• rglullis@communick.news
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    1 day ago

    A very short description would be to look at the Bible not as prescriptive rulebook which we should be using to measure ourselves against, but as a descriptive collection of stories that can help us make sense of human nature and understand that all these “contradictions” are not meant to be solved, but manifestations of our fallibility.

    E.g, I see the story of Babel and I don’t think “that’s why we have different languages in the world” or “if you try to reach God by other means than salvation, He will punish you” but simply “technological progress and science alone are not enough to bring us closer to some utopia (closer to God)”. I think of Kosher diets not as “if you eat pork you are a bad person and deserve eternal damnation”, but “at that time and historical contexts, pork meat was full of deadly pathogens, so it would be wise to avoid it”.

    This is just scratching the surface and it would take a bit more time than I have now, but I will try my best to answer you later.

    • Dasus@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      More ignoring and crying how “you’re not supposed to take it seriously, but actually we tell everyone that taking it seriously is the 1. tenet of Christianity and that we do take it seriously, but NONE OF US EVEN ACTUALLY READ IT LOL

      Read the fucking thing and if you’re not a coward, you’ll stop calling yourself a Christian.

      No pls don’t attempt to defend it before you actually fucking read the Bible.

      • rglullis@communick.news
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        1 day ago

        Which part of I don’t care about whether I fit or not into your definition of “being a Christian” you didn’t get?

        actually we tell everyone that taking it seriously is the 1. tenet of Christianity

        “Taking it seriously” does not imply “being forced to accept that everything must be taken literally even when stretched to its extreme logical conclusions”.

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Who cares.

          I’m pointing out that any definition includes believing in the Bible, as it’s a core tenet in Christianity.

          I’m not here to tell you what to believe. I’m just saying my personal belief is that anyone claiming to be Christian (other monotheist) while not even having read the scripture is a hypocrite who’s only doing it out of social pressure.

          • rglullis@communick.news
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            1 day ago

            believing in the Bible

            “Believing in the Bible” does not imply “being forced to accept that everything must be taken literally even when stretched to its extreme logical conclusions”.

            To be accepted into the Church, you need to accept Jesus and renounce your sins. No one was asked to read the whole Bible and accept it as some Terms and Conditions.

            claiming to be Christian while not even having read the scripture is a hypocrite

            And I’m saying that arguing over the validity of “claims to be Christian” is irrelevant to anyone but fundamentalists.

            who’s only doing it out of social pressure.

            Social pressure from which side? Taking this thread as a sample, it seems that the only ones that care about “claims of being Christian” are the extremists.

            • Dasus@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              And I’m saying that arguing over the validity of “claims to be Christian” is irrelevant to anyone but fundamentalists.

              This is what I meant with the part about how you could change your religion in the conversation to be literally whatever and the conversation would still be exactly the same. So clearly you don’t even know the tenets or sacraments or anything about Christianity, so why would you identify as one?

              Social pressure from which side? Taking this thread as a sample, it seems that the only ones that care about “claims of being Christian” are the extremists.

              We don’t know each other in any social context. Me using logic here is not “social pressure”. Your grandma being pissed at you if you had to point to her what a whackadoodle you need to be to profess belief in the Bible is social pressure.

              Did I mock my grandma for her religion or criticise Christianity to her? Of course fucking not, I loved her. But this is a literal thread asking about religion, and I’m pointing out the hypocrisy, which I think isn’t wrong for this thread.

              I’m asking pretty simple questions and not saying what people should do or believe in.

              • rglullis@communick.news
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                1 day ago

                This is what I meant with the part about how you could change your religion in the conversation to be literally whatever and the conversation would still be exactly the same.

                Really? As an exercise, imagine you are a gay man and you went to talk about it with a priest. Now imagine the same gay man going to talk about it with an Imam. How do you think these conversations would go?

                Take your best shot, give both of them the most charitable/noble representation of their respective values. Do you really think that we would get the same outcomes?

                • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  As an exercise, imagine you are a gay man and you went to talk about it with a priest. Now imagine the same gay man going to talk about it with an Imam. How do you think these conversations would go?

                  Both would work quite well in Finland.

                  In Iran or the US, theocracies, they wouldn’t work either.

                  You know that monotheism is exclusive and hates differences. Yet you’re too fucking scared to call them out on what they are, because the Mary-Sues and Josephs at your local bible-camp wouldn’t like it.

                  Monotheism is absolute cancer which hates everything different.

                  Anyone who’s read basics of history and theology knows that

                  Back in polytheistic societies like Norway and Greece etc, people were far more progressive than comparative monotheist societies.

                  Yet you defending Christianity. It’s ridiculous. You don’t know anything and you don’t follow any tenets. So you don’t actually believe in the 10 commandments. Who the fuck does?

                  Yet you’re too scared to call it the BS it is. You can still enjoy community without claiming to be a Christian. Perhaps in America you can’t…?

                  • rglullis@communick.news
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                    1 day ago

                    You can still enjoy community without claiming to be a Christian. Perhaps in America you can’t…?

                    I’m born and raised in Brazil. Lived in the US from 2008 to 2013. Now I’m living in Germany - more specifically, in Berlin.

                    In the US, I had some family and friends. In Germany I was all on my own, so I’ve tried getting integrated. I went out to meet different people. I wasn’t just stuck in my room all day long. The friends that I did do turned out to be invariably Italians, Polish, Israelis, Spaniards. The best I could say about the people from Nordic backgrounds were “they are my acquaintance”. Dating in Berlin was weird - much similar to New York - where I’d never know if I was just getting myself into some mindless hook-up or a detailed plan establishing the contract terms of the relationship.

                    I was in 3 years already in Berlin and I was seriously considering moving out, when I’ve met a (Greek) woman who I am so very lucky to be able to call “my wife”. She had moved to Berlin just one year before me, and though she had a much larger social circle than mine, they were also mostly of other Greeks. When we started dating, her group of friends didn’t see me as an attachment to her friend. They took me in as part of the group. I’ve became friends with them as well, we would go play ball or hang out even if my then-girlfriend couldn’t make that one night.

                    All of this to say: you are getting at this backwards. I’m not saying that I went to the religion to get “accepted” by peers. What I am saying is that even when I was surrounded by people, they were pretty much all of them completely atomized individuals. This feeling only changed when I found myself closer to people with other cultures who still have a higher attachment to their cultural roots.

            • Dasus@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              that everything must be taken literally

              And if you say you have a belief system, but then that belief system doesn’t have any tenets, any scripture, and the scripture it has means nothing or that you actually haven’t even read the scripture that you claim to believe in “non-literally”, you don’t actually have a belief system.

              To be accepted into the Church, you need to accept Jesus and renounce your sins. No one was asked to read the whole Bible and accept it as some Terms and Conditions.

              Jesus, you really don’t know jack shit of the religion you claim to believe in. Yes, there very much is a "read thr while Bible and confirm your Faith.

              It’s literally called a confirmation.

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

              Now the practice in the modern world isn’t as common, because it’s easier to just default to “you accepted the T&C with your Baptism”, but it is still a literal SACRAMENT in the religion. (I don’t believe you could list other sacraments, or even the meaning of the word.)

              I have had a confirmation. You literally spend a week reading the Bible, after which you get confirmed. No, you can’t fail, it’s not a test, but it does show you how ridiculous the Bible is and it’s just a fun thing for teenagers to do and you get loads of money as presents from family members.

              You don’t seem to know anything about Christianity, you don’t seem to have any rules set by it, you don’t seem to be able to say you believe in any specific bit in it, yet you claim that you definitely are.

              And I’m just asking WHY?

              You could just as well claim you’re some other religion, like Buddhism, and then just pretend your beliefs come from that. As of now in this conversation, changing your religion wouldn’t change the conversation a single bit. That’s how little Christianity matters to you, but you since there’s social pressure, you won’t accept any of this.

              • rglullis@communick.news
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                1 day ago

                you don’t actually have a belief system.

                Okay. I’ll grant you that. I don’t particularly care about the “belief system”. I don’t particularly care about doctrine. I don’t believe that the Earth is 6000 years old and I don’t live my life thinking of where I will end up once I’m gone. If this is your only idea of “being Christian”, then I’m certainly not it.

                And I’m just asking WHY?

                Because of the community that comes with it. Because of the culture that is developed around it. Because it is the foundation of the Western World. Because most of the people/cultures that I’ve seen trying to reject those values have lost themselves to something worse. Because other religions seems to treat this world as a mere passage way, and Judeo-Christian cultures are also concerned about working to leave this place better than what was found.

                • Dasus@lemmy.world
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                  1 day ago

                  If this is your only idea of “being Christian”, then I’m certainly not it.

                  Dude I’ve literally shown you how much more I know and understand about Christianity than you do. You know that you didn’t know what a confirmation is, much less being able to name ALL the sacrament. Hell, you probably even wouldn’t be able to define the word without googling.

                  I can list all the sacrament, because I’ve studied the Bible and Christianity, as a former Christian who was brought up in Christianity.

                  But you don’t even admit to your ignorance about your own faith, when said ignorance is literally the point of this conversation.

                  Because of the community that comes with it.

                  Yeah, just like I said, hypocritical believers who are just too scared to admit the ONLY REASON they’re identifying as Christians is LITERALLY that others wouldn’t accept them not identifying as a Christian.

                  That’s exactly my point.

                  However in more secular countries, you can. You don’t need to be a part of the church to engage in social activities and people don’t socially hang you out to dry if you acknowledge what ridiculous contradictory bullshit the Bible is.

                  Because other religions seems to treat this world as a mere passage way, and Judeo-Christian cultures are also concerned about working to leave this place better than what was found.

                  WRONG. Propaganda, bullshit and utterly fucking wrong.

                  Monotheism is a destructive and hateful. It’s indoctrination, and make people worse than they would be without monotheism. Without monotheism, we would already have our gay luxury space communism.

                  I know more about Christianity than you do, you’re just scared to accept Criticism_of_monotheism.

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

                  • rglullis@communick.news
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                    1 day ago

                    Dude I’ve literally shown you how much more I know and understand about Christianity than you do.

                    Was this a competition? I wasn’t aware. Congrats, you won!

                    Without monotheism, we would already have our gay luxury space communism.

                    So now you are going to be making two arguments:

                    • Explain what is “good” about gay luxury communism
                    • Show why no other non-religious society reached that status - which is hard because the best proponents do is “so-and-so atheist society was not real communism” and the worst is “we haven’t seen it yet because we need to destroy everyone else to implement it”.
          • Maeve@kbin.earth
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            1 day ago

            Things evolve, necessarily. Anyone trying to insist things not evolve is gonna have a hard life.

            • Dasus@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              So you’re arguing that Christianity has evolved out of it’s core tenets?

              I’m sorry, but monotheism is dogmatic. Another word that’s sure to ring a bell, but you seem to have missed the meaning of it.

              Christianity is a dogmatic religion. Google the sentence if it doesn’t make sense otherwise. Or more specifically, it contain dogma.

              Excellent movie btw, for Christians or non-Christians, all alike. Full movie on YouTube completely for free and good quality https://youtu.be/XlIORIds1xc