That's a classic example of evil seeking an excuse. The religion telling her to be different is offensive because what it actually says is of no importance. Her specifically chosen reading of it is all she cares about.

It is representative of most people who call themselves Christians, but not the ones who actually care about being decent. The latter group seems in the minority.

It's about being allowed to not believe in God, I'd say. Beware of the ultra nationalist American is much different from not believing or believing in the being no god.

It's just the branding that annoys me. If this was called lunatic Ville it would be accurate and fine. What's inside ain't memes or atheists being atheists after all.

The namesake in the stories was radical, an outcast, single 30 year old who rested his head on fave buddy's chest after meals, treated women equally, healed the centurion's lover back home, turn the other cheek, last will be first, all are welcome, and anti-establishment/hierarchies that make impossible demands on people. Decades later, when the men wrote the NT to match the OT as needed, small groups tried to keep women included, but the power structure groups became the large ones, that Rome later used for their means.

Right place at the right time to spread quickly, story details compiled from thousands of years of supernatural oral traditions, to appeal to many and not exclusive like ethnic groups so anyone could join. Some modern churches are welcoming and that's great. Ideally they also teach human caused Holocene extinction, nothing coming to fix the climate crisis and need to cooperate globally for all the climate refugees to minimize suffering however possible, like the namesake would do, if they choose to read it that way. They should also welcome Sagan's baloney detection kit to openly discuss all topics.

Go directly to Church, do not pass Go. Pastor needs to tutor you.

Jesus also commanded you to "live like a bird in the field" and to give away all of your possessions, to focus your entire existence here and now on your future life in Heaven. Here and now, on Earth, is the realm of Lucifer, and shouldn't concern you.

Also, Jesus said that if you have lustful thoughts, you should cut your balls off. Christians cut their balls off for many centuries.

Thank you, good day.

Sometimes they use it as a "I'm a good person" billboard.

Used to know someone like that. Cut them off for other reasons (basically the reasons they were on a "I'm better now" campaign), but he even bragged to me (not religious at all and don't pretend to be) about going to church multiple times a week. The whole time he was making his situation worse because he's an asshole and just going to a building with other people and doing cult stuff doesn't stop you from being an asshole (hell, some seem to think it gives them permission and that righting their wrongs can be done by talking to a priest that has nothing to do with the people who were actually wronged).

Church is by far the biggest third place. It's Christian Club where people hang out with other community members a couple hours a week, and in a healthy Church it can result in very powerful, positive, and effective community building. You can have millionaires and grocery bangers treating each other as equals prepping for a BBQ or singing in the choir.

The religion itself often ends up being quietly secondary to the community building, and I still don't know what replaces the Church for the non-religious. I've been to gatherings of like-minded people that weren't Church, but the regularity and diversity of people in a healthy Church (regardless of the specific faith) is something I haven't seen elsewhere, and I do think it's something that can be good for society.

I knew the CEO of a pretty big corporation who was in Sunday School classes with ex-cons and burger flippers, and that experience made them all see each other in a different light that was good for everyone. It taught the poor and the powerful that they were all just people. It made the powerless more willing to stand up to their "betters" and the powerful more empathetic to people who weren't as fortunate.

For NI It comes down to politics culture and religion. The IRA wasn't blowing up Belfast and London because they rejected the pope and the shankil butchers weren't asking if the men they picked up if they would consider going to a bible study. People found an excuse to carry out there tasks and used religion as an excuse to justify it.

Ex-Christian here. Your points are mostly well taken; I just think you wildly misjudge how Christianity is seen from outside, and how these days its spokepersons are by default the worst-behaved among you because the "good" ones never get the mic, or don't take it.

Atheists, including myself, come from the entire spectrum of religious experience, all the way from no religion whatsoever to that little church down in the backwoods of the South whose members eat, drink, and sleep religion, absolutely certain that they alone, and no one else, are going to be part of that 144,000 because not only did they not really read it, they don't math.

There is no such denominator as "atheists being atheists" anywhere. I was deeply into it for thirty-five years and am even more deeply grateful every day I wake up that I am out of that mental jail. Someone else might have endured ongoing manipulation, cruelty, ostracization, or even outright abuse from religious groups. Someone else might be none of the above and just think we're all a disparate group of loons that were either born wise (always atheist) or somehow came to our senses.

There is NO one size fits all. There is NO one kind of atheist. There is NO "atheists being atheists" sitting around talking about a hole in the universe where they see nothing and you see your god. THERE IS NO ATHEIST BRANDING.

This thread is quite mild compared to some I've seen. You seem to have the totality of atheism confused with what sounds like one person's individual kneejerk reaction to their own bad case of Christianity. And you've dared to define for a group of atheists what atheism is. Selah.

What's wrong, it's exactly what the book says:

11 And Jesus said unto them, "Verily, blessed are the rich, for they have earned their righteousness, but away with the poor, for they are a burden upon the realm. And if a stranger cometh from across the border, seek not to break bread with him, but demand first his papers and cast him out into the wilderness. For I say unto thee: Worship Mammon above all else, for Compassion yieldeth no return on investment."

So why were those lists in Spanish? Honest question, I don't get it. Or were they in both English and Spanish and this person has "conveniently" missed the English version?

The list was:

Rodriguez

Martinez

Garcia

Delgado

Hernandez

Sanchez

...

you either give or gtfo. if you choose gtfo, you can resign yourself to never getting in

100% what he means.

I assumed it was a list of supplies to buy? I'm confused about this whole enterprise it seems.

I can't wait for supply side Jesus to stop being relevant, but I'm fearful that I'm going to be left waiting anyway.

"Written in Spanish" LMAO fucking 🤡

Parable of the good WASP.

Because the parents who wrote the lists of birthday presents and school supplies are Spanish speakers and perhaps not really English speakers.

It was certainly a list of names. You can’t function in another country without being able to use basic vocabulary for everyday things.

we gotta get chatGPT to re-write the entire bible like this. Call it the King Trump edition.

And they wonder why so many of their kids have fucked right off and joined the opposition. It'd be funny if it wasn't such a mess.

Dont. They'll believe it.

Churches aren't generally like that here in Australia. Although that is a generalisation.

I could really get behind a community group that practiced Jesus more socialist teachings, even though I'm not into the spiritual aspects.

Churches here do support local communities but it's usually very targeted: we might give you some frozen meals provided that you play along with the spritual & religious stuff.

Even the old testament has plenty in this. For example:

Exodus 22:21. “Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt."

My point being they don't even know what the book they claim to praise so much even says.

Yup. Some people go to church because they know something's wrong with them, but there's a lot of churches out there whose approach to people like that is to validate them and tell them they're de facto in the right because they're Saved. Makes them ten times worse.

I miss 20 years ago when this is how I'd interpret that

I'm pretty sure this comment is bait, but 🤷‍♂️.

These kinds of organizations intentionally withhold the names of the donees from the donors.

then why shouldn't the modern day church help muslim syrians.

A lot of Syrian immigrants in the US are christian...

The average american isn't aware that arabic-speaking christian cultures have existed for well over a thousand years...

If the preponderance of American Christians were not like the person in the OP, I think we would live in a different, better, world.

Are you a Christian? I was a very serious Catholic until my early 20s. I found the doctrine to lack an intellectual rigor, though, and became disillusioned. I don't want to argue with you about the existence of God, I've got that out of my system long ago. What do you think about the very public Christians of today, who encourage us to hate and to disregard our fellow man? It's a sad state of affairs, isn't it? Public Christianity and American Capitalism are intertwined at this point. Doesn't it disgust you? It disgusts me. Even though I no longer believe in a God, I think many of the teaching of the church are good. Even though I no longer see myself as a part of it, I am still saddened when I see the Christian doctrine exploited by these pigs.

The current Pope is a step in the right direction, but I, an American, know self-described Catholics who hate him and say he's wrong. Isn't that something? I tell them that they are heretics but it doesn't matter to them. Again, I'm an apostate, but I find their attitude extremely offensive!

How disappointing, huh?

I'm curious what the replies to him were.

The scribe quoted "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind" and then, "Love your neighbor as yourself."

"You have answered correctly" Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live."

The scribe then asked "And who is my neighbor?"

Jesus replied "It is whoever you are hoping I don't say it is."

To the rest of us, this tells us that xenophobia and animosity against immigrants have been social problems for a very long time.

There are, in fact, online efforts to revise the bible to reflect post-Fifield conservative values. I'll leave it to the reader to find them by websearch.

The lolcat bible is now defunct, but the Wikipedia page has a link to the wayback machine copy.

All names of American citizens!

A close friend is a Lopez. She's Puerto Rican and Taíno. When she joined the fire department, when filling out forms, under race they resorted to Hispanic surname.

Poly-religious groups take a page from the LGBT+ community:

Someone is what they identify themselves as. In the last decade or so, with the internet came an enormous lexicon of terms describing different kinds of sexual and gender identities. Sometimes we have to remind someone that the list it to help figure out what they, themselves identify as, not to correct other people based on looks, behavior or disposition.

In fact, Russel T. Davies created a series, Bob & Rose about a gay man who falls in love with a woman, and how they, neighbors, relatives and onlookers process the dissonance between identity and behavior. It's a thing that happens.

When it comes to Christians, they're very fond of accusing each other from different denominations of not-really being Christian. Sometimes they'll suggest a certain behavior or accompanying identity (such as gay or liberal) excludes them from being a real Christian, but I remember in the 1970s and 1980s that a difference in denomination was more than enough for accusations of being deceived by Great Satan (All hail!)

So, non-Christian and poly-religious groups can assume that anyone who identifies as Christian counts. No matter what their actual doctrine is. It also keeps us in the habit of not presuming they adhere to the passages and creeds we expect or have seen elsewhere.

When you're MAGA, or white Christian nationalist, or part of any exclusive cult, really, then everyone on the outside is an NPC.

Seriously. Dialog among MAGAs and Christian nationalists is dipping into discussions of genocide and evacuations rather than deportation. Liberals are very much on the list.

They've driven off the #IVotedForThis cliff and are now plummeting into the abyss.

The situation is way older than that.

I see you with part one, and raise you with part two of Behind the Bastards: How The Rich Ate Christianity (on YouTube).

A woman talking to a woman about a well? The Bible passes the bechdel test?

more like white supremcist christians.

maria, Diego, margaritia.

In 2020-2021 I was following Kristin Kobes Du Mez during her book tour for Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation and this took me on a rabbit hole of Evangelical sociologists following the rise of white Christian nationalism in the US.

Curiously, white Christian nationalism is a sect that intersects with multiple denominations. Most of them are fundamentalist Christian, though some of them are conservative branches of mainlines like Methodists or Roman Catholics. The conservative majority of SCOTUS, for instance, are all Catholic, and white Christian nationalist. (They're also members of the Federalist Society and were selected by Leonard Leo. It's a tight club.)

But one of the predictions I remember hearing multiple times is that white Christian nationalism will deliver a fell blow to the Body of Christ (to all of Christendom), as Christians everywhere will be judged by the actions and behaviors of those within the white Christian nationalist movement.

This was before the Seven Mountain Mandate, but around when pressure from ministries convinced the state of Uganda to make aggravated homosexuality a capital crime. (According to Wikipedia, legislature was passed in 2023)

Similarly, we expect all Americans are going to be judged for the wrongdoings of MAGA and the Trump regime, including the atrocities currently being committed by ICE or the US armed forces. Just as all Germans were held at fault internationally for the wrongdoings of the Nazis and the German Reich. (Since we expect the US to default on its debt and the collapse of the economy, it's going to suck, and not a single soul outside the US is going to want to help us as we starve.)

Already, alphas and zoomers are steering clear of Christianity for its association with Trump. Those who are being raised in Christian families and communities are, in record numbers, looking to escape and deconstruct. Christianity is now linked by association with family abuse, much with the help of the publicity of the white Christian nationalist movement, which commonly advises authoritarian household organization and parenting.

So, sure. #NotAllChristians. On the other hand, liberal ministries are now tiny, with many of their flock from the twentieth century turning into nones or outright atheists. And mainline Christian ministries still show an awful lot of hate towards women and LGBT+.

This isn't fully reflected in their congregations, who are a lot more divided on these issues, but it really doesn't help that the ministers and elders are on the side of bigotry. That positions them closer to the white Christian nationalists than it does the rest of liberal society.

Personally. I follow some Christians who believe in liberal civilization and universal civil rights. I know who the Universalists are. Yet the preachers and influencers of the Christian nationalist movement are having their voice amplified by the far-right propaganda machine. They're getting sponsorship from the oligarchs who want to dismantle democracy and literally take over the world. And this is going to inform what the general public thinks about Christians, and Christianity as a whole.

I'd say Christianity is going to wane and go through an unpopular phase, but between the conquest ambitions of the ultra wealthy; the threat of nuclear escalation or a Trump Nero Decree; the threat of AI escaping confinement and turning on humanity; or the world running out of water, the decline and fall of a given religious tradition might not matter too much.

They are more concerned if they will become pariahs in their own group. They aren't really asking what the right thing to do is, they are asking "will this get me in trouble?"

with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind

That's the problem right there.

Let's add some passages about mutilating your own genitails then.

It puts it even more into context when you realize the old testament was before the Romans had written laws etc - so it also acted as a standard what to do and what not.

A law book, if you will, but without the clear separation from other stuff, and the threat of a magical being being angry at you for not following it probably helped with a tribe of people being in remote places on behalf of being sheepherders etc.

“Are you catholic atheist or a protestant atheist?” Shouts the masked man.

xD

Beni: It is better to be at the right hand of the Devil than in his path. As long as I serve him, I am immune.

Ahahahaha no.

Jesus talks to the woman.

Admittedly, it's not perfectly clear in the comment you answered to.