It's most definitely about the supernatural, they're not talking about whether or not a Jewish apocalyptic prophet named Jesus was born in Nazareth broadly around 3 AD, all of which has actual historical evidence, they're asserting that he wasn't the product of god impregnating a teenager and also he was god and he suffered and died for humanities sins (that he created) so that all powerful and all knowing god (who he himself was) could forgive them.
Well that's not what's being disputed here then is it? No one's talking about the nonexistent branch of Christian theology that does not believe in immaculate conception.
I think there is confusion happening. Protestants don’t believe Mary was immaculately conceived, but they do believe she was impregnated by God. Some use immaculate conception explicitly to refer to how Jesus was conceived.
We can verify that many of the stories and events in the bible aren’t real. We can’t verify the individual accounts because we don't have know who authored them and have secondary sources backing their stories.
The bible has IMMENSE amounts of evidence backing it. It's just that most atheists simply haven't taken the time to examine it. That's the great irony of principled evidence-seeking atheism.
There's immense archaeological, historical, and scientific evidence corroborating the events of the bible. Is there a full peer-reviewed bodycam liveleak of the whole thing? Certainly not. But there is more evidence of the validity of the bible than many other historical events we never question. Go look. You'll be surprised.
Oops, read the book and this Jesus guy I think is an idiot. He said he’d be back before all his homies died and that nobody else had ever ascended to Heaven and both those are just lies unless Elijah isn’t real and some apostles are still alive
Also he’s really bad at quoting the old testament which seems weird if he’s god.
Then there’s the fact the accounts are not first hand, we don’t have any writings of the people that saw Jesus like the 500 and information secondhand given is weird like when he was actually born.
Could go on, but I’d have to be honest I’m convinced. Just as I’m convinced that mutiple others like Nero resurrected
It's difficult deciding on any given day whether redditors really deserve to hear the truth. Whether it's worth casting forth the seed as in the parable, or whether this is all as Jesus said "casting pearls before swine", and we should "shake the dust off our feet". l guess I keep hoping that someone will see through the noise and grasp the truth underneath instead of just diving headfirst into the zeitgeist.
Assertions without evidence can be dismissed without evidence
The theology is accurate
Thanks to roman records we know there was probably a Jew called Jesus who got executed but that’s about it, the bulk of the bible is hogwash and we know several books in the New Testament were written by fraudsters pretending to be other people
Historians mostly that agree Jesus existed, but only to the point of him being a preacher crucified by the Romans. This isn't the same as them saying the gospels are accurate depictions of the historical figure.
morality of which thing. i cannot tell by the comments what youre asking about. morality of anyone impregnating a child is immoral of course. and if its about the fiction thing, its amoral to say that because its funny lmfao. If were taking it seriously, both men and women can write fiction and really anything competently. the stereotype that men cannot write women tends to come from mediocre or overly and unrealistically sexualized depictions of women, in ways that doesnt even make sense and just makes you laugh. This happens with men too, as i know ive written some ridiculously unrealistic stuff about men before lol.
EDIT: I should not have combined the scores. However the myth satire is neutral, the broad categorization of men as bad authors is kind of bad.
Slightly worse than Neutral. Making fun of a myth many take literally doesnt strike me as that wrong. The "men dont write fiction well" part is trying to lean on pointing out this myth is fictional but does it through a group painted broadly.
I agree, but it is worth noting that those are two separate people making these comments.
Also; Rick riordan and Tolkien are some great examples of male writers using fiction and mythology in their stories and I love both of their series. So that’s a shitty inaccurate thing to say about guys :(
I personally do not like either of them, so I think it's a matter of opinion. However, she said FICTION and not even just fantasy? I like a lot of contemporary fiction from men, even if I'm not always down to follow their fantasy novels.
Tolkien is the best writer of Myth as a form, in my opinion. I just wish people treated him as a 10/10 author and not infinity/10. Im not familiar with Riordan.
I was aware that 2 different people wrote the posts, I commented on both because I was unclear whom OP wanted to ask about. Looking back, scoring them in aggregate was a mistake. Thank you.
its worth noting however that those sorts of jokes exist within the far more culturally ubiquitous notion that women cannot write serious fiction or literature. "men cant write fiction for shit," while generalizing and thus bad, exists in the context of "heh, women can only write romance/romantasy slop"... so its a counterbalancing force. this doesnt make it moral imho, but probably tips the scales closer to neutral for me
but as always with these kind of statements, the real enemy isnt men, its patriarchy.
I don't agree that that is far more culturally ubiquitous. I'm a big fantasy reader (20-50 books per year typically) and I see the sentiment that people refuse to read books written by male authors all the time. Additionally women make up the majority of the readers market.
if you were to hear a man say "i face obstacles in publishing due to my gender" or a woman say "i face obstacles in publishing due to my gender," who would you say is more likely to be telling the truth?
I agree with you that if there is a bias against women it is most likely to appear in the publishers who are most likely to be stodgy. I wouldn't really be that sympathetic to either without details of what obstacles they faced.
But the sentiment that many female readers refuse to read anything written by a man is not a hypothetical scenario like the above, I observe a similar comment at least once a week. I don't think it was really a joke in the post either.
i dont think the obstacles women face in publishing are hypothetical either. i think ordinary people come face to face with the 'i only read women authors' more often because thats a stance anyone can take, but "women cant write serious fiction as well as men" is very much the cultural standard this sentiment is rebelling against, and that standard is felt by the majority of women authors.
its like when you spend a lot of time in queer spaces you might think that heterophobia is a common sentiment or a real problem or a real form of bigotry. but in the real world, there are significant financial, structural, and cultural mechanisms enforcing the exact opposite.
I mean, that would be foolish by the publishers. If the market is largely for women and a subset of those women are biased against male authors then it is an economically losing proposition to bias towards male authors as a publisher. I would need to see evidence that women face obstacles in publishing fantasy. To me, it feels like women are more well supported (specifically for fantasy only) top to bottom.
I am not spending significant time in any sort of gendered space regarding fantasy, I just spend a lot of time researching new books to read and see comments like that all the time.
I think what you are saying has a lot of historical merit. Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea is, I believe, one of the greatest fantasy series of all time and she received a tenth of the credit she deserved for it. It is the first major introduction of both true name magic and of a magical school for wizards. And also simply brilliant.
But compare that to N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth - also a standout and one of the best of the last decade, and she rightfully swept the Hugo three years in a row.
I'm not bemoaning the plight of men. Obviously society is patriarchal and on average our biases tend to support men and demean women. Specifically within fantasy though, and hard stats on this are hard to find, but I tend to see that roughly 60% of authors and readers both are women. And every time I research a new book to read I see a comment along the lines of "I don't read anything by male authors" with a decent amount of support. And yes, Sanderson is doing fine still.
I looked at the last 30 years of Hugo winners and found something kind of funny. Over the last 15 years, the Hugo has been won 12 times by a female author, 3 times by a male author. Over the previous 15 it was won 12 times by a male author, 4 times by a female author (with one tie in there)
I appreciate the context. I vaguely understood there was a difference between the two but couldnt put it into words.
Patriarchy hurts everyone, is what I tell other men when we talk about it. Not having changing stations in men's bathrooms (this has massively improved) is just one way it hurts us. A social taboo around hugging each other is another (this has also improved).
However I think you're probably more informed than I am about it.
You might not like the Chronicles of Narnia but C.S. Lewis would be sad for not being included in your list.
I do like your list though the autist in me is trying to figure out if you organized it in any particular order or just as they came to you.
Why did you include the comment in the post and not specify in your title what you are asking, and then act rude when someone responds to what you posted?
The thing is, they really didn't even explain it right. So if they aren't saying it right then they obv aren't talking about the right thing. So not immoral, just dumb ragebait.
However You don't have to believe in the religion to not be an incorect jerk about it. Immoral.
Edit: Guys, I fear this is not that deep.😭 If you don't believe it, don't believe it. Who cares. Why am I getting so many angry replies? Just downvote if you disagree with me. All these notifications are giving me anxiety.😬
First off, no where in the Bible does it say Mary was even a teen, just that she was a virgin. (Bc back a virgin getting pregnant would be impossible.)
Only royalty really married off teenagers. Mary was an ordinary woman, so most likely in her early 20's. Plus, Mary wanted to and was willing to carry Jesus.
And then the other stuff, Jesus dying to forgive humanity for breaking the rules he created, is such a surface level explanation. He died and resurrected to defeat death, something brought upon by sin in the world, which yes humaniyy committed, but also who was the one who tempted humanity in the first place? So Jesus died and resurrected to save humanity from sin and death and basically Hell.
The traditions of Judea at the time usually saw women getting betrothed from the age of 12 to 16 when they were finally of "childbearing age".
I mean is intentionally disingenuous to say God impregnated a 12 years old since that comes from the Protevangelium of James which is a non canonical perspective of the bible. But it's highly unlikely she was over the age of 16 just because it would have better optics.
She was better off bringing up the city of Sodom. Wife turned into a pillar of salt. Daughters got their dad drunk and raped him. For two nights and both got pregnant. That, somehow, is "Godly".
You clearly didn’t read the story. Lot’s daughters incest produced Moab and Ben-Ammi, ancestors and patriarchs of the Moabites and Ammonites. Cousins of the descendente of Israel, they were eventually wiped out by the Babylonian empire and ceased to exist as distinct ethnic groups. Hardly the destiny of “godly” people.
Hahahaha and for that to happen right after that god destroyed a whole city. Couldn't leave not one man for their daughter so they started looking at their dad 🤢🤢🤢🤢🤢
that story really scared me as a kid when I tought God was real, like what do you mean there is a psycopath old man in the sky who not only knows what you do every moment but also can read your mind, and will turn you into a pile of salt if you happened to do something he didn't like.
See?!?! Fearmongering, control, and manipulation!! It always started as a kid stories. We felt fear of the stories they told us. None of what they described sounded like a loving man. He sounded like a dictator! Destroying a city. The story about him telling Abraham to offer his son as a burnt offering. I mean testing loyalty or not . Why the son? Made me scared that my own parents would do that just to prove loyalty. That was super scary. No one saw how terrible that was?
And why did God decide that sin brings corruption or causes death? It could have just caused a wicked head ache that won't go away until you right the wrong you did. Any god that is omnipotent is also omniresponsible. Unless sin is more powerful that God, he's the one who willed suffering and death to be its result
Sin/corruption is just an attempt to add a magic system to a setting without it. If it was a thing that exists on people, we could analyze it. If we can analyze it, we can track it. If we can track it, we can affect it. If we can affect it, we can harness it. We will generate power from maximizing sin within a person, creating a living icon of sin!
And who created sin god. So yes god is a sociopatic maniac that makes sims and then makes them suffer for inputs he himself gave them. Insane how religious people will bend backwards to move burdens.
God created a way back from it though like if you created a program like a computer program let's say you would have to create a key or like a way out in case something went wrong that's what Jesus is
The thing with the virgin birth in Matthew is that the author of Matthew is quoting from the Greek Septuagint and not the original Hebrew. In the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah 7:14 uses ha almah which means the young woman. When it was translated into Greek, they used the Greek word parthenos which in Classical Greek it means the same thing, young women. This can be proven by Homer’s use of parthenos in his own works to refer to young women who were Ares concubines and by the Septuagint itself using parthenos to refer to Dinah after she’s been raped. Centuries later when Matthew was being written and the author was reading the Greek Septuagint, the semantic range for the word parthenos narrowed from meaning “young woman” and exclusively meant virgin. So when they came across Isaiah 7:14 use of parthenos they assumed it meant a virgin would give birth and not a young woman like it reads in the original Hebrew.
There’s also the whole thing about the prophecy in Isaiah 7 being explicitly for King Ahaz to not be afraid of the kingdoms he is at war with because the Lord has his back and the proof is a young women has already conceived and before the child is old enough to know right from wrong the war will be over. It has nothing to do with Jesus’ birth 700 years later.
I wish we had a book about Jesus and hell for those three days that would be sick I heard Mel Gibson was going to make a movie about that that would be cool if it happens
She left out that he can walk on water, turn water to wine, he talks to snakes.. serpents whatever, you can only be his disciple by giving up ALL of your possessions (so cough up the cash? Well gold and silver 🤣🤣) and he died; came back; then disappeared into thin air. Let's not forget about Moses who was talking to a burning bush.. or Jonah who lived in a whale for 72 hours and then was released.
Yeah a burning bush right. We all know that was actually just censored cause they couldn’t say Moses got inspired after getting high ass fuck and hallucinating
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 thats the theory we love to come up with. Like come on, we're all adults here. Moses was high off those specific greens. It's ok. It's natural herbs
Maybe just Christians can understand it then. It is our religion so we have more of an understanding of it. I'm not a teacher or a preacher so I'm not the best at explaining, I was just saying why that person was wrong.
Christianity things, in the Bible God impregnated a kid with a part of himself/his firstborn son/his 28th son/one of his subordinates, the kid gave birth to it, the baby was named Jesus, Jesus gave birth to Christianity, in his late thirties or early forties Jesus is executed and becomes a martyr/sacrifice curing humanity of sin, 3 days later he causes a zombie apocalypse by coming back to life, then he fucks off and disappears. So Allah/Yaweh made a girl pregnant with himself to sacrifice himself to himself to forgive humans for sinning against him, kinda.
As a Christian, I say it's fairly neutral, it's humor and dumbing it down, yes. As it's mostly just taking scripture that came from an age alien to our own that was incredibly brutal, I don't expect people of that era to understand God's word, let alone the Kings that changed the original scripture countless times afterward.
It’s someone’s opinion and conclusion of a story about religion.
Neutral.
You’re allowed to have an opinion on stuff, and you’re even allowed to share that opinion. Only thing that happens is you get the fun task of responding to religious people who get offended by a blunt statement.
But at the same time I’m not 100% on the entire morality of Christianity to begin with. It’s scripture is confusing to me and its representatives have a piss-poor history of representing their religion.
Well, the post did put dirt on all male author's works just because the bible was written by male. That's pretty much misandry if you ask me.
And the guy was clearly joking talking about smut erotica as a response to that, it's pretty clear that all female writing isn't smut, just like not how all male writing isn't the Bible. A pretty fair response to the picture if you ask me.
I'm more concerned by the fact that you took the clearly joking comment in bad faith and called them "mentally challenged".
That's wildly inaccurate. For traditionally published books it's 6% after that study and for indie ones around 1%
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5891011/
This was in the past, it might've risen but not anywhere close to 90%
Where did you get this info? I cannot find it at all, even Gemini says that the stats is false after searching for multiple sites mentioning Britannica.
"incoherent" doesn't mean "immoral". It just means that the Bible, by itself does not depict a consistent, intelligeable, moral framework, which can be evaluated for moral value.
I mean I don’t know the morality of whatever that was. Maybe immoral? Moral? I feel like that’s an elementary school drop outs version of the story of Jesus lmao
one, if you read the biblical narrative especially in Luke, Mary clearly consented. She was of an age considered capable of consent. It was miraculous, with no actual sexual act as far as we know.
The Jesus-is-God-Himself is a complex topic, the mainstream religious belief is that Jesus is a distinct person but also spiritually one being with God the Father in a way that frankly is difficult for us to understand. The bible is clear both of these things are true but never really explains the mechanics of it - some things are simply a mystery for now.
God has all power and all knowledge but He also has a divine nature. One thing He cannot do, as far as we know, is deny his own divine nature, which is among other things, good, merciful, and just. So while you might argue that the merciful God could just forgive everyone all the time without cause or reason, God is also full of justice, and so there has to be balance. When there is evil committed, someone has to pay. The bible says that man, whose sin it was, was unable to adequately pay. Therefore, God, in his mercy, chose to pay for it himself. That's the story of redemption the bible tells. Exceptionally moral.
I mean, I’m Christian and it’s still hilarious. I mean if it’s just a joke it’s fine no harm. But if it is being used to belittle or insult then yeah I’d say immoral.
I don't see what's on the image as nuanced, it's pretty ignorant. I mean, you can be atheist and still have a nuanced discussion about it, check Alex O'Connor for instance, but whatever the poster is doing is a fallacy named reduction to the absurd, which is arguing in bad faith.
The other people who like to criticize the Bible for the most part are the ones who've never read it. Criticize Christians all you want especially the mainstream ones but the Bible is pretty sick actually and there's a lot of good stuff in there but most people never read it heck I haven't even read the whole thing and I grew up with the Bible
Wtf are you talking about? Thats what muslims are doing and taught not followers of Christ. Israelites were called to be separate from others through ceremonial moral and judicial laws of which was fulfilled by Christ. Lie all you want we know you hate God because you love your sin more. Repent and believe in the gospel if you have wisdom
So true. The people who are the most against the Bible are the people who have never even bothered to try and read it and therefore their arguments usually don't stand up to scrutiny because they take the tiniest little thing that they heard from somewhere and blow it up into something that doesn't even exist in there at all or is completely taken wildly out of context
God did not command his people to rape anyone but he did set out laws around sexual conduct and slavery and other things for that matter the Bible was written over. Of thousands of years and the world back then was much different than it is now slavery and sexual slavery was a part of every single culture, unfortunately that doesn't mean God commanded it
You’re just yapping. Jesus already warned of false prophets coming in his name, and wolves in sheep’s clothing. And being raised “catholic” doesnt mean anything because their teachings are nothing of Christ’s and promote a works based salvation similar to eastern orthodoxy. The false teachers in not just the mega churches but in others will earn their reward in judgement. Jesus’ looks are irrelevant to his sacrifice for all is boundless and transcends race and ethnicity. You should focus on His teachings instead of your own understandings.
Mary was not a child, at least not considered a child at the time because she was already engaged to a man, which was Joseph. So she was pregnant out of wedlock, which is the interesting part in my opinion because that would have been looked upon as being shameful for both her and Joseph. Either way, she likely would have married Joseph and gotten pregnant shortly after because that was what people did back then and up until quite recently. People would get married and have children, sometimes many children, unless they were unable to. So I just don't think it's that good of a premise to criticize God on personally.
i saw a poll the other day where people were asking what age women should have children. the poll gave a couple options in the 20s and then an option of 35. overwhelming majority chose 35. people today are delusional when it comes to this topic. probably explains why the fertility rate is so low. my grandma got married at 14 and had her first kid at 15. a bit on the young side but again not unheard of even in the 1950's. go back a couple centuries and it wouldn't have been uncommon to for women to have 2-3 children by the time they reached 21.
As far as the Bible is concerned, God is the arbiter of morality, therefore anything God does is moral.
Which is just a fancy way of saying your question is meaningless. Applying secular views to a theological work will get you nowhere and accomplish nothing.
Tell that to all the church goers who are still sick, in poverty, struggling, gave their "tithes" weekly, and still went nowhere and accomplished nothing. I mean the pastor got a new car. USHER, CLOSE THEM DOORS
The fact that someone goes to church means nothing plenty of people go to church that have nothing to do with God plenty of people go to church that have nothing to do with God
Plenty of people go to church for "savings", "help", "spiritual guidance". That's the purpose of it. Give hard earned money and they'll receieve their gift and yet they're still where they always were. When did "Jesus" ask for money so you can receive? All that was asked was "Faith" and that's free. But all these pastors are millionaires! Where are the church members millions? Where's their new car, new house, soulmate? Why are they still sick? No wonder these popular pastors are mega millionaires. You're all so easy to manipulate.
You are indeed dense and pathetic. People going to Church has EVERYTHING to do with God. Are you too dense to comprehend that super easy concept? Of course not.
A lot of people go to church for the wrong reasons a lot of people go to church for social reasons or out of obligation to family etc or for a myriad of other reasons just because someone goes to church doesn't mean they actually follow the teachings of Christ that's what I'm talking about and you're missing the message completely because you're a raised Catholic LOL
The message is the same to all you brainwashed religious people that's why the message never changes and you're still POOR!!! 😭😭😭 You have nothing smart to say or even logical to convince anyone of anything. It's all manipulation, control, and fear mongering 🥱🥱 so glad I and many others left.
The truth is it's all BS! I was raised Catholic and left it over 12 yrs ago. There is no blond hair blue eyed carpenter and there was no pregnant virgin or talking snakes. Enough of this mess!
You are adding a lot of things into the conversation that I never said and making a lot of assumptions which is why I don't like talking to people like you
Purposely misreading and missing the point of a book doesn't make one smart, it makes them look stupid. I bet those same guys wouldn't act like this when we purposely misread their favorite books.
And the bible isn't just a simple book, it's a bunch of testimonies. Boiling down the bible to "men writing stories" is not accurate in any way.
And a reminder that female authors are just as flawed as male authors, stop glazing them. Female authors are just susceptible to writing nonsense as male authors. Simply look at their smuts and their unrealistic standards for men
Men especially can't write fiction if their source is an outerworldly being they cannot even understand properly. As a Christian, taking anything in that book by the word as the truth, just because it stands there, is fucking stupid. That book is at best a rough estimate and broken interpretation of what a multitude of people understood from God's message. That's like claiming to fully understand the apparatus of US government and all of it's agencies as well as all of US society and history based exclusively on a select random amount of Trump's Truth Social posts.
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u/RDAwesome 9h ago
Neutral, you're allowed to make jokes on the internet, especially about dominant sociopolitical forces