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The People’s Temple (led by Jim Jones, had a settlement called Jonestown where they committed mass murder-suicide, and is the origin of the term “drinking the kool-aid”) was a progressive religious cult that combined Christianity with communist and socialist ideology, with an emphasis on racial equality. Before the whole murder-suicide thing they provided a bunch of social services including soup kitchens, rent assistance, job placement services, free canned goods, clothing, and coal for winter heating. It’s pretty wild reading about Jim Jones himself and seeing parallels to some modern online tankies (there’s a quote of Jim Jones suggesting they should all kill themselves because the world isn’t ready for socialism and then referring to a group of defectors as “Trotskyite defectors” and “Coca-Cola revolutionaries”).
I worked inpatient psych for many years and have seen hundreds of cases of acute mania, one common symptom of which is hyperreligiosity. I’ve absolutely seen people give away all their money to what we would perceive as good causes. On many occasions, I’ve seen people let strangers who are homeless move into their homes because they wanted to help them. I’ve seen people give away all their belongings to people less fortunate. I’ve also seen the gradual horror dawn on their faces after they start stabilizing and realize what they’ve done
your comment makes me think about the many things we probably have a very biased perception of, because we only know about what the media reports
Oh yeah, the general public has no fucking clue what actual psychiatric disorders look like, and that includes the media
And the psychiatrists, who pretend to help patients but they actually just ostracize them from society, their work and take away their human rights.
Yeah I’m not going to defend any for-profit psych hospital or the people who work there, but to paint the entire field like that is uninformed and petulant
Yes, and when religious people have a psychotic episode, the whole mess usually revolves around religion. Including burning or cutting a religious symbol on your skin.
It’s much more complex than that. Religious delusions are culturally bound. I’ve seen hyperreligiosity in Hindus, New Age Crystal practitioners, and even atheists. Atheists may have a supreme feeling of being one with the earth. All of this is often paired with increased goal directed activity, lack of sleep, and some truly bizarre plans.
I’ve personally never seen anyone burn or cut a religious symbol on themselves based in psychosis though. Self injury like that is more often a sign of borderline personality traits rather than an axis I psychiatric disorder.
Atheists may have a supreme feeling of being one with the earth.
An obsession with wearing fedoras and reading the origin of species for some reason.
I respect you guys when you’re respectable. Some of the teen atheists get too edgy too fast.
I think you’re just describing teenagers in general…
sure. But the aesthetics of their edgy teen-ness seems to manifest that way when they are atheists
Because it’s rebellious. I’m pagan and teenage pagans can get similarly edgy. Some teen Christians do the same with religious imagery of blood and death, but it’s ultimately hard to be edgy in defense of what most of your neighbors’ grandparents believe.
Oh they do
They have a revelation that they should give all their worldly possessions away and it just so happens that the local megachurch can help them distribute the money.
Good argument for something like UBI and public funded healthcare. Some people will lose all of their money, one way or another, and so we need to make sure they can at least live following the incident.
We should also figure out a way to rein in the amount of money that a church can take in, but I don’t know a good mechanism for that at the moment.
One way would be to remove their tax exempt status. Since, y’know, Christians would rather pay tithes to a self-dealing organization which turns away the needy, poor and marginalized instead of paying taxes, which are theft according to them.
Good point. I actually think tax exempt for churches makes zero sense, anyways. Most people seem to think it’s about separation of church and state, but it’s not, legally or logically.
Logically, tax exemption is a type of subsidy. Tax exempt churches are actually being supported by the state. For separation, you’d want them to pay taxes like everyone else.
If churches are going to co-opt state governments to push blatantly theocratic BS like making it mandatory to display the 10 commandments in all public schools, then they can pay taxes like everybody else. Make them pay for their excesses.
They do occasionally, it just doesn’t make for quite as exciting a headline. My dad had a childhood friend whose father bankrupted their family with his idea for a restaurant where there’s no fixed prices and you just pay what you can because he thought it was what God wanted. Definitely better than violent bigotry, still a terrible idea.
Damn shame. The first time someone did that, in LA in the 50s, it worked great.
Well yeah, that was in the “godless” LA. Anyone who’s worked waitstaff could tell you that the surge of customers after church lets out tend to be the most demanding while also being the least charitable, even leaving fake cash with scripture quotes on it in lieu of tips.
Lol fair, did not work out nearly as well in Pensacola FL during the 60’s
As a Christian, something horrible and unrepeatable
religion breeds hatred, segregation by hats worn, excuses to kill and pillage “others”
As Jesus said, hate thy neighbour because he is the wrong skin colour, beat the fucker!
One of my favorite stories of Jesus is when all the elders gathered and demanded Jesus pass judgement on a prostitute. Instead he starts writing in the sand, and one by one the elders were shamed and left. Now we dont know what he wrote in the sand, but we can speculate that it was slurs against non-white non-christians which is why they were all shamed. Furthermore it is certain that afterward anyone left got sand thrown in their face as he shouted “you’re next fucker!” Before banging the prostitute.
Positive might not be the appropriate adjective, but this made me think of the last portion of the life of George R. Price.
