https://x.com/roybelly/status/1882945942477029771
Context for the title, in case you’re wondering: https://archive.is/UL7jK
“The Sin of Empathy” would be a sweet rock band name except it’s not really rock so it can be a punk band name.
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Kinda surprised Americans don’t worship Constantine.
If they cared about history before 1776 they would.
The world was created only about 3000 years ago. There was no world before AMERICA
Isn’t that the name of the Keanu Reeves movie about the guy who killed himself and now he’s damned for all time and works for the Church, and the Archangel Gabriel was there, but he was played by a woman who kinda looks like the “perfect” chick from Fifth Element?
“angels” are not male or female
Comparing Tilda Swinton to Mila Jovavich is an interesting choice.
Blame the autistic facial blindness that I have
What would Jesus do
Jesus turns water into wine. The human body is 70% water. Earth is like 60% water. Jesus was an alcoholic.
TIL Jesus was probably 70% wine instead of 70% water
…huh. Is that why he kept so well?
I used to be the same but then I sobered up somewhat and now I’m only 10% wine. (depending on the day… usually 0%! Sometimes 90%…)
Does that mean Jesus could cause people to become intoxicated? Assuming he can control how much of the water gets turned into wine so he doesn’t just immediately kill the person he could pull off some fun pranks.
I think it means he could cause you to dissolve into a puddle of booze.
I mean…thats how I took it when I went to catholic school.
Also in catholic school, they never did answer the question of why we drank jesus’s blood, and ate his body. Why is that ok? And how did we STILL have so much left to go around so many centuries after his death?
These answers went unanswered to me in 2nd grade. I did get to hang out in the principals office though.
because the catholic church is the new Roman HQ and is ran by “antichrists” hence the ritual of ca(I)nnibalism. there are many others but no one wants to believe the church is opposite of what they say
Catholic school wasn’t so bad. I got a good education. And when I went to college I saw all these kids from public high schools who didn’t know shit, asking dumbass questions. For all my general education requirements I hardly had to study anything. Also they should have taught you about trsnsubstsatiation which would answer your question. Even though it’s not “real”, it explains the concept in their belief system.
That’s Catholic education for you - fill kids heads with abject nonsense, go full authoritarian when they ask for clarification, then later cry about lack of mass attendance when they grow up and want nothing to do with your institution
…dude, were you IN my class? Or…ya know…what’s going on here? How are you narriating my childhood 30+ years later???
Remember that time a fake socialist was in power and locked up the real socialists‽
There is no such thing as a “sin of empathy” and the dude who came up with that phrase is a fascist shitbag.
I dunno. Sithrak may be offended by empathy, kindness and compassion. He’s a pain and misery kind of god.
He is an insane god for insane times.
Trump is the great Deceiver, like Lucifer he casts a light in darkness, and just like Lucifer all who follow that light expecting to find freedom will only find damnation.
Completely true. Now we just need to convince everyone else
Country that has never once given a shit about fire codes suddenly discovers an excuse to arbitrarily emiserate dozens of people.
This is a lot like how our government is all concerned about National Security™ when it comes to pretty much anything else, but a bipartisan bill, supported by both of the last 2 presidents, and upheld unanimously by our current dysfunctional Supreme Court, with National Security™ as the excuse, and we still have Tiktok.
Laws are only there so the ruling class can keep us in line and them in power, and they will never be enforced homogenously.
Exactly what do you thinks fines do! If you’re rich, fines don’t matter… if you’re poor, go to jail for not being able to pay a fine.
We only ever got rid of debtor’s prison in name.
Amazing how hard Dems worked to turn TikTok into another far right media platform.
You seem easily distracted
People will say “I don’t need God in my life to be a good person” out one side of their mouth, while out the other say, “People need laws and the state to be a good person.” I’m an atheist just like them, I just go one god further.
Probably should give a shit about fire codes everywhere else too tbqh
I’d love to talk shit about the current administration too, but I’ve been in buildings where fire inspectors would cut off the power cords of any space heaters they found because they violated code.
I’ve never seen a fire inspector in any building I’ve worked in. Twenty five years on the job and it’s never happened.
I’ve been working about ~15 years and every job I’ve ever had I’ve seen a fire inspector about 6 times
And I’ve personally witnessed the fire marshal annually inspect my last 3 jobs. I may not have been present for the inspections at other jobs.
I believe you, but your anecdote isn’t really evidence of anything.
The people who hire the fire inspectors don’t actually care, but the fire inspectors do. Probably because they’ve smelled far more charred human flesh than anyone should.
“the sin of empathy” has been a Christian doctrine in conservative circles for a few years (at least since 2019).
Churches with universalist doctrines were supporting social change. The Christian reactionaries did their thing by organizing themselves in opposition to this change. Some particularly conservative Baptist called Rigney decided to avoid emacipatory arguments all together and attack what he saw as the pillar concept instead: empathy. 2019 https://ghostarchive.org/archive/UXWex
Also in classic reactionary style, he was cribbing off left thought. Empathy has been a target for criticism from the left going back to at least 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Empathy
I don’t have theological opinions. But I feel like the culture I grew up in valued empathy maybe a little too much. I used to believe that people who did the horrible things lacked empathy. But that can’t be a universal truth. I see people celebrating the cruelty in policies like mass deportation. You can’t enjoy somebodies pain if you can’t recognize it. I’ve also come to learn that being cruel to others can be pro-social.
It really seems like they’re on the verge of just accepting that they’re evil but deciding that that’s good
Isaiah, verse 5:20, which says, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness.”
The Bible’s just chock full of biting criticism and warnings against the behavior of people who pretend their hate and bigotry is a tradition they must follow.
waow lowkey based
Oh hey I’m pretty sure I’ve seen people people put that on signs while protesting against gay pride lol.
The problem with morality is that it’s difficult and it’s really easy to twist any guidelines into whatever you want, and what you instinctively want is almost certainly to feel like you’re smarter and more moral than others as you are right now with no self reflection and minimal effort. If you have internal prejudices you can probably twist whatever system of morality you have into saying they’re good and right and those criticizing you are actually bad.
You have to want to actually be good. And empathy is a good place to start, but listening to others about their needs and experiences is also crucial. And while you do it you’ve gotta remember not to prioritize the feelings of the bigot over the affected (I’ll try to remember to link the contra video I borrowed that observation from)
I’m sure somewhere in the bible, there is a line to justify the lack of empathy. Regardless of factions and sects, any religious person would not be doing what they do if it isn’t prescribed in their sacred text.
The entire Old Testament was about a “jealous god” going around committing genocide based on perceived slights. You can find something in there to justify any horrific shit.
It’s tribalism plus brainwashing. They believe the right way to show empathy to the in-group is to attack anyone in the out-group. Driven by zero-sum thinking and beliefs around “natural social hierarchy” being necessary.
I haven’t read Bloom’s book, but I draw from other sources. I avoid corporate social media and its “conversations” and have been doing so quite happily for nearly 10 years.
I catch little pieces of it, like this, and it reminds me of why I stay away. I dislike the cluttered analysis and damnation or vindication of human actions and feelings sprouting all over the place; Shame, empathy, envy, anger, whatever the flavor of the month is…
Buddhist philosophy teaches us that we are aggregates of various delusions (and science has come to a similar conclusion). Spontaneous compassion, which can come from anywhere, it can’t be “Rationalized,” is one of the greatest tools we have for breaking patterns, of exercising a wild detachment from these aggregates, that destroy our society and ourselves.
All the tools, even the maligned ones like shame and guilt, may lead a person to these sorts of spontaneous acts of compassion, not only toward others, but toward themselves (there is ultimately no difference).
However…Of all the malign-able features of the human condition, empathy must be the strangest to hone in on.
The definition provided by Bloom is not satisfactory: The cold and detached act that arises from “imagining yourself in their place” is what some in the therapy field would call sympathy.
The being in the moment and doing what is needed in that moment is empathy, Empathy should be considered derived from compassion, it is the present choice, sympathy, the rationalized, detached choice, is the lesser guide, but of course it can lead somewhere, too.
If the empathy is missing from the effort to help than I doubt, however rationalized it may be, however well meaning the bureaucracy, NGO, or organized effort, that it will be helpful.
This is the first post on social media I have made in about 8 years that wasn’t somehow related to tech support. Be merciful.
Reminds me of that story a couple of days ago about the homeless guy that got ran over by a bulldozer when they cleared out his tent to tidy up the city for MLK day. Nothing says you admire MLK like killing some poors, right?
Literally homeless crushing machine
And it happened in Atlanta, near Ebenezer Church of all places
Par for the course for Atlanta though, isn’t it? The only thing worse than driving through that city is living there.
Imagine having to be a Falcons fan dear god
Don’t do the whole “not real Christians “ bullshit. They are Christians, these are the dregs of Christianity, it’s ugly side. Own it and fix it instead of saying “he’s not a REAL Christian” as if they’re the only problem and not the belief system itself.
Wrong. They are definitely NOT Christians.
Yes they are. Because they say so. And that’s literally all it takes.
These people are the results of your religion’s teachings. They are the after birth and they are your people. Stop dodging the truth.
They’re not though. A misrepresentation of their own faith so bad that it almost seems deliberate is a fault of how they follow their religion and not the religion itself. In the same way I wouldn’t call a climate scientist a real climate scientist if they thought climate change was false.
Bro, sit down with your hate. You have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.
I spent over 25 years brainwashed and living in an evangelical community. I saw many a Christian doing evil in my time in the church and the teaching itself were insidious and low key bigotry disguised with bullshit love. It’s all a cult. I’m glad I got out, I know and suffered plenty enough to have an opinion, even if you want me to stay silent cause it makes you mad.
I’m sure Jesus loves your language lol
What’s the problem with the belief system? Sounds like in your eyes, the best Christianity is no Christianity.
At its best it’s an antiquated belief system that has no real world applications in our world. It’s only good moral messages are common sense things you should already know, the rest is just filler and opinions and fictions, concocted, edited and man made books, picked by committees of old religious leaders and oligarchs. The teachings of Christianity have done nothing but fuel colonizers and monsters throughout history
Probably the cherry-picking of which beliefs to follow based on convenience, rather than just wanting to be a better person for the sake of it.
You could just follow all of them. Although it’s incredibly difficult, as Christianity basically demands perfection.
If you followed all the things the Bible says you should do, you’d probably be in prison and rightfully so
Like what?
Which denomination would you like me to focus on to answer this question?
And yes, frankly I think in a lot of cases no Christianity in the modern era would be better than none.
I know this is going to be a wildly unpopular opinion: regulations like these are written in blood. There was apparently no real effort to make the church properly habitable. People would be just as outraged (or more) if this headline was describing 18 charred bodies found in a burned down church that was REPEATEDLY told to do things the right way.
If this was anything other than performative or a malicious attempt to secure lawsuits and/or headlines, the church would have been updated, they would have secured an appropriate facility, or these people would be in the congregation’s homes.
regulations like these are written in blood
Absolutely 100% completely. But in this case it I’m not sure the church is actually violating codes, but rather the city is using the claim as a smokescreen to punish them for helping homeless people.
This article quotes the city.
Bryan’s planning and zoning administrator gave the church 10 days to stop housing people, saying it was in a zone that does not permit residential use on the first floor.
The only thing worse then inadequate housing is no fucking housing in the winter
Couldn’t make it past one paragraph, article or comment 👍.
Sorry, i get where your coming from, but if they were actually interested in helping or protecting the homeless, they would have stepped in to assist in an emergency. But their intention is to make the homeless problem “disappear”
You’re right, but people won’t want to hear it. The people on the other side are right, too - it isn’t better to freeze to death than it is to die from smoke inhalation. But you just don’t violate fire code in public buildings, or people die. Anyone could list dozens of examples of this happening with tragic results after a basic web search.
The correct response to this situation would have been for the city government to assist the pastor in meeting the fire code, especially since he is providing a valuable public service by housing the people that nobody else wants to help.
Instead of a peaceful solution that probably would have been cheap to the taxpayer and could have been a PR bonus for the city, they chose to smack him with the letter of the law. Because people freezing to death in the streets isn’t their fault, but people burning to death after the city overlooked a fire code violation would be. All they care about is their liability.
The problem is that this fire code wasn’t written in blood, it was written in cash. The specific code they were violating was that commercial zones cannot house people on the first floor. That’s it. There’s no actual safety issue there.
Just so we’re clear, that’s the ground floor?
Correct- in other words, the one that is fastest and easiest to get out of in the case of a fire.
This whole thing is really disingenuous. Here’s the article. HOWEVER. Look who represented the pastor: First Liberty. They’re a law group that only takes ideological cases, cases that would allow Christians to violate laws with impunity. This initial case was covered by The Friendly Atheist (Hemant Mehta) a few months back; it’s not a simple case of a kind-hearted pastor trying to help homeless people, and accidentally violating some zoning codes along the way.
At least you’re consistent with not wanting Christians to get special treatment
I would love it if Christians would actually help homeless people rather than using them in a legal ploy to expand religious exceptionalism.
Your link doesn’t paint a different picture than the OP.
IIRC the conditions were exceptionally bad, and the action appeared to be tailored to make a legal argument that a (Christian) church wasn’t bound by things like health and safety codes, occupancy limits, or zoning.
It’s strategically created to make the Christian church in question seem sympathetic, although he could have moved to a different location, and/or complied with health and safety codes.
Again - look for what Hemant Mehta has written about this. I can’t find the podcast ATM, and I’m too sick (flu) to spend all day trying to find anything he would have written about it.
If Jesus showed up he would be considered a radical woke liberal.
“Love your neighbor” somehow became report your neighbor to ICE
To be fair to Trump, ideology is always co-opted and interpreted however convenient. The Nazis were “socialist” after all. NK is a people’s republic. etc
