There’s a very easy answer that most Christian conservatives will quickly provide - God makes all things possible. Whether in its most primitive, logic-defying form, or in the more thought-out “Humans are imperfect and thus cannot run a perfect system, unlike God”, few Christians will actually be caught on the surface-level contradiction.
Why are we censoring “communism”?
same reason people say “unalive” and “fuggen” and “child 🌽”… the Internet has become a place for self censoring idiot babies afraid of being algorithmically demonitized/banned
corporate monopolies of all popular platforms has kneecapped actual free speech by training entire generations to be afraid of violating terms of service, I guess
Also too fucking lazy to redo the “meme” without censorship (and sometimes, better quality)
Alternatives:
“unalive”
in cases of homicide: “Ended [Person]'s Life”
or, in cases of suicide: “Ended their own life”
it bypasses most mainstream censors while maintaining the seriousness of it
“child 🌽”
“CSAM” is usually the term that people use these days, I don’t think the term "CSAM is censored
The most successful nations in terms of citizen happiness use mixed-economics. Nordic nations have the blueprint. We just need to use it.
So complete justice system reform, cut the police force, strong wide reaching unions, and strong social welfare.
That does sound heavenly…
Conservatives: “Socialism Bad!”
“Norway is a successful Socialist State”
Conservatives: “But that isn’t socialism!”
“Okay, then lets use whatever that system is”
Conservatives: “SOCIALISM BAAAD! 😡😡😡”
(It’s called Social Democracy btw, which the conservates also hate)
Religion is like a shoe. Yours won’t fit me and mine won’t fit you. So let’s just let each other walk.our own ways without trying to push us along our paths
Replace “Religion” with “Truth” and you’ll see why this doesn’t work.
Religion is a tool to manipulate people according own will based on stories that happened similar in real world. Similar, meaning, the religion master picked stories that helped them explain why people have to behave like he says and maybe added som flavour here and there.
Please, people, can we just stop falling for it?
And what do you think the Buddha’s big master plan was, what with telling people to seek enlightenment?
And you think the BBS accurately represents the teachings of the Buddha, and the whole of Buddhism? I asked about the Buddha’s master plan, you’re trying to answer my question with this BBS article?
Well, one can use religion manipulation for things that are not evil as well.
Doesn’t makes it any better in my eyes, as think it is disrespectful, telling people fictional enhanced stories to manipulate. I prefer the scientific way of thinking and explaining. People understand way more than you think, if you just try to explain it in logical steps that they can follow.So you think Aesop’s Fables are bad?
I don’t know them, but if they are written to manipulate I surly dislike them, yes (I assume that because of the style you are asking)
With our concept making apparatus called “mind” we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled “reality” and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see “reality” differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the level of concept.
We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle. Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.
Anti-Christian communists should read the gospels. They’re the actual basis of the Christian religion and are enlightening.
Blabla your sky daddy doesn’t interest me
No one should read any religious dogma. Shit should be thrown in the bin and left there.
In spite of their persecution complex, Christianity is the largest religion by population worldwide and in many countries. Understanding the way they think can be useful in dealing with them.
The gospels were written by anonymous authors decades to nearly a hundred years after Christianity became a religion, and then became canonized centuries afterwards.
They’re not the basis of Christianity, the Epistles are; and even many of those are forgeries. And those were just cementing the strictures of the existing mystery cult.
There are plenty of Christians who specifically and deliberately oppose attempting to make life on earth more like heaven. They’re not being hypocrites for this, this is their belief system. To disagree with them is to wade into a theological debate, not just a political one.
Jesus was a socialist
Jesus was a first century Jew, he was almost certainly not a socialist.
Agree.
Do we have to censor the word communism now?
Self censor so hot right now!
Can’t have designer outrage without it.
Now = since Red Scare
The absolute worst is them saying socialism is pessimistic because it thinks people can’t do anything for themself and coddles them with a nanny state. Then turns around and says “you have to structure capitalism assuming every single person is a greedy sociopath hellbent on fucking over everyone else to make money.”
And that the only acceptable form of socialism is charity. And like. FFS
Ancaps/libertarians as well.
you have to structure capitalism assuming every single person is a greedy sociopath hellbent on fucking over everyone else to make money.
So… Social Democracy? Which they also oppose? 🤔
Not exactly, the argument (is incoherent and insane) is something like “you can’t have too much democracy and centralized power because people in power are always corrupt.” ✨Somehow✨ laissez-faire capitalism is supposed to naturally account for corruption and sociopathy because the free market forces(???) them to do good things because people are able to spend their money somewhere else. Always non-violent btw ❤️
Lol their argument is lame then.
You can’t trust a democratically-elected government, but can somehow trust non-elected CEOs? 🤣
But it’s true. Psychopaths tend to end up in CEO, and other leadership positions more often, as they are not afraid to literally kill to get ahead.
To be fair, the heaven of the Bible is neither stateless nor classless. “The nations” are still present in Revelation 21 and 22, and inequality in heaven is a common theme in Jesus’s parables.
Revelation 21 and 22 describe changes in the city of Jerusalem and basically nothing else. 🤦♂️
“The nations” is just fancy for “non Jews”. Remember that the bible predates modern nation states by more than a millennium.
inequality in heaven is a common theme in Jesus’s parables.
Is that so? I can think of the story with the lamps where it’s about getting into the kingdom of god or the treasure in the field where it’s about finding the kingdom of god. Or that the poor will inherit the kingdom of god while rich people cannot get into it. Nothing about inequality inside the kingdom of god.
You have to keep in mind that the kingdom of god isn’t really heaven as we think of it even tho Matthew uses the wording kingdom of heaven (to avoid the word god as a good jew). We think of heaven as life after death but the kingdom of god is on earth when Jesus returns and the dead arise and he builds his kingdom here.
“Least”/“Greatest” in “the kingdom of heaven” is a construction that appears at least once off the top of my head, Matthew 5:19. I’m sure there are more. But also, Jesus is depicted as a literal monarch and heaven a kingdom like you said, so there’s at least one extra class right there.
Why are you guys all able to recall random bits of the bible. What normal people are even reading this stuff in the last 40 years?
I had it drilled into my head as a kid. When I left home I forgot most of it. Then as an adult I brushed up on it to argue with the kind of people who drilled it into my head as a kid.
lol.
I see your point but hear me out:
Saying “The only one I call king is the one who died at the cross” subverts the very concept of a king. Not only is this guy no longer here to directly command anyone but his death was the most humiliating to him and his followers possible. In this way, it’s anti-authoritarian. Similar with the greatest in the kingdom of god. It’s the last you would think of: the poor, the children, … . Sure, this leaves place for interpretation. You can say it’s just a new hierarchy. Or it’s so radically putting everything into question that it’s in effect a call against all hierarchies. Or that it’s so radical, it can’t be taken serious at all so barely means anything anymore.
Christianity as a whole shows all of this. The first communes shared everything in common, there was “neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus”. (Gal 3, 28). Later a new hierarchy establish which, once established, wasn’t new or subversive anymore but just a top down hierarchy. Once in a while someone came with a more subversive reading, more often than not founding a new organization that ended up with a strict hierarchy.
I think the biggest flaw is that there is no sustainable alternative given. You can criticize capitalism all day long and reinforce it as a system without an alternative if you don’t give one. Some Christians found alternatives and supported them with the scripture, others supported very different things with scripture. That’s the thing with all world religions: They start in opposition to society but fail to think outside the box and so they end up reinforcing it while keeping the seldom fulfilled potential for a better society (“world region” in the sense Graeber uses the term in Debt and Graham discusses in this podcast episode I guess but I’m not sure).
All that said, since the first Christians certainly had a very egalitarian, anti-authoritative reading, this is the most authoritative reading (pun intended).
This is good stuff; your argument is well reasoned. Brings me back to my Bible study days.
I still think “all hierarchies” might be overbroad. The Bible itself prescribes elders/bishops and deacons to administer the church, for instance, and it’s radical enough regarding obedience to authority that, in my experience, modern day theologically conservative churches trend toward authoritarianism and mostly unchecked abuse of power more often than not. This would have been contemporaneous with the communes.
As for the more heavenly hierarchies, I looked back at some of the points of evidence that I was going to bring up here that I thought supported my case, but the “outer darkness” in Matthew 22 I once thought might not necessarily be hell sure seems like hell upon rereading, and as for the parable of the unforgiving servant who was sent to the “torturers” despite his debts being forgiven, it looks like that word “torturers” is connected to jailers, i.e. debtors’ prison, so I can’t argue confidently that the servant was “saved” from anything and given a different punishment instead. There are still a few passages I can’t totally square though:
The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32): He gets welcomed back into the family, and he sure seems saved in the sense that I think most Christians would read into it, but his inheritance is spent; he doesn’t get more. All the father has belongs to the other son.
The purifying fire of 1 Corinthians 3:9-15: Both groups of people are explicitly “saved”. One is rewarded, the other suffers loss.
The parable of the talents/minas: In the Matthew 25 version of the parable, the first two servants get the same reward (authority over “many things”). No issue there. But in the Luke 19 version, the rewards are proportional. And the one with 10 minas gets a bonus at the end.
That’s as far as I got before my eyes glazed over.
There’s also 11 classes of angels in a ladder system under Jesus. My boys Metatron and Enoch up top if I’m not mistaken.
Is that a Catholic thing?
It’s a Dead Sea scrolls thing
This is really fascinating. I never heard of this.
Is there a non-religious, ELI5 resource I can read more about this?
Dan McClellan videos on YouTube and TikTok are great and accessible discussions of a lot of academic Bible research.
I never had much use for non-religious secondary sources back when I was a believer, so I can’t recommend any, but the New Testament isn’t actually that long; you could probably finish it in a week if you read 20-30 chapters a day, and the chapters are short. The first three books, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and to a lesser extent the fourth, John, are all the same; you can probably just pick one (John is probably the most interesting) and read the rest of the NT as is. Whether or not it’s worth your time is entirely up to you. I certainly have no intention of reading it again any time soon.
I think nothing outside of the gospels is of any merit. It is probably worth your time to read the red words in the bible. Jesus was on some real shit, minus all the son of god stuff
Before people get huffy yes I have read the entire bible; it is not “the most beautiful book ever written” nor anything close to that, but Jesus was an interesting dude
You also can not read the bible as if it’s modern English and interpret it as such. Always consider 1. who was talking then, 2. who they were talking to, and 3. the context in which they were speaking at the time.
Yeah it’s called Theogany by Hesiod
How is Ancient Greek poetry about the origin of the Greek gods relevant here?
Peep this.
It’s the inspiration for the Bible.
How???
Like, you can do some really interesting conversations about Neo Platonism and philo-semitism around the time some of the New Testament was being written - Gnosticism undoubtedly comes from Greek philosophy - but many portions of the Hebrew Bible predate Hesiod entirely.
Can you provide any form of argument, or is this some shit you picked up from like Zeitgeist or something.
Alan watts
Didn’t Alan Watts usually talk about (his extremely westernized interpretation of) Zen Buddhism? When has Alan Watts made the strange argument that ancient Israelites were somehow aware of Greek mythology and a specific text that wasn’t even written until at least many of the minor prophets books were written?
When has Alan Watts ever really been focused on the development of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament and it’s relationship to Greek mythology? Do you have a link to his argument?
Edit: Checked out and skimmed Myth & Ritual in Christianity online to see if what you are saying is in there. I strongly suspect that you are seriously misinterpreting ideas related to Jung and the collective unconscious (as does Zeitgeist), but feel free to clarify.
I was going to upvote but you were right at 666 so I couldn’t bring myself to
I’ve come to the conclusion that Christians that vote republic just dissociate their “church” brain vs their non “church” brain. Their religious beliefs ONLY apply to religious things. Everything else just goes to whatever their true value system is.
I don’t think most religious people have any beliefs, they just roll with whatever stances are currently popular amongst their peers. If a large enough number of their peers say their god says slavery is valid, then they will say slavery is valid, or a million other horrible things
True, I definitely think most religious people don’t think too much about what they’re believing in.
Funny you mentioned this.
Apparently feeding school kids for free was controversial (and still is controversial).
And I watched a fellow parent on Facebook post an event about bake sales to raise money, to immediately sharing talking points about why it’s bad for kids to get free school lunches.
I don’t have children or religion and I believe every child should be fed for free at school and that should include breakfast.
It is like UBI, just for kids
And don’t get me wrong, I am all in into making capitalism a little bit less bad by introducing UBI.
The Bible as a text has zero issues with slavery. The Old Testament thinks it’s fine to sell your daughter. The New Testament tells slaves to submit to their masters.
Your average Christian has very little knowledge of what the Bible actually contains. Non denominational Protestant Christianity’s focus on the personal relationship with God and their interpretation of ‘Biblical literalism’ means that you just squint at the text and read what you want from it.
I remember listening to some particularly painful exegesis on David killing the Amalekite messenger being some kind of message on not tattling to your boss about things. They don’t read things in context - they read snippets and verses and work in their pop culture understandings about hell, Satan, and salvation into the text.
You can be anything you want, so long as you go to church on Sunday and say “sorry”. For example…mafia, pedophile priests and politicians.
Even little old me? I should start going to church and also start being evil.
Yes, my son. You may be as evil as you wish, so long as you say “sorry” on Sunday, Heaven’s doors will be open to you. God help you if you die on a Saturday, though… :)
😈I sowwy jebus
LOL
That’s not how it works. You have to mean it when you repent. If you go killing someone with the intent to just repent later, you are basically screwed. As you probably won’t truly regret what you have done.
Maybe, but I don’t think that’s how the bad guys see it. Else there would be no bad guys who are religious.
It’s not only that, but you must also turn from your sin and towards God. That is, make a conscious commitment not to sin.
“Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord,” Acts 3:19
(2) "Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? (3) I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.” Luke 13:2-3
Nah, they’re the ones complaining jesus is too woke
I think this dude is incapable of dissociating, so he just forces his true value system onto his church beliefs. He will ignore the text that contradicts his own values. There’s definitely lots of people like that.
I mean that basically describes Christianity as a whole. The entirety of the religion throughout human history is basically people reforming it to suit their needs. True of most religions really.
Fundies have a more two-class system in mind for Heaven: God-King and unquestionably loyal fans.
So like Trump and MAGA. Figures
Oooh baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth
What if heaven is just whatever you need heaven to be? Like, what if it’s just a temporary state of affairs? You enter Heaven, and it is exactly what you need to be at peace with your death and your life before that. Then, when you’re ready, after however much time you need, you can decide to move on and stop existing, or send your soul to be reincarnated.
Watch The Good Place.
Funny you should mention temporary - in a way, that’s true of Christian view. ‘Heaven’ in a broad sense is much broader, but the sense of where are ‘you’ after you die, is temporary until the resurrection, where people are once again in a very physical body (but now immortal and undamaged) on a very physical (re)new(ed) earth.
This is similar to what Rick Riordan (author of Percy Jackson) suggests in one of his other works - that the afterlife is simply whatever you believe it to be. It’s pretty comforting imo.
Personally I wouldn’t like it to be what you believe it to be, rather what you need it to be. Some people don’t know what they need until they have it. You can believe that Heaven is endless sitting in a circle and piling devotion upon God, but if that isn’t actually going to help you be at peace, then what good is it gonna do you? How is a baby going to form a belief of what their afterlife is?
No, I reckon Heaven ought to be what you need, not what you want. I want my afterlife to be me being a series of Isekai protagonists in my favourite fictional universes because I secretly want to feel clever and powerful and knowledgeable about things to come, but indulging me probably isn’t the best way to put me at peace.
Seems to be the approach of MCU as well 🤔
The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.
Just so everyone knows, the word you should be using is socialism. Communism is what you call it when socialist pick up guns and other weapons and take over by force using violence. Socialism = good, communism = bad.
Can we all agree that no matter how bad this gets, we shouldn’t stoop to their level?
No.
Nope, that’s not what communists mean, when communists talk about communism. What you describe is the dictatorship of the proletariat, not communism aka the time when all means of production are owned communally, everyone enjoys working according to their ability and lovingly shares all goods according to their needs.
Of course, if you use the term “communism” to refer to the political movement that tries to achieve communism through revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, you’re 100 % right.
