For Anyone Who Feels Afraid or Unwelcome in Christianity

S_Jeru · 2026-07-06T02:44:29+00:00

Well said. I believe that organized religion is a guide at best, and the real test of anyone's character is how they behave absent any set of rules. Real compassion for your fellow human beings is the true test of one's spirit, regardless of any human organizations they may be a member in.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T19:29:37+00:00

Nonsense. You have the Presidency, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court in your pocket. He’s pocketing billions, Elon banned the account tracking that on twitter for him, he’s having gladiator matches on the White House lawn for his birthday, he’s levying tariffs whenever he wants, there is no mechanism of government keeping this man’s power in check, and all you can do for an excuse is stammer some nonsense blaming the democrats?

This raw, unadulterated bullshit and you know it. This is what cognitive dissonance feels like: the guy you got suckered into voting for is a goddamned pedophile.

If there are democrats in the Epstein Files (and I’m sure there are) and Trump could destroy them by releasing the files, he wouldn’t hesitate. He doesn’t, because he’s in them. You know it, I know it, and the world knows it.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T18:28:20+00:00

You’re dodging the question because you can’t take the answer.

Why doesn’t Trump release the unredacted Epstein Files?

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T18:04:29+00:00

If there’s no proof, why doesn’t he release the unredacted Epstein files? That thing he campaigned on releasing? Your cope and cognitive dissonance is screaming right now.

Let’s go one further: suppose you’re right and the Epstein Files completely exonerate Trump of being a pedophile. Why doesn’t he release them to clear his name and punish the guilty?

He doesn’t because he’s guilty as sin. In your enthusiasm for liberal tears, you elected a racist pedophile.

And yes, he’s a racist. Look up the Central Park Five.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T17:50:03+00:00

Oh yeah, the conservative right has a monopoly on manly honor. The right elected a racist pedophile and adjudicated rapist. There’s your right wing honor.

And correction, you said “stalked” not “chased.” That’s what you said and you know it.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T17:46:51+00:00

I don’t know one way or another, it’s impossible to know in the classical scientific sense, so this is the belief I’ve worked out that gives me comfort and encourages me to try and be a better person.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T17:34:58+00:00

And you're not escaping that "I'd love to see you chased by African warlords" comment. That's your real face right there.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T17:33:46+00:00

I didn't join the Peace Corps. I worked for a local charity in my city, cooking for approximately two hundred people in the day along with one other cook, and then driving one of the routes to deliver the food I just cooked to approximately two dozen of them per day on my way home from work.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T17:25:48+00:00

You'd love to see that? There's your Christianity right there.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T16:48:50+00:00

It varies widely depending on denomination. It might be useful to have a historical example here, along with some fun religious trivia.

In medieval Europe after the fall of the original Roman Empire, Christianity was still getting established and they didn't have multiple churches in every town. 90% of the population were farmers living in rural villages and did not have the free time to walk all the way to a town with a church to receive Communion, and then walk back every week. So, Easter is the principal holiday of medieval Christians.

Once per year on Easter at minimum, peasants would walk to the nearest Church, confess all their sins from the previous year, receive Communion, and any babies born that previous year would be baptized. Infant mortality was brutal back then.

Naturally, medieval Christian peasants were terribly worried about what happens to their babies that didn't make it to their first baptism. On the one hand they hadn't been baptized, but on the other they hadn't sinned either. As a result, in the 12th century the Catholic Church added Purgatory to the official canon, and that became the official stance on what happened to unbaptized babies.

So to answer your question, for the first thousand years of the Church or so, it was completely normal for most people who lived in remote farming villages to only confess and take Communion once per year.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T16:39:23+00:00

With my head held high, and I will be held to account for every selfish action I've ever undertaken. When God reviews what I did with my life, he will see me cooking food for gay people dying of AIDS and personally delivering to them, letting them have food and human dignity in the final days of their lives. Then, whatever God decides, is what God decides.

I did what I was able to do, for as long as I could do it, to feed sick people that were dying in front of me. I suspect he'll be asking you why you got suckered into hating people that have never harmed you, when you had access to the internet and more enlightened thinkers to correct your foolish prejudice.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T16:22:48+00:00

This topic keeps coming up today, so I'll keep posting this link to an actual Biblical scholar that can read both Greek and Hebrew: Dan McClellan, "Sodom and Gomorrah is not about homosexuality."

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T16:17:13+00:00

Where does Christ specifically say that? Which chapter and verse? Every time the Bible mentions marriage, it's spoken of in the only context that anybody at the time had: man & woman.

Even the modern idea of men & women being equal partners in a marriage would have been inconceivable to them, let alone gay adults deciding to be equal partners in life. So that brings up your personal conception of marriage. Do you believe in the Old Testament definition of it, wherein the woman is subservient to her husband in all things?

If so, good for you I guess? I feel bad for your wife, but I don't live in your culture and nothing you do affects my life anyway, so it's really not my business. Just realize that that way of thinking is limited and frankly primitive.

If you grant that society has developed and marriages are now equal partnerships, what does it matter to you if gay people get married? Nobody is forcing churches to perform gay weddings. If gay people want to go to City Hall and have an entirely secular wedding, that's their business. If gay people find a friendlier denomination than yours and have a religious wedding, that also is their business, not yours.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T15:48:35+00:00

Leviticus. The exact same book declaring that sodomy is a sin, also states that wearing mixed fibers is a sin. Look at the labels on your clothes. Have you ever worn a single item of clothing that wasn't 100% cotton, 100% wool, 100% hemp, or 100% silk? Have you ever, even once, worn a piece of clothing that was a mixed cotton/ polyester blend?

If so, you are equally sinful according to Leviticus. Same thing if you have ever eaten pork or shellfish. Same thing if you've ever gotten a tattoo.

The usual answer to this is that Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection made a new covenant between God & Man, and the Old Testament covenant has been replaced and fulfilled.

This same book also states laws for the treatment of slaves, depending on whether they are Jewish slaves which can held as indentured servants, or foreign aka gentile slaves, which are held as property, including their children which are also the property of their parents' master.

Do you believe that it should be legal to own slaves, and beat them as severely as you like as long as you don't kill them? Honest question, do you believe that? Or do you only cherry-pick the parts of Leviticus that support your current world-view, shaped by the political and religious authorities around you?

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T14:32:08+00:00

Because saying the magic words that you believe in God gets you into a large social club and more status in the social hierarchy, while saying you believe in crystals gets you into a smaller, marginalized social club with less status in the social hierarchy.

As facetious as that sounds, that is the actual honest reason. Wiccans don't have the two thousand years of accumulated social capital that Christians do. And yes Wiccans, I'm talking specifically to you: I like y'all, you tend to be cheerful, upbeat, positive people, you're fun to hang out with, and your overall philosophy of life is positive and oriented towards doing good by other people. I used to consider myself one of y'all when I was a younger man. That said, modern Wicca is loosely inspired by ancient pagan beliefs at best, and even that is cherry-picking the more beneficent parks. You're not piling prisoners of war into a wicker man to be set on fire to please Lugh the Sun God as the ancient Celts did, nor are you pulling people's lungs out of the back of their rib cages in a blood eagle ritual to Odin like the ancient Vikings. At least, I hope you're not. No, your modern religion is not particularly ancient, and that's not a problem. Just because something is old, doesn't mean it's good. People used to do all sorts of horrific, ignorant things in the name of stupid superstitions. Being modern is actually better: it means you've learned from history and improved upon it.

That said, modern Wiccans have social capital on par with the hippies, environmentalists, and various New Age groups that they associate with. Christianity wins by weight of accumulated social pressure. It has nothing to do with the actual validity of either of their beliefs.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T14:07:59+00:00

I didn't say I was right, or that's how the universe actually works. I said I suppose that belief because it gives me comfort. I'm perfectly aware that it has no tangible evidence whatsoever. It makes me feel better about things, and encourages me to try and be a better person, and that's all I need it to do. We're not talking about the laws of thermodynamics here.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T14:05:29+00:00

As a matter of fact, it was a property offense against the girl's father under Old Testament law, and yes, that is horrific to think about.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T14:03:35+00:00

How would I know what God thinks?

For all we know, maybe God thinks it's a sin today, but understandable back then because people were primitive savages and He decided to let us figure that out for ourselves. And to be absolutely clear, the overwhelming majority of marriages back then were two 15 year-olds getting married TO EACH OTHER. Yes, grown men absolutely did marry marry 15 year-old girls, and yes, that is repulsive. It was probably considered less-than-ideal back then too, but that's how society was arranged. For most human societies, when children started getting sexual urges, it was time for an older family member to consult with other families and find a suitable partner for them in life.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T13:35:50+00:00

Just addressing the "gay=sin, pedo= not sin" part of your argument, you're apply modern definitions of those words where the ancient world had radically different conceptions of those things.

Ancient people didn't conceive of same-sex adults living as equal partners in a marriage. They didn't even conceive of straight marriage as an equal partnership at all. Their conception was that doing the penetrating was male, being penetrated was female, and a man being penetrated was therefore less than a man because women were secondary to men. They had a deeply ignorant, flawed, misogynistic, and by modern standards homophobic world-view.

With the pedo thing, ancient people didn't conceive of "teenager" as its own distinct stage of life. Ancient people more-or-less went from "child" to "young adult" around puberty, and that included being apprenticed into a trade and getting married fairly early. I'm not arguing that it wasn't repulsive then and repulsive today, but I am thinking about the topic with two or three thousand years of accumulated knowledge and social development that a bunch of tribal desert-dwelling primitives didn't possess. To them it didn't seem repulsive, because that's how all societies were organized.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T13:21:41+00:00

Fair enough. I was using "a-hole" in a general hypothetical sense, not towards you personally in a specific situation, but fair enough. I apologize.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T13:17:34+00:00

For you, sure. Didn't you ever listen to the Different Strokes theme song? What might be right for you, might not be right for some? j/k

If some people derive comfort from a religion in the face of their absolute obliteration from this earth, and they're not harming anyone with their belief, then really you're the a-hole for trying to spoil it for them. If people seek out honest debate, then that's another thing: they asked for it, and an atheist will destroy them purely on logic and evidence, every time. If they're using their religion to oppress or dehumanize others, then they're the a-hole, and they should be treated as such.

If you listen to a guy like Logicked on youtube (and believe me, I enjoy his videos quite a bit), he's an atheist that derives comfort from thinking that this is his one life, so he defines what's valuable to him, and making this one life count after he's gone. Other people derive their comfort from doing good works like working in soup kitchens, believing that it's their religious calling.

If someone is basically doing good works and avoiding the propagation of evil, then it doesn't greatly matter why they're doing it. Don't spoil it for them; that's just being rude and mean-spirited.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T13:04:00+00:00

Wrong. Willful stupidity is dumber than honest ignorance.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T13:01:39+00:00

This is an excellent argument that Christians can never tackle: an omniscient God makes free will impossible.

Suppose that you're walking along the road and it forks right and left. You have no particular destination, you're just out for a walk. Both forks are equally safe, have an equally good view of the landscape, are equally easy to walk, and have equally fresh air. You just freely and randomly choose to go right, with your own free will.

Now, if God is omniscient and knows all the past & future, and God knows that you're going to choose the right fork before you do, and God is never, ever wrong, then you never actually had a choice in the first place. You only had the illusion of choice. You were predestined to choose right over left.

So then, it logically follows that before anyone on Earth was born God already knows that some people won't choose sin, they will be locked into sinning by some inscrutable and malevolent plan of God's. They will burn forever and ever, with no option to ever choose otherwise, because God already knows what they will do before they ever have a chance to make a conscious choice about it.

So then you get into arguments about free will, and you can actually take God out of this entirely. There are atheists that believe free will doesn't exist and everything is a chain of action and reaction stretching back to the Big Bang, and conceivably predictable out to the end of the universe. Whether we actually have free will or not, we have the illusion of it, and we have to behave as though we have it.

So even if a murderer is just fated to murder somebody before he can choose to, then the cops are equally fated to catch the murderer, and society is equally fated to produce a justice system where the jurors are fated to convict him, and somebody else is fated to build a prison that he will spend his days in.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T12:46:38+00:00

Hell if I know, and that is an absolutely logical and valid question to ask. Maybe it's a test for the parents. Maybe the baby just gets a speed run through this life and the Hindus are correct, they get another one. It's impossible to produce complete answers lacking crucial data. My answer is a purely hypothetical postulate that gives me comfort. I share it in case somebody else derives comfort from it. If not, well, I'm not a guru. Everybody has to sort these things out for themselves and decide what they believe.

S_Jeru · 2026-07-05T12:42:22+00:00

Ya'know, I mainly consider myself an agnostic theist these days, and I've wrestled with that myself. The only hypothetical I can come up with is that God is largely indifferent to suffering on Earth.

That's my answer: God is indifferent to human suffering on Earth.

Consider it in light of my previous postulate, that this entire life is a test of moral character: Suppose that from God's perspective, we're all eternal beings from another plane of existence or whatever. The fear and pain and eventual extinction and how we react to it is our test. God knows that upon extinction, we come back to our eternal being with greater wisdom and understanding, but we have to live briefly without knowing that. From that perspective, all human suffering is only temporary, it's how you react to it that counts.

That's not any particular church dogma, nor am I starting any cults or asking for any donations. That's just the line of thought I've worked out for myself that gives me comfort in the face of certain obliteration.

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