exchristian

The link from the screenshot: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/are-reddits-replacement-mods-fit-to-fight-misinformation/

Inspired by something another user said, I feel this question deserves discussion. Also, I am shamelessly creating exchristian content. We are still a small group but I like it here now and it will get better, but only if we use it. "Creating content" just means using the site. Talk to me. I'm open to input. Maybe I'm wrong.... but:

Liberal/Progressive/Apologist Christians should not get a pass. The Bible is clear on a number of horrific things and is totally open to interpretation about another bunch of horrific things. In both the new and old testament. I argue that liberal Christianity is both insincere and perpetuates fundamentalist Christian beliefs, within a society, generation over generation.

The key dependent is childhood indoctrination. Liberal Christians still feed their kids the dogma. It all works. Not every kid, but some of them, from this Liberal Christian family, will have a hard time with some part of it and go reading the Bible. They say the Bible is the truth right?

They read the Bible and see where their parents are fudging it. They want to do better. Depending on circumstance, they either tighten up the faith, or they go full in to fundamentalism. I have seen it happen multiple times in 1, 2, and 3 generations in people I've met an known. Anecdotal, sure, but still.

Then, I argue, the cycle continues. How did Christianity survive this long? I'd argue this is all part of it. Even "lightly" indoctrinating children adds a chance, I'd argue significant, that the child becomes a fundy 20, 30, or 40 years in the future, when the chips are down, and someone says "come to my church, they'll help"

Should I be more accepting? I'd love to hear what you think on this subject.

I met Sarah and Justin when I was working on In Faith and In Doubt, a book about marriages and other long-term relationships between religious and nonreligious partners. Whether to baptize (or christen) their daughter was their first significant disagreement over religious practices.

“I wanted her to make her own decision when she was older,” Justin explained, “without having to deal with a choice that had been made for her.”

“But I just couldn’t imagine not having it done,” said Sarah.

She talked to her pastor and learned that her church saw baptism primarily as a ritual to wash away original sin. “I was honestly taken aback,” she said. “I didn’t know that was the meaning. That seemed medieval to me. But I still wanted to have it done, and now I had to figure out why I wanted it.”

She and Justin talked it through. “Eventually I realized that it wasn’t even about the connection to Christ. I think that is a relationship that a person should enter into willingly, and it happens in the heart, not in a ceremony.”

She tried to imagine not having their daughter baptized, just to see what feelings it brought up. “And the funny thing is, my first thought wasn’t about Jesus. I probably shouldn’t say that, but it’s true. It was a simpler thing. My first thought was, ‘But I was baptized, and my mother and daddy were baptized! She has to be baptized! It’s what we do!’ So it wasn’t about salvation, or original sin, or connecting her to Christ. It was about connecting her to my family.”

...These Christians reject the idea of expressive individualism, because Christian ideology teaches that people shouldn’t be allowed to choose what to make of their lives. It teaches that there’s one set of gender roles, one kind of sexuality, and one model of relationships that everyone is supposed to follow. It seeks to hammer everyone into these constricting boxes, regardless of whether or not they fit, regardless of whether or not it makes them miserable. Any deviation from this rigid framework, any desire to think or choose for yourself, they condemn as sin.

Christian apologists say this because they’re blinded by the delusion that Christianity owns morality. They don’t think of their religious beliefs as one worldview among many, but the only way to live a good, moral, and happy life. In their arrogance, they dismiss every alternative, all the infinite variety of culture thought up by humans past and present. They would outlaw it all if they could.

I recently described why I think “woke” has become a vacuous word that means little more than “libtard” in modern parlance. It seems apropos, then, that Christianity Today also recently released a piece that saw the editor-in-chief claim (in a previous NPR interview) that evangelical Christianity is moving too far to the right.

It turns out that Jesus’s teachings are increasingly considered by many Christians to be too “liberal” and “weak.”

I (7+ years closeted to parents) made a comment about California's first hurricane in 80+ years, and she responded with something like,

Maybe it will wash out all the gays and wicked people

🙄😮‍💨

Really?! I didn't even know how to respond to that.

Also, somehow or another I guess it's gotta come out.

If you ever need clear proof that Christianity is bullshit, look at war.

Most recently the thought has been striking me while watching the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But its true of the majority of wars in recent history. Ukrainian Christians pray to God for safety as they bail out of the back of an armored carrier ready to kill in defense of their homeland. Russian soldiers pray to the same God for protection, huddled in their trenches, waiting for inevitable attacks. When troops die, back home, they pray for God's vengeance on their enemy, and both sides ask the same God for justice and comfort.

What ridiculous nonsense. Does either side ever think about how God seems to have fucked them over in favor of their enemy? If the god they were praying to were real, couldn't and wouldn't he intervene without them having to kill each other violently? Doesn't it actively disprove the existence of this "god" when he doesn't?

I am frustrated by the Christian notion to just use their religion as a salve to pain while not changing any behavior that causes the pain in the first place.

I'm tired of the powerful hiding behind religion and using it to control the brainwashed masses.

I don't understand how the rest of the world doesn't already see Christianity, and religion generally, as a harmful evil in society. Its like watching a bunch of deluded heroin addicts.

I've never been a fan of alt-right darling Jordan Peterson. This is a good deconstruction against his arguments that Christianity is necessary for Western values.

The title is satire from the author, but the story inside is familiar. How do you reconcile claims of love and morality from a belief system that creates the opposite?

I stay in hotel rooms fairly often for work. Usually I find myself keeping company with one of these damn things. Last time I hid it under a couch cushion, but I think next time its going in the toilet tank. Anyone else got any bright ideas for fun things to do with these things?

Covers the best guesses current scholarship and archæology gives about the origin of Yahweh following the Bronze Age Collapse.

Not many people are aware of Ingersoll's work as a counter-apologist and vocal critic of Christianity at the end of the Nineteenth Century. His analysis of the religion and its origins as well as criticisms of its practitioners remains relevant today.

Dave Warnock is a former evangelical preacher who was diagnosed with a terminal case of ALS (aka "Lou Gehrig's Disease") in 2019. He was given three to five years to live, and he's chosen to spend that time focusing on life rather than ruminating about his impending death. Based on a web search, he's been actively speaking about his experience as recently as April of this year.

We're experimenting with different alternatives to reddit in anticipation of their impending apocalypse in which they force third party app developers to shut down the products some of us have been using for decades.

No one knows better than an ex-Christian how scary change can be, but it's also an opportunity for growth. Let's see what we can do together.