While discussing the imminent climate disaster with my elderly parents, they said they don’t care because they won’t live long enough to see it.
I asked, “What about your kids and grandkids?”
They asked, “Do you believe in God?”
I said, “No.”
They said, “If you Believe in God, then you’ll get to go to Heaven when you die.”
I don’t believe in God, so I won’t be going to Heaven (which I also don’t believe in), but if I did believe in God and Heaven, and expected to go there, why the hell should I and my children have to live through a post-apocalyptic shitshow before we die?
For the record, from what the church they made me go to taught me about God and Heaven, they should probably not expect to make the cut either. The God I was taught about was pretty anti-fascist. Kind of a socialist really.
Your elderly parents should really check their God Positioning System to see if attitudes like “fuck my neighbours, fuck all future generations, I got mine” will set them on a course to Heaven…
Christianity is about as transactionary as it get since the Romans adopted the religion. You believe in Christ = heaven. That’s all there is and had always been.
Shows that the didn’t pay attention to The Sermon on the Mount and the beatitudes.
Or, like the vast majority of self-professed “Christians”, literally any part of “The Bible” whatsoever.
There is the one part about dashing babies on rocks. I guess they got the “kill children” part.
I was listening to an NPR segment a couple months ago that talked about how a lot of Evangelicals don’t care about the environment dying. They actually embrace it as a quicker route to rapture or some such weird shit.
Didn’t God instruct us to take care of the earth right after we were made?
Genesis 1:28 ESV
And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Genesis 2:15 ESV
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Shouldn’t it be an incentive to take care of God’s creation with respect and love because He saw that it was good?
Genesis 1:12 ESV
The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.
It seems more rational to exploit the earth since you only live once if there is no creator and you are an atheist versus believing there is a Creator and adhering to a religious belief that teaches that the Creator thought His creation was good.
Most Christians would rather believe in escapism and have cruel contempt rather than stewardship and kindness and love and acceptance. Even if it is part of the gospel we read.
Matthew 7:21-23 ESV
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
The conservative mind cannot comprehend this
Also, you expect them to know this because you assume they can actually read, which is required to know this. Instead they get some guy on every sunday who tells them who to vote for if they believe in god so that they can be tax exempt.
Always remember what religion actually is, a tool to control the minds of the people. Imagine being told your whole life that if you act a certain way that you will be rewarded with paradise after you die, and to believe and worship an entity whom you will never see or even have evidence of it’s existence? Sounds absolutely fucking nuts to me, especially considering the fact that over the course of history, all of these religions would kill you if you didn’t follow them in the lands of which they ruled, and oftentimes outside of that, all in the name of “god”
I think it’s a bit of a strawman to assume that churches are just political people looking to be tax exempt.
And I wouldn’t say there isn’t any evidence either. There was clearly a guy around called Jesus who was crucified and people testified to seeing him after he died, many in groups. And many of those people who testified about it died on that fact.
There are also many solid arguments as to why a higher power exists. After researching this subject, I came to the conclusion that those arguments for God are more compelling than the ones against, and Christianity carries the most solid and watertight explanation to who God is. I got baptised a few months ago, and the transformation this has made to my life is beyond words.
I dunno the Bible passages I have read made me think god was a bit of a bipolar asshole and any entity higher than a human that went against god for the sake of humans would be punished too.
that said I also didnt get the impression any of these types of people would make the cut either.
You see. I know the atheist movement ran high on Reddit and flamed out.
I’m typically the guy that’s very live and let live and if you asked me if there’s any danger to believing in a God I’d just say, “you do you”.
However, we get people that are in control or are being controlled that are making decisions that affect everyone based on this stuff. Stem cell research, abortions, sex work, gay rights, porn ID, climate change, evolution … like I just don’t know what to think.
People should be allowed to believe what they will, but never allowed to use their religion as an argument for why a certain policy must or must not be enacted. Separation of church and state is key
What does believing in God have to do with the climate disaster? Are they saying to just accept ir, believe in God and you’ll go to heaven? That’s their answer?
God also did a lot of fucked up shit, like flooding the world because people didn’t pray to him enough. Yeah, nothing better than a vengeful God committing genocide.
Sorry about having to deal with that. I was raised in a similar environment and can very much empathize. At even an early age I started pointing out that what they were trying to teach me and what the book they told me to read were in complete opposition to one another. That didn’t go over well, and it continues to not go over well.
Thing is, according to their own scripture, God doesn’t need you to believe in him/them… just that you live righteously (a word that has different requirements depending whether you are ethnically Jewish or a gentile). Basically, be kind and generous to everyone, because God takes your treatment of others - especially the disadvantaged - very personally. Whether you believe in God (any flavor) or not, that’s just good universal philosophy… and one that Christians don’t just refuse to follow, but spit on.
So spitting on the futures of your own children and grandchildren… wow, according to their own “holy scripture” that’s a big problem.
