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Evangelical Christians


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1 hour ago, 'stache said:

Meh, I just don't care anymore. Religion as a major driver in society is going to die off with the olds. Yeah, there will still be churches and people who attend and believe this crap, but it is fading fast among the younger generations, and the political power held by these groups will diminish substantially, if not entirely. I don't associate with people like this, I'm sure some of my acquaintances are into this nonsense, but we don't talk about it, and if it came up I'm 100% less likely to ever follow up with that person, because I truly believe that people like this are bad people. I don't care about niceties on the surface, or giving money or time to your church's chosen causes, the base of this type of thinking is cruel and hateful, no matter how they try to dress it up as something different. 

FAFO. 

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6 hours ago, gsoda3 said:

disagree.  when a member of the body of Christ offends you you're supposed to go to them.  when they err in doctrine you're supposed to go to them.  lovingly of course.  when you offend someone you're supposed to do the same.  

I think it becomes a question of what do you feel is the appropriate way to intervene? Is the best method to pray for someone because speaking with them could lead to a confrontation that benefits no one? If you do speak to someone that calls themselves a Christian yet has shown actions and espoused beliefs that are diametrically opposed to the teachings of Christ how exactly do you have that conversation?

I personally find that I think to get through to those who are wandering in the wilderness of hatred, racism, misogyny, bigotry and all manner of behaviors that are antithetical just to how you should treat people whether you are religious or not, you have to pray and then meet those people where they are. It doesn’t mean go to a klan rally with them. You just have to find a way where you can reach someone and pull their mind back out of the vast morass of conspiratorial thinking and help them rejoin the part of society not engaging in behavior that is completely self-destructive for the people they are against as well as themselves. They are no quick solutions or answers to any of this, but praying is a good starting place. 

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5 hours ago, 'stache said:

Meh, I just don't care anymore. Religion as a major driver in society is going to die off with the olds. Yeah, there will still be churches and people who attend and believe this crap, but it is fading fast among the younger generations, and the political power held by these groups will diminish substantially, if not entirely. I don't associate with people like this, I'm sure some of my acquaintances are into this nonsense, but we don't talk about it, and if it came up I'm 100% less likely to ever follow up with that person, because I truly believe that people like this are bad people. I don't care about niceties on the surface, or giving money or time to your church's chosen causes, the base of this type of thinking is cruel and hateful, no matter how they try to dress it up as something different. 

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Burn all the science books, burn all the religious texts. Eventually, the science books will be re-written pretty much the same way as they are now. The religious texts would be very different from how we know them. But they would be written. And believers would believe because they basically want to conform to whatever their parents, friends, and neighbors believe and would really rather be told how to behave than to actually think for themselves. 

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3 minutes ago, WhatTheBuck said:

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Burn all the science books, burn all the religious texts. Eventually, the science books will be re-written pretty much the same way as they are now. The religious texts would be very different from how we know them. But they would be written. And believers would believe because they basically want to conform to whatever their parents, friends, and neighbors believe and would really rather be told how to behave than to actually think for themselves. 

From reading around the last few days after the AF manifesto surfaced and just from general stuff over the years, the core of that group that is religious (Q notwithstanding) appears to be falling primarily into those of an evangelical grouping or those of a subset of a Catholic grouping. That doesn't mean there aren't others, but in terms of fervor, that seems to be where some real authoritarian religion as state or whatever theocracy/autocracy they imagine gets their support. That doesn't bode well, not just for people who are of a different democratic with a little 'd' mindset (or different mainstream religion) but for the groups themselves because they would be on a collision course with each other if they rose to power. I guess it would be whichever religion the autocrat espoused would be the 'winner,' but the integralists (Catholic) and the evangelicals would eventually have a falling out precisely because of that. They don't see eye to eye once the rest of us are subdued.

Someone else should chime in though, because I'm not super informed on that topic, just an ill formed opinion.

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1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. 

More than likely, not ever. This Pew Research Center article explains why.

An excerpt from the article:

Quote

… the religiously unaffiliated population is projected to shrink as a percentage of the global population, even though it will increase in absolute number. In 2010, censuses and surveys indicate, there were about 1.1 billion atheists, agnostics and people who do not identify with any particular religion. By 2050, the unaffiliated population is expected to exceed 1.2 billion. But, as a share of all the people in the world, those with no religious affiliation are projected to decline from 16% in 2010 to 13% by the middle of this century.

 

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12 hours ago, Beau Vine said:

 

I don't even know which thread to post this in, other than ALL OF THEM!!!

 

 

Hold on a minute. I thought she said she was not gonna have it. They must not have heard her.

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36 minutes ago, workswithseed said:

Catholics hate condoms, and abortions. 

But behind closed doors, they use them and they have them. They're like Baptists, but with birth control rather than liquor. 

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11 hours ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

From reading around the last few days after the AF manifesto surfaced and just from general stuff over the years, the core of that group that is religious (Q notwithstanding) appears to be falling primarily into those of an evangelical grouping or those of a subset of a Catholic grouping. That doesn't mean there aren't others, but in terms of fervor, that seems to be where some real authoritarian religion as state or whatever theocracy/autocracy they imagine gets their support. That doesn't bode well, not just for people who are of a different democratic with a little 'd' mindset (or different mainstream religion) but for the groups themselves because they would be on a collision course with each other if they rose to power. I guess it would be whichever religion the autocrat espoused would be the 'winner,' but the integralists (Catholic) and the evangelicals would eventually have a falling out precisely because of that. They don't see eye to eye once the rest of us are subdued.

Someone else should chime in though, because I'm not super informed on that topic, just an ill formed opinion.

This is a good point regarding the Catholics and Evangelicals, they would be on opposing sides. This is the scenario that was played out in The Handmaid's Tale. Although I don't see Catholicism ever joining forces with an American authoritarian government. Evangelicalism is perfectly suited for this than the Catholic church which has a hierarchy that reports to Rome. The Evangelicals are very malleable in their beliefs and are already inundated with the idea of America being a nation chosen by God.

We have a pretty good record of bigotry against Catholics in this country. The Papists being rounded up would mesh well with our history. 

Edited by F250
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1 hour ago, F250 said:

This is a good point regarding the Catholics and Evangelicals, they would be on opposing sides. This is the scenario that was played out in The Handmaid's Tale. Although I don't see Catholicism ever joining forces with an American authoritarian government. Evangelicalism is perfectly suited for this than the Catholic church which has a hierarchy that reports to Rome. The Evangelicals are very malleable in their beliefs and are already inundated with the idea of America being a nation chosen by God.

We have a pretty good record of bigotry against Catholics in this country. The Papists being rounded up would mesh well with our history. 

That is why I used the term subset of Catholics. I'd never heard of this movement because a)not Catholic and b)Catholics whom I know are not a part of it.

Here is an article from wiki to cover the basics, but as I went through social media and some of their academic material, they are attempting to step into the vacuum created by the division in America. The wiki article doesn't focus on the US and I would maintain that it could use an update.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integralism

 

I should add, that some of their theocratic goals may also be dependent upon whether they see the Hispanic population as 'white' or not. Some of the people I saw affiliated with this movement appeared to see Hispanics as the means to an end (if the Hispanics were Catholic) in order to have enough of the population to enact a theocracy.

I don't believe that we should have some sort of religious scrutiny test for public office, that has been abused in the past, against groups like Catholics, but I am of the mind it is something of which people should be aware.

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1 minute ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

That is why I used the term subset of Catholics. I'd never heard of this movement because a)not Catholic and b)Catholics whom I know are not a part of it.

Here is an article from wiki to cover the basics, but as I went through social media and some of their academic material, they are attempting to step into the vacuum created by the division in America. The wiki article doesn't focus on the US and I would maintain that it could use an update.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integralism

When it comes to Catholics, the single issue that has allowed for broken brains is abortion.  Take abortion out of the political mix, and Catholic faith in action is pretty damned progressive (being anti-death penalty, pro-charitable acts, pro providing shelter for the immigrant in need, etc.).  The funny thing is, being anti-abortion is actually a long-held position of the church, and is at least consistent with a general "all life is sacred" stance.  Evangelicals, on the other hand, didn't hop on the anti-abortion bandwagon until really late in the game.....after they Civil Rights movement had largely won, and the Evangelicals didn't have any other issues they could hang their hats on to have a theological argument against voting for a democrat.  So, they did a 180  on abortion, and use that single issue to justify their opposition to every progressive thought.

 

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4 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

When it comes to Catholics, the single issue that has allowed for broken brains is abortion.  Take abortion out of the political mix, and Catholic faith in action is pretty damned progressive (being anti-death penalty, pro-charitable acts, pro providing shelter for the immigrant in need, etc.).  The funny thing is, being anti-abortion is actually a long-held position of the church, and is at least consistent with a general "all life is sacred" stance.  Evangelicals, on the other hand, didn't hop on the anti-abortion bandwagon until really late in the game.....after they Civil Rights movement had largely won, and the Evangelicals didn't have any other issues they could hang their hats on to have a theological argument against voting for a democrat.  So, they did a 180  on abortion, and use that single issue to justify their opposition to every progressive thought.

 

The Catholics that we know are the way you describe, I've never met anyone who follows the other movement so I don't know how prevalent it is really without doing some digging. It was something that came up when the poster used several names (in another thread I think--the AF one) and I looked those names up and was reading, especially since one was in the Trump administration.

But people can get very heated over their belief being the ONLY belief and the RIGHT way and then kill each other over it, so I'm putting it in my mental file cabinet in case I run across more events in the months to come.

But to @F250's point, Margaret Atwood is a very observant writer.

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On 4/20/2021 at 9:30 AM, Brisketexan said:

Take abortion out of the political mix, and Catholic faith in action is pretty damned progressive (being anti-death penalty, pro-charitable acts, pro providing shelter for the immigrant in need, etc.). 

That’s been my experience, though admittedly, my Catholic experience was a Jesuit education. Then you come across shite, like this statement attributed to an archbishop.
 

Fuck that dude. 
 

I’m going to boil some shrimp.

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1 hour ago, Willfully Horn said:

That’s been my experience, though admittedly, my Catholic experience was a Jesuit education. Then you come across shite, like this statement attributed to an archbishop.
 

Fuck that dude. 
 

I’m going to boil some shrimp.

The countdown to the Archbishop being exposed for diddling little boys begins...

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On 4/19/2021 at 3:05 PM, 'stache said:

Meh, I just don't care anymore. Religion as a major driver in society is going to die off with the olds. Yeah, there will still be churches and people who attend and believe this crap, but it is fading fast among the younger generations, and the political power held by these groups will diminish substantially, if not entirely. I don't associate with people like this, I'm sure some of my acquaintances are into this nonsense, but we don't talk about it, and if it came up I'm 100% less likely to ever follow up with that person, because I truly believe that people like this are bad people. I don't care about niceties on the surface, or giving money or time to your church's chosen causes, the base of this type of thinking is cruel and hateful, no matter how they try to dress it up as something different. 

On 4/19/2021 at 8:55 PM, WhatTheBuck said:

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Granted, things are far different here in the People's Republic of Travis County vs a place like God-fearing Oklahoma, but I've been seeing more and more churches popping up that are very much non-traditional.  They are chasing the younger crowd that some of the older/bigger/stricter churches have driven off. They welcome LBTQ/etc. members, they aren't pushing this "IF YOU DO OR DON'T DO THIS YOU ARE GOING TO HELL" spiel, but more of a "Let's all be cool to one another, and take care of each other", etc.

These kinds of options weren't around when I was younger, or if they were, they were one-off hippy-dippy types of places, but what I see now is some serious attempts at presenting alternative Christian services to the old-school Baptist/Catholic/etc. services.  And these are very polished attempts - not some back room of a community meeting place, or some crappy strip mall, but prime real estate, and in some cases, they are replacing more traditional churches that used to stand where they are now.

And we've seen the Methodists going through their thing, and Lutherans are wrestling with their own issues.

It's a microcosm and very much anecdotal, but I've watched my wife's (Baptist) Sunday school over the past year when it went to online, and there's been some major blow-ups over the whole "covid is/isn't a hoax", "we don't need masks/no, fuck you, Christians should wear masks to protect their fellow Christians" and lately a family left because they disagreed with everybody getting vaccines ("they are made with aborted fetuses!"), and some others have been arguing about homeless legislation.

I've seen some of the more conservative members (the one pushing the hoax bullshit) swing even farther out there, to the point where they feel this large Southern Baptist church has lost its way, and they need to find a small church that doesn't tolerate a wide range of viewpoints. 

At the same time, I've seen other members pushed way to the left on some issues, people who were shocked that their fellow Christians would act like such assholes over something as simple as an actual pandemic or act that way towards the very homeless that they collect shoes, socks, underwear, toiletries, food, etc. for.

I just don't see how the larger really strict/conservative churches can appeal to younger crowds when they have members who act likes assholes over simple things like this - the pandemic (and here in Austin, the homeless), not to mention recent elections, has really exposed a lot of folks for what they really are, and it's driving wedges into a lot of congregations.

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2 hours ago, Willfully Horn said:

That’s been my experience, though admittedly, my Catholic experience was a Jesuit education. Then you come across shite, like this statement attributed to an archbishop.
 

Fuck that dude. 
 

I’m going to boil some shrimp.

It says best, not beast.

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5 minutes ago, Satchel said:

It has always fascinated me that the RCC can lay claim to a robust intellectual tradition while it produces people such as Archbishop Aquila.

They might lay claim to it, but it's not robust and it's not tradition.  They allowed the Jesuits to have a few guys in a back office somewhere preserve centuries of scientific discovery just in case there might be either a public relations and/or fundraising score to be made from the knowledge preservation.  Kinda like how I keep old fishing lures in case they can be used to dupe a school of fish 25 years from now that's never seen it before, or I can sell them 25 years from now to nostalgic fishermen.  

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8 minutes ago, Lobo said:

They might lay claim to it, but it's not robust and it's not tradition.  They allowed the Jesuits to have a few guys in a back office somewhere preserve centuries of scientific discovery just in case there might be either a public relations and/or fundraising score to be made from the knowledge preservation.  Kinda like how I keep old fishing lures in case they can be used to dupe a school of fish 25 years from now that's never seen it before, or I can sell them 25 years from now to nostalgic fishermen.  

Your view gives short shrift to the Catholic intellectual tradition:https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/jesuits-science-and-a-pope-with-a-chemistry-degree-a-productive-pairing/

 

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On 4/19/2021 at 8:55 PM, WhatTheBuck said:

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Burn all the science books, burn all the religious texts. Eventually, the science books will be re-written pretty much the same way as they are now. The religious texts would be very different from how we know them. But they would be written. And believers would believe because they basically want to conform to whatever their parents, friends, and neighbors believe and would really rather be told how to behave than to actually think for themselves. 

r960-1fe8819fe31a4f9485dc6a1ed5554053.jp

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On 4/19/2021 at 8:55 PM, WhatTheBuck said:

I don’t think you understand just how superstitious people are. Religion isn’t going to die off anytime soon. Even if the religions people practice today were to die off, new ones would be created in short order. If you have a sports fan friend who thinks he has a lucky t-shirt, or a poker-playing friend who always deals the same game he just won to appease “the poker gods” then you know this. We are too prone to superstition (and hallucination) for religion to disappear anytime soon.

Burn all the science books, burn all the religious texts. Eventually, the science books will be re-written pretty much the same way as they are now. The religious texts would be very different from how we know them. But they would be written. And believers would believe because they basically want to conform to whatever their parents, friends, and neighbors believe and would really rather be told how to behave than to actually think for themselves. 

LOL. 

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1 hour ago, Satchel said:

Believing in something is part of our evolutionary need to feel connected to the world around us.

Believing in “Us” vs. “Them” is a successful strategy bred into us from a long history of evolution beginning with our allegiance to people who look like us and are related to us starting with family and moving on to clan, tribe, and nation. Those of us who have a more expansive and inclusive definition of “Us” are branded as liberals. The so-called conservatives these days are more based around an ideology of fear of “Them” and that’s been a standard of fascist ideology as long as fascism has been a thing. It’s easy to get people riled up by telling them that “They” are coming to take your stuff. (Hello Fox News!)

As an involuntary subject of Christian indoctrination, I was taught that we all came from the same two parents: Adam and Eve. Never mind how absurd that myth is nor why the whole human race would have to be based on incest if that was true. (Let’s not even bother with the myth of Noah and the flood which just doubles down on the concept that we’re all descended from the same family.)

Maybe I learned the wrong lessons from my Christian upbringing. I was taught a song that said, “Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world. Red, brown, yellow, black, and white, they are precious in his sight.” I took that to mean He (i.e. God, our perfect, infinite, and all-knowing Creator, never mind that our scripture declares that He has a favored people and we Christians aren’t them,) loves us all equally.

I think Abraham Lincoln was our greatest President and I agree with the assertion in his Gettysburg Address that we’re a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Charles Darwin had only recently published On the Origin of Species so I can forgive Lincoln for not knowing that we really are all related, literally, and our differences are merely superficial. The study of genetics tells us that we’re mostly identical except for a tiny variance in our individual genomes. (Not sure if that’s the right word to use here but I’m on a roll so I’m going with it. Also, and I can’t repeat this often enough, no one ever waved the Confederate flag for the party of Lincoln.)

In my personal experience, anecdotal as it may be, I’ve observed that people are people and there’s no difference between them regardless of race, color, or creed. And most of us are assholes, or at least we are some of the time. But all too often religion just gives people a reason to draw a line between “Us” and “Them” and since they don’t believe the same thing that we do then that makes them bad. Or evil. That doesn’t help anything or anyone.

I don’t think religion is a good thing but I also don’t think it’s going away. We don’t need it in order to be loving and caring and kind to our neighbors and to treat them the way we want to be treated. Maybe some people do. But if we could just get the believers to not take it so seriously and realize that maybe, just maybe, they might be wrong, then we might all be able to get along a little bit better.

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7 hours ago, WhatTheBuck said:

It’s easy to get people riled up by telling them that “They” are coming to take your stuff. (Hello Fox News!)

 

It makes sense that it's easy because not only was that essential for survival (having 'stuff' i.e. food) so you could eat, but also because those are the things that the historians have talked about for years and years and years. It is 'bred' into us, but it is reinforced over and over again so that calling up that fear is not difficult. (I am specifically referring to the specific demographic of historians that have had the most sway for the last several centuries). War, war, war, war, war. Oh! A discovery! War, war, war, war. Oh! An invention.

Not to make light of events, but if one had the same amount of time (centuries) in a parallel universe and women (of all colors) wrote, recorded, and documented history and then combined the two what that would've looked like.

I know there are documents throughout history by marginalized people, but it's  sad how little there is. At least there has been some growth in that aspect, but I notice once marginalized groups speak up, they are seen as complaining. Their opinions and thoughts were never asked throughout history and thus speaking up now is somehow an affront to the idea held by those in power that they were ever worth considering in the first place I guess. And somehow from that we get "AAAHHH, Christians being persecuted! Stop cancelling me because I'm Christian, you're being intolerant!"

 

 

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/dec/02/indonesia-set-to-make-sex-outside-marriage-punishable-by-jail

 

Indonesia set to make sex outside marriage punishable by jail

Indonesia’s parliament is expected to pass a new criminal code this month that would criminalise sex outside marriage and outlaw insults against the president or state institutions, prompting alarm from human rights campaigners.

The deputy justice minister, Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej, said in an interview with Reuters that the new criminal code was expected to be passed on 15 December. “We’re proud to have a criminal code that’s in line with Indonesian values,” he said.

Bambang Wuryanto, a lawmaker involved in the draft, said the code could be passed by as early as next week.

If passed, the code would apply to Indonesian citizens and foreign visitors, and introduce sweeping changes affecting a wide range of civil liberties.

Sex outside marriage, which under the code could be reported only by limited parties such as close relatives, could lead to up to a year in prison, while unmarried couples would be banned from living together.

 

 

Christian Taliban:

giphy.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=ec3fe3ae99bd122

 

GOP: 

tenor.gif?itemid=15267125&f=1&nofb=1&ipt

 

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On 4/19/2021 at 3:05 PM, 'stache said:

Meh, I just don't care anymore. Religion as a major driver in society is going to die off with the olds. Yeah, there will still be churches and people who attend and believe this crap, but it is fading fast among the younger generations, and the political power held by these groups will diminish substantially, if not entirely. I don't associate with people like this, I'm sure some of my acquaintances are into this nonsense, but we don't talk about it, and if it came up I'm 100% less likely to ever follow up with that person, because I truly believe that people like this are bad people. I don't care about niceties on the surface, or giving money or time to your church's chosen causes, the base of this type of thinking is cruel and hateful, no matter how they try to dress it up as something different. 

Most observers of religion would rather see a sermon than hear one any day of the week. Too often, contemporary Christianity is characterized by noisy cultural warriors, who practice a form of the faith that it untethered to the Gospel. As one who does not take a casual approach to practicing the faith, I find the prodigious use of Jesus language by public practitioners, the obsessive focus of doctrinally based prohibitions over the invitations, law over love, to be the most damning indictments against Christian praxis.

 

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