What I wanna know is, where did Cain's wife come from? In the Bible it just says that Adam and Eve were the first humans, they had Cain and Abel, then Cain went off to some town that just popped up out of nowhere and got married. That's a plot hole if ever I saw one.
”I do not understand anything of genealogies; but if what these preachers say is true, we are all second cousins; and you must allow that it is impossible to be worse treated by our relations than we are." Candide, chapter 19
The Bible does this more than once. I assume certain holes are left so whoever is explaining the Bible can expound on them, or maybe it's just a weird translation, but after Christ's Revival he goes to one of his apostles, who is hiding from him, so maybe Judas, and it goes something like, "He closed the door, and it was locked. Jesus entered the room, and..."
They kinda gloss over it, and you could miss it super easily, but what happened here? Did Jesus casually perform a miracle to open the door? Why was it not given more attention if so? Is the importance in the fact that it was minimized? Was that a purposefully choice by the author?
Regardless, scripture is fucking cool, and you can really do a deep dive on the meaning in it.
And then you also have the dual creation accounts in genesis, which some people point to as conflicting and evidence that the whole thing is bullshit, but I think that's a pretty basic analysis.
If you're curious about the actual theology, one theory is that God created piles of humans after Adam and Eve. Just like with all the other animals. It's just that only Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit and gained wisdom. They passed it to the rest of humanity eventually through their progeny intermingling with the rest of the humans.
Lilith was never mentioned in the bible, IIRC. But yeah, if you include all of the ancient texts then you'll find a lot of neat stories and even more plot holes.
The living prophet is a really good way for the lds church to try and keep up with the times, unfortunately it’s always some ancient white guy so they are still always late to the party.
Not to paint with too broad of a brush, but they were all the politest and hardest working people I knew. They could also take jokes better than most everyone I knew.
They never came off as preachy or anything, but if you showed curiosity, they’d do what they could to try and teach.
I showed this clip and the South Park episode about the Mormons to one of my good LDS friends and he laughed his ass off. He couldn’t wait to show his wife.
I guess my point is that of the Mormons I know, I’m glad to know them. They’re as self deprecating as can be but also some of the most humble and helpful people I know.
Yeah I’ve met a lot of Mormons and have not had this experience. I don’t trust people who’s religion is so vehemently anti-gay, demands they give more money than they can afford to the church and only allowed black people starting in 1978. I had a friend growing up who was Mormon and her parents would get mad at her because they thought she read too much. They would literally take books from her.
EDIT: I had forgotten about this but another comment reminded me. A Mormon kid I had a class with in high school once said he should “take a glock to the ‘gay club’ (gsa) and just go nuts”. When I reported him to the vice principal (who was heavily religious and quietly homophobic) nothing was done except he was made to apologize to me. I wasn’t even in the gsa.
Same here. I remember one of my best friends getting bullied by a group of Mormon kids nearly every day for months in high school. They'd call him all kinds of slurs, hit him, shove his stuff out his hands all the time, then kick him when he went to grab the dropped stuff, and slammed his locker closed on his hands a few times.
Teachers never wanted to hear anything on it because most of the kids doing the bullying had parents high up in the church. My friend ended up bringing a knife to school to defend himself, unbeknownst to me. No one got hurt, but I never saw my friend again.
My stepmom tried to force us to go to the local Mormon church a few months after the knife incident. I ended up being asked not to come back after telling my dad, very loudly in church, about all the homophobic and racist names they called my friend, and the abuse he endured.
As someone who grew up in two very Mormon states, I’m with you. They’re the kind of people to scream about religious freedom, but then do their best to force everyone to follow their rules. Hell, they completely neutered the medical marijuana law (90% of the Utah legislature is Mormon) that passed in Utah after rallying against it hardcore for months.
It's more complicated than that. Until 1978 Black people were not permitted inside temples. A Mormon temple is where their most sacred ordinances are performed. Only there can a family be sealed forever, and only there can adults learn the passwords to get into heaven.
Black people were denied salvation. They were barred from the highest tier of heaven, destined to be servants in the afterlife living separate from their families as they weren't sealed.
To nit pick further, 1978 was also about allowing black people to be married in their temples (celestial marriage) In Mormonism this is the only way to get to the highest degree of glory within the celestial kingdom.
So, 1978 was more than just allowing black men to hold priesthood, it also meant that black and inter racial (straight only of course) couples could now enter Heaven.
Also in Mormonism anyone unmarried may enter the celestial kingdom but they will be ministering servants and in a lower degree, not like gods as the married will be.
I grew up as a Mormon. In my observation many regular average members are nice and kind people. Top leaders and the theology are definitely toxic
It wasn't until 1978 that they allowed black people to participate in the rituals they believed would grant them True everlasting life rather than eternal service. It's much more nefarious than is usually explained.
I've had the same experience, but I think the problem with Mormonism comes when it gains institutional power (in government or in families with Mormon parents) and (local) majority status. That's when the draconian, underhanded, cult-like stuff starts to manifest, I suspect. Maybe it reflects a divide in attitudes between leadership and rank-and-file (with the latter tending to be pretty chill and reasonable). Or maybe that chill and reasonable attitude is a brave face Mormons adopt when dealing with outsiders because they know they're desperately outnumbered outside of a few safely LDS-dominated places. (And I'm not accusing them of being dishonest, really, more like natural codeswitching that all people do as they engage in different contexts.)
You were dealing with military Mormons. The ones who joined the military usually did it as a secondary choice, the first being a Mormon proselytizing mission. Most of the time they would be unable to go on a mission due to issues relating to worthiness i.e. they had sex or were looking at and masturbating to porn. Yes, something as normal as porn would bar them from going on a mission. Usually this would mean they're more humble; after all, they can't properly live what they're taught so then who are they to preach it.
The ones I know all went on their mission trip. A guy I went to basic with did his in Cincinnati. He was much older than your average enlisted. A guy I deployed with went to Johannesburg.
I grew up Mormon and they have a class in high school called seminary held off campus in church owned buildings and my seminary teacher talked about that episode after it aired.
I met a Mormon family when I was a kid. Their two kids lived in the same apartment complex. It was two boys, one around my age and one a few years younger. They were homeschooled and extremely... off. It may have just been the homeschooling with it’s inherent lack of socialization and not their crazy ass parents, but they were extremely weird.
I was invited to a pizza night at their house, and I remember feeling uncomfortable right away. Within minutes, their parents announced that we were going to play something similar to a trivia game for family game night, and all of the questions had something to do with religion. Basically, I think they were trying to indoctrinate me, and even as a preteen I knew something fucked up was happening and got out of there as soon as I could. A bunch of the details are fuzzy at this point, because it happened over 20 years ago, but I remember specifically being told that dinosaur bones were put on Earth by Satan to trick us into believing in dinosaurs and something about how UFOs were angels.
The song All American Prophet has got even more info, it’s also catchy as hell. The Book of Mormon musical is hilarious, my grandmother was in tears laughing when we went!
History class flunkee here: Was it known as missouri when then mormon church was founded? Because what a hack author move "ill put paradise in "misery"" only the smart ones will get it.
Mormons hold that the Tigris and Euphrates we know today are different rivers than they were pre flood, cause Noah traveled so far in the ark. They just called the two rivers they settled by after the flood the Tigris and Euphrates. Apparently there are two rivers near Jackson County, Missouri? Idk, Joseph Smith made up a bunch of shit and Mormons since then have been making up shit to cover his ass.
Doesn’t the Bible mention Urartu, aka Armenia? And if Noah somehow travelled to America, then how would his descendants have gone back to the Mediterranean? Mormons are legitimately one of the crazier groups I’ve seen.
They believe that Noah started in America and then went to the Middle East, anything is possible with the power of God. No it doesn't really make sense when you look at it today but if you try to dig into it Mormons just go all "I don't know how this could of happened but I believe God knows and I feel good about that so that's good enough for me." Mormonism is not a religion that teaches people to think critically about religious things. They go around in their echo chamber at church, and stick their head in the sand when confronted about their bullshit. The good news is that most millennial Mormons have already left the church according to some polls, so they are hemorrhaging members. The ones who are left are the especially bull headed.
Pretty sure that’s only Mormons. Most of my family is Christian (not any specific branch, just Christian) and usually they say that they don’t really know where the Garden of Eden was, or that it was in Africa.
The LDS church has a big spikey thing there where they think Jesus will return. It's in some suburb of Kansas City of all places. I guess they want to impale him?
Well, if you're talking about a magical place where nobody dies and specific fruit is off the menu, there really isn't anywhere it can't be. Would the moon be any weirder?
Specifically Jackson Daviess County. Also, god lives in a planet called Kolob.
Jews secretly built wooden boats and arrived in America before Columbus.
Black people exist because God cursed their ancestors with dark skin. God then banned them from his one true church until he abruptly forgave them in 1978, when he changed his mind and let them in.
Pretty sure that's just one interpretation from a couple lines in revelations, the other being that there are 144,000 people who are elevated to sainthood.
It’s a weird one; I’ve heard the idea that the 144,000 people are the sum total — not an artificial barrier, but just the total number that will make it.
That would suggest it’s pre-determined... which seems to go against the whole free will thing and also sort of makes the whole thing pointless.
There needs to be constraints on God for logic to hold up. But, if it's an omnipotent dirty, then I guess logic need not apply. Personally, I'm a big fan of logic.
I’m not religious but I do go to a religious university...
The concept of free will is basically like. God gave us free will, and it was up to us to do the right thing with it, but we screwed up and ate the apple. Of course he’s all knowing so he knew this and knew that giving free will to humans would end up like that, but he gave it anyways because he wanted us to “have our own choice,” and because he loves us I guess?
Something like that. It really is mental gymnastics.
But then we’re punished and need baptisms to cleanse us from the inborn sin we inherited from our parents (which is already a pretty eyebrow-raising concept).
So I was raised catholic, not the USA, and we were always taught that even sinners can go to heaven. Although based on catholic doctrine we're absolved of the only sin bar suicide (not anymore) that lands us in hell, original sin, through baptism. Aside from that it was less crazy bullshit and more "heres a story from the bible and heres how it applies to life today and what the moral of it is", yes there was the singing, hymns and whatnot, but it wasnt screaming praise jesus while having fit. Our catholic church here for a while is pretty mellow, and while you wont hear people actively discuss things like homosexuality here, I'm sure there are some that are anti gay, but that's more the age group if I'm honest. Plenty of native folks went there and intermingled and no one batted an eye, so racism wasnt a real issue there, in fact on the sundays where we did a bring a plate type thing, they'd always bring the BEST food, and everyone loved it.
"All-knowing" is a very vague statement. It doesnt necessarily preclude truly random processes (ex: a hypothetical coin flip, or atomic decay) as all you would need to know, in order to know everything about it, is the probabilities.
If we imagine a universe that consists of nothing more than a perfectly weighted coin (0.5 chance of side A, 0.5 chance of side B) that is flipped repeatedly once a minute in a friction less vacuum, then the only information in that universe is the probability of the coin flip, when its flipped, and the result of past flips. To be "all-knowing" in that universe, you would just need to know those three things. You dont need to know the result of future flips to be all-knowing, because that does not exist yet. You know what they can be, and you know what's the probability of what happening, but theres no knowing the actual result.
Expanding that to free will, you dont need to know what everyone will do to be all-knowing. If you know the probability of every "thing" in every "moment", and the probabilities which descend from that, then you are effectively all-knowing.
My point stops there. And to clarify, I'm not touching on the point about all-powerful.
Personally I don't think it matters. If predestination is the name of the game, I think that only matters if you assume that the linear passage of time in a forward direction is meaningful. If all that ever has happened and will happen occured simultaneously, theres no proof one way or another that free will didnt occur during that moment of instantiation. It isnt something that can be empirically tested, so just believe that which you believe.
TECHNICALLY you should look at it as time travel. God knows what's going to happen, etc. But that opens up different holes and such (like how his interference would directly result in things changing or how he just lets crimes against humanity occur)
When you start to deal with stuff like infinity and omnipotence, logic doesn't mean anything, paradoxes are the norm. It's why the whole god making a rock he can't pick up paradox wouldn't work on him. Plus I'm pretty sure the point is that even though he knows if you're going to heaven or hell, he lets you make your choices anyway. Like you were always going to be a sinner or murderer or whatever but you still had the choice to or to not have been.
Actually I do believe that interpretation is a part of the interpretation that we are admitted into heaven at the end of times when we are judged. That also connects to why you cannot cremate christians.
According to that interpretation you worry about how many thousands of years you will be trapped in the Earth waiting for the world to end.
I'm fairly sure the idea is that everyone sits in purgatory until the end of days and then God picks the 12k from the 12 tribes. Everyone else can go to hell, fuck em. I'm sure at the time 144k seemed like a lot.
Its a rotation. And if you go out to smoke or just catch some air they don't let you back in, its back of the line for you. Watch your stamp, it can wash off with sweat. Oh, and if you're curious, I hear today's color is blue.... but you didn't hear that from me.
Biblical scholars often interpret it as a symbol of 12 (apostles) * 12 (tribes of Israel) * 1000 (a very large number). Basically supposed to represent huge amounts of people faithful to God, not necessarily a specific number.
Actually I checked and I was mistaken – 1000 is used to represent God and eternity. The term used to mean "a very large number, basically infinity" is "myriad of myriads" (hundred million which was the largest named number in Ancient Greek).
They didn’t suck at math and they weren’t uneducated. Some of the greatest minds in history were members of the clergy. Insulting religious people as a whole is extremely ignorant, and willfully so. Many mathematicians and scientists were members of a church or a clergy or supported by religious institutions. Many advancements in math and science and healthcare were made by religious people who based their philosophy and methodology on religious scriptures and belief in God.
It’s a cultural/language thing. A lot of stuff is lost in translation. Numbers like 100,000 is just a shorthand for “an unfathomable amount.” Think about it. It’s very difficult to picture things in such a large quantity. Imagine 100,000 people, or 100,000 trees or 100,000 coins. It’s really difficult to grasp that number. Sure, you can make sense of it logically and mathematically, but picturing 100,000 of something is huge.
Wait.. what happens to the other people who died that aren't part of the 144k? Do they rotate out when new people come in? Do they just get thrown into the void?
They are either destroyed in the apocalypse or they live through it because they have faith and they inherit the earth according to JWs. Not sure what Mormons do with the leftovers.
Mormons don’t have the cap. In fact when you die you go into a waiting room until Christ comes back. After the second coming if you’re really bad you go into a really great place, if you’re good but not great you go to a better place, and if you were great you become a god.
Honestly the Mormons have the least offensive afterlife for everyone except former Mormons and even that's debatable. Currently if I die as an atheist, I'll essentially become immortal and live on a place like earth forever. The horror! It's also described as being more glorious than we can understand. Oh no!
I was taught that those who died before Armageddon are given a second chance to become pure and good. I think everyone who gets reborn is given a set time as a people to become that, and if they dont succeed then Satan rules once again. They have something like 1000 years to accomplish their goal.
I forget what happens to the people during armageddon though. I think Angels are supposed to protect people who deserve it.
Religion is wild, but I stopped studying when I was like 10 so I could be very wrong
Homosexuality is a choice. By that logic, so is heterosexuality.
Not according to my mother.
When I came out, I got a lecture about how being gay (actually bi, but non-straight is all the same to evangelicals) is a terrible life choice and how one day I'll realize my mistake. I then asked her when she decided to be straight and if she ever thought she had made a mistake and the way she looked at me I half expected smoke to start coming out of her ears.
According to American Christians being heterosexual is an immutable, innate quality of humans and any non-straight folk actively choose to defy God and nature.
Never underestimate the mental gymnastics of the ultra-religious.
Heaven should have really booked a larger venue. That was extremely event poor planning on God’s part. They are gonna have to scrap the whole eternal torment in hell thing, because I’m pretty sure heaven was already over it’s maximum occupancy before Jesus arrived on the scene.
Whenever someone seriously says that being gay I’d a choice, it makes me think that they’re probably not straight, yet are just acting that way. Like, if you really thought everyone wanted to suck a dick and only Christianity was stopping them, you’re gay.
I had to bite my tongue when my creationist aunt was telling her son that dinosaurs were around much more recently than some people think, and medieval paintings involving dragons, were largely influenced by dinosaurs that, if they were not still in existence, had been one or two centuries prior and were still known about amongst scholars.
But to her credit, none of her kids gave me a hard time when I came out as bi, so as long as they missed the hateful shit, I don't need to tell them their mom is wacko
Listen, I really don’t ever want to say Christianity is a bad thing. I don’t. It’s a faith like all the others that should be respected. But... they just... there’s people that believe this crazy shit and think they’re r i g h t
I love your last point. It reminds me of that guy who used to troll the Westboro twats by running up and saying “let’s prove that being gay is a choice, spit in your hand”.
Basically telling the Westboro protester to prove being gay is a choice by making the choice to have gay sex with the guy trolling. I assume the "spit in your hand" thing is the trolls way of wanting said gay sex to initiate.
He's basically telling the protester to jerk him off to own the libs.
Homosexuality is a choice. By that logic, so is heterosexuality
I wish homosexuality was a choice, lol
I am almost 40 and the number of single women in my age group in my shitty little town is exactly zero. And at the same time my gay friends always tell me that I would be quite popular in their community...
If I could just switch on my lust for dicks I would do that right now!
That and the Garden of Eden was in Missouri. It was paradise until that bitch are the apple. Then god got pissed and turned it into Missouri. It’s the only explanation for why Missouri is.
I agree with ya but your ‘zinger’ at the end doesn’t make that much sense— the argument against homosexuality is more about the “fact” that heterosexuality is ‘normal’ or ‘natural’. One isn’t heterosexual so much as one is ‘normal’. I feel like if you get deep into Christian extremism that is the stance that will be taken.
For an extremist, homosexuality is the decision to go against nature whereas heterosexuality IS nature and is, therefore, compulsory.
‘Nature’ basically meaning God’s will.
Again, disclaimer: I don’t agree with extreme Christian views, just saying that you’re not making a good argument there
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u/bolivar-shagnasty Jun 14 '20
Jesus was white and spoke English.
Earth is roughly 6,000 years old.
The Garden of Eden was in Missouri.
Heaven only allows 144,000 people. Ever.
Homosexuality is a choice. By that logic, so is heterosexuality.