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How come Republicans are the most fervent Christians?
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this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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A lot of atheists end up with that impression, maybe from unfamiliarity. That Jesus was just a dope socialist who loved everyone.
But the religion has been absolutely shitty for pretty much as soon as he was dead (at least).
For example, the other day I saw someone cite Acts 4 as an example of how Christianity was a commune, where people pooled their assets.
It conveniently left out the part where Peter had an older couple who didn't pay him everything they owned who were both struck dead after meeting privately and being confronted (allegedly killed by God). Which was a reference back to the book of Joshua where a guy kept some loot for himself and was outed and killed.
Women were told to be silent and subservient (in spite of 'heretical' sects and texts of Christianity where Jesus was instructing female disciples and they were acting as teachers - ironically the only extant sect that claimed Jesus was talking about Greek atomism and naturalism was one of these).
The religion was canonized right after the emperor of Rome converted, so guess what was canonized? A bunch of shit about how patriarchal monarchy is the divine plan. The saying attributed to Jesus about how someone who succeeded in life should rule and should only hold power temporarily obviously gets excluded and eventually the collection of sayings is punishable by death for even possessing it.
Even a lot of that stuff about "blessed is the poor" was probably from Paul who was separating fools from their money. Originally there's sayings about how those ministering shouldn't collect money, but this gets straight up reversed in a later edition of Luke and you can see Paul in 1 Cor 9 arguing that he is entitled to make a living off ministering and encouraging donations "for the poor in Jerusalem." But then elsewhere we see Paul was accepting expensive fragrant offerings from people. But that's ok, as then in the gospels you see Jesus keeps an expensive fragrant offering and yells at the people who criticize him for not selling it and giving the proceeds to the poor.
It's a bunch of feel good BS to con people out of their money. I don't think it was always that from the very start, and probably even had some interesting things going on initially, but almost immediately after Jesus is out of the picture the errant early tradition gets morphed into a traditional cult where power and wealth consolidates at the top and it preaches subservience and obedience and self-hatred so you beg for the idea of salvation and trade all that you have for a promise the people you turn everything over to can't fulfill.
So why would a group that wants power and wealth concentrated and to destroy democracy in favor of patriarchal authoritarianism be attractive to Christians? Because they've been being fattened up for that slaughter going on near two thousand years at this point.
Also: Jesus was made up by these early Xtian founders. He wasn’t a real person.
https://youtu.be/LTllC7TbM8M?si=oDMJJxBdAFsY3RFo
Almost no one respectable in the scholarship, including atheist scholars, thinks that's the case.
And it would be the only instance I'm aware of where someone at the nascent stages of a cult made up a leader and immediately had major schisms around what that made up leader was saying.
Literally the earliest Christian documents we have are of a guy who was persecuting followers of Jesus suddenly going into areas where he had no authority to persecute, literally "if you can't beat them, join them," and then telling people not to pay attention to a different gospel "not that there is a different gospel" or to listen to him over alleged 'super-apostles.'
The next earliest document is a gospel that's constantly trying to spin statements allegedly said in public by Jesus with secret teachings that only a handful of their own leaders supposedly heard.
Not long after that is a letter from the bishop of Rome complaining his presbyters were deposed in the same place Paul was complaining about them receiving a different gospel, and how young people should defer to the old and women should be silent (so we know the schism was supported by the young and women, who just so happen to be at the center of a competing tradition which has extensive overlap with Paul's letters to Corinth).
For all of the above to have occurred within just a few decades of a made up person would be even less believable than that said person walked on water. Personally, I don't believe either of those scenarios.
P.S. Carrier is a history PhD, not a biblical studies PhD, and a bit of a pompous moron. For example, he managed to miss one of the most interesting elements of early Christianity regarding the Gnostic references to cosmic seeds because his head was so far up his own rear that he couldn't see past a (straight up bizarre) theory they were talking about a cosmic sperm bank. Nope - it has to do with Lucretius's "seeds of things" but that's a long discussion for another comment. Point is, I'd be wary of taking anything he says too seriously.
The point he makes about the only evidence for JC’s reality as a person is other people much later pointing at each other and saying “he said so”.
If, as he said, any real evidence beyond hearsay can be produced it might he credible.
They aren't much later on. A number of the texts are composed within decades of his death. It's much later in that we have copies, and they definitely had some edits along the way, but they are pretty early.
There's arguably much better evidence a historical Jesus existed than a historical Pythagoras, for example. Do you doubt Pythagoras existed?
Or even Socrates - we only have two authors claiming to have direct knowledge of events around what he said, and the earliest fragments of their writings comes from the same collections of texts as early Christian writings, and the only full copy of Plato is centuries older in production than the earliest full copies of both canonical and extra-canonical texts.
What evidence for Socrates or Pythagoras do we have beyond hearsay?
Ok that’s fine, but please examine the differences in motivation.
Let’s say Plato etc are indeed made up. There’s little money to be made or social control gained via their fictitious being.
Let’s go further down that path.
The ideas and examinations of nature, and the basic sciences of understanding our universe, even if done by one or more people under the guise of some fictional characters are still incredible foundations for rational thinking over the next two and a half thousand years. Again: advancing understanding and what we know as ‘science’, not direct social control and making money off the punters.
Religion… well… That’s something else.
There are huge profits to be made from telling people stuff about how various magical creatures can inflict punishments, heal illnesses and forgive bad behaviour.
The motivations are clear. Humanity hasn’t changed a crumb in several thousand years.
Follow the money.
Which text do you think was written within decades?