Religion Shitpost #1: Cleansing The Temple

Feb 28, 2021

I want to talk about God stuff, specifically how the bible contradicts the church, just like today's fake news and fake science. I guess this is as good a place as any.

Let's get some things out of the way: I'm not an expert on religion. I'm an "unofficial catholic" from a mostly nonpracticing Anglican/Catholic family. I know prophecy is possible, I believe Jesus was a prophet, I have faith in God, but all I know about him is what I can observe of his creations, and I certainly don't believe everything I hear in any church or read in any book, even the bible, which was written down by fallible humans. I believe that religion and science are the same thing: a quest for truth which is often corrupted into false dogma.

(I've chosen my words carefully. Truth is absolute reality... and not 100% knowable. Knowledge is a firsthand impression of reality. Belief is just a reliable assumption. Faith is trust. To have faith is to rely upon an assumption. These are the biblical meanings of the words, to the best of my knowledge.)

There are some great things about the Roman Catholic Church. It's traditional and conservative, full of normalcy in this age of GloboHomo. But it's authoritarian, which I never liked, and it's always been infiltrated to some degree by the devil's children, and they're really taking over now. Even devout Catholics I know are breaking away from the church.

The priests tell us that the gospel is the Word of the Lord, Jesus Christ, who is one with god the creator of all things seen and unseen. And in it he tells his disciples to call no man "rabbi" (master), especially not the Pharisees/Jews, and not each other or future Christian priests. According to their own original sources, they have no authority under God.

I'm picking up some interesting things from a thoughtful reading of the gospel...

- Obviously it's pretty short, and it's four takes on the same story, you can just read one and you'll get Jesus's message.

- The gospel isn't dogma. Jesus would want you to do your own interpretation. That's why the new testament includes so many different takes on the story.

- You don't need much historical context. Not much has changed in 2000 years. You can figure out a lot just from rereading. The internet helps a ton.

- The archaic English translations are awkward to read, but most of the gospels were supposedly written down in Greek by their authors, so the copies and translations may be accurate. At least different versions are fairly consistent in meaning. The old testament is more questionable, passed down orally in ancient Egyptian and/or Hebrew dialects I guess, then written down and translated to Greek, Latin, and archaic English.

- The old testament is probably included in the Christian bible just for context. Apparently it's a collection of lore shared by many ancient Mediterranean peoples, not just the Jews. Especially the messiah prophecy.

- Papal infallibility isn't in the gospel. The citations don't check out. It wasn't official Vatican policy until 1870. It's bullshit.

- In their liturgy, the Romans deleted the 2nd Commandment (thou shalt carve no idols nor worship them) and split the 10th in two so the change wasn't totally obvious. This was apparently done by St. Augustine (at the behest of Emperor Constantine?) to make Christianity compatible with Paganism. I don't think they altered the originals in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. They just claimed "the true interpretation".

- Some of the commandments don't mean what people commonly believe - not at all. The surrounding verses add context. "Thou shalt not kill" applies to neighbors - not enemies, criminals, or animals. "Don't take God's name in vain" doesn't mean "don't say goddamnit" - it's more like "don't use my name for vanity, for virtue signaling. Don't attach my name to your agenda. Don't wage holy wars in my name - I disavow!"

- If the 10 Commandments were the core of the old covenant, doesn't the new covenant supersede them? Jesus gave only 2 commandments in Matthew 22:37 - love God with all thy heart, soul, and mind; and love thy neighbor as thyself.

- Jesus was a hardcore libertarian. Light on rules, heavier on suggestions and reasoning. He was all about common sense and good deeds - not the letter of the law and empty rhetoric. No playing word games like "I didn't covet thy wife, neighbor, I just got her drunk and she got down on her knees... hey get that knife away--" "tis not murder, thou canst live without thy phallus, lol."

- Jesus' church is a decentralized church. Every member is a priest.

- There's not much "Judeo-" in Christianity. If Jesus was the messiah prophesied by Moses, it supersedes Judaism. If not, it's a separate religion. Most of his followers weren't even Jews. Many Jews wanted to kill him, like all prophets before him, as their god directed in Deuteronomy. Frankly he sounds like a different god, or some other type of entity... but in fairness this may be a corrupted text... which is nevertheless used as vain justification for evil acts.

- On the other hand, in John 8, in which many people think Jesus said the Jews' god is the devil... I guess he was trolling this particular group of Jews, one of them says "our father is Abraham"... he says "no, your father is the devil"... they say "you have a demon" (you're crazy), he says "my father... is your god".

- Claims of antisemitism in the gospels are complete bullshit. There's nothing in there about genociding or persecuting the Jews. It's just a rejection of theocratic tyranny.



Freedom, that's what it's all about. And preserving your history and traditions against interference and erasure. The more I learn about Christianity, the more I love it.

Followup comment: Simulationism Theory

What if the old testament religion was a primitive form of simulationism... and it was true?

Maybe God was lead developer of a big MMO in a higher universe.
He starts with 2D, gets some players in there.
Creates an NPC named Adam, clones him to make Eve, they breed like rabbits.
Then he extends it to 3D on a flat-earth plane with a skybox.
Some smartass flies up to the moon, so he quickly builds that level.
Then he invents globe-alism before they fly to the planets and stars.
Spends a whole week in God-time building the spheres, orbital physics, sun, stars, DNA, genetic algorithms, and he runs the sim until the the globe is populated with creatures resembling the ones on flat-earth.
Then he tells Noah to build an ark, floods flat-earth, imports the Ark to globe-earth.

By this point there are dozens of developers/angels and players/demons running around as avatars in the sim, poking NPCs for lulz, zapping them with lightning bolts, throwing disasters at them just to see what they can handle.
Someone hacks God's account and creates some really fucked up shit in his name.
He gets his account back and drops a megaton of brimstone on it.

Eventually they all get bored of sims and get into single player turnbased RPGs. *as their uber-God intended.
God creates one last avatar, gathers round a flock of NPCs, and tells them he's gonna be a good boy now, no more jealousy, no fire and brimstone... "but I'll be watching, and I'll be back someday."
He writes a script to archive the souls of the departed to tape storage.
And he lets the sim run for several thousand earth years while he plays through his backlog of turnbased RPGs.
Someday, he tells himself, he's gonna end the sim, score and rank the souls, delete the bad ones, and populate a new sim with the good ones.
"Good" just means "interesting".

Just a theory, lol.

[Spoiler: this is 'Gnosticism' - and early 'Christians' who preached it were excommunicated by the orthodox church fathers for heresy.]