If a human can choose how to interpret holy text however they want and there isn’t an immediate response from a diety for interpreting them wrong, the texts must not really matter.
I mean, sort of?
Jesus flipping tables and scolding merchants is cool, whether he’s the son of God or not.
Imagine if someone became a really popular influencer pushing similar teachings as Jesus, and just started raising shit with their modern millions of followers. Be an interesting WP prompt
If Jesus was alive today, he’d be crucified again by the Religious Right.
You put into words how I’ve felt for a long time. What is the cause of their blindness?
[Warning: ridiculous existential musings incoming from your question. I lost someone recently and I’m questioning everything.]
What if the Religious Right is some kind of modern-day antithesis to the Tree of Knowledge, its grotesquely interwoven branches of congregants luring others to eat from, and live within, their Tree of True Evil?
What if, at the Fall, Adam and Eve were merely releasing themselves from their creator and captor, from God himself, through eating the forbidden fruit? And that Eden was no utopia, it was really just a prison?
What if God is the bad guy here? And the Religious Right are a reflection of God’s actual being and not the God described so perfectly in Scripture?
What if God is now manifesting himself through the Religious Right, rather than Scripture, to convince more of his “children” to return to his “watchful” guard, to be rewarded in Heaven, to live with Him, in Him, in the Unity of the Holy Spirit, all Glory is Yours Almighty Father, forever and eeeeveeer??
I mean, he put us here, right? Why can’t he just stop the whole thing in its tracks? Or … Maybe he doesn’t have all the power in this sticky Creation situation? Maybe…
Wait. Why does God sound like a scumbag ex?
Guys, what if we have it all backwards?
What if we have a Mom God, and Dad God just made up that bullshit about the rib to explain away any questions about a possible Mom God, let alone ever giving her a written word? (I made her, so I speak for her.)
What if we’re in the middle of some sort of nasty interuniversal deity custody dispute??? Maybe Mom God didn’t want us to suffer, so we were emancipated, and our entire existence was supposed to be Deity-Free, but Dad God couldn’t handle not having control, taxing the shit out out of us with biblical directives even he doesn’t follow, instead of receiving some secure attachment to Mom God via knowledge of the physical realities of this world.
Is Dad God just looking to yank all his kids back, and I mean all of them, no matter how willing or unwilling they are to go home with Almighty Daddy? But he can’t, because he can’t just rapture us outright, or the jig is up, and so we have to live according to see who gets lucky enough to stay at his house and drink all the Holy Mountain Dew and eat all the Holy Hot Pockets we can guzzle down?
What if the Devil isn’t a fallen angel at all, but actually Mom God being slandered and literally demonized by Daddy? And Mom God was only here trying to bring us knowledge of our own autonomy and ability, to set us free?
… Maybe Dad God is only trying to get more child support so he can buy more simulators on Steam and never actually play them because he’s greedy and lazy and every other deadly sin he likes to project onto us. I mean, we were made in his image, right? No wonder everyone is capable of inhumanity. Dude wants to keep us locked up. That seems pretty inhumane.
Yet he says he is perfect. “Yeeahhh, everything wrong you filthy humans is because of that damned snake in the tree!!!” No, we were always the way we were, Dad God, that “damned devil” was just trying to help us get out from under God’s graceless grace.
We are a forgotten Steam sim, mommy tried, and daddy never loved us.
ahhhhh im so high sorry guys
Edit: apparently I can’t spell deity.
I recognize this kind of high. The cannabis thought rabbit hole goes deep. Sometimes it is enjoyable to go down it, other times it isn’t. I’m sorry for your loss, but know Love is out there. No matter the state of the world we can heal from it
You should take a read into some Gnosticism. You’d be interested in what they have to say regarding the Demiurge.
I can only speak for myself and my experience as a former Christian.
For many actually devout Christians, as in Christians who not only read the Bible but do their best to follow its teachings, would probably not believe it if someone went around and said he was Jesus. so regardless of what he said. It’s kind of like Half Life 3: they have an “image” of who Jesus is and he would look like an Arab, not the white hippie that we’re all used to seeing.
The Christian Right uses religion as a way to justify their behavior, primarily their hatred. They don’t call it hatred. They call it God’s Love™.
These are the assholes who hold up signs saying whatever is immoral because of some random verse in the Bible, as if that should somehow convince people that it’s right.
They read Jesus’ message for love and understanding and say, “Oh, that’s nice! I do that everyday with the people I love!” 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰
But then they read Paul’s letters about judgment and casting people out and see that as “Well, if I don’t agree with you, it must mean I have to do this to you!”
Again, it’s not about what the Bible says. It’s about what they use it for. They use it to feel good about themselves and to exert their power over others under the guise of Christian Love.
They are blind to it because they don’t see their hypocrisy. They are, in fact, pharisees.
Conservatives would literally call him a communist
Hutterites live like the early Christian church lived and they are effectively communists. They live on communal land, pool all their income together, share all their resources, etc. Engels called them proto communists.
I believe Jewish Shtetls were another early example of humans naturally forming these types of societies.
Cool in concept.
Problem is Jesus is just a fairy tale, like King Arthur or Robin Hood.
Robin Hood, also cool.
Arthur, naked apologia for feudalism 2/10 would not endorse.
Arthur, naked apologia for feudalism 2/10 would not endorse.
I prefer the view of the peasants in Monty Python. Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Yeah, I mean, just because some moistened tart lobbed a sword at him…
Weren’t they an autonomous anarchical commune or something (or so they thought)?
Anarcho-syndicalist commune.
Thank you!
Fair points.
If only certain things matter, then nothing matters. I prefer a God who lets us be free.
Does your preference matter?
Many religions start out promoting freedom, and evolve to forbidding things and actions
That’s normal: a free society has laws, even anarchism has rules. Freedom is not anomie.
The problem is that many religions, instead of proposing rules in order to better one’s spiritual life, or instead of thinking of then as a means to an end, make rules an end in themselves. Rules can be freeing, but if they’re their own end, they become confining.
- maybe there is no “wrong” way to interpret the text
- maybe your view of the response as only immediate is too limiting
- just playing devil’s advocate here since you made some pretty big assumptions
maybe there is no “wrong” way to interpret the text
If the intended interpretation of a text is “respect women” and you instead interpret the text as “you can own women”, then you have interpreted the text incorrectly.
but there is no way to know what the “intended” interpretation is. and often interpretations beyond the original creator’s intent are still valuable and valid
I agree. There is definitely cases where it is impossible to know, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t wrong ways to interpret something.
You can be wrong without it being possible to know.
how can it be possible to be wrong if there is no definitive correct answer?
Just because it isn’t possible to know doesn’t mean there isn’t a definite correct answer.
A destination can exist without a pathway to it.
okay prove it. otherwise you’re just making an assumption.
This man deserves every ounce of respect that he gets, all of it earned.
Look up the nuclear reactor story if you didn’t know it!
Just dropping in to note that I have read about some really cool feminist and women centered interpretations of many major religions over the years. Women are actively combating this sort of thing from within every religious community and there’s a long, uplifting history of it going back to the beginning. Gives me happy feelings to know.
Religious people, and women in particular, seem to really love participating in their own oppression. Hell, look at the amount of shit Catholics have to ignore in order to keep attending services and paying money to those bastards every Sunday in good conscience.
Yes, that’s what happens when you’re indoctrinated from birth.
Can confirm.
this isn’t limited to religious people
In apocryphal gospels, Mary Magdalene was an apostle, and one of the most important ones. In order to believe that the gospels which were compiled to become the bible were “divinely inspired” and not selected (and edited) by the fucking Romans for political reasons, you have to be either dangerously naive or have an agenda.
Yeah but if you’re already at that point, chances are you’re just going to go a step further and not care about what books were included or not because it’s all bullshit.
Not all of it is BS. There’s some good stuff in there, like the golden rule.
It also warns about hypocrites like Trump and MAGA. People who loudly proclaim to be christian, but are the exact opposite through their actions, especially of treating people like dirt (putting it mildly). And of people being led astray by them.
It’s ironic that these folks who claim to love the Bible are often called out by the Bible. Makes me wonder if they even read it…
Your God condones (nay, encourages) slavery.
Inexcusable. The rest of the book is nonsense, but even if you think it isn’t… You can’t rationalize that one away.
That’s just all religions thought. They all are abusive and manipulative.
Some might have a different stance on women but none are worthy of existence.
Wicca.
Come at me.
how is judaism abusive and manipulative? attending regular services brings me a sense of inner peace, aligns my actions with my beliefs, and connects me with my community
All religions, no exceptions. To kick things off with the lowest of low hanging fruit: your religion practices male genital mutilation.
But the abuse, manipulations and control go all the way through from patriarchal hierarchies to an “exacting regimen requiring absolute obedience and humility; strong social pressures and rewards for cooperation;”
Which is to say cult brainwashing techniques used by any religion from Judaism to Mormonism to Hinduism. From the Branch Davidians to the Sumerian high priesthood: humans have never ceased using the 0-days of the human mind to exploit and manipulate their fellow man.
Does that mean religions can only do evil? Of course not. I’m glad you get a sense of connection and peace from it.
But that connection and peace serves to perpetuate the primeval toxic hierarchy. You’ll raise your kids on it. Make sure they believe it from a young age. After all - “Train a child according to his way; even when he grows old, he will not turn away from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) You gotta get em young or they’ll never believe when they’re old.
You know that religious people have different beliefs and varying practices and varying relationships to institutions, right? Criticize specific institutions if you want, but don’t be an asshole.
I felt the critic was well thought-out and non divisive. They accurately described how religion and the religious are conjoined together at the hip.
If you need real world examples of religion being bad for humans, crack open any paper or look at any creditable news site. Gaza, multiple cleansing in Africa, West China, cults in Japan and South Korea, U.S. politics, India … It is not hard to find the root cause.
But you calling them an asshole was a good comeback.
I’m not ignorant. I just think specifically attacking someone for their religion is shitty. There are way better ways to combat abuses of power than laying it all at the feet of every single person of a certain faith. That is being an asshole in my book.
“I just think specifically attacking someone for their religion is shitty.”
I think physically attacking someone because of your religion or them not buying into your religion is worse. Religions took the whole “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me” ass backwards.
We are watching a native group of people being cleansed from the earth because of a book. If I murdered 40,000 people because of Santa Clause, I would be the most wanted criminal. However, we praise them and say it is " God’s will."
Fuck you and the imaginary shit you believe. Butt hurt because they pointed out a very accurate fact. Even the Abrahamic religious have a story about how everyone cooperating was against “God” in the tale of the Tower of Babel.
There is just nothing liberatory about wanting to get rid of people’s cultural practices. Focus your anger on the politicians and bad actors who coopt those practices.
Religious people are part of the religion but not the whole.
As demonstrated by my previous comment: it is the religion that is the problem, not people finding camaraderie or community therein. I’m glad the previous commenter finds solace but it is important to call out that mechanism is exploited by the religion itself to propagate.
You cannot fully separate a religion and the religious. Without the religious a religion has died.
It would be best if all religions died: the religious that keep them alive are good people who have been misled.
You think you’re punching up. You’re not. You’re conflating a vast group of people and their heterodox cultural practices with your imagined idea of them and labeling all of it bad, in a performatively condescending way that pretends to be altruistic. Other peoples’ relationship to their spirituality is not cool to be shitty about. ‘Get rid of all religion’ is vaguely genocidal and also would not even make a dent in the persistent human problem of abusive and manipulative groups existing.
You’re religious so you’re being defensive and fighting for reasons to keep your beliefs. You don’t want to believe that you participate in a larger organization that harms humanity. That means you’re a good person.
The religion you participate in still harms people. It doesn’t matter what religion it is.
Good people trying to do good things participate in evil organizations that perpetrate harm.
I’m actually not religious. I just think a lot of these arguments sound uncomfortably close to bigotry.
I have a Tshirt that says *“Religion - weirdos in robes making shit up” and it has 5 men dressed in the robes of the major religions.
Christians twice?
Maybe one is supposed to be protestant/church of England? Definitely not a different religion though
Don’t let them hear that. ExJW, but of course considered all other flavors wrong, especially catholics.
Maybe one is Catholic?
While Jesus himself is overwhelmingly sympathetic to women, the bible’s later chapters (specifically those written by Paul) are pretty clear on how women ought to be treated. So while you could technically interpret it as exalting women, any religious leader turning to the bible with a specific question of how to behave will be more likely to find those later chapters with direct answers more appealing.
I’ve heard of literally one religion that’s nice to women, and that’s Wicca. The super cringe crazy people religion is the only one that’s like “Women are people and also when you want something, get in the right mindset and go after it”.
If I believed in believing in things, that’s the one I would pick. Also because my desk with a computer on it pretty well fulfill all the requirements of an altar.
I’m not wicca but I am otherwise pagan, and yeah a lot of modern paganism comes from pursuit of the divine feminine. For atheists I imagine (and understand, I was one for years) that it seems like weird nonsense, but one of the things I respect about wicca is that it’s basically “the divine masculine gets enough worship so we’re gonna focus entirely on the divine feminine”
I have a lot of respect for Jimmy Carter, but I just can’t agree here. There is no way to read the Bible and not see the out-and-out misogyny in both testaments.
Women are clearly considered property. Paul says he does not permit women to speak in church.
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Hey I saw that other post you meant to reply to, nice of the Home Depot cashier to show concern for our beleaguered hero.
Oops, lol
We’ve all done it
We was surprised that Hezbollah used pagers, a thing so outdated that only some select professions still use it, but we choose to navigate our lives following a 2k years old scripture.
I think it’s not accurate to call pagers outdated. There’s a reason those professions still use them and it’s not just because old habits die hard or something.
Ban the religious right and repress them.
Nothing quite like seeing “ban & repress” on a page about authoritarianism.
I mean, sounds fair to me. An eye for an eye. Dangerous people must be kept out of politics if we want to have a good life again.
That’s how you fuel hatred, create terrorist organizations, and build further rifts among people.
Solution: repress even harder.
IDF mode activated
???
Don’t. You don’t wanna open that can of worms. What’s right and what’s practical for making the world better are very different things.
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I love JC, but words mean definitive things
I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent
There are no alternative interpretations, only self delusions to protect yourself from bigger questions
Religious texts are a choose your own adventure book, even for the fundamentalists that endorse the parts like that. All believers intentionally leave room for whatever they like.
There are in fact at least two alternative explanations on this: (1) Paul is issuing a general decree that in absolute terms means women must never have authority in any situation ever at any time; (2) this is a local issue specific to Israel at the time because Jews believed women shouldn’t have authority, and the Church allowing them to would bring it into disrepute, so this was fitting in with the local society. The second interpretation also ties in with Paul’s “all things to all people” teaching. Also Paul in other places specifically notes the difference between “I, not the Lord…”, and “The Lord, not I…”, and this line states “–I-- do not permit…”, suggesting this is from Paul rather than an ultimate directive from above.
youve added a whole lot of words that arent there.
Sure, but (a) that’s how exegesis works, and (b) so are you if you’re extrapolating anything beyond Paul’s statement. He cannot permit or refuse anything now because he’s dead.
But that wasn’t Jesus; it was Paul. Paul wrote a lot of stuff that is exactly opposite of the quotes attributed to Jesus.
some christians discount old testament for anything but historical purposes and consider jesus a new covenant. So the interpretation of that is it does not apply to the modern world.
This is actually a lie perpetuated by the Wiccan Cultists (the Rape cult yes). They demonize men in order to get stupid women on their side, since anyone capable of earning a bachelors degree would only join them for power grabs, they simply applied to the lowest common denominator. If what this statement was saying is true, then domestic abuse rates would be higher under religion. It’s not, it’s about average for society, so religion has very little bearing on how stupid women are treated, it’s actually all about them just being too stupid to change a tire, but somehow still allowed to vote. They think they’re entitled to their brain dead actions, and I despise every last one of you(Wiccan rape cult and supporters). I look forward to dragging you in front of everyone for your trials.
Congrats you’ve fallen into a common stats trap!
You can’t know what the average is for the hypothetical society to which you are comparing despite that being the optimal way to compare. If you were to actually attempt this comparison, you would take two comparable societies that differ only in religious adherence, controlling for non religious cultural things (hint: you can’t separate those easily if at all). And even if you did manage that, you’ve only shown correlation, not causation. Proving the latter is much harder.
If it sounds like I’m agreeing with you, I’m not! I’m saying you cannot know one way or another. But your inane, tautological statement of “the average domestic abuse rates for society are about average” drove me to inform others of how terrible this argument is. You’re clearly a lost cause.
If you want to prove your point, don’t try stats, you’re bad at it. Go for a logical argument, though I suspect you’re bad at that too.
