Also, Goliath was the bad guy.
Well, the antagonist of the story at least.
The Israelites genocided the Philistines every chance they got… Whose name Palestine is descended from btw.
No.
Books.
That’s funny.
How does somone so stupid put something like that into the world so confidently…
stupidity begets confidence
This 100% scans.
No they don’t. “Christians” don’t read, especially their own handbooks. To the point where if you quote something from the bible that disagrees with their ignorant bullshit they get extra mad.
At this point, the phrase “David and Goliath” is basically a meme, and there are a lot more people that know a short guy named David fought a giant named Goliath than actually read 1 Samuel. And for that matter, more than know how the fight actually played out.
Heck, there are a lot of people that probably only know about it from The Simpsons, that episode with the skits that cast the kids as Bible characters and basically parodied the stories they were based on… I think it had Bart as David, probably Nelson or one of the other bullies as Goliath, and Ralph killing one of Goliath’s brothers with a sling and a modern tombstone? That’s probably about as much as a lot of people know about David & Goliath, honestly.
Goliath also ate children.
perfect analogy for the american government.
And for tech bro oligarchs
Also I heard him call me a slur on Xbox live
Do these people even read their own books?
No. I thought that was pretty obvious.
I stopped reading Reddit entirely save for deshittifying search results, but I braced myself and looked at the conservative subreddit today, and even they think this is quite dumb.
Hahaha I did the same, I was considering what rock I could turn to find them under and remembered Reddit.
Can confirm, even they haven’t found a way of spinning this one. Their best shot was justifying this as an attempt of making Trudeau, who’s leaving, to look bad and ease up on the tariffs when the new guy comes in so he looks good and is more eager to work with Trump, but even then they see it as a shot in the foot.
They all seem pretty bewildered by this iteration of the orange rapist from the little bit I looked. I got the feeling that he doesn’t have a lot of support there anymore. Idk I’m not digging around but it’s just a sense I have.
Facebook. You can find a lot of them on Facebook. My family included…
I glanced around old Facebox and mostly saw them yammering about trans people today and pretty quiet on the tariffs. It’s interesting.
I made a post on there, first one I’m years, about how whoever voted for Trump can’t fuck right off. My sister texts me “oh dear brother. You’ve unleashed the Maga folks” which happen to be my brother and my other sisters ex-husband. I haven’t even checked my notifications to see what they said. I don’t need to read it. I know it will be ignorance. Anywho, take care of yourself
I’m sorry for your loss of a brother.
Best wishes to you amigo.
Back at you homie
Maybe he should blame the guy who last negotiated such a bad trade deal, which would be… checks notes… Donald Trump during his first term! 🤦
Americans & intelligent are 2 things that should never be used together;<br> I realized that & accepted it
I find the average atheist seems to be more familiar with the messages of the Bible than many of these people who claim to spend their Sundays studying it.
Teenage me went into reading the Bible expecting to learn more about my religion and become one of those well-versed scholars.
And then I kept reading, and the terrible truth eventually dawned on me. It really is just a bunch of silly stories from farmers thousands of years ago. It’s nearly impossible to actually read it and remain neutral about this; yet another one of life’s “emperors new clothes” situations.
The more I read the Bible (having read multiple versions) as a teen the more I realized that people who claim to walk as Christ did, in fact do not walk as Christ did. There are exceptions, such as the pastor who I met volunteering at a soup kitchen, but a vast majority only prove my point.
Christ walked among sinners, the down and destitute, tax collectors, sex workers and the “unclean”. The same people these self proclaimed men and women of Christ will rebuke and spit on.
I always think back to that scene from Castlevania between the Bishop and the Demon: “my life’s work is in his name!” “Your life’s work. Makes him puke.”
Yeah but some of the worst Christians are the ones who do walk with the wretches. They come in with their ideas of sin and salvation and don’t bother to notice when they’ve found pockets of paradise among the damned because they’re too busy trying to convert people away from the things they like
It really is just a bunch of silly stories from farmers thousands of years ago
Can you imagine how twisted the guy who wrote Revelations was? Why did he just make all that shit up? Why did he try to pass off his own shit as Yahweh’s shit? Since he knew that Revelations was his own made up bullshit, he must have known that the entire bible was made up bullshit too. Why did he think it was okay to be a gigantic liar and for him to contribute to the mountain of bullshit started by others?
A friend who grew up an atheist recently read the Bible as part of her reading a bunch of religious texts. Her take on revelations is that she’s had fever dreams like that.
If you’re actually curious about this, Elaine Pagels has a really great book about this. The book of Revelation was just a thinly-veiled series of jabs at specific people and the politics of the time.
Her interpretation is that it would have been blatantly obvious to John’s contemporaries, but it’s opaque to us now because we’re so far removed from that time period.
huh. Interesting.
so something similar to Dante’s Inferno, which is basically a long shitpost about contemporary politics that over time diffused into religious culture?
Yup. It’s a big fat rant propaganda against nero. And it worked - our perception of nero has been viewed through that lens for centuries
He went in for the 2000 year old schizopost.
Money
Out of curiosity I went to one once, I am not Christian and I never believed in the Bible.
I don’t know if this how all churches do it but the one church I went to read the Bible in a manipulative way. Regardless of the book or its content, you cannot construct a narrative by selecting one or two verses from one book and another one or two verses from another book of the Bible. Sometimes the books aren’t even from the same testament.
Any book should be read in whole, and any verse has a context that explains it.
The same technique applied to anything be it a research paper or a comic will produce a false narrative.
Here’s a fun one: tell a conservative that rich people are doomed to go to hell. If they ask how you figure that, quote:
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God
Without fail their programming will kick in and you will get some lengthy blog post with stupid reasoning about how what Jesus was actually talking about was some rock formation and some other dumb shit. Meanwhile you can just read the verses before and after for context and it’s pretty damn clear what was meant: greed is a form of evil.
This is the difference between reading the Bible and having it explained to you.
Another fun one: tell them God prefers atheists to vague believers. Prepare for another programmed blog post about how Jesus was actually referring to the taste of the water at some town that completely ignores the context of the book itself.
The point is that whatever verses are picked out agrees with what the pulpit wants to believe. It makes their hate righteous.
I don’t know about other churches, but the Methodist Church I used to go to with my grandma never had a pastor out of the 2 I witnessed that did stuff like that. Maybe it depends on the region, but I’ve never heard of those type of manipulative strategies where I live, so I’d say I’m pretty lucky on that front. Closest I’ve probably heard of something like that in my area are the Mormons, but that’s a whole nother can of worms that I don’t wanna touch.
Regardless, that doesn’t sound right or like a very Christian thing to do. Even if the verses tell of similar things, context for those verses are real important, just like with any other readings (religious or otherwise).
It’s also a thing based on denomination. Quakers are unlikely to pull that shit, meanwhile baptists are infamous for it.
I always find this imagery amusing. David is touted as this weak shepherd boy who is nearly defenseless in the face of this giant opponent. In reality, you’ve got someone who has trained to sling rocks with deadly accuracy. He’s basically the bronze age equivalent of a sniper, bro can send a 2 inch projectile at mach jesus straight for your dome.
Prior to Goliath David was using that sling to defend his flock from wolves. I imagine it’s much harder to bullseye a running wolf than human with acromegaly like Goliath.
Slings (no NOT slingshots) are actually awesome. It is very fun to learn to throw tennis balls. The average physically active adult can with learn to throw without hurting their bodies at speeds only a fairly professional baseball pitcher could rival with arm alone. The “lever action” you get from the slings length translates to a much slower (angular rotation) and less violent acceleration necessary at the base of the rotation (your body) for a vigorous throw, it doesn’t hurt to throw even fairly heavy things because it is like you have gone to a really low gear on a mountain bike.
I really like this guy’s paracord slings, might be expensive but you are also basically buying a template and a tool that will last for years and years of throwing.
https://www.practicalparacord.com/
https://youtube.com/@practicalparacord
Montage of normal people slinging and the crazy variety of body types and throwing styles, I have never seen a sport/throwing implement with such variety of body mechanics, it is clearly in our bones after all, to make a sling simply requires cordage of some kind, time and a pile of rocks!
Bitch, the “unfair treatment” you are going on about was the one proposed by Trump in 2018.
It’s often been pointed out that Right Wing Media Literacy is poor.
We see this often when they root for villains or characters intentionally unsympathetic, like Bojack’s Dad, Homelander… heck Trump’s 2020 Re-Election team compared him to Thanos, saying he was “inevitable” and making gifs of him as Thanos snapping the DNC away.
So this isn’t anything new in theory, but it’s amazing that this “They’re rooting for the bad guys because they don’t know how media works” problem extends to the FUCKING BIBLE!
The Heroes of the Bible are intentionally meek a lot of the time, the point is that even when you aren’t powerful yourself, your dedication to your Faith and standing up for what’s right should be enough to make up for your shortcomings, for the Lord will lift your burden.
It’s why “Proud Christian” doesn’t make any sense, it’s a very Pro-Humility faith!
I mean, David literally had a thousand wives and concubines and he still had to go and fuck one of his best soldiers’ wives.
He got her pregnant and then orchestrated the guys desth to cover up his sin, the baby was cursed to die, and the second the baby died, he was just like, “Okay, cool, I’m over it” and he’s still considered the beloved of God.
The gist of the story is that people that are pointed to high places and have heroic unbelievable achievements can make horrible mistakes and still be forgiven by God as long as they repent.
Nobody is perfect, not the undefeatable giant Goliath, nor the beautifully-hearted musical genius hero warrior king David of Israel.
Anybody whose understanding of David stops at, He killed Goliath with a slingshot" doesn’t deserve any sort of authority when it comes to interpretation of the Bible.
My interpretations of the Bible are as useful as my interpretations of any other fantasy series. Just because something has a deeper meaning doesn’t mean it is useful, correct, or should be followed. Every episode of South Park ends with what lessons they learned. It’s also more up to date and in tune with the realities of the world around it. The reason people don’t worship South Park is because they haven’t been systematically brainwashed to do so.
How I know this: god told me so
I was cut, by the edge.
The Bible’s track of history is unique in that it doesn’t just show when the people written about did good, it also shows when they did bad. David was good, until he got into that affair with Bathsheba, and indirectly got her husband killed in battle. He was called out on that part by a prophet speaking in behalf of God, and the only reason he lived was that he repented, but he still lost their first child because of it.
Solomon was the king with a thousand wives. He asked God for smarts when presented with an option to ask for anything and be granted it, and he was granted that and more for thinking spiritually and not materially, but then he started getting into the whole wives and concubines thing. Another example of “started out good, but then got sucked into doing bad”, as he was given advance prophecy that Israel would be broken into pieces over this. Which happened when his son took over and made things worse.
And one could look at both of them as following in the traditions of the judges in that way. They were people who needed power to protect their people, obtained it, used it for good, abused it, then suffered.
I was always taught it was meant to indicate that God and it’s followers would always have this push and pull relationship, but I think it’s just that power makes you suck
This means that Canada defends the israelites, and therefore has God on their side.
I’ve been saying it for a while, but a lot of the US so called Christian groups actually aren’t. I’m not really sure what they should be called. Pseudo Christian maybe?
Sure, their fundamentalist, militant beliefs are not rooted in any intelligent reading of their scripture, but, in my opinion, just like humans can not evolve out of our ancestry (humans are apes, are monkeys, are primates, are mammals, are chordates) movements cannot escape the roots of their religion. And they constitute a vast, but for it’s size relatively homogeneous, culturally distinct sect of Christianity. So let’s not create a “true scotsman” here, just because they don’t abide by your (or my) interpretation of their faith doesn’t mean they aren’t Christians, similar differences in belief exist in many religious sects in many different religions. And at least they violently “claim” to be Christians and will defend that position with vigor. Something apparent in all the big american sects that, from the outside, seeem to have little to nothing to do with the teachings in the New Testament. Like Mormonism.
Just like Christianity, Judaism and Islam are still abrahamic religions, those new american sects will always remain christian in their roots.
For this sect, Christian trappings have fused with the American Civil Religion, the Red Scare and the “Lost Cause”-myth. In this worldview, the defeat in a holy war (American Civil War) facilitated the struggle between evil, socialist, secular, globalist, minority-loving, weak liberalism and the good, pious, capitalist, nationalist, exceptionalist, (mostly white) red-blooded conservatism.
This might actually constitute a new kind of religion, but it is heavily blanketed in pseudo-christian trappings and lots of old-testament fire and brimstone. And this mind-virus relies on the widespread christian beliefs in the US to spread into new hosts. A lack of (objective, comparative) religious education with, at the same time, a deeply religious habitat is the fertile ground that allows this to spread. What you or me would interpret as a “correct” (or “less wrong”) christian faith, if followed culturally or blindly and without haven given it enough thought, actually aides in the spread of this militant, nationalistic, chauvinist movement that has infected the US and is (imho) at the root of Reaganism, the Tea-Party and the entire Maga-Movement. It has been mutating and getting more malignant for a while now and I honestly have no idea how this could ever be excised from the US.
I think you’re absolutely right. I imagine in 20 or so years all this will be seen as heretical by the more organized Christian denominations. Really I see two ways for it to go: mormonism or positive Christianity. And that really depends on how well things go for them
Your take on it is interesting and probably quite close to the truth of it. Those sects are now part of the US identity for many and are there to stay despite their continuing mutations.
Many of them could pretty accurately be called Mammonites.
I’d argue that the American Civil religion is dedicated to the dual gods of Columbia and Mammon. Those are the only two things they consider truly sacred
American with christian characteristics?
he point is that even when you aren’t powerful yourself, your dedication to your Faith and standing up for what’s right should be enough to make up for your shortcomings, for the Lord will lift your burden.
Really? And here I thought it was just another awful story from an awful book that nobody bothers to read.
Please, tell me how the book of Job is all about being faithful to god, even during the worst times. And completely ignore the premise of the book, and the horrific things visited upon the man for simply being “god’s most faithful servant”. Oh wait, no that wasn’t enough. God had to murder his family and destroy his life because he made a bet with the literal devil. What a cool guy.
Your book is garbage and you should feel bad.
