Holy cow, I remember these skinny books. Chick tracts, ey? Growing up, back when my folks were still fundies, we had a few on the bookshelf and I remember they were my first time seeing ‘nudes’ in print. I think the highlight was some dude who went to hell’s whole butt, nary a leaf in sight. Prior to that, there was only the carefully, tastefully covered parts of Adam and Eve for me.
Hilarious that my takeaway from these was just first sight of full butt.
The oglaf comic mentioned a god called Sithrak in some of the comics, and eventually made some tracts in the style of chick tracts about it
https://www.oglaf.com/sithrak/
(that comic is SFW but many of them aren’t)
The kind of christian who indulges in this sort of thinking is wildly out of touch even with the beliefs of most zealous evangelical Christians.
Evangelicals might have a grudge against the education system for producing people who are less likely to be evangelicals, but they’re also people who are deeply involved with peer culture, sports, and public organized religion.
This literature was published by a sect that even evangelical folks would regard as cultish.
Don’t pay attention to quacks. If the devil exists, there is no way a human being has any idea what he ‘knows’. So their entire ridiculous cartoon starts with a false premise and gets worse from there.
If you believe the devil exists, and that he is a near peer adversary of God, you are officially a polytheistic unbeliever.
There is no one single “Christian”. Europe has been Christian for centuries and has maintained some of the best educational facilities in the world, filled with Christian professors, lecturers, and students.
The smart Christians aren’t like this. They have a well-thought-out answer to every r/atheism “gotcha”. You can talk with them about religion and philosophy (though if you try to convert them into atheism or your religion, they have as much patience as you would in their position) and come to very interesting insights together, even if you disagree about the nature of life and the universe.
Some Christians don’t seem very smart, and just seem to apply the label “Christian” to their morals. They don’t have any arguments against criticism, or just can’t handle others disagreeing, so they try to keep any messages opposing their view out. These don’t seem to be good people, in my opinion, or the type that’s a good person as long as you’re not gay/atheist/etc.
The people spreading these shitty textbooks generally seem to fall in the second category. The authors may not even be Christians (there’s good money to be made by pandering to dumb people) but the churches or even schools that buy these, buy them because they can’t win an honest discussion with a teenager without going “because I told you so”.
In my personal experience (in a mostly non/semi atheist country, generally being around higher educated people) most Christians aren’t like this. There’s the dumb, loud, minority, but atheists can very much be the same; I cringe every time I see those “my kid’s school had a bible in the library so I’m upset” stories.
This in particular is from Jack Chick, who also belonged to a group convinced that the KJV is the result of a new revelation.
These comics are known as Chick Tracts.
Remember people, do not feed the trolls!
Follow the money.
It’s only the church leaders who push this crap.
The simple answer is, generally no. Most modern Christians are far more moderate and flimsy in their beliefs than one might think. There’s always going to be extremists in any situation, but someone that identifies as a “Christian” in the modern world is generally shaped by the modern world. You’ll be hard pressed to find someone deny basic science in today’s world.
Bet
There’s a whole order of Jesuits who are basically the Pope’s scientists, and who curated the ancient knowledge through the Dark and Middle Ages.
In fact, the current Pope is a Jesuit.
Where you living? Because all the white christians in my state most definitely reject education. Hell 90% of the GOP base in America is well on their way of being completely braindead due to their hate for education and science.
The American Bible Belt are Evangelical Baptists, and an odd offshoot of Presbyterian. They’re… special. I know them to be reactive, xenophobic and downright ornery.
They are also absolutely, rabidly devout.
You’re confusing the belief that their faith trumps education with reject education altogether.
You’ll be hard pressed to find someone deny basic science in today’s world.
They didn’t outright deny it (out loud), but they cast doubt and equivocate about the parts that don’t agree with their preexisting worldview.
I don’t understand these comics. Are they pro religion? Are they anti-religious satire?
The first comic seems to both warn against satan and attack religion. It might be talking about all religions but the right one.
The second comic is even more confusing. First it seems to associate education and the theory of evolution in particular with satan. But then it seems to associate rejection of education with punks who aren’t necessarily known for their religiosity.
The third comic, finally, is pretty clear, painting wealth and entertainment (sports) as detractions from religion. This could technically still be satire though.
It looks like a Chick Tract, and these panels would be part of a larger work. They’re dumb, but completely serious. Popular with fundies, and if you’re not careful you might find one on your desk at work. (I have, lol).
There is definitely an anti-Catholic sentiment in some of them, so that’s probably what the frame in the first clip is getting at.
Are people not familiar with Chick Tracts? These comics are the product of the prodigous paranoid right wing evangelical conspiracy theorist Jack Chick (1924-2016).
I think these comics are best understood as the work of an outsider artist, like Henry Darger or a painting elephant. His work allows you to glimpse a mind outside the normal human experience.
His work focuses on who is going to hell - everyone who’s not a right wing american protestant, and many who are. It shows a strong pornographic influence - many end in a blissful face dowsed in a baptismal money-shot.
It’s meant to be used as a legitimate tool to evangelize. The worst christian lunatics leave these things in public, earnestly believing that after reading you’ll realize the divinely ordained truth that freemasons will all burn in hell along with blood-drinking rothschilds and D&D players.
Ohhh, Chick Tracts. Fun times, I recognized the style right away too!
I’ve seen them in person twice. Once a neighbor gave us one in a plastic bag with other Jesus-y stuff. And the second time I found an entire stack of them at the gyno’s office
I stole all of them. Amazing. Horrible things, I love how batshit they are lmao
I always took them all whenever I found them - horrible things, I love them covers it perfectly.
But also, I wouldn’t just leave a kitchen knife lying in public. Most people can be trusted to safely avoid the danger. But what if a child, or someone intent on harm found it?
The responsible thing to do is to remove the threat from the environment.
My mother brought a couple of Chick tracts home from church for me… I don’t think she actually read them first.
My favourite was the one where a man murdered his wife while drunk and then his daughter threatened to cut him with a broken bottle.
The d&d game summoning the devil was always my favorite. Always love a d&d episode.
Also any one where the pope is shown in league with someone unlikely - communists, jews, muslims, etc.
When people talk about “christians” they always fail to realize that there are hundreds of different denominations. Some are going to be psycho snake swingers or ultra regressive loons. Others are just regular people who believe in god. People always focus on the crazies because the crazies are the ones standing around screeching.
But there are plenty of denominations that are left leaning as fuck because, guess what, Jesus as described in the bible was a socialist hippy who hung out with sex workers, leppers, and other social outcasts. For example the church I always went to was pro same sex marriage as far back as 2005, so long before it was legal in most states (I just don’t remember it comming up before that).
So some ultra regressives (like the person who made those comics) are anti-education because they’re against anything that doesn’t promote their worldview. But I’d say the vast majority of christians aren’t like that at all.
The problem with the regular moderate Christians is they vote in droves for regressive politicians. Because one of the parties got a monopoly on Jesus™️.
Yet, nobody talks about moderate Nazis. Just Nazis.
What’s a moderate Nazi even look like? I think if you even slightly deserve the term ‘Nazi’ you’re so far past anything considered moderate it’s absurd.
Not the ones I know
That’s cool and good for them. Not the ones I’m friends with either. But who do they vote for?
Considering the weight of the Jesuit order, both in education, and in the Vatican politics, I don’t think that the Christian are against education in general.
I will reply not with my own view, but of the person who is most likely the author if this tract: Jack Chick. “Catholics are not Christians.”
Absurd, you say? Of course, and I agree that it’s absurd.
In the US there are two broad categories of people who would disagree.
- Old school bigots, many of whom came from immigrant families and wanted to align with the ruling class in America: WASPs. These were generally families who came from northwestern Europe and Scandinavia. (This describes the oldest members of my own family, who are still scandalized that my uncle married a woman from an Italian family in the 1960s).
- Fundamentalist Protestants. There are a thousand different flavors, so it’s hard to give them a single name. They agree that the bible is the literal word of God and that Catholicism is fundamentally flawed - as is any religion that stresses the need to “do unto others” in any significant fashion. “The only way to heaven is through me,” said Jesus. In other words, if you’re a serial killer but you truly believe in Jesus Christ and have pledged your soul to him - well, Jesus must have a good reason for all that serial killing you did. (This describes my in-laws, so yes - my entire family is fucked up).
The serial killing thing is a bit of an exaggeration, but honestly - these people are almost shockingly mean to each other.
It’s more that they think modern education is WRONG, and the only truth is the Bible, or whatever their interpretation of the Bible is.
Which is funny, because those same folks never even read the Bible.
This is it, in my experience. They think all you need to read is the bible and no other books. But if you’re only reading the bible, you miss out on everything in all other books, which is a lot.
Thats the propaganda.
In reality its about control and power. Thats why they want to breed an army and take over all elected positions. Thats what they talk about behind closed doors and when cameras are away.
This right here is the answer. To elaborate a bit; they are taking the Bible as an Axiom, A self-evident principle or one that is accepted as true without proof as the basis for argument; a postulate. The problem is that research around devolution, the formation of the universe, or Earth’s age point to those Axioms not being as solid as once thought. In science this is not an issue; we have moved from Newton’s view on gravity to Einstein’s view with General Relativity, see this for more. In Christianity this is not as simple; remember God is all powerful and all knowing, and by extension so is his word in the Bible. If you conclude something that does not agree then you are challenging that aspect of God. That is the core of fundamentalism. You can already see how this framework leads to a young Earth or dinosaurs living with humans.
The stupid ones do, yes. The smarter ones are allowing it to go on unchallenged so…
That’s the issue with any “freedom” - we can make a wrong choice. e.g. lack of gun control allows school shootings, literally daily:-(. Though on the internet, we can go anywhere, do as we please, and say anything!
I would not call any of these three issues fully “unchallenged”, in the sense that many words have been expended about them, on all sides, though ultimately yes you are correct: nobody has altered the laws to allow stopping of any of them (yet internet freedoms are the ones at most risk right now, due to authoritarianism).
They are generally fine with education in general, but some get VERY riled up about some of the specifics.
