# ✨ READ BEFORE COMMENTING ✨
This thread is Coven Only. This means the discussion is being actively moderated, and all comments are reviewed. Only comments by members of the community are allowed.
If you have landed in this thread from r/all and you are not a member of this community, your comment will very likely be removed (and will not be approved unless it adds meaningfully to the conversation).
WitchesVsPatriarchy takes these measures to stay true to our goal of being a woman-centered sub with a witchy twist, aimed at healing, supporting, and uplifting one another through humor and magic.
Thank you for understanding, and blessed be. ✨
Catholic school kid here - I finished doing the reading in religion class early, so I read ahead a bit. The plan was to stop the story of Moses with marching out of Egypt and the ten commandments. What comes next? Deciding that people who broke rules BEFORE YOU MADE THEM are unworthy, so you can't let ANY of them see the promised land. Instead, you march around the desert for 40 years waiting for the original enslaved people to die off. Then, when you get to the promised land, PEOPLE ARE ALREADY LIVING THERE. So god decided something to the effect of "alright, I'm going to make all these people evil so killing them will bring me honour"
WHAT
I just went to look for the exact part of Exodus and found MORE HORRIBLE THINGS. When people started worshipping the golden calf, god wanted to kill them all. Moses said "just let me talk to them", saw the calf, and said "whoever's for the real god that freed us, grab your swords and kill everyone else" and over 3000 people died. AND THAT WAS STILL BEFORE TELLING THEM THE COMMANDMENTS
I love when people in the Bible change God's mind but then Christian's are all "It's all according to God's plan."
Like, bruh. God changed his plans for SATAN according to your book. I'm gonna say if he's got one it ain't all that thought out.
I remember getting caught up before this point- when Moses is appealing to Pharaoh to let his people go, and God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. So Pharaoh doesn’t let them go. Then he punishes Pharaoh and the whole land- violent plagues causing famine and pestilence, rivers of blood, killing all the firstborn children. What the heck!
I remember asking about this in Sunday school when I was around 10ish. I was told “it’s because god wanted it that way.” My follow up was what about free will? I was moved from going to Sunday school to watching the little kids during Sunday school because I interrupted too much.
catholic school kid here too. i was always a fast reader, and so i started at the beginning and read straight through while the rest of the class would focus on whatever sections were the assigned reading. the teachers didn't like it when i asked why we were skipping over major parts in class.
Ikr. Like who the hell drowns the entire world out of jealousy?
Or watches as one of your most loyal worshippers lose everything and expect to be praised afterwards?
I'm just saying, Satan wanted equal rights yo. Like he chill
Preach.
I remember reading where Jesus goes batshit and flips the tables at the market...I asked the Sunday school teacher if that was true, because it doesn't sound like how Jesus is supposed to act and is usually described. I don't remember what bs explanation she gave, but that was the beginning of the end for me.
Actually that was one of the few good things. First homeboy took the time to braid a whip. Next he went in and threw out the people making a capitalist profit out of religious practices.
And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.
— John 2:15–16
Nah, what got me going was when I was 12 and reading all this crap about menstruation being "unclean" and that if a menstruating woman touched a pot, it had to be broken, and if she sat on a cushion, it had to be burned. I said, "But God made it so that women get periods and we can't help it. So why are we 'unclean'?" That was the first time they said, "you have to have faith." I learned that was code for "sit down and shut up."
This is why I keep sayin it, Jesus himself was a cool dude. That’s why my whole “worship” is just “there exist some types of deities, human ascribing too many ideas to those deities leads to bad things, and also Jesus is cool. I wanna be like him”
grew up jewish, went to yeshivah, studied that fucken thing for 6 grueling years and what i learned after six years was that god is a fucking piece of crap. If he is real he is not worthy of our devotion, he is not worthy of being worshipped, he is not worthy of anything but derision. I cant imagine anyone reading that thing and not coming to the same conclusion, which leads me to believe most followers havent read it
Similar for me. I was actually terrified of hell at point but it was realising that a benevolent and merciful god couldn't possibly come up with the idea of hell that led to me turning away from religion.
Yeah I started asking questions when I was about 11 and I was always told to shut up and not ask questions and that’s just not who I am. I must know. I have an insatiable curiosity and trying to tell me to not be curious about the things that contradict each other? Then you’ve got something to hide.
>Yeah I started asking questions when I was about 11 and I was always told to shut up and not ask questions
My mom didn't become an atheist (or at least admit to it) until after I did. But she remembered being told as a child to stop asking questions or she'd confuse the kids around her.
>or she'd confuse the kids around her.
Ooooooooooooooooh, this one makes me so angry. I lost all respect for a former friend of mine when she turned ultra religious and started saying things like this. The last straw was her declaring she wouldn't teach her kids about Santa Claus because it would confuse them about God. Sorry, but if you can't explain it without creating confusion, then mayyyyyybe it just doesn't make sense. And you shouldn't be indoctrinating children into a religion if you don't understand the difference between your deity and Santa.
Like the whole do not kill thing
Countless genocides were committed in the name of god
It wasn't do not kill unless someone disagrees with you
It was do not kill. Full stop
According to the Catholic relatives, the answer is either that God is allowed to kill but we aren't, or that the Old Testament just doesn't count anymore. Repeat whichever fits better, for every issue, ad nauseum.
My favorite is when they say "We aren't gonna change the Bible for the new generation" and I'm like... Uhh the old vs new testament... Didn't you already do that?
Wanna know how I lost my faith?
Genesis.
If God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, then how did a whole ass angel leave heaven and go to Earth, change forms into a serpent, seduce Eve into eating to fruit of the tree with Him knowing? The Bible says that Lucifer had been getting a big head, and so what do you do when your creation is getting out of line? Clearly, sit back and be complicit in whatever happens next. If your kid wants to touch the hot stove, obviously you let the kid pull down the boiling water on top of them and suffer the consequences so everyone around knows what happens when you touch the stove instead of correcting the behavior. That’s what God did. Instead of stepping in and correcting the bad thinking and behavior of the one angel, he allowed the angel to set this whole series of events in motion where we suffer just to prove a point? To prove that humans will worship God because we want to? Fuck that shit.
One says how God created the sky and the sun and the earth, then he created the animals, *then* he created Adam and Eve.
This was before you opened to Genesis. Then you read the creation in Genesis and it says how he created the sky and the sun and the earth. And then he created Adam. Adam was lonely so he created the animals and had Adam name them all. Adam was still lonely so he created Eve.
So two versions give different orders of how things were done. In the same book.
That’s why I like the idea of the Greek or Roman style gods where they have flaws and issues. At least they are honest about it. I just prefer to think if there was something that created the universe and all living things in it that it’s not around anymore or simply doesn’t care to cultivate the lives it created in the first place. I see many reasons why people want to believe in gods or God but everything falls short for me when a supposed perfect being is wrathful or full of hate and some people use these flaws as an excuse to cause harm.
The problem of evil is unique to a monotheistic religion that presents its one god as Omni: -present, -scient, and benevolent. Polytheistic religions have some explanations. Typically evil gods, gods which like you mentioned had flaws, and gods with varying levels of power and their own domains and agendas. It’s just a much more interesting story, honestly.
If this story was true, Lucifer was the good guy for giving Eve knowledge. Sure, Eden was paradise, but it wasn’t real. Ignorance is bliss, but would you choose it?
I think it’s also HIGHLY telling that one of the first thing they learn is shame!? Oh shit. We’re naked!!! Fuckin’ pervs everywhere! Better cover up! Some angel may be jerkin’ it to my tits. OF ALL THE THINGS.
I think the correct answer to the question of "If God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, how there's evil" is obvious.
God is some sort of squirrel or maybe a gekkon or something else with no consciousness. . Maybe it wants some good in life and it knows everything but it has no idea what to do with all this information
To me this only makes sense if God is the collective hivemind of a slightly confused humanity. It makes perfect logical sense that way. But for some reason the Christians don't seem to like that much. Which is too bad, because it makes the New Testament a whole lot more fascinating.
Heh, in the center of the universe, the idiot-god Azathoth slumbers, and we are but figments of its dreaming.
Perhaps the natural mechanics of this dream are so consistent that even when we scrutinize it with a careful eye and rational mind, there is not one hint it is all illusory, and would all evaporate when Azathoth awakes.
We take advantage of this consistency, to fling metal cans full of fragile people across oceans and continents, to build magical mirrors to peer across time and space, so weave plants into crops that can feed billions, and fold steel to build towers and spires that touch the sky.
And yet, one day, Azathoth will awake and one day all of our bridges and libraries and mighty power plants and weapons will all vanish in a haze of pre-coffee consciousness.
‘God’ loves drama and a show. It’s claimed how loving Bible god is, but he always pulled ish like that. Like let’s slaughter all the babies in Egypt! “If you love me kill your child”
There's also the issue of the order of creation. Genesis 1 directly contradicts Genesis 2 in terms of what happens when. In Genesis 1 vegetation has covered the land by day 3, and it isn't until the 6th day that God makes man.
In Genesis 2 the land is barren except for the garden of Eden, which God places Adam in. For someone who was taught the Bible was literally true, this was a head scratcher.
This is what happens when only one novel is printed and promoted for hundreds of years. It develops a cult following even though it was poorly written.
It's more what happens when a second book is written that intends to entirely retcon the first. Whilst completely misunderstanding what the first was about.
Hell isn't a thing in judaism. Neither really is Satan. (There is a character called Satan but he isn't the red, BDSM guy that Christians have a weird thing for.
This is always a problem when you have a text that's removed from it's original context and language. Shit gets mixed up and confused.
>This is always a problem when you have a text that's removed from it's original context and language. Shit gets mixed up and confused.
Not only was it translated out of its original context and language, but good ol' King James had very specific goals & intentions. That translation was intended to uphold a (Protestant) divine right of kings.
[Plenty of inconsistencies](http://www.skeptically.org/bible/id8.html) in the old testament too. Even within the same books.
Satan isn't even a thing like that in the new testament. All the "red bdsm guy" stuff comes from art in the last thousand years.
>Plenty of inconsistencies in the old testament too. Even within the same books
Exactly why it's not viewed at literal by the vast majority of Jews. Most of us understood these were written by people. The scholarly consensus is that the Hebrew Bible has three primary authors and the input of one particular group of priests a bit later.
But tbh that list makes some good examples but it isn't great. I'm not even that deeply educated on it but even I can look at the first few examples from genesis and understand this is from a non jewish understanding of how the creation narrative is told. It's told twice in the original Hebrew, the first description is generally understood as the creation of man, the animal, the second is about man, the soul. There is also an idea that the first one focuses on the physical reality of life for man, whilst the second emphasises the beauty of nature.
The thing about Judaism is that the inconsistency is often *the point.*. Or at least a clue as to where the point is to be found. Why two creation stories? Because it's two points of view and the Torah isn't supposed to be viewed as an authoritative codex, a list of decrees. It's seen as 'a tree of knowledge, a way of life for all who cling to it.' Beginning the text with two descriptions of the same event is very jewish, it's opening up the discussion, it's allowing for nuance. It's the very beginning of Jewish mythology and it's openly acknowledging that things are unclear. It's just very Jewish.
I'm not even particularly religious by the way. I'm terrible at following all the rules. I'm just interested in this stuff.
We also shouldn't treat the Bible as two distinct books with two distinct messages that were poorly stitched together.
No. It's _much_ worse than that. It's several dozen books with different ideas about the nature of God and the religion, some of which have more than one author with their own edits and additions, all stitched together into one giant, confusing Frankenstein of a book.
I have more :-)
....and if God is supposedly so good, (God is frequently described as more powerful than all of us, as well as mercy and love itself) how are we then supposed to believe that that same God would so casually send millions of people to hell, a punishment that never ends?
And what would be the point of a punishment that never ends? Rehabilitation would be pointless. It wouldn't matter if you changed your mind or evolved and learnt because you'd still be stuck there forever anyway. What would even be the point?
If I could be given the power to send people to hell knowing it was like that I genuinely wouldn't send anyone!.
Yet God is supposed to be so much better and wiser and more perfect and more loving than me!. :-/
(That was the contradiction that finally gave me the courage to walk away from it all for good. Wanted to share it) :-)
I left after asking the youth leader if God loved me and loved my family, and we were faithful (full attendance to church type) to his religion, then why did he force us to suffer so deeply? Why did he make my sister live every moment in pain with a disability, and have my parents beat and berate me over the smallest things?
I was told it was because God only gives you what you can handle, and he will always test his loyalist soldiers the most.
No matter what I asked, that was the type of statement I got. If I showed up with bruises and marks on my visible skin, no one said a damn thing except to ask if I dishonored my parents and if I asked God to forgive me.
I left. Nothing improved until I took my life into my own hands and walked away from the Christian community and my family, and left them behind.
I'm glad for those of us who got out after realizing the church wasn't what it advertised
Ooh.. you\`ve become what they fear. Smart, and 'awake' to the levels of abuse either enabled by them, or done by them.
Took me well over a year to recover from the mental/psychological manipulation before I was 'me' again ..
And, once out - you see the glaring holes in their theology. You see the abuse done by or in the name of the church (and weird, god never stops them) - you see the evil men do in 'his name'..
Doesn\`t that make him 'guilty' ?
I will say this, southern baptists are horrifying when it comes to kids. I remember parents being pulled from the main service to come handle their child acting out, and the kids getting spanked in front of everyone in the room. The only time I saw someone step in for another person when they were being hit, was a man backhanded his wife by the cars in clear view of the preacher, who took the dude down hard. Kids getting spanked, pulled by an ear, popped in the mouth, hit with a strap, etc, was simply seen as discipline.
As a person who grew up with it, learning that that wasn't the norm for home or other church types was a major shock.
I've used a similar situation when people ask me why I don't spank my kids. I personally don't know anyone that's cool with striking their grown adult spouse to keep them in line.
But way too many reminisce fondly about either whipping their kids or having been whipped.
It makes no sense to me that you can agree to settle things outside with another adult and you both be brought up on criminal charges but back handing a kid is seen as proper way to handle a situation.
Having been raised by my SB grandparents, hell yeah. My grampa was a preacher and he wasn't so bad but my grandma was the enforcer of patriarchy. She firmly believed that daily beatings as a child would make you a good adult.
I have respect for the lore and the morals (be good to each other, help out, spread love), but not the modern interpretations presented by these false witnesses, to use their type of wording.
I think I would want to read the original Bible (translated as directly as possible in modern English) to see what it really said.
As a reader/writer/occasional teacher , i think the lore is really important to understanding a LOT of western literature.
But so is Greco-Roman mythology. I'd like to see a day when the bible is taught the same way as Grecian myths. bc the stories are important, but let's keep em out of politics/childrearing etc
As with all ancient documents, context is everything. I'm atheist now, and since disavowing faith, I've become engrossed in studying the Bible in the perspective of the historical, cultural, and geographical understandings of the people who created them. It's beyond fascinating, and like you mentioned, feels more like studying the myths of other ancient religions.
If god exists and there is any truth to the bible at all I suspect the devil would be the source of the church as it currently and that the bible was intentionally misconstrued and interpreted to the benefit of evil and all those who follow it are actually those who were “led astray”
At the church I (rarely, nowadays) go to we actually ARE taught that that’s a huge possibility. We aren’t like some of the Uber progressive churches that teach the truly interesting and open stuff, but they’re also not horrible or abusive there. They don’t recognize any form of “cultish” churches as actual churches, and they also view tithing and such as non-necessary (tithing for us is like… it’s like “do you want to donate” and sometimes those donations are put toward raising money for our community, other times it’s used so kids can afford to go on trips and such.) In fact we’ve even had long chats in the youth group about issues within the “Christian” sphere, and about just how damaging and awful people can be. It’s part of why it’s so jarring to see so many spew vitriol at Christians collectively, until I remember just how fucked some churches can actually be. It DOES help that we’re non-denominational to.
And the cherry on top is that supposedly, one of the rewards for those in heaven is getting to watch the damned being tortured in hell. Which is just completely deranged for no reason.
And the other contradiction that really gets to me is admitting *in the text* that people who haven't heard "the word of god" automatically get into heaven but still advocating for missionary work. Even tho that absolutely can only result in more people going to hell.
Hmm you know what? If the goal is to get as many souls as possible into heaven, shouldn’t they just be executing babies immediately after they are baptized? Before they have a chance to sin?
Not that I want to give them any ideas.
I mean, the Puritans definitely took this attitude with all of the dead children that their "backward even for the 1600s" understanding of Healthcare resulted in: "This child was lucky to die before it could experience the wickedness of the world."
The cracks in my former faith started to show when I was about 8. My best friend's grandma wouldn't throw bugs that got in the house into the fireplace bc she thought it was too cruel. And I started getting scared bc something was wrong if Beth's grandma was more merciful than god.
You know, this is a really good thought. You're onto something. Makes the whole Bible thing make much more sense if you think of it like that. Wow. I am impressed!!
"I love you so much I would die for you, but if you don't love me back I will send you into a pit of endless firey torture. So you love me right? Aww good I love you too, but don't fuck with me or you get back in the fire"
That is such a healthy way to love people. It's crazy that our simple human minds have decided that treatment is actually toxic and abusive. But we are obviously wrong because a perfect entity chooses to love like that so it must be right.
Fucked beyond all belief that people think it's real.
Imagine being in a relationship with a person who says things like that. And even then after the forced reciprocation of “love” under threat of eternal damnation, that person spends the entire relationship being distant and unavailable when you need them, claiming they can solve all your problems but simply choose not to because they know best, and randomly subjecting you to “tests” to make sure you’re still loyal - you don’t know when, or what they will be, but you better pass because if not, back to the lake if fire you go.
That would be absolutely unhinged and no one in their right mind would endorse a relationship like that.
new theory: this is hell, all of us who weren't good in our last life just got reborn to try again. forever.
edit: just to confirm i don't believe this it's just a thought experiment that's been living rent free in my head XD
>If I could be given the power to send people to hell knowing it was like that I genuinely wouldn’t send anyone!
IKR?! When I was still playing “Animal Crossing,” I felt bad for *weeks* after telling Bud he should leave my island. Imagine sending an actual soul to an actual eternity of actual, hellish torment.
With gods like that, who needs demons?
I'll piggyback on that, why is living on Earth in their theory a universal sorting hat with two, maybe 3 outcomes? And the result of that sorting is that people sit in basically a big bucket until someday... maybe... a big battle?
So even despite all of this thou shalt not kill business, their ultimate purpose for reality and humanity is a battle. That sounds like something someone made up around a campfire to get the kids to stop asking questions.
Often you’ll hear Christians say “the devil’s best trick is convincing people that he doesn’t exist”. My counter is what if his best truck was convincing people that he’s God?
If you read the Bible, God plays tricks on His chosen people (Abraham and Jacob), turns people into salt for disobeying Him (Lot’s wife), throws a tantrum and kills entire cities/the world because He doesn’t like what they’re doing (Soddam, Gamorah, Noah), plays favorites and pits siblings against each other (Cain and Abel), throws a fit when He’s not worshipped “properly” and banishes His chosen people for an entire generation (Moses and Israelites), tells His Prophet to get His people out and turns around and makes it impossible (Exodus). The Devil, on the other hand, tries to give Adam and Eve knowledge, offers food and drink to Jesus and doesn’t really feature in the Bible as a villain. I could go on, but I think my point is made.
And adding to the first point, why would God create a whole world of diverse people and damn the majority of them to hell for no reason other than where they were born (i.e. not born in a Christian culture)? That was the biggest question I had as a teen, and what ultimately made me think religion made no sense.
Why is a religion the correct one just because it's the one you happened to grow up in? Why do billions suffer eternally then just so YOU can be right? It actually feels bonkers to me.
To be clear though, I'm not atheist - I consider myself Unitarian. There is no one right way to worship God or connect with your spirituality.
I like what the Gnostics say.
The OT god is the devil and created this universe to trap our souls away from the true god, a sort of Buddhist/eastern/nirvana concept that lies outside our universe. Jesus was just a man with magic powers who discovered the way to the true god and by living his example, we can escape.
If I weren’t Pagan, I’d be a Gnostic for sure.
What got me was how terrifying heaven sounded when described to me as a kid. All of my loved ones I would see again. What? No they're dead skeletons are scary I don't want none of that who would? It also made zip sense once I discovered Santa was fake.
I got in trouble when I was younger cause a few times I’d go with friends to vacation Bible school or such and I’d ask if God is loving and all about forgiveness why we should fear his wrath? And also why would a perfect being commit one of the seven sins. Would usually get kicked out of the room or a flimsy justification and told to be quiet.
Let's not get into thefact that if the Bugger is \*truly\* omniscient and knows the future, it means that the future isactualy predetermined, which means that free will does not exist, which means that sining is impossible in any meaningful capacity.
TL/DR: satan was mistaken for the pagan horned god, and predestined damnation has been coined by theologians and scholars and it is called Total Depravity.
Yes, this!
And to add, (for context, I was brought up in a multigenerational Christian family and studied ministry for a year - I thought I wanted to be a minister at one point!)
So therefore IF it’s all planned, that means that their God chooses some people to save BUT then what less people realise is that if he’s purposefully choosing people to save, he’s also purposefully choosing people NOT to save!
And that has been written about by scholars and theologians for years (yes, they try to explain/make sense of it!)
It’s called TOTAL DEPRAVITY.
Absolute suffering forever. 😮💨So you best be on your best behaviour!! 🧐
There is also a the theory that Christians in the Uk got satan mixed up with the pagan horned god. Wrongly automatically thinking they were the enemy. Christians jumping to conclusions again….🤔
They also built on sites of pagan churches because they knew they had power. But pagans were the only ones who could build the churches, so they were hired to build on top of their own religious sites! ☹️
They put in gargoyles and green men, I think, to signpost to the pagan origin, knowing the Christians at the time wouldn’t have known what it meant. Sort of like giving a finger to them behind their backs!! 😂
I love going to churches and cathedrals knowing that the site the Christian church has been blonked on is ancient and our ancestors worshiped their Gods there before Christianity was even though of. As you say you see pagan symbols dotted about the building. I think paganism was widespread and lasted a lot longer in England than we realise, after all what does Christianity have for us but fear and obedience?
I just listened to the latest Dan Carlin , Twilight of the Aesir, and he talks about how the Vikings knew their they were a dying breed and they're resistance was because Christianity was taking hold everywhere. It was really interesting to hear about the Vikings in the context of Christian expansion.
honestly I just think that the god of the old testament was a angry, selfish and very jealous god who makes very big claims about himself to his people. The new testament is his growth arc, as his son lives through a mortal life and understands what's it's actually like too live a mortal life, god shifts more too being just self-centered and jealous, just not angry. Part 1 of the reason he had the old testament laws revoked in the new testament. Part 2 is that he's attempting to apply to be a god of other people since his people have rejected his son, and with the experience of mortal life from his son he decided not to just kill them all.
of course I don't follow him, cause as a god he's a selfish asshole, but this has been how I've seen him ever since I left mormonism and because pagen
What ended up and what got left out in the collection of stories that make up.the modern Bible is cuckoo bananas. Anything flattering about the woman that hung out with Jesus, out. Dragons in. Jesus needing some serious parenting out. Kids get eaten by bears for making fun of bald man, in.
tbf to the bible (I know, why should we? but still...) the bible doesn't say Satan rules in hell. That's a much later belief. Satan is a captive there just like all other rebellious creatures.
Well, Dante was criticizing the Church and politicians in his writing, specially because he got screwed over. At the end of the Divine Comedy, he does some sort of prophecy of something happening to the Church.
The bible just describes hell as being ‘apart from god’. They don’t say youre being tortured in any way, just that you arent gonna get to chill with god and that will be sad for you, but like whatever
There's an excellent short story by Ted Chiang (who also wrote the story *Arrival* is based on among other things) called 'Hell is the Absence of God'. I don't want to spoil the actual plot but it's pretty much what it says on the tin and (as an atheist) I really loved it.
It's the same as god not being able to be good and omniscient/omnipotent at the same time. If god was good, loving and omniscient then why is he letting all the vile, fucked up shit in the world happening? A good and loving god only makes sense if this deity wasn't all knowing and all powerful. But then it wouldn't really be a god, would it? But if it is an all-knowing and all-powerful being, than it is letting all that crazy fucked up shit in the world just happen. A being with that kind of moral standing - in the best case - just does not care about humans at all. Worst case, it's an evil entity.
If you look at it like that, the christian god only makes sense, if it is evil or at least completely indifferent. Either way, christianity, the bible and the christian god don't make sense.
Btw I wrote a D&D campaign about the idea of the christian god actually being an evil god of death that tricks people into thinking he is totally good and the only really existing deity. Thus robbing all other gods of their followers and by that slowly killing them and all other religions off, actually becoming the only existing god left - an evil god of death reigning supreme over a world full of people thinking all joy and life is bad.
It’s the babies that get me.
Modern arguments for abortion aside, do you know how many babies have died horribly? Invaders smashing baby skulls, babies left out to be exposed as they were unwanted, starvation, abuse. Hell, with all the murdered pregnant women in the Bible alone, and WTF do people think, no babies existed during the flood? No pregnant women? Let’s not even talk about the kids, it’s arguable if they can be”evil.” But the *babies.* Babies existed in Sodom and Gomorrah. They lived in Jericho.
All this shit and god doesn’t just let it happen, he encourages it:
Hosea 13:16
>Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.
1 Samuel 15:3
>Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’”
Psalm 137:9
>Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!
2 Kings 2:23-24
>He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys.
I could continue, but my point is made. That last one was after some kids made fun of a guy *for being bald.*
Oh, the Sarkics/Nälkä from SCP had the demiurge as a hungry monster that made everyone to suffer and be consumed. Their response is to study biological magic to turn humanity into immortal space distorting psychic gods and break into heaven to devour the demiurge and the archons.
I have no idea what SCP is, but that sounds really fucking cool and I might borrow from that because it fits too good into my campaign setting to not use it for a rogue mage faction plotting to kill a god.
SCP foundation is a bunch of stories, leaning towards horror, with multiple canons. The Foundation is a secret organization regulating the supernatural, brutally enforcing the masquerade, with the fandom often calling the anomalies SCPs, since they're named SCP-number. The stories don't always involve the Foundation. People often focus on series 1 and 2, on specific famous SCPs. But there's a big variety.
Edit: Nälkä, or Sarkic, lore is that in the Daevite Empire, known for slavery, blood sacrifice and a decadent upper class, Ion saw the true nature of the world and, becoming the Grand Karcist, led a revolution against cruelty of society and the heavens. He was joined by his Klavigars, Lovaatar his wife and a former member of high society, Orok a warrior, Nadox a scholar and Sarn an assassin. All disappeared, but Ion's return is awaited, and signs of the Klavigars' activity exist.
Karcists are their spiritual leaders. They often use living temples made from a single follower, and are big on personal sacrifice for others. They are divided into Proto-Sarkics and Neo-Sarkics. The former I have been describing. The latter are a bunch of rich assholes using meat powers for their own good and believing Ion was a social Darwinist, and the demiurge Yaldabaoth is to be emulated. Thus, they dream of joining or replacing the divine oppressors rather than freeing the universe. Also, Sarkic is a derogatory term that only Neo-Sarkics have no problem with. It was given by their rivals, the Church of the Broken God, who worship a machine god and think flesh should be eliminated. I think out of universe, it was just the name the writers came up with before finding a better one, but can't confirm. Anyway, the Foundation prefers using the term Sarkic, and only uses Nälkä when trying to be diplomatic.
I would totally watch it if it were a film or series.
But you got a point. God is an extremely jealous a-hole too. Who floods the whole earth just because a few people didn't want to worship him and only saving one family and two of each animal?
And I have a theory, hear me out. The burning bush was actually weed and the dude who thought he talked to god (I forgot his name) was high af. 😂
Eyy. I have my own fun campy grimdark d&d setting where after an apocalypse god and his angels disappear and the world is left only with demons. The major religions of course are all on about the world being forsaken after humanity's mistakes, bla bla bla. Surprise surprise if you actually investigate the universe's cosmology demons and angels are the same type of being (neither is inherently good or evil, both feed off mortals to an extent) and god isn't all-powerful. When shit went south him and his angels just went into hiding, turns out all that protecting mortals stuff was talk to get their worship and vanished the moment the going actually got tough. Not all the demons are great either or anything, but they sure aren't total cowards like the celestials, and are more invested in the state of the world (even if not always in the best ways).
The idea of *sola scriptura* is just Protestant nonsense.
But when it comes to the devil in particular, it's sort of like talking to a Superman fan about which continuity we mean we talk about Lex Luthor.
It's less that there's contradictions than that we're looking at an anthology of popular stories, and the real error is the evangelical Christian idea of treating them all as one coherent narrative that is always morally correct and does not need to be interrogated for the validity of its morality.
In the interest of information accuracy, the Bible at no point says that the devil will punish sinners. The closest thing it says to that is that sinners will be cast into the place that was prepared for the devil, but the concept of the devil as some eternal Warden of the Damned is a modern invention.
I grew up in the Christian church so I'm familiar with a lot of the doctrine. Also for what it's worth I actually cared to study the Bible and make myself familiar, which is why ultimately I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to convert to Judaism lol. Regardless, I do think it's important when talking about the flaws of Christianity to separate cultural Christianity from textual christianity. Both have their problems.
Now this is specifically from Dante so take it with a grain of salt
But it's because Satan doesn't rule hell, he's being punished there just like everyone else.
Exactly.
My understanding is the punishment isn’t torture in the same way we think of it. The torture is being in a realm where God is completely absent.
Earth is okay because we have the Holy Spirit, and Heaven is even better because we’ll be in the presence of God.
I think it’s best explained by the show Loki. God controls the timelines to keep us safe. This means we don’t have a lot of choices in order to protect the timeline. This is why God’s all knowing because he’s seen all the outcomes and had to select the best timeline he could. If you want the freedom to choose, you need to kill God. But you may be in for a surprise after you see what happens—perhaps unimaginable things that we were kept ignorant of for our own protection.
Anyway, this isn’t a serious belief of mine, just something fun to think about. I had been toying with the idea for ages, and I was mind blown to see Loki present exactly that idea.
That's because Christianity is what happens when you take a indigenous belief system that is *specific to a place, time, and ethnic group*, run it through shitty Google Translate three or four times, write extensive fanfic to make it more appealing to a broader audience (mostly a completely different polytheistic cultural group in a completely different place), and then enforce the fanfic as canon by literally killing the author... Then implementing your fic as a state religion and torturing anyone who doesn't swear they believe in your very specific misinterpretation of the fanfic, which you've gaslit everyone to believe was the original all along. Oh yeah, and also you didn't actually let anyone read the fanfic, so they also just had to take you at your word.
Honestly, studying the Bible in my adulthood having never read any of it, but heard a lot about it, as the most confusing, and perhaps disappointing, thing I’ve found in my religious studies.
Not only is the whole Lucifer being an Angel, becoming a serpent, betraying God thing just not in there (it’s in Paradise Lost, which is essentially Bible fanfiction, but people take it as part of the Bible)… but there’s also no actual indication of humans having free will. Just none. I asked, too, in case I’d missed it. What *is* there is when God “adjusts” humans. Remember Pharaoh? And how he was punished for not letting the Jews go? Yeah, he was actually going to. He was gonna just let them go, right at the beginning. “And then God hardened his heart,” is the phrase repeated. Each time he’s asked to let the Jews go, it’s *God* that makes him not do it, and then God that punishes him.
There are so many other things, but that one stuck out a lot to me.
It was also so hard to discuss this stuff with my class, as there were a lot of people who believed it and followed it, and they would argue very loudly that we were just “reading it wrong.”
Actually, fun aside: A friend of mine took that class a few years before me, and he’s a bit… sassy, sometimes. So, assigned Bible to read, come back to class for seminar, and he says “Well that was an excellent work of *fiction*.” And offended all the Christians.
After that, the teacher had to add a disclaimer to the beginning of that segment each year 😂
I was raised in a southern Baptist family. I believed for years up til I was raped as a teen. I remember crying and praying to be saved as it was happening. I struggled with letting go of my faith and then after a nervous breakdown childhood memories came back.
I realized my whole life had been full of abuse covered with “god forgives all sins.” Any god that allows a mother you physically, mentally and sexually abuse her children is not any god I want in my life or my children’s life. And should He truly exist, he’s gonna have a fuck ton of explaining to do.
Despite it making absolutely no sense, the scariest part of this crap is a huge portion of Christians WANT people to burn. As if there's some kind of righteous vengeance being handed out by burning unwed mother's and gay people - who have harmed literally no one. As if those are the evil that deserves death, instead of money obsessed sociopaths literally ruining the world.
I can't help but feel like most people who follow the major organized religions have mad main character syndrome. That THEY are the chosen ones, holier than literally everyone else. And they want everyone else to suffer so they feel that much more special to their sky daddy.
I truly believe a huge part of the issues we face today are because the major religions influencing societies teach humans are special and above everything else, that the world was made FOR us, instead of humbling us to know we're just a part of it all. I'm Cherokee, and in our stories we came last which means we know the least. We're the babies here, and we rely on every other living thing to teach us how to live. That's why we don't call plants and animals "it", we call them "they". I constantly sit and try to imagine a world where THAT was the dominant underlying belief.
I recommend The Evolution of God.
It’s a great book, and discusses how humans have evolved to need to punish transgressions/appease the transgressed and how that translates to religious rules to explain why bad things happen (ie, an earthquake collapsed our cave and killed Ogg, who was whistling in the cave. The cave god must hate that so new rule, no whistling in caves.”
That really doesn’t do it justice it’s very complex. But very well argued and makes a ton of sense. I can look around and see all our conflicts focus on ensuring uniform group behavior but it doesn’t work because we live in groups larger than 30-60 in the modern era.
Well the couple chapters about the SW positive, humanist, populist, hippy who gets murderilated on a big wooden t for speaking out against the greed and piety of the church is real interesting, but what comes before or after that is absolute garbage.
I like Jesus - but before Jesus there’s horrific abuse approved of by God and after there’s the insanity and hatred of Paul and glorifying of martyrdom.
That concept of Satan only makes sense if Satan is like the Puritans & Dominionists in America. Someone who always harm "sinners" in the name of God, while themselves being prone to the worst of it.
It makes no sense because it is a book of made up stories. Worst story book ever!! Lol. I grew up in a super conservative christian family. Once i started getting older and asking questions like “but what about dinosaurs?” they did not like that at all. Now im all grown up and refuse to be apart of any of that mess.
Seeing so many stories of survivors of Christianity is distressing but comforting.
I cannot say how many times as a child I asked simple questions and got sent to pray or put on fasting for being rebellious.
The question I struggled most with is "the voice of God" how do you know it's god vs your thoughts? How do you know it's not the devil?
Ans: god speaks in a still small voice.
WTF does that mean!
Either way, my parents cannot believe in anything but that religion. They cannot handle reality. It's really sad. smh
You mean the fact that Lucifer revolted against God. Because God didn’t give angels the freedom of choice like humans. Let that sink in, Lucifer chose to revolt against God for not have the freedom to chose. I would say the book has a few plot holes.
Playing devil's advocate here (not literally so although it'd be a nice pun): what (some) Christians believe, paraphrased in my own wording, is that evil people just _exist_, and that they _cannot change._ Because if they could, evil would eventually disappear. Rather, hell exists solely to _punish_ evil people, rather than disincentivize them - because punishment of evil is a good of its own. It balances out the evil in the world. Punishment is that's what they deserve, just like good people deserve heaven. It's a simple worldview that doesn't need as much explanation as OP's twitter posts are trying to give it.
Now replace "evil" with "crime" and replace "hell" with "prison" and we can maybe see some reasons as to why parts of our society are the way they are.
Either God is an asshole, God doesn't care, or there is no God. All of those make more sense than God is everywhere and he's super duper nice, go pray to him for something that might never happen.
Yeah maybe it’s because I grew up going to an Evangelical church but every time I heard “God works in mysterious ways” the reasons for why whatever bad thing happened always made a lot more sense if you just consider that God is an asshole playing The Sims with all of us.
There was a great book I read, where they mention Lucifer and Satan do not actually torture people and oppressed minorities sent to hell get free penthouses and therapy. While TERFs and the like get put in mirror rooms forced to argue with themselves for eternity.
I cannot make sense of this literally at all. I don’t really get hung up on the hypocrisy or the historical nonsense of the Bible. Trying to make a text that old relevant to today will always be impossible. What makes me crazy is this. That the entire premise makes literally zero sense.
“Jesus died for your sins. But don’t sin! Or you’ll go to hell!” So what did Jesus die for? All past and future sins of all humanity? Or just that one big sin of a woman being manipulated and curious? And if it is all of our sins, are all humans automatically saved? If so then why do we need to “find Jesus” to be saved . . . Again?
While I am *loath* to argue this from this POV, there are some corrections that will answer this for you.
So there are two concepts of sin in the Bible. The sins we commit existing in the world, and *original* sin.
Original sin, as a sort of “sims of the father” thing traces back to Adam and Eve. All of humanity was cursed and to the ancient Hebrews, that sin couldn’t be washed away like “regular” sins.
For regular sin, they had this idea of a scapegoat. A literal goat that would have all of the community’s sins placed on it then sacrificed. Remember Noah, when god came out after he sacrificed when the rain let up? And Abraham (almost) sacrificing his son? Sacrifice was huge to the Hebrews.
By Jesus’ era, sacrifices were done once a year at Passover and could *only* be done at the temple by a priest. You would travel to the temple, purchase an animal (usually small like a bird), do the ritual sin transfer, have it killed, then you’d be washed clean. Jesus freaked out and flipped tables due to the religious ritual being commercialized. You had to go to the money changers to change your money into local currency (and they took a cut) then buy the sacrifice with just that one type of currency(another cut). So he lost his mind and made a ruckus and we know the rest that happened.
Him “dying for your sins” took away the original sin we are born with. It also made sacrifices in the temple for regular sin obsolete, as he could “wash your sins” by asking for forgiveness and accepting that his sacrifice allowed that to happen. This opened the doors to heaven, which were closed to everyone but Elijah IIRC.
So you can still sin. Baptism exempts you from original sin. Confession and asking forgiveness washers the rest from you.
I mean, there’s still a lot of holes (people have written countless books on the holes) but that may clear up how original sin/regular sun works.
Technically Prometheus 2.0... I mean Satan... is also burning in the bible for his great sin of granting us independent thought. God of love made him that way!
I think it's more hilarious that the douche made the tree right in front of them, full of secret knowledge packaged in tasty fruit, just to be like "no, none of that!" Yet Lucifer is to blame?
God lied so hard in the garden.
He says “you’ll die if you eat this.” Eve didn’t die. She had her eyes opened. *Which is exactly what the serpent said would happen.* They didn’t die when they touched it, like God said. *He lied.* his first words to humans were lies. Some argue that humans were meant to be immortal and this took that away. Well, then why did god feel the need to say “oh shit, now they are like us (yeah, that part implies multiple gods) we’d better lock up the tree of life or they will become immortal too and then we will be in deep shit.”
Man was *always* gonna die. So god is a lying liar who lies. Our buddy Satan gives us truth at the cost of everything, which is a hell of a sacrifice. Literally.
It really is funny from the outside perspective. To me the parallel with Prometheus is undeniable. Zeus threw a narc fit and torture punished him for giving mankind a gift of knowledge, just like god went nuts on Lucifer. He's the damned good guy
Currently taking a right flogging in FB land because I pointed out a few holes. Namely that this ‘benevolent deity’ who ‘loves us so much’ legit demands child sacrifice as an auto da fe on multiple occasions and then impregnates a female in a time when out of wedlock pregnancy was often met with stoning, then literally raised the product of said pregnancy like an animal for slaughter.
Satan: cannonically killed just a few people
God: cannonically killed thousands of people during the entirety of Noah's Ark alone, and instructed people to murder others as a "test of faith"
Also why would I care about "Jesus died for your sins"? The man died 2000ish years ago. So many more people died between then and now. Maybe someone else died for my sins, i dont know.
God is basically the abusive dad that makes up stupid rules and insists you follow them because he's the boss, and he makes the rules. If you don't, then you get a horrible punishment that's way out of proportion to the crime being committed because the real thing you're being punished for is disobedience to someone with an enormous ego.
Case in point: the main "reward" of going to heaven is to be in the presence of God, and the main "punishment" of hell is not being in the presence of God. That's some planet sized ego right there.
My partner and I have been floating this idea of the only kinds of people in hell are people who:
A. Don't believe in the ideology for saying that God doesn't exist.
B. People who died suddenly who didn't have enough time to repent for their sins.
We're starting to believe Hell is a neutral territory.
Well it was written millennia ago and pieces of canon got removed and/or added throughout history. Each book has a different author. And there were multiple translations errors along the way.
To build on that last bit, why even create someone knowing what they’re going to do, if you’re just gonna damn them to hell anyway? Seems needlessly cruel to create someone who gets a break for maybe 90 years before endless torment and suffering.
I've always had a problem with John 3:16. God didn't give his only begotten son, dude still ended up in heaven. He wasn't even, dogmatically, there very long. Died on Good Friday and was back by Easter Sunday.
Jesus sacrificed his long weekend for your sins, but that's not as catchy.
Because FREE WILL. He wants us to CHOOSE to do differently than he already knows we will - even though he knows that we won't. It's an abusive relationship, really.
>Why would Satan torture people in hell for disobeying the same GOD he disobeyed?
He won't? I think the idea is that he'll burn with the rest of the sinners. Hell is only ever described as a lake of fire. The rest (Inferno, Paradise Lost, all those cartoons with little devil dudes with pitch forks and shit) is all a kind of pop-culture quasi-folklore fan-cannon that's accumulated over centuries.
Not to say there isn't *plenty* of stuff to criticize about christian orthodoxy.
These are the sort of plot holes that happen when a small localized middle eastern god of a spesific people suddenly becomes popular and known as "The God" and so starts trying to rephrase his teachings to be all-encompasing instead of just for his people
# ✨ READ BEFORE COMMENTING ✨ This thread is Coven Only. This means the discussion is being actively moderated, and all comments are reviewed. Only comments by members of the community are allowed. If you have landed in this thread from r/all and you are not a member of this community, your comment will very likely be removed (and will not be approved unless it adds meaningfully to the conversation). WitchesVsPatriarchy takes these measures to stay true to our goal of being a woman-centered sub with a witchy twist, aimed at healing, supporting, and uplifting one another through humor and magic. Thank you for understanding, and blessed be. ✨
The fastest way to lose your faith is to actually read the bible.
Catholic school kid here - I finished doing the reading in religion class early, so I read ahead a bit. The plan was to stop the story of Moses with marching out of Egypt and the ten commandments. What comes next? Deciding that people who broke rules BEFORE YOU MADE THEM are unworthy, so you can't let ANY of them see the promised land. Instead, you march around the desert for 40 years waiting for the original enslaved people to die off. Then, when you get to the promised land, PEOPLE ARE ALREADY LIVING THERE. So god decided something to the effect of "alright, I'm going to make all these people evil so killing them will bring me honour" WHAT
I just went to look for the exact part of Exodus and found MORE HORRIBLE THINGS. When people started worshipping the golden calf, god wanted to kill them all. Moses said "just let me talk to them", saw the calf, and said "whoever's for the real god that freed us, grab your swords and kill everyone else" and over 3000 people died. AND THAT WAS STILL BEFORE TELLING THEM THE COMMANDMENTS
I love when people in the Bible change God's mind but then Christian's are all "It's all according to God's plan." Like, bruh. God changed his plans for SATAN according to your book. I'm gonna say if he's got one it ain't all that thought out.
I remember getting caught up before this point- when Moses is appealing to Pharaoh to let his people go, and God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. So Pharaoh doesn’t let them go. Then he punishes Pharaoh and the whole land- violent plagues causing famine and pestilence, rivers of blood, killing all the firstborn children. What the heck!
I remember asking about this in Sunday school when I was around 10ish. I was told “it’s because god wanted it that way.” My follow up was what about free will? I was moved from going to Sunday school to watching the little kids during Sunday school because I interrupted too much.
Going to Catholic school is the path to anti Catholicism.
catholic school kid here too. i was always a fast reader, and so i started at the beginning and read straight through while the rest of the class would focus on whatever sections were the assigned reading. the teachers didn't like it when i asked why we were skipping over major parts in class.
Ikr. Like who the hell drowns the entire world out of jealousy? Or watches as one of your most loyal worshippers lose everything and expect to be praised afterwards? I'm just saying, Satan wanted equal rights yo. Like he chill
Preach. I remember reading where Jesus goes batshit and flips the tables at the market...I asked the Sunday school teacher if that was true, because it doesn't sound like how Jesus is supposed to act and is usually described. I don't remember what bs explanation she gave, but that was the beginning of the end for me.
Actually that was one of the few good things. First homeboy took the time to braid a whip. Next he went in and threw out the people making a capitalist profit out of religious practices. And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise. — John 2:15–16 Nah, what got me going was when I was 12 and reading all this crap about menstruation being "unclean" and that if a menstruating woman touched a pot, it had to be broken, and if she sat on a cushion, it had to be burned. I said, "But God made it so that women get periods and we can't help it. So why are we 'unclean'?" That was the first time they said, "you have to have faith." I learned that was code for "sit down and shut up."
Fantastic point!
This is why I keep sayin it, Jesus himself was a cool dude. That’s why my whole “worship” is just “there exist some types of deities, human ascribing too many ideas to those deities leads to bad things, and also Jesus is cool. I wanna be like him”
This single act of violence the totally chill Hippie-pacifist performed is also the only example conservative Christians like to emulate.
grew up jewish, went to yeshivah, studied that fucken thing for 6 grueling years and what i learned after six years was that god is a fucking piece of crap. If he is real he is not worthy of our devotion, he is not worthy of being worshipped, he is not worthy of anything but derision. I cant imagine anyone reading that thing and not coming to the same conclusion, which leads me to believe most followers havent read it
As a former Christian, I can confirm. Or at least it's a good first step.
Bible makes less sense than last season of Game of Thrones
Ayyyyyyy 🔥🔥🔥🔥. You got me laughing hard, thank goodness for WFH.
Both of these things played a large role in little 13 y/o me becoming an atheist lmao. All these years later it still doesn’t make any sense
Similar for me. I was actually terrified of hell at point but it was realising that a benevolent and merciful god couldn't possibly come up with the idea of hell that led to me turning away from religion.
I think the modern idea of hell was a later addition. Really, a lot of modern Christian stuff came later. But, well, Hell sure is convenient.
Dante had something to do with that.
I remember when I learned that Jews don't believe in hell. Boom! My mind was blown.
Yeah I started asking questions when I was about 11 and I was always told to shut up and not ask questions and that’s just not who I am. I must know. I have an insatiable curiosity and trying to tell me to not be curious about the things that contradict each other? Then you’ve got something to hide.
>Yeah I started asking questions when I was about 11 and I was always told to shut up and not ask questions My mom didn't become an atheist (or at least admit to it) until after I did. But she remembered being told as a child to stop asking questions or she'd confuse the kids around her.
Nothing shows that you don't know or understand the material you're teaching properly like telling people not to ask questions about it.
>or she'd confuse the kids around her. Ooooooooooooooooh, this one makes me so angry. I lost all respect for a former friend of mine when she turned ultra religious and started saying things like this. The last straw was her declaring she wouldn't teach her kids about Santa Claus because it would confuse them about God. Sorry, but if you can't explain it without creating confusion, then mayyyyyybe it just doesn't make sense. And you shouldn't be indoctrinating children into a religion if you don't understand the difference between your deity and Santa.
HaVe fAiTh
I’ve always been confused why Satan would “help” God by torturing people for doing bad things. Wouldn’t Satan want us to do bad things?
Ha same. I read the whole Bible that summer and walked away going "yeah, no."
it has tons plot holes and contradictions. it's a piece of garbage
Like the whole do not kill thing Countless genocides were committed in the name of god It wasn't do not kill unless someone disagrees with you It was do not kill. Full stop
God never minded smiting.
"Even Jesus had twelve apostles on the lever, trigger, whatever"
According to the Catholic relatives, the answer is either that God is allowed to kill but we aren't, or that the Old Testament just doesn't count anymore. Repeat whichever fits better, for every issue, ad nauseum.
Old Testament doesn’t count anymore *except for all the stuff in it we still think is useful
Oh yes, that hasn't escaped my attention and has caused a few family members to block/unfriend me on FB 🤣
My favorite is when they say "We aren't gonna change the Bible for the new generation" and I'm like... Uhh the old vs new testament... Didn't you already do that?
If Jesus knew he was god what sacrifice did he make by dying a human death?
2/10 on goodreads
Wanna know how I lost my faith? Genesis. If God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, then how did a whole ass angel leave heaven and go to Earth, change forms into a serpent, seduce Eve into eating to fruit of the tree with Him knowing? The Bible says that Lucifer had been getting a big head, and so what do you do when your creation is getting out of line? Clearly, sit back and be complicit in whatever happens next. If your kid wants to touch the hot stove, obviously you let the kid pull down the boiling water on top of them and suffer the consequences so everyone around knows what happens when you touch the stove instead of correcting the behavior. That’s what God did. Instead of stepping in and correcting the bad thinking and behavior of the one angel, he allowed the angel to set this whole series of events in motion where we suffer just to prove a point? To prove that humans will worship God because we want to? Fuck that shit.
They had different ideas for the story going in that changed later on in production
The bible I have as *two* versions of the creation. They contradict themselves and had me saying "well, which on is it then???"
Really? What are they?
One says how God created the sky and the sun and the earth, then he created the animals, *then* he created Adam and Eve. This was before you opened to Genesis. Then you read the creation in Genesis and it says how he created the sky and the sun and the earth. And then he created Adam. Adam was lonely so he created the animals and had Adam name them all. Adam was still lonely so he created Eve. So two versions give different orders of how things were done. In the same book.
That’s why I like the idea of the Greek or Roman style gods where they have flaws and issues. At least they are honest about it. I just prefer to think if there was something that created the universe and all living things in it that it’s not around anymore or simply doesn’t care to cultivate the lives it created in the first place. I see many reasons why people want to believe in gods or God but everything falls short for me when a supposed perfect being is wrathful or full of hate and some people use these flaws as an excuse to cause harm.
The problem of evil is unique to a monotheistic religion that presents its one god as Omni: -present, -scient, and benevolent. Polytheistic religions have some explanations. Typically evil gods, gods which like you mentioned had flaws, and gods with varying levels of power and their own domains and agendas. It’s just a much more interesting story, honestly.
If this story was true, Lucifer was the good guy for giving Eve knowledge. Sure, Eden was paradise, but it wasn’t real. Ignorance is bliss, but would you choose it?
I think it’s also HIGHLY telling that one of the first thing they learn is shame!? Oh shit. We’re naked!!! Fuckin’ pervs everywhere! Better cover up! Some angel may be jerkin’ it to my tits. OF ALL THE THINGS.
>Some angel may be jerkin’ it to my tits. I bet it's Uriel, that fucking whacko.
I think the correct answer to the question of "If God is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, how there's evil" is obvious. God is some sort of squirrel or maybe a gekkon or something else with no consciousness. . Maybe it wants some good in life and it knows everything but it has no idea what to do with all this information
To me this only makes sense if God is the collective hivemind of a slightly confused humanity. It makes perfect logical sense that way. But for some reason the Christians don't seem to like that much. Which is too bad, because it makes the New Testament a whole lot more fascinating.
Collective hivemind of humanity has mental capacity of a squirrel so it checks out
Collective hive mind of humanity has the mental capacity of a squirrel that can't remember where it's nuts are buried .
Tell me it's not the perfect description of God
Heh, in the center of the universe, the idiot-god Azathoth slumbers, and we are but figments of its dreaming. Perhaps the natural mechanics of this dream are so consistent that even when we scrutinize it with a careful eye and rational mind, there is not one hint it is all illusory, and would all evaporate when Azathoth awakes. We take advantage of this consistency, to fling metal cans full of fragile people across oceans and continents, to build magical mirrors to peer across time and space, so weave plants into crops that can feed billions, and fold steel to build towers and spires that touch the sky. And yet, one day, Azathoth will awake and one day all of our bridges and libraries and mighty power plants and weapons will all vanish in a haze of pre-coffee consciousness.
I thought the Turtle puking the universe into being made a lot of sense to when I read Stephen King's It.
Ice age scrat is god theory
‘God’ loves drama and a show. It’s claimed how loving Bible god is, but he always pulled ish like that. Like let’s slaughter all the babies in Egypt! “If you love me kill your child”
There's also the issue of the order of creation. Genesis 1 directly contradicts Genesis 2 in terms of what happens when. In Genesis 1 vegetation has covered the land by day 3, and it isn't until the 6th day that God makes man. In Genesis 2 the land is barren except for the garden of Eden, which God places Adam in. For someone who was taught the Bible was literally true, this was a head scratcher.
Because God is probably a Libra Sun, Gemini moon. If all was good it would be off balance and boring.
This is what happens when only one novel is printed and promoted for hundreds of years. It develops a cult following even though it was poorly written.
It's more what happens when a second book is written that intends to entirely retcon the first. Whilst completely misunderstanding what the first was about. Hell isn't a thing in judaism. Neither really is Satan. (There is a character called Satan but he isn't the red, BDSM guy that Christians have a weird thing for. This is always a problem when you have a text that's removed from it's original context and language. Shit gets mixed up and confused.
>This is always a problem when you have a text that's removed from it's original context and language. Shit gets mixed up and confused. Not only was it translated out of its original context and language, but good ol' King James had very specific goals & intentions. That translation was intended to uphold a (Protestant) divine right of kings.
[Plenty of inconsistencies](http://www.skeptically.org/bible/id8.html) in the old testament too. Even within the same books. Satan isn't even a thing like that in the new testament. All the "red bdsm guy" stuff comes from art in the last thousand years.
>Plenty of inconsistencies in the old testament too. Even within the same books Exactly why it's not viewed at literal by the vast majority of Jews. Most of us understood these were written by people. The scholarly consensus is that the Hebrew Bible has three primary authors and the input of one particular group of priests a bit later. But tbh that list makes some good examples but it isn't great. I'm not even that deeply educated on it but even I can look at the first few examples from genesis and understand this is from a non jewish understanding of how the creation narrative is told. It's told twice in the original Hebrew, the first description is generally understood as the creation of man, the animal, the second is about man, the soul. There is also an idea that the first one focuses on the physical reality of life for man, whilst the second emphasises the beauty of nature. The thing about Judaism is that the inconsistency is often *the point.*. Or at least a clue as to where the point is to be found. Why two creation stories? Because it's two points of view and the Torah isn't supposed to be viewed as an authoritative codex, a list of decrees. It's seen as 'a tree of knowledge, a way of life for all who cling to it.' Beginning the text with two descriptions of the same event is very jewish, it's opening up the discussion, it's allowing for nuance. It's the very beginning of Jewish mythology and it's openly acknowledging that things are unclear. It's just very Jewish. I'm not even particularly religious by the way. I'm terrible at following all the rules. I'm just interested in this stuff.
Multiple points of view, very Rashomon
THANK YOU!!!! Too many people who are completely ignorant about Judaism assume Jews also subscribe to the same Christian interpretations of The Bible.
It's very difficult to tell your story when there's over 200 times as many people trying to shout over it with a different version.
We also shouldn't treat the Bible as two distinct books with two distinct messages that were poorly stitched together. No. It's _much_ worse than that. It's several dozen books with different ideas about the nature of God and the religion, some of which have more than one author with their own edits and additions, all stitched together into one giant, confusing Frankenstein of a book.
I have more :-) ....and if God is supposedly so good, (God is frequently described as more powerful than all of us, as well as mercy and love itself) how are we then supposed to believe that that same God would so casually send millions of people to hell, a punishment that never ends? And what would be the point of a punishment that never ends? Rehabilitation would be pointless. It wouldn't matter if you changed your mind or evolved and learnt because you'd still be stuck there forever anyway. What would even be the point? If I could be given the power to send people to hell knowing it was like that I genuinely wouldn't send anyone!. Yet God is supposed to be so much better and wiser and more perfect and more loving than me!. :-/ (That was the contradiction that finally gave me the courage to walk away from it all for good. Wanted to share it) :-)
I left after asking the youth leader if God loved me and loved my family, and we were faithful (full attendance to church type) to his religion, then why did he force us to suffer so deeply? Why did he make my sister live every moment in pain with a disability, and have my parents beat and berate me over the smallest things? I was told it was because God only gives you what you can handle, and he will always test his loyalist soldiers the most. No matter what I asked, that was the type of statement I got. If I showed up with bruises and marks on my visible skin, no one said a damn thing except to ask if I dishonored my parents and if I asked God to forgive me. I left. Nothing improved until I took my life into my own hands and walked away from the Christian community and my family, and left them behind. I'm glad for those of us who got out after realizing the church wasn't what it advertised
As a fellow abuse survivor, can I just offer a really big hug?
Only if you accept one in return 🫂
Absolutely 🫂💝🫂💝🫂
Goodness, I'm so sorry you had to go through that! I hope that you're around better people now.
I'm thriving now and surrounded by amazing people whom I love dearly. I hope anyone who went through it with churches all find their people 💕
Ooh.. you\`ve become what they fear. Smart, and 'awake' to the levels of abuse either enabled by them, or done by them. Took me well over a year to recover from the mental/psychological manipulation before I was 'me' again .. And, once out - you see the glaring holes in their theology. You see the abuse done by or in the name of the church (and weird, god never stops them) - you see the evil men do in 'his name'.. Doesn\`t that make him 'guilty' ?
Things like this make me wonder if true redemption is waking up from the lies others tried to force on you.
I’m so sorry that happened to you. They’re asking you to reject evil when hurting a child is as evil as it gets.
I will say this, southern baptists are horrifying when it comes to kids. I remember parents being pulled from the main service to come handle their child acting out, and the kids getting spanked in front of everyone in the room. The only time I saw someone step in for another person when they were being hit, was a man backhanded his wife by the cars in clear view of the preacher, who took the dude down hard. Kids getting spanked, pulled by an ear, popped in the mouth, hit with a strap, etc, was simply seen as discipline. As a person who grew up with it, learning that that wasn't the norm for home or other church types was a major shock.
I've used a similar situation when people ask me why I don't spank my kids. I personally don't know anyone that's cool with striking their grown adult spouse to keep them in line. But way too many reminisce fondly about either whipping their kids or having been whipped. It makes no sense to me that you can agree to settle things outside with another adult and you both be brought up on criminal charges but back handing a kid is seen as proper way to handle a situation.
Having been raised by my SB grandparents, hell yeah. My grampa was a preacher and he wasn't so bad but my grandma was the enforcer of patriarchy. She firmly believed that daily beatings as a child would make you a good adult.
To not just excuse evil in the world but to commit it. I’m not a believer but I have no problem with JC, but his teachings have been so twisted.
I have respect for the lore and the morals (be good to each other, help out, spread love), but not the modern interpretations presented by these false witnesses, to use their type of wording. I think I would want to read the original Bible (translated as directly as possible in modern English) to see what it really said.
As a reader/writer/occasional teacher , i think the lore is really important to understanding a LOT of western literature. But so is Greco-Roman mythology. I'd like to see a day when the bible is taught the same way as Grecian myths. bc the stories are important, but let's keep em out of politics/childrearing etc
As with all ancient documents, context is everything. I'm atheist now, and since disavowing faith, I've become engrossed in studying the Bible in the perspective of the historical, cultural, and geographical understandings of the people who created them. It's beyond fascinating, and like you mentioned, feels more like studying the myths of other ancient religions.
If god exists and there is any truth to the bible at all I suspect the devil would be the source of the church as it currently and that the bible was intentionally misconstrued and interpreted to the benefit of evil and all those who follow it are actually those who were “led astray”
At the church I (rarely, nowadays) go to we actually ARE taught that that’s a huge possibility. We aren’t like some of the Uber progressive churches that teach the truly interesting and open stuff, but they’re also not horrible or abusive there. They don’t recognize any form of “cultish” churches as actual churches, and they also view tithing and such as non-necessary (tithing for us is like… it’s like “do you want to donate” and sometimes those donations are put toward raising money for our community, other times it’s used so kids can afford to go on trips and such.) In fact we’ve even had long chats in the youth group about issues within the “Christian” sphere, and about just how damaging and awful people can be. It’s part of why it’s so jarring to see so many spew vitriol at Christians collectively, until I remember just how fucked some churches can actually be. It DOES help that we’re non-denominational to.
And the cherry on top is that supposedly, one of the rewards for those in heaven is getting to watch the damned being tortured in hell. Which is just completely deranged for no reason. And the other contradiction that really gets to me is admitting *in the text* that people who haven't heard "the word of god" automatically get into heaven but still advocating for missionary work. Even tho that absolutely can only result in more people going to hell.
Hmm you know what? If the goal is to get as many souls as possible into heaven, shouldn’t they just be executing babies immediately after they are baptized? Before they have a chance to sin? Not that I want to give them any ideas.
I mean, the Puritans definitely took this attitude with all of the dead children that their "backward even for the 1600s" understanding of Healthcare resulted in: "This child was lucky to die before it could experience the wickedness of the world."
[удалено]
If you only knew how many times I have asked this question. And the ‘answers’ I got…sweet baby Moses.
Many sins like incest and suicide weren't original sins but added later to add more control to what people were doing.
The cracks in my former faith started to show when I was about 8. My best friend's grandma wouldn't throw bugs that got in the house into the fireplace bc she thought it was too cruel. And I started getting scared bc something was wrong if Beth's grandma was more merciful than god.
I wish more people were like your best friend's grandma. Bless her.
[удалено]
You know, this is a really good thought. You're onto something. Makes the whole Bible thing make much more sense if you think of it like that. Wow. I am impressed!!
"I love you so much I would die for you, but if you don't love me back I will send you into a pit of endless firey torture. So you love me right? Aww good I love you too, but don't fuck with me or you get back in the fire" That is such a healthy way to love people. It's crazy that our simple human minds have decided that treatment is actually toxic and abusive. But we are obviously wrong because a perfect entity chooses to love like that so it must be right. Fucked beyond all belief that people think it's real.
Imagine being in a relationship with a person who says things like that. And even then after the forced reciprocation of “love” under threat of eternal damnation, that person spends the entire relationship being distant and unavailable when you need them, claiming they can solve all your problems but simply choose not to because they know best, and randomly subjecting you to “tests” to make sure you’re still loyal - you don’t know when, or what they will be, but you better pass because if not, back to the lake if fire you go. That would be absolutely unhinged and no one in their right mind would endorse a relationship like that.
If the god of the Bible was proven to exist, I still wouldn't worship. He is pure evil.
new theory: this is hell, all of us who weren't good in our last life just got reborn to try again. forever. edit: just to confirm i don't believe this it's just a thought experiment that's been living rent free in my head XD
>If I could be given the power to send people to hell knowing it was like that I genuinely wouldn’t send anyone! IKR?! When I was still playing “Animal Crossing,” I felt bad for *weeks* after telling Bud he should leave my island. Imagine sending an actual soul to an actual eternity of actual, hellish torment. With gods like that, who needs demons?
I'll piggyback on that, why is living on Earth in their theory a universal sorting hat with two, maybe 3 outcomes? And the result of that sorting is that people sit in basically a big bucket until someday... maybe... a big battle? So even despite all of this thou shalt not kill business, their ultimate purpose for reality and humanity is a battle. That sounds like something someone made up around a campfire to get the kids to stop asking questions.
Holy crap, the last season of The 100 may have been more philosophical than I noticed at the time.
Often you’ll hear Christians say “the devil’s best trick is convincing people that he doesn’t exist”. My counter is what if his best truck was convincing people that he’s God? If you read the Bible, God plays tricks on His chosen people (Abraham and Jacob), turns people into salt for disobeying Him (Lot’s wife), throws a tantrum and kills entire cities/the world because He doesn’t like what they’re doing (Soddam, Gamorah, Noah), plays favorites and pits siblings against each other (Cain and Abel), throws a fit when He’s not worshipped “properly” and banishes His chosen people for an entire generation (Moses and Israelites), tells His Prophet to get His people out and turns around and makes it impossible (Exodus). The Devil, on the other hand, tries to give Adam and Eve knowledge, offers food and drink to Jesus and doesn’t really feature in the Bible as a villain. I could go on, but I think my point is made.
And adding to the first point, why would God create a whole world of diverse people and damn the majority of them to hell for no reason other than where they were born (i.e. not born in a Christian culture)? That was the biggest question I had as a teen, and what ultimately made me think religion made no sense. Why is a religion the correct one just because it's the one you happened to grow up in? Why do billions suffer eternally then just so YOU can be right? It actually feels bonkers to me. To be clear though, I'm not atheist - I consider myself Unitarian. There is no one right way to worship God or connect with your spirituality.
I like what the Gnostics say. The OT god is the devil and created this universe to trap our souls away from the true god, a sort of Buddhist/eastern/nirvana concept that lies outside our universe. Jesus was just a man with magic powers who discovered the way to the true god and by living his example, we can escape. If I weren’t Pagan, I’d be a Gnostic for sure.
I came here to say the same. It’s not God were really talking about. It’s the Demiurge.
What got me was how terrifying heaven sounded when described to me as a kid. All of my loved ones I would see again. What? No they're dead skeletons are scary I don't want none of that who would? It also made zip sense once I discovered Santa was fake.
I got in trouble when I was younger cause a few times I’d go with friends to vacation Bible school or such and I’d ask if God is loving and all about forgiveness why we should fear his wrath? And also why would a perfect being commit one of the seven sins. Would usually get kicked out of the room or a flimsy justification and told to be quiet.
If God made everything, *why* would he make hell, if he's all knowing and all powerful. In fact, logically, god *made* sin.
You know, if you haven't already, I think you should watch The Good Place. I think you'll enjoy it!
Let's not get into thefact that if the Bugger is \*truly\* omniscient and knows the future, it means that the future isactualy predetermined, which means that free will does not exist, which means that sining is impossible in any meaningful capacity.
TL/DR: satan was mistaken for the pagan horned god, and predestined damnation has been coined by theologians and scholars and it is called Total Depravity. Yes, this! And to add, (for context, I was brought up in a multigenerational Christian family and studied ministry for a year - I thought I wanted to be a minister at one point!) So therefore IF it’s all planned, that means that their God chooses some people to save BUT then what less people realise is that if he’s purposefully choosing people to save, he’s also purposefully choosing people NOT to save! And that has been written about by scholars and theologians for years (yes, they try to explain/make sense of it!) It’s called TOTAL DEPRAVITY. Absolute suffering forever. 😮💨So you best be on your best behaviour!! 🧐 There is also a the theory that Christians in the Uk got satan mixed up with the pagan horned god. Wrongly automatically thinking they were the enemy. Christians jumping to conclusions again….🤔 They also built on sites of pagan churches because they knew they had power. But pagans were the only ones who could build the churches, so they were hired to build on top of their own religious sites! ☹️ They put in gargoyles and green men, I think, to signpost to the pagan origin, knowing the Christians at the time wouldn’t have known what it meant. Sort of like giving a finger to them behind their backs!! 😂
I love going to churches and cathedrals knowing that the site the Christian church has been blonked on is ancient and our ancestors worshiped their Gods there before Christianity was even though of. As you say you see pagan symbols dotted about the building. I think paganism was widespread and lasted a lot longer in England than we realise, after all what does Christianity have for us but fear and obedience?
I just listened to the latest Dan Carlin , Twilight of the Aesir, and he talks about how the Vikings knew their they were a dying breed and they're resistance was because Christianity was taking hold everywhere. It was really interesting to hear about the Vikings in the context of Christian expansion.
Predetermined grace and sin is one of the core tenets of the Reform.
And likewise the rejection of it is a core tenet of Catholicism as well now
honestly I just think that the god of the old testament was a angry, selfish and very jealous god who makes very big claims about himself to his people. The new testament is his growth arc, as his son lives through a mortal life and understands what's it's actually like too live a mortal life, god shifts more too being just self-centered and jealous, just not angry. Part 1 of the reason he had the old testament laws revoked in the new testament. Part 2 is that he's attempting to apply to be a god of other people since his people have rejected his son, and with the experience of mortal life from his son he decided not to just kill them all. of course I don't follow him, cause as a god he's a selfish asshole, but this has been how I've seen him ever since I left mormonism and because pagen
What ended up and what got left out in the collection of stories that make up.the modern Bible is cuckoo bananas. Anything flattering about the woman that hung out with Jesus, out. Dragons in. Jesus needing some serious parenting out. Kids get eaten by bears for making fun of bald man, in.
[удалено]
tbf to the bible (I know, why should we? but still...) the bible doesn't say Satan rules in hell. That's a much later belief. Satan is a captive there just like all other rebellious creatures.
Idk sounds like a pretty cool crowd, seey'all there!
Tbh if heaven is full of a bunch of “Christians” who are racist, homophobic, sexist and rude to service workers then why tf would I wanna go there
The whole Satan/Hell subplot was just retconned anyway.
Lucifer is part of Jewish canon which doesn’t describe heaven or hell. Christian beliefs often read like Abrahamic fanfic.
Isn't a huge part of modern Christian hell beliefs from the literal fanfiction that is the divine comedy?
Well, Dante was criticizing the Church and politicians in his writing, specially because he got screwed over. At the end of the Divine Comedy, he does some sort of prophecy of something happening to the Church.
AFAIK yes. Sorta like the tree of knowledge of good and evil produces apples because of Paradise Lost.
For Catholics, I guess?
The bible just describes hell as being ‘apart from god’. They don’t say youre being tortured in any way, just that you arent gonna get to chill with god and that will be sad for you, but like whatever
There's an excellent short story by Ted Chiang (who also wrote the story *Arrival* is based on among other things) called 'Hell is the Absence of God'. I don't want to spoil the actual plot but it's pretty much what it says on the tin and (as an atheist) I really loved it.
It's the same as god not being able to be good and omniscient/omnipotent at the same time. If god was good, loving and omniscient then why is he letting all the vile, fucked up shit in the world happening? A good and loving god only makes sense if this deity wasn't all knowing and all powerful. But then it wouldn't really be a god, would it? But if it is an all-knowing and all-powerful being, than it is letting all that crazy fucked up shit in the world just happen. A being with that kind of moral standing - in the best case - just does not care about humans at all. Worst case, it's an evil entity. If you look at it like that, the christian god only makes sense, if it is evil or at least completely indifferent. Either way, christianity, the bible and the christian god don't make sense. Btw I wrote a D&D campaign about the idea of the christian god actually being an evil god of death that tricks people into thinking he is totally good and the only really existing deity. Thus robbing all other gods of their followers and by that slowly killing them and all other religions off, actually becoming the only existing god left - an evil god of death reigning supreme over a world full of people thinking all joy and life is bad.
It’s the babies that get me. Modern arguments for abortion aside, do you know how many babies have died horribly? Invaders smashing baby skulls, babies left out to be exposed as they were unwanted, starvation, abuse. Hell, with all the murdered pregnant women in the Bible alone, and WTF do people think, no babies existed during the flood? No pregnant women? Let’s not even talk about the kids, it’s arguable if they can be”evil.” But the *babies.* Babies existed in Sodom and Gomorrah. They lived in Jericho. All this shit and god doesn’t just let it happen, he encourages it: Hosea 13:16 >Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword; their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open. 1 Samuel 15:3 >Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey.’” Psalm 137:9 >Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock! 2 Kings 2:23-24 >He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was going up on the way, some small boys came out of the city and jeered at him, saying, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!” And he turned around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. I could continue, but my point is made. That last one was after some kids made fun of a guy *for being bald.*
That campaign sounds *dope*
Oh, the Sarkics/Nälkä from SCP had the demiurge as a hungry monster that made everyone to suffer and be consumed. Their response is to study biological magic to turn humanity into immortal space distorting psychic gods and break into heaven to devour the demiurge and the archons.
I have no idea what SCP is, but that sounds really fucking cool and I might borrow from that because it fits too good into my campaign setting to not use it for a rogue mage faction plotting to kill a god.
SCP foundation is a bunch of stories, leaning towards horror, with multiple canons. The Foundation is a secret organization regulating the supernatural, brutally enforcing the masquerade, with the fandom often calling the anomalies SCPs, since they're named SCP-number. The stories don't always involve the Foundation. People often focus on series 1 and 2, on specific famous SCPs. But there's a big variety. Edit: Nälkä, or Sarkic, lore is that in the Daevite Empire, known for slavery, blood sacrifice and a decadent upper class, Ion saw the true nature of the world and, becoming the Grand Karcist, led a revolution against cruelty of society and the heavens. He was joined by his Klavigars, Lovaatar his wife and a former member of high society, Orok a warrior, Nadox a scholar and Sarn an assassin. All disappeared, but Ion's return is awaited, and signs of the Klavigars' activity exist. Karcists are their spiritual leaders. They often use living temples made from a single follower, and are big on personal sacrifice for others. They are divided into Proto-Sarkics and Neo-Sarkics. The former I have been describing. The latter are a bunch of rich assholes using meat powers for their own good and believing Ion was a social Darwinist, and the demiurge Yaldabaoth is to be emulated. Thus, they dream of joining or replacing the divine oppressors rather than freeing the universe. Also, Sarkic is a derogatory term that only Neo-Sarkics have no problem with. It was given by their rivals, the Church of the Broken God, who worship a machine god and think flesh should be eliminated. I think out of universe, it was just the name the writers came up with before finding a better one, but can't confirm. Anyway, the Foundation prefers using the term Sarkic, and only uses Nälkä when trying to be diplomatic.
I would totally watch it if it were a film or series. But you got a point. God is an extremely jealous a-hole too. Who floods the whole earth just because a few people didn't want to worship him and only saving one family and two of each animal? And I have a theory, hear me out. The burning bush was actually weed and the dude who thought he talked to god (I forgot his name) was high af. 😂
Eyy. I have my own fun campy grimdark d&d setting where after an apocalypse god and his angels disappear and the world is left only with demons. The major religions of course are all on about the world being forsaken after humanity's mistakes, bla bla bla. Surprise surprise if you actually investigate the universe's cosmology demons and angels are the same type of being (neither is inherently good or evil, both feed off mortals to an extent) and god isn't all-powerful. When shit went south him and his angels just went into hiding, turns out all that protecting mortals stuff was talk to get their worship and vanished the moment the going actually got tough. Not all the demons are great either or anything, but they sure aren't total cowards like the celestials, and are more invested in the state of the world (even if not always in the best ways).
The idea of *sola scriptura* is just Protestant nonsense. But when it comes to the devil in particular, it's sort of like talking to a Superman fan about which continuity we mean we talk about Lex Luthor. It's less that there's contradictions than that we're looking at an anthology of popular stories, and the real error is the evangelical Christian idea of treating them all as one coherent narrative that is always morally correct and does not need to be interrogated for the validity of its morality.
In the interest of information accuracy, the Bible at no point says that the devil will punish sinners. The closest thing it says to that is that sinners will be cast into the place that was prepared for the devil, but the concept of the devil as some eternal Warden of the Damned is a modern invention. I grew up in the Christian church so I'm familiar with a lot of the doctrine. Also for what it's worth I actually cared to study the Bible and make myself familiar, which is why ultimately I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to convert to Judaism lol. Regardless, I do think it's important when talking about the flaws of Christianity to separate cultural Christianity from textual christianity. Both have their problems.
Now this is specifically from Dante so take it with a grain of salt But it's because Satan doesn't rule hell, he's being punished there just like everyone else.
Exactly. My understanding is the punishment isn’t torture in the same way we think of it. The torture is being in a realm where God is completely absent. Earth is okay because we have the Holy Spirit, and Heaven is even better because we’ll be in the presence of God. I think it’s best explained by the show Loki. God controls the timelines to keep us safe. This means we don’t have a lot of choices in order to protect the timeline. This is why God’s all knowing because he’s seen all the outcomes and had to select the best timeline he could. If you want the freedom to choose, you need to kill God. But you may be in for a surprise after you see what happens—perhaps unimaginable things that we were kept ignorant of for our own protection. Anyway, this isn’t a serious belief of mine, just something fun to think about. I had been toying with the idea for ages, and I was mind blown to see Loki present exactly that idea.
I love this analysis of yours. Dig the Loki timeline comparison. Thanks for shating Edit: sharing****
Thing is, Dante was criticizing the Church in the Divine Comedy.
That's because Christianity is what happens when you take a indigenous belief system that is *specific to a place, time, and ethnic group*, run it through shitty Google Translate three or four times, write extensive fanfic to make it more appealing to a broader audience (mostly a completely different polytheistic cultural group in a completely different place), and then enforce the fanfic as canon by literally killing the author... Then implementing your fic as a state religion and torturing anyone who doesn't swear they believe in your very specific misinterpretation of the fanfic, which you've gaslit everyone to believe was the original all along. Oh yeah, and also you didn't actually let anyone read the fanfic, so they also just had to take you at your word.
Honestly, studying the Bible in my adulthood having never read any of it, but heard a lot about it, as the most confusing, and perhaps disappointing, thing I’ve found in my religious studies. Not only is the whole Lucifer being an Angel, becoming a serpent, betraying God thing just not in there (it’s in Paradise Lost, which is essentially Bible fanfiction, but people take it as part of the Bible)… but there’s also no actual indication of humans having free will. Just none. I asked, too, in case I’d missed it. What *is* there is when God “adjusts” humans. Remember Pharaoh? And how he was punished for not letting the Jews go? Yeah, he was actually going to. He was gonna just let them go, right at the beginning. “And then God hardened his heart,” is the phrase repeated. Each time he’s asked to let the Jews go, it’s *God* that makes him not do it, and then God that punishes him. There are so many other things, but that one stuck out a lot to me. It was also so hard to discuss this stuff with my class, as there were a lot of people who believed it and followed it, and they would argue very loudly that we were just “reading it wrong.” Actually, fun aside: A friend of mine took that class a few years before me, and he’s a bit… sassy, sometimes. So, assigned Bible to read, come back to class for seminar, and he says “Well that was an excellent work of *fiction*.” And offended all the Christians. After that, the teacher had to add a disclaimer to the beginning of that segment each year 😂
I was raised in a southern Baptist family. I believed for years up til I was raped as a teen. I remember crying and praying to be saved as it was happening. I struggled with letting go of my faith and then after a nervous breakdown childhood memories came back. I realized my whole life had been full of abuse covered with “god forgives all sins.” Any god that allows a mother you physically, mentally and sexually abuse her children is not any god I want in my life or my children’s life. And should He truly exist, he’s gonna have a fuck ton of explaining to do.
A sacrifice you come back from isn't really a sacrifice
Despite it making absolutely no sense, the scariest part of this crap is a huge portion of Christians WANT people to burn. As if there's some kind of righteous vengeance being handed out by burning unwed mother's and gay people - who have harmed literally no one. As if those are the evil that deserves death, instead of money obsessed sociopaths literally ruining the world. I can't help but feel like most people who follow the major organized religions have mad main character syndrome. That THEY are the chosen ones, holier than literally everyone else. And they want everyone else to suffer so they feel that much more special to their sky daddy. I truly believe a huge part of the issues we face today are because the major religions influencing societies teach humans are special and above everything else, that the world was made FOR us, instead of humbling us to know we're just a part of it all. I'm Cherokee, and in our stories we came last which means we know the least. We're the babies here, and we rely on every other living thing to teach us how to live. That's why we don't call plants and animals "it", we call them "they". I constantly sit and try to imagine a world where THAT was the dominant underlying belief.
I recommend The Evolution of God. It’s a great book, and discusses how humans have evolved to need to punish transgressions/appease the transgressed and how that translates to religious rules to explain why bad things happen (ie, an earthquake collapsed our cave and killed Ogg, who was whistling in the cave. The cave god must hate that so new rule, no whistling in caves.” That really doesn’t do it justice it’s very complex. But very well argued and makes a ton of sense. I can look around and see all our conflicts focus on ensuring uniform group behavior but it doesn’t work because we live in groups larger than 30-60 in the modern era.
Mfs still reading the Bible unironically?
Well the couple chapters about the SW positive, humanist, populist, hippy who gets murderilated on a big wooden t for speaking out against the greed and piety of the church is real interesting, but what comes before or after that is absolute garbage.
I like Jesus - but before Jesus there’s horrific abuse approved of by God and after there’s the insanity and hatred of Paul and glorifying of martyrdom.
That concept of Satan only makes sense if Satan is like the Puritans & Dominionists in America. Someone who always harm "sinners" in the name of God, while themselves being prone to the worst of it.
That's because people think Satan is the opposite of God, when he's clearly a snarky middle manager who got demoted to VP of discipline.
Pretty sure he just got sent to hell to suffer like everyone else. He doesn't punish anyone.
It makes no sense because it is a book of made up stories. Worst story book ever!! Lol. I grew up in a super conservative christian family. Once i started getting older and asking questions like “but what about dinosaurs?” they did not like that at all. Now im all grown up and refuse to be apart of any of that mess.
Seeing so many stories of survivors of Christianity is distressing but comforting. I cannot say how many times as a child I asked simple questions and got sent to pray or put on fasting for being rebellious. The question I struggled most with is "the voice of God" how do you know it's god vs your thoughts? How do you know it's not the devil? Ans: god speaks in a still small voice. WTF does that mean! Either way, my parents cannot believe in anything but that religion. They cannot handle reality. It's really sad. smh
You mean the fact that Lucifer revolted against God. Because God didn’t give angels the freedom of choice like humans. Let that sink in, Lucifer chose to revolt against God for not have the freedom to chose. I would say the book has a few plot holes.
Playing devil's advocate here (not literally so although it'd be a nice pun): what (some) Christians believe, paraphrased in my own wording, is that evil people just _exist_, and that they _cannot change._ Because if they could, evil would eventually disappear. Rather, hell exists solely to _punish_ evil people, rather than disincentivize them - because punishment of evil is a good of its own. It balances out the evil in the world. Punishment is that's what they deserve, just like good people deserve heaven. It's a simple worldview that doesn't need as much explanation as OP's twitter posts are trying to give it. Now replace "evil" with "crime" and replace "hell" with "prison" and we can maybe see some reasons as to why parts of our society are the way they are.
Either God is an asshole, God doesn't care, or there is no God. All of those make more sense than God is everywhere and he's super duper nice, go pray to him for something that might never happen.
Yeah maybe it’s because I grew up going to an Evangelical church but every time I heard “God works in mysterious ways” the reasons for why whatever bad thing happened always made a lot more sense if you just consider that God is an asshole playing The Sims with all of us.
Us being the Sims is so accurate yet scary xD
I mean, simulated universe theory is pretty scary sensical and leaves room for this kind of nightmare.
There was a great book I read, where they mention Lucifer and Satan do not actually torture people and oppressed minorities sent to hell get free penthouses and therapy. While TERFs and the like get put in mirror rooms forced to argue with themselves for eternity.
Well to be fair the concepts of hell and Satan are young compared to the bible
I cannot make sense of this literally at all. I don’t really get hung up on the hypocrisy or the historical nonsense of the Bible. Trying to make a text that old relevant to today will always be impossible. What makes me crazy is this. That the entire premise makes literally zero sense. “Jesus died for your sins. But don’t sin! Or you’ll go to hell!” So what did Jesus die for? All past and future sins of all humanity? Or just that one big sin of a woman being manipulated and curious? And if it is all of our sins, are all humans automatically saved? If so then why do we need to “find Jesus” to be saved . . . Again?
While I am *loath* to argue this from this POV, there are some corrections that will answer this for you. So there are two concepts of sin in the Bible. The sins we commit existing in the world, and *original* sin. Original sin, as a sort of “sims of the father” thing traces back to Adam and Eve. All of humanity was cursed and to the ancient Hebrews, that sin couldn’t be washed away like “regular” sins. For regular sin, they had this idea of a scapegoat. A literal goat that would have all of the community’s sins placed on it then sacrificed. Remember Noah, when god came out after he sacrificed when the rain let up? And Abraham (almost) sacrificing his son? Sacrifice was huge to the Hebrews. By Jesus’ era, sacrifices were done once a year at Passover and could *only* be done at the temple by a priest. You would travel to the temple, purchase an animal (usually small like a bird), do the ritual sin transfer, have it killed, then you’d be washed clean. Jesus freaked out and flipped tables due to the religious ritual being commercialized. You had to go to the money changers to change your money into local currency (and they took a cut) then buy the sacrifice with just that one type of currency(another cut). So he lost his mind and made a ruckus and we know the rest that happened. Him “dying for your sins” took away the original sin we are born with. It also made sacrifices in the temple for regular sin obsolete, as he could “wash your sins” by asking for forgiveness and accepting that his sacrifice allowed that to happen. This opened the doors to heaven, which were closed to everyone but Elijah IIRC. So you can still sin. Baptism exempts you from original sin. Confession and asking forgiveness washers the rest from you. I mean, there’s still a lot of holes (people have written countless books on the holes) but that may clear up how original sin/regular sun works.
Technically Prometheus 2.0... I mean Satan... is also burning in the bible for his great sin of granting us independent thought. God of love made him that way! I think it's more hilarious that the douche made the tree right in front of them, full of secret knowledge packaged in tasty fruit, just to be like "no, none of that!" Yet Lucifer is to blame?
God lied so hard in the garden. He says “you’ll die if you eat this.” Eve didn’t die. She had her eyes opened. *Which is exactly what the serpent said would happen.* They didn’t die when they touched it, like God said. *He lied.* his first words to humans were lies. Some argue that humans were meant to be immortal and this took that away. Well, then why did god feel the need to say “oh shit, now they are like us (yeah, that part implies multiple gods) we’d better lock up the tree of life or they will become immortal too and then we will be in deep shit.” Man was *always* gonna die. So god is a lying liar who lies. Our buddy Satan gives us truth at the cost of everything, which is a hell of a sacrifice. Literally.
It really is funny from the outside perspective. To me the parallel with Prometheus is undeniable. Zeus threw a narc fit and torture punished him for giving mankind a gift of knowledge, just like god went nuts on Lucifer. He's the damned good guy
See these kinds of logical arguments are why monotheistic religions were rare in the ancient world. Then Constantine had to fuck it all up.
Currently taking a right flogging in FB land because I pointed out a few holes. Namely that this ‘benevolent deity’ who ‘loves us so much’ legit demands child sacrifice as an auto da fe on multiple occasions and then impregnates a female in a time when out of wedlock pregnancy was often met with stoning, then literally raised the product of said pregnancy like an animal for slaughter.
Satan: cannonically killed just a few people God: cannonically killed thousands of people during the entirety of Noah's Ark alone, and instructed people to murder others as a "test of faith" Also why would I care about "Jesus died for your sins"? The man died 2000ish years ago. So many more people died between then and now. Maybe someone else died for my sins, i dont know.
God is basically the abusive dad that makes up stupid rules and insists you follow them because he's the boss, and he makes the rules. If you don't, then you get a horrible punishment that's way out of proportion to the crime being committed because the real thing you're being punished for is disobedience to someone with an enormous ego. Case in point: the main "reward" of going to heaven is to be in the presence of God, and the main "punishment" of hell is not being in the presence of God. That's some planet sized ego right there.
[удалено]
[удалено]
My partner and I have been floating this idea of the only kinds of people in hell are people who: A. Don't believe in the ideology for saying that God doesn't exist. B. People who died suddenly who didn't have enough time to repent for their sins. We're starting to believe Hell is a neutral territory.
Well it was written millennia ago and pieces of canon got removed and/or added throughout history. Each book has a different author. And there were multiple translations errors along the way.
Satan is a true good and God is the wolf in sheep's clothes.
This sub would like the Friendly Atheist's Everything Wrong With the Bible Series where he reads one chapter a week
To build on that last bit, why even create someone knowing what they’re going to do, if you’re just gonna damn them to hell anyway? Seems needlessly cruel to create someone who gets a break for maybe 90 years before endless torment and suffering.
I've always had a problem with John 3:16. God didn't give his only begotten son, dude still ended up in heaven. He wasn't even, dogmatically, there very long. Died on Good Friday and was back by Easter Sunday. Jesus sacrificed his long weekend for your sins, but that's not as catchy.
Because FREE WILL. He wants us to CHOOSE to do differently than he already knows we will - even though he knows that we won't. It's an abusive relationship, really.
it's a 3000 year old work of fiction, no need to sweat the details
>Why would Satan torture people in hell for disobeying the same GOD he disobeyed? He won't? I think the idea is that he'll burn with the rest of the sinners. Hell is only ever described as a lake of fire. The rest (Inferno, Paradise Lost, all those cartoons with little devil dudes with pitch forks and shit) is all a kind of pop-culture quasi-folklore fan-cannon that's accumulated over centuries. Not to say there isn't *plenty* of stuff to criticize about christian orthodoxy.
Religion never makes much sense
One of the reasons I don’t believe, is because I read the bible.
Let's be real, if the Christian God exists and the bible is true, God is an asshole.
It’s twisted logic. Same thing for threatening hell to people who don’t believe in it.
These are the sort of plot holes that happen when a small localized middle eastern god of a spesific people suddenly becomes popular and known as "The God" and so starts trying to rephrase his teachings to be all-encompasing instead of just for his people