If there is heaven and there are people there, it’s already a problem for me. No need to add other things.
I think it might have something to do with those “Christians” envisioning heaven as an implicit ethnostate.
Socialism seems ugly to them because it involves the people who seem ugly to them being cared for.
But they’d never say it out-loud; most can’t even see that’s what their twisted little hearts desire.
Seen this clip from some american fundie podcast that was… a choice.
This person was asked something like, if you could have world peace, but all governments become socialist, would you do it? They said no and fucking justified their answer with a partial quote from something like Deuteronomy 15:7-11, claiming that well the bible says there’ll always be the poor so socialism is actually bad because of that, and a quick search to see if I could find it there’s a lot of stuff echoing the same stuff, that socialism is unbiblical etc.
What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? I’m irreligious but was raised Christian, this is so vehemently counter to my understanding of Christian teachings (the flavour of which I was raised has atheist ministers so there’s that), which was more or less, raise everyone up, accept everyone for who they are, help people, don’t turn a blind eye to injustice and like just be decent to each other. Was this podcast prosperity doctrine shit or something else because yeah wow, it’s honestly sinister to me.
They begin with the conclusion (e.g. socialism bad), and then find whatever they can in their shitty book to justify it.
Yeah, just like everything else, they are cherry picking passages that support the conclusion they’ve already reached on their own
I was raised as a fundamentalist, but I got out.
American evangelical fundamentalists firmly believe in heirarchy— children are under the authority of their mother, who is under the authority of her husband, who is under the authority of God.
They see any disruption of this heirarchy as an attack on their religion.
Taxes? You’re usurping the man’s authority to spend his money as he sees fit.
Women’s liberation? You’re usurping the man’s authority over his wife.
Entitlements? You’re usurping the man’s authority to use his pocketbook as leverage over his family.
Immigration? You’re usurping the man’s authority by lowering his cultural relevance.
LGBTQ+ acceptance? You’re usurping the man’s authority by undermining the patriarchy.
You’ve probably noticed a pattern as to who is primarily driving these issues.
Yup. Funny all the people blaming the bible like the dude up there calling it a stupid book… obviously hasn’t read it. The bible has great lessons, 90% of Christians just ignore them is all. Don’t blame the book for the idiots who claim to follow it when they actually aren’t. Even the stuff wanna be Christians quote thinking it supports their argument they are either misunderstanding or leaving out vital context. Real Christians are very rare and almost never associated with an organized church. They just quietly try to do their best they don’t try to use their belief to justify the rest of their life and bad decisions.
I think they just lack vision and don’t actually want to change the real world, just dream of a better place
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
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
Anti-Christian communists should read the gospels. They’re the actual basis of the Christian religion and are enlightening.
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.
No one should read any religious dogma. Shit should be thrown in the bin and left there.
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
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? 🤣
Ancaps/libertarians as well.
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.
The most successful nations in terms of citizen happiness use mixed-economics. Nordic nations have the blueprint. We just need to use it.
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)
So complete justice system reform, cut the police force, strong wide reaching unions, and strong social welfare.
Fundies have a more two-class system in mind for Heaven: God-King and unquestionably loyal fans.
So like Trump and MAGA. Figures
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
In the eternal words of Bob Marley:
Some people think
Great God will come from the sky
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high
But if you know what life is worth
You will look for yours on earth
And now we see the light
We’re going to stand up for our right
🥰🫶🏻
Heaven is an autocratic police state though
Yup. The common answer to “why does evil exist” is that humans have free will.
Therefore it follows that if there is no sin in heaven, there is also no free will.
Ssshhh, you’re not supposed to actually think it through!
Communism in theory: A stateless, classless, moneyless utopia where everyone shares resources based on need. Communism in practice: Authoritarian regimes, economic inefficiency, suppression of dissent, and a state that never ‘withers away’ like Marx imagined.
Every major attempt, USSR, Maoist China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, has resulted in centralized power, mass repression, and economic collapse. The problem isn’t just ‘bad leaders’; it’s that a system requiring absolute cooperation and selflessness on a societal scale is fundamentally unworkable. Human nature, resource scarcity, and the need for incentives all get in the way.
So yeah, communism sounds nice on paper, but history proves it turns into a dystopia instead of a utopia every time.
We need to stop idealizing communism because it doesn’t work.
Human nature, resource scarcity, and the need for incentives all get in the way
For now. Why not keep looking and find a way to make it work?
Of course we need to continue to do this just not with Communism.
Unchecked capitalism also leads to bad outcomes, including ecological collapse.
We need something that isn’t “a handful of people have all the power”
Social democratic republic with heavy consumer backed regulation and woodchippers
It would be important that the regulation is constantly protected. The forces of greed will constantly be trying to dismantle it, and people are kind of stupid.
Maybe the woodchippers do some of the heavy lifting there, but you then need to make sure they don’t get used for evil
Democracy requires eternal vigilance. Democracy would fall if people stop caring about elections, and the socialist policies would be dismantled along with it.
We need an overhauled political system and convince a supermajority of the country to vote infavor of a constitution that entrenches socialist values within it. (A supermajority is essential for better legitimacy, 51%-49% is very flimsy and people would doubt the results, but a 60%-40% is a very high margin and people would be less likely to doubt the results) Then we need a “Constitutional Court” with people who share those values to be seated in the court to defend the constitution.
Sort of like Germany’s “Defensive Democracy”, but with added socialist values.
But in the end, it still requires the people in power to actually do their job. (I’m not sure why Germany still haven’t banned AfD 🤔)
Probably also need to really invest in education. People don’t just magically know political theory, and a lot of bad ideas can sound good at first
Interestingly enough, it’s mostly the right wing that is anti education.
Or we need several generations of a eugenics program that eliminates psychopaths and sociopaths and narcissists. Which could be accomplished without authoritarianism. Imagine an affordable DNA matching service where you find out the odds of a couple having evil kids because even narcissists and sociopaths don’t want the trouble that comes with problem children. It’d be ubiquitous like sonograms at 6 months except you do it prior to conception.
It’s not psychopath sociopathic narcissists that don’t allow communism not to work it’s general human Nature on a large societal scale.
The Spartans practiced a form of eugenics and they were one of the greatest societies in human history and that still doesn’t make them right about what they did.
I highly recommend that you go back and read through some human history before making idiotic comments like this.
All of human history is selective breeding. The lunatic desert people in the Middle East where 1 rich guy has 10 wives and 40 kids is one way of doing it. And, thankfully, post-Magna Carta cultures and ones with greater-female-human-autonomy cultures have another method of selective breeding. And what you just said about broad human nature supports my original statement because fundamentals of human nature change and not just from environmental conditions but inherited tendencies.
Side note: what was so great about Spartans? They seemed like slave-dependent authoritarian assholes that disappeared in a flash.
700 years for a society as strict as Sparta is a pretty big blip whatever a blip might mean to you. Especially since elements of their society is still incorporated in our own.
It sounds like you’re using lots of 100 dollar words in 10 dollar sentences without knowing what they mean. Did you read up on any of that human history we talked about before?
What you lack in reading comprehension you make up for in smarmy quips.
You sound like a Nazi. That is literally 100% out of their playbook. Musk would be proud of you.
Couldn’t you use that argument to disqualify most government types? I mean show me a type of government that hasn’t been perverted. Does North Korea disprove all democratic republics? I mean they call themselves a democratic republic therefore they are a republic right? That’s what you’re using as a definition to deny communism right? Hell I don’t even have to look at the worst example is there a good example of a government that hasn’t been perverted?
No, but objectively, some governments are far better than others. For example, I wouldn’t want to live in the Republic of the Congo or North Korea. Despite the issues we face in America, I still live a comfortable and peaceful life here, and I have no desire to leave. If I were in North Korea or China, however, I would likely be looking for a way out.
Your comment does however provide great examples of the no true Scotsman and appeal to purity fallacies. Though I’d argue that acknowledging the flaws in all governments doesn’t mean they are all equally bad. Some are demonstrably worse than others.
That’s because of Vanguardism
China is in no way, shape, or form, a “Communist” nor “Socialist” country, it’s just State Capitalism.
No Socialist/Communist movement could be successful without democracy. People wouldn’t be able to control the means of production if there is no democracy.
So you’re saying of this vanguard existed I mean as it would work?
When I was fairly young my mom described Christian heaven. I remember struggling with the idea of not struggling and being happy all the time. Then she hit me with if someone you love doesn’t make it to heaven you forget them. That’s when the fracture began for me.
Severance
Its not that you forget the person. You gain a perfect understanding of the situation. Like when your child has to go to jail for some crimes they committed. You may be sad they went to jail, then understand why they went to jail, then agree it was right that they were put in jail.
Not a perfect analogy, but something like that.
im of the opinion that incarceration is wrong and fucked up and kind of always wrong. what if I have a conscience? can I still be religious if I have a conscience and believe in things?
So we join with the God-mind in order to understand why the person we previously loved isn’t worthy of love after all…
Not what I said.
Basically heaven is a mindfuck.
It really is. It’s not even a pleasant thought experiment.
If i could take a moment to cite the opening to the lords prayer:
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
The ability to make one being a christian not by default be a socialist as well is a continuous theological labor for the capitalist
It’s only “communism” if the equality goes to individuals outside of your group. If your group gets the benefits, well, that’s because you’re awesome and you deserve it; but fuck those other guys.
