts. Being surrounded by extreme, intolerable pain is the most difficult part of being vegan.
Any thought that could rationally lead to realizing MAGA is wrong is a sin now!
probably because he's echoing what Elon said about empathy
I wish I had a cute devil girl on my shoulder 🙁
Fine, I’ll try to talk your mom into sitting on your shoulder again. This is getting ridiculous, Riiiiicky.
I find it more than a little humorous that their defining attribute for the last hundred years is so easily abandoned
Monotheism is the fascist dictatorship of religious structures.
I wish pizza cake had her own sublemmy(slemmy/summy?)
(community)
She probably won’t because as far as I know, it’s not possible to sue a lemmy community, so… threats won’t work here.
Yeah, I don't want to see stuff from a person who threatens to sue subreddits for making fun and criticizing their comics
Michael Burns (of Wisecrack) has a pretty good analysis of this: https://youtu.be/VtyRTFGfw6o
Being a real christian is about to become cool, I guess?
Point or no point, it’s hard not to cringe when I see PizzaCake comics.
Why?
Enjoy the read.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/s/xN4NxGa5N8
Thanks for that. Having read it, though, I think it's likely that I'll forget about the details soon enough to continue nothing-ing her comics. The whole argument feels silly from the periphery.
I believe it. I call their god the Tyrant for a reason after all.
Demon pizzacake can get it
Pizzacake comics might be a torture psyop.
"apparently a right-wing [person] said this" is low-quality content, gets my downvote. Such an unspecific comment serves only to outgroup people.
He wasn't a pastor, he was a deacon and probably just a twitter troll but no one here cares about accuracy it seems
Pastors and deacons are both member of the church, and arnt that far apart in rank
Sorry no, you are wrong. But that's understandable considering how actively ignorant atheists are about what actually happens in churches
My only question is why so fuckdamn many of you are ALSO so arrogant about it
Because literally none of us gives one damn shit what the difference between a deacon and a priest is. They're both trying to sell everyone the idea that they're magical friend in the sky wants all of us to obey a bunch of rules that were written almost two thousand years ago and contradict themselves constantly.
Some day when you grow up you are gonna cringe so hard over this post that I almost want to screencap it for when you eventually delete it
You have an imaginary friend, and you're trying to defend him on the internet...
I bet it would shock you to find out that the existence or lack thereof of an Abrahamic god is irrelevant to me.
Or, to use crayon terms: It really doesn't matter to how I live my life if He exists or not. I choose to live as if He does and it has benefited me immensely. If somehow direct material proof of the nonexistence of god appeared tomorrow, or even the opposite, I will still live my life as I have been.
My main point is that the abandonment of cultural sacredness is why we are descending into fascism right now and you whiny little ratheists are a big part of the reason
You really have no idea how many progressive Christians you piss off with your wide-assed brush you keep painting us with
Not Abrahamic, still imaginary. Still cringe.
Well all you little bitches can just turn the other cheek.
Why do you think that is cringe? I wouldn't have thought so at 14 or at 44
I'm not religious, but it was cringe because they were reveling in thier ignorance right before paroting common online reductions of faith. "Obey your sky daddy's rules" and all that. Seems trite. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Them: “I don’t care about your religion”
You: “Omg you’re gonna look sooooo stupid.”
If your only counter argument is a spongebob meme then maybe you want to think on what I said about maturity for a moment.
Aww who are we kidding, everyone knows you're a perpetual child
… SpongeBob?
LoL, the arrogance of this comment is absolutely hilarious. I'm GenX. I've been through all of it with religion. The only cringe here is you.
Because everyone can tell you're deliberately getting hung up on a technical inaccuracy not relevant to the issue to derail the conversation.
I guess accuracy is only important in your opposition, gotcha
Don't let it ever be said that heathens aren't hypocritical as well
Things are important when they matter. What's keeping you from telling us why it matters in this instance? Cmon educate those heathens.
my theory is the oppression religious arrogance is now getting its comeuppance. everyone who grew up with religion can now talk freely about how fucking stupid it is without their father or mother whupping their ass--theres no surprise to this.
what the fuck are you even on about? Religion has been trash talked pretty consistently since the 90s
I have an alternate hypothesis: atheism is the first rebellion, a private rebellion, as all the simmering resentment of being under their parents' thumb is transferred to the ultimate example of authority. They attribute every shortcoming of perceived justice (remember they are kids, their concept of justice is 'I should be treated special') on the head of an apparently absent, indifferent, or even malicious god.
And the 'freedom' of being finally able to shout out against that perceived indifferent authority brings a sense of heady and powerful liberty like baby's first beer
And I think young atheists get addicted to that thrill, to be able to shout out against power, but just like every other addiction you never quite get the same thrill as that first delicious moment of rebellion
So they have to start finding it elsewhere, and usually it's arguing with theists because frankly, it's easy to do and win. they define 'win' being as 'upsetting the theist while appearing intellectual' and practice a set of boilerplate arguments quick-tabbed to whip out at any of several theological conversation hooks
The problem with that is, again it's an addiction. It makes people do stupid things to satisfy it, like saying incorrect things with undeserved boldness
no ones shouting against religion, theres too much risk being assaulted by some zealot. people are just talking about it on the internet. and for the record. religious people literally go door to door to influence us, they are the reason why we have anti-abortion laws, they are the reason why trans people have to fucking hide their identity for fear of being murdered, they are the reason we have wars.
people talk a lot about 9.11 and how islam is to blame. people talk about how ww2 was about targeting Jewish people. religions literally cause wars. its not real. and people who defend it are silly stupid heads with poopy on their heads (kidding here, I know plenty of spiritual people who are kind and great) but the evil out weights the good.
you have some good points and i respect that. but i--grown under a strict religious parental figure do not understand how people cant wrap their head around your concept of disrespect of religious things. if god brings you peace of mind, thats awesome. just don't force it on anyone else
Fuck off in every way you are capable of, then fund a study group to discover new and interesting ways to fuck off, then do them
All at once.
I am so fuckdamn tired of this constant casual marginalization, the abandonment of the sacred culturally is 50% of the reason we are descending into fascism and yet you rancid heathens sit there all smug in your own pile of rhetorical shit thinking it is progress
There were once concepts in our culture that were unassailable, protection for women and children, the enshrinement of personal privacy, and of universal human dignity.
The thing is, ALL of these protections rolled down from the idea that 'Human life is sacred because it is a creation of God', and A WHOLE FUCKTONNE of our Bill of Rights are based on this (despite what all of you whiny separation of powers people claim), so when you unroll the idea of God, then anything that was protected is now subject to attack
But you will whine 'Nonono Angry_Autist, it was those evil Skybeard believing repugnicans that overturned RvWade!'
Only because they knew that no one holds womens' rights scared anymore, because no one holds ANYTHING sacred anymore, because without an objective measure of ethical good, everything is just relative cultural custom and just as unimportant.
You can SEE that in how ambivalent they are over the rising number of innocent women dying from easily treated miscarriage complications
But STILL you don't understand just how devastating descending into moral relativism has been, and will fight against ANYONE who tries to show you your complicity in the current era of strife
History is basically thousands of years of horrors during which people mostly believes their deity approved of all the awful things they did. It isnt the decline of the sacred that opened up this particular can of worms.
If anything its a swing towards authoritianism as a reaction to a whole host of factors.
Changing demographics making white people and men afraid of losing their privileged position
Decline in relegion making the remaining faithful fearful of living in a world where most disagree with them
Apathy on the left due to left wing figures desire not to rock the boat and pwrsue real change
Centralization of media by a handful of people with interests more aligned with the right followed by decades of brainwashing
A characteristic figure to be the focus of the above
Rising inequality to put pressure on the common folks.
Its weird to live in a world where the atheists overwhelmingly voted for normalcy and the devout voted 70% for fascism and still see godless people blamed for what you voted for.
holy crap take it easy.
"all men were created equally--oh except black people we are enslaving them" didnt thomas jefferson fuck his slaves and keep his own children as slaves or some shit?
the never ending hypocrisy from religion is why you get what you get. No longer getting graded on a curve is not persecution. you are just fragile. Also please, take it easy. im not against you. I think religion has many good things in them, but when christian schools have mass graves in them from the aboriginals they kidnapped they deserve a bit if scrutiny, right? when muslim schools destroy gays, when ethno-religious states conduct genocide? it deserves some scrutiny and shouldn't be surprised when people talk about it.
Sorry about not knowing the intricacies of your imaginary friend's club. BTW, claiming that your imaginary friend is the only one that's real is pretty arrogant too.
Ok then cite me my post where I claimed God was real.
I FUCKING DARE YOU
You can only win arguments when you fill your opposition's mouth with lies
First of all, calm down, you don't want to incur in the deadly sin of wrath and not get invited to the sleepover at your bestie's.
That's not how salvation works and even kids in sunday school know that...
Oh no, they mixed up pastor and priest, what a sin! Two words that are super alike and mean basically the same thing, damn them!
Deacons aren't pastors or priests, they are glorified ushers
They're still one level down the hierarchy, which was their point
Or are you being an idiot on purpose?
Um... do you imagine that churches are somehow run like the military, and that roles of service are badges of office?
Additionally, there was no 'down the hierarchy' point made, they just conflated the two roles, which is why I corrected them
Are you having a problem following this conversation? The 'Show Context' button can refresh your memory
Both are ordained ministers, the preist just leads the parish, and the deacon helps the preist lead a parish. Hierarchically they are adjacent. Why are you so confident of my religion?
Basically your side believes in 100 kinds of magic and fairy tales, at least in America the majority of self described Christians believe that the earth is less than 10k years old wished into being by what amounts to a prick of a genie and a non trivial minority of these folks believe the Earth is flat.
After spending their life talking to believers who might as well be actual adult Santa worshippers its easy to be both arrogant and a bit confused by the non imaginary part of the holy heirarchy.
Talking like someone who judges groups solely by the actions of loud extremists and oversimplifies anyhting they don't understand.
Every theist believes in a detailed fantasy world that would shame the imagination of the average schizophrenic.
The Reddit Atheists have entered the chat and are here to stay it seems
Religion is objectively stupid. We are just expected to pretend you all are reasonable because you are the majority.
This is the comic that makes pandering public comics to promote their paid art
Which might be fine, but it seems like good context to know.
How is that relevant in this context?
Unless there's some context I'm missing, that business model sounds... reasonable?
What you're describing just sounds like advertisement.
It is true that I personally do not find most of her recent political comics to be particularly funny or insightful--which is fine, she does not have to draw to satisfy me--but there are plenty of her comics which are not about politics but about cats or silly reflections on life, especially before Trump got elected.
So in short, thank you very much for your comment because it totally inspired me to check this person out and find comics of theirs that I enjoyed! 😀
They threaten people who parody their work with DMCA
Citation?
Here ya go.
That... is a really impressive amount of drama over such a middling comic.
It certainly is.
Interesting. You know I wonder…
If we were them, and worried about e.g. making rent, maybe we’d start a second pandercomic brand to pander to conservatives too
(Oh of course - being disingenuous is never ideal, thanks for pointing this out)
Apparently she has a lot of fans, because people are really offended by what I thought was a pretty neutral comment.
I guess that info is supposed to be secret or something?
Nah, it's supposed to matter.
appreciate the message, but God can we please not share pizza cake comics on Lemmy, none of them were funny on Reddit and they're not funny here.
Look, on many things, we probably agree. Maybe even more important things.
And I don't even love this comic, its just, fine, its whatever.
That said I upvoted this comic to spite you and your comment here, because I don't like your sentiment that people can't like and share things that they like because your hipster instinct kicked in.
To be fair this is on comic strips not funny - there is no commitment to this being funny.
Humor is fairly subjective. You don't want content because you don't like it? That's fundamentally against the concept of what Lemmy represents. This isn't a website to cater to your whims.
Noooo I though I escaped this shit.
…which shit? You’re in a community called comicstrips and it’s a comic strip.
The bad ones. That are obviously botted. This shit would always be at the top of the page on Reddit. And it’s never funny.
I’m not sure I follow. This doesn’t seem “obviously botted” to me. Is it not possible that different people find different things funny and we don’t all share one common sense of humor?
(Or, I suppose, that comic strips can have value beyond humor.)
beep boop