This actually makes sense, once you understand what their problem is with communism.
You see, they have no problem with all the benefits that communism offers… What bothers them is the idea that those benefits would be given to people who haven’t earned it.
Heaven, to them, is a reward. Only the pure, the righteous, the faithful get to enjoy its benefits. Heaven only works for them if they imagine that they will be able to look down and see hell.
A heaven for everyone, with no walls, no gates, no pitiful outcasts scrabbling to get in… That’s no heaven at all.
You’re not wrong about the reward being earned. That’s definitely the unspoken part of it.
When I grew up religious, the conversion was that communism was a bastardization of god’s plan, so it’s inherently evil. Basically, it cannot be as pure and perfect with men in charge so it will fail every time.
You’d think they’d want to try and be more like their god and his plan for their heaven but they just reject it.
They believe that only God can be the one to create paradise on earth. A primary pillar of their faith requires earth to be in a constant state of suffering until then.
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You’re not wrong about the reward being earned. That’s definitely the unspoken part of it.
It’s also heretic AF. As in: It directly contradicts Orthodox, Catholic, and Lutheran, doctrine, all for different reasons.
Remove the heretics from Christianity, and you will have not a religion of billions of oppressors, but a cult of a few dozen communist hippies.
They should know better:
Interesting read. Thank you.
Heaven only works for them if they imagine that they will be able to look down and see hell.
See, this is the part I can’t get behind. An eternity of that disparity with even the smallest scrap of empathy would eventually be unending torment. Every day is just more “oh yeah, hell is a thing and I can’t do anything about it…”
Fr, I knew for fact that there was something deeply fucked up about “The Good Place” in the TV show bearing the same name when Janet played Eleanor a short clip of sound from the Bad Place.
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Right wing politics can be summed up as: Exclusive & Sadism
If working all your life for a regime does not earn you the benefits of that regime, I don’t know what will in their minds
No, the issue most people have with it is that it requires a king (god) to make it work. People don’t mind a higher being (god) ruling them as an absolute monarch. They do mind handing such power to a human, since we have seen again and again how such power corrupts people.
When I was fairly young my mom described Christian heaven. I remember struggling with the idea of not struggling and being happy all the time. Then she hit me with if someone you love doesn’t make it to heaven you forget them. That’s when the fracture began for me.
Basically heaven is a mindfuck.
It really is. It’s not even a pleasant thought experiment.
Its not that you forget the person. You gain a perfect understanding of the situation. Like when your child has to go to jail for some crimes they committed. You may be sad they went to jail, then understand why they went to jail, then agree it was right that they were put in jail.
Not a perfect analogy, but something like that.
So we join with the God-mind in order to understand why the person we previously loved isn’t worthy of love after all…
Not what I said.
But at the end of my lifetime, it’s someone I loved, but that God doesn’t love (not enough to bring them to heaven, anyway…), and so my feelings about them get updated with God’s perspective?
So I learn why I was wrong to love them?
Edit: I’m just saying that Hell as a concept, alongside an all-loving God, doesn’t compute, to me.
Whereas Hell as a concept, introduced by human church leaders, to keep tithes up, makes perfect sense, to me.
So it feels like an Occam’s Razor situation, to me.
This isn’t preaching, I’m just going to explain it so maybe you can understand it better.
As far as God only bringing people to heaven if He loves them, there’s more to it. If God created everything (humans, animals, earth, stars, etc.) then He has authority over it. He has laws we are to follow, and if we break any of them then we are guilty of sin. Just like in human society, when someone breaks a law, they get punished either by paying a fine, going to jail, etc. Hell is jail; everyone has committed a sin against God, and deserves to go there. The bible without much detail, tells us there are varying degrees of punishment in hell.
In response to your edit, think of God as a judge. If a human judge has a child trafficker in his court, and the judge just lets him go free, would he be considered a good, just judge? No, we’d say he is a corrupt judge. Apply that concept to God, crimes must have a punishment. If God just brought people to heaven, then God wouldn’t be just. So you’re saying a loving God wouldn’t send people to hell. Well, God is loving, and had His son Jesus who never sinned crucified (willingly), paying for the punishment of the sins of anyone who puts their faith in Him as Lord. So, because God is loving, it’s very easy to avoid going to Hell. Which is why it’s also very easy to go to hell, we already deserve to go, so if we reject His offer of forgiveness, that’s on us.
Purgatory, I would say was an invention of church leaders since it’s not in the bible. They used the threat of purgatory to get people to pay for indulgences.
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be religious if I have a conscience
What’s the point of religion if you’re already capable of deciding what’s right and wrong?
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Severance
Me listening to tankies describe communism as a moneyless, stateless, classless world, then criticise anarchism
people still use the word tankie ? my guy most communists these days are anarcho communists.
tankie was never funny anyways
What’s a tankie? I know what it means but for others that don’t go ahead and drop an egg of knowledge on them.
A supporter of the Soviet Union and its habit of using tanks to suppress uprisings.
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I choose to imagine it’s actually because they all wear tanktops
We can only make the world stateless by having one all-encompassing state. Anarchism would result in a mosaic of states.
Nice satire
sadly I actually do believe this. help me 😭
What if we have zero states?
I’d rather 0 than 51
Well that’s what anarchism tries to do
What if heaven is just whatever you need heaven to be? Like, what if it’s just a temporary state of affairs? You enter Heaven, and it is exactly what you need to be at peace with your death and your life before that. Then, when you’re ready, after however much time you need, you can decide to move on and stop existing, or send your soul to be reincarnated.
This is similar to what Rick Riordan (author of Percy Jackson) suggests in one of his other works - that the afterlife is simply whatever you believe it to be. It’s pretty comforting imo.
The gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that’s where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go. Which they won’t do if they don’t know about it. This explains why it is important to shoot missionaries on sight.
Personally I wouldn’t like it to be what you believe it to be, rather what you need it to be. Some people don’t know what they need until they have it. You can believe that Heaven is endless sitting in a circle and piling devotion upon God, but if that isn’t actually going to help you be at peace, then what good is it gonna do you? How is a baby going to form a belief of what their afterlife is?
No, I reckon Heaven ought to be what you need, not what you want. I want my afterlife to be me being a series of Isekai protagonists in my favourite fictional universes because I secretly want to feel clever and powerful and knowledgeable about things to come, but indulging me probably isn’t the best way to put me at peace.
Seems to be the approach of MCU as well 🤔
Watch The Good Place.
Funny you should mention temporary - in a way, that’s true of Christian view. ‘Heaven’ in a broad sense is much broader, but the sense of where are ‘you’ after you die, is temporary until the resurrection, where people are once again in a very physical body (but now immortal and undamaged) on a very physical (re)new(ed) earth.
Can we just have tiny villages where we tell ghost stories and just all contribute to each other’s well being?
I asked one “so when do I actually die?” and they couldn’t comprehend that I didn’t want to exist forever
I suppose that whatever heaven does to you, you would want to exist forever…for whatever reason.
You can sit on that bench as long as you want. Whenever you’re ready, you just walk through.
Problem is real world communism always ends up as authoritarian dictatorships.
it’s almost like American imperialism has made sure that any attempt has failed by economic and military disruption and injecting dictators with the goal of dissuading others from trying.
the second there’s a success story western capitalism becomes unnecessary and a better system comes into view.
Also communist economy is impossible to implement since there is no all knowing god to fuck all the people siphoning the money out via corruption. Communism is great if you can remove humans from the equation. Mofo humans fuck every system up, we are the problem.
Lol, heaven is also an authoritarian dictatorship
Also, heaven is an absolute monarchy. The fact so many commies don’t even see the difference between communism and a monarchy should tell you all you need to know.
Also, heaven is an absolute autocracy. The fact so many fundies don’t even see the difference between US and facism should tell you all you need to know.
Socialist capitalist democracy works pretty well though
Source: Scandinavian
Tends to on a nation scale. But there’s still some good lessons to learn from it for smaller scale and nation scale too.
That’s a pretty boilerplate criticism. While true to a great degree, it’s also true of a lot of western capitalist nations.
It’s pretty hard to find information about real communist societies because media companies have it in their best interest to bury any good that has possibly been done by a communist society, meanwhile demonizing them and making them the enemy. You really have to dig to find honest information about communist societies.
Moreover, a lot of otherwise successful communist regimes have been sabotaged and poisoned by capitalist interests. Either by literally arming fascists, or just by demonizing them with foreign policy and media coverage.
Heaven is described as being populated by perfected people, not by their own doing… The world we live in is populated by selfish people primarily. Hell even toddlers are selfish. It’s a redefinition of human nature. Whether or not it’s a fantasy, it would actually make it work flawlessly.
I know that’s not your point, I just want to point out that toddlers aren’t selfish as much as they just haven’t developed empathy yet, as a sense of empathy usually only develops after the 4th birthday. The golden rule just doesn’t work for toddlers, they can’t put themselves in someone else’s shoes and imagine how they feel. There’s a riddle/test with a doll and a closet that illustrates this well.
Of course they are selfish, but it is Ok and natural.
I think that a person that never experienced empathy from others will most likely never develop empathy and stay selfish.
It is the job of society to teach/show the society empathy, and if we do not, we are fucked.
Cooperation and sharing are just as much “human nature” as selfishness. We contain lots of “natural” impulses, but people will prioritize and grow into those impulses which society most rewards.
Yea, and pure capitalism rewards assholes the most…
If there is heaven and there are people there, it’s already a problem for me. No need to add other things.
Sound like you need a Medium Place all by yourself.
Religion is like a shoe. Yours won’t fit me and mine won’t fit you. So let’s just let each other walk.our own ways without trying to push us along our paths
Religion is a tool to manipulate people according own will based on stories that happened similar in real world. Similar, meaning, the religion master picked stories that helped them explain why people have to behave like he says and maybe added som flavour here and there.
Please, people, can we just stop falling for it?
And what do you think the Buddha’s big master plan was, what with telling people to seek enlightenment?
And you think the BBS accurately represents the teachings of the Buddha, and the whole of Buddhism? I asked about the Buddha’s master plan, you’re trying to answer my question with this BBS article?
Well, one can use religion manipulation for things that are not evil as well.
Doesn’t makes it any better in my eyes, as think it is disrespectful, telling people fictional enhanced stories to manipulate. I prefer the scientific way of thinking and explaining. People understand way more than you think, if you just try to explain it in logical steps that they can follow.So you think Aesop’s Fables are bad?
I don’t know them, but if they are written to manipulate I surly dislike them, yes (I assume that because of the style you are asking)
Replace “Religion” with “Truth” and you’ll see why this doesn’t work.
With our concept making apparatus called “mind” we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us. The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled “reality” and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see “reality” differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper that is the level of concept.
We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle. Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.
Any idea why communism is spelt with a zero here?
gotta censor it
Just so everyone knows, the word you should be using is socialism. Communism is what you call it when socialist pick up guns and other weapons and take over by force using violence. Socialism = good, communism = bad.
Can we all agree that no matter how bad this gets, we shouldn’t stoop to their level?
Nope, that’s not what communists mean, when communists talk about communism. What you describe is the dictatorship of the proletariat, not communism aka the time when all means of production are owned communally, everyone enjoys working according to their ability and lovingly shares all goods according to their needs.
Of course, if you use the term “communism” to refer to the political movement that tries to achieve communism through revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat, you’re 100 % right.
No.
Communism was tried, and it failed.
Capitalism failed and continues to fail every day. When do we get to try something else?
Actually, I’d say the issue isn’t so much communism or capitalism as the problem is humans in general. They are greedy and selfish. That’s why both fail. Same with socialism, etc.
It has been 2025 years since the death of Christ, and we still do not have a functional economic system!
No matter what angle you look at it from, it’s insanity.
Apparently humans as a whole will never learn to just behave.
It’s also not stateless. Quite the opposite in fact.
Then it wasn’t tried
Marxist communism hasn’t been tried. Leninism is also called communism, and it’s been tried. It’s supposed to be a two part system where you establish dictatorship to create the classless, stateless, moneyless system… They just never seem to reach the second part once they setup the dictator. 🤷🏻♂️
I think at this point we need to accept that the only communism we’ve seen in practice, is communism.
The absolute worst is them saying socialism is pessimistic because it thinks people can’t do anything for themself and coddles them with a nanny state. Then turns around and says “you have to structure capitalism assuming every single person is a greedy sociopath hellbent on fucking over everyone else to make money.”
you have to structure capitalism assuming every single person is a greedy sociopath hellbent on fucking over everyone else to make money.
So… Social Democracy? Which they also oppose? 🤔
Not exactly, the argument (is incoherent and insane) is something like “you can’t have too much democracy and centralized power because people in power are always corrupt.” ✨Somehow✨ laissez-faire capitalism is supposed to naturally account for corruption and sociopathy because the free market forces(???) them to do good things because people are able to spend their money somewhere else. Always non-violent btw ❤️
Lol their argument is lame then.
You can’t trust a democratically-elected government, but can somehow trust non-elected CEOs? 🤣
But it’s true. Psychopaths tend to end up in CEO, and other leadership positions more often, as they are not afraid to literally kill to get ahead.
Ancaps/libertarians as well.
And that the only acceptable form of socialism is charity. And like. FFS
I think it might have something to do with those “Christians” envisioning heaven as an implicit ethnostate.
Socialism seems ugly to them because it involves the people who seem ugly to them being cared for.
But they’d never say it out-loud; most can’t even see that’s what their twisted little hearts desire.
I think they just lack vision and don’t actually want to change the real world, just dream of a better place
Seen this clip from some american fundie podcast that was… a choice.
This person was asked something like, if you could have world peace, but all governments become socialist, would you do it? They said no and fucking justified their answer with a partial quote from something like Deuteronomy 15:7-11, claiming that well the bible says there’ll always be the poor so socialism is actually bad because of that, and a quick search to see if I could find it there’s a lot of stuff echoing the same stuff, that socialism is unbiblical etc.
What the actual fuck is wrong with these people? I’m irreligious but was raised Christian, this is so vehemently counter to my understanding of Christian teachings (the flavour of which I was raised has atheist ministers so there’s that), which was more or less, raise everyone up, accept everyone for who they are, help people, don’t turn a blind eye to injustice and like just be decent to each other. Was this podcast prosperity doctrine shit or something else because yeah wow, it’s honestly sinister to me.
It sounds to me like they want to be able to give freely and not be forced by a human law.
If everybody shares there is no need for official socialism because enough resources are shared.
The difference is that the formerly poor has to be thankful.
I was raised as a fundamentalist, but I got out.
American evangelical fundamentalists firmly believe in heirarchy— children are under the authority of their mother, who is under the authority of her husband, who is under the authority of God.
They see any disruption of this heirarchy as an attack on their religion.
Taxes? You’re usurping the man’s authority to spend his money as he sees fit.
Women’s liberation? You’re usurping the man’s authority over his wife.
Entitlements? You’re usurping the man’s authority to use his pocketbook as leverage over his family.
Immigration? You’re usurping the man’s authority by lowering his cultural relevance.
LGBTQ+ acceptance? You’re usurping the man’s authority by undermining the patriarchy.
You’ve probably noticed a pattern as to who is primarily driving these issues.
They begin with the conclusion (e.g. socialism bad), and then find whatever they can in their shitty book to justify it.
Yeah, just like everything else, they are cherry picking passages that support the conclusion they’ve already reached on their own
Yup. Funny all the people blaming the bible like the dude up there calling it a stupid book… obviously hasn’t read it. The bible has great lessons, 90% of Christians just ignore them is all. Don’t blame the book for the idiots who claim to follow it when they actually aren’t. Even the stuff wanna be Christians quote thinking it supports their argument they are either misunderstanding or leaving out vital context. Real Christians are very rare and almost never associated with an organized church. They just quietly try to do their best they don’t try to use their belief to justify the rest of their life and bad decisions.
“Christians”
Here we go with the scare quotes again… They’re not fake Christians just because you don’t agree with their particular dogma.
