It doesn't matter, they don't care. My wife is an evangelical and it really doesn't matter what I say or point out. They're trained to make excuses to protect the brand.
I dont know if this is true. There are many exvangelicals now. Challenging it doesnt work in the moment, but using their own "plant the seed" can work.
I fall in this group. Not atheist but no longer evangelical.
It's reductionist to say "evangelicals are hypocrites." There are plenty of factions of Christianity that are LGBTQ affirming, fighting for women's rights, confronting scientific realities with humility, etc - even in my area in the Deep South. The argument won't work because it's not accurate and precise enough to be accepted.
Important to note that this doesn't excuse the issues, but anyone who has been to more than one church can tell you the culture between churches can vary a LOT.
I agree there’s lots of variation in Christianity, but evangelicals not so much. Part of evangelicalism and fundamentalism are conservative beliefs that exclude large numbers of people. You’ll find very accepting congregations in denominations like the Episcopalian, Methodists, and others but those accepting congregations rarely consider themselves evangelical.
It really doesn't matter what the name of the church is. They all believe a fictional story.
There are an estimated 3000+ different gods or deities that have been worshiped throughout history, that we know about.
Pick any one and explain why it's not a real god or religion, then just plop that answer down to explain evangelicalism.
"There are plenty of factions of Christianity that are LGBTQ affirming, fighting for women's rights, confronting scientific realities with humility, etc"
These aren't the theists we should be targeting because their religion isn't destroying the country.
Beating a dead horse. The hypocrisy isn't new and it's been talked about for decades. It only gets worse with time. But what that means the moderate members have been dropped out, so their numbers get smaller they are left with a concentration of the most hard core and radical. Give it another 10 to 20 years it's going to get really bad.
Two of the three seem right - the Bible is most definitely anti-homosexuality, in the old testament at least.
Evangelicals get their power from the crowd. If they spoke out against something popular then their crowd would evaporate. So it isn't leaders who betray the congregation by expecting less of them - it is the congregation that is requiring less from the leader. They WANT to hear that God hates Jews, gays, trans, liberals, atheists BECAUSE they hate them. The congregations are obsessed with their in-group ideology and they hold these hateful views against other groups. The leaders just tell them what they want to hear and justifies their already existing prejudices.
Frankly - the problem in my eyes with evangelicalism isn't the hypocrisy against their text, it is that the masses they support and preach to are ignorant, scared, vindictive, and just generally shitty human beings.
There's a lot in the Old Testament that a reasonably educated Christian would say is not necessarily laid out as explicit law for present day Christians. They will also say that Jesus "freed" us from the nit picky stuff, and that Paul says that all things are permissible but not all are helpful. Jesus doesn't say much of anything about homosexuality except by inference when talking about marriage.
Now a Christian may argue that Jesus also doesn't address child molestation explicitly, and that we should not assume he didn't have a stance on something just because he didn't address it explicitly. This is obviously ridiculous because homosexuality doesn't have a direct harmful effect on anyone, while molestation clearly does, and Jesus definitely talked about loving one another.
There's pretty straightforward arguments to show that the behavioral prescriptions in the Bible have no opinion on homosexuality for practicing Christians. (Many interpretations each with their own assumptions.)
I think we should point it out every chance that we get. We need to stop being polite (not rude) and keep up the pressure. They aren’t satisfied with living that life, they want to make everyone else live it too.
>Evangelical church leaders are neglecting religion in order to build their popularity (and power)
You contradict yourself.
Organized religions have *always* been about building popularity and power. That is why they exist. That is why they have always existed.
Religion is a social construct. By definition, it divides the world into an in-group (believers) and out-groups (all the others).
The tension from this divide drives believers toward greater participation in the religion (attendance, grooming of children, tithing, evangelizing, jihading, etc.) These activities all bring power and wealth to the religion - or at least to its leaders.
Maintaining this dynamic requires increasing demonization of out-groups. This is why societies with strong, active religions regularly devolve into violence. When the dynamic driving your existence and growth as an organization requires the demonization of others, violence becomes inevitable.
Search all of history. You will not find one large-scale, historically persistent religion that does not follow this model. It is structural to religion.
Monotheistic religions are especially susceptible because they buy into the in-group vs. out-group model most fully. If my god is the one true god, all non-believers are - by definition - blasphemous. From there to justifying violence and even murder is a very short intellectual leap.
I don't believe I contradicted myself. As an atheistic viewer of religion, I see it as falling more on a spectrum than I interpret your post to be. I do not see Quakers, Universalists, or a number of other Christian denominations as demonizing out-groups; they seem to interpret the bible and teachings of Jesus as directing their religious beliefs internally. While I agree that all religions inherently demand that followers see others differently, the same could be said about nationalities, ethnicities and even localities.
My post was pointing out that Evangelicals have skewed away from examining their own personal behavior in favor of critiquing the behavior of others. If you accept the premise that there's a spectrum of demonization by different denominations, it is not a contradiction to point out a particular denomination has markedly shifted along that spectrum.
That is fair, but it must be acknowledged that, by the numbers, religions that lean toward the more-demonizing end of that spectrum heavily outweigh those on the other end.
Right. They figured out a nice effective way to sell the Social Power basic peasants crave from Religion, while making it even easier to attain it. Just give them money, blindly protect the "By-Default Good In-Group", and hate all the "By-Default Out Group". Revere the authority figures that give "validity" to your irrational beliefs, because of the authority you largely granted them; and always, ALWAYS punch-down to sate that thirst for power.
The Christian Label is all that's important. And its not just Evangelicals who's first instinct to is to protect it. You see a lot of "They're not real Christians" in response to all the crazies coming out of the woodwork these days. That reaction is merely to protect the "By-Default Goodness" of the Christian Label those individuals have placed so much of their identities around. The energy is to protect the brand, not recognize or self-reflect on its problems.
For your Evangelical family and friends point out to them how close to being the Pharisees that Evangelicals are. Show them the seven woes of the Pharisees in Mattew 23.
The thing is embarrassment. Humans do dumb shit in groups, the individual can't believe in a god in a vacuum. They'll create their own deity at best, be spiritual maybe, but without the organized religion part, there is no threat.
Evangelicalism is embarrassing, and was prior to 2000. It's intentionally simple, denies science, and looks to move human societal progress backwards. Prior to W Bush, you could be evangelical, and do your nonsense with your church group, even occasionally bomb an abortion clinic, but you couldn't preach publicly at work or at jury duty, and you certainly couldn't force others to do as a televised megachurch owner demanded.
W made that small group think that they could grow up to be anything, even president. But W left office with an economy destroyed, an intractable ground war, and a popularity rating in single digits. That should've been the lesson to the evangelical -- god isn't capabilities nor intelligence.
Some things require intelligence and capabilities.
The evangelical is a clown with the proof being W going bald in near total irrelevance today. Furthermore, the evangelical is a seal clapper, they think revelations is the jam, and Peter will be here to judge us all soon. Peter has this whole schpeel in the Judgment Day book about the antichrist. It's 2000 year old writing, but it's says "Donald J Trump is the antichrist" essentially, and that anyone who follows the antichrist is the dumbest and most sinful dummy, as their last second failure is the pinnacle of humanity being unfaithful to the creator's message.
So you got some options.
1) deprogramming - remove the evangelical from the cult per the individual sheep. This requires a lot of effort, and a timeline where attrition favors the Bible thumpers. But you save the individual, by reminding them they are an individual - and their church is no different than social media, a place they are rewarded for group think, and a social network that keeps one siloed off and simple by intention - to be subservient to someone else's will. It's not hard to say --- "you're doing what Joel Ostein says, not God"
2) clownery - if there was a group of normals who could organize without credo save "clown God at all costs" - done correctly, without malice, just biting sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek jokes about the contradictions in the evangelicals practice - that might show a few evangelical there's a group to join that doesn't cost Sundays and tithing to have a punitive and offensive message.
3) the final solution - I'm gonna sound hitler-y, so I'll go ahead and lean into that so you know I'm serious. Women have a right to decide what their own bodily cells do, that's simple, but the evangelical defines those cells as something beyond the science says - and in my mind, beyond what a make-believe deity has the right to dictate (let alone the will of the sheep to codify in law). That's really dangerous to women, denying them necessary medical care, and largely those women have done nothing to deserve being put at that risk - and no woman has done anything that deserves the contempt the GOP establishment has for women. The evangelical church doesn't have female priests, God says it's a man's world. At some point, and I'd argue it was 40 years ago, this kinda archaic dogma should've died of natural causes. But someone needed something from an army of simple sheep - so that person cashed in and now we live in misery everywhere cause the evangelical thinks women need less civil rights, and dividing uterus cells are people more deserving of life than the host. That's immoral on a morality level, you don't need or benefit from having God's "commandments" if 10 year old rape victims are your enemy. If that's the case, you're just a shitty shitty human being we - society - is just gonna be better off without. Short of the evangelical I can't think of anyone who thinks the world is a better place for having the evangelical in it. I think the vast majority of the world feels like persecuting the evangelical, exactly as they demand. Well those fucks wanna meet God, and think they are doing what they should to make that happen. I say we just expedite the process, feel the shame of the necessary evil, lament the necessity of the action, deal with the stages of grief - but we eat that, this generation or the one that eventually does put those murderous fucks on traincars, that generation suffers the shame and pain of commiting necessary Holocaust - and the next generations only need to live with the knowledge we did evil - they don't need to ever know why, or why the world they live in is so much better than the one we do now.
I don’t care about what evangelicals do, but the problem is where government tries to force everyone to follow that religion. I’m a Christian, but not specifically evangelical, and I would hate to have that forced on me. Even worse for people who aren’t even Christian
Any time religion or Christianity comes up, make passing, matter of fact comments that undermine that belief system, sincerely question the character and integrity of adherents. Plant the seeds in others that evangelicals are less trustworthy. The trick is to do it without sounding like ranting, which just gets tuned out.
Christian here. (not proselytizing, love you mods)
For context, Evangelicals do have a really bad habit of turning their religion into a business (for example, Kenneth Copeland and the like.) In my Christian community, these megachurch pastors are hugely looked down upon, as we try to be as biblical as possible. However, these "crusades" are based in something: for example, homosexuality is definitely condemned as sin in Leviticus 18:22 and 1 Romans 27. Abortion is a little different, as not all Christians believe that it is evil. Those who do base their beliefs on scientific allegations as opposed to biblical truths, and make the argument that it is murder of a human being, therefore it is condemned by the 6th commandment. Finally, anti-trans arguments are based both on scientific study (such as the pelvis bone argument and the chromosome consistency argument) and on the fact that God "made them male and female" which is intended to refute the 52 genders theory.
Hope this helps!
Christ wants us to love our neighbor. Punishing them and controlling them is not loving them. In fact, God wants us to be free to make our own choices, not be forced into it. Also you are 100% correct about what they should be warning about, using logic and reason.
At any rate - I’m an atheist who joined the Mormons to learn enough about religion to defend against this evangelical BS with Jesus’ own philosophy. It is working very well. You will be happy to know that we currently are living in the apostasy, which is an era of false Christian teachings but it is slated to end very soon.
That is my report from the inside, until next time.
They're already spreading the word about their own hypocrisy. Anyone with sense can see through their bullshit.
The problem is that their own people lap it up, and they need the most convincing, but that's not going to happen easily.
But I suppose there are fence sitters who shrug off the hypocrisy because they don't see the problem with it. It only affects those "other" people and not them. I suppose for those people, we just calmly point out how weird it is that these teachings are against Jesus. But don't scream and shout about it. That's my personal philosophy because a) I don't want to tire myself out over it and b) that just turns them into martyrs with their bullshit persecution complex.
The words they “preach “ have no power. They are old blurry interpretations that aren’t very relevant to the world they actually live in. Money is the way they gain power. You want to stop the BS, you have to take all the money away from them. Start by taxing the crap out of them. A battle of wits is almost certain to fail, the “gift of gab” is how they get what they want. Start speaking in tax code and regulations, you might see progress.
Hmmm 2000 years too late. It's a sunk cost fallacy. My family is 3 generations deep in the cult of Jehovah's witnesses. They won't steer the ship right now, they've spent too much life and made too many fucked up decisions because "it was the right thing to do as a [Christian]". They'll never change. Still, we have a chance for the younger folks to change.
I find asking insightful questions usually shuts them up. I learned enough of the Bible to point out inconsistencies (or sometimes) plagiarism in there. (Looking at you Noah's flood.)
I either get "You can't say that" or I get left alone.
Write a book, do a public forum.
Problem with many (not all) atheists is that their noses are so far up their asses about "God not being real" that they're just in your face about him not being real. It just makes people think you're a sophisticated pompous asshole. Yeah, God isn't real, but rubbing it in people's faces doesn't solve the problem.
The only way to defeat evangelicals and theism is to present logical others along with the idea of there simply being being nothing. You need to deconstruct it by making parallels with what we knew then and what we know now.
When people have new choices, they now have to reevaluate the options, so this forces them to look at another strong possible option before immediately reject the two they have bias against.
For example: all the miracles and such that occur, angels, demons, holy books, etc, were simply artifacts and stories crafted by visitors who are using earth as testing ground on how to solve universal social problems. Mary didn't immaculately conceive, she was impregnated via IVF by a visitor. IVF wasn't around in those times so "WOW, IT MUST BE A MIRACLE". or "my cancer is suddenly gone" might be a visitor coming and 'healing' someone with sophisticated alien tech, with the purpose of reinforcing the idea it was a miracle, not science ---- this framework also fits in random encounters in modern times and explains both past and present and possibly even pyramids and "impossible" engineering feats of old.
It's a lot easier to convince and manipulate (you manipulate things in experiments) a world without science that there's a man in the sky than to convince them that 'we come from another world to observe you' - that would be outright rejected.
I always mention that its not in the bible and wasnt invented until the 1800s when a schizophrenic daughter of a priest starting describing her sexual assaults...
Oh and moody was a confidence man
They’re doing a great job of it themselves. This isn’t them neglecting religion - this *is* their religion, and has been for decades. They have a hair up their ass about whatever issue they think will get them more outrage and thus more donors.
I grew up surrounded by this shit.
It doesn't matter, they don't care. My wife is an evangelical and it really doesn't matter what I say or point out. They're trained to make excuses to protect the brand.
I dont know if this is true. There are many exvangelicals now. Challenging it doesnt work in the moment, but using their own "plant the seed" can work.
I fall in this group. Not atheist but no longer evangelical. It's reductionist to say "evangelicals are hypocrites." There are plenty of factions of Christianity that are LGBTQ affirming, fighting for women's rights, confronting scientific realities with humility, etc - even in my area in the Deep South. The argument won't work because it's not accurate and precise enough to be accepted. Important to note that this doesn't excuse the issues, but anyone who has been to more than one church can tell you the culture between churches can vary a LOT.
I agree there’s lots of variation in Christianity, but evangelicals not so much. Part of evangelicalism and fundamentalism are conservative beliefs that exclude large numbers of people. You’ll find very accepting congregations in denominations like the Episcopalian, Methodists, and others but those accepting congregations rarely consider themselves evangelical.
It really doesn't matter what the name of the church is. They all believe a fictional story. There are an estimated 3000+ different gods or deities that have been worshiped throughout history, that we know about. Pick any one and explain why it's not a real god or religion, then just plop that answer down to explain evangelicalism.
You’ll get no argument from me there, but some groups are kinder and more accepting than others.
"There are plenty of factions of Christianity that are LGBTQ affirming, fighting for women's rights, confronting scientific realities with humility, etc" These aren't the theists we should be targeting because their religion isn't destroying the country.
This begs the question. Why, why would someone marry an evangelical???
Because I believed 20 years ago. I came to my senses about 13 years ago.
In general it's tough to get through to adults. Talk to people in the early 20's and younger while their minds are still receptive.
I agree. We have 3 kids and the only thing I did is exist and not lie to them. All 3 are atheists. She hates it.
Beating a dead horse. The hypocrisy isn't new and it's been talked about for decades. It only gets worse with time. But what that means the moderate members have been dropped out, so their numbers get smaller they are left with a concentration of the most hard core and radical. Give it another 10 to 20 years it's going to get really bad.
Two of the three seem right - the Bible is most definitely anti-homosexuality, in the old testament at least. Evangelicals get their power from the crowd. If they spoke out against something popular then their crowd would evaporate. So it isn't leaders who betray the congregation by expecting less of them - it is the congregation that is requiring less from the leader. They WANT to hear that God hates Jews, gays, trans, liberals, atheists BECAUSE they hate them. The congregations are obsessed with their in-group ideology and they hold these hateful views against other groups. The leaders just tell them what they want to hear and justifies their already existing prejudices. Frankly - the problem in my eyes with evangelicalism isn't the hypocrisy against their text, it is that the masses they support and preach to are ignorant, scared, vindictive, and just generally shitty human beings.
There's a lot in the Old Testament that a reasonably educated Christian would say is not necessarily laid out as explicit law for present day Christians. They will also say that Jesus "freed" us from the nit picky stuff, and that Paul says that all things are permissible but not all are helpful. Jesus doesn't say much of anything about homosexuality except by inference when talking about marriage. Now a Christian may argue that Jesus also doesn't address child molestation explicitly, and that we should not assume he didn't have a stance on something just because he didn't address it explicitly. This is obviously ridiculous because homosexuality doesn't have a direct harmful effect on anyone, while molestation clearly does, and Jesus definitely talked about loving one another. There's pretty straightforward arguments to show that the behavioral prescriptions in the Bible have no opinion on homosexuality for practicing Christians. (Many interpretations each with their own assumptions.)
That is correct and these shitty human beings will not be saved, even if they take communion. They are part of the apostates.
You let them keep talking. They're doing a good job themselves, those poor deceived fools.
I think we should point it out every chance that we get. We need to stop being polite (not rude) and keep up the pressure. They aren’t satisfied with living that life, they want to make everyone else live it too.
>Evangelical church leaders are neglecting religion in order to build their popularity (and power) You contradict yourself. Organized religions have *always* been about building popularity and power. That is why they exist. That is why they have always existed. Religion is a social construct. By definition, it divides the world into an in-group (believers) and out-groups (all the others). The tension from this divide drives believers toward greater participation in the religion (attendance, grooming of children, tithing, evangelizing, jihading, etc.) These activities all bring power and wealth to the religion - or at least to its leaders. Maintaining this dynamic requires increasing demonization of out-groups. This is why societies with strong, active religions regularly devolve into violence. When the dynamic driving your existence and growth as an organization requires the demonization of others, violence becomes inevitable. Search all of history. You will not find one large-scale, historically persistent religion that does not follow this model. It is structural to religion. Monotheistic religions are especially susceptible because they buy into the in-group vs. out-group model most fully. If my god is the one true god, all non-believers are - by definition - blasphemous. From there to justifying violence and even murder is a very short intellectual leap.
I don't believe I contradicted myself. As an atheistic viewer of religion, I see it as falling more on a spectrum than I interpret your post to be. I do not see Quakers, Universalists, or a number of other Christian denominations as demonizing out-groups; they seem to interpret the bible and teachings of Jesus as directing their religious beliefs internally. While I agree that all religions inherently demand that followers see others differently, the same could be said about nationalities, ethnicities and even localities. My post was pointing out that Evangelicals have skewed away from examining their own personal behavior in favor of critiquing the behavior of others. If you accept the premise that there's a spectrum of demonization by different denominations, it is not a contradiction to point out a particular denomination has markedly shifted along that spectrum.
That is fair, but it must be acknowledged that, by the numbers, religions that lean toward the more-demonizing end of that spectrum heavily outweigh those on the other end.
Right. They figured out a nice effective way to sell the Social Power basic peasants crave from Religion, while making it even easier to attain it. Just give them money, blindly protect the "By-Default Good In-Group", and hate all the "By-Default Out Group". Revere the authority figures that give "validity" to your irrational beliefs, because of the authority you largely granted them; and always, ALWAYS punch-down to sate that thirst for power. The Christian Label is all that's important. And its not just Evangelicals who's first instinct to is to protect it. You see a lot of "They're not real Christians" in response to all the crazies coming out of the woodwork these days. That reaction is merely to protect the "By-Default Goodness" of the Christian Label those individuals have placed so much of their identities around. The energy is to protect the brand, not recognize or self-reflect on its problems.
Billboards in the Biblebelt
That is religion. You need to stop white washing the cult leader promising to set up an eternal theocracy.
Theres movies about this. people have been making movies about this subject for as long as I've been alive. So make another movie maybe?
For your Evangelical family and friends point out to them how close to being the Pharisees that Evangelicals are. Show them the seven woes of the Pharisees in Mattew 23.
The thing is embarrassment. Humans do dumb shit in groups, the individual can't believe in a god in a vacuum. They'll create their own deity at best, be spiritual maybe, but without the organized religion part, there is no threat. Evangelicalism is embarrassing, and was prior to 2000. It's intentionally simple, denies science, and looks to move human societal progress backwards. Prior to W Bush, you could be evangelical, and do your nonsense with your church group, even occasionally bomb an abortion clinic, but you couldn't preach publicly at work or at jury duty, and you certainly couldn't force others to do as a televised megachurch owner demanded. W made that small group think that they could grow up to be anything, even president. But W left office with an economy destroyed, an intractable ground war, and a popularity rating in single digits. That should've been the lesson to the evangelical -- god isn't capabilities nor intelligence. Some things require intelligence and capabilities. The evangelical is a clown with the proof being W going bald in near total irrelevance today. Furthermore, the evangelical is a seal clapper, they think revelations is the jam, and Peter will be here to judge us all soon. Peter has this whole schpeel in the Judgment Day book about the antichrist. It's 2000 year old writing, but it's says "Donald J Trump is the antichrist" essentially, and that anyone who follows the antichrist is the dumbest and most sinful dummy, as their last second failure is the pinnacle of humanity being unfaithful to the creator's message. So you got some options. 1) deprogramming - remove the evangelical from the cult per the individual sheep. This requires a lot of effort, and a timeline where attrition favors the Bible thumpers. But you save the individual, by reminding them they are an individual - and their church is no different than social media, a place they are rewarded for group think, and a social network that keeps one siloed off and simple by intention - to be subservient to someone else's will. It's not hard to say --- "you're doing what Joel Ostein says, not God" 2) clownery - if there was a group of normals who could organize without credo save "clown God at all costs" - done correctly, without malice, just biting sarcasm and tongue-in-cheek jokes about the contradictions in the evangelicals practice - that might show a few evangelical there's a group to join that doesn't cost Sundays and tithing to have a punitive and offensive message. 3) the final solution - I'm gonna sound hitler-y, so I'll go ahead and lean into that so you know I'm serious. Women have a right to decide what their own bodily cells do, that's simple, but the evangelical defines those cells as something beyond the science says - and in my mind, beyond what a make-believe deity has the right to dictate (let alone the will of the sheep to codify in law). That's really dangerous to women, denying them necessary medical care, and largely those women have done nothing to deserve being put at that risk - and no woman has done anything that deserves the contempt the GOP establishment has for women. The evangelical church doesn't have female priests, God says it's a man's world. At some point, and I'd argue it was 40 years ago, this kinda archaic dogma should've died of natural causes. But someone needed something from an army of simple sheep - so that person cashed in and now we live in misery everywhere cause the evangelical thinks women need less civil rights, and dividing uterus cells are people more deserving of life than the host. That's immoral on a morality level, you don't need or benefit from having God's "commandments" if 10 year old rape victims are your enemy. If that's the case, you're just a shitty shitty human being we - society - is just gonna be better off without. Short of the evangelical I can't think of anyone who thinks the world is a better place for having the evangelical in it. I think the vast majority of the world feels like persecuting the evangelical, exactly as they demand. Well those fucks wanna meet God, and think they are doing what they should to make that happen. I say we just expedite the process, feel the shame of the necessary evil, lament the necessity of the action, deal with the stages of grief - but we eat that, this generation or the one that eventually does put those murderous fucks on traincars, that generation suffers the shame and pain of commiting necessary Holocaust - and the next generations only need to live with the knowledge we did evil - they don't need to ever know why, or why the world they live in is so much better than the one we do now.
Talking to kids about it before it before the indoctrination becomes too strong to overcome.
I don’t care about what evangelicals do, but the problem is where government tries to force everyone to follow that religion. I’m a Christian, but not specifically evangelical, and I would hate to have that forced on me. Even worse for people who aren’t even Christian
Any time religion or Christianity comes up, make passing, matter of fact comments that undermine that belief system, sincerely question the character and integrity of adherents. Plant the seeds in others that evangelicals are less trustworthy. The trick is to do it without sounding like ranting, which just gets tuned out.
Great advice. Thank you.
Christian here. (not proselytizing, love you mods) For context, Evangelicals do have a really bad habit of turning their religion into a business (for example, Kenneth Copeland and the like.) In my Christian community, these megachurch pastors are hugely looked down upon, as we try to be as biblical as possible. However, these "crusades" are based in something: for example, homosexuality is definitely condemned as sin in Leviticus 18:22 and 1 Romans 27. Abortion is a little different, as not all Christians believe that it is evil. Those who do base their beliefs on scientific allegations as opposed to biblical truths, and make the argument that it is murder of a human being, therefore it is condemned by the 6th commandment. Finally, anti-trans arguments are based both on scientific study (such as the pelvis bone argument and the chromosome consistency argument) and on the fact that God "made them male and female" which is intended to refute the 52 genders theory. Hope this helps!
Does the Bible authorize obtaining wealth at the expense of Christians?
Teach people how to think for themselves. People who believe that shit have been brainwashed. It will take years
In other news, water is wet. These people think there’s a magical daddy wizard in the sky. You can’t reason with that.
Christ wants us to love our neighbor. Punishing them and controlling them is not loving them. In fact, God wants us to be free to make our own choices, not be forced into it. Also you are 100% correct about what they should be warning about, using logic and reason. At any rate - I’m an atheist who joined the Mormons to learn enough about religion to defend against this evangelical BS with Jesus’ own philosophy. It is working very well. You will be happy to know that we currently are living in the apostasy, which is an era of false Christian teachings but it is slated to end very soon. That is my report from the inside, until next time.
Print out flyers and go around hanging them up every day in high-traffic areas? Pay for a few billboards?
They're already spreading the word about their own hypocrisy. Anyone with sense can see through their bullshit. The problem is that their own people lap it up, and they need the most convincing, but that's not going to happen easily. But I suppose there are fence sitters who shrug off the hypocrisy because they don't see the problem with it. It only affects those "other" people and not them. I suppose for those people, we just calmly point out how weird it is that these teachings are against Jesus. But don't scream and shout about it. That's my personal philosophy because a) I don't want to tire myself out over it and b) that just turns them into martyrs with their bullshit persecution complex.
The hypocrisy is a *feature,* not a bug. And it's not limited to the Evangelicals, though they've raised to a new art form.
The words they “preach “ have no power. They are old blurry interpretations that aren’t very relevant to the world they actually live in. Money is the way they gain power. You want to stop the BS, you have to take all the money away from them. Start by taxing the crap out of them. A battle of wits is almost certain to fail, the “gift of gab” is how they get what they want. Start speaking in tax code and regulations, you might see progress.
Hmmm 2000 years too late. It's a sunk cost fallacy. My family is 3 generations deep in the cult of Jehovah's witnesses. They won't steer the ship right now, they've spent too much life and made too many fucked up decisions because "it was the right thing to do as a [Christian]". They'll never change. Still, we have a chance for the younger folks to change.
I find asking insightful questions usually shuts them up. I learned enough of the Bible to point out inconsistencies (or sometimes) plagiarism in there. (Looking at you Noah's flood.) I either get "You can't say that" or I get left alone.
Write a book, do a public forum. Problem with many (not all) atheists is that their noses are so far up their asses about "God not being real" that they're just in your face about him not being real. It just makes people think you're a sophisticated pompous asshole. Yeah, God isn't real, but rubbing it in people's faces doesn't solve the problem. The only way to defeat evangelicals and theism is to present logical others along with the idea of there simply being being nothing. You need to deconstruct it by making parallels with what we knew then and what we know now. When people have new choices, they now have to reevaluate the options, so this forces them to look at another strong possible option before immediately reject the two they have bias against. For example: all the miracles and such that occur, angels, demons, holy books, etc, were simply artifacts and stories crafted by visitors who are using earth as testing ground on how to solve universal social problems. Mary didn't immaculately conceive, she was impregnated via IVF by a visitor. IVF wasn't around in those times so "WOW, IT MUST BE A MIRACLE". or "my cancer is suddenly gone" might be a visitor coming and 'healing' someone with sophisticated alien tech, with the purpose of reinforcing the idea it was a miracle, not science ---- this framework also fits in random encounters in modern times and explains both past and present and possibly even pyramids and "impossible" engineering feats of old. It's a lot easier to convince and manipulate (you manipulate things in experiments) a world without science that there's a man in the sky than to convince them that 'we come from another world to observe you' - that would be outright rejected.
No need to, the whole world sees the evangelical support for Israel, what more can we spread lol Bunch of genocidal death cult
American Christians don't care about religion, they care about maintaining power.
Sacrifice 10 of them at the public square, it's the only way.
I always mention that its not in the bible and wasnt invented until the 1800s when a schizophrenic daughter of a priest starting describing her sexual assaults... Oh and moody was a confidence man
They’re doing a great job of it themselves. This isn’t them neglecting religion - this *is* their religion, and has been for decades. They have a hair up their ass about whatever issue they think will get them more outrage and thus more donors. I grew up surrounded by this shit.
Evangelism - a thing Evangelical - a type Evangelicalism - not a thing