This actually makes sense, once you understand what their problem is with communism.
You see, they have no problem with all the benefits that communism offers… What bothers them is the idea that those benefits would be given to people who haven’t earned it.
Heaven, to them, is a reward. Only the pure, the righteous, the faithful get to enjoy its benefits. Heaven only works for them if they imagine that they will be able to look down and see hell.
A heaven for everyone, with no walls, no gates, no pitiful outcasts scrabbling to get in… That’s no heaven at all.
You’re not wrong about the reward being earned. That’s definitely the unspoken part of it.
When I grew up religious, the conversion was that communism was a bastardization of god’s plan, so it’s inherently evil. Basically, it cannot be as pure and perfect with men in charge so it will fail every time.
You’d think they’d want to try and be more like their god and his plan for their heaven but they just reject it.
They believe that only God can be the one to create paradise on earth. A primary pillar of their faith requires earth to be in a constant state of suffering until then.
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You’re not wrong about the reward being earned. That’s definitely the unspoken part of it.
It’s also heretic AF. As in: It directly contradicts Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran, doctrine, all for different reasons.
They should know better:
Interesting read. Thank you.
Heaven only works for them if they imagine that they will be able to look down and see hell.
See, this is the part I can’t get behind. An eternity of that disparity with even the smallest scrap of empathy would eventually be unending torment. Every day is just more “oh yeah, hell is a thing and I can’t do anything about it…”
Fr, I knew for fact that there was something deeply fucked up about “The Good Place” in the TV show bearing the same name when Janet played Eleanor a short clip of sound from the Bad Place.
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Right wing politics can be summed up as: Exclusive & Sadism
If working all your life for a regime does not earn you the benefits of that regime, I don’t know what will in their minds
No, the issue most people have with it is that it requires a king (god) to make it work. People don’t mind a higher being (god) ruling them as an absolute monarch. They do mind handing such power to a human, since we have seen again and again how such power corrupts people.
When I was fairly young my mom described Christian heaven. I remember struggling with the idea of not struggling and being happy all the time. Then she hit me with if someone you love doesn’t make it to heaven you forget them. That’s when the fracture began for me.
Basically heaven is a mindfuck.
It really is. It’s not even a pleasant thought experiment.
Its not that you forget the person. You gain a perfect understanding of the situation. Like when your child has to go to jail for some crimes they committed. You may be sad they went to jail, then understand why they went to jail, then agree it was right that they were put in jail.
Not a perfect analogy, but something like that.
So we join with the God-mind in order to understand why the person we previously loved isn’t worthy of love after all…
Not what I said.
But at the end of my lifetime, it’s someone I loved, but that God doesn’t love (not enough to bring them to heaven, anyway…), and so my feelings about them get updated with God’s perspective?
So I learn why I was wrong to love them?
Edit: I’m just saying that Hell as a concept, alongside an all-loving God, doesn’t compute, to me.
Whereas Hell as a concept, introduced by human church leaders, to keep tithes up, makes perfect sense, to me.
So it feels like an Occam’s Razor situation, to me.
This isn’t preaching, I’m just going to explain it so maybe you can understand it better.
As far as God only bringing people to heaven if He loves them, there’s more to it. If God created everything (humans, animals, earth, stars, etc.) then He has authority over it. He has laws we are to follow, and if we break any of them then we are guilty of sin. Just like in human society, when someone breaks a law, they get punished either by paying a fine, going to jail, etc. Hell is jail; everyone has committed a sin against God, and deserves to go there. The bible without much detail, tells us there are varying degrees of punishment in hell.
In response to your edit, think of God as a judge. If a human judge has a child trafficker in his court, and the judge just lets him go free, would he be considered a good, just judge? No, we’d say he is a corrupt judge. Apply that concept to God, crimes must have a punishment. If God just brought people to heaven, then God wouldn’t be just. So you’re saying a loving God wouldn’t send people to hell. Well, God is loving, and had His son Jesus who never sinned crucified (willingly), paying for the punishment of the sins of anyone who puts their faith in Him as Lord. So, because God is loving, it’s very easy to avoid going to Hell. Which is why it’s also very easy to go to hell, we already deserve to go, so if we reject His offer of forgiveness, that’s on us.
Purgatory, I would say was an invention of church leaders since it’s not in the bible. They used the threat of purgatory to get people to pay for indulgences.
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be religious if I have a conscience
What’s the point of religion if you’re already capable of deciding what’s right and wrong?
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Severance
What if heaven is just whatever you need heaven to be? Like, what if it’s just a temporary state of affairs? You enter Heaven, and it is exactly what you need to be at peace with your death and your life before that. Then, when you’re ready, after however much time you need, you can decide to move on and stop existing, or send your soul to be reincarnated.
This is similar to what Rick Riordan (author of Percy Jackson) suggests in one of his other works - that the afterlife is simply whatever you believe it to be. It’s pretty comforting imo.
Personally I wouldn’t like it to be what you believe it to be, rather what you need it to be. Some people don’t know what they need until they have it. You can believe that Heaven is endless sitting in a circle and piling devotion upon God, but if that isn’t actually going to help you be at peace, then what good is it gonna do you? How is a baby going to form a belief of what their afterlife is?
No, I reckon Heaven ought to be what you need, not what you want. I want my afterlife to be me being a series of Isekai protagonists in my favourite fictional universes because I secretly want to feel clever and powerful and knowledgeable about things to come, but indulging me probably isn’t the best way to put me at peace.
Seems to be the approach of MCU as well 🤔
Watch The Good Place.
Funny you should mention temporary - in a way, that’s true of Christian view. ‘Heaven’ in a broad sense is much broader, but the sense of where are ‘you’ after you die, is temporary until the resurrection, where people are once again in a very physical body (but now immortal and undamaged) on a very physical (re)new(ed) earth.
Can we just have tiny villages where we tell ghost stories and just all contribute to each other’s well being?
Heaven is an autocratic police state though
Yup. The common answer to “why does evil exist” is that humans have free will.
Therefore it follows that if there is no sin in heaven, there is also no free will.
Ssshhh, you’re not supposed to actually think it through!
Do we have to censor the word communism now?
Self censor so hot right now!
Now = since Red Scare
Can’t have designer outrage without it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that Christians that vote republic just dissociate their “church” brain vs their non “church” brain. Their religious beliefs ONLY apply to religious things. Everything else just goes to whatever their true value system is.
I don’t think most religious people have any beliefs, they just roll with whatever stances are currently popular amongst their peers. If a large enough number of their peers say their god says slavery is valid, then they will say slavery is valid, or a million other horrible things
The Bible as a text has zero issues with slavery. The Old Testament thinks it’s fine to sell your daughter. The New Testament tells slaves to submit to their masters.
Your average Christian has very little knowledge of what the Bible actually contains. Non denominational Protestant Christianity’s focus on the personal relationship with God and their interpretation of ‘Biblical literalism’ means that you just squint at the text and read what you want from it.
I remember listening to some particularly painful exegesis on David killing the Amalekite messenger being some kind of message on not tattling to your boss about things. They don’t read things in context - they read snippets and verses and work in their pop culture understandings about hell, Satan, and salvation into the text.
True, I definitely think most religious people don’t think too much about what they’re believing in.
You can be anything you want, so long as you go to church on Sunday and say “sorry”. For example…mafia, pedophile priests and politicians.
Even little old me? I should start going to church and also start being evil.
Yes, my son. You may be as evil as you wish, so long as you say “sorry” on Sunday, Heaven’s doors will be open to you. God help you if you die on a Saturday, though… :)
😈I sowwy jebus
LOL
If i could take a moment to cite the opening to the lords prayer:
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.
The ability to make one being a christian not by default be a socialist as well is a continuous theological labor for the capitalist
I was going to upvote but you were right at 666 so I couldn’t bring myself to
Meh, all I remember of what the Bible says of heaven is it will be none stop worshipping of god. Like hillsong forever or something.
It’s only “communism” if the equality goes to individuals outside of your group. If your group gets the benefits, well, that’s because you’re awesome and you deserve it; but fuck those other guys.
Communism in theory: A stateless, classless, moneyless utopia where everyone shares resources based on need. Communism in practice: Authoritarian regimes, economic inefficiency, suppression of dissent, and a state that never ‘withers away’ like Marx imagined.
Every major attempt, USSR, Maoist China, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, has resulted in centralized power, mass repression, and economic collapse. The problem isn’t just ‘bad leaders’; it’s that a system requiring absolute cooperation and selflessness on a societal scale is fundamentally unworkable. Human nature, resource scarcity, and the need for incentives all get in the way.
So yeah, communism sounds nice on paper, but history proves it turns into a dystopia instead of a utopia every time.
We need to stop idealizing communism because it doesn’t work.
Couldn’t you use that argument to disqualify most government types? I mean show me a type of government that hasn’t been perverted. Does North Korea disprove all democratic republics? I mean they call themselves a democratic republic therefore they are a republic right? That’s what you’re using as a definition to deny communism right? Hell I don’t even have to look at the worst example is there a good example of a government that hasn’t been perverted?
No, but objectively, some governments are far better than others. For example, I wouldn’t want to live in the Republic of the Congo or North Korea. Despite the issues we face in America, I still live a comfortable and peaceful life here, and I have no desire to leave. If I were in North Korea or China, however, I would likely be looking for a way out.
Your comment does however provide great examples of the no true Scotsman and appeal to purity fallacies. Though I’d argue that acknowledging the flaws in all governments doesn’t mean they are all equally bad. Some are demonstrably worse than others.
Human nature, resource scarcity, and the need for incentives all get in the way
For now. Why not keep looking and find a way to make it work?
Of course we need to continue to do this just not with Communism.
That’s because of Vanguardism
China is in no way, shape, or form, a “Communist” nor “Socialist” country, it’s just State Capitalism.
No Socialist/Communist movement could be successful without democracy. People wouldn’t be able to control the means of production if there is no democracy.
So you’re saying of this vanguard existed I mean as it would work?
Based and food pilled
Religion is like a shoe. Yours won’t fit me and mine won’t fit you. So let’s just let each other walk.our own ways without trying to push us along our paths
Religion is a tool to manipulate people according own will based on stories that happened similar in real world. Similar, meaning, the religion master picked stories that helped them explain why people have to behave like he says and maybe added som flavour here and there.
Please, people, can we just stop falling for it?
Replace “Religion” with “Truth” and you’ll see why this doesn’t work.
With our concept making apparatus called “mind” we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled “reality” and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see “reality” differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the level of concept.
We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle. Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.
If there is heaven and there are people there, it’s already a problem for me. No need to add other things.
Sound like you need a Medium Place all by yourself.
who gives a fuck what a stupid book written by idiot camel herders from 3000 years ago says? who even fucking cares one single fucking iota? seriously. WHO? slap the fucking piss out of the person that does.
destroy all abrahamic religions for the sake of humanity. no fucking mercy.
Holy Reddit atheists, Batman
Yeah. They’re the worst. They make it difficult to have actual atheistic views.
from 3000 years ago
The only parts that are even possibly that old are random bits of poetry.
and some of it was inspired or stolen from babylonian and egyptian mythology, so it could go even further back. which means absolutely nothing in the age of AI.
The elements borrowed from Babylonian mythology show up in the post-exilic period. Like, yeah, there’s Babylonian influence in the Noah story, because they had been held captive in Babylon and met Babylonians. We’re talking like 500s BCE here.
Flood stories are not really that impressive a commonality. Early civilizations were based on rivers. Sometimes rivers flood and that’s a big deal (the Nile floods consistently, which refreshes nutrients and is how Egyptian civilizations managed their longevity.)
Whoah there buddy, we’re supposed to tolerate the sickness until they go on a shooting spree.
i didn’t get that memo
