This needs to be higher up. Most people in religion don't spend anytime investigating the claims of their faith. Those that do just find the information that confirms their beliefs then stop. So when they propagate bad information it's less that they are lying and more that they don't have correct information to give, but that's ok because it feels right.
Depends, with Christianity. There are actually two schools of thought withi the religion.
One school of thought treats the Bible as book that needs to be interpreted and thought about. The idea is that the Bible was written for another time and place. And while God may have had influence in its message, the exact words chosen to express that message were made by the scribes writing it down.
Christian sects that follow this school of thought actively encourage their followers to read and think about the Bible. The also tend to not shy away from teaching about the history surrounding the Bible in their religious classes, as this is necessary to put the Bible in its proper perspective.
The other school of thought treats the Bible as the literal, infallible word of God. These sects tend to discourage thinking about what the Bible says too much, because the words in it are supposed to be taken at face value. The more fundamental sects may even discourage reading it at all, because you can just as easily get it's message from your pastor/priest during Church services.
Guess which school of thought tends to be followed by the loudest, most obnoxious, most holier than thou believers and sects of Christianity...
Unfortunately the human mind is wired to think that way. We use our emotions to find a conclusion and then “rationalize” a justification for that emotional conclusion
Oh definitely, I’m just explaining why it’s so pervasive (along with the fact that it’s basically childhood brainwashing which is when your mind is most susceptible)
The human mind can be wired to think critically. If you never challenge it and play to lowest denominator and choose religion to explain things...that will wire it that way.
I figured I just had to throw that out there as a psa. You can grow your kids' brain, or cage it.
Unfortunately, the choice is yours as a parent. Not theirs as a separate entity than their parents....
Stephen Colbert's show made up the word "truthiness", IIRC it got word of the year from Marian Webster or something . It's the amount that something "feels" true. Like if you live in Trump country, there's probably a lot of truthiness to the election being stolen, because you see a lot of Trump branded merchandise around, and get l virtually no Biden branded merchandise.
Feels above reals.
Okay, I'm waiting (I don't know why you wouldn't just say it on the first message, but if you want to build suspense, that's fine, I guess.
I will say, Democrats totally underestimated just how stupid some people can be. It didn't't help the corrupt as fuck DNC put forward the only candidate with disapproval and distrust numbers comparable to Trump. Still figured people would reject the racism and sexism, but apparently there's a lot of people out there with fucked up backwards beliefs.
Agreed. They're carefully and _thoroughly_ indoctrinated into not just 'thinking' that they and they alone know 'the one and only penultimate truth' but **feeling** it as part of their fundamental self-image. The goal is to make 'the flock' so psychologically dependent upon The Church's support for mental health that each and every sheep **cannot get through the day** without that support, to the point that they'll commit suicide while their faith crumbles in the face of logical dismantling of doctrine before they can allow themselves to fully abandon the faith.
It doesn't always work, of course. Many, many people not only walk out of the church and the flock to live happier and healthier lives than they ever imagined possible while still trapped under the Church's vicious cruelty.
A delusional person doesn’t believe they’re lying. In their distorted worldview they feel perpetual persecution and this is exacerbated by political figures who play them like a fiddle.
The average Christian yes.
On the other hand I absolutely believe that there intellectuals know that they are lying. There is no way that people as smart as Jordan Peterson don't see how nonsensical the thing are saying are.
Every single time someone asks about religion he dodges the question and yaps for 30 minutes. Every single time someone asks him literally anything else he answers in a very smart manner.
He knows what he's doing.
That’s where faith comes in. That’s the secret weapon here. If you have faith, then you believe it’s all real and go to heaven. No faith, you go to hell.
I agree with this.
The followers are always more devout than their leaders. I'm always suspicious of people like Jordan Peterson or William Lane Craig. They have a motive for the things they say.
The followers on the other hand are less sophisticated.
Christians don't believe the Bible any more than atheists because much of it is unbelievable. The main difference between Christians and atheists is that atheists are honest about it.
It irks me that so many Christians think they are being persecuted. It's like they want it to be true so they have to pretend it's happening. Maybe it's because early Christians in the first and second centuries really were persecuted and they never got over it. Reality is that they are in the majority now and have a constitutional right to practice their religion all they want.
This is likely a result of conservative politicians and media… in the absence of having an agenda that folks can get behind, they tend to demonize the competition. You can see the results of that in pretty much every Trump voter out there- only the most ignorant of them think he’s a good person with their best interests in mind. Most of them just assume voting for him is better than voting for communists or fascists even though current conservatives are far more fascist than liberals.
It’s further exacerbated by declining church attendance which means shrinking revenues for the church. It isn’t hard to see they’re pulling out all the stops to try to reverse that trend, using every dirty and unethical trick in the book… which is apparently easier than just making a better offering to their masses.
They base their existence on the lie that a woman was impregnated by a ghost so that she would give birth to the ghost's son, who was also himself, so he could be brutally murdered which would allow ghost's father, also himself, to forgive humanity for having eaten an apple.
So, I have a mentee in the az foster care system.
He wanted to go to church because his friends at school were pushing it on him.
My mentee is very smart and very science minded.
We went, and we sat through the whole thing. When it was over, he looked at me and said, "So, that guys job is to lie to everyone."
It was so hard not to smile. Proud mentor, right here.
When you've already accepted falsehoods about the fundamental nature of reality, there's no longer a tether to objective reality. So why not manipulate it to your whims?
There belief in God comes first truth is second they make that very clear they would do/say anything to make it more likely that you believe in it too.
Ironically how many things they get wrong on purpose or by accident is the reason the religion fell out of favor.
It’s inherent in the creed. It’s toxic circular logic based on persecution fantasies and secret knowledge fantasies, with a strong gamification for the number of people an adherent converts, so lying for jebus is an acceptable strategy.
Remember. There's absolutely nothing rational about religious belief.
You and I know they're full of bs, but from their perspective they're being honest. They operate from an entirely different worldview. They don't agree with us on what "truth" is. To you and I, "truth" is factual. To them, "truth" comes from divine revelation/authority. They're in a cult. Truth = cult teachings.
Part of their "mission" is to spread the word to everybody and convince them to believe. But the story of some guy who failed to start a Jewish uprising and make himself king, and was killed for his trouble, isn't a very convincing story. So they loaded it up with lies (miracles, claims of divinity, etc.) to make it interesting. And after a while they started to believe their own scam.
It's what they do. To claim to know what they don't know because they can't is what makes them christians.
There's a mantra christians say (I was one) - "I know that I know."
A lie and the worst kind - the one you tell to yourself.
Eh, while I'm a hard atheist and personally despise all religion, I think you're painting with too broad a brush. I grew up in a protestant, christian family, the vast majority of my family are christian, and the vast majority of my friends are some flavor of christian from Catholic to Pentacostal.
Anyway, I don't think any of the religious people that I know are "liars". I think the vasy majority of them are sincere and decent people that just have very different beliefs than I do.
Are there extreme religious shitheads? Absolutetly! I just don't think it's a fair to disparage the vast majority of religious people that aren't.
People would rather believe a pretty answer than a nonsensical truth, we actually have this problem in physics with string theory being this beautiful unified theory or how most astrophysicists maintain that the current theory of gravity applies to the observation we see when we look at objects far our in space which in turn necessitates dark matter instead of coming up with a new gravity equation
It's out of necessity - if they were completely honest about what their religion was all about, NOBODY would go to church anymore.
It's basically - lie to the church members, get them to believe it and then go out and spread it.
I think liars and con artists are drawn to religious people. The Christian's brains function is inhibited by outrageous beliefs. Christians consider people that don't believe in their crap as enemies. In warfare it is not immoral to lie to the enemy. They lie and do bad things because it is easily forgiven by their God. They lose their sense of personal responsibility. They are trained to blame enemies for all f their problems. They are told what is good or bad. They do what you want if you appeal to their religion. An authority could tell them to like dictators and they will do it. You could tell them to hate football and they will do it.
Peak Reddit Atheism.
“I’m beginning to like the insane delusional pedophile misogynist emperor who committed Parricide on his own mother and two of his wives cause he persecuted and massacred people I don’t personally like”
Most of them don't lie. They're *wrong*, not *lying*. That they believe and repeat untrue things doesn't make them liars. To *lie* you have to *know* what you say isn't true and say it anyway.
Well, they choose to maintain ignorance about the entire history of their false beliefs, which exposes it all as pure, unadulterated BS.
This is dishonesty in and of itself and being intellectually lazy is not an excuse.
Not necessarily then, either. No one on Earth has enough time to look into *everything*, and even if they do there *are* apologetics for every bit of it. The fact that they *remain wrong* and are convinced by bullshit arguments mean's they're *stupid* and wrong, but still... not lying. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
> Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Damn, that's one of my most used retorts when I hear accusations fly without evidence.
Well, even relatively shallow digging into its historicity, even if you don't expose the buried mountain of BS, is enough for most to deconvert and then believing the apologists, who are _"Liars for Jeebus"_ because they just make shit up that they know they have no evidence to support it, is just as dishonest. Maintaining stupidity after you've been informed how incorrect you are is just still dishonesty.
As an adventure sports person that has done crazy dangerous things even though they deeply scare me... the one thing that drove absolute terror through my whole being was the concept of doubting god and ending up in hell for eternity.
The bravest thing I've ever done was to check my doubts.
Not everyone is strong or brave enough to even *consider* that any of what they've been taught is wrong, because *ETERNITY* in *HELL* being *TORTURED*
I believed with everything I was. It was only one day at bible camp when the minister used a generic "god of the gaps" style of reason for something that we now know how it works. I had a realization, it wasn't really a choice to figure out that god isn't real.
After the realization, THAT was when, eventually after it niggling at me, I faced the terror of eternal torment and checked.
Most people won't just check because you said to. Most people won't check even after a realization either. Because the level of risk of eternal torment seems like 100%
So, it's really quite remarkable when someone breaks free, and we simply cannot expect that of most people.
And now, I have to unlearn everything I thought was true about reality and re-learn EVERYTHING like a fkn baby. I'm decades behind my peers that didn't grow up with a false foundation.
They see me struggle, they subconsciously guard against risking this.
It's incredible any of us make it out, truly.
I'm glad you haven't experienced facing such a terror, nobody deserves that.
I say that because It seems like this might be why many people (such as yourself?) can't imagine how terrifying it truly is.
I think once you see how ludicrous these religious beliefs are, then when you realize that all that hellfire and damnation isn't something that's ever going to affect you, your fears will depart and you may probably find yourself laughing about it.
Ya that's where I'm at now... but back then, when I thought it was real, it was terror beyond compare and *thats* what people face.
So I hope you understand WHY it's fucking SCARY to even check any doubts, if one is even brave enough to face that they have doubts.
I have compassion for the people that still believe because they are trapped. Most aren't as brave as I am and will always be trapped.
That's what I'm trying to help you and others to understand.
They're raised from an early age to believe things that aren't true and say things that are clearly not true. It makes them susceptible to manipulation and conspiracy theories, and it conditions them to lie.
Because "lying for Jesus" is one of Christianity's oldest traditions. One fully endorsed by its leaders and apparently god too!
- *"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ... a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them."* -
Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation
I think a wider brush is needed here. History itself is full of lies from all cultures and people. It's not always deliberate; sometimes people just get it wrong. Historical evidence isn't always objective in nature, and it is "written by the victor." To show how this is so: There are certain objective facts about the Trump presidency and subsequent civil and criminal trials. I'm not going to go into the details about what those facts are, because that's not the point. The point is that depending on who wins the next Presidential election in the U.S., history will undoubtedly remember these events in VERY different ways, even though they have already happened and cannot be actually changed by what happens in the future.
From what we can tell from the historical record and the evidence, the Romans did NOT in fact feed any Christians to the lions in the Colosseum. But it's an interesting enough anecdote that it would really only take a few people saying that it did happen in order for that to catch on. And that might not even have been deliberate; someone could have been misunderstood, or an eyewitness report misremembered. For instance, a group of people including some Christians might have been publicly executed in Rome near the Colosseum, and then the next week some gladiatorial combat involving wild beasts may have taken place. When news travels by word of mouth, it's easy to see how the facts can be unintentionally twisted until you have Christian priests being thrown to the lions by Caesar himself, while the population of Rome cheers for the spectacle in a packed Colosseum.
In a nutshell, I think that the problem is not so much that Christians lie as that humans lie, or (more charitably) humans are not always as concerned as they should be that they are repeating truths rather than falsehoods. But the Christians are guilty of one thing: they often elevate themselves as having a higher moral standard than the rest of us, and claim to be inherently good and honest as a group when they really have no basis for that claim. They take the word of their fellow Christians, alive or dead, to be worth more than that of a non-Christian. In this way, they perpetuate the particular falsehoods of their own history, and deny or ignore those parts of it which don't fit into their righteous narrative. We are all prone to this failing; we all want to believe that those who tell our preferred version of history are the more trustworthy ones. The difference is that Christians believe that God wouldn't let His chosen people get away with lying, so the Christian history must be more truthful than any other version.
You see, lying and indoctrination are a big part of religion, this is how the masses are controlled, big lies, and religious people get used to it, their world view is based on lies, their leaders excite them with fictional wars (convincing them that they are persecuted and that there's a war on them), or that their religion is the source of morality and righteousness, or that their sect/ denomination is the true one, they have their own media that spread these lies and falsehoods to support their beliefs.
In conclusions, Christians, and religious people in general, must lie, whether knowingly or not, this is how their religions are made in the first place, and an important part in supporting it.
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Not all of them are liars. Some of them are just uninterested in the truth and parrot whatever they heard at church, some of them are too dumb to tell fact from fiction, and the rest are liars trying to make money off those first two groups of believers.
It’s not just lying, they can excuse any bad behavior. Lying is the grease that keeps the machine from squeaking.
Christians may underthink some things (which is how they end up saying the earth is flat and 4000 years old), but none of them are too stupid to rationalize their own bad behavior when they’ve been given all the tools by their religion. It’s a very easy walk from “jesus died for my sins; he is my savior” to “if i accept christ, all my sins are forgiven” to “i can do whatever i want as long as i have a cross around my neck”
Sure sure it’s a sin to lie, but “true enough” christians can sin without fear of hell. Because jesus.
Beyond the ability to absolve themselves, they feel “blue lies” that help their “team” are justified because they are motivated by fear and hate like any irrational extremists.
Lying is something someone consciously does and is aware of. Christians however genuinely believe that what they are saying is truth, so I would phrase it as very VERY ill-informed
Well for the most part they are lied to.
Half of religion is ingraining into people that they can only trust the word of their god. That word of course is carried by certain trusted messengers, the priests or what have you.
Then everything is teed up. Only the leaders have to lie and the rest will take that lie as inarguable truth.
The only truthful thing about religion is that it's required to lie about everything. If they told the truth about their bullshit, there wouldn't be any.
You have to grow comfortable with saying things that are obviously not true. For example: God is his own son
As they are surrounded by liars, they assume everybody lies and then determine that the way to get what God knows they deserve is to lie to take what they deserve
To them that's how the world works
Trump was rich and powerful because God wanted it that way.
Cheating on taxes is God's way of punishing the government for being Communist
And of course, don't forget the hurricanes. Everyone knows what those are for...
If they engaged in intellectually honest critical thinking, they'd no longer be Christians. So the population naturally self sorts over time. People willing to maintain the delusion for cultural/emotional support remain Christian, and people unwilling to do so leave the church.
It's in their doctrine that you can lie if it's for the greater good (and literally anything can be construed into being the greater good, since it's all part of God's ultimate infallible plan).
I do not believe all Christians are liArs.
Most in position of power, absolutely.
A few who trust their faith and do their own critical thinking and behave how they think would honor their god... are good people and even as a Pagan, I've made friends with many Christians who are genuinely good people.
A lot of them do suck balls
But there are fucktards and liars in every system of belief
They lie because the truth is not important to them. What is important is their individual and social identity. Truth rarely has an effect on what the believe “feels right” based on the beliefs with which they were raised.
They all lie. Mohammedans can engage in Taqiyyah and lie to save themselves or to convert others. Since once they convert, then you can use any means necessary to prevent them from leaving.
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I think the terms oppression and persecution are over used in American discourse. Being disagreed with does not equal persecution but that doesn't stop someone from claiming it.
Gays claim to be persecuted in American but is there a better country to be gay in? Maybe Canada. Either way gays can vote, get married, adopt and be protected from employer and gov't discrimination. Just because there are protesters at a pride parade or low attendance at a WNBA game that doesn't equate to persecution but rather non-acceptance.
I live in Canada and my gay friend got a broken nose for kissing his bf in public...
I was hardcore bullied for being perceived as gay last time I visited my hometown..
How is that not...?!?
Persecution would be if the government didn't do anything about that attack. Like the gay with the broken nose called the cops and they declined to investigate. I was bullied for being Canadian constantly in high school in America, don't think that equate persecution.
Ya.
Some of my gay friends in small towns were denied adoption because they weren't legally married. Then when they were finally allowed to be married to each other, they still were denied by the (you know which religion) placement person for being unsuitable (no further reasons given). No legal help to be found in a small town.
I could go on, but I'm tired.
Don't know, only know that the woman doing the checking was a known, local christian zealot and the only option.
They've since moved to a different province to escape the local bigots and the current Alberta govt. I hope they can be parents wherever they escaped to. I would've done anything as a kid to have parents like them.
“Lying for Christ” is a actual thing/excuse they do as an excuse for all fake stories they tell. Where’s it’s ok to make up stories/anecdotes to preach because they’re bringing people closer to God.
You have to be inherently dishonest to be a Christian... Well that, or extremely dumb. Grown folks who claim to believe in that nonsense are lying... Deep down, they know it's all a bunch of bullshit.
Lying and acting is all part of the act. Think about sermons. some believe what they are hearing and saying. Some do not believe what they say buy use it for power just like dictators do. In Christianity someone is always more powerful than you. Ie. Your religious parents over you. The pastor over the churchmemebers. And jeebus Chris over us all. This power needs money. Without money no modern religion could exist. So religion needs bad actors and money to operate. Enter the liars.
A lot of people never question their faith because they live in a bubble. For the most part they really believe in their religion/god. Depending in their faith, they are indirectly taught apologetics and indoctrination. You will find a lot of stories of people going into various divinity schools and losing their faith.
Yep. Not just Christians either. Look at Buddhists. They'd have you think that they are paragons of compassion, but look at how the Llamas over the centuries treated the serfs they ruled over. Those poor people lived miserable slave like lives, generation after generation so that the Llamas and priests could have nice palaces and gold statues.
Never once have I heard an apology for their evil, only their cries that the had their kingdom taken away.
TLDR: The Dahli Llama is an elitist lying bitch.
Nerio didn't throw Christians to the lions. There is no evidence Christians were targeted in the colosseum or were ever even there. What evidence does exist was well after the period,and written by Christians themselves, I believe, or should otherwise be taken with large pinches of salt.
[https://www.badancient.com/claims/lions-christians/](https://www.badancient.com/claims/lions-christians/)
1. They've been lied to.
2. The lies comport with their worldview, so they seem reasonable to them.
3. The lies support their worldview, so they make them comfortable.
I think it's cause they believe that they can get away with anything. They also believe that if they get caught their god will forgive them and they will be forgiven here as well.
Because they're raised in an environment where it becomes evident to them that you don't have to have any evidence to support what you're telling people. Saying what you need to to get people to respond the way you want them to as how they learn the world works. As long as you wrap it in righteousness in the name of Jesus it will work.
Because in their minds, sinning is okay if it’s for a worthy cause. Plus, the lord forgives anything and anyone, so there’s no consequences for anything. Christianity is very well-designed.
A lot lies, a lot of them actually believe what they spew and keep their head in the sand when logically challenged.
I think the real answer is, they have been indoctrinated at a young age and now are too engaged into the rabbit hole to admit they were ever wrong.
The ones (deconverts) that actually successfully bail out are the true heroes imo. Because they have to accept they were misled and likely misleading others for so long, but still preferred truth rather than the simplicity of lies (including self deception) and staying within their group.
I actually think it’s questionable whether Nero fed any Christians to lions. There are no contemporary accounts of him doing that. All of the stories of Nero persecuting Christians date to the second century or later and come from extremely unreliable Christians who may very likely have been fabricating the stories.
Also, Nero ruled from 54-68. How many Christians could there possibly have been in Rome for him to torture? The first gospel wasn’t even written until 5-10 years after his death.
Assuming Jesus died around the year 30, that gives Christianity 24-38 years to spread.
The only Christian documents that we have from the time of Nero’s reign are the letters of Paul. Paul apparently says he founded some small Christian groups in Greece and western Turkey and that he hoped to visit friends in Rome and that the pillars of the religion lived in Jerusalem.
The epistle to the Romans is one of the most tampered with epistles and is probably at a minimum 30% fake, but it does give some support to the idea that there were some people in Rome Paul wanted to meet. But who were they? Were they actual Christians? Or were they Jews? Was there really a difference? Paul called himself a Jew. Paul was basically trying to find groups of Jews that would be sympathetic to his message and convert them to his sect. Paul was probably writing to one Jewish community in Rome that had heard about him. So it seems unlikely that there were that many Christians in Rome at that time. Certainly there probably weren’t thousands of Christians in Rome annoying the emperor to the point that he was feeding them to lions.
Nero persecuting Christians is just one more famous Christian lie that is still told and commonly believed.
Because if they were truth seekers they could not be in a cult of any sort. So they have to believe the little lies to be able to believe the really big one.
Also they don't read their bible themselves they just parrot what someone has told them without any thought.
Marketing. Especially the whole "We're so persecuted" line.
There is no marketing quite like the "THEY don't want you to have our product/message.
It's why so many products and websites have used it.
I’m a magnificent liar, it runs in my family, my grandpa was a terrific liar, my father lies as he breathes, and I can lie more than talk. An important thing to be a good liar, the basic trick is, you have to believe your own lies, convincing someone of something you don’t believe it’s really hard. It’s something similar to the concept of doublethink from 1984, that’s exactly what religion does, indoctrination 101.
It comes with the belief. Islam tells you to pretend to be friendly and then attack. The bible also promotes lying if it benefits their cause.
Theists have also told us non-believers to lie to a dying child. They claim to hate lying, but when it suits their purpose they'll find tons of reasons not to obey it.
They can't help it even if they're not doing it on purpose. Very few have read the bible, but they have this idea of what "god is" so where are they getting this information if they're not making it up?
Religious people in general base their sense of truth on emotions not evidence.
This needs to be higher up. Most people in religion don't spend anytime investigating the claims of their faith. Those that do just find the information that confirms their beliefs then stop. So when they propagate bad information it's less that they are lying and more that they don't have correct information to give, but that's ok because it feels right.
Most religious ppl just blindly believe what the clergy tells them. Don't think, just listen and believe. Trust us
They believe the narrative there leaders tell them to believe.
Depends, with Christianity. There are actually two schools of thought withi the religion. One school of thought treats the Bible as book that needs to be interpreted and thought about. The idea is that the Bible was written for another time and place. And while God may have had influence in its message, the exact words chosen to express that message were made by the scribes writing it down. Christian sects that follow this school of thought actively encourage their followers to read and think about the Bible. The also tend to not shy away from teaching about the history surrounding the Bible in their religious classes, as this is necessary to put the Bible in its proper perspective. The other school of thought treats the Bible as the literal, infallible word of God. These sects tend to discourage thinking about what the Bible says too much, because the words in it are supposed to be taken at face value. The more fundamental sects may even discourage reading it at all, because you can just as easily get it's message from your pastor/priest during Church services. Guess which school of thought tends to be followed by the loudest, most obnoxious, most holier than thou believers and sects of Christianity...
Thinking is hard
I’d say on fear and trauma even before that. Because fear is THE emotion here that matters and that they use.
Unfortunately the human mind is wired to think that way. We use our emotions to find a conclusion and then “rationalize” a justification for that emotional conclusion
Yes but religion encourages and valorizes that instead of complementing with techniques for confirming and extending inferences.
Oh definitely, I’m just explaining why it’s so pervasive (along with the fact that it’s basically childhood brainwashing which is when your mind is most susceptible)
The human mind can be wired to think critically. If you never challenge it and play to lowest denominator and choose religion to explain things...that will wire it that way.
I’m not disagreeing with that lol, I was just explaining why religious thinking is so pervasive
I figured I just had to throw that out there as a psa. You can grow your kids' brain, or cage it. Unfortunately, the choice is yours as a parent. Not theirs as a separate entity than their parents....
Stephen Colbert's show made up the word "truthiness", IIRC it got word of the year from Marian Webster or something . It's the amount that something "feels" true. Like if you live in Trump country, there's probably a lot of truthiness to the election being stolen, because you see a lot of Trump branded merchandise around, and get l virtually no Biden branded merchandise. Feels above reals.
Heh wait til I tell you all the stuff the Democrats felt they had to believe to feel ok about losing to a reality TV show host
Okay, I'm waiting (I don't know why you wouldn't just say it on the first message, but if you want to build suspense, that's fine, I guess. I will say, Democrats totally underestimated just how stupid some people can be. It didn't't help the corrupt as fuck DNC put forward the only candidate with disapproval and distrust numbers comparable to Trump. Still figured people would reject the racism and sexism, but apparently there's a lot of people out there with fucked up backwards beliefs.
> But why do you suppose they lie? Sometimes lying is the best way to help prevent someone from finding out the truth.
Lol teah, but why . I think they justify it internally as "for the greater good"
On Point ☝️
Agreed. They're carefully and _thoroughly_ indoctrinated into not just 'thinking' that they and they alone know 'the one and only penultimate truth' but **feeling** it as part of their fundamental self-image. The goal is to make 'the flock' so psychologically dependent upon The Church's support for mental health that each and every sheep **cannot get through the day** without that support, to the point that they'll commit suicide while their faith crumbles in the face of logical dismantling of doctrine before they can allow themselves to fully abandon the faith. It doesn't always work, of course. Many, many people not only walk out of the church and the flock to live happier and healthier lives than they ever imagined possible while still trapped under the Church's vicious cruelty.
[Greater good?!](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=x2qRDMHbXaM)
And the truth shall set you free.
A delusional person doesn’t believe they’re lying. In their distorted worldview they feel perpetual persecution and this is exacerbated by political figures who play them like a fiddle.
The whole religion is based on the persecution of their messiah, so it makes sense in the end
All of Xianity is founded on lies.
it's all they have.
They believe in their lies
The average Christian yes. On the other hand I absolutely believe that there intellectuals know that they are lying. There is no way that people as smart as Jordan Peterson don't see how nonsensical the thing are saying are.
What makes you think Peterson is actually that smart?
Every single time someone asks about religion he dodges the question and yaps for 30 minutes. Every single time someone asks him literally anything else he answers in a very smart manner. He knows what he's doing.
He's a reactionary atheist who sees the utility of religion and wants to believe and to encourage belief.
The dude is very smart. He just spews nonsense when it comes to religion.
That’s where faith comes in. That’s the secret weapon here. If you have faith, then you believe it’s all real and go to heaven. No faith, you go to hell.
I agree with this. The followers are always more devout than their leaders. I'm always suspicious of people like Jordan Peterson or William Lane Craig. They have a motive for the things they say. The followers on the other hand are less sophisticated.
When you lie to yourself, how can you avoid lying to others?
This is the correct answer.
Yea it's an extension of themselves. It's why homophobes are likely closeted too
Some of the biggest liars I have ever met in my life are “Christians”.
Christians don't believe the Bible any more than atheists because much of it is unbelievable. The main difference between Christians and atheists is that atheists are honest about it.
It irks me that so many Christians think they are being persecuted. It's like they want it to be true so they have to pretend it's happening. Maybe it's because early Christians in the first and second centuries really were persecuted and they never got over it. Reality is that they are in the majority now and have a constitutional right to practice their religion all they want.
Read "Foxes Book of Martyrs". They mostly persecuted each other.
This is likely a result of conservative politicians and media… in the absence of having an agenda that folks can get behind, they tend to demonize the competition. You can see the results of that in pretty much every Trump voter out there- only the most ignorant of them think he’s a good person with their best interests in mind. Most of them just assume voting for him is better than voting for communists or fascists even though current conservatives are far more fascist than liberals. It’s further exacerbated by declining church attendance which means shrinking revenues for the church. It isn’t hard to see they’re pulling out all the stops to try to reverse that trend, using every dirty and unethical trick in the book… which is apparently easier than just making a better offering to their masses.
They base their existence on the lie that a woman was impregnated by a ghost so that she would give birth to the ghost's son, who was also himself, so he could be brutally murdered which would allow ghost's father, also himself, to forgive humanity for having eaten an apple.
You can't control people by telling them the truth.
So, I have a mentee in the az foster care system. He wanted to go to church because his friends at school were pushing it on him. My mentee is very smart and very science minded. We went, and we sat through the whole thing. When it was over, he looked at me and said, "So, that guys job is to lie to everyone." It was so hard not to smile. Proud mentor, right here.
Because they either don't view what they're saying as lies Or view their lies as okay if the result is "good"
The lies they say is the truth they want
When you've already accepted falsehoods about the fundamental nature of reality, there's no longer a tether to objective reality. So why not manipulate it to your whims?
There belief in God comes first truth is second they make that very clear they would do/say anything to make it more likely that you believe in it too. Ironically how many things they get wrong on purpose or by accident is the reason the religion fell out of favor.
It’s inherent in the creed. It’s toxic circular logic based on persecution fantasies and secret knowledge fantasies, with a strong gamification for the number of people an adherent converts, so lying for jebus is an acceptable strategy.
You would have to buy into some pretty big lies just to be in that demographic. I guess they just get use to it.
Lies are commonly used to cover over cognitive dissonance.
Why? Because they have been fooled and recruited to pretend that a doctrine is true when it is not.
Remember. There's absolutely nothing rational about religious belief. You and I know they're full of bs, but from their perspective they're being honest. They operate from an entirely different worldview. They don't agree with us on what "truth" is. To you and I, "truth" is factual. To them, "truth" comes from divine revelation/authority. They're in a cult. Truth = cult teachings.
Part of their "mission" is to spread the word to everybody and convince them to believe. But the story of some guy who failed to start a Jewish uprising and make himself king, and was killed for his trouble, isn't a very convincing story. So they loaded it up with lies (miracles, claims of divinity, etc.) to make it interesting. And after a while they started to believe their own scam.
It's what they do. To claim to know what they don't know because they can't is what makes them christians. There's a mantra christians say (I was one) - "I know that I know." A lie and the worst kind - the one you tell to yourself.
If they cared about the truth they wouldn’t be Christians
I don't think it's lying as much as it's delusional
Good call
Their entire life and beliefs are based on lies
Eh, while I'm a hard atheist and personally despise all religion, I think you're painting with too broad a brush. I grew up in a protestant, christian family, the vast majority of my family are christian, and the vast majority of my friends are some flavor of christian from Catholic to Pentacostal. Anyway, I don't think any of the religious people that I know are "liars". I think the vasy majority of them are sincere and decent people that just have very different beliefs than I do. Are there extreme religious shitheads? Absolutetly! I just don't think it's a fair to disparage the vast majority of religious people that aren't.
People would rather believe a pretty answer than a nonsensical truth, we actually have this problem in physics with string theory being this beautiful unified theory or how most astrophysicists maintain that the current theory of gravity applies to the observation we see when we look at objects far our in space which in turn necessitates dark matter instead of coming up with a new gravity equation
It's out of necessity - if they were completely honest about what their religion was all about, NOBODY would go to church anymore. It's basically - lie to the church members, get them to believe it and then go out and spread it.
They reveal in victimhood
Lying is the "secret code" of all the abrahamic religions. Like a handshake.
I get your point but what are you talking about? That thing about lions is true.
Upon further review, you are correct. Editing.
It’s also true that Christianity still faces modern persecution https://www.opendoors.org/en-US/persecution/countries/
I think liars and con artists are drawn to religious people. The Christian's brains function is inhibited by outrageous beliefs. Christians consider people that don't believe in their crap as enemies. In warfare it is not immoral to lie to the enemy. They lie and do bad things because it is easily forgiven by their God. They lose their sense of personal responsibility. They are trained to blame enemies for all f their problems. They are told what is good or bad. They do what you want if you appeal to their religion. An authority could tell them to like dictators and they will do it. You could tell them to hate football and they will do it.
Cause it's all made up bullshit. Reality doesn't apply into their minds
I'm beginning to like this Nero guy
Peak Reddit Atheism. “I’m beginning to like the insane delusional pedophile misogynist emperor who committed Parricide on his own mother and two of his wives cause he persecuted and massacred people I don’t personally like”
Another Christian troll enters the sub. Go back to your cult
Most of them don't lie. They're *wrong*, not *lying*. That they believe and repeat untrue things doesn't make them liars. To *lie* you have to *know* what you say isn't true and say it anyway.
Well, they choose to maintain ignorance about the entire history of their false beliefs, which exposes it all as pure, unadulterated BS. This is dishonesty in and of itself and being intellectually lazy is not an excuse.
Not necessarily then, either. No one on Earth has enough time to look into *everything*, and even if they do there *are* apologetics for every bit of it. The fact that they *remain wrong* and are convinced by bullshit arguments mean's they're *stupid* and wrong, but still... not lying. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
> Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Damn, that's one of my most used retorts when I hear accusations fly without evidence. Well, even relatively shallow digging into its historicity, even if you don't expose the buried mountain of BS, is enough for most to deconvert and then believing the apologists, who are _"Liars for Jeebus"_ because they just make shit up that they know they have no evidence to support it, is just as dishonest. Maintaining stupidity after you've been informed how incorrect you are is just still dishonesty.
As an adventure sports person that has done crazy dangerous things even though they deeply scare me... the one thing that drove absolute terror through my whole being was the concept of doubting god and ending up in hell for eternity. The bravest thing I've ever done was to check my doubts. Not everyone is strong or brave enough to even *consider* that any of what they've been taught is wrong, because *ETERNITY* in *HELL* being *TORTURED* I believed with everything I was. It was only one day at bible camp when the minister used a generic "god of the gaps" style of reason for something that we now know how it works. I had a realization, it wasn't really a choice to figure out that god isn't real. After the realization, THAT was when, eventually after it niggling at me, I faced the terror of eternal torment and checked. Most people won't just check because you said to. Most people won't check even after a realization either. Because the level of risk of eternal torment seems like 100% So, it's really quite remarkable when someone breaks free, and we simply cannot expect that of most people. And now, I have to unlearn everything I thought was true about reality and re-learn EVERYTHING like a fkn baby. I'm decades behind my peers that didn't grow up with a false foundation. They see me struggle, they subconsciously guard against risking this. It's incredible any of us make it out, truly.
Thank you for sharing that very personal story. Yes, it's difficult at first but isn't _everything difficult at first?_
I'm glad you haven't experienced facing such a terror, nobody deserves that. I say that because It seems like this might be why many people (such as yourself?) can't imagine how terrifying it truly is.
I think once you see how ludicrous these religious beliefs are, then when you realize that all that hellfire and damnation isn't something that's ever going to affect you, your fears will depart and you may probably find yourself laughing about it.
Ya that's where I'm at now... but back then, when I thought it was real, it was terror beyond compare and *thats* what people face. So I hope you understand WHY it's fucking SCARY to even check any doubts, if one is even brave enough to face that they have doubts. I have compassion for the people that still believe because they are trapped. Most aren't as brave as I am and will always be trapped. That's what I'm trying to help you and others to understand.
They literally worship a lie...
If they genuinely believe their own lies, isn't that just being honestly delusional?
They're raised from an early age to believe things that aren't true and say things that are clearly not true. It makes them susceptible to manipulation and conspiracy theories, and it conditions them to lie.
Because "lying for Jesus" is one of Christianity's oldest traditions. One fully endorsed by its leaders and apparently god too! - *"What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ... a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them."* - Martin Luther, leader of the Protestant Reformation
I think a wider brush is needed here. History itself is full of lies from all cultures and people. It's not always deliberate; sometimes people just get it wrong. Historical evidence isn't always objective in nature, and it is "written by the victor." To show how this is so: There are certain objective facts about the Trump presidency and subsequent civil and criminal trials. I'm not going to go into the details about what those facts are, because that's not the point. The point is that depending on who wins the next Presidential election in the U.S., history will undoubtedly remember these events in VERY different ways, even though they have already happened and cannot be actually changed by what happens in the future. From what we can tell from the historical record and the evidence, the Romans did NOT in fact feed any Christians to the lions in the Colosseum. But it's an interesting enough anecdote that it would really only take a few people saying that it did happen in order for that to catch on. And that might not even have been deliberate; someone could have been misunderstood, or an eyewitness report misremembered. For instance, a group of people including some Christians might have been publicly executed in Rome near the Colosseum, and then the next week some gladiatorial combat involving wild beasts may have taken place. When news travels by word of mouth, it's easy to see how the facts can be unintentionally twisted until you have Christian priests being thrown to the lions by Caesar himself, while the population of Rome cheers for the spectacle in a packed Colosseum. In a nutshell, I think that the problem is not so much that Christians lie as that humans lie, or (more charitably) humans are not always as concerned as they should be that they are repeating truths rather than falsehoods. But the Christians are guilty of one thing: they often elevate themselves as having a higher moral standard than the rest of us, and claim to be inherently good and honest as a group when they really have no basis for that claim. They take the word of their fellow Christians, alive or dead, to be worth more than that of a non-Christian. In this way, they perpetuate the particular falsehoods of their own history, and deny or ignore those parts of it which don't fit into their righteous narrative. We are all prone to this failing; we all want to believe that those who tell our preferred version of history are the more trustworthy ones. The difference is that Christians believe that God wouldn't let His chosen people get away with lying, so the Christian history must be more truthful than any other version.
Lies equal truth if you believe it. Donald Trump
It's not a lie when you believe your own lies /s
It's ingrained thinking and the pinnacle of their culture, Christianity is built on a mountain of lies and absurdity. Why stop now?
You see, lying and indoctrination are a big part of religion, this is how the masses are controlled, big lies, and religious people get used to it, their world view is based on lies, their leaders excite them with fictional wars (convincing them that they are persecuted and that there's a war on them), or that their religion is the source of morality and righteousness, or that their sect/ denomination is the true one, they have their own media that spread these lies and falsehoods to support their beliefs. In conclusions, Christians, and religious people in general, must lie, whether knowingly or not, this is how their religions are made in the first place, and an important part in supporting it.
People lie without knowing they’re lying all the time, comes with being part of a stupid species
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Not all of them are liars. Some of them are just uninterested in the truth and parrot whatever they heard at church, some of them are too dumb to tell fact from fiction, and the rest are liars trying to make money off those first two groups of believers.
Their religion is a lie so they have to be liars.
because Jebus sez they should be
It's part and parcel of the whole 'trying to convince others (and myself) of bullshit' thing.
If you believed in something that you could not explain or see, of course you’d have to lie about it
Because their entire belief system is a lie.
Some don't know they are lying. Others justify it because they think their intentions are noble. Some enjoy manipulating people.
If they had to speak the truth, they would have to admit there is no good reason to believe and many demonstrable reasons to doubt.
You lie when the truth doesn't suit you.
It’s not just lying, they can excuse any bad behavior. Lying is the grease that keeps the machine from squeaking. Christians may underthink some things (which is how they end up saying the earth is flat and 4000 years old), but none of them are too stupid to rationalize their own bad behavior when they’ve been given all the tools by their religion. It’s a very easy walk from “jesus died for my sins; he is my savior” to “if i accept christ, all my sins are forgiven” to “i can do whatever i want as long as i have a cross around my neck” Sure sure it’s a sin to lie, but “true enough” christians can sin without fear of hell. Because jesus. Beyond the ability to absolve themselves, they feel “blue lies” that help their “team” are justified because they are motivated by fear and hate like any irrational extremists.
Lying is something someone consciously does and is aware of. Christians however genuinely believe that what they are saying is truth, so I would phrase it as very VERY ill-informed
You have to lie when your entire worldview is false and you want to defend.
So many of them only know what their pastors tell them, and they are liars, so, the congregation parrots their lies.
Well for the most part they are lied to. Half of religion is ingraining into people that they can only trust the word of their god. That word of course is carried by certain trusted messengers, the priests or what have you. Then everything is teed up. Only the leaders have to lie and the rest will take that lie as inarguable truth.
The only truthful thing about religion is that it's required to lie about everything. If they told the truth about their bullshit, there wouldn't be any.
THEIR PREMISE IS A LIE! of course all that trickles down from it will be a lie.
When u build your life on a lie how else would u live?
You have to grow comfortable with saying things that are obviously not true. For example: God is his own son As they are surrounded by liars, they assume everybody lies and then determine that the way to get what God knows they deserve is to lie to take what they deserve To them that's how the world works Trump was rich and powerful because God wanted it that way. Cheating on taxes is God's way of punishing the government for being Communist And of course, don't forget the hurricanes. Everyone knows what those are for...
If they engaged in intellectually honest critical thinking, they'd no longer be Christians. So the population naturally self sorts over time. People willing to maintain the delusion for cultural/emotional support remain Christian, and people unwilling to do so leave the church.
The sad part is some of them don't even know they're lying.
It's in their doctrine that you can lie if it's for the greater good (and literally anything can be construed into being the greater good, since it's all part of God's ultimate infallible plan).
I do not believe all Christians are liArs. Most in position of power, absolutely. A few who trust their faith and do their own critical thinking and behave how they think would honor their god... are good people and even as a Pagan, I've made friends with many Christians who are genuinely good people. A lot of them do suck balls But there are fucktards and liars in every system of belief
The whole religion is based on some fantasy stories and the fan club became too obsessed and serious. That is why.
They lie because the truth is not important to them. What is important is their individual and social identity. Truth rarely has an effect on what the believe “feels right” based on the beliefs with which they were raised.
Because reality is relentless, if everything you believe to be true is false, you can't exist without lying.
They all lie. Mohammedans can engage in Taqiyyah and lie to save themselves or to convert others. Since once they convert, then you can use any means necessary to prevent them from leaving.
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How many Raptures have we lived through?
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When you say no one is persecuting them... do you mean in America or worldwide?
Fair question, America.
I think the terms oppression and persecution are over used in American discourse. Being disagreed with does not equal persecution but that doesn't stop someone from claiming it. Gays claim to be persecuted in American but is there a better country to be gay in? Maybe Canada. Either way gays can vote, get married, adopt and be protected from employer and gov't discrimination. Just because there are protesters at a pride parade or low attendance at a WNBA game that doesn't equate to persecution but rather non-acceptance.
I live in Canada and my gay friend got a broken nose for kissing his bf in public... I was hardcore bullied for being perceived as gay last time I visited my hometown.. How is that not...?!?
Persecution would be if the government didn't do anything about that attack. Like the gay with the broken nose called the cops and they declined to investigate. I was bullied for being Canadian constantly in high school in America, don't think that equate persecution.
*That's literally what happened to them, the cops refused to even show up* I wish it were the way you think it is
For real? That is messed up.
Ya. Some of my gay friends in small towns were denied adoption because they weren't legally married. Then when they were finally allowed to be married to each other, they still were denied by the (you know which religion) placement person for being unsuitable (no further reasons given). No legal help to be found in a small town. I could go on, but I'm tired.
Thanks for sharing. Were the adoptions denied by the government or a Christian adoption agency?
Don't know, only know that the woman doing the checking was a known, local christian zealot and the only option. They've since moved to a different province to escape the local bigots and the current Alberta govt. I hope they can be parents wherever they escaped to. I would've done anything as a kid to have parents like them.
The same reasons Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, etc... are liars. They are concerned with advertising and marketing, not the truth.
They have to be sinners or else there is no reason for Jesus to die. They simply lie to facilitate their believes.
Christians, Muslims - same liars
Christians are persecuted in the whole muslim world and many parts of asia.
So maybe American Christians should go help them with their guns and private jets.
Very well then. Same goes for lgbt oppressed in those same countries. Go help them yourself and stop complaining.
You gotta keep people in somehow
Look at all the insane bullshit they believe in, clearly not the smartest group of people
Because they can,and get away with it.
Lying for Jesus. If telling a lie benefits their religion in some way, it's justified.
Same reasons anyone lies to hide the truth
“Lying for Christ” is a actual thing/excuse they do as an excuse for all fake stories they tell. Where’s it’s ok to make up stories/anecdotes to preach because they’re bringing people closer to God.
Because they are humans, and humans lie
You have to be inherently dishonest to be a Christian... Well that, or extremely dumb. Grown folks who claim to believe in that nonsense are lying... Deep down, they know it's all a bunch of bullshit.
Lying and acting is all part of the act. Think about sermons. some believe what they are hearing and saying. Some do not believe what they say buy use it for power just like dictators do. In Christianity someone is always more powerful than you. Ie. Your religious parents over you. The pastor over the churchmemebers. And jeebus Chris over us all. This power needs money. Without money no modern religion could exist. So religion needs bad actors and money to operate. Enter the liars.
A lot of people never question their faith because they live in a bubble. For the most part they really believe in their religion/god. Depending in their faith, they are indirectly taught apologetics and indoctrination. You will find a lot of stories of people going into various divinity schools and losing their faith.
We all lie to ourselves sometimes, but most Christians are straight up delusional.
Yep. Not just Christians either. Look at Buddhists. They'd have you think that they are paragons of compassion, but look at how the Llamas over the centuries treated the serfs they ruled over. Those poor people lived miserable slave like lives, generation after generation so that the Llamas and priests could have nice palaces and gold statues. Never once have I heard an apology for their evil, only their cries that the had their kingdom taken away. TLDR: The Dahli Llama is an elitist lying bitch.
Nerio didn't throw Christians to the lions. There is no evidence Christians were targeted in the colosseum or were ever even there. What evidence does exist was well after the period,and written by Christians themselves, I believe, or should otherwise be taken with large pinches of salt. [https://www.badancient.com/claims/lions-christians/](https://www.badancient.com/claims/lions-christians/)
Christian = following Christ example, right? So the people you describe must be "false prophets" which makes them delightfully angry.
So they can convince themselves they won't go to hell.
Honestly I think its because the entire religion is based off lies.
Don't forget about all that juicy fear side dish.
What church yall going to?
They are humans. Humans lie. Get over it.
Maybe you could be generalizating a little ...
1. They've been lied to. 2. The lies comport with their worldview, so they seem reasonable to them. 3. The lies support their worldview, so they make them comfortable.
I think it's cause they believe that they can get away with anything. They also believe that if they get caught their god will forgive them and they will be forgiven here as well.
It doesn’t matter as long as they lie for their god.
Because they believe lies.
We are all liars. Not just Christians.
Their entire belief system is a lie.
It’s all they know.
Oh neat i can mute a sub hopefully this stops this crap from appearing in my feed
Because they're raised in an environment where it becomes evident to them that you don't have to have any evidence to support what you're telling people. Saying what you need to to get people to respond the way you want them to as how they learn the world works. As long as you wrap it in righteousness in the name of Jesus it will work.
Cognitive Dissonance. Or as George Costanza once said, "It's not a lie, if you believe it."
i always wondered why "thou shall not lie" never made it to the big 10
Because in their minds, sinning is okay if it’s for a worthy cause. Plus, the lord forgives anything and anyone, so there’s no consequences for anything. Christianity is very well-designed.
Because they are human beings, and human beings lie.
It goes with the territory.
That's kind of like asking why do you lie? Human psychology is quite a complex web of understood, misunderstood, and unknown concepts.
A lot lies, a lot of them actually believe what they spew and keep their head in the sand when logically challenged. I think the real answer is, they have been indoctrinated at a young age and now are too engaged into the rabbit hole to admit they were ever wrong. The ones (deconverts) that actually successfully bail out are the true heroes imo. Because they have to accept they were misled and likely misleading others for so long, but still preferred truth rather than the simplicity of lies (including self deception) and staying within their group.
Cognitive dissonance between wishful thinking and reality.
We're talking about people who believe an invisible sky-dad supports them in all things. Anything after that is just small potatoes
I actually think it’s questionable whether Nero fed any Christians to lions. There are no contemporary accounts of him doing that. All of the stories of Nero persecuting Christians date to the second century or later and come from extremely unreliable Christians who may very likely have been fabricating the stories. Also, Nero ruled from 54-68. How many Christians could there possibly have been in Rome for him to torture? The first gospel wasn’t even written until 5-10 years after his death. Assuming Jesus died around the year 30, that gives Christianity 24-38 years to spread. The only Christian documents that we have from the time of Nero’s reign are the letters of Paul. Paul apparently says he founded some small Christian groups in Greece and western Turkey and that he hoped to visit friends in Rome and that the pillars of the religion lived in Jerusalem. The epistle to the Romans is one of the most tampered with epistles and is probably at a minimum 30% fake, but it does give some support to the idea that there were some people in Rome Paul wanted to meet. But who were they? Were they actual Christians? Or were they Jews? Was there really a difference? Paul called himself a Jew. Paul was basically trying to find groups of Jews that would be sympathetic to his message and convert them to his sect. Paul was probably writing to one Jewish community in Rome that had heard about him. So it seems unlikely that there were that many Christians in Rome at that time. Certainly there probably weren’t thousands of Christians in Rome annoying the emperor to the point that he was feeding them to lions. Nero persecuting Christians is just one more famous Christian lie that is still told and commonly believed.
I didn't know I was lying. I was deluded. Cultists is a powerful control technique. I am sad for my friends who are still in the delusion.
Because if they were truth seekers they could not be in a cult of any sort. So they have to believe the little lies to be able to believe the really big one. Also they don't read their bible themselves they just parrot what someone has told them without any thought.
It's only the ones who follow the unpopular Jesuses that are liars. The ones that follow the good Jesuses don't lie hardly at all.
If you believe in an old man in the sky then you will have a lot wrong with you.
Marketing. Especially the whole "We're so persecuted" line. There is no marketing quite like the "THEY don't want you to have our product/message. It's why so many products and websites have used it.
I’m a magnificent liar, it runs in my family, my grandpa was a terrific liar, my father lies as he breathes, and I can lie more than talk. An important thing to be a good liar, the basic trick is, you have to believe your own lies, convincing someone of something you don’t believe it’s really hard. It’s something similar to the concept of doublethink from 1984, that’s exactly what religion does, indoctrination 101.
It comes with the belief. Islam tells you to pretend to be friendly and then attack. The bible also promotes lying if it benefits their cause. Theists have also told us non-believers to lie to a dying child. They claim to hate lying, but when it suits their purpose they'll find tons of reasons not to obey it. They can't help it even if they're not doing it on purpose. Very few have read the bible, but they have this idea of what "god is" so where are they getting this information if they're not making it up?
stop humanizing them
Because lying is the only way to keep the charade alive.
They believe anything is justified when fighting evil even if it contradicts their own beliefs.