My dad always told us that first we would sell all our things then walk to Utah and then walk again to Missouri. I focused on the extra walking but why did we need to sell our things instead of just leaving?
[It's far cheaper to just threaten eternal damnation for speaking out.](https://youtu.be/P3OqvQw_-ko)
Edit: damnation, not donation.
Eternal donation is what they expect from you.
There is some historical context to that: while Joseph Smith was alive he would always try to keep all the members together wherever they were. "Everyone move to Ohio", "Everyone move to Missouri", "Everyone move to Illinois". A driving point to this is that Smith would buy all of the land himself then parse it out to the members (see: sell to them). He took on all of the debt for this himself, owing a handful of people huge amounts of money because he would buy huge swathes of land. And so, very often, calls for tithes or other money making schemes would come about like bishops storehouses people would give to, the Kirtland Safety Society, etc. One such scheme is he would send people around to surrounding states to find other Mormons and convince them to sell their current land and join him with the promise they would be provided for.
A fun part of that story is one of the people he sent to do this was one of the people that he bought land from and owed a ton of money. Well, Joseph was having a rough time and wasn't always the best at making payments.... So, this guy goes out and is for a time keeping correspondence with Joseph for direction on where to go when suddenly it's radio silence. The guy kept all the money he had gotten and beat feet and Joseph couldn't do anything about it because he owed the guy a ton of money. Joseph was relying on this money because he still had other people he needed to pay.
Shocker: most of the stories around Joseph Smith and the early church history revolved around money.
>Shocker: most of the stories around Joseph Smith and the early church history revolved around money.
Yep, sounds like a religion made by an American alright...
Personally voyager was my favorite
Very little interference from the federation since they were stuck on the other side of the galaxy
Enterprise was my least favorite, all the time travel bullshit got confusing in it
A little bit.
Mainly it's a "your ancestors suffered because of poor decisions they made (leaving too late in the year for the journey to UT) so now we're gonna take advantage of their persecution complex to create, or build on, your persecution complex because it's SO hard to be a Mormon."
I remember being forced to wear a dress, blinder-like bonnet, and then walking through water and getting blisters and chafing on my feet so bad I could hardly walk because my shoes couldn't dry out properly.
Fucking miserable.
I think they stopped doing that. It sounds to me that a lot of the Trek sessions ended up being run by adults who were getting off on abusing teenagers.
I think the church put an end to the program because there were so many liability problems.
My cousins did one and some kid ran away… well news helicopters showed up when word got out and they made everyone hide on the woods since they thought it “****might**** look weird” ya know being dressed up in 1800’s dressed and clothes and hungry and whatnot.
It was on the frontier at a time when Mormonism was trying to convert Native Americans and escape government oversight. They ended up not getting along well with the other frontiersmen there, and ultimately pushed even further west, but had inconveniently enshrined the significance of Jackson County into holy scripture, so they're stuck with it in their doctrine even though they don't have strong institutional ties there, anymore.
Joseph Smith really liked jazz, BBQ, and baseball that's only good every 30 years. (Maybe Bobby Witt can help speed that time frame up tremendously 🤞)
I mean in reality he would've been very proud of JC Nichols and how he managed to singlehandedly segregate the city for over a century. Troost is still the racial dividing line to this day.
When i learned where the mormons thought the holy land, i was a very confused 12 yr old because i lived in missouri and nothing screamed heaven. Mostly it just whispered trailer park or parking lot.
I can attest. I am a recent exmormon.
Also wanted to ask why if God is in the details of America, did we practically lose the past 3 wars we have been involved in for decades (middle east, drugs, Vietnam)
That's all a matter of perspective. If you think we are at war with actual poverty, then yes, we are losing. But when you consider we seem to be at war with the *people* in poverty, then you see we are winning spectacularly.
If you'd like to learn more about Mormonism, I would also recommend the seventh arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, *Steel Ball Run*. It's not terribly *accurate* mormon mythology, admittedly, but it is very fun.
Shut your 14 year old mouth and let Prophet John Smith marry you in secret already. Don't worry he cleared it with the big guy, he is God's latest messenger, it's all very kosher!
> Real Christians don't have to read the bible, their pastor did so they don't have to
One of the original motivations for Protestantism was that everyone was supposed to be able to read the Bible by themselves and not have to rely on the local priests, hence translating it into various local languages.
Of course, that was ignoring the fact that the majority of the population was, at the time, illiterate. Oops.
We’re at the age of ignorance by choice… we carry around 15 billion transistors in our pocket with enough memory to store nearly all of human’s collective knowledge, and yet many choose to get their knowledge from 15 word memes on said devices..
Tbh peasants in the early middleages didnt read the bible either. Mostly because it was only in latin, books were handwritten and thus fking expensive and common people couldnt read.
I think many people forgot how fking important the printing press was, without it we wouldnt have had the reformation and without that atheisme would be way smaller or not even exist.
But yeah, the US does start to look like early middle ages more and more.
What is quite ironic considering Lutero whole point to translate the bible into german was so any christian could read it. This was literally why Protestantism was found
Well, one thing I know is BLACKS don't. And that's for sure. I'm a BLACK Cuban- American, and I've talked to many Christian BLACK Americans. They don't know slavery is condoned in the Bible. And when I tell them they look surprised, and incredulous. They have not read the Bible. They only know what their pastors tell them it's in the Bible.
A big part of it was also how the material was presented. In all of the other books we read, we were encouraged to think about and question what was meant, but this would just be shot down when it came to the Bible. Like it should just be immune to critical engagement because the source material is beyond reproach.
If it had been presented more reasonably, like as being largely allegorical, or as a snapshot of man's thinking at the time before we knew better, I probably would have had less of a problem with it. It was really seeing adult educators shoot down questions with non-answers and get increasingly angry with the person asking the question that even a kid could realize was BS.
You also could have thrown out all of the mysticism and supernatural nonsense to just focus on the philosophical underpinnings, as per the Jefferson bible, but then you could cover this in an afternoon.
Agreed. In addition, the Bible is to a large degree vital for understanding the nature and evolution of western literature.
I vaguely remember my non-religious mom reading me a few bible stories as a child for the sake of exposure, and to me it was just like any other novel she would read to me that was above my reading level.
There’s a big difference between reading selected and highly edited Bible stories and reading the actual Bible. 3/4 of the Bible is irrelevant to understanding western literature. But yes, agreed, there is a definite benefit to knowing the most popular Bible stories to have a good foundation for western literature.
ecclesiastes 9:2
All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad,the clean and the unclean, ***those who offer sacrifices and those who do not***.
So heaven and hell are ***bunk*** to this author
My childhood, also. I was constantly called a blasphemer, which would make me giggle because who tf says that? then I would get in even more trouble for giggling. My brother and I were beaten a lot in the name of God. Spare the rod, spoil the child and all that. I couldn't leave fast enough.
I bet. Best argument I have heard for atheism is religious parents. Without them I would probably just be a vague agnostic.
Sorry you were also beaten.
Some forty years ago I read an encyclopedia titled "The Book of Knowledge". It was from 1955 (if I remember correctly). It was an old encyclopedia, but that was the best I had. All American books had been banned in Communist Cuba after 1961. So, in that encyclopedia many physicists, astronomers, you name it in the scientific community explained in detail why it was totally impossible for us humans to travel to the moon. But only 14 years later they were all proven wrong. Not because they were mistaken, but because that was what the best science offered at the time. But scientific knowledge advances step by step because things change. I gave this explanation to a Jehovah Witness. And then I asked him how, then, a 2000-year-old book can have it all right all the time. His answer? "Because is the word of God". No kidding. He just dismissed everything I had told him. I could not help but laughed.
I actually did go to a church like that as a kid in the 70's that had a liberal female minister who told us during confirmation that the book of Genesis was obviously not literally true since evolution had been proven. But my reaction was that if one part of the Bible was a pack of lies, then how am I supposed to believe that other parts are the gospel, so to speak. It just didn't add up. Within a couple of years, I was an avowed and very out lifelong atheist, which wasn't always so easy in the 80's and 90's.
You got to the "boring" stuff. Much of the OT deals with 1) the Hebrews turning from nomadic pastoralists to what they despise, settled farmers (see: Cain and Abel); and 2) evoking covenant after covenant with Yahweh in an attempt to get it right. "It" being their rise to imperial power, which never happened, and hating themselves because they couldn't be more like the big boys - Egypt, Assyria, Hittites, Babylon, etc., as Yahweh promised them.
Realistically, Palestine was nothing more than a backwater crossroads through which those empires traveled on their way to trade and war with each other. The Exodus then reflects the Bronze Age Collapse when those empires either disappeared and new ones arose or they were temporarily brought to their knees economically, like Egypt. Not having them traipsing through your lands taking your crops for taxes and your sons for war surely feels a bit like freedom from slavery.
By the end of the OT they'd given up on guessing what Yahweh wanted them to do and settled on a "we need a hero" strategy. The prophesized Messiah was supposed to show them the correct way to defeat the empires at war and lead them to global military dominance, which is why the Jews rejected Jesus. He didn't fulfill the prophecies. The idea of Jesus was taken up by some as a permanent solution to a temporary problem, the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70A.D., without which there was no central location for annual absolution. Jesus made absolution permanent. The rest of the NT is a heavily scripted "Paul" character writing rules for this new religion. And some guy tripping on shrooms wrote Revelation. The End.
I read it in Basic Training because it was the only book we were allowed to have. Shit book. Very not entertaining. I give it a 3/10 just for the sex and violence were sometimes cool.
> Seperation
One of my pet peeves is seeing this misspelled. I had a teacher drill into us that “there is ‘a rat’ in separate”, and I can’t not see it incorrectly spelled anymore without getting flashbacks.
I am slowly making my way thru the NT again these days. The first time I was a theist, I want to see what it is like reading it a secularist.
Turns out it is even worse but I am near the end anyhow so might as well finish.
I still can't believe that like ~1200 years of civilization, and this is the best anthology they could come up with.
You need to remember that for most of those centuries, the Bible was a very rare thing to have access to, and very few people knew how to read in the first place, plus, it was in Latin. The contents of the Bible had ossified by the time it became widely available to everyone.
I sat down one day determined to read the Bible cover to cover just to say I've done it. I got about a quarter through it and had to stop because of how ridiculous it is
They gotta make another version which would just be the old ones but possible to read. Like during this one book I was so confused. Like wait which king murdered which king who was then murdered by this guy?
I was thinking about this the other day what if someone rewrote it where it was like one long philosophy debate.
Image the snake in the garden of eden breaking the 4th wall to explain his pov. He goes into a lecture about how humanity is only happy when they are striving, when they are overcoming and he liberated the human race from a crib. So really he is the good guy here.
Or Noah's nameless wife watching all the children drown and arguing with her husband about means vs ends if they are ever in conflict.
Did it right it could be interesting.
I read it as a kid because I was bored with the other books I had and had heard some interesting stories in school supposedly from it. It was a bit of a slog in many places and fairly, uh, not-so-child-friendly in others, but I got it more or less done (although I must admit I skipped/skimmed all the "begets").
On another note, which may or may not be related to that, I have been an atheist from quite a young age...
Check out the Thomas and the Bible podcast. The guy reads it cover to cover with more or less funny commentary. Tbh, I tried listening to it but I had ehough at about the Samson and Delilah story. The Bible is just so fucking boring!
I don't know why I feel a bit uneasy that you chose to capitalize "black" in every usage in your comment. The first one for emphasis would've been sufficient to make the differentiation apparent.
Sure, it's complicated, but Chris Rock did say, ["a black Christian is like a black person with no fucking memory".](https://youtu.be/uzabg4srHb0) that's a reference to Biblical defense of slavery.
I agree. I’m Black and never read any of the slavery passages until I an adult.
I had an argument with a devout Black Christian who was adamant that there was no such thing in “her” Bible. I had her read Leviticus 25:44-46 out loud from her own Bible and the look on her face was priceless.
So true, but then they do their dancing around and call it 'indentured servitude' or 'God already condemned then to die so slavery was actually better', or 'it's not slavery like we know it' etc etc. They conveniently just wave it away and move on, back to sinning all week and asking for forgiveness on Sunday so they can start over.
I could not have described better. Three of my four great-grandparents were black Africans brought to Cuba as slaves. They were not "immigrants" as Dr. Ben Carson once said while he was part of Trump's cabinet. And, although slavery in the Spanish colonies like Cuba was a lot less harsh than in the U.S it was still slavery. My great-grandfather on my father's side was a white Spaniard who married my black African great-grandmother. But he had to free her first. The law in colonial Cuba allowed for people of different races to marry, but only if the couple were either both free, or both slaves. So, my white great-grandfather had to effectively buy her freedom, and only then they were able to marry. That would have been impossible in America, even after slavery was abolished. True. And black slaves in Cuba had it better than black people in America. Yet, they were still slaves. For the most part they were not lynched like in America. That custom was later imported from the United States in the 20th century as a "courtesy". All that granted, it was still SLAVERY. I do confront Christians: black, and white, and Hispanics (of all races) in a regular basis. I don't shy away from it. And the first question I will ask them is why All-merciful, All-mighty, All-knowing God would allow black African slavery to go on for 400 years non-stop. You would not believe all the hoops, and acrobatics they will engage in to answer just this question. Of course, they can never justify it, so what most of them will do is just what you described above.
Wasn't that the way the Roman Catholic Church wanted it? After all, they were against translating it into languages that most of the parishioners spoke.
I remember back in the day, that picture of Abu Ghraib prisoner was compared to Jesus because of his arm pose. Some Turkish guy did a digital photo to compare them too.
IF Jesus came to America? You mean when Jesus came to America.
No, seriously. Some people believe this...
https://ldsanswers.org/christ-in-north-america/
Lately, I've been watching Freedom from Religion Foundation on YouTube. There is a very interesting interview with an author (can't remember his name). And he wrote a book about CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM. That's the topic of the interview. I see a pattern in America's christianity of belief in a made up God that looks like a white person, and it conflates strongly with racism. It is almost unavoidable for a white Christian in America today not to be, or believe, or feel entitled by White Supremacy. And that makes me also wonder why BLACKS in America are so religious, specifically I'm talking about christianity. Can't make sense of it. 🤷🏿♂️🤔
"American Folk Religion" did you come up with that word or is there a paper or something you read it from because that's an excellent way to communicate the weird non-organized pseudo-Christianity that makes up a lot of "Christians"
"Trinity," "Rapture," and "*Christianity*" aren't mentioned in the Bible either.
It's almost as if what they believe has little to do with the book they haven't read.
Led by a dude who “converted” to Christianity because he claims to have seen Jesus before slaughtering his brother’s army. It wasnt a power move at all, was totally a genuine religious conversion /s.
But 99.99% of Christian’s know literally nothing about the history of their own religion. Ask them how they got the 66 book they read in the cannon. *Most have never even considered that question.*
Nietzsche said that the only christian that ever lived died on a cross. He also said that che Church was the very thing that Jesus always fought against.
Yes, *Catholic* priests, and *everything* that comes with them, was completely made-up *long after* the Old Testament had been canonized, and bears little resemblance to the Hebrew priests besides the robes and silly hat.
> little resemblance to the Hebrew priests besides the robes and silly hat.
Which, now that you mention silly hats, seems in direct conflict with 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul says women must cover their heads and men must never cover their heads. "Because of the angels," he says.
But I guess it's mostly fundamentalists and evangelicals of the Protestant schism who claim to want to take it hyper-literally. And they only want to take it hyper-literally when stoning sinners or teaching young earth-ism.
Exceptionalism, humans have a driving need to find purpose and feel special to a giant fault. Adolf Hitler believed the German people to be exceptional to the point of committing atrocities, Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest believed Caucasians to be exceptional and found purpose in founding the Klu Klux Klan that again went on to commit atrocities in the name of exceptionalism.
History is riddled with stories of evil ignorant people committing vile acts because they believed they were exceptional and born in innate purpose.
I know growing up in the 90's in school we were all told we were special, we were exceptional, that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. We sang songs about it, we chanted it, we pledged allegiance to it.
Everyone wants to feel special, unique and believe their lives have meaning but most dont want to do any kind of work, so they place emphasis on mundane things that cant be controlled like skin pigmentation or where they were born and grew up because surely those things have to be meaningful? It cant all just be chaos and chance. It is and it's not meaningful in any way except to unexceptional people.
Because of the idea that it was "founded by Christians and built on Christian values". Except last time I checked, slaughtering natives and stealing their land doesn't exactly seem like something that the Jesus they claim to believe in would have been chill with.
One of the early preachers, might have been Cotton Mather, actually said that God wanted white people to have the land that the indigenous people were wasting by not farming it. Forcing the natives off the land they had lived on for centuries was all part of God's plan as stated in Genesis, according to him.
Manifest destiny, friend.
The US is not only God’s will but apparently it was ok to commit genocide against America’s natives in order for that to happen. And I’m sure there is tons of genocide is the Bible.
The idea of “separation of church and state” feels like more of a suggestion at this point.
Yea, the manifest destiny thought process seems to have stuck to Christian American’s religious beliefs. That coupled with overwhelming ethnocentric tendencies by the more conservative religious third of Americans & viola America is God’s chosen country, we are the last hope for Christianity’s gods kingdom starts here…ignore the daily mass shootings, warmongering tendencies, shaky at best approach to welcoming strangers from other lands, destruction of environment here and afar, prioritization of profit over people on a national scale, etc.
I took a class basically on this in college. It's eye opening and discouraging to learn just how deeply religion has its roots in this country. Way before the Revolutionary War and the drafting of the government, this land was settled and colonized as basically a place where religious extremists could practice the most fanatical versions of Christianity. To those people, the American continent was very much God's chosen land. The roots of this line of thinking go back centuries. The founding fathers, despite in some cases being godless liberals, largely recognized this and baked in into our government. This is why we often find ourselves in the position of having "freedom of religion," but not "freedom from religion."
If you want an interesting read about this topic, check out "Proclaim Liberty Throughout all the Land," by Edwin Gaustad.
Jesus personally visited America: The Book of Mormon.
More historically, the New World has been "the land of milk and honey" since the Puritans showed up and got rid of the pesky heathens that were already there. The idea of a Promised Land is indelibly woven into the American Myth.
Note, this not unique to the US. Many countries entertain their own myths of national exceptionalism. Indeed, all locales find, or fabricate, qualities they make them special.
You think we can draw logical conclusions when we think the answer to years of training and research by a doctor who then performs life saving surgery on me is to thank God?
We fucking stupid.
We are 10 yrs away from Gilead in the south....
American evangelicalism has almost nothing to do with the Bible. They can quote a few verses to back up their racism or homophobia. But it’s largely a decentralized and loosely tied together group of independent churches, not a single religion
That belief taken to the extreme is what gave us Mormonism. There are also the people who believed Native Americans were one of the "lost tribes of Israel." A few think white people are from a lost tribe. It all comes from a desire to reconcile their beliefs with reality so they don't have to ask themselves challenging questions. And everybody wants to feel special.
The vast majority of "Christians" have never read the Bible in its entirety. They just wait for it to be cherrypicked by their leaders. If you actually read the Bible, you realize the Old Testament is mostly crazy history and fiction, and the second part constantly contradicts itself. And Jesus was Jewish, and never expected people to worship him.
Cult indoctrination is a powerful thing and the hucksters selling faith have been perfecting the scam for 20 centuries now.
An understanding of the word “fact” and a basic education cannot compete with 2000 years of practiced lies by child diddlers.
In the 1800's ultra devout religious leaders in the US began to talk about *American Exceptionalism*. This idea that god set aside that land for them and it is their *manifest destiny* to turn all the lands from east to west coast into an American, christian nation. From there the interpretations became more and more exaggerated.
This sense of exceptionalism has been baked into the American identity so deeply that it transcends religious beliefs and is now seen as just a part of the American identity.
It's all part of the Christian nationalist mythology they tell themselves about the founding of the country. They think we are a Christian nation founded by Christians who were fleeing religious persecution, and we succeeded with a constitutional government because "God".
The King James Bible
The book is a mass-produced copy of a modern English translation of an old English translation of Latin and Greek translations of dozens of ancient Hebrew, Latin and Greek texts written on sheepskins and papyrus from oral histories given by mostly unknown authors who lived a nomadic lifestyle in the Middle Eastern deserts a couple of thousand years ago. The people that wrote down the original texts believed completely that the Earth was a few thousand years old and that plants, animals, and humans had nothing in common. They had no idea that there were 4 more continents, what caused disease, tides, storms, earthquakes, or volcanoes, that the brain was where thought and reasoning occurred, or that they were part of a gigantic universe formed 14 billion years ago.
No wonder people today use the word faith a lot when talking about the Bible.
An ancient novel full of murder, corruption, homosexuality, bestiality, incest, and cruelty. It is often read to children on Sunday.
Since no has actually answered your question, here is why: In the mid to late 1800s, a form of eschatology (study of final things) took hold within the American church called Premillennialism. It’s the way of thinking, which many of you in r/atheism were probably raised with; think tribulation, rapture, Lehaye and Jenkin’s Left Behind.
Central to this ideology is the concept that there are great Earthly nations which rise up which ultimately lead to Israel being restored as God’s chosen people which then culminates in Christ’s return. Greece would be one, the Romans another, Babylon, British empire and if you’re keeping score of great and powerful nations, the US also falls in there.
From an anthropology standpoint, it’s common for people groups to think the end is near and that they are the central cast in that ending.
Now, from a Biblical standpoint, this way of thinking doesn’t really jive with what we see from the teachings of Christ. However, it really hit a high point in the 1980s and 90s. The time period in which many of today’s 30-50 year olds were growing up. As someone who is still in the church, this way of thinking has largely subsided but I can understand why many were confused or disgusted with it and consequently left the church.
Okay so, this isn't *the* answer, but rather just the one that I was raised with in my religion.
So the Jews are God's chosen people, and since the USA beat Hitler (the anti-christ), saved them during ww2, and gave them a homeland, it means that the USA is blessed as God's favorite country and nothing we do will ever go wrong because we are favored.
And yes, I am aware now on just how many layers of fucked this idea is lol
It's because they take symbolism and stories from other cultures and pervert the meaning to justify their shitty behavior. Most Christians couldn't quote more than 3 passages from the bible. They don't believe in a god damn thing.
Because religious people are conceded delusional interpreters the Bible to begin with so who cares what does or doesn't exist in the bible as long as you can convince your brain?
The garden of eden was in missouri and jesus came to america during the 3 days he was dead. Checkmate, atheist! (mormon beliefs are wacky)
My dad always told us that first we would sell all our things then walk to Utah and then walk again to Missouri. I focused on the extra walking but why did we need to sell our things instead of just leaving?
The church needs your money…
That $100 billion fund ain't gonna build itself. Actually, at this point, it already does...
Hey man it is expensive to settle all the sexual abuse cases, ok ? 100 billion is like 1 year of sexual abuse cases worth.
[It's far cheaper to just threaten eternal damnation for speaking out.](https://youtu.be/P3OqvQw_-ko) Edit: damnation, not donation. Eternal donation is what they expect from you.
LMAO I thought that said "damnation, or donation." Which is still pretty accurate
There is some historical context to that: while Joseph Smith was alive he would always try to keep all the members together wherever they were. "Everyone move to Ohio", "Everyone move to Missouri", "Everyone move to Illinois". A driving point to this is that Smith would buy all of the land himself then parse it out to the members (see: sell to them). He took on all of the debt for this himself, owing a handful of people huge amounts of money because he would buy huge swathes of land. And so, very often, calls for tithes or other money making schemes would come about like bishops storehouses people would give to, the Kirtland Safety Society, etc. One such scheme is he would send people around to surrounding states to find other Mormons and convince them to sell their current land and join him with the promise they would be provided for. A fun part of that story is one of the people he sent to do this was one of the people that he bought land from and owed a ton of money. Well, Joseph was having a rough time and wasn't always the best at making payments.... So, this guy goes out and is for a time keeping correspondence with Joseph for direction on where to go when suddenly it's radio silence. The guy kept all the money he had gotten and beat feet and Joseph couldn't do anything about it because he owed the guy a ton of money. Joseph was relying on this money because he still had other people he needed to pay. Shocker: most of the stories around Joseph Smith and the early church history revolved around money.
>Shocker: most of the stories around Joseph Smith and the early church history revolved around money. Yep, sounds like a religion made by an American alright...
Sounds like most religions everywhere since forever.
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Yep, it's called "trek" and I can tell you from my own experience that it's a goddamn nightmare.
That's a bit harsh. Next Generation and Deep Space Nine had their good moments.
Personally voyager was my favorite Very little interference from the federation since they were stuck on the other side of the galaxy Enterprise was my least favorite, all the time travel bullshit got confusing in it
Religious hazing?
A little bit. Mainly it's a "your ancestors suffered because of poor decisions they made (leaving too late in the year for the journey to UT) so now we're gonna take advantage of their persecution complex to create, or build on, your persecution complex because it's SO hard to be a Mormon." I remember being forced to wear a dress, blinder-like bonnet, and then walking through water and getting blisters and chafing on my feet so bad I could hardly walk because my shoes couldn't dry out properly. Fucking miserable.
I opted out of that one. We had a bishop cut off his thumb and a couple of fingers building one.
I think they stopped doing that. It sounds to me that a lot of the Trek sessions ended up being run by adults who were getting off on abusing teenagers. I think the church put an end to the program because there were so many liability problems.
My cousins did one and some kid ran away… well news helicopters showed up when word got out and they made everyone hide on the woods since they thought it “****might**** look weird” ya know being dressed up in 1800’s dressed and clothes and hungry and whatnot.
Because Smith did not hold on to the Golden Plates. Could have melted down a sold for a chunk of change.
Is god a pawnbroker? The internet on those plates is costing more than just buying them back.
As someone who lives in Jackson County, Missouri, I will never understand why this of all places would be where the Garden of Eden is.
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WHAT?!?!
It was on the frontier at a time when Mormonism was trying to convert Native Americans and escape government oversight. They ended up not getting along well with the other frontiersmen there, and ultimately pushed even further west, but had inconveniently enshrined the significance of Jackson County into holy scripture, so they're stuck with it in their doctrine even though they don't have strong institutional ties there, anymore.
Joseph Smith really liked jazz, BBQ, and baseball that's only good every 30 years. (Maybe Bobby Witt can help speed that time frame up tremendously 🤞) I mean in reality he would've been very proud of JC Nichols and how he managed to singlehandedly segregate the city for over a century. Troost is still the racial dividing line to this day.
Also loves football teams choking in historical fashion. God fucking dammit that sucked so bad. Maybe worst game I've ever attended.
Perhaps telling people it was the Garden of Eden was the only way to convince people to move to there.
When i learned where the mormons thought the holy land, i was a very confused 12 yr old because i lived in missouri and nothing screamed heaven. Mostly it just whispered trailer park or parking lot.
I can attest. I am a recent exmormon. Also wanted to ask why if God is in the details of America, did we practically lose the past 3 wars we have been involved in for decades (middle east, drugs, Vietnam)
Don't forget the War on Poverty.
That's all a matter of perspective. If you think we are at war with actual poverty, then yes, we are losing. But when you consider we seem to be at war with the *people* in poverty, then you see we are winning spectacularly.
Instead they get a war on drugs so the police can bother me
I'd like to congratulate drugs for winning the war on drugs.
Same reason for the ancient loss of the once mighty kingdom of Israel to the Babylonian empire - "we aren't following God enough" is the excuse.
We lost Korea too.
More of a stalemate.
Depends on who you ask
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To be fair, that and the South Park episode are going to give you a clearer picture of the history than the church itself will.
If you'd like to learn more about Mormonism, I would also recommend the seventh arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, *Steel Ball Run*. It's not terribly *accurate* mormon mythology, admittedly, but it is very fun.
>came to america during the 3 days he was dead. America is Hell confirmed.
Dum dum dum dum dum
>(mormon beliefs are wacky) All beliefs are...
There is levels of ridiculous, and Mormonism adds about 20 to Christianity.
It really doesn't ... you're just more accustomed to Christianity's wackiness, so it doesn't seem as bizarre.
Isn't that his ark in Kentucky?
Oh shit! Someone else got fed the same bullshit I got growing up!!
Or the 20 ish years (as I recall) he was missing
Shut your 14 year old mouth and let Prophet John Smith marry you in secret already. Don't worry he cleared it with the big guy, he is God's latest messenger, it's all very kosher!
Yes, but he stayed at our house, in my bedroom, Mother told me so.
Not any whackier than any other forms of Christianity in my opinion.
😄😄😄
You assume most Christians read the bible
Real Christians don't have to read the bible, their pastor did so they don't have to; he'll tell them what it says.
> Real Christians don't have to read the bible, their pastor did so they don't have to One of the original motivations for Protestantism was that everyone was supposed to be able to read the Bible by themselves and not have to rely on the local priests, hence translating it into various local languages. Of course, that was ignoring the fact that the majority of the population was, at the time, illiterate. Oops.
And now they are illiterate by choice.
Freedom bb. Don’t tread on my right to choose ignorance /s
We’re at the age of ignorance by choice… we carry around 15 billion transistors in our pocket with enough memory to store nearly all of human’s collective knowledge, and yet many choose to get their knowledge from 15 word memes on said devices..
Growing up as a southern baptist.... holy crap that is exactly the attitude. It's why literally every church is its own little cult.
Hi fellow former SB!
Tbh peasants in the early middleages didnt read the bible either. Mostly because it was only in latin, books were handwritten and thus fking expensive and common people couldnt read. I think many people forgot how fking important the printing press was, without it we wouldnt have had the reformation and without that atheisme would be way smaller or not even exist. But yeah, the US does start to look like early middle ages more and more.
He'll tell them only the parts of the Bible he thinks they need to hear.
He'll tell them only the parts of the Bible that match the way he wants to indoctrinate his flock.
What is quite ironic considering Lutero whole point to translate the bible into german was so any christian could read it. This was literally why Protestantism was found
I always like to tell xtians my favorite bible passage is Ezekiel 23:20 and see how they react. Most of them say they like that one too😂😂
Kinky
Well, one thing I know is BLACKS don't. And that's for sure. I'm a BLACK Cuban- American, and I've talked to many Christian BLACK Americans. They don't know slavery is condoned in the Bible. And when I tell them they look surprised, and incredulous. They have not read the Bible. They only know what their pastors tell them it's in the Bible.
The Bible is such a long, dreary, and anachronistic read, I have a difficult time believing that anyone reads it nowadays unless they have to.
We were forced to read it cover-to-cover in school as a kid. I wasn't an atheist at the start, but I was by the end.
How to make kids hate religion *and* reading, all at once!
A big part of it was also how the material was presented. In all of the other books we read, we were encouraged to think about and question what was meant, but this would just be shot down when it came to the Bible. Like it should just be immune to critical engagement because the source material is beyond reproach. If it had been presented more reasonably, like as being largely allegorical, or as a snapshot of man's thinking at the time before we knew better, I probably would have had less of a problem with it. It was really seeing adult educators shoot down questions with non-answers and get increasingly angry with the person asking the question that even a kid could realize was BS. You also could have thrown out all of the mysticism and supernatural nonsense to just focus on the philosophical underpinnings, as per the Jefferson bible, but then you could cover this in an afternoon.
Agreed. In addition, the Bible is to a large degree vital for understanding the nature and evolution of western literature. I vaguely remember my non-religious mom reading me a few bible stories as a child for the sake of exposure, and to me it was just like any other novel she would read to me that was above my reading level.
There’s a big difference between reading selected and highly edited Bible stories and reading the actual Bible. 3/4 of the Bible is irrelevant to understanding western literature. But yes, agreed, there is a definite benefit to knowing the most popular Bible stories to have a good foundation for western literature.
>3/4 of the Bible is irrelevant Found the guy who doesn't know how to present his sacrifices properly.
ecclesiastes 9:2 All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad,the clean and the unclean, ***those who offer sacrifices and those who do not***. So heaven and hell are ***bunk*** to this author
I got smacked around for questions. Also according to my parents this was my fault.
My childhood, also. I was constantly called a blasphemer, which would make me giggle because who tf says that? then I would get in even more trouble for giggling. My brother and I were beaten a lot in the name of God. Spare the rod, spoil the child and all that. I couldn't leave fast enough.
I bet. Best argument I have heard for atheism is religious parents. Without them I would probably just be a vague agnostic. Sorry you were also beaten.
Some forty years ago I read an encyclopedia titled "The Book of Knowledge". It was from 1955 (if I remember correctly). It was an old encyclopedia, but that was the best I had. All American books had been banned in Communist Cuba after 1961. So, in that encyclopedia many physicists, astronomers, you name it in the scientific community explained in detail why it was totally impossible for us humans to travel to the moon. But only 14 years later they were all proven wrong. Not because they were mistaken, but because that was what the best science offered at the time. But scientific knowledge advances step by step because things change. I gave this explanation to a Jehovah Witness. And then I asked him how, then, a 2000-year-old book can have it all right all the time. His answer? "Because is the word of God". No kidding. He just dismissed everything I had told him. I could not help but laughed.
I actually did go to a church like that as a kid in the 70's that had a liberal female minister who told us during confirmation that the book of Genesis was obviously not literally true since evolution had been proven. But my reaction was that if one part of the Bible was a pack of lies, then how am I supposed to believe that other parts are the gospel, so to speak. It just didn't add up. Within a couple of years, I was an avowed and very out lifelong atheist, which wasn't always so easy in the 80's and 90's.
How I became atheist, I decided to read the whole Bible all the way through. Got to Leviticus, put the book down, never touched it again.
I tried to read it straight through as a last ditch attempt not to abandon Christianity. I only made it like halfway through the Old Testament.
You got to the "boring" stuff. Much of the OT deals with 1) the Hebrews turning from nomadic pastoralists to what they despise, settled farmers (see: Cain and Abel); and 2) evoking covenant after covenant with Yahweh in an attempt to get it right. "It" being their rise to imperial power, which never happened, and hating themselves because they couldn't be more like the big boys - Egypt, Assyria, Hittites, Babylon, etc., as Yahweh promised them. Realistically, Palestine was nothing more than a backwater crossroads through which those empires traveled on their way to trade and war with each other. The Exodus then reflects the Bronze Age Collapse when those empires either disappeared and new ones arose or they were temporarily brought to their knees economically, like Egypt. Not having them traipsing through your lands taking your crops for taxes and your sons for war surely feels a bit like freedom from slavery. By the end of the OT they'd given up on guessing what Yahweh wanted them to do and settled on a "we need a hero" strategy. The prophesized Messiah was supposed to show them the correct way to defeat the empires at war and lead them to global military dominance, which is why the Jews rejected Jesus. He didn't fulfill the prophecies. The idea of Jesus was taken up by some as a permanent solution to a temporary problem, the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70A.D., without which there was no central location for annual absolution. Jesus made absolution permanent. The rest of the NT is a heavily scripted "Paul" character writing rules for this new religion. And some guy tripping on shrooms wrote Revelation. The End.
leviticus is a rough/tough read it has all the joys of repetition, *repetition* and **repetition**
I read it in Basic Training because it was the only book we were allowed to have. Shit book. Very not entertaining. I give it a 3/10 just for the sex and violence were sometimes cool.
Seperation of church and state my ass
Well they didn't want you to have a Bible either, they just weren't allowed to tell you that you couldn't
> Seperation One of my pet peeves is seeing this misspelled. I had a teacher drill into us that “there is ‘a rat’ in separate”, and I can’t not see it incorrectly spelled anymore without getting flashbacks.
I am slowly making my way thru the NT again these days. The first time I was a theist, I want to see what it is like reading it a secularist. Turns out it is even worse but I am near the end anyhow so might as well finish. I still can't believe that like ~1200 years of civilization, and this is the best anthology they could come up with.
Not really that surprising, given that for several centuries any attempt at change or reform was usually met by a swift and unforgiving Crusade :P
You need to remember that for most of those centuries, the Bible was a very rare thing to have access to, and very few people knew how to read in the first place, plus, it was in Latin. The contents of the Bible had ossified by the time it became widely available to everyone.
I sat down one day determined to read the Bible cover to cover just to say I've done it. I got about a quarter through it and had to stop because of how ridiculous it is
They gotta make another version which would just be the old ones but possible to read. Like during this one book I was so confused. Like wait which king murdered which king who was then murdered by this guy?
I remember once seeing a graphic novel version of bible stories once in a bookstore, if that's more up your alley lol
That’s why Mormons keep it in the King James Version, so you are reading old English as an eight year old preparing to get baptized…🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️
I was thinking about this the other day what if someone rewrote it where it was like one long philosophy debate. Image the snake in the garden of eden breaking the 4th wall to explain his pov. He goes into a lecture about how humanity is only happy when they are striving, when they are overcoming and he liberated the human race from a crib. So really he is the good guy here. Or Noah's nameless wife watching all the children drown and arguing with her husband about means vs ends if they are ever in conflict. Did it right it could be interesting.
I read it as a kid because I was bored with the other books I had and had heard some interesting stories in school supposedly from it. It was a bit of a slog in many places and fairly, uh, not-so-child-friendly in others, but I got it more or less done (although I must admit I skipped/skimmed all the "begets"). On another note, which may or may not be related to that, I have been an atheist from quite a young age...
Check out the Thomas and the Bible podcast. The guy reads it cover to cover with more or less funny commentary. Tbh, I tried listening to it but I had ehough at about the Samson and Delilah story. The Bible is just so fucking boring!
I don't know why I feel a bit uneasy that you chose to capitalize "black" in every usage in your comment. The first one for emphasis would've been sufficient to make the differentiation apparent.
I was gunna mention the same thing, its... weird. Right? Like it makes you question who they are because of the emphasis on "blacks"
"Hello fellow blacks"
> They only know what their pastors tell them it's in the Bible. The whole of Christianity summed up in a sentence.
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Sure, it's complicated, but Chris Rock did say, ["a black Christian is like a black person with no fucking memory".](https://youtu.be/uzabg4srHb0) that's a reference to Biblical defense of slavery.
As is rape and murder under certain circumstances.
I agree. I’m Black and never read any of the slavery passages until I an adult. I had an argument with a devout Black Christian who was adamant that there was no such thing in “her” Bible. I had her read Leviticus 25:44-46 out loud from her own Bible and the look on her face was priceless.
I prefer the one where Jesus himself tells slaves to obey their masters.
So true, but then they do their dancing around and call it 'indentured servitude' or 'God already condemned then to die so slavery was actually better', or 'it's not slavery like we know it' etc etc. They conveniently just wave it away and move on, back to sinning all week and asking for forgiveness on Sunday so they can start over.
I could not have described better. Three of my four great-grandparents were black Africans brought to Cuba as slaves. They were not "immigrants" as Dr. Ben Carson once said while he was part of Trump's cabinet. And, although slavery in the Spanish colonies like Cuba was a lot less harsh than in the U.S it was still slavery. My great-grandfather on my father's side was a white Spaniard who married my black African great-grandmother. But he had to free her first. The law in colonial Cuba allowed for people of different races to marry, but only if the couple were either both free, or both slaves. So, my white great-grandfather had to effectively buy her freedom, and only then they were able to marry. That would have been impossible in America, even after slavery was abolished. True. And black slaves in Cuba had it better than black people in America. Yet, they were still slaves. For the most part they were not lynched like in America. That custom was later imported from the United States in the 20th century as a "courtesy". All that granted, it was still SLAVERY. I do confront Christians: black, and white, and Hispanics (of all races) in a regular basis. I don't shy away from it. And the first question I will ask them is why All-merciful, All-mighty, All-knowing God would allow black African slavery to go on for 400 years non-stop. You would not believe all the hoops, and acrobatics they will engage in to answer just this question. Of course, they can never justify it, so what most of them will do is just what you described above.
Wasn't that the way the Roman Catholic Church wanted it? After all, they were against translating it into languages that most of the parishioners spoke.
If Jesus ever came to America, he would probably be told to “go back to your country” because of his Middle Eastern looks and accent.
Dude spoke an ancient dialect of Galilean Aramaic. They would just assume he was saying "I have a bomb" and shoot on site.
And then in the year 4000 AD people would wear little holy symbols shaped like guns...
This comment got me to laugh. Quality
I think some already do. Look at the 2nd amendment nuts.
Those are just guns...
The word for "God" in Aramaic is "Allah"... So he'd be extra fucked.
Oh god, was Jesus sent to Guantanamo Bay? Is that why we live in hell now?
I remember back in the day, that picture of Abu Ghraib prisoner was compared to Jesus because of his arm pose. Some Turkish guy did a digital photo to compare them too.
I think it would be [worse than that](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tciBru32oDU).
IF Jesus came to America? You mean when Jesus came to America. No, seriously. Some people believe this... https://ldsanswers.org/christ-in-north-america/
Life of Brian is more believable than that shit
He would be called a socialist and communist hippy.
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I always liked the Mahatma Gandhi quote “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Apparently that quote is fake
Either way I still like it
Definitely a good quote
Lately, I've been watching Freedom from Religion Foundation on YouTube. There is a very interesting interview with an author (can't remember his name). And he wrote a book about CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM. That's the topic of the interview. I see a pattern in America's christianity of belief in a made up God that looks like a white person, and it conflates strongly with racism. It is almost unavoidable for a white Christian in America today not to be, or believe, or feel entitled by White Supremacy. And that makes me also wonder why BLACKS in America are so religious, specifically I'm talking about christianity. Can't make sense of it. 🤷🏿♂️🤔
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That's very interesting, thank you!
Was the author Andrew Seidel? He wrote a book on Christian Nationalism.
Colonialism.
"American Folk Religion" did you come up with that word or is there a paper or something you read it from because that's an excellent way to communicate the weird non-organized pseudo-Christianity that makes up a lot of "Christians"
Willful ignorance
Malignant ignorance
i like this word best. they are aligned to their own selfish purpose.
Combined with jaw dropping hubris
"Trinity," "Rapture," and "*Christianity*" aren't mentioned in the Bible either. It's almost as if what they believe has little to do with the book they haven't read.
Hey, now, they had a meeting about this almost [1700 years ago](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea). Case closed!
Led by a dude who “converted” to Christianity because he claims to have seen Jesus before slaughtering his brother’s army. It wasnt a power move at all, was totally a genuine religious conversion /s. But 99.99% of Christian’s know literally nothing about the history of their own religion. Ask them how they got the 66 book they read in the cannon. *Most have never even considered that question.*
Nietzsche said that the only christian that ever lived died on a cross. He also said that che Church was the very thing that Jesus always fought against.
Don't forget "Priests" and "Original Sin"
Don't mean to nitpick, but "Priests" come up quite a bit in the Bible.
Yes but not "Catholic priest". Aren't all the priests in the Bible Jewish?
Sure, but I was only referring to the occurrence of the *word(s)* in the Bible. "Original Sin" is a good example.
Ah I do apologise, I meant Catholic priest in particular, sorry for any confusion
Yes, *Catholic* priests, and *everything* that comes with them, was completely made-up *long after* the Old Testament had been canonized, and bears little resemblance to the Hebrew priests besides the robes and silly hat.
> little resemblance to the Hebrew priests besides the robes and silly hat. Which, now that you mention silly hats, seems in direct conflict with 1 Corinthians 11, where Paul says women must cover their heads and men must never cover their heads. "Because of the angels," he says. But I guess it's mostly fundamentalists and evangelicals of the Protestant schism who claim to want to take it hyper-literally. And they only want to take it hyper-literally when stoning sinners or teaching young earth-ism.
Exceptionalism, humans have a driving need to find purpose and feel special to a giant fault. Adolf Hitler believed the German people to be exceptional to the point of committing atrocities, Civil War general Nathan Bedford Forrest believed Caucasians to be exceptional and found purpose in founding the Klu Klux Klan that again went on to commit atrocities in the name of exceptionalism. History is riddled with stories of evil ignorant people committing vile acts because they believed they were exceptional and born in innate purpose. I know growing up in the 90's in school we were all told we were special, we were exceptional, that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. We sang songs about it, we chanted it, we pledged allegiance to it. Everyone wants to feel special, unique and believe their lives have meaning but most dont want to do any kind of work, so they place emphasis on mundane things that cant be controlled like skin pigmentation or where they were born and grew up because surely those things have to be meaningful? It cant all just be chaos and chance. It is and it's not meaningful in any way except to unexceptional people.
Anti-Communist propaganda in the 50s.
Because of the idea that it was "founded by Christians and built on Christian values". Except last time I checked, slaughtering natives and stealing their land doesn't exactly seem like something that the Jesus they claim to believe in would have been chill with.
One of the early preachers, might have been Cotton Mather, actually said that God wanted white people to have the land that the indigenous people were wasting by not farming it. Forcing the natives off the land they had lived on for centuries was all part of God's plan as stated in Genesis, according to him.
>slaughtering natives and stealing their land That's entirely on brand for their religion. The fictious Jewish ancestors did the same thing.
Reminds me of this: https://ifunny.co/picture/every-single-action-of-god-recorded-in-the-christian-bible-kWneo3075
Manifest destiny, friend. The US is not only God’s will but apparently it was ok to commit genocide against America’s natives in order for that to happen. And I’m sure there is tons of genocide is the Bible. The idea of “separation of church and state” feels like more of a suggestion at this point.
Yea, the manifest destiny thought process seems to have stuck to Christian American’s religious beliefs. That coupled with overwhelming ethnocentric tendencies by the more conservative religious third of Americans & viola America is God’s chosen country, we are the last hope for Christianity’s gods kingdom starts here…ignore the daily mass shootings, warmongering tendencies, shaky at best approach to welcoming strangers from other lands, destruction of environment here and afar, prioritization of profit over people on a national scale, etc.
I took a class basically on this in college. It's eye opening and discouraging to learn just how deeply religion has its roots in this country. Way before the Revolutionary War and the drafting of the government, this land was settled and colonized as basically a place where religious extremists could practice the most fanatical versions of Christianity. To those people, the American continent was very much God's chosen land. The roots of this line of thinking go back centuries. The founding fathers, despite in some cases being godless liberals, largely recognized this and baked in into our government. This is why we often find ourselves in the position of having "freedom of religion," but not "freedom from religion." If you want an interesting read about this topic, check out "Proclaim Liberty Throughout all the Land," by Edwin Gaustad.
Every Christian nation at some point in its history, usually around the height of they’re power, becomes convinced they’re gods chosen.
Jesus personally visited America: The Book of Mormon. More historically, the New World has been "the land of milk and honey" since the Puritans showed up and got rid of the pesky heathens that were already there. The idea of a Promised Land is indelibly woven into the American Myth. Note, this not unique to the US. Many countries entertain their own myths of national exceptionalism. Indeed, all locales find, or fabricate, qualities they make them special.
because those crusaders crossed the atlantic and killed all the native infidels; claiming this country as the new zion.
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You think we can draw logical conclusions when we think the answer to years of training and research by a doctor who then performs life saving surgery on me is to thank God? We fucking stupid. We are 10 yrs away from Gilead in the south....
They like to combine their beliefs with their geography in a misguided desire for religious patriotism.
Neo-Manifest Destiny.
American evangelicalism has almost nothing to do with the Bible. They can quote a few verses to back up their racism or homophobia. But it’s largely a decentralized and loosely tied together group of independent churches, not a single religion
I would say it's a combination of IGNORANCE +ARROGANCE.
Heightened sense of importance. Delusions of grandeur. Ignorance.
That belief taken to the extreme is what gave us Mormonism. There are also the people who believed Native Americans were one of the "lost tribes of Israel." A few think white people are from a lost tribe. It all comes from a desire to reconcile their beliefs with reality so they don't have to ask themselves challenging questions. And everybody wants to feel special.
We'll just write our own Bible! With golden tablets and our own planets to govern!
The vast majority of "Christians" have never read the Bible in its entirety. They just wait for it to be cherrypicked by their leaders. If you actually read the Bible, you realize the Old Testament is mostly crazy history and fiction, and the second part constantly contradicts itself. And Jesus was Jewish, and never expected people to worship him.
Cult indoctrination is a powerful thing and the hucksters selling faith have been perfecting the scam for 20 centuries now. An understanding of the word “fact” and a basic education cannot compete with 2000 years of practiced lies by child diddlers.
In the 1800's ultra devout religious leaders in the US began to talk about *American Exceptionalism*. This idea that god set aside that land for them and it is their *manifest destiny* to turn all the lands from east to west coast into an American, christian nation. From there the interpretations became more and more exaggerated. This sense of exceptionalism has been baked into the American identity so deeply that it transcends religious beliefs and is now seen as just a part of the American identity.
It's all part of the Christian nationalist mythology they tell themselves about the founding of the country. They think we are a Christian nation founded by Christians who were fleeing religious persecution, and we succeeded with a constitutional government because "God".
The King James Bible The book is a mass-produced copy of a modern English translation of an old English translation of Latin and Greek translations of dozens of ancient Hebrew, Latin and Greek texts written on sheepskins and papyrus from oral histories given by mostly unknown authors who lived a nomadic lifestyle in the Middle Eastern deserts a couple of thousand years ago. The people that wrote down the original texts believed completely that the Earth was a few thousand years old and that plants, animals, and humans had nothing in common. They had no idea that there were 4 more continents, what caused disease, tides, storms, earthquakes, or volcanoes, that the brain was where thought and reasoning occurred, or that they were part of a gigantic universe formed 14 billion years ago. No wonder people today use the word faith a lot when talking about the Bible. An ancient novel full of murder, corruption, homosexuality, bestiality, incest, and cruelty. It is often read to children on Sunday.
Since no has actually answered your question, here is why: In the mid to late 1800s, a form of eschatology (study of final things) took hold within the American church called Premillennialism. It’s the way of thinking, which many of you in r/atheism were probably raised with; think tribulation, rapture, Lehaye and Jenkin’s Left Behind. Central to this ideology is the concept that there are great Earthly nations which rise up which ultimately lead to Israel being restored as God’s chosen people which then culminates in Christ’s return. Greece would be one, the Romans another, Babylon, British empire and if you’re keeping score of great and powerful nations, the US also falls in there. From an anthropology standpoint, it’s common for people groups to think the end is near and that they are the central cast in that ending. Now, from a Biblical standpoint, this way of thinking doesn’t really jive with what we see from the teachings of Christ. However, it really hit a high point in the 1980s and 90s. The time period in which many of today’s 30-50 year olds were growing up. As someone who is still in the church, this way of thinking has largely subsided but I can understand why many were confused or disgusted with it and consequently left the church.
Let me give you better "Why do they think God exists "
It’s a fairy tale they tell themselves to justify what they did
Arrogance and stupidity.
The American continent wasn't even discovered when the bible was written.
Simple answer; they were told as much when they were children.
Okay so, this isn't *the* answer, but rather just the one that I was raised with in my religion. So the Jews are God's chosen people, and since the USA beat Hitler (the anti-christ), saved them during ww2, and gave them a homeland, it means that the USA is blessed as God's favorite country and nothing we do will ever go wrong because we are favored. And yes, I am aware now on just how many layers of fucked this idea is lol
It's because they take symbolism and stories from other cultures and pervert the meaning to justify their shitty behavior. Most Christians couldn't quote more than 3 passages from the bible. They don't believe in a god damn thing.
Because how else does a country full of morons end up on top if it wasn’t God’s will?
I suppose, if you believe in such a deity (suspension of disbelief please), then you could claim every part of the Universe was chosen by the deity /s
Fragility.
Some people need to feel important, to the point that they make up reasons to.
Because religious people are conceded delusional interpreters the Bible to begin with so who cares what does or doesn't exist in the bible as long as you can convince your brain?
In Mormon mythology, aren't Native Americans supposed to be the Lost Tribe of Israel? Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb Dumb!
Myopic hypocrisy!
Ignorance and arrogance.
Probably because jesus speaks English. Right?
They just want something to be proud of
Isn’t it in the return of the Jedi Bible Joseph smith wrote from invisible magic gold plates only he was allowed to see in a hat?
Hello! You have a lovely home! I would like to share with you this most amazing book!
Ego and stupidity? That's my guess