Was looking for any kind of context that would somehow make it even slightly less-outrageous than the headline indicated.
It was worse.
slough has a reputation to keep down
Thinking of Betjeman as I read that.
The Mountain of Fire and Miracles Daniel Centre Church
With a name like that, you know they’re fucking nuts.
Having the word “Church” in their name was a dead give away
as Christopher Hitchens pointed out, putting the word Pastor or Reverend in front if peoples names letss then get away with saying the most horrible, hateful hurtful stuff that wouldn’t see then banned on many Lemny instances without being called out and shunned for it. To wit, Hegseth’s hate preacher
- Rape, regardless of gender, is wrong.
- This charity implies rape against women is not wrong.
According to the Bible, Men raping Women isn’t wrong. At least not as long as the father of the victim gets compensated and the two get married.
https://www.biblica.com/bible/?osis=niv%3Adeu.22.28-deu.22.29
Yes, the fee was 50 shekels of silver for raping a virgin child, so less than $150 USD (assuming each silver shekel was 11.4 gm, the standard shekel back then).
This is why we need the Bible to teach us morality, you see.
But if I ignore the parts I find immoral, and focus on what I personally consider to be good moral lessons, it gives me objective morality!
The first part of Deuteronomy is historical. The second part is legislative. There is still much that can be learned from it.
This idea, whether it comes from the religious or not, that the entire 44+ books of the Bible are some kind of “Do everything this collection of documents says to the exact letter or else hell or something” instruction manual is one of the most ignorant and sadistic jokes of our time, and to reduce it to such is an act of intellectual dishonesty.
instruction manual is one of the most ignorant and sadistic jokes of our time
The Bible itself says it’s an instruction manual, repeatedly. So… the ignorant, sadistic joke is the Bible, and has nothing to do with “our time”.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. ~2 Timothy 3:16-17
Yeah, “God-breathed” means “He wanted it written down.” And “it is useful for teaching.” “Thoroughly equipped” means knowledgeable, especially when it comes to context and intent of the work.
(The more you know 🌈 ✨ ⭐)
Not “every single sentence is a direct command necessary to adhere to the faith.” That would be, obviously, ridiculous. (And extremists who insist on such, are indeed dangerously silly people.)
Tons of the Old Testament is just genealogy and records of law of the time. I’d hope you wouldn’t read a history book and conclude that the authors intended you to live by Hamurabi’s Code, or that they themselves endorsed slavery because it was recorded. Yet we still can derive a lot of wisdom from knowing about these things.
Sorry I know Internet doesn’t convey tone but I don’t mean to sound like, grouchy or anything. Just making an appeal to reason is all.
Hope you have a good one. :)
I’m not giving you my particular interpretation, only sharing why the “good book” is used as an instruction manual by those who do so.
Also, the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit gives them infallible wisdom from God, so that they have spiritual discernment and knowledge.
(the magic bird imparts no such wisdom)
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. 13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. ~1 Corinthians 2:12-17
I’m not giving you my particular interpretation, only sharing why the “good book” is used as an instruction manual by those who do so.
Fair! It is a great pain that people will be inclined to interpret things in a confirmation-bias kind of way.
The Bible does have lots of instructions, but the important context of “to whom”, and “for what reason” is often cast aside when people want to use it justify themselves. We all suffer for such vanity.
(the magic bird imparts no such wisdom)
Hehe I’m sorry, this reference(?) went over my head. 😅
As for the verse you posted, written I believe by the Paul the Apostle to the Corinthian churches, I think he means to say that those who are actively seeking to understand, eventually will find the wisdom God imparts.
But people applying solely material / natural / worldly sensibilities will see it all as foolishness, because they aren’t trying to find any revelation in it. They approach with preconceived notions to pick it apart instead, and in so doing reinforce their existing biases.
I think a lot of believers, either in bad faith or simply naive zeal, will skip the “seeking to understand” part, take the words at face value, and see all of it as a system of rules to push on others. At its core, this is where we see the bad examples of religions the world over: man’s attempt to elevate themselves over others, instead of humble themselves to serve each other.
Indeed. Foolishness. :(
It should definitely been seen as an historical book. And every time you see a weird rule like this, you have to remind yourself that it was being instituted to improve the situation.
In this case, it’s likely that the extant rule was that girls who had been raped were to be banished from the community, or worse. This rule guaranteed she would still have a home and protector. Not a great one, but still an improvement.
A similar thing happens in the story where Abram is told to sacrifice Isaac, but is given a reprieve at the last moment.
You can see this as evidence that God is sadistic. Read through our eyes, it looks that way. It’s likely that child sacrifice was common in that time and place, so this story tells something else: it’s telling people to start sacrificing animals instead of children, and putting a divine stamp on the instruction.
Again, not great, but a huge improvement.
Thank you for such an eloquently put explanation! I actually hadn’t considered the context to this extent, and it gives me much to think about.
We do have our problems these days, but I’m glad to be in this time; The norms of those days must have been quite awful in contrast. :(
This idea, whether it comes from the religious or not,
I’ll stop you right there: it does.
I was happier not knowing this
We should all be educated on the books these eejits derive their beliefs
It’s also apparently OK for daughters to rape their father (Genesis 19)
ragebait. the whole website is ragebait.
Yeahhh, check that dudes hard drives
Dudette’s hard drive, let’s not misgender here. I hear they like that.
i mean, let’s open that can of worms. i’ve been using dude gender neutral my entire life. my wife is a dude. i’m enby though, so i might be projecting a bit i will admit.
Alright, that’s fair I guess. I can see it be gender neutral, I’m just used to it referring to guys. Plus, I like the way dudette sounds.
i mean, i know someone who got their phd in linguistics making a graph of “how do people pronounce [i forget what the word was] here” in the US [edit and Canada i forgot they went up to Medicine Hat for part of the study]. someone else with “do you call it soda, pop, or soda pop (shut up atlanta you coke fiends you don’t count)”. maybe they were masters degrees and their phds were something else i forget this was decades ago. i don’t know enough of the prereqs, but “is dude masculine or gender neutral” would be a fun study and maybe pay for me to go back to college for a decade. (because i would need to learn more than hobby linguistics)
In the wise words of Kel Mitchell, “I’m a dude, he’s a dude, 'cause we’re all dudes. (Hey!)”
Drug test him and the communion wine too while you’re at it
Wut…
So I looked up the video mentioned in the article. This just sounds like someone who is insane and/or trying to garner attention from religious hysteria. Even after this article’s publication, the video mentioned in the article has 397 views and only 7 likes, so it doesn’t seem like anyone cares who these people are.
It can also be helpful to realize, doomer headlines like this one about nothing-assholes are common on opposite political spectrums too. There are probably some liberally minded feminists who have given horrific takes like “We should just round up every white man born in a red state, and dump them all in a landfill, with no trials.” And as stupid and evil as that is, some news site has probably quoted them to make manosphere centers feel even angrier towards “evil feminists”.
Yep. This is just one of those aspects of the internet era. I’m certain people publicly said far worse than this in every nation, and they were shunned and their words never made it into a printed article. I know far worse claims that have been published on YouTube and also never got an article about them.
Now there is the aspect that this is an organization registered as a charity. I can’t speak for the UK, but in the USA, it’s very easy to form a registered charity organization if you are willing to bind yourself to the limitations of such. It’s not something that a government department head signs off on, or a parliamentary body votes on. It’s usually an accounting operation and a rubber stamp.
Sane Christian charities trying to desperately bandage humanity’s hemorrhaging across the globe? Not even newsworthy.
An insane whackjob makes a video screaming hot takes into the void and claims to be a believer?
The Internet: “SEE THIS IS WHAT ALL THESE PEOPLE ARE LIKE! I knew I was right to hate anybody different from me !!11one”
The Catholic church alone owns 170 million acres of land, and an unimaginable amount of stolen wealth acquired over centuries.
It appears that, after the charity is done, they make a substantial profit.
Sadly, in the USA and many other countries, the secular taxpayers have to shoulder the burden of their “charities” that somehow make them filthy rich.
Apologies for the overly clinical language. While yes the rape of males is a definite problem, the rape of females never stopped. I don’t have the statistics but i doubt it even slowed. What the fuck, homophobes and rape apologists at the Mountain of Fire and Miracles Daniel Centre Church?
Boys deserve not to get raped, but so do girls. Everyone deserves to not get raped. And yeah some boys are still raping people of varied genders, as are some girls.
Wtf is wrong with this pastor‽
There are a lot of good religious people but this just highlights yet again that there are a lot of sick weirdo’s that claw their way up the religious ladder.
I find that good people are good whether they are religious or not. But religion has a way of making good people do evil deeds.
I’d prefer just no religion myself.
I appreciate the exceedingly rare nuance. As a believer myself, this is…despicably unhinged, and needs to be called out. Predators have a way of gaining acceptance in the flock before they blatantly run amok.
England stamp this evangelical shit out now while you can!!!
This warning can’t be dire enough.
Yeah I am the one who made the comment that person was commenting to. I know about evangelical Christians all too well. I am a white boy in the South.
just send them over here to statesia we are about to stupid ourselves to death anyways
And not even Catholic. I would have lost that bet!
The Catholic Church has an institutional issue with protecting priests that they should not be protecting, but the actual rhetoric that the church puts out is usually fairly reasonable. At least, as reasonable as can be expected from any religious organization.
As if the ancient greeks didn’t absolutely rape boys too
It’s a pot calling the kettle black situation if you’re comparing the Greeks to the Christian Church, especially in the early days
I mean, if the ancient Greeks did it, it must be fine
Its where alpha and beta comes from. Perfect representation of masculinity
nope
“Alpha” and “beta” originated from a crappy study on wolves, where the researcher was researching hierarchy in wolf packs, but it was not a wolf pack but random groups of unrelated captive wolves. They came to the conclusion that there are “alpha male” wolves hierarchically above the “beta male” wolves. The study, despite being retracted by the publisher and denounced by the researcher, is widely viewed as fact. (source)
The toxic “masculinity” crowd then took this and started using “alpha male” to refer to “masculine” men and “beta male” to “insufficiently masculine” men. The neologism “sigma” was created in parody of this, with people claiming to be a “sigma” and thus above “alphas”.
I meant literally, like the letters. Not the toxic masculinity
those arent really relevant tho
These organizations are weird as fuck. Raping people is evil, regardless of anything else.
wat
