"A better world is possible, you just have to wait until after you die"
the teachings of christianity are fucking great - don't hoard wealth, don't judge your neighbours and love them, give money and food to the poor, etc. jesus was unironically a socialist
problem is that most christians don't actually follow those teachings
The Jesus that was written about might have been a "socialist" (insofar as one can apply modern political labels to historical figures), but I can't help but feel that a lot was left out of the texts. Early christianity was an apocalyptical death cult. They didn't write anything down for decades, because they literally thought the world was going to end within the lifetime of the original followers of Jesus.
They only started writing when it became clear this whole apocalypse business was more of a long term thing, and by that time the teachings had probably adapted to material reality quite a bit.
Like giving away all your wealth and living in poverty being presented as the ethical choice seems hyperbolic, if noble, but it makes sense to mean this literally if you believe the world will end within the year. And this is something that made it into the texts. I wonder what kind of stuff didn't.
Arguably, Jesus wasn't a socialist and his teachings about wealth aren't all that cool when you put context around it. Jesus was a Jewish Apocalypticist. He thought that in the imminent future, the Jewish God would strike down the powerful and the oppressors i.e. the Romans and establish His Kingdom on earth. In light of that, Jesus talked about sharing among each other and not hoarding wealth because why would you do that if wealth is irrelevant in God's kingdom. Of course the apocalypse never came so Christians have to twist Jesus' words into something that sounds timeless but somehow not about sharing wealth.
Yeah. Being nice to the less fortunate is a tenet of most major religions. Your religion isn't getting big if it doesn't have a bit of populism in it.
Jesus repeatedly spoke against trying to fundamentally change political and economical structures. If he was a socialist he was a leftcom of some sort.
I mean, I sort of agree with chud Evangelicals when they say Jesus didn't have an overtly political message. He was talking to his followers, talking to them specifically about sharing shit with each other and MAYBE taking care of the poor people of their in-group. All in preparation of a coming apocalytic event. Even these things are a small part of his message. Tbh I don't really see Jesus' sayings to have much value, either politically, socially, or religiously.
Yeah, there isn't really a single shared canonical bible between denominations. I've never bothered to look that closely, but you could probably learn a lot about the different christian offshoots just by looking carefully at what they value when constructing their foundational text, and specifically looking at what they discard.
all the protestants did is shave a few books they disagreed with off
That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, discarding things they disagreed with.
some denominations are just going to add a little extra stuff.
Again, exactly what I mean.
there is not any major branch of Christianity that doesn’t take what we know of as the Protestant Bible as scripture.
Except, I would assume, catholics, who are themselves the largest group? Unless you mean they take it as scripture, and then some other stuff, too.
I'm not saying they don't share most of the text, all I'm saying is that the texts don't match exactly, and there isn't one single canon.
All of this isn't even getting into the issue of translations.
Exactly this. The vast majority of debate over which books belonged to the canon took place in the first 300-400 years of Christianity. The foundational text for 99.5% of all denominations today is the 66-book collection known to everyone on earth as The Bible(TM). Yeah, the catholics readded some books in between due to their specific theology, but the idea that sects just shave off entire books they don't like on the reg is ridiculous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulcinians
The main concepts of the Dulcinian heresy were:
-The fall of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and return of the Church to its original ideals of humility and poverty;
-The fall of the feudal system;
-Human liberation from any restraint, and from entrenched power;
-Creation of a new egalitarian society based on mutual aid and respect, holding property in common and respecting gender equality.
Are you kidding? It's the saving grace of that scam of a religion.
Religions are systems, you can’t just pick and choose the best parts and declare that representative.
Counterpoint: You absolutely can.
Really good take imo. Religion is "supposed" to provide divine guidance the believer. If you're picking and choosing what elements to follow then you're guiding yourself. At that point you're not religious, whether you accept it or not. If you believed in an omniscient god, you would follow their their decree to the letter as they literally know better than you.
Who this person who gets to decide what the objective point of religion is. They should start a church.
What? Religions can absolutely be examined through a materialist lens to examine the function they serve in society and to an individual.
Yeah if you want to. Or a different lens if you don't want to.
. Spirituality isn’t some mystical unknown, literally everyone experiences it and it arises from a combination of biological and social factors and is channeled by societal constructs towards specific social, economic and political aims.
Sure that's a model for it. Good job you have a model.
Model's not the thing though.
Read theory
The theories not the thing either you're gonna reify yourself to death.
I think Jesus or the Pope have a good claim to being able to define what religion is to them. A catholic is welcome to disagree though and still consider themselves catholic. Who's gonna stop them?
My grandmother hates new Pope and thinks he's anti-Catholic. I could tell her she's wrong to consider herself catholic in light of that fact, but I don't see what the point of that would be, because she'd disagree.
I wouldn’t tell your grandma she’s not catholic but the church just might.
So what?
The conception of religion as a purely individual choice is a very bourgeoise and radical concept that does not reflect the way the vast majority of the world actually practices religion.
I mean sure, when you choose to model everyone's religion the way you have, it definitely looks like the vast majority of the world doesn't practice religion as a different model would describe, but that's a function of your model, not reality.
In short, asking questions in a materialist framework guarantees materialist answers.
I think you can absolutely use material conditions to model the role of religion in society. The problem comes in asserting that that model is the only one that accurately describes reality. I don't think that's been demonstrated.
if you don’t think materialism is the best and effectively the only way to analyze society and come to conclusions and decisions on how and why to change it, why are you a socialist?
Because of foundational moral axioms regarding the ethical treatment of human beings. This notion of socialism as a purely materialist endeavor has always struck me as a bit silly, because materialism is non-normative. Someone could read a huge amount of materialist theory, ascribe to the conclusions intellectually, and still decide to be a rip-roaring exploitative capitalist.
And what other model would you say is as or more valid?
I think find instrumentalism/pragmatism comports with my framework better, but I don't begrudge anyone their choice of materialism.
Someone could read a huge amount of materialist theory, ascribe to the conclusions intellectually, and still decide to be a rip-roaring exploitative capitalist.
Is La Rouche a good example?
I mean, you're able to claim whatever you want and have whatever take on religion you want, but it doesn't mean you're not just fooling yourself.
but it doesn’t mean you’re not just fooling yourself.
What does that even mean?
It means that people who claim they adhere to x religion but they just pick and chose the parts they like (which is the norm), aren't really taking to heart the teachings of x religion. It's also a somewhat recent phenomenon (although that too depends on what society we are talking about). These people mostly just use religion to justify their personal opinions and the social mores they learned to obey to themselves. But these things are totally irrelevant when you supposedly believe there is a supernatural being in charge of the world who wants you to have a certain purpose.
This is evidenced by the fact that most of these people usually have never studied the holy texts of the religions they adhere to, and in general spend little time figuring out what their religion is even supposed to say. I don't really understand that, like, if I thought there was a God I'd be super invested in learning what the fuck he wants from me. I guess this doesn't automatically mean they don't take it seriously, but it does show that the way they learned to interact with religion is closer to something which just justifies the stuff a specific social circle thinks you should follow rather than anything religion is ostensibly about.
"umm actually sweaty, you're doing religion wrong" - somebody, apparently.
Also teaches to obey your earthly masters, whether it be monarchs or slaveowners. The ultimate message is “Be nice, but don’t try to really change anything because the meek will eventually inherit the earth after we all die and God does a re-do.”
While we find that abhorrent today, if you understand the material conditions of the time, it really was more realistic to teach acceptance of your fate rather than delude people into dreams of liberation.
Free peoples and kingdoms were essentially just fuel for the unbeatable slave empires of the era. And it took centuries of stagnation and invasion provoked partially by climate change before any of them cracked. And what replaced it was Feudalism, so, legitimately, it would be pretty foolish to have hope and commit yourself to struggle in that period.
Industrialism and the equalizing power of firearms are basically a necessity for systems based on equality like socialism. Otherwise, the arguably inevitable trajectory of agricultural societies is into some form of despotic hierarchy.
Yeah, that’s exactly my point. It was a lie to keep people complacent in their oppression and it’s still around today. Sure, there were material reasons behind why it was propagated and enforced but that doesn’t somehow make it less evil.
What's the point of that judgement in the absence of an alternative though?
A bunch of oppressed people created a bunch of lies to help each other survive an unthinkably cruel system. Rather than...what exactly? Staying atomized and utterly crushed by it?
Ironically, those lies took over the whole fucking empire. Which is pretty insane, if you think about it.
The alternative of... not lying to people to get them to accept their oppression? Seriously, I understand why the lie was created and propagated, but it was still a lie.
It may have initially been a creation of the oppressed, but it was quickly co-opted by the oppressors and used as a weapon to keep the oppressed from even imagining an end to their oppression. It didn’t “take over the empire”, the empire took over and co-opted Christianity and wielded it as a weapon against the lower classes. Believing a lie like that doesn’t serve the lower classes.
That's not an alternative. You're just framing it as one. Of what fucking value is the truth if it cannot set you free?
The people who internalized the truth, "you are a slave being oppressed," either used it to rebel, which failed basically 100% of the time and resulted in death or a fate much, much worse than death, or they were completely fucking miserable and encumbered by the truth until the day they died.
You've never needed a lie to sustain you, so you can't understand why they would do it. But in a truly hopeless situation, which is what they were in, they needed it to get them through it.
Marx doesn't call it "the sigh of the oppressed creature" for nothing.
You're essentially getting mad at people for not being more miserable, for being subject to a brutal condition.
Religion inevitably grows where people need the will to carry on. It's pointless to be bad at that. Make the situation better, and it won't grow.
That’s not an alternative. You’re just framing it as one.
It absolutely is an alternative. You do realize that not every part of the world believed in Abrahamic religions, right? Alternatives have always existed, some better and some worse.
Of what fucking value is the truth if it cannot set you free?
Why is a lie that keeps you enslaved a good thing? The truth is always better, because the lie will always eventually run into reality and cause harm and destruction. Do you think the idea that God would eventually fix everything and that therefore the environment doesn't matter has been a harmless lie?
Do you think people were set free when they were told that their dead unbaptised child was in hell? Or that their loved one who committed suicide was being tortured for eternity? What about the women accused of being witches and burned at the stake? The LGBT people? The women who needed abortions? The pagans executed because they would not convert? Or do you think these people being unjustly persecuted for millennia is worth it because it meant the majority didn't feel bad about being oppressed?
You’ve never needed a lie to sustain you, so you can’t understand why they would do it.
Seriously, fuck you. I was a devout Evangelical until I was 26, I don't want to hear any bullshit about me never needing Christianity. It was my life.
Marx doesn’t call it “the sigh of the oppressed creature” for nothing.
Marx was explaining why religion existed, not saying it was good.
You’re essentially getting mad at people for not being more miserable, for being subject to a brutal condition.
I'm getting mad at you for saying a lie made to justify oppression and keep the enslaved from resisting their slavery was a good thing. I understand the reasons why people embraced Christianity and I don't (necessarily) judge them for it. But just because many people embraced a shitty idea because they couldn't stand the truth does not mean that idea was somehow good.
It may have been foolish but as far as I know militant liberatonary nationalist movements were quite widespread in the first century Judea. Zealots and what not.
Yeah and they were fucking annihilated and brutally tortured and executed. Their adjacents probably raped and enslaved. The entire Jewish diaspora and all of its suffering can arguably trace its persecution back to this single rebellion.
All for what, so your ruling class could be a similar ethnicity? What was the best case outcome?
Just finished the New Testament and I would argue that the three main takeaways are (in Robocop voice) Obey the Cops, Pay Your Taxes and Circumcision is Whack!
They were trying to make it more universal than the judaism they were grafting themselves onto. Telling somebody they have to do genital mutilation as an adult has always been a tough sell. Oh, and the New Testament is probably the most antisemetic book there is. And yes, that includes Mein Kampf.
Christianity is unjustified hierarchy. I for one, don't want this god guy as my boss and his son is probably just a grifter.
“Worship me and beg for my forgiveness or suffer for eternity” doesn’t sound very chill to me.
I used to work with a guy who was Jehovahs Witness. Something regarding politics and elections came up and he said something to the effect of "I don't believe it's necessary to reform things on earth, only god can lead. I'm only concerned about getting to heaven." That has stayed with me for a long time.
That's extremely true. The mindset though, terrifying to me.
They do a lot of other shit that makes me disrespect the fuck out of them.
Gotcha. I still can't even say I respect them for that, but I am glad they do it.
Christianity is all about making me feel bad just for being born when all I wanna do is hold a gotdang barbecue.
According to my childhood church, God allowed sin into the world and made hell just so they could get some premium worship. Only the best slaves for the almighty.
So glad I fucked off when I turned 18.
In defense of people who believed this, they were thousands of years away from anything being better on earth.
Like imagine living through the decline of a brutal slave empire, which took centuries to fully collapse, and the thing that replaced it was fucking internecine Feudal warfare for another millennia.
Unironically, whether you can stomach all the atrocities that happened afterwards or not, until the rise of Islam and its golden age, you would be pretty justified in thinking the world was never going to be better than it was in an age when most people were still utterly miserable.
You are absolutely correct, I didnt expect this bad take to do so well
Like my granny used to say, "Some people are so heavenly minded that they're of no earthly good."
You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky
Work and pray, live on hay
You'll get pie in the sky when you die
Long-haired preachers come out every night
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer in voices so sweet
You will eat, bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky
Work and pray, live on hay
You'll get pie in the sky when you die
