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94 points
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Without getting too /r/atheism, it is funny to see the lengths many Christian scholars will go to try and justify that line.

“Oh, well they were probably actually referring to this giant arch that might have once been translated as “the eye of the needle”, meaning that they were saying it’s really easy to get into heaven”

Like what the fuck? What do you guys think is the point of the passage then?

And these aren’t like yokels and grifters. They’re like PhDs in Christian Theology. The religion at a point is just almost entirely concerned with making up translations and it literally always has been

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32 points

Especially when the next couple of verses explains it.

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18 points

Christians love to do this thing where they pretend each verse, taken completely out of context, stands on its own. Seems to be especially popular with American evangelicals.

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19 points

In fact, they like to think that the verses only make sense out of context. No matter how many other verses you can cite across multiple books where Christ makes it clear He’s commanding you to abandon the idea of worldly, material possessions and dedicate yourself and your wealth to helping other people and spreading the word, they’ll go “No it was just a gate” and keep not doing what Christ told them to while pretending to be Christians.

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15 points

Yeah, it’s pretty unambiguous. Jesus tells the rich boy that came to him to give away all their possessions and let the Lord clothe them as he does the birds and flowers. Rich boy gets real sad and goes away.

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31 points

Kind of how they only focus on half of the definition of Gluttony and ignore how it also means excessive Greed.

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7 points

Which is besides the point because Greed is already one of the deadly sins in it’s own right.

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3 points
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I find most of the seven sins redundant.

Lust and gluttony and envy fall under greed. You could also argue sloth for greed of sleep. Wrath and pride are the only two that don’t fall under the greed category.

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11 points

And these aren’t like yokels and grifters.

They’re not?

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12 points

No. Many of them aren’t. I get the jab, but I think reducing everyone who has strange or perplexing, even illogical views to just being “an idiot or a grifter” isn’t productive.

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6 points

Ah right - they’re the griftees, having paid a fuckton of money for a PhD in “Christian Theology.”

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3 points

okay, but you can look at the specific perplexing or illogical view when making that judgment and if that specific illogical view is designed to promote your own wealth the needle on the bullshitometer moves a bit closer to “grifter”

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5 points

Well it’s pretty easy to get around even without the translation mental gymnastics, you just have to ask for forgiveness before you die and put the church as the only beneficiary in your will.

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Memes

!memes@lemmy.ml

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