I want my naked whitewashed ripped dude nailed to a cross with a crown nade of thrones. Not that weird stuff.
Aren’t Christians the biggest idolaters? They always pray at statues of Mary and other saints. If I remember correctly Mary and all the saints aren’t deities.
TBF that’s not all Christians. They did have wars and murder a lot of people because they disagreed on that kind of stuff.
Everyone’s a heretic to somebody!
Or sometimes because the local land owning gentry realized he could take some monestary’s land if he thought Martin Luther was onto something.
A lot of them have an obsession with the American flag that I would argue is idolatry at that point.
And guns don’t forget the gun worship.
Actually a lot of Christians hate on Catholics specifically because of their praise of Mary and the other saints.
Yeah those Christians don’t ignore the parts of the bible that we ignore. Those heretics.
That’s Catholics.
You have Catholics and Protestants, and under Protestants you have a shit ton of denominations (Baptist, Methodist, Prebyterian, Pentecostal, etc).
Under each of those protestant denominations you can then have different conventions.
Catholics tend to be a lot more ‘ritualistic’ than say Baptists. They’re also the only ones with any respect for the pope. Protestants see that as idolism, and the pope having 0 importance.
Catholics are the ones known for intercessory prayer, wherein you pray to someone “God-adjacent,” and ask them to talk to God on your behalf. Mary is a big one for sure, Joseph is sometimes in there, whatever relevant patron saint, etc. It’s so engrained that there are little nursery rhyme style “chants” for things sometimes:
Tony, Tony, look around, something is lost and must be found.
St. Anthony is the “patron saint of lost items.”
That’s Catholics specifically, and if you think it’s hypocritical to pray to graven idols then man your mind is gonna blow when you hear what they do to children…
thank satan no protestant or non denominationals are like that.
I love all the statues, paintings, and knickknacks. They’re not necessary for prayer, but they can be nice when they’re well done.
I saw El Greco’s Assumption of the Virgin in Chicago a few weeks ago. It was really stunning.
Sure, the art can be beautiful, but I’m not sure of the relevance here? Doesn’t change that people pray to them all the time, in direct contravention of one of the Commandments of their religion, not does it unmolest a single child.
My personal take is that Jesus was a cool dude with some good ideas, but the majority of people who claim to follow his teachings don’t, and that’s why we are where we’re at.
The relevance is that conflating idolatry with the majority of Western art over the last two millennia is a little hyperbolic.
There is a lot of beautiful Catholic art. I understand the Muslim argument against portraying the human form, and they have some beautiful art and architecture.
But I like Christian art too.
conflating idolatry with the majority of Western art over the last two millennia is a little hyperbolic
Good thing I didn’t do that, then. I’m referring to the literal prayers to Mary, uttered before literal statues of Mary.
The statues or paintings (or reproductions) aren’t necessary to the prayers any more than the rosary beads are. I doubt you’ll find many Catholics who would claim the objects held much importance other than being something to look at or hold. The same goes for the candles, incense, and vestments. They’re fun props, but most people understand they’re only that.
Some people don’t like them, and that’s okay too. I don’t understand the appeal of Southern Baptist services or church buildings.
My reading of the text forbids praying to gods other than the One True God or to graven idols, rules which the practices of Catholicism break on the regular. That’s my opinion, based on the text as written, and it’s not changing unless the text does.
As to the practice itself, I couldn’t give a shit beyond the fact that it makes Catholics who pray to saints hypocrites. If you want to defend it, defend it to your god, but I’m pretty sure he’d prefer the rampant child abuse to be taken care of first.
Those are Catholics. I only pray to God.
There’s a lot of christian cults. You’re only describing catholics here.
I was raised catholic and kids in other christian cults called me a devil worshipper.
I guarantee if it was a statue of Christ on a cross and someone was complaining about it, he’d comment with at least 1-2 completely irrelevant bible verse and a billion reasons why you should always listen to God and how Christianity is the one true religion.
Your username just got the theme song in my head…
Why do I still remember this? I’m sure that memory could have been overwritten for something more useful.
Had to read this comment three times because I didn’t see “username” and couldn’t figure out what I was missing.
“Christianity’s theme song? So popular that it gets stuck in your head? Wtf is going on?”
Monotheism is so boring
Summertime… and the trolling is easy…
If you’re too late you’ll miss the goat?
For anyone interested in contributing but also getting some nice swag. My card stays in my wallet and is the first thing you see when I flip it open like a proper edgelord. (IDs go in your phone now damnit!) My certificate and other little stickers are on my wall above my computer or on it lol.
They do good work though.
I need to get a new card, mines so worn down you can’t even read the tennets anymore :(
IDs go in your phone now damnit
To quote the professor: wha?
When they say freedom of religion, they mean freedom for their religion and restrictions for others
I’ve honestly never heard a Christian talk about freedom of religion. I don’t think they actually believe in it.
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I mean, if you were a properly religious Christian I can see why this might bother you a bit.
I’m at church a few times a week, and I think this is funny. Turnabout is fair play. And too many Christians have tried forcing ther symbolism down other people’s throats for too long.
If you’re a properly informed American, I can’t see how you’d be bothered by it at all.
Christians are the reason this is in the capital so blame yourself I guess? Lol
I’m an atheist, or I suppose agnostic in the strictest sense.
Sorrrrrt of. It depends on whose rules you want to follow. The original Jews were polytheistic, though during the time of Jesus most had become monotheistic. In any case, the “you shall have no gods before me” is literally saying that Yahweh is the top god, not that he is the only god. There’s plenty of other gods in the old testament and Jesus even references some of them, like the Son of Man.
It’s pretty easy to argue that all Christians have lost their way when it comes to their polytheistic origins. Even if you don’t want to argue that, you just have to point to all the arguments in the early church about whether Jesus was a god or not, and if he was, was he the god or not to basically throw out any idea of what a proper Christian is.
(An aside, Jesus did not believe himself to be a god or in any way divine. He never made any such claims. He believed he was the King of the Jews, like David and Solomon, except that he was going to be the last one. He believed that within his lifetime the Judgment Day would come and God would decide who got to live in the next world, based on how good they were in this world. Jesus would become King and his disciples would help rule his kingdom in this next world.
There’s a lot more to the story of Jesus and it’s all very interesting but this whole comment was already mostly pointless rambling so I’m gonna stop here.)
Yeah, I have heard that early Judaism accepted polytheism as a given, maybe even something like pandeism, they just believed there was a single ultimate power.
It should only bother you if you’re a Christian Nationalist or so ignorant you don’t really know what the various “Satanist” organizations actually believe. Christians who know their church history understand what it is to be an illegal religion facing actual persecution and what it is to live alongside actual temples with temple prostitutes and animal sacrifices and the like.
Religious stuff never bother me. They shouldn’t be bothered either, but they behave like children
“WAHHH religious freedom is only supposed to be for me 😭😭😭😭”
I agree it has no place there with the separation of church and state and all that constitution stuff.
The path that was taken is the opposite way. If there’s a Christian display, then they also have to allow Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Zoastarian, Odin, the Old Gods of Westeros, and Hylia.
It’s either zero or everything.
Huh…wouldn’t a 10 commandments monument be idolatry too then?
Not really, but the fucking golden Trump Statue at CPAC certainly should be.
I read an article, around the time that happened, where a minister, or whatever title, who was invited to speak at that event, saw the statue, saw how people were reacting to it, and left. It was interesting reading about how he was waking up to the reality that the political group he associated with were now a cult of Trump.
What does the ST do at this kind of event?
Take selfies then go get dinner
Im guessing the poster approved this when he insists on christian crap in the capitol.
Getting someone fired doesn’t require bail money… unless they were talking fires of hell
> Atheists make a group called the Satanic Temple to troll Christians
> They put up a demon statue to troll Christians
> A Christian gets upset about it
> Roflol look at this cringe Christian getting upsetThe easiest solution would be to just ban any religious iconography in state funded buildings.
We didn’t used to have this problem but then a bunch of ignorant fuckers decided America was a “Christian nation” so unfortunately someone has to combat it lest we turn into an Iranian style theocracy.
This is what patriotism looks like. Standing up for all of our rights. Not collecting guns and foaming at the mouth about gay people.
> Christians completely miss the point about separation of church and state and the government not giving preference to one religion over others
This but unironically.
