this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2024
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US Authoritarianism

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Hello, I am researching American crimes against humanity. . This space so far has been most strongly for memes, and that's fine.

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[–] [email protected] 87 points 3 weeks ago (15 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (8 children)

I mean, sort of?

Jesus flipping tables and scolding merchants is cool, whether he’s the son of God or not.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If Jesus was alive today, he'd be crucified again by the Religious Right.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

You put into words how I’ve felt for a long time. What is the cause of their blindness?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

[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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

You should take a read into some Gnosticism. You'd be interested in what they have to say regarding the Demiurge.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Conservatives would literally call him a communist

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

If only certain things matter, then nothing matters. I prefer a God who lets us be free.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

This man deserves every ounce of respect that he gets, all of it earned.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes, that's what happens when you're indoctrinated from birth.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Can confirm.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 weeks ago

this isn't limited to religious people

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago (21 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

Found it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Maybe one is supposed to be protestant/church of England? Definitely not a different religion though

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Maybe one is Catholic?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

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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