So many doomsday prophets come and go it isn't funny. So many apocalypses in my lifetime that never happened and apparently they have been at it since Christ (who was also a doomsday prophet) and probably before that.
nightofmichelinstars 3 points 6 months ago
Arrogance at its finest. They can't fathom the world goes on without them.
UnderpantsWeevil 26 points 6 months ago
Aliens visit Earth. They come in peace and surprisingly, they speak our languages.
Obviously, all of the heads of government and religious leaders want to speak to the aliens so they set up a meeting with our new visitors. When it's the Pope's turn, he asks: "Do you know about our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?"
"You mean JC?", responds the alien. "Yeah, we know him! He's the greatest, isn't he? He swings by every year to make sure that we are doing ok".
Surprised, the pope follows up with: "He visits every year?! It's been over two millennia and we're still waiting for his SECOND coming!"
The alien sees that the pope has become irate at this fact and starts trying to rationalize. "Maybe he likes our chocolate better than yours?"
The pope retorts "Chocolates? What are you talking about? What does that have to do with anything?"
The alien says "Yea, when he first visited our planet we gave him a huge box of chocolates! Why? What did you guys do?"
mfed1122 20 points 6 months ago
Its so frustrating that the people responsible for inventing the original kernel of Christianity were smart enough to more or less perfectly predict the way in which their own creation might backfire, purposely built in instructions on how to deal with that scenario, and it still didn't work. Really paints a hopeless picture for humanity's ability to keep systems intact. But I think it also nicely illustrates the problem with building your system on this "noble lie" (the existence of god, essentially, in this case). Falsehood is like a crack in the edifice which just keeps spreading and eventually makes room for all kinds of stupid crap to seep in.
UnderpantsWeevil 13 points 6 months ago
It helps to remember that (a) most of the New Testament wasn't officially canonized for 300 years, so it went through quite a few writers rooms before being formalized at Nicea.
And (b) the bulk of Christian Lore was cribbed from neighboring local religions and mythologies, so they really did have to be careful to warn people "No no no, that Egyptian god Horus may look like Jesus but he's a fake one. And then the Persian military god Mithra is a fake one too. And the Virgin Birth of Athena from Zeus's head? The Dionysus story of being born from Zeus's thigh? Not what we're looking for."
A lot of the proscriptions and prophecies of the Christian Bible had already happened within the history of the region. Often repeatedly. Even the testament of Revelations, which predicts all sorts of calamities and torments mixed in with signs and portents, was mostly saying "What happens if everything bad about my perspective of modernity was cranked up to 11 and happened all at once? And also, I'm high as shit."
JohnnyEnzyme 13 points 6 months ago
Hate to say it, but the whole white-washed Jesus thing has always been cringey from the first.
Dude was a Semitic man from 2000yrs ago, assuming he existed at all, or was later conflated as a single person, whatever. But he would have been a Semitic man from the times.
I.e., not some later Euro-looking dude, wearing impractical, bullshit white robes as a carpenter, lol.
GalacticSushi 6 points 6 months ago
assuming he existed at all, or was later conflated as a single person, whatever.
Virtually all scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus did exist as a real person and that's who the figure in the bible is based on. Obviously not as a divine being or anything, but there was an actual Jewish preacher in the first century.
hakunawazo 2 points 6 months ago
Brian
JohnnyEnzyme 2 points 6 months ago
There were scads of such Jewish preachers as I understand it. For example, Monty Python's Life of Brian was particularly great for being both a humor film, but also a surprisingly accurate one, in which such preachers were depicted.
I understand "Jesus" was indeed based on at least one person ("Yshua ben Yosef" perhaps), but my point is-- I don't see any reason (as with most other figures in legend and mythology) why it couldn't have been based on more than a single person. Because even the best evidence we have upon all this is little more than retold stories, edited and curated by people several centuries later.
Jesus might as well be a ghost.
MonkderVierte 1 point 6 months ago
Bible also has a lot of Moses and his story almost certainly goes back to some ancient epos.
JohnnyEnzyme 3 points 6 months ago
Just heavily borrowing figures and legends from early mythos, a lot of them based in the Fertile Crescent as I understand it, i.e. Egyptian, and various civs between the Tigres & Euphrates rivers.
fallaciousBasis 6 points 6 months ago
Perfect example of how all gods are personal gods.
But believers will never grasp that.
It's always one God and it's definitely not you.
JohnnyEnzyme 1 point 6 months ago
Perfect example of how all gods are personal gods.
Well, an impersonal "god" such as the Hindu Brahman (etc) might defy that idea. Or my conception of The Cosmos-- vast and inscrutable, without the slightest interest in me, personally. Which, interestingly, helps me imagine myself as being a part of it, and not separate, as with typical Western Religion.
fallaciousBasis 0 points 6 months ago
How's that? We're all brahman, the atman, that from which there is no whicher.
But apparently we've forgotten that.
JohnnyEnzyme 1 point 6 months ago
I guess that condenses my thoughts above in to one idea, yes.
MonkderVierte 1 point 6 months ago
What was it again; because he had a certain ethnic origin, he was actually more dark-skinned than the local population?
JohnnyEnzyme 1 point 6 months ago
More time spent in the sun?
And hence, a certain variety of class distinction.
Caricatures
@feddit.org
312
116
1
We know how sensitive Mr. Trump is to his public perception. This community is for collecting good depictions that distort his image into accuracy, so that they may spread further.
Please make sure your submissions include attribution (e.g., a readable signature in the image, a link, or both).
Please don't post "AI"-generated imagery.
go to feed...
Caricatures
@feddit.org
312
116
1
We know how sensitive Mr. Trump is to his public perception. This community is for collecting good depictions that distort his image into accuracy, so that they may spread further.
Please make sure your submissions include attribution (e.g., a readable signature in the image, a link, or both).
Please don't post "AI"-generated imagery.
go to feed...
comic strip by Hilary B. Price
save