Pope says 'backward' US conservatives replaced faith with ideology

https://media.tenor.com/JUa45Zo1SP8AAAAM/creed-bratton-the-office.gif

Baptist coworker who thinks Catholicism isn't real Christianity...

I've seen a lot of that and not just recently.

All religions think all other religions are not "real", because of their "There can be only one!" Highlander shit.

I think all religions are just fake copycats of the one true god.

Praise be Flying Spaghetti Monster

Ramen

Pork Belly

I mean, most protestant Christians dislike Catholicism, that's why they are called protestants after all.

The new part is American evangelicals and other extremists thinking that catholicism not being conservative enough...

Conservative Protestants have been saying that for a very long time though. The attitude is so pervasive that my wife, who grew up Catholic (but has not been one for decades), has to be reminded that Catholics are Christians.

Not for nothing but that claim is hardly new. Goes back to the Reformation.

To be fair, it isnt; but then neither is Evangelicism or Mormonism or any of these other wackadoo cults within which these assholes conflate their hatred and fear with faith.

What makes Catholicism fake Christianity in your view? Any faith that believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God that died for the sins of humankind meets the threshold, imo. The Catholic Church fits comfortably within that definition.

If I were being charitable I’d label these heretical creeds as Paulity. They have very little to do with the words and deeds of Christ, or living up to them, and far more to do with how Saul of Tarsus interpreted them.

You may recall the Catholic Church was born out of the first Nicaean Council, where they canonized the four gospels that best reinforced the idea of the supremacy of the Roman state, and burned the hundreds of other so-called “gnostic” gospels, which (judging by the content of the few that survived) far better encapsulate what I would consider “real Christianity”.

That said, the whole “No True Scotsman” fallacy really isn’t worth pursuing. It’s been this way since 325 CE, and there really is no painting a happy face on one of the most destructive and inhumane ideologies history has to offer. No matter what my opinion may be, you are correct in pointing out that the Paulity is the institution that is currently regarded as “Real Christianity”, as sick and anti-Christian as it may be.

All Christians use some interpretation of Bible and Christ.

From the outsiders it's a bit funny to observe these squabbles and the heretic accusations.

You may recall the Catholic Church was born out of the first Nicaean Council, where they canonized the four gospels that best reinforced the idea of the supremacy of the Roman state, and burned the hundreds of other so-called “gnostic” gospels, which (judging by the content of the few that survived) far better encapsulate what I would consider “real Christianity”.

I believe you are mistaken. That was next big council. The 27 books were finalized by a man who attended the Nicaean Council. When he got back he wrote a letter stating which books he considered to be canon.

Well there is all that child sex abuse.

That is an institutional failing of the Catholic Church, it was never endorsed as a part of the Church’s dogma. While I would encourage any Catholic to ask themselves if they really should continue to support an organization that hasn’t done even close to enough to reckon with their many sins over the past two millennia, I still think it’s silly to act like they’re not Christian.

Fucking kids ≠ following the teachings of Jesus in my book.

This is also how the Catholic Church sees it.

Well then you can include baptists in that too.

the only difference between the priests and pastures is the "born again" churches do not have a central structure to follow up on it so they are all just one offs.

There's a ton of it in protestant churches too. The national Baptist church is under federal investigation for it right now. The US has always had an easier time hating Catholics.

It’s hard to imagine now , but Catholics were not considered Christians and it was ok to openly discriminate against them. I know of people fired for that. People still try and convert me to ‘Christianity’ and claim all sorts of stuff.

The KKK and Nixon were vocally against’Papists’

To be fair, even the super conservative Catholics aren’t into this pope. Benedict was their jam.

There a whole YouTube channel by some ex fox host called church militant... It's all about hating gays and lesser religions. They talk shit about the Pope all the time.

It's like everything in America is just power struggles, selfishness, greed, and crime. There's no God or respect for life here. The "good guys" don't even go after the "bad guys" because the bad guys are ahead now. People are so naive here they think heartless crimes are not happening when it's right under their nose. Sometimes the good guys even get used in the plot. Just look at all the old politicians and Americans that got roped in Rogers stones mob puppeting of Trump. America had a mob affiliate for president. I think that puts in stone... Americas bullshit. It's going to take decades to get trust and genuine patriotism back.

I wonder where do they think it all comes from?

Even when I was one I had zero interest in that game.

https://youtu.be/6TxjrHPHypA

Didn't they recently called Jesus / Christianity woke?

You know you fucked up bad when even the Pope is saying, "Whoa, slow it down there with the fascism, bud".

American Catholics have largely voted Democrat for much of the last century. This flip-flop to voting Republican is relatively recent.

It seems to me to be a bit of a religio-coup. Bishops have some autonomy, and Priests some as well. It's become increasingly common that both are in opposition to Rome on certain behaviors related to politics, and exactly how strongly they should be pushing people to vote and for what reasons. The dehumanization of Biden (publicly refusing him Eucharist) for his nuanced pro-choice views is in direct contradiction of papal behavior going back at least to the turn of the 20th century. Telling people that in voting, any sin is forgivable except being pro-choice... well, there's no basis in Canon Law for that attitude.

I live in a very Catholic area, and have a lot of Catholic family. Talking to them, they mention their priests say "you can vote for either party, as long as they're pro-life". The Abortion issue is not the only or greatest issue to Rome. It is AN issue, but disagreeing with the Church is generally not going to earn their full enmity unless you are preaching your disagreement. Biden (the target of that local church smear campaign) is absolutely not preaching pro-choice to anyone.

Pope Francis is right to be saying that because American Catholic Leadership has gone WAY astray from what Catholicism allows or mandates of them.

Conservatives are mostly christian, but if they aren't catholic the pope has little sway over what they do. And they love dissing catholics so yes they will more than they have been already.

If you have a throwaway email to see comments on the Newsmax site, it is Catholics and whatnot saying the Pope isn't the real part of the religion anymore.

Time for a reality check on the history of Popeing

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my god that is the best meme ever

Happy to share!

Thanks, ButtholeSpiders!

These christians will drop their Pope before they drop their politics

They already have. Only Roman Catholics really care what the Pope has to say. There are far more Baptist, Methodist, Evangelical, Pentecostal, and Presbyterian in the US than Catholics.

The Pope is the head of the Roman Catholic church, it's always been the case that only Catholics really care about what he says.

For reasons I can't explain, many of those denominations don't even recognize the catholic church as being Christian.

The problem is much more fundamental than this. I have repeatedly had to explain to adults, in many different contexts the subset/superset relationship. People do not know that you can be part of a superset that describes all things in a subset. For some reason you are able to graduate high school without every actually figuring this out

No Child Left Behind really did give out a lot of diplomas to dummies...

That's always boggled my mind.

I had many childhood baptist friends who claimed with disgust that the Catholic Church isn't Christian.

I just can't see the reason (there isn't any) other than needing a conservative out group.

I just can’t see the reason (there isn’t any) other than needing a conservative out group.

The reason is simple, actually. The Protestant revolution was ostensibly started with Martin Luther advertising that the pope was the antichrist.

Protestantism was basically the practice of declaring Catholicism to be a false Church. Then it evolved and they got more cordial. After 300 years of bloodshed

Technically, at the time of Martin Luther, the Roman Church was corrupt AF, so he wasn't totally wrong. It kind of still is, but hey, who's counting.

This is a true statement. But glass houses and stones. Let's not forget he wrote the infamous "On the Jews and Their Lies", and started supporting their persecution and outright murder. Many believe that his rhetoric directly caused the antisemitic attitudes of the Nazi Party. The aforementioned book was incredibly popular among Nazis.

And the Lutherans are smart to denounce that book. Catholics could learn from a religion deciding it actually did stupid things and fixing itself.

I just didn't think it was any more or less corrupt as any other Church.

It all seems like an unironic no-true-yorkshirrman comedy sketch.

When I was in the Catholic Church they abused us 17 hours a day!

That's nothing! When I was in the Protestant Church they abused us 27 hours a day and killed us before bed time.

Etc.

I feel like Martin Luther was an idealist, an innocent "true believer" who got shocked when he saw the harsh reality of what was going on in Rome.

Then he got his reform, established a new Church... and that's where he went wrong, because sooner or later Churches gonna Church.

TY! All those names are familiar but the events are not.

TIL.

I'm pretty sure the reverse is true.

There are some differences in the details of each denominations beliefs enough to mark some Christians as not real Christians. If only God could just make an announcement over the PA to clear things up...

Related: How many denominations only allow their own denomination to take Communion?

That ship has already sailed - I was just with my conservative uncle this last weekend when he complained that the current pope is "woke"

To these people, their political ideology is their religion

Absolutely agree. I am certain ifwe're real and appeared in person and spouted half the stuff attributed to him in the gospel they would call him "woke" too.

Absolutely no doubt. Kind of surprised no one has done a video series where you anonomize Jesus's teachings, then read them back to conservative Christians and ask what they think about them

The results would be hilarious, no doubt

Probably because they don't want Tucker Carlson siccing a mob on them

The pope? They'll drop Jesus Himself if it suits them

They already have. Been reports of congregations who have complained the the words of Jesus are too woke and weak...

does anyone know off the top of their head how/when Christianity became so tightly associated with the Republican party? No way it was always so extreme in US history

1979: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority

My favourite bumper sticker ever said: The moral majority is neither

Having lived though it in the 1990’s there was a marked turn in the politicizing of Christianity. There was a rise of mega churches and politicians who worked to make churches align to the Republican Party for government assistance. The money for what was welfare was shuffled to churches to take up services that once were secular.

The whole tenor of conversion changed. It just got mean and only got worse from there.

Interesting, I'm assuming that politicians who bought into this evangelical pandering benefited from this by getting votes/support?

Over time. It was more of a mutual benefit the government gives money to the church and the politicians got votes from the churches. At one time there were a lot more social services, not enough, but much more.

They dropped the Jesus Christ of the New Testament half a century ago, and even then they pretended he was somehow as white as mayonnaise, so why not drop his earthly mouthpiece?

Honestly, I consider that a win. A huge reason I left the catholic faith wasn't because of the religion itself, but because of the people who claimed to follow Jesus but in practice did nothing like Jesus.

yout are not wrong given survey data

Pope Francis is completely right.

I'd say he's left

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Religion is the biggest scourge against humans. Controlling behavior, brainwashing the young and stolen untold trillions of $$. Fuck religion. They all need to be labeled as cults and treated as harshly.

Religion, at its core, is basically rules that state "don't be a dick." Unfortunately, all of the dicks didn't get the message.

It's not "don't be a dick'.

It's "do as we want you to do"

Plenty of the rules are "be a dick, like this:"

Plenty of the rules are "don't do this objectively harmless thing"

Plenty of the rulez are "do this ridiculously pointless thing"

Yes, modern religion has many rules made by the dicks once they took over. Before the dicks rules were things like don't steal shit, don't fuck your neighbor's wife, don't murder people, don't lie about shit, etc. The dicks were so bad that some other guy had to come along and say "seriously guys, stop being dicks". But the dicks didn't like that so they killed him.

Phallus 6:9 - And lo' the Lord said unto Clitoris, "Be thou not a dick by thine actions, nor by thy words, nor by thy thoughts."

Amen!

Plenty of the rules are "don't do this objectively harmless thing"

Plenty of the rulez are "do this ridiculously pointless thing"

Most declarations of what religions do and don't don't do miss Discordianism pretty hard, but you got us on those.

Exhibits: A) Don't eat hotdog buns. B) Go off alone on a Friday and eat a hotdog with a bun.

Good looking out for us religious minorities.

Ish.

Many religions are more "don't be a dick to your fellow brothers in faith, but feel free to be a dick to others". In-group out-group dynamics were historically quite important.

You know - "don't murder", but at the same time Deuteronomy says

10 When you march up to attack a city, make its people an offer of peace. 11 If they accept and open their gates, all the people in it shall be subject to forced labor and shall work for you. 12 If they refuse to make peace and they engage you in battle, lay siege to that city. 13 When the Lord your God delivers it into your hand, put to the sword all the men in it. 14 As for the women, the children, the livestock and everything else in the city, you may take these as plunder for yourselves.

Also

(19) “You are not to lend at interest to your brother, no matter whether the loan is of money, food or anything else that can earn interest. 21 (20) To an outsider you may lend at interest, but to your brother you are not to lend at interest, so that Adonai your God will prosper you in everything you set out to do in the land you are entering in order to take possession of it.

And yet the golden rule usually doesn't get written down until multiple generations after the religion is formed. Took almost a century for Christianity to bother.

The problem is "don't be a dick" meant different things in different points in time. Now, enough time has elapsed that there are a huge amount of different iterations of "don't be a dick" rules and people just pick and choose which rules suits them.

When the rules are laws, lawyers argue in front of judges and define the grey areas. They change the grey areas from time to time. We as a society have agreed to have a single interpretation of those rules.

In religion, when people don't agree on the rules or how they should be interpreted, they can break apart and form their own religion. There is no governing body with the power to enforce the single interpretation.

Thus, people who missed the dont be a dick memo just find each other and pretend their interpretation of the thousands of years old text is more valid than the don't be a dick crowd.

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I would settle for taxing them.

I think a better option would be stripping the tax exempt status from the ones that politik from the pulpit. Actually enforce the law we have now instead of being afraid of looking like we're persecuting them. Hell, they all have that complex already anyway.

Taxing them all would just open the floodgates.

It's very inline with the church's teaching to pay taxes.

Mark 12:17 Then Jesus said to them, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and give to God the things that are God's.” The men were amazed at what Jesus said.

There is no religious conflict at all with taxing churches.

There is no religious conflict at all with taxing churches.

You gave one example for one religion. I don't necessarily think taxing churches is a bad idea, but I don't think that's a great argument for it.

This is in a thread about a sect of Christianity. I am not aware of another religion that uses the word church. The dictionary definition is christian house of worship. Jewish Synagogue. Islamic Mosque. Hindu Temple. Norse Hof. Greek and Roman temples.

Talking about taxing churches is about a tax on Christian houses of worship. There is no Christian religious rule against it, which means that it would be a stretch for anyone to claim that the government is violating the first amendment.

I assumed you meant churches as all places of worship. If you meant you want to only tax Christians, then I completely disagree with you.

Taxing them all would just open the floodgates.

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

These assholes should deal with a real flood for once.

I dont think the churches that just sit and read a book are really deserving of a "flood". I also wouldn't call taxes a flood though, so I'm not opposed to that.

Not good enough. They need to strip that status even from the ones that don't.

Would definitely be a step in the right direction. I'd even be ok with exceptions for the tiny churches in small towns.

I agree but only because they tend to have budgets so small that they aren't worth taxing.

At the risk of interrupting the circlejerk here, most churches have tiny budgets that aren’t worth taxing, and run by clergy with very little pay. The other side of that is the established ones sit on land in the center of towns that has been in their hands for decades or centuries: they may not be able to afford the property taxes.

On the other hand, if you were thinking of modern televangelist millionaires, by all means tax their income. I don’t know where to draw the line and it’s probably good to be conservative about it, but some of these people really seem to have crossed it already

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"Cult" is just something the big congregation calls the small congregation.

There's a whole list of 8 points over what constitute a cult.

I don't remember the whole thing, but it was something like : Cults don't let you leave. If you do leave, your family and friends who are still in the cult will not speak to you. Cults control you in details. They make sure you are tired at the end of the day, too tired to think for yourself. Cults make you dependent financially. Once you are that deep in, leaving means starting over economically.

There's more, but it is different from how most people experience mainstream religions (I mean there are pockets here and there that are very cultish, but really the religion as a whole is a different beast that just works differently than an actual cult).

Tell me more about how you've never been in a church in the south.

I've been to multiple churches in the south, like everywhere some are better some are worse.

"Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"

We're doing pretty good on the king front, lets work on the priests a bit

IDK, if we're comparing scourges against humanity I'd say "the rich" in general are worse, be they kings, CEOs, religious icons, politicians, or whatever. Their pursuit of money and the power to keep that money corrupts everything. They ruin everything from companies to countries and even religions (makes them even worse).

Really though, the most evil thing is cancer. It kills indiscriminately and tortures its victims the whole way. Even if you win, you never get the peace of knowing it's truly gone. True evil.

Really though, the most evil thing is cancer

Another reason why, if God exists at all, they're not worth a penny of my income or a moment of my time.

Yuh if we're gonna go that deep, the rock are responsible for the deep corruption running thru society, across all society's ills around the world. I agree that american religion's descent into facism-promotion is a symptom of that rather than a driving force.

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I like the similar sentiment from a while back:

The messengers and the prophets will come to you and give you what belongs to you. You, in turn, give them what you have, and say to yourselves, 'When will they come and take what belongs to them?'

Jesus (but in a text buried in a jar for centuries after becoming punishable by death for just possessing it)

Agreed.

I'll gain an iota of respect for Frankie and Catholics when they unilaterally decide to stop donating money to this church until they purge all of the child rapists and reform their teachings on confessions so child rapists are no longer protected.

You think the Pope donates money to the church?

Religion can fuel some truly abhorrent things, but at the same time I know people who have used religion and faith to pull themselves out of a really bad spot in life.

There can be a middle ground between admonishing all religious practices and dogmatic bible thumpers, and that starts with religion being a understood as a personal choice and how people interpret the religion being a reflection on their self and not the every religious person ever.

No. Religion is a scam. Lies to all it's members. Steals from anyone that tithes or donates anything, including their time.

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first Jesus, now the pope is woke? At what point do I start considering that maybe I'm actually the asshole here?

I have found this to be true. The current pope is doing a lot of work to bring Catholicism into the modern age. Starting with acknowledging and addressing in material ways the history of abuse.

There is going to be , or should be , a full on schism in the US church. The parishioners I practice with are more for the Republican Party than for the pope. They basically are waiting for him to die and ignoring doctrine that does not match ‘how it used to be’ Ya know with all of the sexual abuse and bigotry.

There is going to be , or should be , a full on schism in the US church. The parishioners I practice with are more for the Republican Party than for the pope. They basically are waiting for him to die and ignoring doctrine that does not match ‘how it used to be’ Ya know with all of the sexual abuse and bigotry.

How many schisms would that make now? There was the Protestant schism, the Anglican one, Eastern Orthodox one (I think?), and uhh...I'm sure there may be more but at any rate, I guess they certainly are due for another given it's been awhile.

No Council of Nicaea fans?

Constantine: Ok guys, nobody leaves the room until we sort out this Holy Trinity thing you're all killing each other over.

I still have no clue what's up with the holy trinity tbh 🤨

I chalk it up to, "well, glad i'm not christian" and leave it at that as much as I can.

Well neither did Constantine. But people were killing each other over it, so... Council of Nicaea. From what I understand he didn't really say anything in the Council, just sat there and let all the priests argue it out.

I left catholocism shortly after getting my CS degree, but I think it works roughly like this:

class Trinity {
 private:
  God g;
 public:
  God&amp; father = g;
  God&amp; son = g;
  God&amp; holy_spirit = g;
};

Edit: stupid Lemmy can't render ampersands correctly: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/3774

Basically the holy trinity is the idea that Jesus,God and the Holy Spirit are all aspects of the same being. They are not independent of each other.

In Lovecraftian terms the full extent of God is an eldritch being is so incomprehensible that it would break mortals if he appears directly to them. Jesus and the Holy spirit are two ways that god can interact with mortals without them, or the universe, breaking. They are not lesser separate gods .

Think of it how like the US gov is made up of the executive, judicial, and legislative branches but they're all part of the government.

you can just smell the divinity

The Anglican schism is generally considered to be part of the protestant schism.

Ngl I wasn't sure, it just pops out to me as its own thing, so thanks on the clarification!

That schism happened with Vatican II. After that point, it seems like Popes have regularly been political instead of doing what they knew was right, because they seem to think slight improvement by the congregation is better than alienating the conservative membership. I think the growth Sedevacantism terrifies them more than anything. The group is clearly heretical by every Catholic doctrine, but so popular you will not see any formal declaration that they are in a state of excommunication.

The thing is, we non-Catholics should be rooting the religion on to shed that craziness. Whether you like religion or not, Catholicism is not going anywhere and a progressive Catholic Church is better than a Regressive Catholic Church.

The pope ain't perfect. But goddamn do I love him stripping corrupt officials of their position, being much more chill towards my queer brothers and sisters worldwide, and telling the US arm to remove the giant sticks from their ass over abortion and divorce.

I hope he lives till 130 and keeps being a stabilizing force for good. It's a rarity to see religious officials who are not only reasonable, but actively trying to make the world a slightly better place.

You're just buying into and regurgitating his PR. The Pope talks and acts in opposition to his bullshit platitudes. It's business as usual against the lgbt community in every Catholic Church across most of the world, including the Vatican. He himself was a known homophobe long before he was pope. He continues to ignore and refuses to meet with the victims of priest sexual abuse. He is a bullshiter and I can't believe anyone on the left buys into any of it

Have you ever been to a Catholic Church?

Yes, the vast majority stick to their own politics and beliefs, regardless of what the Pope says. Go to South America and visit a church, see how lgbt acceptance works out down there.

Thankfully I have no reason to ever go near a Catholic Church again.

I don't think a octogenarian virgin who believes in imaginary friends is the authority I'd nominate to lecture me on abortion and divorce.

He said allowing people to transition was as dangerous as nuclear weapons.

Yeah, wow, such love and support.

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New Pope diss track just dropped.

Hey babe, wake up

This is the fruits of the GOP strategy that's been going on for decades to strengthen their support through Christian believers. The Pope is just recognizing the impact of that from the religious side, whereas Barry Goldwater warned of it's impact from the political side.

Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.

It certainly is a terrible damn problem, and we're knee deep in the shit right now.

Separation of Church and State: Good for the Church, Good for the State.

Being called "backwards" by the head of the catholic church is quite something

Pot meet kettle

Ironic.... he could see the problems in others..... But not himself.

Broken clock right twice a day, etc.

American conservatives really hate that this pope prioritizes Jesus-y stuff like love, forgiveness, and taking care of your fellow humans.

I have a bunch of Catholic family members that are much more into being angry, fighting to shove dogma down everyone’s throat, and not helping anyone that doesn’t sit in the pew next to them.

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Pretty sure it was a Roman Catholic priest that burned all the Mayan texts. The Roman Catholic Church is the largest destroyer and oppressor that ever existed.

Pope Francis has blasted the “backwardness” of some conservatives

Media needs to find another word for speaking up in opposition to something.

Slammed. The pope lept from the turnbuckle, robes aflurry, and slammed the backwardness.

Oh mah gawd King, the the pope has a steel chair! A steel chair!

Ba GAWD, that's the Pope's music!

Commenter SLAMS media over use of word “blasted”.

Pope is 100% correct on this one. But on terrorist state ruzzia, he misses the mark by a mile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qirI4eSTNag

It's organized crime and mob taking over America. And they are already in...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Vatican_Council

and that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.

Isn't god supposed to be unchanging according to their book?

Atheist here. But I'll put a Christian hat on for a sec.

Humans are fallable. God isn't. Human interpretation of God's will is fallible. Therefore the church must adapt as humans become better at diving God's will.

Hat off.

I don't think that's a contradiction. Now I'm going to stand in my garage for an hour and sing, hoping it'll make me a good car.

I never understood this argument. If God is all powerful how come he leaves his messages to interpretation. Shouldn't we all just be born knowing the exact wording and understanding? Also why does he need people to write his books and teach his lessons when again he supposedly is all powerful and could make it so we were born with this knowledge instead of leaving it to idiots who can't "comprehend God's great plan".

It's a way to select the good ones for his next experiment.

Ever have a dog? You really love the dog and the dog is smart for a dog, but no matter how hard you train them they won't really understand you. You can get them to follow a few rules , but after a certain point you can't really train them much more.

People can't even handle the few very basic messages that were already laid out.

Except if God is truly omnipotent they can dumb it down to a point we can understand it or iunno increase our mental capacities. We aren't omnipotent so of course we can't explain every concept to a dog, but god could.

Ssssh. It's just a way to control Pharaoh's slaves.

Yeah it seems ridiculous now that I've deconverted and can finally look at this critically from the outside. It would be like raising a kid by leaving them a letter. If the god existed surely they would have the bright idea to drop some updated material every few decades and maybe make the occasional clarifying announcement to humanity.

Having a collection of religious texts, physically recorded by human hands, that provide information about the religion is a feature consistent with any religion that has a human-fabricated deity. Coincidentally, it is also a feature of every major religion. 🤔

If the god existed surely they would have the bright idea to drop some updated material every few decades and maybe make the occasional clarifying announcement to humanity.

Oh, but God does and coincidentally God's will always coincides with what the person proclaiming to relay God's will wants to be true .

If the god existed surely they would have the bright idea to drop some updated material every few decades

this was part of what Jesus was supposed to do, actually.

... and Mohammed... and Joseph Smith...

Depending on which items of Abrahamic scripture you consider canon.

Atheist here, putting in a Christian hat. If you were omnipotent and creating a game, would you make it easy or hard?

If I was omnipotent I could make the game specifically challenging in it's own ways for every single individual on a changing whim, while also knowing their full skillset and potential plus what they want out of the game. If they want it casual, competitive, for fun, screwing around, etc. If they want zombies, new IPs, shooters, MMO, what ever. And since I was omnipotent I could weave them in such a way they all work together for every single player. And the players would know the rules of their version because as soon as they're born they know everything they need to know about the rules of their game.

I'd also have a working anti cheat for once and GMs to enforce said rules to a certain extent (small dig at the industry here :P)

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Doctrinally god can remain infallible while altering his message to be what humans of a given time and place are ready to hear and act upon. Are your parents hypocrites for letting you drive a car at 16 but not at 4?

I knew a guy who thought like this, (Rest in peace, Robotech_Master, I miss you everyday)

He was a Christian who had a rather unorthodox way of interpreting the bible.

His take was that God is real, souls are real, and there is indeed a life after this one.

However he didn't believe in anything supernatural.

He believed God was simply a being beyond human comprehension who didn't have a good way of explaining the universe to a simple primitive species like man. So he dumbed it down with supersitions and myths in order to keep man heading in the right direction.

For example

God couldn't get an ancient people to understand shellfish kills you if you cook it wrong, so he just made up a rule that said "You will be killed by my divine wraith if you eat this! So you better not!"

And then when Jesus came along and humans knew how to cook shellfish properly he dropped a line about how "the old law doesn't apply anymore"

He believes Heaven and Hell, the Resurrection of Christ, and Souls were all legit... and have a rational explanation, man is just too inexperienced to understand the specifics beyond some colorful scripture and a few divinely inspired paintings right now.

For his sake I hope he was right, coming up on the anniversary of his tragic hit and run...

Doctrinally...

Yes, that's my point with "diving God's will".

I'm not sure what you mean by the car-hypocrite bit though.

That is a solid response. Thank you.

Good car? What the fuck are you talking about?

It's a reference to a quote, the providence of which I know not:

Going to church does not make you a good Christian any more than standing in my garage makes me a good car.

Jesus warned of being like the hypocrites when your relationship to God should be personal (and private).

Ah thanks

All good!

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That's actually more of a doctrine that is made up by the organization and less something explicitly stated in the book. There probably are some psalms or other references that use the word (translated as) "unchanging", but in context, the original audience would probably not have interpreted it in the same way. Think God's love and power will never fail, not God will literally never experience anything or change. In the 10 commandments story, Moses has a conversation with god and changes his mind.

Lots of things like this.

The Levitical Law condemning Homosexuality was originally one condemning Pedophilia, but King James changed it in his translation in order to throw off suspicions that he was gay, which he totally was.

It's actually somewhat more complicated than that, and relates to the evolution of English words. The word "fornication" I believe was in a state of evolution when KJV was written, originally having a meaning more in-line with "married people who visit prostitutes" (a major issue of the day). It quickly evolved to include all premarital and homosexual relations. I'm not sure how cleanly the timing is, but King James himself had male lovers.

I am of the belief that KJV was not anti-gay as written. Language just caught up to it. It wasn't a big stretch, as homophobia was a common unofficial position pretty much unbroken between 100AD and 1500AD or so.

What? Definitely not.

At least catholic christianity emphasizes how Jesus brought change to the jewish traditions on how to live "close to god". Change is a thing in the catholic church, which is exactly why people have tried to make a lot of things they liked into unchanging doctrines over the centuries.

Not sure about the details but God being unchanging shouldnt coflict with humans changing.

Ever heard of the new testament?

Not really. If you read it Jesus specifically says that he came to amend the word of god. That's how we got bacon cheeseburgers and cotton-poly blend shirts back. Shame he didn't say anything about racism or homophobia but what are you gonna do?

The concepts of racism was quite different then as to now and was addressed. Basically the story of the 'Good Samaritan" needed to add the 'good' because Samaritans were discriminated against and though of as poorly as racists do today.

Homophobia is basically covered in a bunch of places where in general you are supposed to love and treat people well. Jesus gave MANY examples of directly treating people who were not in good social, or religious, graces with kindness,openness and compassion. Basically the worse someone is the more you have to try and show love. I'm not sure at all how basically the complete opposite is the practice. There is some epic level mental gymnastics to get there.

Now slavery, umm... yeah. God was like , here are some rules on how to treat your slaves. You know because that is a thing and should keep being one. I'm glad this one is opposite in practice.

God's immaculate, ineffable plan, you say?!

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I mean he's right, but maybe he wants to add his institution to that list as well.

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Fuckin hell America, you annoyed the fuckin Pope?

That's usually reserved for genocidal maniacs 😂

…or for satirical newspapers.

I mean the church caused a lot of this.

In the same way fish crawling out of water caused all of this, I guess

Religion in general is pretty backwards as well.

Those are the same people who called Jesus weak so I think it's a bit late for the pope to weigh in

Didn’t this guy pay a personal visit to the christofascist who refused to grant a gay marriage license September 2015? Guy wore a similar hat anyway.

Has he met the Catholic Church?

Inquisitions? Witch burning? Who does he think did extremism biggest and best?

Sure, now they mostly just coverup for paedophiles and rampant baby murder at orphanages, but they were the OG extremists, let’s not kid ourselves.

He's telling people to have this same level of introspection. It's really not complex or hypocritical.

This Pope has also tried a number of serious reforms within the Catholic Church so trying to paint him as hypocritical is pretty tough

https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/pope-francis-new-vatican-doctrinal-chief-signals-enormous-change-catholic

My conservative Catholic family thinks the current Pope is a plant by the liberals, so he must be doing something right in my book.

The pope: "maintaining rigid and unchanging ideology is bad and room for change and growth must be allowed"

You: "um excuse me but hundreds of years ago the church killed people"

The church sucks ass but this is the absolute worst take regarding this specific post.

Not hundreds of years ago. Maybe my sarcasm didn’t come across through text, but their atrocities are still being uncovered from only a couple of decades ago, and they’re still committing atrocities on a slightly smaller scale today (though I’m sure their victims – still alive today – would argue they’re not lesser).

The Catholic Church doesn’t have a leg to stand on here, and it’s gross that they’re pretending they do.

e: didn’t close my brackets

Did you... even read the text outside of the title?

They were also a huge player in the residential "schools" of North America, which was one of the major ways the Indigenous genocide was conducted.

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Note that he said this in a private conversation, not an official statement.

He will backtrack on this in less than a week, he always does this little dance.

Oh that's a shame. Francis has been a bit of a punk rock pope so far.

In relation to the ultra conservative Catholic church that is.

Replacing faith with ideology - so doing things because you think they are right is worse than doing them because god tells you to?

In most Christian religions if you don't explicitly say Jesus died for your sins centuries before you were born, literally nothing else matters.

You can follow every rule because you personally agree with it. But if you don't submit to Jesus (and by extension your church's chain of command) then you're going to hell.

So if you're just doing what's right by your personal morals, it doesn't "count" even if it agrees with church teachings.

Obedience is more important than anything else.

And by the same token, you can torture, kill, and eat people and still go to heaven if you accept Jesus before you die. Jeffrey Dahmer was baptised in prison and apparently that made everything all right.

It’s a bonkers belief system if you think about it. It definitely doesn’t encourage being a good person like it claims to.

From a believer POV obviously

The whole point of organizing religion is telling people "you are ~~so dumb~~ misguided by the Devil so our scholars gonna tell you how to behave"

That's fine if you give up the sanctimony of saying that God is on your side. Otherwise, you're dishonest.

I have a hard time understanding how anyone could have genuinely misinterpreted this.

Wake me up when Catholics aren't forced-birth advocates that will vote in any fascist that aligns with their single issue.

Change over time? What, we getting new words from God? Gonna add a newer testament?

New testament 2, electric Boogaloo!

You talk like you don't know about New Testament: America

I thought that was the Book of Mormon. Maybe the Pope is a Mormon.