Ask Lemmy

They don't believe what you assume Christianity is. They believe in Calvinist predestination. They think that whenever something bad happens to someone, that person deserved it.

Because moral values don’t come from religious texts. They are transmitted socially and economically. The texts are then used to justify whatever belief system the believer subscribes to.

The real origin of these right-wing beliefs is an interesting question. They arise from a complex cultural and historical process that stems from the material conditions of both ancestral and present-day cultural groupings. My suspicion is that they arose because in these societies, the most successful reproductive and political strategies center around dominance hierarchies. Materially successful people are able to out-compete, out-reproduce, kill, or otherwise coerce people in their societies to adopt values and norms that justify and protect their social dominance and oppression. Even those on the bottom of these hierarchies, like women or the poor must adopt such values or be excluded or attacked.

There are also competing groups that either oppose such hierarchies or have adopted them to a lesser extent. It is from these groups that many Christian ideas originated. In general they tend to originate in urban areas—I suspect this is because there are more opportunities for people to escape from others who wish to dominate them as compared to agrarian societies where access to land or livestock can be monopolized by the powerful. Anonymity and cultural diversity in cities also allow the weak to more easily inflict violence on their dominators without suffering social consequences.

But over time, Christianity spread widely enough that people with different values adopted them. In other cases, the descendants of these anti-hierarchical Christians adopted hierarchical values for various reasons listed above. As the economic and political conditions of society change, people must adapt or die. Unfortunately, some of these adaptations can be harmful to society as a whole even as they benefit their adopters.

Control and conformity. Pseudo-morality.

The control is pretty standard stuff that goes with the authoritarian nature of religion. They place a person in charge who, like the deity, has all the answers and solves all the problems, so long as you believe and support them unquestioningly. If you’re not smart enough to sort out the system that you’ve been told is deliberately complicated and “rigged” you just listen to the Big Man and he’ll sort it all out for you.

Conformity is making the in-group and out-groups. The in-group demands loyalty and support. The out-groups are anyone else you want them to be. Immigrants. Minorities. Other religious groups. Political opponents. It’s ridiculously blatant in US republicans where even if their wives or themselves are personally insulted by their leader they still support and vote for the group. You must conform. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. Very binary thought.

Religion offers the moral angle as well. Despite American Christians, particularly evangelicals, claiming to support Christian ideals they objectively and subjectively do not. The list is too long to process here, but basic greed, hatred, violence, and all the rest of what most of us would consider anti-Christian values are at the forefront of the more outspoken religious Right. Yet they’ve been raised and told that the “godless Left” have no morals, if you’re not religious you can’t have morals, and whatever other tripe that allows them to accomplish the mental gymnastics they go through to claim moral superiority while doing things like making sure migrants drown in rivers trying to cross illegally into the US.

The hypocrisy and mental gymnastics engaged in by the American Right in many facets of their workings, not just their feigned religion, is mind-boggling. They’ve gone so far past the available superlatives describing their hypocrisy and greed that you just have to throw up your hands in disgust and walk away before it drives you crazy.

It isn't Christ-ianity, as benJoseph, himself, was the wokest guy in all the new testament.

It is wearing the appearances of "their" religion while pushing animal-reaction-with-no-moral-responsibility that is going-on.

The genociders of Russia & Israel are doing the same thing, just with different appearances.

The Great Filter.

Read Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast & Slow", which is the most important psychology book on the planet, right now, & see how all these return to fundamentalism, where we are inherently valid, and genociding all "others" is our "GOD-given" Right rabids are..

pushing Kahneman System-1 ( imprint->reaction, aka animal-reaction, the limbic "reasoning" of herdbeasts & pack-animals, and gangs, and ideology-addiction/prejudice-addiction, which are 2-sides of the same "coin" ) to be displacing considered-reasoning, Kahneman System-2, from the world, is the consistent underlying-commitment in all of these fundamentalists.

They may wear the appearances of "the communist party", or whatever Putin's party is, or the republican party, or zionism, or the Confucian Marxist Leninist Kapha-metabolism anti-spiritual ideology of the CCP, but the underlying motivation is murdering/obliterating alternative-to-their-ideology/prejudice from our world, for their herd/gang's global totalitarian supremacy.

This is natural, in The Great Filter, when humankind's unconscious fights to beat/break/obliterate moral-anxiety from its domain, and animal-reaction can't have moral-responsibility, so that is The Answer(tm), according to our unconscious-ignorance.

Faction against faction, until the polycrisis/metacrisis has "justified" exterminating our world's life, is how unconscious-ignorance wants to play it out, for the "mythic" "importance" or "significance" of being THE "important thing" that beat God, broke God's plan, & made God obey ( toddler-tantrums are always aimed at making the parents OBEY: that is their point ).

Universe, however, can't care, and .. no obeying/catering-to our unconscious-ignorance's narcissism/entitlement is going to happen, so..

..

WHEN you encounter an addict systematically denying facts, whether a smoker denying that their smoking has anything, whatsoever, to do with their endless coughing, or a crack-addict denying that their utterly-corroded-health has anything to do with the crack that's using their life, or an ideology-addict/prejudice-addict denying that evidence shows ClimatePunctuation exists, let-alone is still-accelerating ( as it must, for decades-more ),

THEN you are seeing Kahneman System-1's fighting-off of objectivity/considered-reason, protecting animal-reaction, and the no-moral-responsibility condition that unconsciousness/ignorance wants to rule all, while narcissistically being catered-to by God.

The most central piece of evidence in this mechanism is .. actually so old that it probably is from about the time of the sudden-collapse of the last Ice Age, 11,750-ish years ago:

In the Christian bible, the story in Genesis, of woman eating "the fruit of the Knowledge of Good & Evil" means woman ate Morality.

It's RIGHT FSCKING THERE.

( altruism is generalized-mothering, as researchers from Exeter & Bristol universities found hard-evidence of, in studying wasps' altruism, in Panama )

Morality is what women ate, & then shared it with us guys.

Moral-anxiety is the "downfall" the "loss of (animal-ignorance) grace".

Herdbeasts do not have our moral-anxiety, they live in the "grace" of mere-animal-ignorance.

Notice, however, that for millenia, religion-men have distorted the story to convict women of "sin" that somehow downfell our entire species.

Gaslighting on that scale may never have been equalled, for significance of evil.

Think, though: *it's the same thing as what the "Christians" are doing!

Kahneman System-1 is fighting-off considered-reasoning, and all the "women, who (supposedly) caused humankind's downfall, ought be uneducated, barefoot, & pregnant, at home, obeying their LORD, a man" scammery is just male-ego trying to occupy the earthly place of lord, or trying to be the proxy "god".

Israel's claiming that Ezekiel 39 asserts that it is going to be successfully eradicating its neighbors, gaining supremacy..

.. while creating such absolute-hatred among all the region surrounding them, that their "deterrent" is being corroded-away ..

.. so that in a few years the Muslim region won't care how much damage Israel does to them, while they're annihilating Israel ..

Ideology-addiction/prejudice-addiction has strategic consequences.

Israel's going to be annihilated, exactly as benJoseph stated, 2 millenia ago.

It's the same, everywhere: animal-ignorance of ideology-addiction/prejudice-addiction is committed to genociding "others", and arranges its own annihilation, whether through political reaction, or through assumption-river/religion reaction, or through impersonal forces like ClimatePunctuation, or food-chain-collapse, both terrestrial & marine ( late this century ), the same won't think, because God obeys the local Ideology/Prejudice .. the same mechanism.

Imagine humankind turning into herdbeasts, & through the different factions vying for supremacism, the entirety of herdbeast-humankind stampeding off a giant cliff, becoming all dead, broken at the bottom.

That is The Great Filter's probable outcome, at the moment.

the "politics" of Leninism, which uses brainwashing "education" to produce/enforce "proletariat dictatorship",

and the "politics" of Murdochism, which uses brainwashing TV to produce/enforce "populist dictatorship",

they're really both fighting to obliterate considered-reasoning from all authority, for their exclusive dominion.

They're the same thing, under the appearances.

Same with the assumption-river/religion of legalism, which benJoseph railed-against 2 millenia ago, notice that the "Christians" pushing christofascism are legalists, who play exactly the same games that the "Jews" of the Pharisees who convicted benJoseph played..

No shame, no accountability, no responsibility, only machiavellian narcissism & sociopathy/psychopathy..

Another assumption-river/religion underlying many "religious" gaslighters is the class-based-"validity" one, which both monarchy & oligarchy are examples of.

Every time you see the narcissism-body-language of a doctor, condescending to their inferiors ( use video to capture it, watch it in slow-motion, as it becomes much more visible, then ), you're seeing that religion.

Dad was a medical-researcher & doctor: I grew into presuming the same upper-middle-class "validity" that he presumed.

7+ years of homelessness, total, throughout my life, finally broke that identity-underlying-ego, to some extent. Cracked it.

Read the book by researchers Logan, King, & Fischer-Wright, named "Tribal Leadership", on the 5 levels ( not stages: they're mistaken. Stages are irreversible & sequential, like caterpillar->moth. Cultural-process-levels are not irreversible-sequential. ).

They use doctors as the exemplars of narcissism-culture, identifying a simple experiment we all can do:

Wearing a suit, & belonging in it, walk into any hospital, & count the % of junior-staff who still have enough human-validity/human-dignity left in them, to meet your gaze.

Only 1 hospital, that those researchers ever encountered, had junior-staff who still had equal-human-validity in them.

Then consider narcissism-culture outside of medical-culture..

the US had over 600 mass-shootings in 2023.

Mass-shootings are narcissism, lashing-out against others' lives, to "get even" with their wounded-narcissism.

The 4 false-religions underlying much "politics" and much "religions" are:

• psychopathic corporate-moneyarchy
• class-status-based-"validity" ( monarchy is purely this, oligarchy is the intersection of moneyarchy & class-status-based-"validity", in a Venn diagram )
• legalism
• authority-worship

Notice how grabbed-authority-is-the-LORD is taking-over politics..

Notice how legalism is wedging-out accountability, everywhere..

Notice how psychopathic corporate-moneyarchy is fighting to prevent living-wage from existing among more & more of the world's population, joining sadism & nihilism to psychopathy..

Notice how the narcissistic-birthright-entitlement of class-status-based-"validity" is more & more & more obviously becoming central to the fundamentalists who're highjacking the whole world.

The "politics" and the "religions" are just makeup.

The real underlying drive, is breaking/obliterating considered-reasoning from having any authority, anywhere, so rampaging nonaccountability can be the alpha-bull, or "lord".

It's our limbic-brain fighting-off the cortex, or human-brain, one final time.

Never mistake the symptoms for the underlying-condition.

see the fundamentalism underlying it all.

It's sooo simple, sooo clear, sooo .. immense.

_ /\ _

As a Christian (albeit not American), no clue. I think it's mainly on single issue problems such as abortion or sexual immorality, to be honest.

Although it could also be a loud minority problem, where the actual Christians are less outspoken. Who knows.

This isn't really true. A lot of Democrat voters are also Christian. If by "fervent," you mean "hateful," this may be more true. A large percentage of Democrat voters are also Christian, but not as hard-line about LGBT issues, and perhaps not as hard-line about abortion.

The type of Christians that Republicans court are easy to persuade and control. Religion has historically been used to create in-groups and out-groups, and as a form of control.

If one were to take the Christian bible at face-value, they would oppose things like sexual freedom. Most leftists/socialists think about intersectionality, so they would be opposed to people who have the "morals" of many Christians.

Trick question. They are not.

Ok, that's disingenuous. They are Christians. Except, they are nothing like christ.

I know each person will find a different quality of christ that is most like themselves and attribute that as his defining feature but to me christ was radically liberal. Christ saw the hurting in the world and said "I won't submit to it" but gave himself to it freely. In doing so he freed himself. Christ saw the labrythian rules and dogmas of the prevailing religion of his time; saw how it was punishing people and fought to reform. He knew he has just as much authority over God's word as any prophet or religious person and give himself to make the needed changes that would ease the suffering of everyone. It was that and a dash of magic; the world was changed. Slowly but thoroughly.

He was a brown middle eastern liberal. Nothing like the Christians we see today. If there was a christ for today they would reform again and the cycle of religous power struggle would continue.

It's just a trick to get votes they are as heathen as they come. Since Christians believe in made up bullshit they are easy to trick out of money and votes. It's really not any deeper than that.

Based on my limited knowledge of Christianity, it is all about social justice, compassion and peace.

That's expected. That's what they say they are about. However, one only ever needs to open their book, the bible, or just observe history the past 2000 years, to see that is NOT at all what they do.

You have a very GOOD understanding of Christianity. You're seeing it for what it really is. That hypocrisy is intentional, and obscured by the mythology of: "I dunno, god's weird, right?"

It's by design that Republicans, considering all those observations, would claim they were. Because they are the real christians. [My best MAGAT impression]: "Not like these liberal hippies that just want everyone to be kind to one another. That's socialism!" And on and on.

They're the most fervent Protestant Christians certainly. I'd say the Catholic demographic probably leans more heavily toward the Democratic party, and the Orthodox will vary by jurisdiction.

Every week they gather and listen to a man telling them what to believe, unquestionably, and without evidence.

Then a politician comes along and tells them more things to believe, unquestionably, and without evidence.

For a bunch of guys always talking about prophets, their belief system has zero predictive power.

Because Abrahamic faiths are first and foremost built on deciding a truth and working backwards to “prove”(convince yourself and brainwash your kids) it.

This works well for right wing ideologies built around social classes and believing whatever you’re told without question.

Add to that that Christians are on average significantly dumber, then all you have to do is tickle their confirmation bias and they won’t give anything you do a second thought.

Part of the issue with many religions is that they exists in multiple components. There is

• the religion as the nebulous idea of a culture as adopted by word of mouth generational teaching.

• religion as depicted and codified by a holy script.

• the popculture adoptions of religion through time that become traditionally indistinct.

• the branches of philosophical thought inside the religion changing the window of interpretation and creating schisms

• The economic and power structures involved in maintaining physical sites of worship and a guiding priesthood.

• The political stances the powers inside the religious complex adopt to adapt to specific historical events.

These different factors are generally all at play though there are exceptions like some religions do not have a holy text or sites of worship for instance. Religions are kind of aggregates of time, tradition and thought and distorted by time as well. For instance linguistic and technological drift makes it very hard to appropriately understand a text in it's proper context. Like David and Goliath becomes a very different story when you understand that a sling weilded appropriately is like firing a pistol at short range.

Christianity is kind of a mess in the concept of time. A lot of belief brought into Christianity predated it. Hell for instance predates Christianity (it is not explicitly mentioned in the text but was passed down linguistically) and the conception of it borrowed off of Buddhist, Norse and Grecco/Roman ideas of the underworld. Other things like the Seven Deadly Sins, Lucifer, Monastic living and so on were often inventions of single people who essentially just started fads. Priesthoods have always been tied into concepts of authority through study and internal structures around property. Becoming an abbot was basically just another way to gain the ruling autonomy of nobility for land use. The political structure inside the Church has changed it's relationship with things out of fear as well. The idea of abortion as murder is tracable to the black death when priests worried that a population collapse would cause disaster for society so it changed it's teaching from the concept of "ensoulment" and being very abortion neutral to facilitating a literal witchunt destroying existing systems of female led midwifery to gain reproductive control.

Christianity has at some level always been about power, control and resources... But there are also multiple Christianities. For instance a person who reads the book but rejects the church or the built up dogma of traditions is still a Christian. You can also adopt just the institution or the popculture understanding of Christianity and still be a Christian. Adopting every peice of a religion is itself optional.

The problem being is that understanding the text and history requires a lot of effort, intellectual savvy and time in study. Just like the medieval times people tend to get their understanding from people who did that work for them (or say they did) to supply the missing context. A lot of the time people accept whatever "feels" right and people also tend to be self centric. Feeling superior by category of beliefs we have been handed is something we are all potentially susceptible to.

Because they stopped maturing when they were 8 years old and mommy and daddy were dragging them to church every weekend.