this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2025
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And don't forget, those are the people who tell us atheists that "without the Bible, where do you get your morals from?"
Well, we can see what these biblical morals are - you mentioned it: homophobia, racism etcetera. It makes people hateful, while claiming it is charity and compassion.
Religion poisons everything.
People who ask that question are really telling on themselves; they’re saying that without religion they would have no qualms stealing, murdering, and raping. They’re very dangerous people.
Oh absolutely. That's the scariest part about this whole line of argument.
Christians do not believe people are inherently good. We are all sinners. And even scarier, you can be excused for anything if you confess. Three Bloody Marys and one Hello Dolly and you're golden. Still get into heaven.
The whole religion is just a thinly veiled framework designed to allow bad people to do bad things - and even make good people do bad things.
35 For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. 36 I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’
37 “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? 39 When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’
40 “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters,[a] you were doing it to me!’
There are many parts of Christianity, but these are among the clearest words of its founder. Wherein this admonition do you find a framework to do bad?
Want me to list all the parts of the Bible where it commands Christians to kill gays...?
But that's not even the point. You know just as well as I do - Christians of each century have always cherry picked the Bible. There's a currently fashionable interpretation of the same book that keeps changing over time. Pick a different country and a different century, suddenly people are burning witches.
The exact contents of the Bible don't even matter that much, it's the fact that Christians are free to interpret it to their liking.
The Bible isn't the framework I was talking about. The framework is the Bible plus the man with the funny hat can tell you whatever the fuck he thinks it means and what makes you blindly serve his current agenda.
They are not all dangerous. Most are just ignorant. Sometimes willfully so. They have been conditioned to never even think about questioning the rules, so they never had that moment where they thought "wait none of this makes any sense". We should be more compassionate towards these folks. Most of them are not bad people they are just incapable of questioning their place in the universe.
Ignorance is dangerous
I’m not saying all religious people are dangerous, just those who ask how someone can have a moral compass without religion. In order to ask that question genuinely they have to believe that they, without their religious rules, would have no qualms with harming others for their own gain.
I think it's broader than that:
You also see plenty of people delegating their sense of Right and Wrong to, for example, political leaders.
A great example is people who would look at what's going on in Gaza putting aside politics and going "yeah, knowingly killing tens of thousands of children is objectivelly a bad thing" but as soon as their favorite political leaders start opinating about it, all of the sudden they're all "I don't believe that's a Genocide" (even after the UN officially deemed it a Genocide) and claiming that people criticizing Israel are anti-semites.
I've seen it happen in the country were I live - people who previously admitted that what was happening was bad, suddenly when their favored rightwing politicians took an interest in it and openly sided with Israel, start voicing quite different opinions which ape what those politicians are saying. You get further confirmation that they're driven by politics when they start framing the whole thing with local politics - which has pretty much zero influence on the actions in Gaza - hence that framing means they're looking at it through the eyes of local tribalism rather than using a personal sense of Right and Wrong.
As I see it, the problem isn't specifically Religion or Politics, it's people with high Tribalism (hence easilly swayed by the leaders of their tribes, such as religious or political tribes) and lacking or with a very weak moral compass.
FFS I hate that. "Religion poisons everything" no! No it doesn't! Think if christianity wasn't a thing they wouldn't find something else to twist? After all it's not like any other good thing got twisted, no? Communism, patriotism, charity, heck, even local communities?
Christianity says: Do not do to others what you don't want done upon yourself. No matter if sinner or faithful, treat all with respect (nagging about becoming christian is ok tho, sadly). Do not fall for greed, lust or pride.
American "Christians" aren't Christians, same like most of the local Patriots are actually Nationalists and Communism is mostly used as a another tool for simply stealing power.
I know I am pretty much shaking my fist at the sky here, sorry, but I really needed to let it out ._.
Edit: I don't have much time - sorry - so I will say it here.
Best of all, I don't think I am even christian. xD
Classic defense by religious apologists and still a fallacy. You don't wish to associate all the bad Christians with Christianity, so you pull the old "they aren't real Christians" card. No, only you, a good and righteous and kindhearted person, you are the only one who is a true Christian. Of course. We've heard it countless times.
Of course they're Christians. You don't get to whitewash Christianity by simply declaring they aren't.
Which fallacy is this? It's not the "No true Scotsman" one as explained here: https://lemmy.world/post/37452533/19987098
For example, let's turn that argument around:
Did person A argue fallaciously to you? Or is person B just an idiot who took on a wrong label?
Person B is an idiot who doesn't understand words because atheist is a simple label with a singular meaning.
To be a Christian someone just needs to identify as a Christian. They don't actually have to do anything specific with that self identification that aligns with the Bible or any particular denomination's practices. That is because belief and faith and religion have a massive spectrum of beliefs and practices wrapped up into one. A large number of people who attend religious ceremonies don't even believe in the deities or take things literally, they are there for the community.
According to Christ himself, this one is pretty central:
If someone denounces this baseline (and not fails to follow it, but denounces it), there's not much left to a claim of following Christ.
And these people are people who attend religious ceremonies, not Christians.
Same as someone attending a meeting about Atheism doesn't become an Atheist by attending the meeting but by being convinced that God doesn't exist.
Is that so? A lot of agnostics call themselves atheists. In general, if you ask atheists specifically about what they believe, quite a few of them actually describe agnosticism, as in they do not firmly believe that god doesn't exist, but rather believe that there's no basis in believing that god exists.
The difference between atheism and agnosticism has no practical meaning to the vast majority of unbelievers.
You can't positively state that something does not exist. You can't logically be 100% certain there is no God. We know that. So if you love going by definitions, yes, most unbelievers are agnostics, not atheists.
So why do we keep calling ourselves atheists? Because we view the likelihood of God's existence as so infinitesimally small, the difference between agnosticism and atheism becomes negligible. If we rate the odds of God's existence at 0,000000001% we can as well just call it zero.
In other words, stop whining about atheists not using the term you'd prefer. We don't tell you what you should call yourself either.
Yes, you do, that's what the whole thread here was about.
And you mistake my position on belief as well. I am mostly agnostic.
And yes, the difference between agnosticism and atheism is huge, except if you are too uneducated to understand the difference, which makes it weird that you have such a strong opinion on the matter.
No, I've never told anyone what to call themselves except Christians. I don't care what denomination or special kind of Christians they insist on being.
But now that you've started the Ad Hominems, calling me uneducated instead of explaining the "huge difference", apparently you've run out of arguments. Or knowledge. Or both. Someone who claims to be an expert on logical fallacies like the No True Scotsman should also understand that you've sunk very low if you need to resort to Ad Hominems.
So you just stopped being as respectful to me as I was to you during the whole discussion and now I've lost interest in talking to you. You proved yourself undeserving of my time. Good day.
"No atheist believes in God" is a factually correct statement. It's like saying "One does not equal two" - a verifiable, objective truth that does not rely on anyone's opinion.
Therefore, person B made a contradictory statement, and person A would be correct in responding "Then you aren't an atheist", because person B stated a verifiable falsehood. Same as saying "One equals two". We all know it's wrong.
Christianity has a much looser definition. You quoted it yourself:
A Christian (/ˈkrɪstʃən, -tiən/ ⓘ) is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
So anyone who follows this religion and calls himself a Christian is a Christian. Nothing in the definition says "You must follow the Bible to the exact letter" in order to be one. There wouldn't be ANY Christians if that were true.
So that leaves us with a whole bunch of people who all claim to be Christian, but have different opinions on..
... et cetera, et cetera.
And all of these people claim the others aren't the true believers.
Now here's a very simple question: What gives you the confidence, why should we believe you that it's YOU, out of all these people, who follows the correct interpretation of the Bible?
That's why the No True Scotsman fallacy applies to the whole bunch, including you, when you claim the others are no true Christians. Not a single Christian can objectively, verifiably prove that their individual view of Christianity is the correct one.
According to Christ himself, this one is pretty central:
If someone denounces this baseline (and not fails to follow it, but denounces it), there's not much left to a claim of following Christ.
And that is not an objective statement that's verifiably and objectively true. It DOES depend on personal opinion and interpretation. Other Christians might say other stuff in the Bible is more important. Like killing homosexuals. Or burning witches.
There is no clear definition of an ideal Christian. Never was. Never will be. Every century has its own view on what Christianity has to be like, we just happen to live in one which tends to agree with your views.
In other words, according to your statement, there were almost no Christians a few centuries ago, which is verifiably untrue.
No true Scotsman fallacy.
Knowing a name of a fallacy doesn't mean you understood what the fallacy means.
The No true Scotsman fallacy is a very specific thing and it doesn't mean what you think it does.
Here's the name-giving example of the No true Scotsman fallacy:
So for an argument being the No true Scotsman, there need to be three elements. If one or more are missing, the fallacy doesn't apply:
So why does the no true Scotsman fallacy not apply here?
Because it's about this change, not about whether something can be classified as something.
Take for example this exchange:
In this case Person A
That's what @Demdaru@lemmy.world argued:
The "no true scotsman" fallacy is about changing your argument into a non-falsifiable tautology. It's not about using the words "true" or excluding some group from some definition. And it certainly doesn't mean "Everyone who calls themselves X surely and irrefutably belongs to group X".
No-True-Scotsman-Fallacy Fallacy
That is what you do when you say "They aren't real Christians because they do X." It is the poster child of the no true Scotsman fallacy.
Unless you think it requires changing after the start of the conversation in which you are completely wrong.
Ok, let me put it in a way that you might understand:
You: "No true Scotsman! Anyone who calls themselves an Atheist is an Atheist, no matter if they believe in God."
Do you see how this makes no sense?
An Atheist is a person who doesn't believe in God, not a person who calls themselves an Atheist. And saying you aren't an Atheist if you believe in God isn't a fallacy but just purely the definition of the term.
Here's the Wikipedia definition of a Christian:
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christians)
So someone who does not follow or adhere a religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ is not a Christian. Not by fallacy, but by definition. And it doesn't matter what they call themselves.
What you are doing is saying they are not really Christians because they do or don't do X and that is exactly what the fallacy is.
Are priests who molest children not real Christians?
Atheist is different because it is a singular thing, like calling that priest a child molester. He did the thing so that is what he is.
Again: "They are no true Atheists because they believe in God."
No true scotsman or not?
Not.
An atheist who believes in god is like a vegan who regularly and knowingly eats bacon, they are using the wrong labels. Those both have narrow and clear definitions, unlike religion where there are a ton of things that vary between local practices and traditions that can be used to say that they aren't really X religion.
I follow your logic, and it does make sense, but I think the problem might be that those arguing against you are American, not Scotsmen /s
Can we agree that there can be good and bad, or perhaps generous vs selfish Christians? Another issue is “Christian” is sometimes used adjectively, “that’s pretty Christian of you”, which is generally used to mean generous, but has nothing to do with someone’s belief in God, Jesus etc.
Probably a person’s belief in supernatural beings has nothing to do with their ethics, morality or generosity, it’s just that in some societies at certain times there are perceived correlations, and irrespective of whether these reflect reality or not, they, through deliberate conflation of religion, morality, politics etc. can color people’s opinions of those belonging a specific religion.
I got bad news for you, Christians have been hypocrites for alot longer than the US has existed.
People who use Communism as a tool for simply stealing power are called Bolsheviks. Not all communists are like that.