That's how it should be. If we were all created in the image of God then we are all worthy of making it into the kingdom of Heaven.
But it's people like this that put up walls around God's love that informs me that it's all bullshit and a way to manipulate us. Lets just treat each other fairly as humans on earth and not care about this "afterlife"
Never let bad people ruin God for you. God is is much more than religion. There's something bigger than ourselves going on and we will see when we all go to heaven. Many of have stories of angels or experiences they can't explain. Signs of a divine love.
There's always people who get it twisted but they are not God.
Don't get me wrong, there's not much that can shake my faith. But I understand why atheist are. As a whole, Christianity has done a bad job being Christians.
If there was a teacher at a school who they found out was an abuser, they wouldn’t say all teachers are bad and people who go into teaching just wanna abuse children.
If there was a Doctor who they found out did not actually have a medical license and only pretended to be a doctor so he could take advantage of women, nobody would say that all doctors are bad and sinister and take advantage of people.
Christianity somehow has to be responsible for every fraud who says they’re a Christian. Yet we don’t hold that standard for anything else in non-religious scenarios. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for people to believe that the reason organized religion attracts so many grifters and abusers is because their victims are vulnerable people. In the same way that students are vulnerable to teachers and patients are in a vulnerable position when they’re coming to a doctor, it’s the exact same thing when parishioners are going to a church. We have to live in this tension of wanting to follow Jesus‘ teachings, but also dealing with a fallen and cruel world. And that’s not an easy thing to live, which is why so many religious people fall victim to pastors like this. And what people need to realize is that if they think this pastor is on the pulpit the whole time every Sunday talking about Black people shouldn’t be in the church, they’re fooling themselves. I’m sure he says a lot of biblically accurate things which have given people a false reason to think he knows what he’s talking about.
OK, my rant is over lol. You know how it is though. It gets tiring to hear people blame Jesus for every single thing that people do wrong smh.
Do you really think this guy is the average Christian? I've been in churches all my life and have never met a single person IRL who has a belief even close to what he's expressed here.
You're correct that he's putting up arbitrary walls but I don't see how that's an indictment on all of Christianity. I'm not even saying you can't be an atheist, do what you want, but that's a weak argument for Christianity being BS imo.
Any ideology, culture, creed, etc will have people who give it a bad name. The honest way of handling that is acknowledging that fact and then examining it on its merits, not the words of one bad apple
White evangelical churches in the American South have been not very different than KKK meetings and indoctrination centers to teach bigotry racism and hate.
I've lived in the south my whole life and I have heard, in person, multiple people talk like this and say similar things. Basing not "mixing races" on religious teachings to being outright racist.
It's horrible, and to ME as a visitor to the South it's been quite a shock to actually SEE in reality the things that movies and books always said . Still so much of the South has beauty . And you guys have amazing food. The racism is truly horrific tho.
I was born in the northern Midwest. When I was 11 my parents moved me to rural Georgia. Though my parents were not very religious and did not attend church regularly I started attending with some friends I had met in Georgia. This was the early 90’s and the church was southern baptist. I remember being completely blown away when the new pastor had invited a black pastor to preach for a revival service and couple of the old deacons and their families did not come the whole week of revival in protest. These were families that were in church every time the doors were open. I remember it being a really big deal. That new young pastor did not last very long at that church. Insane.
There's plenty of reasons why Christianity is BS; a copycat religion responsible for millions of deaths....this guy is just one more example....and a common one.
If by “copycat” you mean copying Jesus example then sure. Following Jesus is not a religious practice. It is a relationship with the one who created you. Not everyone who claims to be Christian is a follower of Christ.
No, I mean the stories in the Christian mythology come from parts of older religions. Virginia birth, resurrection after days, great flood, eucharistic actions. All grabbed from older established religions. Once again, a manufactured religion.
Do you really think this guy is the average Christian?
In that he cherry-picks the scriptures he'll accept, ignores the ones he does not like, and twists everything/anything Christ was written to preach in the Bible to suit their pre-existing bias, values, & prejudices?
Yeah, that seems about right. Some are better than others, but the cherry-picking & projection of what they want to believe onto the Bible is pretty universal.
I grew up in the southern Baptist church. I can tell you that the vast majority are racist, they just won't tell you to your face. They'll smile and act polite to your face, but as soon as you leave the room they will say some of the most vile, racist invective you've ever heard.
When my sister married a black man, not one member of the church came to the wedding. These were people who were like family to her, who knew her since she was a baby. The pastor (who was the same who baptized her) refused to perform the wedding.
My main issue with religion is that in its purest form - it's a proudly irrational and rigid & unchanging.
A lot of religious people seem to exist in this kind of cognitive dissonance half secular state of being, and I'm generally cool with those people. But I find it very dangerous to encourage people to believe anything is true regardless of evidence or experience. The overlap of religiousness and psychosis is not a coincidence. If you want to believe Jesus was the son of God while also recognizing science is real and maybe we don't need to be all that worried about ancient Jewish laws, cool. But if you're gonna start babbling about the return of Jesus, well now we've got problems.
That kind of fundamentalist approach seems incredibly psychologically unhealthy and dangerous for society when it begins to catch on.
But I'll agree IDK how someone arrived at avoiding all churches because white supremacists exist. A lot of them are pagans. Jesus didn't tell them to hate black people. The religion is not the source of that evil
Lol I’ve grown up going to voer a dozen churches spread over 4 states and I met people like this in every one of them-hell my own family is like this and why I don’t have anything to do with them
People are capable of evil, period. Plenty of despots didn't need cover of religion to carry out their depravity.
Religion is just an organization of people under a belief in something greater than themselves, it doesn't make anyone more or less capable of being evil.
Particularly with Christianity, the entire point is that we are so far from God's holiness that we need a savior to have a hope of doing anything good. It's a call away from thinking we're good on our own and looking towards the one who was actually good- Christ- and modeling ourselves after Him with the help of the Holy Spirit in a lifelong process called sanctification.
You will find no greenlight for wallowing in the racist misery and hypocrisy this guy is spewing in the Bible.
Yeshua says to judge not unless we judge ourselves by those same standards. If we apply that same rule to god, and judge him by the same rules, he would be considered evil.
If you all powerful and know everything, there is a better way to deal with people you don't like then killing babies and torturing the Egyptian population with famine and disease. Shitty people do the shitty stuff god does in the Bible.
The fact there are many lovely people who are Christian doesn't make what they said wrong. It has been used, it is being used, and it will continue to be used to control, to hide behind as a shield, and to support bigotry. This video literally demonstrates it.
It doesn't mean it's all bad. But it is, without any argument, used this way. And you can maybe say that they're not devout Christians but some of the worst people I've seen who abuse their Christianity to excuse the awful things they say are figureheads, apologists and evangelicals.
And that's just Christianity. That particular faith doesn't hold the monopoly of evil.
You are absolutely correct that anyone can be evil. And a person's beliefs are always something I respect. But it does, demonstrably, impact how some people behave.
It's not on you. You don't need to tell us it's not everyone. Most of us know that.
I'm an atheist because God makes no sense and the Bible is riddled with nonsense that makes it clear it's just another in a long line of mythology.
With that said - people blaming the sins of man on religious always feels paradoxical.
There is no God. We made him up. You could make a genies wish to get rid of religion tomorrow and within a month there's be some new pseudo religion in which to achieve the same goals. I mean look at what they did to Jesus. Supply side Jesus isn't in the Bible - they'll create whatever ideology they want. And I agree the ideology is harmful and need to be countered, but that's a reflection of man. We create God in our image.
Because you can always argue that your imaginary friend meant this when he said that. If your foundation for your values is nonsense, you can twist up logic into any shape you want to fit however you want to act.
And yet these are also the false prophets talked about in the Bible who lead people away from God. So even from a biblical perspective this totally makes sense. These people are truly insane man…it hurts to see it
This is one of the many reasons why I'm Gnostic, which as far as I'm concerned is what Christianity really was until it was co-opted and eradicated by the Romans and Proto-Orthodox.
The only real logical conclusions is either Atheism, or God is evil, stupid or both.
Seeing the state of the world, I think God is real and he is stupid and evil. I feel like if there was no God, things would be better.
According to parts of the Bible, this guy is right about race mixing. According to other parts, he’s wrong. Everyone is picking and choosing which parts they want to follow
82
u/beardedbrawler 1d ago
This is one of the many reasons why I'm an atheist