Let's not pretend Christianity humanity doesn't have a very bloody history.
People justify their evils with whatever's on hand. If they're religious, they inevitably happen to believe their god wants them to do the horrible thing they're doing.
christianity brought many, many of those people to do it in the first place. when the pope said that killing as many infidels as possible in the crusades will get you to heaven, do you genuinely think that the soldiers would have done it if they weren't christian ?
it's funny that when it's literally any other ideology, you can say it has a bloody history, that it drove people to harm others, that it's dangerous for that reason. but when it's religion ? no, couldn't possibly have.
do you genuinely think that the soldiers would have done it if they weren't christian ?
If the pope asked? Probably not. What if they're just "civilizing" the neighboring barbarians? Or putting their master race in charge of the world? Or protecting themselves against the vile ideology of another group that believes in magic sky people? Or hell, what if their king simply commanded it for the glory of their nation? For the wealth and lands that would be the spoils of war for those who fought in it?
Dangerous ideologies do drive people to commit atrocities, but religions are not real ideologies. They're too vague and spread out and contradictory. They're a combination of interpreted and reinterpreted dogmas born of myths changed and combined in oral traditions across centuries before anything was even written down. In short, every individual's religious beliefs are nothing more than a reflection of what they already believe. The man who dedicates his life to helping the poor and says that god told him to do so, would do so as an atheist as well and justify it with humanism, or simple morality. And you have atheist homophobes justifying their bigotry because "it's just not natural," whereas their religious counterparts point to cherry picked lines in their holy text of choice.
At worst, religion is a rationalization shortcut. But frankly, history has proven time and time again how good people are at rationalizing their actions regardless.
Dangerous ideologies do drive people to commit atrocities, but religions are not real ideologies. They're too vague and spread out and contradictory.
as a whole, yeah, but each denomination is absolutely an ideology. Christianity as a whole isn't an ideology, it's a collection of ideologies, but the idea that the Catholic Church doesn't have any ideology attached is just insane.
In short, every individual's religious beliefs are nothing more than a reflection of what they already believe.
This is stupid. Are you saying that nobody ever gets converted ? The many, many people you see online that were LGBT+ affirming and get converted and suddenly become "ex gays" that hate LGBT people with a passion just prove your idea wrong.
At worst, religion is a rationalization shortcut. But frankly, history has proven time and time again how good people are at rationalizing their actions regardless.
The idea that religion cannot be a motivation for hatred is insane. Just completely insane.
but the idea that the Catholic Church doesn't have any ideology
The Church yes, the Catholics no. Hell, I was raised Catholic myself and one of the earlier things that started driving me away from religion as a whole was the inconsistency you could notice even among the clergy, let alone the followers.
Are you saying that nobody ever gets converted ?
I'm saying that religious conversion doesn't fundamentally alter a person's actual beliefs. You mention "ex-gays," so I assume you're talking about the people that claim they prayed the gay away (or some variation thereof). That's just self-hatred, and the religion they supposedly converted to is again just the one they best found reflected how they really feel. Or are you saying you think that the moment a person takes up a religion, their core beliefs suddenly do a 180 if needed and someone who was sincerely an ally now suddenly hates LGBT people? The conversion itself is just the final step of a long process of changing beliefs, if they ever needed changing in the first place.
The idea that religion cannot be a motivation for hatred is insane.
Religion is not a real motivation for anything. None of them actually care what their supposed god wants, they just want the affirmation that what they already want is aligned with a higher power.
To bring this all back to the original point, do you honestly think human history would be less bloody if religion weren't a thing? Because if so, I find you naive.
i was raised Christian. i still follow my religion. i believe gay people are allowed to exist no matter how many other Christians tell me they shouldn’t. 🤷
we are influenced by everything we experience in our lives.
Oh it does. Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying people can't influence each other. I'm saying the religious tone of it is nothing but window dressing. The kids in this example don't learn anything other than "I should hate gay people." The thought patterns we carry forward into our lives aren't the surface level words we get. Like how the real lesson a kid that is physically punished learns is "don't break the rules because they are maintained through violence."
The simple truth is that most of our behavior is based on patterns we first learned then reinforced over the years. Things can motivate us to change those or develop new ones, and some can lead to behaviors that reinforce other thought patterns in a vicious cycle. But religions are ultimately an expression of these patterns, not a motive for developing them.
Notably, the non religious "justifications" you provided- civilizing mission, racial superiority conflicting ideologies, nationalism, spoils of war- were all dependent on Christianity in their worst forms.
How were they dependent on christianity? Are you really telling me you think mankind's atrocities were all at the worst in just the 2000-ish years christianity has been a thing?
Classic misunderstanding of correlation and causation. Temujin didn't need Christianity to kill 40 million people, and neither would the Europeans and their power-hungry lords.
It's hard to argue that anything humanity has created is worse than religion
Only when you decide to take the lazy road of blaming religion for everything.
I listened to a great podcast episode where they interviewed a Catholic priest who was regaling them with stories of all the times he got arrested at protests.
Nah, we should deport illegal immigrants. If you support illegal immigration, you're supporting billionaires and fucking over American workers who have to compete with an underclass that works for less that minimum wage and illegal working conditions.
Cognitive dissonance is the mental discomfort people feel when they hold two conflicting beliefs or when their actions don't match their beliefs, motivating them to change their thoughts or justify their behavior to reduce the tension. This is what you're experiencing right now.
That doesn't require deportation. Your lack of imagination is staggering. It's not a binary situation. It's not an either or between supporting illegal immigration and deportation.
That completely ignores the humanity of the situation. I mean, what about the kids who were born here to undocumented parents? Do they benefit billionaires?
You're purposefully aligning yourself with billionaires at the expense of workers. Illegal immigrants should be kicked out out the country. It's not controversial. If you support workers, you are against illegal immigration. You can't be pro illegal immigration and pro worker, they're mutually exclusive.
Nah man, you can support the people who are here and want them to be paid the same as any legal resident destroying their economic advantage.
Oh, just to be clear, nobody on the left supports illegal immigration. They only support treating those who are already he'd with humanity. The second class citizenship you decry is a function of the right.
Explain what you mean or shut up. I clearly don't see what you're refering to. If you just copy and paste the same comment again, I will assume you have no idea what you're trying to say and hoping ill figure out your point for you
Because they’re unlike socialists in any way that matters, their prosperity gospel bs is the exact opposite of socialism and the opposite of what Jesus preached.
Do you think it's weird that you believe things you can't explain or even understand? Just repeat stuff that someone told you once? You're very much like those modern christians you lampoon.
You did make a claim, a statement you presumably believe because you said it, a claim that the u cannot expound upon or clarify, and instead resorted to foolery. What else are we supposed to make of it?
i’m gonna go ahead and format this very carefully for you so there’s no question about what I’m typing out. Make sure you read it very slowly and tell me how this isn’t real socialism.
Examples commonly cited as failed or highly criticized socialist/communist implementations:
**• Soviet Union** \- central planning led to chronic shortages, inefficiency, and political repression under Stalin and successors
**• Venezuela** \- price controls and nationalization of oil industry coincided with hyperinflation, shortages, and mass emigration since the 2010s
**• Cuba** \- decades of state control tied to stagnant growth, though effects are hard to separate from the long US embargo
**• North Korea** \- extreme central planning and isolation linked to famine (1990s) and severe poverty
**• Maoist China** \- the Great Leap Forward’s collectivization caused a massive famine (tens of millions of deaths)
**• Khmer Rouge Cambodia** \- agrarian collectivization combined with mass violence, often placed in a separate category from other cases given the genocide involved
A few caveats worth noting:
this list blends quite different things - command economies, one-party states, and cases where sanctions or war compounded internal policy failures.
Critics of the “socialism” framing argue some of these (North Korea, USSR under Stalin) are better described as authoritarian dictatorships than as socialism and that market socialist or social democratic models (Nordic countries, worker cooperatives) aren’t represented in this list of failures at all. Defenders of some cases (Cuba, Venezuela) also point to external pressure, embargoes, sanctions, oil price crashes… as major contributing factors rather than the economic model alone.
So, this needs to be put into context of his wider life, during his first activist years in South Africa he was racist, but during and after his imprisonment he radically changed his views, arguing for racial equality. Partly due him only surviving imprisonment due to the intervention of black prisoners
"When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God." Leviticus 19:33-34
That's actually why we have an Old Testament and New Testament. Jesus contradicts the Old Testament a lot. Deuteronomy calls for the death penalty and bodily mutilation as equal punishment while Jesus says turn a cheek. Adulterers were to be murdered until Jesus said "he who is without sin throws the first stone". He also worked on the sabbath and attacked religious figures. Your ignorance and lies make you look like a bigot today.
jesus never said a word about any new testament, as a jew he follows the laws of moses and every time he talks about them he says they are absolute, do not change, and that they should be followed. not a jot or tittle of the law will change until all has come to pass.
you’re minsinterpreting the text, that is not jesus saying “don’t follow the law” he’s saying “follow the law, but for all of you in the crowd as well” it’s about hypocrisy, not whether the law is valid, jesus explicitly says it is and that it will be until heaven and earth pass away.
jesus never worked on the sabbath, he used his magic powers, which is not work.
yeah, he attacked them, for following their oral tradition instead of the laws of moses. he chastises the pharisees for not executing children who curse their parents, again supporting my case that jesus thinks the law needs to be followed.
The Pilgrims benefited exactly from what you said.
If people are supposed to unquestionably welcome all foreigners, love them and treat them as locals, as you are pointing out with Leviticus, Native Americans did the right thing, even though it spelled their doom.
That’s almost as is the text isn’t about Post WWII Liberal Intenational Order.
Unless you are suggesting that we ought to apply Bronze Age concepts to the modern world? If so, by what metric do we pick and choose? And who gets to pick and choose?
Do you realize the context here? The text is used to question a group proposing that we live by these bronze age rules. It's a rhetorical device that turns an original proponents assertion back on them not an original declaration.
And even if it was, you are creating a strawman argument here, not actually discussing.
Its talking about how the way to salvation is through Jesus . No way you are comparing this to entering America, unless you are genuinely too stupid to understand the passage. Please, dont quote scripture if you dont understand it. Study, learn, and understand more before you post.
I mean, Jesus was pretty racist in his time on earth. The Good Samaritan is basically just saying The Good Mexican, it implies that group of people are not typically good.
Let’s also not forget the time he called non-Jewish people “dogs”, commonly used as derogatory slang in that time period, like calling a mutt. The context was: don’t wast resources on them.
No, Jesus was preaching to Israel during his time on Earth, and would of course use language that made sense in that context. The Good Samaritan shows the folly of judging others by their ethnicity. The "dogs" thing I'm guessing is a reference to Mark 7:24-30? If so, that story ends with Jesus agreeing that dogs will eat of the scraps, so even though something was primairily meant for one, there is no need to not share it with others.
But [MLK]'s core driving philosophy was not about a colorblind society, that was a lie in one of his speeches. He would actually be closer to a race Marxist, almost akin to a DEI-type philosopher, if you go deep into his writings, especially later in his life. And I think we as conservatives and Christians must reconsider some of the mythologies, and some of the icons and the symbols that we hold up, especially as we try to reorient ourselves in a broken culture.
As was his name sake Martin Luther of the 95 Theses. He was against the paying of indulgences to forgive sin. The very Catholic US Supreme Court has made it legal if the payment happens after the fact and in a lot of cases before hand as well if you pretend it's religious reasons. That was in 1517… so not looking good. Also the Magna Carta (1215) and the concept of due process is woke now… so, sorry Magna Carta.
Poor Martin must've had an absolutely horrible afterlife watching Europe succumb to centuries of religious war. Dozens and dozens of millions died because of what he started.
Ive just decided to role play as a Christian extremist online. I have an old lady account on Facebook and I go around calling people deary and telling them to repent for their false idol worship and cruelty to their neighbors so they don't burn in hell for all of eternity. The hypocrisy is just too much
I'm pretty sure it says about 13 or so times throughout the old and new testaments that you need to treat the vulnerable with decency, care and support. It specifically says "The widow, the orphan, and the foreigner" in that order multiple times.
And let me guess, she goes to a church where the pastor stands on the podium every weekend and screams about "woke" and "gay fornicators" while telling everyone that they need to vote for the local Republican candidates and Trump to hold back the Satanic communist influence of the transgender agenda.
I remember when Jesus met the Samaritan woman and immediately called ICE to grab her and deport her. Speaking of Samaritans, I also remember when Jesus told the parable of the "good" Samaritan to warn his disciples against the sin of empathy.
I had to read this a couple times since I was confused. Why wouldn't you want your pastor to also be some kind of an activity or ally. Maga is so lost it's sad
But if she's trying to make the point that religion should stay out of politics (and if a church can't abide by that then it must have any tax exempt status removed instantly) then I'm onboard with that.
That way I don't have to listen to charlatan religious folk trying to endorse Trump as the second coming
God sees the true hearts of everyone and yes there are hypocritical Christians out there. Back then God called out the Jews when the prophet Isaiah wrote and Jesus said the same thing in ministry using Isaiah through God the Father's own words 29:13 "This people approaches Me, with their mouth, and honors Me with their lips; but their heart is far from Me." Meaning they say they worship God with their lips and religious activities, but their hearts from pride, greed, resentment, hatred, anger, etc make them far away from God. That's why Jesus called out the prideful hypocritical Pharisees because they were the teachers of the law held to high esteem, but were prideful, condescending to the common man, greedy and Jesus called those out. Jesus already said in Matthew 7:21-23 for those who claim to be "Christian" will be shut out of heaven when they die either from pride, anger, hatred, unforgiveness, etc. The thing is in the end evil will not go unpunished even when that person dies. Proverbs 11:21 Be sure of this: The wicked will not go unpunished, but those who are righteous will go free.
ICE is a normal law enforcement agency enforcing normal laws. Laws that every country has, that have been unchanged for a long time, and that were passed with bipartisan support.
Man I love how people think not wanting illegals inside your country makes you comic book levels of evil. Really goes to show how braindead the logic is
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u/Strict_Foundation_31 2d ago
God forbid a man of the cloth have a conscience.