Chapter 8 Exposing the pathologies of Christianity to the public. Updated.
Memes shared only in social media groups of like minded individuals doesn't do much. Allowing religious, metaphysical, ideological, and philosophical differences divide us will defeat us.
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About what doesn’t work and why progress has been poor.
Before discussing what we need to do, it would be good to discuss what isn’t effective.
First thing, just posting items in atheist groups where they will be read only by other atheists, doesn’t do much. It might keep be of use to an atheist having to deal with some Christian, but generally, most of the members of these groups are fairly familiar with all the critical ideas concerning Christianity. In fact some of these atheist Facebook groups don’t allow sharing of a post.
What would be good, is if they shared it on their personal Facebook page, or X (formerly twitter) or on other social media, and not some contained forum.
Some of these atheists still haven’t gotten over their fundamentalist childhoods and they need to get over it and move on to do something.
If we are going to make progress, we must be willing to speak up and speak to the public.
For Gays in the alternative religions, there is no thought at all that there is a responsibility to defend the Gay community. A lot of the members are escapist and their interest in alternative religions is to escape challenges and are alarmed by the idea of fighting any homophobia at all. When they reject homophobic Christianity, they are often only doing so in similarly confined spaces in social media.
The leadership of the LGBT thinks that happy talk about inclusion and love and other things is going to deal with homophobic Christianity. Clearly it isn’t. This strategy avoids conflicts that might cause issues for the Democratic political establishment which wants to get Gay votes, but also hopes to get Christian votes at the same time, and doesn’t want to call out Christian homophobia as Christian problem. They are a large block of voters. Lots of local and national LGBT groups get funding from government for social services or donations from corporations. None of them want any controversy. LGBT political groups have an agenda connected to the agenda of the more general (straight) political groups which don’t want to have a campaign targeting homophobic Christianity as a Christian problem.
A campaign against homophobic Christianity will need to be outside the existing LGBT groups and formations.
Criticism of their leaders’ material wealth isn’t going to do much except convince those who already reject Evangelical Christianity that their decision is correct. The believes don’t care if their leader has one private jet or a dozen, they may in fact feel the more jets the more their leader is valid.
Then there is the proposal to go after tax exemptions for churches that are political. This idea is usually proposed with no real means proposed to actually have it accomplished. Mostly it is proposed in place of doing something to shut down the conversation of actually doing something. Unless the churches lose their power, they aren’t going to lose tax exemptions for being political. Having this action item as a starting item for a campaign against homophobic Christianity makes no sense. Even if they could lose their tax exemptions, they would alter their behavior to avoid losing their tax exemptions, but there could still campaign against Gays in the social sphere.
The atheists fight for the separation of church and state. This has some value, but even separated from the state, homophobic Christianity can still go after Gays in society. The separation of church and state usually isn’t that sustainable if a large fraction of society is Christian. Separation of church and state didn’t prevent the laws against homosexual sex. Separation of church and state historically has meant that one Christian faction can’t use the government to go after another Christian faction or get privileged over other Christian factions.
The discussion about the separation of church and state isn’t about Christian homophobia and isn’t going after Christian homophobia.
Don’t push away potential allies by making this an atheist movement. Besides the Abrahamic faiths, (Christian, Muslim, Judaism), the other religions aren’t that much concerned about Gays. They may not be all that friendly, but they aren’t that much concerned either, and not focused on going after Gays. Christianity has antagonized a lot of religious groups in history and these other religious can easily see how Christianity has obliterated completing religions.
Christians thrive on persecution in terms of abuse. Martyrdom is a major element in their religion. Avoid tactics which feed into their self-glorification as persons suffering for Christ. Vandalism, violence, verbal abuse like cursing, or other abusive tactics enable their fantasies as crusaders or martyrs for Christ.
Avoid tactics which center them in things. They always need to be just one bad choice among multiple choices.
Also, don’t push away Gays who are against homophobic Christianity, but aren’t going to be pushed into atheism. We don’t want to force people into having to decide to be atheists as a precondition to deciding to go after homophobic Christianity. A lot of people aren’t ready and never will be ready to give up the potential of religion and metaphysical speculation about life. There needs to be the development of Gay spiritual alternatives to Christianity. The movement can’t be pushing people out of Christianity with only one place to go spiritually, that is atheism.
There is no need to have people be atheists to go after homophobic Christianity.
Some people will always want some religious life or spiritual life, and not live in a world materialist world.
Gay atheists use atheism to reject religious belief which would include Christianity which would then necessarily reject homophobic Christianity. That works for them, but it isn’t going to be acceptable to everyone, and even not acceptable to most people.
Most importantly, atheism isn’t a required step to reject homophobic Christianity. There are a multitude of paths which lead to the rejection of homophobic Christianity. A movement against homophobic Christianity will require that everyone wanting to fight homophobic Christianity work together.
Further, there is a great potential in these alternative religions to mobilize Gays in ways that will also be a force against homophobic Christianity. These religious alternatives might act to get Gay Christians to push a little harder against homophobic Christianity.
What needs to be done.
We need to organize. There isn’t a group currently that specifically is targeting homophobic Christianity. We probably could do a lot, even without new ideas if we had an organized campaign.
We need to speak openly, forcefully, directly and critically without restraint about the pathological nature of Christianity. Up until now this hasn’t been done. Gay atheists and Gays in alternative religions are scarcely even visible in the LGBT communities. Even with the existing arguments of Gay atheists and Gay in alternative religions there is a possibility of progress if these arguments were in the general community.
We need to adopt outspoken, provocative, agitating and creative tactics to de-normalize Christianity. Even when our arguments are denounced, it gets people to think about them. We should not rely on just showing some logical inconsistency in Christianity. Analytical logic isn’t a deciding method for most people. Our efforts need to emotionally reach people.
Point out that Christianity is a religion of terror relying on hellfire and punishment in the afterlife, when they can’t do punishment like slaughter and burning people at the stake in this life.
Point out that their god is a violent psychopath and is motivated by jealously. Point out the violent, psychopathic history of Christianity as directly related to their theology.
Point out the disgusting, vicious, horrible, and lurid parts of the Bible. Make it very visible. Point out the ritual cannibalism of their God.
Point out that Christianity is fragile. It doesn’t really have faith in itself, it sees competing religious as a real danger. It sees critical thinking and commentary about Christianity as a real danger to itself. That is why it is hysterical about people worshiping other religions, criticizing Christianity. This is why Christianity is exclusionary, and doesn’t allow people to worship more than one god, and why it demands total loyalty, it knows that it isn’t a pleasant religion and without a policy of separating and containing its members inside Christianity, it likely will disintegrate.
Point out that Christianity is fragile, and that is why they are always trying to run the lives of non-believers and police them. If non-believers are able to exist openly and freely and successfully not following Christian rules, it tends to undermine the credibility of Christian theology. Since many people become Christians to put their lives in order, they want to have society dominated by their rules since they are tempted. They can’t handle alcohol and their Christianity is a duct tape to keep themselves together, but just help themselves they want to regulate your use of alcohol.
When the historical nature of Christianity is pointed out, the standard evasion is that the Christian faith is composed of people and their failings. Yet, isn’t the Christian faith supposed to make people better, not worse? Christians have a heads I win, tails you lose theology. Anything good comes from God, anything bad if a failed Christian person.
Always make clear the Christian origin of disordered behavior and things for which they are the origin. For example, the three outbreaks of Covid are attributed to Christian groups not following Covid safety there. Globally Christians resisted Covid safety and lot of Christians died of it. This wasn’t an accident, a group that rejects rational thinking and has an ongoing hysteria is likely to do irrational things undermining the safety of society.
Recently, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued Pfizer for the Covid vaccine using reasoning that ArsTechnica called “pure stupid.”[1] Who are the anti-vaxxers in society that are supporting Paxton? It is Evangelical Christians.
Point out Christianity’s irrational anti-science views and in particular how it mentally processes scientific evidence to the contrary.
When Christians are doing some atrocious or disordered thing point out that it derived from the nature of their religion. Point out that there is always this potential that Christians will have an irrational reaction undermining the safety of society.
The next pandemic might be Nipah. Its fatality rate is 40% to 100%, transmissible between humans, and it has no vaccine.[2] Texas Attorney General Paxton is harassing vaccine manufacturers who might develop a vaccine. Outbreaks in Asia are contained by strenuous measures. Imagine what would happen if Nipah came to the United States and there was no vaccine and Evangelical Christians refused to follow safety procedures and were babbling about being vaccinated in Christ. It could be like something is a science fiction movie. The morgues would be filled up, hospitals would be mobbed by panicked people, people would fear to go to work, dead bodies would be in the streets.
The reasons that Christianity so often is driven to disordered behavior is inherent in its nature. Some denomination or church might not be currently campaigning to go after another religion, or Gays or something else, they may not be campaigning against vaccines or harassing biology teachers trying to teach evolution, but it needs to be perceived that a relapse is always possible.
Make s point to show how the Bible, both New and Old Testament supports slavery, which it does, and Jesus uses slavery to explain his religion. The purpose isn’t to justify slavery, or to do the Gay Christian argument that some things are to be regarded in the Bible and somethings discarded. The purpose is to show how Christians are opportunistic and self-serving and self-delusional and their theology is incoherent. A side benefit would be that people realize that Christianity supports slavery. Its pro-slavery program is just at this time is dormant.
Educate the public how Christianity has an inherent psychopathic self-serving nature and is a danger to society.
Look for allies among those who are also threaten by Christianity. This shouldn’t be hard, they have bullied so many.
Take multiple paths to fight homophobic Christianity and don’t allow religious, spiritual, metaphysical or philosophical differences divide us and defeat us.
[1] Mole, Beth, “Texas sues Pfizer with COVID anti-vax argument that is just pure stupid,” ArsTechnica, 12/4/2023, https://arstechnica.com/health/2023/12/texas-sues-pfizer-with-covid-anti-vax-argument-that-is-pure-stupid/ downloaded 12/13/2023.
[2] No author, Nipah Virus Infection India, 10/3/2023, Word Health Organization, WHO, https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2023-DON490
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