I am sorry but Americans are not Christians. I am atheist since I was born, never beleived but I am living in Christian country (ortodox) and what I am seeing, Americans are Christians only in self proclamation. Nothing in Protestant churches (they are not even that) is Christian. It’s pure transactional, and unhuman at it’s core. And they are lucky that Jesus doesen’t exist because they would burn in hell (together with me as an atheist). So, in a nutshel, American christians are atheists that use religion for justifying all those sins that they are not supposed to make. And this is the ugly truth.
supply side jesus.
yeah, in jesus’s image, right. I wonder if jesus gave a fuck about other people…
I’m an atheist, but I would probably guess that those type of Christians aren’t real Christians at all. It seems to be common in America for people to associate “traditional family values” with Christianity. Which very basically translates to racism and homophobia. So they hide behind Christianity like they’re holyier then thou. These people aren’t Christians, their bigots with disassociative disorders. You were raised by bigots.
It’s like the challenge was how to hold in one’s mind “being Christian” and simultaneously going down a checklist of actions and words listed as defining Christianity and doing the exact opposite. Though, By 320 CE, that was the status quo.
Jesus’s whole way at talking truth to power was to acknowledge and show compassion for those marginalized and hated by the Romans and the Pharisees. His main problem with the Pharisees was literally the hypocrisy of them saying they follow the laws of the religion, and then not doing any of that. It was dangerous to call them hypocrites due to their political power.
Sound familiar yet?
I don’t agree when you say “racism and homophobia”. American Christian values are racism and homophobia and misogyny.
I only realised this after I was well past my “Angry Atheist” phase: There are good verses in the Bible and there are also bad verses. Most of the Christians cherry pick. How they cherry pick depends on who they are. In my opinion, there aren’t any real or fake christians. There’s only good christians and bad christians.
The toxic manipulation of how American Evangelical churches teach the Bible is to intentionally remove context and just point to a through-line of whatever supports the topic of the week. The same out of context OT verse can mean 30 different things to these people.
Oh I was raised by bigots. Both full narcissists. Its why democrat and republican mean nothing to me. My democrat dad switched to a republican without changing one racist bigoted opinion. Made sure everyone knew how generous he was. Only he was generous when no one was around to see. Then he was cruel and mean. When I stopped being his victim he disowned me. Of all those christians he was hanging around ninety percent of them were just like him. They were incrediblly mean to people and always justified it using the bible. If their afterlife were a real thing then they wouldn’t be that way. The reason why they can be that way is that they know its all a scam. If jesus ever existed that jewish dude wouldn’t be someone they cared for.
I long for the day they are taxed for their donations and then we will see how christian they are. Whats left might be worthy of my repsect. But I doubt it.
Yeah so I was raised in a reasonably devout household, and I’ve never really been able to resolve this.
Its related to the fundamental attribution error - we judge others by their actions but ourselves by intentions. Except its more than that because religion creates this us vs them dynamic, where anyone who is “us” has good intentions, but anyone who is them does not.
Let’s suppose a “good” person is one who performs acts of altruism, has integrity, and a high level of emptiness self awareness.
In my experience these “good” people are a small part of any group. Any race, creed, city, social group, whatever.
With that in mind, I don’t think religion makes people good - rather its a system of beliefs that allows people to perceive themselves and their friends as good.
Really I think this explains why religion is so prevalent. Ultimately being “good” isn’t a very good gig. Imagine doing destitute because you’ve spent your life performing acts of altruism. OTOH if it merely allows one to form a cohesive group of “good” people, i can see how that would be perpetuated.
You can be all of those things and be Christian.
Literally so hard this. I was raised by christians and they were disappointed when I turned out to not be a christian adult. I tried so hard to point out the hypocrisy of them teaching me to always treat others with respect and to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” but being hardcore right-wingers and trump supporters, being racists af and hating trans and queer people. They still don’t seem to get it.
“If Jesus was here, he would join the front lines”, my incredibly Catholic relative that needs to re-read the sermon on the mount.
After decades of arguments, the best I managed was slightly changing the language used. Now around me my dad calls black and brown people Democrats instead of slurs. Thinks he’s damn clever too.
Man, I think I was an atheist for years before I actually knew it. I disagreed with several things without even noticing for a long time. I’d skip going to church, (hell I would show up sometimes for the beginning and leave just so people would know they saw me that day). I hated LGBT people for a good chunk of it. That kinda stopped after I met some.
Then when someone close to me came out as trans, I didn’t even blink or feel weird about it. But the old beliefs still kinda hovered there for a while still.
That shit is hard to shake when it’s indoctrinated as bad as it was, mostly because of the fact that the fear of hell is reeeeal. It took a movie bringing up the fact that something that I believed was original to the Bible has been around well before it got put into the Bible. That finally shattered holding onto it, and everything else has been catching up ever since.
I’m finally becoming someone I’m not ashamed of.
That started 9 years ago. I still have a group of friends to get back to that tolerate me back then somehow and I need to reintroduce the new me.
Then when someone close to me came out as trans, I didn’t even blink or feel weird about it.
Calling bullshit on that, mate. Anything out of the ordinary, you are going to be curious about. People blink and feel weird when someone swaps playstation for xbox. If you had said that you didnt hate them just because, that would fine. But this “I totally didnt blink at something Im not used to” is a cheap virtue signal.
I dont care who you are, or what the issue is. If some suddenly isnt who you thought they were in some way, youre going to blink. Youre going to have questions. Wanting to understand things isnt bad. And honestly utterly fucking sick of every single person on the internet pretending that they arent the same human being that the rest of us are. If nothing else, youd at the very least be worried about them because of all the stories you hear about shitty parents disowning their kids for being LGBT. But not you, you didnt even blink…
And honestly utterly fucking sick of every single person on the internet pretending that they arent the same human being that the rest of us are
I don’t even know what this part means.
As for the rest of it, maybe I’m not using the word “blink” the same way. Your way is probably more correct. I was using a more substantial version than “blink” seems to mean, but maybe that’s just a regional or friend/family group difference.
But for reference, when I hear it used, it’s more in a sense of being shocked to the point of just kinda a brief mental shutdown, during which one would just blink while they process.
That’s just how I’ve heard it used, but on its face it does sound like it should be a much more minor reaction.
In which case, yes, I did blink. But if I had heard it a couple years before that, I would have had a much bigger reaction. Plus the fact that it was becoming more obvious shortly before they came out.
Either way my point was that at that point in my life I was coming out of religion enough that my reaction was more immediately supportive of my sibling rather than reacting negatively toward them in favor of the religious rules I had before.
Removed by mod
You don’t know Jesus. Man was savage. Cursed a fig tree for no reason. Hates money changers.
Removed by mod
Right, let’s take Christ out of the discussions of Christ-ianity.
Removed by mod
Are you just randomly hitting an edgy opinionated atheist soundboard over there lol.
Say the line, Bart!
I think you replied to the wrong person. All of my examples are from the New Testament.
Isn’t jesus part of the holy trinity, so is essentially god? Lots of stuff about that dude in the old testament. And he hated on a lot of people
Agreed, but I’m not interested in debating that with someone who calls people Peasy. lol
I’ve often wondered if I would have grown up to be as vehemently atheist if I had grown up in a place without american “christians”
Don’t worry. There’s plenty of other diseased religions in other areas!
This was one of the fundamental experiences of whiplash that shot me straight out of the Christian community. Giant pile of child-fucking hypocrites.
Meh for me it was the child fucking.
Social media, that’s why. The brain being cooked in dopamine all the time by algorithm and fake news fries the brain. People forgot how to be nice.
No one forgot how to be nice. They just dont have to be online, because they know they can get away with being a cunt. Social media has outed a lot of people for being cowards.
There are anecdotes of people changing for the worse. I remember a poster who said his parents became Trump supporting bigots, even though growing up they taught OP not to be racist.
Grew up in the south before social media existed. It’s the cause of a lot of problems, but this one predates it by a wide margin. It definitely made it worse, but there is no greater hate than Christian love.
Most Christians (I say most because I have met some good ones) only speak out on the bad things the bible says (eg anti gay) and do nothing on what Jesus says about rich people (“its harder for rich people to enter heaven than a camel through the eye of a needle” etc.) Jesus literally told so many parables of old rich men who couldn’t give up there wealth to worship Jesus, and for being the head of such a largely hateful group, actually didn’t say anything bad against gay people, abortion, trans people and was in fact welcoming of gentiles (Equivalent to immigrant or foreigners to his audience.)
I was “raised Christian.” The top reasons I despise religion is the a) hypocrisy from top to bottom, b) a person can go through life wrecking others others in ways that may be devastating, permanent, and/or traumatic that they have to live with forever and are supposed to just accept it like some mind of lesson from god, yet the person who does all the damage gets to go to heaven if the ask for forgiveness in just the right way.
Yeah, the whole “love each other and forgive everything” lessons of my youth have been replaced by “fuck you, I’m getting mine” christians.
You need to read your Bible more often if you think you’re the first person to have noticed that.
I recommend Isaiah 30:8-17.
Lol, the Bible is full of contradictions that are all rationalized and interpreted by the wants of the individual and leader. No desire to dig into that any more than I already have.
So… it’s just like people are then?
Not quite? You can have a person that does all those things on their own, sure… they aren’t part of a “club.” But when religion using that bible makes a group of people all doing the same thing it can be very destructive.
Actually American Americans are the “Pharisees”. They just hate to be called to be called out by Jesus.
They act like Pharisees. They talk like Pharisees. I hope they will be judged like Pharisees.
Of course, everyone will be judged eventually. Pretty sure it says that in the Bible too.
Does anyone actually think these pseudochristians are actually pure in any way?
They do. That’s why they’re so hateful to anyone who contradicts them.
I figured most of them for the “religion is a useful tool to manipulate others” instead of actually believing in any sort of purity - other than rationalizing their shitty treatment of others.
I think the rationalization of shitty behavior is key. Everyone is the hero of their own story, and there is no end to the mental gymnastics or cognitive dissonance people will go through to remain the hero.
It’s almost Occam’s Razor. It’s easier to believe someone is a selfish hypocrite than some kind of moral-less grifter.
That’s not to say there aren’t grifters, just that the vast majority have drunk the kool-aid and keep drinking it because of a warped sunk-cost fallacy scenario. If I stop drinking, I have to admit I was bad and wrong, so I double down and stay the good guy.
point B was my favorite part of The Brothers Karamazov.
Ya you nailed it. Good people are punished and bad people rewarded.
Yeah, the whole “love each other and forgive everything” lessons of my youth have been replaced by “fuck you, I’m getting mine” christians.
Ah yes, the Boomer Christians.
Helps if you read it as “care about others[parishoners]” not “care about others[foreigners, minorities, and other faiths]”
Ministers love to talk about charity when they’re passing around the collection plate. It never comes up on tax day.
That is a good point while honestly I can’t think of a vague group like “others” without thinking of including my e.g. mom and also a random person from who knows where. We are brothers and sisters. And I don’t understand how i could have learn anything else from Jesus’ teachings and I am now a non believer.
This is almost exactly what brought me out of christianity. I was institutionalised into it from birth. So, I always just glossed over the most obvious problems that people would bring up. If anything, it entrenched me further.
However, I started realising that I had more love and compassion for people than, not just christians, god claims to have, by their own admission.
How can I love a stranger than an all loving God?
It was all downhill from there.
“The others” were meant to “those who deserving”.
