The most hilarious one to me is African American athletes thanking God.
Soooo, he let your ancestors get enslaved, sold, beaten, tortured, and shipped around the world by assholes… who used the Bible to defend slavery… All of this, so he could someday help you throw that pigskin for 2 touchdowns…
God truly works in mysterious ways 😂
Soooo, he let your ancestors get enslaved, sold, beaten, tortured, and shipped around the world by assholes…
The traditional argument I’ve heard boils down to Satan being the tyrannical enslaver and God being the liberator. They were freed from bondage in the same way that the Jews were freed from Pharaoh’s Egypt. Emancipation is a Christian victory in a holy war.
All of this, so he could someday help you throw that pigskin for 2 touchdowns…
This is where Old Testament Theology intersects with modern Evangelicalism.
A bunch of the early books talk about various Jewish prophets and preachers climbing their way into positions of influence or rule, by demonstrating commitment to the Covenant. Victory is a demonstration of your piety, not your physical aptitude. If you are the Most Faithful then you will lead armies to victory and stand at the right hand of the powerful and claim/reclaim your old Kingdom of Israel.
Evangelicals are less invested in Israel as a state than in the general idea of theocracy and of a “Godly Country”. You achieve greatness by advocating for Godliness. You find yourself in this privileged position not because God wanted you to win the game, but because God wanted you to testify to his greatness. Winning is simply an opportunity to evangelize. Whether you’re the King of England or the Winningest College Football Player, your status only persists so long as you evangelize in God’s name.
You won the football game in order to gather a crowd. You got that crowd in order to deliver this message. If you stop delivering the Good News, or you deviate from God’s Plan, you’ll stop winning the football games.
Victory is a Mandate From Heaven to follow your lead. Except when its victory by a heretic, in which case it was Satan’s plan. So don’t just follow anyone who wins. Take the victories of your ingroup as proof of your righteousness. And assume any defeats involved Satanic Cheating.
Evangelicals then have the distorted view that their actions towards Heaven Public Relations can make them win or lose games but, in reality that outcome would be influenced by God will alone regardless of what they do or dont towards Heaven PR
black slave owners were also plentiful. still exist today even.
Source?
Not sure how well meaning that guy’s comment was, but are you questioning if there were/are African slavers? You’ll find slavers across all major cultures. It is estimated to be more than 40 million slaves in world right now, mostly in Africa and Asia.
Though I’m not sure if there were that many slave owners that were black in western countries.
Yeah, that’s why I wrote that I’m not sure how well meaning the guy was with his comment. He left it vague.
Antoine de St Exupéry is a French aviator and writer who opened airmail route between Europe, Africa and South America.
One day he flew back from Africa to France with a Berber, someone who lived in the Sahara desert. As they flew through the Alps he saw all the waterfalls, lakes, streams, rivers …
At this point he told the St Exupéry that the god of French people must love them more that their own god.
Hey that’s the guy who wrote Le Petit Prince isn’t it
yes and Vol de Nuit which is an account of his travels and a beautiful read
This made me think. What do Christians even think how different groups of people came to be? They don’t believe in evolution and they clearly believe humanity started off with only two people. And after you’ve cleared that hurdle, why do some groups suffer much more than others? Suffering used to be a punishment by god himself in their own stories.
For some it was punishment. Like “these people were bad so they are all dark skinned now.”
Mormonism even had that as established doctrine for awhile.
According to Genesis Noah had three sons, whose descendents repopulated the earth.
One day Noah got shitfaced drunk and Ham saw him naked and now all his descendents are cursed.
That was one of the justifications for slavery.
They think skin color was the mark Asshole put on Cain for being a jealous
farmermurderer.Edit to add some context- Cain was a farmer and gave a sacrifice of grain. Abel was a shepherd and gave a sacrifice of sheep. Asshole likes the smell of fried mutton, rejects Cains offering (even if it was just as or more work…)
Obviously it’s just a myth; though it’s one used to establish Israelites as being superior to Canaanites and the other semites in the area.
It’s only with the meeting of people who weren’t brown that the mark became assumed as skin color.
My late Catholic grandmother believed this. She read some book by a Catholic “mystic” who had visions. Surprise! Racist visions.
ugh. go to any poor catholic neighborhood and you will see psychic shops that drape their stuff in saints and such.
Depends on who you ask, christians and jews and i think islam saw black people as punishment from god. Whoch is super cool, obviously
“Christians, Jews, and I… saw black people as a punishment from God.”
nice lmao (this is a joke i know youre not being racist)
Most Christians accept the reality of the evolution, you know. Most of them aren’t literalists who believe that Adam and Eve actually existed.
And for the ones delusional enough to believe that, they generally believe that God decided everything, so I guess he could have decided that some people kind of evolved, but under the direct control of God, and not by natural selection.
Yeah, that was a fun moment when Pope Francis declared that Adam and Eve were not real. Dude, your firm just spent two thousand years killing and torturing countless thousands of people due to the concept of the “original sin”, which had been committed by a fictional character??!?
did he get rid of the doctorine of original sin?
Didn’t know that, I haven’t actually met a lot of religious people. But like, that begs the question, why wouldn’t God write literal instructions if he would wants you to follow them? If Adam and Eve are meant as a parable (why else include it if it’s neither true nor teaches something), he basically wrote a fanfiction about himself to get a point across that could have been written directly. There are no bonus points for creative writing if you punish people with eternal damnation for misinterpreting it.
Mate, I have to stop you right there because you seem to be applying logic to religion. It doesn’t work. And yes, being religious requires you to allow so much mental gymnastics that it’s simply incomprehensible, that’s why we are not.
Their whole „system of beliefs” is riddled with inconsistencies and paradoxes that are so easy to think of that Im still surprised these people can sleep at night. Literal 6 year old level santa clause bullshit that they simply allow to be the „reasoning” for their lives. Except they don’t because every christian strays from their gods instructions in one way or another simply cherry-picking things they want to follow and believe and those they do not. It’s fucked up that adults do it but we even let them run our fucking countries.
Religion truly is a disease on intelligence.
oh man you are so spot on. I remember a back and forth I had about me saying jesus espoused pacifism and a religious guy told me the turn the other cheek was meant to not be taken literally but a later thing where jesus is being taken away and he told his disciples he will have to arm themselves should (this part mind you is when he told the one to put away the sword and healed the soldiers ear). Its definitely what do I want the end thing to be and now let me interpret to reach that.
The Bible is a wonderful book; you can prove anything you want with it. ~Mark Twain
thank you. Its funny. As a kid having to read the books I did not like the man but as an adult who hears more and more of his quotes I love him. Quotes like this should be the required reading before reading his books.
Mysterious ways
Don’t think too critically of the Bible, you’ll end up an atheist.
Tower of Babylon seems as far as that thought goes.
Kind of. The Tower of Babel was an explanation as to why other languages existed and a lesson in hubris against your deity.
Most believe in micro evolution but not macro evolution
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Weird how only the most resource-rich countries in africa are the ones going through so much shit, and it’s weird how they’re all ruled by dictators, I wonder how those positions.
This book explains why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Nations_Fail, and it’s very easy and fun to read.
Dictatorship is still better than war zones. Having a dictatorship means the area is stable, and hence good enough for business.
Every consumer good in this picture has “Made In China” stamped on it.
And was built in a factory staffed by 7-10 year olds.
Eh. Industrial China isn’t so hard up for labor that it needs 7 year olds running around very expensive equipment. More likely its a 20-30 year old working a 996 in a factory half-owned by an American investor.
You’re more likely to find child labor way out on the pre-industrialized western fringe, where kids working the farm alongside their parents is closer to a matter of survival. And the Chinese government has been discouraging that, both by building schools and expanding industrial agriculture capital that makes child labor redundant.
Ironically, the US has been moving in the other direction. So maybe we’ll live to see the day when all the cheap kitche crap littered through our homes is Made In America again.
Well, I guess most of that is good to hear.
And yeah, the US has been lurching towards child labor a concerning amount lately.
And not a single one has “Made in Africa”.
Africa isn’t a country
Made in EU is a thing and EU isn’t a country either.
That was a marketing gimmick, not a labeling mandate.
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Meanwhile Ukraine…
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I feel like it’s more “thank us for believing in the right god”
