I've been reading through the old stories for the first time in my life, and in my view, you can only read them through the lens of a series of allegorical lessons intended to warn about consequences that do take place in the real world, and those consequences can be beyond lethal.
History will wipe your entire bloodline out if you make bad enough mistakes. Ask the Hitlers.
Not only hasn't read the bible. Also hasn't seen The Ten Commandments which definitely shows god creating a deadly plague. Charlton Heston would like a word.
Or Prince of Egypt which has one of the best soundtracks and great animation. I'm not a Christian but even I know about the damn plague that got those little Egyptian kids.
Hell, not only does YHWH kill many innocent children, a big part of the story is how he literally brainwashes the pharaoh to have an excuse to do so. YHWH explicitly "hardened his heart, and the heart of his servants, that I might shew these my signs before him"
Only if simultaneously being willfully obtuse and ignorant.
For example, in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Jesus forbids those going out to minister from brining a purse or money.
This necessarily prevents monetary collections.
So why is the church okay with taking your money today?
In part, rationalized by Paul's arguments in 1 Cor 9 against the earlier Christian community there that don't think it's appropriate to profiteer off ministering.
But then even more, at the last supper in Luke, Jesus explicitly says "Hey guys, remember when I said not to carry purses? Let's reverse that and now definitely carry purses."
Except this addition to the last super in Luke-Acts is missing in Marcion's version of that gospel, which is probably preserving the earliest extant version of it.
So while yes, you could in theory fit Jesus in the NT to agree with Paul that churches and those ministering have a right to profit from it and should definitely collect money from people (like they do in Acts 5 where an older couple who holds back money are both struck dead before Peter) - an even halfway critical eye should see that the historical Jesus was far more likely to have been against such practices given the widespread accounts of his ban, the earlier attitudes in Corinth, its embarrassing nature to be added in after already collecting money, and the late nature of the reversal.
And to see that much like biological evolution, ideas evolve over time too, and the version of Christianity we have today isn't necessarily the one closest to the original form, but simply the form that was most adaptive through the fall of the Jerusalem temple, the endorsement of Rome, etc.
So yes, few people might know or see it this way, but that is largely because they don't bother looking into their preconceptions and would rather believe a superficial picture that agrees with what they think they know (and I'm not only talking about Christians here either).
Yeah a lot of people miss things like context, knowledge of the time period, and a proper understanding of theology when they talk shit about the Bible. I'm not Christian myself, but a close friend of mine is Catholic, and after hearing his clarifications on supposed Biblical Plotholes and how much more complicated the subject is... Well it definitely made me start squinting at oversimplifications concerning theology with a little more scrutiny.
This coming from the politician having orgies and cheating on her husband with her CrossFit gym owner.
I could give a shit, but the hypocrisy is real.
Exodus 20:17
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.
She's a woman of very strong faith. She has faith that as long as she spouts the "correct" kind of bullshit, she'll have money flowing in and all the power she craves...
The worst kind of faith. Faith in success for being a hypocrite.
People complain about people saying "I could care less" when they mean "I couldn't care less" (I care so little that I cannot care less)
I don't care about it, since it's clear what they mean.
You're the first where I'm not sure whether you mean what you say and are playing on the common phrase "couldn't give a shit" or whether you are messing up that phrase in exactly the same way as the 'care less' one
Like are you saying you would have time for them if it weren't for their hypocrisy, or that you have no time for them except to point at the hypocrisy?
If not for double standards Republicans would have no standards at all. But this isn't really even double standards, because she doesn't believe in most of the nonsense she spouts herself, she just lets it out because Trump has learnt her that that is the thing their voters wants to hear.
Or it's the work of Satan, who doesn't actually have free will, but get to do evil things because otherwise you'd be blaming god for killing a bunch of people. Although, in the one place where Satan is doing things in the bible, it's god that does all the killing.
god kills Job's family so that he can brag to Satan about how much Job loves him.
no no don't you see that's a facile argument? sky daddy gave us free will to do evil so we had to choose him because... that is... because there... uhm
So as someone who read the bible quite a lot when he was still Catholic - Humanity gets knowledge of Good an Evil by eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Before then, there were no evil acts - that's why it is called the Original Sin.
Like I get what you're going for but if you're going to try to parody actual religious claims you should know the basics.
God gave humans free will which he apparently doesn’t control. Doesn’t explain natural disasters though. I think they’re meant to test our faith or something? Catholic school was a loooong time ago.
The bible, that’s god book, as far as I know the devil hasn’t brought out a book yet, haven’t heard his side of the argument. God’s just writing shit about him, and the devil’s being the bigger man and saying I’m not even going to comment, talking shit about me like that.
That is a false dichotomy. If God did not create COVID, it's not necessarily a bioweapon. It could still be an accidental lab escape or a naturally evolved disease, for example.
I mean, assuming god to be real, wouldn't all of those options still have been created by god? Either directly through evolution, or indirectly through inaction?
That is missing half the point. If you believe in the Christian God then you also believe that that God created the world and everything in it. So God would still have made it, the lab which created it and everything else.
It is not often that you find a statement which is dumb on so many levels that it actually gets dumber every time you pick it apart, but I am not surprised that MTG was the one to make such a statement.
For some reason the only way can interpret this is she's saying the bubonic plague was a bio weapon... Or any other plague in history, including the ones "God" takes responsibility for in the Bible.