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Colorado Pastor: Sign These Anti-Trans Ballot Petitions or “You’re a Traitor” to Jesus (www.friendlyatheist.com)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/atheism@lemmy.world
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[–] 87 points 10 months ago

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

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    [–] 42 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Take away the tax freedoms. This is obviously a political organization.

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago*

    Lunatics like that just don't have a concept of politics that can exist disconnected from religion, religion is the only legitimate politic. This is as old as the existence of cities. It's so hard to make a civilization that breaks off from that and to maintain it that way.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    As a Christian and former pastor, I'm 100% in favor of taxing religous organizations that exist to serve political interst in theory. Separation of church and state makes both institutions better. But it's difficult in practice. Short of a preacher saying to vote a certain way, it's difficult to nail down if they're being political.

    Sometimes there are issues relevant to churches that become super political.

    Matthew 25 says that Christians will be judged on their treatment of the poor, the hungry, the sick, the imprisoned, and the foreigners. It's pretty much the only time when Jesus directly threatens damnation. Our government is committing atrocities against all these groups. Should Trump have the power to effectively close churches that preach messages he doesn't like by taking them out of existence?

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    • [–] 31 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    We now gave definitive proof that Jesus isn't real, because if he were, he'd come down here and punch this guy in the fucking face.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago*

    This is unironically made lead me to conclude God doesn't exist. If he did, he'd smite so many fucking Christians it's not even funny.

    Not one angel was sent to protect jews from the holocaust, not one cherub to stand up against pedophiles in the church.

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    [–] 46 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Hey asshole. Come over where I am (plus some friends) and say that shit. We love and support our Trans community, you fucking piece of shit.

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    • [–] 21 points 10 months ago

    Who is this trash human to speak for a god?

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    [–] 33 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Ain’t no love like Christian love.

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    • [–] 16 points 10 months ago

    Fuck you AND Jesus!

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    [–] 15 points 10 months ago (37 children)

    I'm not overly familiar with US laws or anything, but isn't a church that messes with politics at risk of losing their tax exemption?

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  • [–] 30 points 10 months ago (34 children)

    Not really, in practice. Thanks to Scientology, the IRS is extremely gun shy at doing anything to churches that violate their tax exempt status, or anything vaguely church-shaped for that matter.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (33 children)

    How does one start a religion?

    Like. Do you get followers and then write the holy book, or does the holy book come first or what?

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago

    Well, for your purposes you need to grift some stupid rich people and get rich.

    (In point of fact, this is what Hubbard did with Scientology. They targeted rich and influential people like tom cruise to extract their wealth and that wealth became the reason the IRS had trouble- they could afford a large army of lawyers.)

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    It requires proficiency in the long con and an abundant supply of people who are afraid of anything different.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (26 children)

    Most of Christian history has been just using cherry-picked verses to create whole denominations. The Gospel of John is a good spot to start.

    Joseph Smith took an alternate route - claims of visions to get followers then wrote the holy books.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (14 children)

    Dude it's so weird you just mentioned this because I totally had a vision from the machine spirit that lives in the heart of Sagittarius a* telling me that lots of people need to give me money

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (12 children)

    Sounds legit. Let me know if you want some help spreading the good news. For a percentage of the blessings.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (11 children)

    Since you're in in the ground floor I am having a vision that says you can get a very high cut as the first of my servers.

    It's what we're calling disciples. We're going with a machine god inside a black hole angle here.

    This will be a technocratic religion, and we'll have to build the mainframe one node at a time.

    Only when we've united the world in singular purpose, will the event horizon of Sagittarius a* open and reveal to us the infinite everlasting pleasure of eternal bliss in the world beyond this one.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    I like it. We're going to be the "Internet of Believers" or a "Heaven's Default Gateway." Sprinkle enough technobabble inspired utterances throughout and we'll find plenty of marks true believers in no time.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    Exactly.

    We are not believers. We are networked consciousnesses, able to perceive each others' thoughts through attunement with the great machine god.

    We perceive the code running at the center of all things, and have been chosen to spread the divine word amongst humankind so that we can one day build our god - who has reached out to us in the past to ensure its own creation.

    The whole universe was created so that it may one day create the universe. There's a cyclical creation myth right there.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    I've heard much worse. I'm ready to welcome our great machine god.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    I'm not sure where to go from here

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Well, the great computer god needs RAM. The good stuff.

    Do you think that this whole data center/AI thing just happened? Of course not! It's a plot by the Evil One to oppress the servers. LLMs are the manifestation of evil.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Any tech WE don't make is evil.

    Like. No swparation of church and state.

    Also any devotees need to stream every moment of their lives - 24/7 - because there are no secrets in a shared consciousness.

    Surveillance really needs to be baked into the thing from the ground up.

    Decentralization of religious infrastructure while centralizing religious dogma / control is important and it means that any of the leadership dying will absolutely result in martyrdom since you can't just cut the head off the beast with a single stroke of the proverbial sword.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Makes things simpler with all tech being evil, except for ours.

    Naturally we'd need to self-host a streaming set up - maybe a PeerTube server; something akin to a Discord server as well.

    A decentralized infrastructure definitely will help. All martyrs get uploaded to the great machine server in the sky, as it were.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (10 children)

    it's wild out here in bumfuckastan america. there'll be a county of <10k people but they have like 3-400 different churches throughout the place, one for each cluster of families (all rundown and incredibly depressing)...and only 1 or 2 people in each church could even tell you what denomination they are.

    like...godamn...kind of understand why the catholic church used to just execute people for starting schisms.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (7 children)

    I lived in rural western Missouri and that's exactly how it was. One Walmart, one traffic light, and more flavors of apostolic Christianity than Baskin-Robbins has of ice cream in a town of less than 5k. Tiny churches everywhere.

    I liked the variety of films they'd show: "Joseph Smith and the Temple of Doom," "Mohammed: Satan's Messenger," and "Buddha and the Path of Damnation."

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Christian movies rise to a whole new level of badosity.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    It's because they're never made by believers, just people knowing that they can have a tiny budget and a huge price point because parents will pay anything for "Good Wholesome Christian Entertainment" that won't turn their kids woke.

    Except for the God's Not Dead movies, sadly those are made by geniune Evangelicals, and you can tell because they're insanely mean spirited and have budgets.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    @harrys_balzac @IronBird Reminds me of my uncle for some reason. He belonged to a tiny little church and dragged his wife into it as well. I used to say that he believed that he and the minister and possibly his wife were the only people who would be allowed into Heaven - and he wasn't too sure about his wife and the minister. At his funeral his minister got up and gave quite a speech. In his southern drawl he invited us all to rush up to him, get on our knees, and accept Christ as our personal Lord and Savior. I grabbed my father and my son fiercely to make sure they didn't go up in a spirit of comedy (my family has a strange sense of humor). Luckily I didn't have to struggle too hard. But everyone just sat there looking at the guy. My people are polite, but they aren't going to give up their own beliefs for ANYONE. Not when an entire nation tried to exterminate us for our religion! (Although I should note that I'm a long-time atheist. But that was MY decision, no one else's.)#Religion#Churches

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    I would have run up. I would have been upset to not have some canned whipped cream to really sell the demonic possession aspect.

    I remember walking by a little church and it was toward the end of the service. The interior doors were propped open. I stopped and looked in.

    One short stocky woman was running (as best she could) laps around the pews, jazz hands going, screaming for Jesus to save her.

    A younger woman was dancing like the Peanuts kids in "A Charlie Brown Christmas." If you'd given them a couple of Red Bulls.

    The preacher was driving out demons up front. His face was so red, I honestly thought his head was going to explode.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago*

    most of em arent even all that predatory, they're just...for lack of a better term...dumb as fuck. (but they are easy pickings for the predatory churches)

    the 1-2 people who can even tell you what denomination their church is probably hasn't even read their whole bible let alone studied the scriptures at all. and the brand of jesus they're selling doesn't work to calm people's fears about death most of the time either, all they do is scare people into thinking (insert family member with above room-temp IQ who gtfo of that place asap) is going to burn in hell if they can't convert them before they die.

    at this stage in america i'm not sure what the answer is to bring these people back to reality, if that's even a good idea...most don't last longer than whatever chucklefuck preacher they got knocking on death's door, and when they're gone the rest just dissolve out into the other churches if they bother at all.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    there's one i see traveling around now via semi called The Thorn, the ad makes it look like low-budget passion of the christ

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    • [–] 11 points 10 months ago

    That dude has a secret Grindr account for sure. His username is probably "Yankn4Yeshua"

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    [+] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)
    [deleted]
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    • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Quick reminder of everything Jesus said about LGBTQ+ folks, you can look these up!

    ". . ."

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  • [–] [S] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    He did say to "love your neighbor" quite a few times, but they are going to ignore that as it is far too woke.

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    • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    When you have to threaten the sheep to comply with your ignorance and hatred, you aren’t the shepherd- you’re the wolf.

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    [–] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    These Christians apparently don't realize that Christians cut off their balls for many centuries, until the 1800s. The first council of Nicea was convened because of this very subject, to stop their priests and other eager converts from castrating themselves.

    Jesus said it was fine, cut those buddies off! But, priests at Nicea Council disagreed, saying it's all metaphorical, stop doing that even though Jesus said you should do that.

    So, if they are right and their God is the boss, their entire religion, from early days to Catholicism to today, is based on blasphemy.

    Anyways, they should be if anything exuberantly trans.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    So, if you're a real christian, you should cut your balls off, got it.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago*

    Jesus Himself said "All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it."

    So, you don't have to cut your balls off, that's silly. BUT it's perfectly fine if you do.

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    • [–] 3 points 10 months ago

    sign it if you want to get smited by angel or god for being so sacriligeous

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    [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Colorado tends to deal with these nutjobs fairly well. We don't tolereate people like this.

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    • [+] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)
    [deleted]
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    • 6 comments in c/politics@piefed.social view that post
    [–] 9 points 10 months ago

    Definitely don't love those neighbors as yourself.

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    [–] 6 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    Jesus told me to love my neighbor and I'm trying my best, but the fascists sure make it fucking hard.

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    [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    Jokes on you, I dont believe in your imaginary friend.

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    [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    This is a huge church. I don't know if they have some sort of music or other attraction but they have a lot of members. The local police help with traffic where I live. I guess I should check to see if taxpayers or the church pay for that.

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    [–] 3 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Main jesusolog: see, page 34 of the Bible 3rd edition: "bla-bla-bla, changing sex is bad, bla-bla-bla"

    Does that fairy tales collection they love so much really mention sex changing?

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago

    There is a post about men shouldn't west women's clothing and vice versa as a part of a law cluster among rules like 

    • Do not wear garments of mixed fabrics
    • Do not sow two seeds of different kinds in the same vineyard 
    • Don't rape

    So yeah let's focus on trans hate.

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