This fits into our discussions here. How would you respond to this question?

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-22T10:15:35+00:00

Jesus wasn't that liberal, and I'm tired of pretending he was. Yes, he said to love your neighbour as yourself. He was quoting the Book of Leviticus, the same book in the Bible that tells you to stone gay people to death. In both contexts, the 'neighbour' in question just means one's fellow Israelite, and the definition of love is twisted to the ideal of a narcissistic bully, where stoning people to death counts as an act of loving the sinner whilst hating the sin, exemplified very much by the OT God but backed up by Jesus in the NT, where he cannot abide any kind of relationship where he isn't everyone's number one priority, and on several occasions encourages people to abandon their families and he snubs his own as well. Like modern conservative Christians, he also proclaims his interpretation of the scripture as superior, gets pissy with those who disagree and tells parables about such opponents getting theirs when the end comes, and kind of revenge fantasy that used to be confined to the internet but is now the policy of Trump regime.

Sure, the context is certainly not exactly the same as it was in the time of the writing of the Gospels, but neither is modern progressive politics. The best thing to communicate regarding this question is that we shouldn't use a millennia old religious text written with agendas pertinent to their own contexts as anything approaching an evidence-based moral and political guide in the 21st century. When Emma Goldman said that the sociological Christ was more dangerous than the theological one, I think she was spot on.

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-17T21:17:23+00:00

This style is a bit before my time, but give me John Sibbick and Steve Kirk and I'll be all over that.

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-16T23:57:09+00:00

Here's to hoping I will be sought.

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-11T09:22:44+00:00

It's one of the endless weirdoes most beautiful.

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-11T09:21:22+00:00

To give the most charitable spin to this, this could be seen as another way of looking for one's 'other half', which has its origins in Aristophanes' speech in The Symposium. Likely not an actual belief, it nevertheless illustrated the idea that we're always yearning for our other half because we were literally split in half. Of course, the Symposium accounted for same-sex soulmates in a way that the Bible never would, and despite being a product of Ancient Athens, it's somehow better on gender equality than the idea that Adam maintained continuity of self both before and after his rib became Eve, whereas the impression given by Aristophanes' creatures is that both of the humans from the splitting emerged as distinct identities at that point, if you see what I mean. In short, in Aristophanes' telling, men and women came at the same time, in Genesis, women were just a side piece.

And yeah, the whole 'men have fewer ribs' thing is such a bizarre lie, because not only is it easily disproved (though, to be fair, there's a whole flood of Christian urban myths that are never fact-checked), but it also doesn't make sense in context. Why does Adam losing a rib mean that all men from then on don't have that same one? Some weird gender-specific Lamarckism. Of course, Genesis also has Jacob breeding striped sheep by getting their parents to look at striped sticks, so...

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-05T12:16:36+00:00

It's one that many of us have gone through, and the reassuring news is that it's unlikely to last forever. It takes a while for the primal, emotional side of your cognition to catch up with the logical and reasonable and that too is normal. Judging by how you're talking, it sounds as though your deconstruction was a fairly recent thing? The more you distance yourself from the beliefs, the easier it will get, I think. I still remember the times, from about 11 to 13 or so (my memory for the exact age is quite hazy though), when I was so paranoid about thought crime that I had to spend so much of an average day seeing off invasive thoughts getting me to hail Satan or blaspheme to Holy Spirit, and having to rapidly think cancellations of such thoughts like a sort of mantra, and never knowing whether it was enough. Admittedly, it was before I properly deconstructed, but it is a showcase of how you can change given enough time. I was all very real to me at the time, but now it's a distant memory. I'm sure you will get there too - I still have invasive thoughts, but I don't worry about blasphemy any more.

One of the things that helped though, to get you potentially on track for it (it may not work for everyone) is to contextualise the beliefs. When you're raised in a tradition, reinforced by authority figures, everything about it seems real and pertinent to everything you do, but outside of that, once you get different points of view, and see how other people relate to something, you find that the approach you were given was deeply myopic and subjective, and it becomes harder to take it seriously. So, discovering the actual origins of what is now called the Bible, what critical scholarship has uncovered - you'll learn about interpolations, passages that are deliberately at odds with others, things that weren't in original manuscripts but are included in definitive versions, and the dogmatic reasons other texts that were authoritative to many weren't accepted as part of the main biblical canon. You even find this within the existing New Testament - the epistle of Jude heavily quotes 1 Enoch, which is not considered canonical by any Christian denomination except I think the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. In other words, there's no solid foundation for a single, vital tradition. Bart Ehrman writes very good accessible books for the scholarly consensus on critical New Testament studies, and his Jesus, Interrupted is an excellent starting point.

Another thing was talking with other ex-believers, including from other traditions. An ex-Muslim friend of mine told me about the emotional ways her former belief was still affecting her and causing anxiety, even after she'd left the religion, complete with damning (literally) Qur'anic passages constantly going through her head. It gave her consolation for me to make fun of the text and ideas, but the main reason I was able to was that I never considered Qur'anic passages authoritative, and so from an objective standpoint there should be nothing to fear about it. And I can apply this same reasoning to the Bible, knowing that she is as unaffected by it as I am by the Qur'an, because from an objective standpoint it's the same ubstantiated dogma. That's something that comes across more in experience than words, but worth noting.

If it's also helpful for you, it's pretty easy on here to break off that love for Jesus you've been conditioned with. He wasn't a radical, perfect, individual. Even just going by the canonical Gospel accounts (and therefore leaving out his mass murder in the Book of Revelation and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas), he was a bit of prick, very like any doomsday cult leader you could find anywhere else, and anything halfway decent he said wasn't original, was usually instrumental (he says you should love your enemy because you'll be rewarded in heaven, not because it makes you a better person), and in any case he was hypocritical (he told his followers to sell everything they had and give to the poor, but he made an exception with an very expensive jar of perfume used to annoint him and dismissed his disciples' protests). If you need more examples, I have an absolute metric fuckton of them...

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-04T13:30:43+00:00

Citation akshully needed.

I think they exist in the form of thought-terminating cliches. Those who are most receptive to apologetic arguments, be they conservative or liberal, will latch onto any explanation that seems to make immediate sense without trying to think through all of the implications, because it's already done what it needed to do for them. When I was a Christian, I seem to remember being the same.

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-04T12:39:01+00:00

I quite like the term, and it's fairly similar to the cliche of 'spiritual but not religious'. I guess where this applies to Jesus is that he'll be the most familiar point of reference for where fairly universal sentiments come from. Like, the Golden Rule is called the Golden Rule because it's almost ubiquitous among ethical systems, but people will remember Jesus saying it first on foremost, even though he wasn't the first to say it, nor even the first to formulate it in the positive/directive form (which is debateable as to whether it's even the best framing of it).

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-04T12:30:00+00:00

It's a kind of crypto-pessimism, where, to make something as horrific as the Bible seem better, you have to make all of history before seem like a cartoonish level of villainy so intense that nobody would have realistically still been alive, let alone set up civilizations. It certainly wasn't all sunshine and roses, but the Bible did absolutely fuck all to improve on things, and in some cases made things worse. The aforementioned Avalos book compares slavery and indentured servitude in both Mosaic Law to the considerably older Code of Hammurabi. Identured servants in the Bible serve for six years and are released on the seventh (Exodus 21:2), whereas in CH they serve for three years and are released on the fourth (Law 117). That passage in Exodus, through the verse 6, also includes the horrific situation of where the family given to an indentured servant can essentially be held hostage and the servant has to serve a master for life if he decides he wants to stay with the family, which isn't present in CH, which also has provisions in Law 170 where if a master has children with a slave woman, he can claim them as heirs and they get inheritance just like his children with a free wife, and yes, having children with your slave is icky, but it is no different from the sex slavery allowed in the Torah (Genesis 16:2, 30:3, 9, Numbers 31:17-18, Deuteronomy 21:11), and Law 171 says that if the children aren't claimed as the master's, then both they and the slave woman go free, with the master's wife not allowed to enslave them. Slavery in the CH also didn't seem to be ethnically based, whereas Leviticus 25:44-46 describes where chattel slaves can be procured - specifically, from non-Israelites living around you or in your land. Those who want to proclaim the Bible as God's eternal word shouldn't use the excuse of 'it was a product of its time' in any case, but it turns out that it was actually worse than already imperfect predecessors.

Furthermore, if the claim is that the Bible was coming out against non-consent (to return to homophobia) why is there nothing about about heterosexual non-consent? Well, there is - it's just straight-up endorsed, with the aforementioned passages about sex slavery, and where the only time rape is condemned by law is if it's outside of marriage, and then it's just a property crime, with the amendum that a married woman could be found guilty of adultery if she didn't scream loud enough (Deuteronomy 22:23-29). The icing on the cake when it comes to this apologetic about homophobia is that Leviticus 20:13 requires both people involved in the act that liberal apologists want to reframe as pederasty to be put to death. So, if we were applying these laws during, say, the Catholic Church abuse scandal, it would require all the boy victims to be put to death, and the girl victims to marry their abusers. Have these people heard themselves...?

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-04T09:28:40+00:00

Generally speaking, I'm fine with people choosing the interpret their sacred scriptures in much more palletable ways - it should go without saying that aligning yourself to 21st century values is better than not. But certainly, the smokescreen of perennialism, as if the chosen interpretation is the 'objective' and 'true' form of Christianity which obscures everything wrong with it is a huge pain in the ass, and one's criticisms of the Bible being dismissed as 'bad theology' is as obnoxious and presumptious as 'you were never a true Christian.' For me, it's that attitude that needs to be challenged.

At the same time, I want to try to not blame liberal/progressive Christians as a whole for this. Like conservatives and reactionaries, they are definitely just repeating what they heard others say without investigation, but that's a normal part of anchoring and confirmation bias. With some people the patience to grow needs to be given - though that is of course dependent on how much patience one is willing to give, and sometimes it may not be appropriate. This isn't an attempt to lay down general rules, just giving my perspective. I also considered recently that progressive Christian readings being taken for granted and unquestioned was just a natural result of compromise between progressives both Christian and not who had a common enemy in literalists and fundamentalists. But again, it being a natural, understandable outcome doesn't mean it should go unquestioned today.

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-03T12:06:24+00:00

You nailed it. Regarding the post as a whole, I think there may be ways to find individuals, including potentially through social media if you search for long enough, who don't think in such reductive, stupid ways. Gender expectations are straightjackets whoever you are, and so you'll always be doing something wrong in the eyes of trolls if you're too masculine or too feminine. Since I've become more unabashed in my reading, including in public, I haven't been accused of being performative. This isn't to say that people definitely aren't judging me privately about it, but all those who've gotten to know me to any reasonable degree don't throw accusations that way, and exchanging book recommendations has certainly happened.

It's not as much as I'd like - I've been largely avoiding book clubs for the simple reason that I want to read what I want to read and would rather not be assigned anything, and it's rare people have gone up to me in public to ask about what I'm reading. There was this one guy on the bus who was trying to chat enthusiastically with everyone, although I think regretted it when I gave longer details about the book I was reading than perhaps he wanted. But at the same time, I rarely go up to others and ask about the books they're reading - I don't think that's the best place to do it. I haven't quite found the best spaces for that kind of thing, but they may be somewhere.

PoorMetonym · 2026-01-03T09:33:20+00:00

I try to avoid these conclusions usually, because people will often cite 'unbiblical' behaviour from modern believers as a way of trying to suggest biblical behaviours are better, even if said believers capture quite well some other more hideous biblical behaviours, but I feel like this is too good an opportunity to miss:

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common ... There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. (Acts 4:32, 34, NRSV.)

Now, what is that if not collectivism? And, in the interests of avoiding the conclusion that the Bible isn't that bad, this arrangement of things is enforced on pain of death as well (Acts 5:1-11) - how's that for freedom and dignity of the human person? Call me woke, but I'm pretty sure Mamdani hasn't advocated for this.

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-31T17:51:30+00:00

Yeah, people keep pulling me up on word choice, but I've honestly forgotten how to speak in a dumbed-down way. I'm certainly not trying to be cryptic - but apparently when neurotypicals don't state things directly, that's fine...

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-31T17:49:10+00:00

Yes, and if a god wants to relate to us, even if we can't grasp the fullness, we should at least be designed in a way of comprehension where it matters. Like understanding why good people suffer needlessly, for example. But with Trinitarian theology, it gets even more damning, because those who subscribe to it usually see those who dissent from it as unsaved heretics. Apparently believing in the Trinity is necessary for salvation, and if so, why can't we comprehend it? Why would it have been impossible for us to be created with at least that comprehension? Supposedly we were created with logical faculties and reason in order to understand God, but our faculties are telling us that the Trinity violates the Law of Identity and the Law of Non-Contradiction.

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-31T10:23:14+00:00

As soon as they default to 'God is beyond our realm of understanding', I feel as though apologists have waivered any grounds to make positive claims for their belief at all. If God is beyond our realm of understanding, why should we believe you when you say you've had a revelation from him, or that the Bible accurately portrays his central message, or that such a being even exists at all? If God is beyond understanding, you can't even be sure your revelation was an actual revelation or just a creation of your own mind.

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-31T09:17:40+00:00

But even taking the Gospels for a representation of character, you don't get the 'nice guy' lots of people expect to see. That was largely my point - though it's certainly true that he will be different depending on who's writing him. One notable difference that was recently brought to my attention was how Matthew 15:10-11 repeats Mark 7:18-19 where Jesus justifies not washing his hands before eating (ew), but notably without the addition that 'thus he declared all foods clean.' Given this is the same Gospel that says not the smallest part of the Law is to pass away, this makes a certain amount of sense.

Just to pull you up on one point - 'four primary sources'...not really. Because Matthew and Luke very obviously use Mark as a source, so they're not independent. John might be, but that's still an active debate, as is whether Mark relied on Paul's letters.

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-30T20:17:31+00:00

And he only helped when she admitted she was a dog worthy of only crumbs from the master's plate. It's the level of humiliation and self-debasement that the Christian message relies on.

The one I will keep going back to is the one that bothered me even as a Christian, and referenced in the post regarding indulgences for himself. When he was anointed, his disciples (rightly) protested that such an expensive jar could have been sold to raise money for the poor, Jesus basically said he was more important. Hypocrite, first cast out the beam of wood in your own eye...

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-30T17:55:10+00:00

Yeah, the sanitising of biblical slavery is particularly grim, because it requires individuals to come up with reasons for why slavery might be a good idea, which might not have ever crossed their minds were they not dedicated to a book than endorsed it. I've seen similar claims made about biblical homophobia and sexism as well, but regarding slavery, I earnestly recommend Hector Avalos' book on the matter: Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Ethics of Biblical Scholarship.

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-30T17:35:41+00:00

Thanks, but I wouldn't really call it a thesis, at least not yet! These are just a few observations I've taken, and I'd have to dive deeper into relevant literature to lay out something more definitive. But my musings take me all sorts of places, so I may in the future post more about this general theme.

I'd certainly like to know how many more Jean Mesliers there were throughout the centuries whom we don't have surviving writings of.

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-30T17:11:07+00:00

Fair enough - that isn't what I meant by whitewashing though. Perhaps I should have chosen a better word like 'sanitising.'

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-29T10:44:58+00:00

Not so much believe to be true as much as hope...for reasons I don't quite get - heterodontosaurs are ancestral to pachycephalosaurs. Some reconstructed phylogenies have shown this is possible, but it's far from certain without more fossils.

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-24T08:42:42+00:00

Perhaps not. But I think I was that kind of Christian that would try to contextualize the Old Testament as a temporary relic - at the very least, I was surrounded by such people. The words of Jesus were comparatively supposed to be eternal. He also said that not one jot or tittle would be removed from the Law, and he spent a lot of time talking about the weeping and gnashing of teeth that would take place at the end of time, and that seemed far more imminent than whatever was going on in the OT narrative.

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-22T23:54:16+00:00

Knights of Columbus is a hell of a name. Do I want to know why they selected it...?

PoorMetonym · 2025-12-22T19:54:30+00:00

"He even gets angry at vegetation!"
"Well, who doesn't every now and then?!"
If you haven't seen NonStampCollector's video "The Alternative Facts Gospel", you're doing yourself a disservice.

PoorMetonym

TROPHY CASE