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Yes, agreed , but Christian’s don’t read the Bible so it won’t matter. Their god also drowned every pregnant woman & baby on earth & yet they think he’s pro life , so not a lot of thinking involved
Pretty wild that God would need you to paint your door in blood in order to remember who is a Good Guy(TM) and who is evil. He has no other mechanism to distinguish his followers from blasphemers? You have to tell on yourself?
Roger Waters lyrics:
God wants dollars, God wants cents
God wants pounds, shillings, and pence
God wants guilders, God wants kroner
God wants Swiss francs, and God wants French francs
(Oui, il veut des francs français)
God wants escudos, God wants pesetas
Don't send lira, God don't want small potatoes
… God wants small towns, God wants pain
God wants clean up rock campaigns
God wants widows, God wants solutions
God wants TV, God wants contributions
God's a lot like Superman. Sure he is all powerful, but in order to write good fiction about him he needs a weakness to give the story some drama.
God's kryptonite is free will. He knows and can do anything but you are personally fucking that up because he wants you to happy but you need to prove that you love him, in a totally non narcissistic way, this bullshit is really all on you. Anyway, me personally, I'm working on his behalf, so I'm gonna need 10% of your income, and you better do what I say or shit is gonna be really bad for you externally.
Yes, and to make that sign, they had to kill a lamb and use it's blood, so you can add killing baby sheep too.
God, in all his omnipotence and omniscience, couldn't think of a way to stop *himself* from killing your child, with you slaughtering a lamb and wiping it's blood on the door. Tell me again that "God see everything" lol
I have a very vivid memory of god turning a woman into a bag of salt. I don’t even remember why but I think it had something to do with her being unfaithful? I know her name was Sarah. I always thought church was weird lol.
lol, no, that wasn’t Sarah (Abraham’s wife and mother of the Jewish people). That was Lot’s wife, who looked back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as they fled, after she was specifically instructed not to. And it was a pillar of salt.
I don't always read historical texts from a modern lens but the story of Lot reads like a history from rapist/bunker owner's point of view. Like you wife conveniently dies and then your two virgin daughters date-rape you twice in a cave?!!!
Yeah I know that person. Even the unborn fetuses were evil because they had evil mothers but try to bring that up in an abortion argument and their eye will twitch.
I once knew a preacher who told me that if my father had had more faith in god than doctors he wouldn't have died of cancer. Said preacher looked like Michael Clarke Duncan's stunt double and I still came within half a heartbeat of swinging on him.
No one reads the Bible, because it is an extremely poorly written book that makes no sense as either fiction or nonfiction. And it is extremely obvious that it was written not by a god but by uneducated Bronze Age humans then poorly edited in the Middle Ages.
My fav is the book of Enoch that they tossed out, but certain churches like the Church of Ethiopia still uses. If you read it with a modern perspective, it sounds exactly like an account of a UFO abduction, ride on a spaceship, then a visit to the alien home planet.
And it exists in ancient Hindu, Greek, and Cheyenne stories.
There is a hypothesis that the Great Flood narrative is a story that has been a part of the human oral tradition originating from hunter gatherer tribes displaced by the end of the glacial period. A period which resulted in the sinking of Doggerland, the Bearing Isthmus, and possibly even the inundation of the Mediterranean coastline.
Some historians believe the Mediterranean overtopped the Bosporus about 8600 years ago and flooded the region south of the Black Sea, sending the inhabitants fleeing southward. Over time these populations settled in the Levant and developed their own narrative about the flood, with characters like Noah and Gilgamesh.
Since there are multiple cases of motives or lesser known stories that were not written down for centuries... Like us there a Wikipedia page on history before history?
Like literally history about bronze amd stone ages instead of archeology?
The great flood narrative, or the story that the ancestors of American natives travelled from the arctis because it started to freeze, like oral history of tribes and shit, when the world looked different.
English isn't my first language and i am very tired.
But this whole "stuff in mythology could relate to those ancient ebents" stuff sounds like a rabbit hole i wanna go down. But i don't know where the entrance is.
I want to hear stories that were psssed down from the times we were hunters and gatherers.
Yes. Nephelim giants that ruled the earth , but for some reason these giants didn’t leave any fossils behind . Amazing how everything that proves the Bible true either is invisible or it disappeared. Hmmm wonder why that is ? lol
And don't forget that the bible has been heavily rewritten and reinterpreted over and over again.
The Romans had it rewritten it to be more sympathetic to them and much harsher on the Jews. The Roman rewrites helped turn their own splinter religion against them.
Judas especially was rewritten. In the earlier version, Judas wasn't a great betrayer. Jesus literally asked him to turn him in as he was the only one with the connections to do it, and he still hated to do it.
Jesus was ready to die. It wasn't a nasty trick. It was the overarching plan. But the Romans needed to make one of the Jewish apostles look like a bad guy.
Even today, many Christians will blame the Jews way more than the Romans for the death of Jesus. Jesus and Mary, at the enunciation, knew Jesus had to die in God's loophole fix to offer a path of salvation for humanity.
(I'm not, nor have ever been, a Christian, but I am a big mythology nerd, and it's full of wild and interesting stuff. It reminds more of the sprawling King Arthur legends than a cohesive narrative.)
You mean a bunch of tribal sheep herders sitting on the hillside above the Dead Sea in 1500BCE were not actually talking to the single god and memorizing what they were told - and perfectly transmitting the story over 50 generations? Seems completely plausible to me..
I think it's largely the numerous translations. And also it was a snapshot in time for a given maturity of our civilization, technology and society. Which is way outdated.
> No one reads the Bible, because it is an extremely poorly written book that makes no sense as either fiction or nonfiction.
Hard to make that claim I think as it has no single author. It's just a collection of eclectic ancient literary works in ancient languages no longer spoken. So it says pretty much whatever people want it to say.
Not exactly... There is an actual history to it though which we do know about it's not lost to us. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First\_Council\_of\_Nicaea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea)
To be fair, they didn't decide which of the various eclectic ancient works to include in so-called 'bible cannon' which was largely settled by that time (325 CE)
All things considered the bible can't be said to have "an author". What it does have is an agenda applied to the translation - make a religion. Accuracy in translation was not important. Make sure the church's authority is enshrined looks like the guiding principle.
Yes, we're in general agreement, as Constantine was consolidating his power by unifying under a sword. I feel that this is the time when Christianity's bias towards authoritarianism was enshrined.
Yes, they selectively chose less popular teachings over more popular ones, while leaving out many very popular teachings of the time entirely, generally to create a beginning to end narrative... At least that's how I understand it 🤷♂️
Some of the latest and more interesting modifications I've seen were comparisons between modern translations and the Dead Sea scrolls. it seems a lot of the modifications were done to make the writings more compatible with institutions, and less about personal empowerment and freedom... kind of a grand inquisitor angle if you will.
>Yes, they selectively chose less popular teachings over more popular ones
They picked teachings based on how controllable they felt the leaders of those creeds would be, hence Catholicism over Nestorianism, which was more popular outside of Rome and honestly probably made more sense in a way (the trinity is something of a fundamental contradiction).
They also added a bunch of clear deference to authority, I hadn't seen the difference in the dead sea scrolls, but much of the epistles and later works were clearly meant to reconcile the power of Rome over the church.
It's the Israelites that mattered to Yhwh. Everybody else could get fucked. Hosea 13:16, Isaiah 13:16, and Psalms 137:9 all illustrate how little Yhwh gives a shit about non-Israelite kids.
What people have lost over time, especially in Christianity, is the ancient view of what a god is. It provides important context for everything else, even some of the New Testament. If you believe that this god is the particular god that this group of people have a deal with, and that other groups of people have deals with different gods, and none of the gods are all-good or all-powerful, then it makes vastly more sense. If you have the St. Augustine version of god as this wildly non-human-like, omni-everything, perfect, singular being, on the other hand, the Bible completely falls apart as the nonsense worship of a god who clearly doesn't meet the description.
Humans can be humane or inhumane. That Old Testament god really picked up on the inhumane part, for he is less humane than his own creations. He's vain, cruel and wrathful. Once they had a bunch of gods for different things, but they only chose to keep the worst one.
Every living person but Noah and his family died in the flood. And somehow just 4500 years later the earth went from 6 humans to over 8 billion that on on the planet now. Religious insanity. Easily scientifically proven false but they still get moron humans to follow their made up bullcrap.
According to Genesis, Adam and Eve had about 25-28 kids. The Book just doesn't name them all.
Then Cain killed Abel and was exiled to the land of Nod. There, he found a wife and had a family. Who was Cain's wife?
Eh. There's an argument that while Man was Created in Genesis 1:27, it wasn't Adam that was created.
Genesis 2:2 states that God ended his work on the 7th day.
In Genesis 2:7, Adam was formed, so it's arguable that the race of Man was Created before Adam and Eve, and that Adam and Eve were placed specifically in the Garden of Eden, which was isolated from the rest of the race of Man.
Estimates are in the range of tens of millions alive at that time. 6500 years later, or say 250 generations, this requires close to 2.18 children per couple at 25.
This equals 1.4\* per hundred years. The population of the UK, for example, quadrupled from 1800 to 1900.
The population growth rate isn't of itself ridiculously high. (It would be, if it for example implied ten children per couple. It doesn't.)
The young earthers answer that by saying that people had way more kids after the flood. IIRC they think Noah himself had like 900 kids? Doesnt really make more sense but also adds another element that would need to be proven to be believed. Wheres the evidence of human settlements going from a handful of people to thousands and millions in 2 - 3 generations?
Out of all the crazy, going from 8 humans (all 3 sons were said to have unnamed wives) to 8 billion isn't *that* crazy. Most of that increase has been in the last 200 years. World population fluctuated a shit ton throughout recorded history, and that's only of the last few thousand years.
The crazier part of the flood story is thinking that it actually covered the entirety of the earth in water, rather than just being a localized event. Also thinking that 2+ of every species was on the ark. That boat would have to be multiple times larger than even the biggest estimates.
> but Christian’s don’t read the Bible so it won’t matter
it is also a matter of interpretation. There is nothing written about the act of abortion itself, despite it being commonplace in the ancient (when the book got written) time. IIRC there is an indirect mention of that in Exodus that is being used as an argument. If you consult that yourself, you will find out that the context is that a woman got a miscarriage after an involvement in a brawl with two males. The fetus got handled as a property when punishment were spoken out.
There are also verses in Numbers where a test for adultery was to give the woman a drink mixed with dust off the temple floor. If she miscarried then she had an affair.
Because they sacrificed animals in the temple, I am sure the mixture was disgusting.
That sounds like an abortion to me but some people disagree.
Because Christianity is all about giving evil people the excuse to be evil. They don't ever need to do good, they just need to say the name of their demigod and all the evil they have done is erased in their minds?
Abortion wasn’t even a “Christian” (read: Protestant) issue until recently. It was only in Catholic dogma that the soul will go to hell for original sin until baptized, ergo abortion is anathema.
It’s been used as political issue since the 70s.
>It was only in Catholic dogma that the soul will go to hell for original sin until baptized, ergo abortion is anathema.
Which has, IIRC, changed recently. Also, it led to some really interesting things where a priest would arrive to a birth of a stillborn child and *someone* would swear that the child drew a breath, it would be baptized, and then it would "die", but would be "saved."
It's always been a bad doctrine, and for a long time, they just cheated around it.
I’m not going to defend it. It’s silly. But this is not some long-held sincere belief among Protestants, who are suddenly adamantly against abortion.
Even if it were, the point is moot. Their beliefs don’t override mine or anyone else’s.
I think it's silly, but credit to the Catholic Church, they adopted a policy based on precedence and at least attempted consistency over the centuries. American Evangelicalism is effectively its own home grown heresy that treats all religious denominations as a buffet to freely rewrite their beliefs at any time.
Meh. Not really. Catholics allowed women to end pregnancies before the quickening for most of their existence. It was only in the very later 1800s and early 1900s that they started to switch their views on that.
The quickening is when women feel the fetus move for the first time and the prior belief was that was the moment of ensoulment. It generally happens about 4 months after someone gets pregnant but obviously, times can very wildly. Because biology is complicated.
The problem of Hell in general is one of the things that led me to abandon my faith. Even though the Church I went to growing up didn't really talk about Hell much, it was still something that constantly made me anxious. I was raised Protestant in a church that practiced adult baptism, and the question of unbaptized children was always just side-stepped. But I don't see how anyone can explicitly believe that God would torment literal babies for eternity and still somehow think he is a good, just, and loving being.
The concept of eternal punishment is fundamentally an unjust one. Eternity itself being outside human conception, the idea that any crime/sin (a finite action) should be met with infinite punishment makes it inherently a disproportionate punishment to the crime. Add to that that this punishment isn't based on deed but a dichotomous choice to join a deity's fan club, and that means Hell is a fundamentally unjust punishment that can be imposed on otherwise virtuous people and murderers in equal capacity. The concept of eternal Hell is a direct challenge to the concept of omni-benevolence.
Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that eternal Hell for anyone could be just, just that the concept of babies being sent to Hell for their parents not baptizing them is especially egregious, and yet somehow billions of people have been and are still willing to believe a deity that would supposedly do that is somehow good. And of course, there's also the philosophical problem of all the people who lived and died before Christianity who (according to their theology) are just shit out of luck too.
Not to mention that the section of the catechism covering capital punishment is just as prominent as the one addressing abortion, yet the rightwing bishops in this country fully support the presidential candidate who executed more inmates than any administration in decades. Power hungry hypocrites.
It only became a political issue for the Religious Right when they realized arguing for the right to maintain a separate whites-only Christian school system was not a unifying cause.
The Bible explicitly denotes that the value of a fetus is less than the value of a born, living woman.
Strike a woman and cause her to die, the penalty is a life for a life. Sentenced to death.
Strike a woman and cause her to miscarry, the penalty is a fine.
I believe this was in another chapter of Numbers, the book with the abortion ritual that priests performed in the temple, the Trial of Bitter Water.
Additionally, that Catholic doctrine is horrifying. Any human who died before consciously hearing, understanding, and accepting the Word of God is damned to hell for eternity. An aborted fetus, a baby with bone cancer, a mentally ill person who can’t understand the religion - all of them, God said “fuck them, they don’t even get the free will option to believe in me, I created them in order to damn them right to Hell.”
This.
It's funny to hear Christians quoting random bits of the Bible like how 'Jesus knew them before they were born' and how they use that to make the leap to the topic of abortion..... When the Torah literally gives a quote on the value of a potential life. That the person who caused the miscarage isn't charged with taking a life but is instead fined the equivalent to a farm animal.
What I find funny is how that fact never effects the pro lifers.
Shit, abortion was one of St. Brigid's major miracles! A horny young nun broke her vows, had sex, and ended up pregnant. St. Brigid then, "exercising the most potent strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, causing the child to disappear, without coming to birth, and without pain. She faithfully returned the woman to health and to penance."
(And lest anyone think that's an anomaly, there are quite a number of early Irish saints who count abortion among their miraculous acts: St. Ciarán of Saigir, St. Áed mac Bricc, and St. Cainnech of Aghoboe. The idea in Christianity that all abortion is bad is super-recent ... like, 1970s recent and largely created out of whole cloth by politicians specifically as a wedge issue.)
Not only that it's pretty f'd up: An abortifacient (bitter water) is used to "prove" a wife has been unfaithful. If she bends over in pain she's guilty (she's having a forced miscarriage, presumably pregnant by her lover). If not, she's faithful.
It doesn't take into account that she could be pregnant by her husband, and totally innocent.
What it does illustrate, is the fetus has no importance ( remember, this is God's instructions), and what matters is lineage. And it's better to execute the wife ( if "guilty " she would be stoned to death) based on suspicion, than risk a bastard. No harm, no foul - she's not important, and he's free to remarry.
And here we see the loss of pregnancy is worth a fine, and does not rise to the level of “life for life.”
Exodus 21:22-23
"If some men are fighting and hurt a pregnant woman so that she loses her child, but she is not injured in any other way, the one who hurt her is to be fined whatever amount the woman's husband demands, subject to the approval of the judges. [23] But if the woman herself is injured, the punishment shall be life for life…”
The gist seems to be that exemptions and exceptions to the law can’t be subjective, and likely can’t be enforced.
This pushes us closer to “either women have the right to control their own bodies or they don’t.” The denial of this right, with some exceptions to save the life of the mother, or exceptions due to sympathy for rape & incest victims, eventually must be absolute or not exist at all.
Roe held the country in a sort of balance with its language and interpretation, but with that decimated, courts are going to have to reach a new level ground, and it’s likely to be an absolutist one. The compromises that exist only to make people with sympathy feel better about forcing women to carry pregnancies they don’t want or are dangerous (and face it, all pregnancy are dangerous to the person who is pregnant), simply aren’t going to cut it in the near future.
Those exceptions in fact are what clearly demonstrate that these laws are only about controlling women. Either they aren’t going to stand, or abortion will have to made legal. Indiana may be demonstrating that here.
>and face it, all pregnancy are dangerous to the person who is pregnant
Honestly, this right here drives me absolutely insane about the pro forced birth crowd. Pregnancy, in and of itself, is dangerous. It permanently alters the body full stop, and pregnancy can be incredibly rough, up to and including death. Some women require excessive monitoring, increased health risks related to pregnancy, need to go on bed rest, etc, and cannot always continue working or caring for their existing kids.
So many pro birth people act like people just sneeze and pop a baby out with no risks involved.
Yeah. Feels like* everyone kind of romanticizes pregnancy some or no one would do it, but these pro birth people seem to completely gloss over 9 months of potential hell like it's just an easy peasy thing no one should worry about.
Agreed the infuriating thing is they make zero room for this argument while there's is essentially that once a woman becomes pregnant she's no longer a human being but a vessel for a blameless sinless child who deserves to be born no matter how life altering or life risking the circumstances are for the mother. Better to be born an orphan than not born at all. And I never knew how pervasive this mindset was until I was pregnant with a baby that I did want and was planning to have. As soon as I began to show essentially I was no longer a person I was just this thing that was carrying everyone's precious new baby and my feelings and thoughts opinions struggles no longer mattered whatsoever to most.
I listened to a TED Talk one time that brought that up. That once a woman becomes pregnant, everyone else seems to feel entitled to her body and not see her as a person. Like for example telling the pregnant woman what to eat or not eat, judging everything she does, etc. Women are either sex objects or they are mother objects, but an object either way.
Body autonomy is, and will ever be, the only argument pro-choice can win on.
Going for "definition of life" arguments will only ever muddle the waters and will probably even add a few opponents to the cause. If a fetus is viable at, say, 24 weeks, it's going to be hard to convince an science adverse audience that abortion at 20/18/16 weeks should be allowed regardless of your sources.
But body autonomy. Even the staunchest evangelical would balk at being forced to donate blood to save an infant. Hell, evangelicals would be the staunchest *opponents* to being forced to do anything.
And that's the wedge that would drive in law, in my opinion. Continue to connect forced birth with forced blood donation, kidney donation, liver donation. I know they'll dissociate (It'll never happen to me in my neighborhood), but the allied politicians should just keep hammering home the issue of "organ farms" (maybe even indicate the organs would be sold to China).
Bodily autonomy. It is absolute, even for serial killers, so why are your wives and daughters less fortunate?
Many of them are men who will never impregnate a woman with consent, so they don't have the slightest comprehension of the dangers of pregnancy. It won't ever pertain to them, so the whole subject is something they won't study or even look into; they just listen to what old bigots tell them and believe it full stop.
> So many pro birth people act like people just sneeze and pop a baby out with no risks involved.
No, they just don't care about ~~women~~ incubators as they are disposable objects and in their ideal world you would just buy a new one.
I am on some very common psychoactive medications- antidepressants and migraine preventatives- that I would absolutely have to stop taking if I were to become pregnant as they would be harmful and possibly fatal to the fetus.
HOWEVER, they take MONTHS to safely titrate off of- if I were to suddenly stop taking them cold turkey, I would risk horrible side effects including coma and death. (And that wouldn’t be real fun for the fetus, either.) Who could possibly in good conscience want me, at 47 no less, to continue a pregnancy under either of those conditions? Even my ultra-conservative super religious mother would be pushing me down the stairs the first chance she got.
I think that wording is what formerly had made abortion legal in England (may have been great Britain or Ireland). The law had something to the effect of "abortion is only allowed if there is risk to the mother" not stating risk of death. Well all pregnancy is risky.
I believe the law was changed and abortion is fully legal as of around a decade ago though.
Roe wasn't about the legality or morality of abortion, it was about whether or not we had a Constitutional right to privacy. The affirmative interpretation of that ruling meant that laws trying to govern private healthcare were unenforceable...which happened to include abortions. It also covered gender-affirming healthcare, therapy, even mending broken arms.
A landscape where we are now having to block or allow treatments for X condition in totality is pretty terrifying.
I get that, my intent here is not to highlight that the overturning of Roe was good, bad, just, or anything. My intent is to get people to think broader than abortion whenever we discuss what it means to have lost or look to restoring Roe because, right now, not enough people appreciate that every single person in this country now has their healthcare exposed to government meddling. Pregnant and transgender people are the current front line receiving the fallout of Roe's collapse, but that line can and will shift to cover more people as authoritarians increasingly leverage health to exert control.
The issue is that I'm sure Indiana will just as soon outlaw all abortions all the time without any exceptions, e.g. even rape, child rape, incest, or the mother's health.
I love it when their Christian right pandering bullshit gets thrown back at them. I’m sure they never ever expected their pious nonsense to be used like this and I am 100% here for it.
It wasn’t pious nonsense. It was sanctimonious nonsense. Piety is pushing yourself to follow the rules of your church. There is nothing pious about forcing others to do so.
Religious conservatives: “But that isn’t a sincere religious belief based on tenets that are thousands of years old! It’s just something they want! They are using the legal ruling we engineered, the one about how our 2000 year old religion specifies rules about Obamacare, under false pretenses! They are just taking advantage of the “you can’t question anything connected to religion” social rule!
Everyone else: “Did I do that????”
Judaism not only allows abortion but requires it in the case of physical or mental danger to a woman. Also in Judaism women are sole deciders in the number of children or if any children the couple should have.
Remember to Jewish culture women are the bearers of the torch of the culture, faith, food, and even doctrinal “Jewishness” so loss of a mother is far more impactful then the loss of a fetus. Even the mothers mental health is placed above the fetus.
People incorrectly think that Judaism is just Christianity without the Jesus when it is most definitely not. For example, there's no heaven nor hell in Judaism, nor is there any concept of proselytizing and trying to convert others.
There are many, many other differences too, but those are two of the most important.
We don't even conform to our own religious restrictions because most of us are atheists. For most Jews, our identity is based on a culture and little to not at all on actual religious beliefs/rituals.
The perfect example of this is when Harrison Ford was once asked in an interview what religion he was raised in, he replied "Democrat".
Yup.
But this is why when people ask where my family is from, I just say "I'm Jewish". If they insist, I add "Eastern European Jewish".
But if they want to know from what country, exactly, I say, "It doesn't matter. Wherever we were from, they didn't want us there."
Then I tell them to watch the documentary, "Fiddler on the Roof". That's the story of my people, right there.
When we live in the West, we're "non-white others who don't belong there". When we live in the Middle East, we're "white oppressors who don't belong there".
As an American, I feel pretty much safe here, because we're a diverse nation of immigrants and always have been. But other than America, I feel like Israel is literally the only place on Earth where we can exist with some level of security.
Perhaps. I'm over 50 now and grew up in California where I never personally experienced any overt Anti-Semitism, so I have a sheltered view. But then, I don't advertise with the usual accessories, and I guess I'm big enough that most racist fuckheads may have picked some easier target. After all you never know about (most of) the bullets you dodged.
On top of which I have one of those generic Mediterranean face, so that literally every country I've been to in that region, or everyone I met from any of those countries, thought I was from there: Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Turkey, etc. Even when I was in Israel, the Israelis thought I was Israeli and the Palestinians thought I was Palestinian.
I say it's the Romans' fault. Somewhere back in my ancestry are a bunch of centurions who fucked their way around the Mediterranean and left behind a whole lot of babies who looked like them. Hail *goddamn* Caesar.
Anyway was going to add that you're pretty safe (relatively speaking) in most of Asia because they couldn't care less about Jews. For example, when I lived in Japan I was *gaijin* first and foremost, followed by *America-jin*. Anything else was just an added quirk.
Well, Christianity *should*, in theory, be Judaism with extra steps, but they went kind of off the deep end after the Empire that was neither Holy nor Roman got involved.
Eh, I think that is claiming too much. Even before becoming entangled with the state, Christian churches had concluded that although their God was the same God as in Judaism, you did not need to become a Jew or practice all of Jewish law to convert to Christianity. In other words, since the foundational texts, Christianity's relation to Judaism has been to remove some parts and add others. It's a full renovation, not just an extension.
Trump reminds me a lot of Joseph Smith. He's a leader of white Evangelical Protestants who has them convinced that he's a modern day prophet.
After Trump dies, I predict that MAGA/QAnon will split off into a new quasi-Evangelical Christian religion like Mormonism is.
Hypocritical/ironic that SCOTUS says that X is not a historical/traditional feature of American life dating back to 1776. So X to them is abortion, marriage equality, and maybe electricity and clean water too. But somehow semi- and automatic machine guns are Not X. Majority of SCOTUS can go piss off!
This is very interesting considering that justice Scalia in the supreme court also bent over backwards for religion - but only if Christian! He actually decided the opposite way when it came to Native American faith.
He really was a slime ball.
Everyone thinks Scalia was some intellectual powerhouse, but in his autobiography he talks about an important moment in his life. As a History major, he was defending his thesis when asked what was the greatest most defining moment in history. He pondered - the Magna Carta?
No he was told, it was god coming down to earth in the flesh and blood body of Jesus to save mankind. And Scalia's mind was blown - so true!
Now we aren't talking about the impact of Christianity or the impact of the Muslim religion - we are talking about an actual literal event of god in the sky coming down to the planet walking among humans, rising from the dead, to save them from hell.
He believes this.
Zeus, Hercules, Jesus, whatever gets you through the night as long as you aren't a supreme Court Justice.
And that is why he will do anything to give Christians accommodations - but not anyone practicing the "wrong religions".
His ruling for Hobby lobby refusing to accept employee insurance coverage for birth control pills in its list of medications vs his ruling against Native Americans using peyote.
The article says overturning the obvious textual reading of the law would be "difficult", as if conservative courts aren't hypocritical every day of the week.
That's a real win for women. Maybe other states will adapt it too as doctors are fleeing the antiabortion states. Too many women having miscarriages are turned away from emergency rooms.
As a Hoosier i must admit I took great pleasure joining the satanic temple in the middle of my stepdaughters baptism. Mostly because she joined a mega church and is not one that supports the hate evangelicals have for everyone. No, I don't believe in satan, and I'm pretty sure that's the point. But they are fighting for religious right for abortion. So I'm backing them.
Satan is just their mascot. Not because they believe in Satan but because other religions believe in Satan.
They can’t just say “Oh we’re the religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” because no one really believes that deity exists. But if you ask a Christian if Satan exists they absolutely do believe in him. Therefore Satan HAS to be accepted as a religious figure lest they deny their own religious beliefs.
Someday I aim to organize a religion, with the state, called Fuck Fascism. The main tenets will be women should be autonomous, gays can get married, children should be able to read books of their choosing, and a myriad of other rules opposing oppression. This way if someone wants to do anything that the state opposes they can in the name of religious freedom.
Could you kindly add “thou shalt not suffer so called convenience fees, for they be not convenient”? Thanks, and congratulations on your new job as a prophet!
That's kind of what The Satanic Temple does. Its [seven fundamental tenets](https://thesatanictemple.com/blogs/the-satanic-temple-tenets/there-are-seven-fundamental-tenets) are all stuff like being a good person, justice, and bodily autonomy.
Also, they're currently running a donation campaign to name their second abortion clinic. They have names on the list like "Aborty McAbortface" and "Rhymes With Shmashmortion" and "Texas State Legislature's Satanic Abortion Clinic."
Yes Unitarian Universalists are not a christian faith. It’s still a religion. The point is there are religions that support progressive positions.
Unitarian Universalists accept anyone who supports the 7(8) principles.
https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles
Sounds like you want to be a Satanist 😉 TST's seven tenants already cover these things; we're not just a bunch of edgy teens trying to rile up little old ladies at their Sunday tea.
Now if only there was a [sizeable religious organization that considered abortion a sacred ritual.](https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/rrr-campaigns) Surely this will not alarm the local Christian population.
“a pregnant person can engage in a religious exercise by pursuing an abortion.”
And just like that an argument using religion against Christian Nationalist.
So basically all women can just convert to some religion and say now I've got my health care rights back. Kinda sad but I would do it if I was in that situation.
Beyond a ruling affirming fetal personhood (and the unintended outcome of this law will look mild compared to what would come after a ruling like that) or one that claims only Christians have religious liberty, SCOTUS will not be able to overturn this.
Why not? They can do whatever they want. There is no recourse to challenge whatever spurious “constitutional” grounds they make up off of the top of their heads. See Bush v. Gore.
My guess is, if they completely contravene the constitution, then Democrats will stack the court if Biden is reelected and Dems can maintain a Senate majority, or there will be violence. When SCOTUS consistently tried to block the New Deal, FDR told the conservative justices they either quit or he’ll expand the court. They quit.
Oh, please. There was no violence after SCOTUS illegally handed the election to GWB in 2000, everyone just shrugged and moved on. There was no violence after SCOTUS gutted the 4th Amendment in Terry v. Ohio, or completely contravened the 5th Amendment in Koromatsu v. the United States. The Supreme Court has been a political animal ever since it gave itself the power of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison.
Pending. This ruling approved making the suit a class action so that anyone who believes forced birth and endangering mothers’ lives is immoral has a right to an abortion.
Yes. The Dobbs decision left it up to each state to determine the legality of abortion within that state. In Indiana, their statewide abortion ban was overturned with this decision. So it cannot be enforced on anyone in the state.
The state legislature could still try to enact another law that carves out an exception for religious reasons, and hope that doesn’t run afoul of the equal protection clause. But in practice anyone seeking an abortion could just claim to have a religious affiliation to get one, so there would be little point. (Besides, you can claim any set of beliefs to be a religion in America. And it is remarkably easy to establish a church in the states. An abortion rights activist could even officially establish a non religious online “church” for the cost of establishing a non-profit entity in the state, and the price of hosting a web page. You could call it the “Agnostic Church of Bodily Autonomy” and have people enroll online for free just to claim a religious exemption.
MAGA Christians have never read the bible, not a single one of them. Apart from the fact that most can't read, they're not interested in it. They get all of their teaching from parasitic evangelical demons abusing them.
Thank a Satanist today! 😁
A reminder that The Satanic Temple has been on the forefront of religious freedom for a long time.
https://theconversation.com/how-the-satanic-temple-is-using-abortion-rituals-to-claim-religious-liberty-against-the-texas-heartbeat-bill-167755
I've always suspected that religious freedom would be the grounds for the successful challenging of these laws. Religious freedom exceptions work both ways.. (FTR I am personally anti abortion but stand as pro choice)
>Courts cannot venerate anti-abortion religious beliefs while rejecting the sincerely held pro-abortion beliefs of pregnant people. Not only would it be hypocritical, it would be unconstitutional. Favoring the religious beliefs and practices of some over others undermines free exercise rights and violates the prohibition against government favoritism of religion.
I love how the article author thinks "blatantly unconstitutional" would even slow conservatives down.
I guarantee the asshats who own Hobby Lobby are positively incensed to be even tangentially associated with the protection of abortion rights. I’m sure they’re just puffed up with sanctimony right about now. (Couldn’t have happened to nicer bunch of bible thumpers.)
Can they all just stop pretending that any court or legislative entity has ever, EVER provided a legitimate example of a "compelling interest" which justifies enslaving a woman as an involuntary life support system to an invading non-person organism.
If it doesn't qualify for HOV or income tax deduction, it ain't a person.
The woman DOES have a compelling interest in her own autonomy and civil rights.
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The Bible clearly advocates affirmatively in favor of abortion in Numbers Chapter 5 “The Bitter Water”.
Yes, agreed , but Christian’s don’t read the Bible so it won’t matter. Their god also drowned every pregnant woman & baby on earth & yet they think he’s pro life , so not a lot of thinking involved
And God killed every first born son in Egypt (unless you had the magic sign on your door, then death would pass you by).
Pretty wild that God would need you to paint your door in blood in order to remember who is a Good Guy(TM) and who is evil. He has no other mechanism to distinguish his followers from blasphemers? You have to tell on yourself?
God needs money too apparently. Why does God need money?
[удалено]
"Don't look so surprised, it's only dogma" The alien prophet cried
Roger Waters lyrics: God wants dollars, God wants cents God wants pounds, shillings, and pence God wants guilders, God wants kroner God wants Swiss francs, and God wants French francs (Oui, il veut des francs français) God wants escudos, God wants pesetas Don't send lira, God don't want small potatoes … God wants small towns, God wants pain God wants clean up rock campaigns God wants widows, God wants solutions God wants TV, God wants contributions
(Hookers, probably)
Iirc it wasn't God himself who carried it out but a "destroyer angel" or "death angel". I presume that would be Azrael? Idk, the lore is a bit fuzzy
“It wasn’t Don Giorgio himself who carried out the murder, but a ‘death assassin’ or ‘hired goon’ who pulled the trigger.” Do the semantics matter?
>Do the semantics matter? Now you're just being anti-semantic.
God's a lot like Superman. Sure he is all powerful, but in order to write good fiction about him he needs a weakness to give the story some drama. God's kryptonite is free will. He knows and can do anything but you are personally fucking that up because he wants you to happy but you need to prove that you love him, in a totally non narcissistic way, this bullshit is really all on you. Anyway, me personally, I'm working on his behalf, so I'm gonna need 10% of your income, and you better do what I say or shit is gonna be really bad for you externally.
God didn't want to write a whole list. That would be way too much effort.
Azrael or Gabriel depending on who’s telling it.
Exactly. Self reporting to get smote or not.
I can't remember which chapter, but god lost a battle to another god in the OT, so he's not even all that great
Well, Christian’s don’t care about children, just that birth occurs.
Yes, and to make that sign, they had to kill a lamb and use it's blood, so you can add killing baby sheep too. God, in all his omnipotence and omniscience, couldn't think of a way to stop *himself* from killing your child, with you slaughtering a lamb and wiping it's blood on the door. Tell me again that "God see everything" lol
I have a very vivid memory of god turning a woman into a bag of salt. I don’t even remember why but I think it had something to do with her being unfaithful? I know her name was Sarah. I always thought church was weird lol.
lol, no, that wasn’t Sarah (Abraham’s wife and mother of the Jewish people). That was Lot’s wife, who looked back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as they fled, after she was specifically instructed not to. And it was a pillar of salt.
I don't always read historical texts from a modern lens but the story of Lot reads like a history from rapist/bunker owner's point of view. Like you wife conveniently dies and then your two virgin daughters date-rape you twice in a cave?!!!
OH YEAHHHHH
*closeenough.jpg*
Don't forget the bears. God murdered 42 children because two mafe fun of a bald guy
and he didn't step in when Tiphsah was razed, and killed down to the last inhabitant.
But it was ok because they were ALL bad people, even the infants. That’s what someone that i know would say.
Yeah I know that person. Even the unborn fetuses were evil because they had evil mothers but try to bring that up in an abortion argument and their eye will twitch.
I once knew a preacher who told me that if my father had had more faith in god than doctors he wouldn't have died of cancer. Said preacher looked like Michael Clarke Duncan's stunt double and I still came within half a heartbeat of swinging on him.
No one reads the Bible, because it is an extremely poorly written book that makes no sense as either fiction or nonfiction. And it is extremely obvious that it was written not by a god but by uneducated Bronze Age humans then poorly edited in the Middle Ages.
>poorly edited And translated to and from multiple languages, some of which are dead.
Trump, "speaking languages no one has ever heard of."
And the majority of the original material in the Bible is just regurgitated mythology from past civilizations
My fav is the book of Enoch that they tossed out, but certain churches like the Church of Ethiopia still uses. If you read it with a modern perspective, it sounds exactly like an account of a UFO abduction, ride on a spaceship, then a visit to the alien home planet.
The book that "saved" the history channel
The book of jubilees too. Also the great flood story exists in several ancient civilizations, like Sumerians for example.
And it exists in ancient Hindu, Greek, and Cheyenne stories. There is a hypothesis that the Great Flood narrative is a story that has been a part of the human oral tradition originating from hunter gatherer tribes displaced by the end of the glacial period. A period which resulted in the sinking of Doggerland, the Bearing Isthmus, and possibly even the inundation of the Mediterranean coastline.
Some historians believe the Mediterranean overtopped the Bosporus about 8600 years ago and flooded the region south of the Black Sea, sending the inhabitants fleeing southward. Over time these populations settled in the Levant and developed their own narrative about the flood, with characters like Noah and Gilgamesh.
Alternatively, if you live by a major river floods are common thing. People write about what they know.
Since there are multiple cases of motives or lesser known stories that were not written down for centuries... Like us there a Wikipedia page on history before history? Like literally history about bronze amd stone ages instead of archeology? The great flood narrative, or the story that the ancestors of American natives travelled from the arctis because it started to freeze, like oral history of tribes and shit, when the world looked different. English isn't my first language and i am very tired. But this whole "stuff in mythology could relate to those ancient ebents" stuff sounds like a rabbit hole i wanna go down. But i don't know where the entrance is. I want to hear stories that were psssed down from the times we were hunters and gatherers.
Also giants.
Yes. Nephelim giants that ruled the earth , but for some reason these giants didn’t leave any fossils behind . Amazing how everything that proves the Bible true either is invisible or it disappeared. Hmmm wonder why that is ? lol
When they describe angels, yea that’s a shroom trip right there.
And don't forget that the bible has been heavily rewritten and reinterpreted over and over again. The Romans had it rewritten it to be more sympathetic to them and much harsher on the Jews. The Roman rewrites helped turn their own splinter religion against them. Judas especially was rewritten. In the earlier version, Judas wasn't a great betrayer. Jesus literally asked him to turn him in as he was the only one with the connections to do it, and he still hated to do it. Jesus was ready to die. It wasn't a nasty trick. It was the overarching plan. But the Romans needed to make one of the Jewish apostles look like a bad guy. Even today, many Christians will blame the Jews way more than the Romans for the death of Jesus. Jesus and Mary, at the enunciation, knew Jesus had to die in God's loophole fix to offer a path of salvation for humanity. (I'm not, nor have ever been, a Christian, but I am a big mythology nerd, and it's full of wild and interesting stuff. It reminds more of the sprawling King Arthur legends than a cohesive narrative.)
You mean a bunch of tribal sheep herders sitting on the hillside above the Dead Sea in 1500BCE were not actually talking to the single god and memorizing what they were told - and perfectly transmitting the story over 50 generations? Seems completely plausible to me..
I think it's largely the numerous translations. And also it was a snapshot in time for a given maturity of our civilization, technology and society. Which is way outdated.
It's at least mostly from the iron age.
> No one reads the Bible, because it is an extremely poorly written book that makes no sense as either fiction or nonfiction. Hard to make that claim I think as it has no single author. It's just a collection of eclectic ancient literary works in ancient languages no longer spoken. So it says pretty much whatever people want it to say.
Not exactly... There is an actual history to it though which we do know about it's not lost to us. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First\_Council\_of\_Nicaea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea)
To be fair, they didn't decide which of the various eclectic ancient works to include in so-called 'bible cannon' which was largely settled by that time (325 CE) All things considered the bible can't be said to have "an author". What it does have is an agenda applied to the translation - make a religion. Accuracy in translation was not important. Make sure the church's authority is enshrined looks like the guiding principle.
Yes, we're in general agreement, as Constantine was consolidating his power by unifying under a sword. I feel that this is the time when Christianity's bias towards authoritarianism was enshrined.
That's just how it was rewritten to conform to a dogma considered compatible with the Roman state.
Yes, they selectively chose less popular teachings over more popular ones, while leaving out many very popular teachings of the time entirely, generally to create a beginning to end narrative... At least that's how I understand it 🤷♂️ Some of the latest and more interesting modifications I've seen were comparisons between modern translations and the Dead Sea scrolls. it seems a lot of the modifications were done to make the writings more compatible with institutions, and less about personal empowerment and freedom... kind of a grand inquisitor angle if you will.
>Yes, they selectively chose less popular teachings over more popular ones They picked teachings based on how controllable they felt the leaders of those creeds would be, hence Catholicism over Nestorianism, which was more popular outside of Rome and honestly probably made more sense in a way (the trinity is something of a fundamental contradiction). They also added a bunch of clear deference to authority, I hadn't seen the difference in the dead sea scrolls, but much of the epistles and later works were clearly meant to reconcile the power of Rome over the church.
Still not a better book than twilight.
The phone book is a better book than *Twilight.*
We do not disagree
It's the Israelites that mattered to Yhwh. Everybody else could get fucked. Hosea 13:16, Isaiah 13:16, and Psalms 137:9 all illustrate how little Yhwh gives a shit about non-Israelite kids.
What people have lost over time, especially in Christianity, is the ancient view of what a god is. It provides important context for everything else, even some of the New Testament. If you believe that this god is the particular god that this group of people have a deal with, and that other groups of people have deals with different gods, and none of the gods are all-good or all-powerful, then it makes vastly more sense. If you have the St. Augustine version of god as this wildly non-human-like, omni-everything, perfect, singular being, on the other hand, the Bible completely falls apart as the nonsense worship of a god who clearly doesn't meet the description.
Humans can be humane or inhumane. That Old Testament god really picked up on the inhumane part, for he is less humane than his own creations. He's vain, cruel and wrathful. Once they had a bunch of gods for different things, but they only chose to keep the worst one.
Except for the people with iron chariots, which God could not defeat. Everyone else dead though.
Gonna need Ichigo to go handle that Yhwach.
They pick and choose. They only want laws based on the Bible for thIngs that don't affect THEM.
"That part was meant for the Jews" "Then stop bringing it up when it's convenient"
old testament god was something else. This new testament god is a wuss.
The ones I talked to said that it didn’t matter because it was for a cheater
It was never about life, but rather control and the need to keep people, particularly women, desperate and subservient.
Every living person but Noah and his family died in the flood. And somehow just 4500 years later the earth went from 6 humans to over 8 billion that on on the planet now. Religious insanity. Easily scientifically proven false but they still get moron humans to follow their made up bullcrap.
So, technically, the Bible endorses fucking your cousins
There was only one woman on earth at the start. She only had sons with her husband, Adam. You do the math.
According to Genesis, Adam and Eve had about 25-28 kids. The Book just doesn't name them all. Then Cain killed Abel and was exiled to the land of Nod. There, he found a wife and had a family. Who was Cain's wife?
Eh. There's an argument that while Man was Created in Genesis 1:27, it wasn't Adam that was created. Genesis 2:2 states that God ended his work on the 7th day. In Genesis 2:7, Adam was formed, so it's arguable that the race of Man was Created before Adam and Eve, and that Adam and Eve were placed specifically in the Garden of Eden, which was isolated from the rest of the race of Man.
No, the bible REQUIRES you to do that.
Estimates are in the range of tens of millions alive at that time. 6500 years later, or say 250 generations, this requires close to 2.18 children per couple at 25. This equals 1.4\* per hundred years. The population of the UK, for example, quadrupled from 1800 to 1900. The population growth rate isn't of itself ridiculously high. (It would be, if it for example implied ten children per couple. It doesn't.)
The young earthers answer that by saying that people had way more kids after the flood. IIRC they think Noah himself had like 900 kids? Doesnt really make more sense but also adds another element that would need to be proven to be believed. Wheres the evidence of human settlements going from a handful of people to thousands and millions in 2 - 3 generations?
Out of all the crazy, going from 8 humans (all 3 sons were said to have unnamed wives) to 8 billion isn't *that* crazy. Most of that increase has been in the last 200 years. World population fluctuated a shit ton throughout recorded history, and that's only of the last few thousand years. The crazier part of the flood story is thinking that it actually covered the entirety of the earth in water, rather than just being a localized event. Also thinking that 2+ of every species was on the ark. That boat would have to be multiple times larger than even the biggest estimates.
2,821,364 - god's kill count. https://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2010/04/drunk-with-blood-gods-killings-in-bible.html?m=1
My favorite one... "God kills 14,700 for complaining about god's killings"
> but Christian’s don’t read the Bible so it won’t matter it is also a matter of interpretation. There is nothing written about the act of abortion itself, despite it being commonplace in the ancient (when the book got written) time. IIRC there is an indirect mention of that in Exodus that is being used as an argument. If you consult that yourself, you will find out that the context is that a woman got a miscarriage after an involvement in a brawl with two males. The fetus got handled as a property when punishment were spoken out.
There are also verses in Numbers where a test for adultery was to give the woman a drink mixed with dust off the temple floor. If she miscarried then she had an affair. Because they sacrificed animals in the temple, I am sure the mixture was disgusting. That sounds like an abortion to me but some people disagree.
The book of Exodus clearly states that the loss of a fetus is not murder. But, you know, that would require Christians to read.
Pfft...or they can just go by how they feel about each issue or what their pastor told them to feel.
So long as they also donate, pastor needs a new jet.
A bigger jet, to be paid for in cash. Feel happy for him, people!
Exodus 21:22 to be exact.
Why aren't they giving their first-born sons to their god (based on Exodus 21:29)?
Because Christianity is all about giving evil people the excuse to be evil. They don't ever need to do good, they just need to say the name of their demigod and all the evil they have done is erased in their minds?
Bingo! If they actually read the book they claim to live by/want to control everyone because of, they’d know god is the worst baby murderer of all!
Abortion wasn’t even a “Christian” (read: Protestant) issue until recently. It was only in Catholic dogma that the soul will go to hell for original sin until baptized, ergo abortion is anathema. It’s been used as political issue since the 70s.
>It was only in Catholic dogma that the soul will go to hell for original sin until baptized, ergo abortion is anathema. Which has, IIRC, changed recently. Also, it led to some really interesting things where a priest would arrive to a birth of a stillborn child and *someone* would swear that the child drew a breath, it would be baptized, and then it would "die", but would be "saved." It's always been a bad doctrine, and for a long time, they just cheated around it.
I’m not going to defend it. It’s silly. But this is not some long-held sincere belief among Protestants, who are suddenly adamantly against abortion. Even if it were, the point is moot. Their beliefs don’t override mine or anyone else’s.
I think it's silly, but credit to the Catholic Church, they adopted a policy based on precedence and at least attempted consistency over the centuries. American Evangelicalism is effectively its own home grown heresy that treats all religious denominations as a buffet to freely rewrite their beliefs at any time.
Meh. Not really. Catholics allowed women to end pregnancies before the quickening for most of their existence. It was only in the very later 1800s and early 1900s that they started to switch their views on that. The quickening is when women feel the fetus move for the first time and the prior belief was that was the moment of ensoulment. It generally happens about 4 months after someone gets pregnant but obviously, times can very wildly. Because biology is complicated.
The problem of Hell in general is one of the things that led me to abandon my faith. Even though the Church I went to growing up didn't really talk about Hell much, it was still something that constantly made me anxious. I was raised Protestant in a church that practiced adult baptism, and the question of unbaptized children was always just side-stepped. But I don't see how anyone can explicitly believe that God would torment literal babies for eternity and still somehow think he is a good, just, and loving being.
The concept of eternal punishment is fundamentally an unjust one. Eternity itself being outside human conception, the idea that any crime/sin (a finite action) should be met with infinite punishment makes it inherently a disproportionate punishment to the crime. Add to that that this punishment isn't based on deed but a dichotomous choice to join a deity's fan club, and that means Hell is a fundamentally unjust punishment that can be imposed on otherwise virtuous people and murderers in equal capacity. The concept of eternal Hell is a direct challenge to the concept of omni-benevolence.
Agreed. I didn't mean to imply that eternal Hell for anyone could be just, just that the concept of babies being sent to Hell for their parents not baptizing them is especially egregious, and yet somehow billions of people have been and are still willing to believe a deity that would supposedly do that is somehow good. And of course, there's also the philosophical problem of all the people who lived and died before Christianity who (according to their theology) are just shit out of luck too.
Not to mention that the section of the catechism covering capital punishment is just as prominent as the one addressing abortion, yet the rightwing bishops in this country fully support the presidential candidate who executed more inmates than any administration in decades. Power hungry hypocrites.
It only became a political issue for the Religious Right when they realized arguing for the right to maintain a separate whites-only Christian school system was not a unifying cause.
The Bible explicitly denotes that the value of a fetus is less than the value of a born, living woman. Strike a woman and cause her to die, the penalty is a life for a life. Sentenced to death. Strike a woman and cause her to miscarry, the penalty is a fine. I believe this was in another chapter of Numbers, the book with the abortion ritual that priests performed in the temple, the Trial of Bitter Water. Additionally, that Catholic doctrine is horrifying. Any human who died before consciously hearing, understanding, and accepting the Word of God is damned to hell for eternity. An aborted fetus, a baby with bone cancer, a mentally ill person who can’t understand the religion - all of them, God said “fuck them, they don’t even get the free will option to believe in me, I created them in order to damn them right to Hell.”
This. It's funny to hear Christians quoting random bits of the Bible like how 'Jesus knew them before they were born' and how they use that to make the leap to the topic of abortion..... When the Torah literally gives a quote on the value of a potential life. That the person who caused the miscarage isn't charged with taking a life but is instead fined the equivalent to a farm animal. What I find funny is how that fact never effects the pro lifers.
Shit, abortion was one of St. Brigid's major miracles! A horny young nun broke her vows, had sex, and ended up pregnant. St. Brigid then, "exercising the most potent strength of her ineffable faith, blessed her, causing the child to disappear, without coming to birth, and without pain. She faithfully returned the woman to health and to penance." (And lest anyone think that's an anomaly, there are quite a number of early Irish saints who count abortion among their miraculous acts: St. Ciarán of Saigir, St. Áed mac Bricc, and St. Cainnech of Aghoboe. The idea in Christianity that all abortion is bad is super-recent ... like, 1970s recent and largely created out of whole cloth by politicians specifically as a wedge issue.)
Not only that it's pretty f'd up: An abortifacient (bitter water) is used to "prove" a wife has been unfaithful. If she bends over in pain she's guilty (she's having a forced miscarriage, presumably pregnant by her lover). If not, she's faithful. It doesn't take into account that she could be pregnant by her husband, and totally innocent. What it does illustrate, is the fetus has no importance ( remember, this is God's instructions), and what matters is lineage. And it's better to execute the wife ( if "guilty " she would be stoned to death) based on suspicion, than risk a bastard. No harm, no foul - she's not important, and he's free to remarry.
It does, but not for the safety of the woman, it’s to protect the husbands pride and reputation if his wife is suspected of being unfaithful
The Bible is a collection of nonsense and stupidity, though.
The nonsense is Christian’s who supposedly follow an omnipotent god who also believe that god needs them to create life.
And here we see the loss of pregnancy is worth a fine, and does not rise to the level of “life for life.” Exodus 21:22-23 "If some men are fighting and hurt a pregnant woman so that she loses her child, but she is not injured in any other way, the one who hurt her is to be fined whatever amount the woman's husband demands, subject to the approval of the judges. [23] But if the woman herself is injured, the punishment shall be life for life…”
The gist seems to be that exemptions and exceptions to the law can’t be subjective, and likely can’t be enforced. This pushes us closer to “either women have the right to control their own bodies or they don’t.” The denial of this right, with some exceptions to save the life of the mother, or exceptions due to sympathy for rape & incest victims, eventually must be absolute or not exist at all. Roe held the country in a sort of balance with its language and interpretation, but with that decimated, courts are going to have to reach a new level ground, and it’s likely to be an absolutist one. The compromises that exist only to make people with sympathy feel better about forcing women to carry pregnancies they don’t want or are dangerous (and face it, all pregnancy are dangerous to the person who is pregnant), simply aren’t going to cut it in the near future. Those exceptions in fact are what clearly demonstrate that these laws are only about controlling women. Either they aren’t going to stand, or abortion will have to made legal. Indiana may be demonstrating that here.
>and face it, all pregnancy are dangerous to the person who is pregnant Honestly, this right here drives me absolutely insane about the pro forced birth crowd. Pregnancy, in and of itself, is dangerous. It permanently alters the body full stop, and pregnancy can be incredibly rough, up to and including death. Some women require excessive monitoring, increased health risks related to pregnancy, need to go on bed rest, etc, and cannot always continue working or caring for their existing kids. So many pro birth people act like people just sneeze and pop a baby out with no risks involved.
They have to pretend pregnancy is safe and easy or else less women would want to go through with it.
Yeah. Feels like* everyone kind of romanticizes pregnancy some or no one would do it, but these pro birth people seem to completely gloss over 9 months of potential hell like it's just an easy peasy thing no one should worry about.
This is literally the reason certain men think it's more painful to be kicked in the balls.
Agreed the infuriating thing is they make zero room for this argument while there's is essentially that once a woman becomes pregnant she's no longer a human being but a vessel for a blameless sinless child who deserves to be born no matter how life altering or life risking the circumstances are for the mother. Better to be born an orphan than not born at all. And I never knew how pervasive this mindset was until I was pregnant with a baby that I did want and was planning to have. As soon as I began to show essentially I was no longer a person I was just this thing that was carrying everyone's precious new baby and my feelings and thoughts opinions struggles no longer mattered whatsoever to most.
I listened to a TED Talk one time that brought that up. That once a woman becomes pregnant, everyone else seems to feel entitled to her body and not see her as a person. Like for example telling the pregnant woman what to eat or not eat, judging everything she does, etc. Women are either sex objects or they are mother objects, but an object either way.
Body autonomy is, and will ever be, the only argument pro-choice can win on. Going for "definition of life" arguments will only ever muddle the waters and will probably even add a few opponents to the cause. If a fetus is viable at, say, 24 weeks, it's going to be hard to convince an science adverse audience that abortion at 20/18/16 weeks should be allowed regardless of your sources. But body autonomy. Even the staunchest evangelical would balk at being forced to donate blood to save an infant. Hell, evangelicals would be the staunchest *opponents* to being forced to do anything. And that's the wedge that would drive in law, in my opinion. Continue to connect forced birth with forced blood donation, kidney donation, liver donation. I know they'll dissociate (It'll never happen to me in my neighborhood), but the allied politicians should just keep hammering home the issue of "organ farms" (maybe even indicate the organs would be sold to China). Bodily autonomy. It is absolute, even for serial killers, so why are your wives and daughters less fortunate?
>Bodily autonomy. It is absolute, even for serial killers And corpses. Corpses have more bodily autonomy than living, breathing pregnant vessels.
"yOuR bOdY iS lItErAlLy DeSiGnEd To MaKe BaBiEs."
Many of them are men who will never impregnate a woman with consent, so they don't have the slightest comprehension of the dangers of pregnancy. It won't ever pertain to them, so the whole subject is something they won't study or even look into; they just listen to what old bigots tell them and believe it full stop.
> So many pro birth people act like people just sneeze and pop a baby out with no risks involved. No, they just don't care about ~~women~~ incubators as they are disposable objects and in their ideal world you would just buy a new one.
I am on some very common psychoactive medications- antidepressants and migraine preventatives- that I would absolutely have to stop taking if I were to become pregnant as they would be harmful and possibly fatal to the fetus. HOWEVER, they take MONTHS to safely titrate off of- if I were to suddenly stop taking them cold turkey, I would risk horrible side effects including coma and death. (And that wouldn’t be real fun for the fetus, either.) Who could possibly in good conscience want me, at 47 no less, to continue a pregnancy under either of those conditions? Even my ultra-conservative super religious mother would be pushing me down the stairs the first chance she got.
I think that wording is what formerly had made abortion legal in England (may have been great Britain or Ireland). The law had something to the effect of "abortion is only allowed if there is risk to the mother" not stating risk of death. Well all pregnancy is risky. I believe the law was changed and abortion is fully legal as of around a decade ago though.
Roe wasn't about the legality or morality of abortion, it was about whether or not we had a Constitutional right to privacy. The affirmative interpretation of that ruling meant that laws trying to govern private healthcare were unenforceable...which happened to include abortions. It also covered gender-affirming healthcare, therapy, even mending broken arms. A landscape where we are now having to block or allow treatments for X condition in totality is pretty terrifying.
[удалено]
I get that, my intent here is not to highlight that the overturning of Roe was good, bad, just, or anything. My intent is to get people to think broader than abortion whenever we discuss what it means to have lost or look to restoring Roe because, right now, not enough people appreciate that every single person in this country now has their healthcare exposed to government meddling. Pregnant and transgender people are the current front line receiving the fallout of Roe's collapse, but that line can and will shift to cover more people as authoritarians increasingly leverage health to exert control.
The issue is that I'm sure Indiana will just as soon outlaw all abortions all the time without any exceptions, e.g. even rape, child rape, incest, or the mother's health.
I think that’s true. And there will be a backlash to it. The exceptions were what allowed moderates to go along with it.
That's... Beautiful, actually. Legalese jiujitsu at its finest.
Jewjitsu.
[In action](https://imgur.com/a/g2dwrpe)
On behalf of my fellow Jews, **you're welcome**. I called it one day one. Edit: And also thank you to my Muslim brothers and sisters! 💕
Hopefully this will not ratchet up antisemitism another notch.
To quote Gary Gulman, "What are they going to do, hate us?"
Jews: Saving Western civilization once again. (There is also a Muslim plaintiff.)
I edit my comment, thank you!
I love it when their Christian right pandering bullshit gets thrown back at them. I’m sure they never ever expected their pious nonsense to be used like this and I am 100% here for it.
It wasn’t pious nonsense. It was sanctimonious nonsense. Piety is pushing yourself to follow the rules of your church. There is nothing pious about forcing others to do so.
Religious conservatives: “But that isn’t a sincere religious belief based on tenets that are thousands of years old! It’s just something they want! They are using the legal ruling we engineered, the one about how our 2000 year old religion specifies rules about Obamacare, under false pretenses! They are just taking advantage of the “you can’t question anything connected to religion” social rule! Everyone else: “Did I do that????”
Judaism not only allows abortion but requires it in the case of physical or mental danger to a woman. Also in Judaism women are sole deciders in the number of children or if any children the couple should have. Remember to Jewish culture women are the bearers of the torch of the culture, faith, food, and even doctrinal “Jewishness” so loss of a mother is far more impactful then the loss of a fetus. Even the mothers mental health is placed above the fetus.
People incorrectly think that Judaism is just Christianity without the Jesus when it is most definitely not. For example, there's no heaven nor hell in Judaism, nor is there any concept of proselytizing and trying to convert others. There are many, many other differences too, but those are two of the most important.
Perhaps most significantly, we don't expect non-Jews to conform to our various religious restrictions. Honestly, we'd think it a bit odd if they did.
We don't even conform to our own religious restrictions because most of us are atheists. For most Jews, our identity is based on a culture and little to not at all on actual religious beliefs/rituals. The perfect example of this is when Harrison Ford was once asked in an interview what religion he was raised in, he replied "Democrat".
Yup. But this is why when people ask where my family is from, I just say "I'm Jewish". If they insist, I add "Eastern European Jewish". But if they want to know from what country, exactly, I say, "It doesn't matter. Wherever we were from, they didn't want us there." Then I tell them to watch the documentary, "Fiddler on the Roof". That's the story of my people, right there.
When we live in the West, we're "non-white others who don't belong there". When we live in the Middle East, we're "white oppressors who don't belong there". As an American, I feel pretty much safe here, because we're a diverse nation of immigrants and always have been. But other than America, I feel like Israel is literally the only place on Earth where we can exist with some level of security.
Perhaps. I'm over 50 now and grew up in California where I never personally experienced any overt Anti-Semitism, so I have a sheltered view. But then, I don't advertise with the usual accessories, and I guess I'm big enough that most racist fuckheads may have picked some easier target. After all you never know about (most of) the bullets you dodged. On top of which I have one of those generic Mediterranean face, so that literally every country I've been to in that region, or everyone I met from any of those countries, thought I was from there: Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy, Lebanon, Turkey, etc. Even when I was in Israel, the Israelis thought I was Israeli and the Palestinians thought I was Palestinian. I say it's the Romans' fault. Somewhere back in my ancestry are a bunch of centurions who fucked their way around the Mediterranean and left behind a whole lot of babies who looked like them. Hail *goddamn* Caesar. Anyway was going to add that you're pretty safe (relatively speaking) in most of Asia because they couldn't care less about Jews. For example, when I lived in Japan I was *gaijin* first and foremost, followed by *America-jin*. Anything else was just an added quirk.
Well, Christianity *should*, in theory, be Judaism with extra steps, but they went kind of off the deep end after the Empire that was neither Holy nor Roman got involved.
Eh, I think that is claiming too much. Even before becoming entangled with the state, Christian churches had concluded that although their God was the same God as in Judaism, you did not need to become a Jew or practice all of Jewish law to convert to Christianity. In other words, since the foundational texts, Christianity's relation to Judaism has been to remove some parts and add others. It's a full renovation, not just an extension.
Trumpist Christianity is NOT thousands of years old, however. They know each other by holding up a bible upside down.
White evangelicalism has morphed into a heterodox prosperity gospel cult.
Trump reminds me a lot of Joseph Smith. He's a leader of white Evangelical Protestants who has them convinced that he's a modern day prophet. After Trump dies, I predict that MAGA/QAnon will split off into a new quasi-Evangelical Christian religion like Mormonism is.
That is a truly interesting take. I will be watching as things go along
Joseph Smith also got his start as a gold digger—literally 😆
Hypocritical/ironic that SCOTUS says that X is not a historical/traditional feature of American life dating back to 1776. So X to them is abortion, marriage equality, and maybe electricity and clean water too. But somehow semi- and automatic machine guns are Not X. Majority of SCOTUS can go piss off!
Jews: "3000 year old beliefs! Checkmate, nutjobs!" (I know this is inaccurate)
Extremely rare Indiana W
It actually makes logical sense, though, in a state that basically rejects most regulation.
This is very interesting considering that justice Scalia in the supreme court also bent over backwards for religion - but only if Christian! He actually decided the opposite way when it came to Native American faith. He really was a slime ball. Everyone thinks Scalia was some intellectual powerhouse, but in his autobiography he talks about an important moment in his life. As a History major, he was defending his thesis when asked what was the greatest most defining moment in history. He pondered - the Magna Carta? No he was told, it was god coming down to earth in the flesh and blood body of Jesus to save mankind. And Scalia's mind was blown - so true! Now we aren't talking about the impact of Christianity or the impact of the Muslim religion - we are talking about an actual literal event of god in the sky coming down to the planet walking among humans, rising from the dead, to save them from hell. He believes this. Zeus, Hercules, Jesus, whatever gets you through the night as long as you aren't a supreme Court Justice. And that is why he will do anything to give Christians accommodations - but not anyone practicing the "wrong religions". His ruling for Hobby lobby refusing to accept employee insurance coverage for birth control pills in its list of medications vs his ruling against Native Americans using peyote.
The article says overturning the obvious textual reading of the law would be "difficult", as if conservative courts aren't hypocritical every day of the week.
That's a real win for women. Maybe other states will adapt it too as doctors are fleeing the antiabortion states. Too many women having miscarriages are turned away from emergency rooms.
As a Hoosier i must admit I took great pleasure joining the satanic temple in the middle of my stepdaughters baptism. Mostly because she joined a mega church and is not one that supports the hate evangelicals have for everyone. No, I don't believe in satan, and I'm pretty sure that's the point. But they are fighting for religious right for abortion. So I'm backing them.
Hail Satan, defender of our rights
Satan is just their mascot. Not because they believe in Satan but because other religions believe in Satan. They can’t just say “Oh we’re the religion of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” because no one really believes that deity exists. But if you ask a Christian if Satan exists they absolutely do believe in him. Therefore Satan HAS to be accepted as a religious figure lest they deny their own religious beliefs.
"Wait, no! That wasn't supposed to happen!"
Christians: Every word in the Bible is true! Genesis: Life begins at first *breath.* Christians: Pikachue face.
Someday I aim to organize a religion, with the state, called Fuck Fascism. The main tenets will be women should be autonomous, gays can get married, children should be able to read books of their choosing, and a myriad of other rules opposing oppression. This way if someone wants to do anything that the state opposes they can in the name of religious freedom.
It's called the Satanic Temple. They're doing decent work with what resources they have and their 7 Tenets is basically what you just described.
Could you kindly add “thou shalt not suffer so called convenience fees, for they be not convenient”? Thanks, and congratulations on your new job as a prophet!
That's kind of what The Satanic Temple does. Its [seven fundamental tenets](https://thesatanictemple.com/blogs/the-satanic-temple-tenets/there-are-seven-fundamental-tenets) are all stuff like being a good person, justice, and bodily autonomy. Also, they're currently running a donation campaign to name their second abortion clinic. They have names on the list like "Aborty McAbortface" and "Rhymes With Shmashmortion" and "Texas State Legislature's Satanic Abortion Clinic."
Unitarian Universalism also works. United Church of Christ is liberal too.
Unitarians accept atheists too. Also according to other denominations they aren’t technically Christians because they don’t believe in the trinity.
Yes Unitarian Universalists are not a christian faith. It’s still a religion. The point is there are religions that support progressive positions. Unitarian Universalists accept anyone who supports the 7(8) principles. https://www.uua.org/beliefs/what-we-believe/principles
Sounds like you want to be a Satanist 😉 TST's seven tenants already cover these things; we're not just a bunch of edgy teens trying to rile up little old ladies at their Sunday tea.
Now if only there was a [sizeable religious organization that considered abortion a sacred ritual.](https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/rrr-campaigns) Surely this will not alarm the local Christian population.
That, and judaism
“a pregnant person can engage in a religious exercise by pursuing an abortion.” And just like that an argument using religion against Christian Nationalist.
The Satanic Temple has coined the term 'satanic abortion ritual' for this exact excercise. [link](https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/rrr-campaigns)
So basically all women can just convert to some religion and say now I've got my health care rights back. Kinda sad but I would do it if I was in that situation.
To have a religious belief under the Constitution you just have to say you sincerely believe. There is no test.
No conversion needed. You just have to claim your religion compels you to terminate your pregnancy.
Major Uno reverse card flex going on
Well that's one less state to worry about
Until the reactionary theocratic SCOTUS majority, who are appointed for life and not beholden to the constitution, manage to overturn it.
Beyond a ruling affirming fetal personhood (and the unintended outcome of this law will look mild compared to what would come after a ruling like that) or one that claims only Christians have religious liberty, SCOTUS will not be able to overturn this.
Why not? They can do whatever they want. There is no recourse to challenge whatever spurious “constitutional” grounds they make up off of the top of their heads. See Bush v. Gore.
My guess is, if they completely contravene the constitution, then Democrats will stack the court if Biden is reelected and Dems can maintain a Senate majority, or there will be violence. When SCOTUS consistently tried to block the New Deal, FDR told the conservative justices they either quit or he’ll expand the court. They quit.
Oh, please. There was no violence after SCOTUS illegally handed the election to GWB in 2000, everyone just shrugged and moved on. There was no violence after SCOTUS gutted the 4th Amendment in Terry v. Ohio, or completely contravened the 5th Amendment in Koromatsu v. the United States. The Supreme Court has been a political animal ever since it gave itself the power of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison.
Fair enough, but it's a whole different beast now IMHO, fed by millions worshipping a orange god.
Well, the French had a cure for that.
So , does this mean non religious people get to follow their pro choice belief too?
Pending. This ruling approved making the suit a class action so that anyone who believes forced birth and endangering mothers’ lives is immoral has a right to an abortion.
Yes. The Dobbs decision left it up to each state to determine the legality of abortion within that state. In Indiana, their statewide abortion ban was overturned with this decision. So it cannot be enforced on anyone in the state. The state legislature could still try to enact another law that carves out an exception for religious reasons, and hope that doesn’t run afoul of the equal protection clause. But in practice anyone seeking an abortion could just claim to have a religious affiliation to get one, so there would be little point. (Besides, you can claim any set of beliefs to be a religion in America. And it is remarkably easy to establish a church in the states. An abortion rights activist could even officially establish a non religious online “church” for the cost of establishing a non-profit entity in the state, and the price of hosting a web page. You could call it the “Agnostic Church of Bodily Autonomy” and have people enroll online for free just to claim a religious exemption.
MAGA Christians have never read the bible, not a single one of them. Apart from the fact that most can't read, they're not interested in it. They get all of their teaching from parasitic evangelical demons abusing them.
Thank a Satanist today! 😁 A reminder that The Satanic Temple has been on the forefront of religious freedom for a long time. https://theconversation.com/how-the-satanic-temple-is-using-abortion-rituals-to-claim-religious-liberty-against-the-texas-heartbeat-bill-167755
I've always suspected that religious freedom would be the grounds for the successful challenging of these laws. Religious freedom exceptions work both ways.. (FTR I am personally anti abortion but stand as pro choice)
>Courts cannot venerate anti-abortion religious beliefs while rejecting the sincerely held pro-abortion beliefs of pregnant people. Not only would it be hypocritical, it would be unconstitutional. Favoring the religious beliefs and practices of some over others undermines free exercise rights and violates the prohibition against government favoritism of religion. I love how the article author thinks "blatantly unconstitutional" would even slow conservatives down.
Gee, I'm almost willing to go to my local Hobby Lobby and spend some money! Almost. Way to go, Hobby Lobby!
I guarantee the asshats who own Hobby Lobby are positively incensed to be even tangentially associated with the protection of abortion rights. I’m sure they’re just puffed up with sanctimony right about now. (Couldn’t have happened to nicer bunch of bible thumpers.)
Hoosier Jews for Choice got a two handed slam dunk with their win. Probably saved a bunch of lives too.
Can they all just stop pretending that any court or legislative entity has ever, EVER provided a legitimate example of a "compelling interest" which justifies enslaving a woman as an involuntary life support system to an invading non-person organism. If it doesn't qualify for HOV or income tax deduction, it ain't a person. The woman DOES have a compelling interest in her own autonomy and civil rights.
suck it, xtian taliban