I’m Buddhist, and it’s always struck me as odd that so many religious people require their text to be literally true.
If it were to be definitively proven that the person called Jesus Christ never existed as a historical person on earth, the various Christian churches and organizations would stop at nothing to attempt to discredit this. They would be furious.
On the other hand, if it were definitively proven that Siddartha Gautama, the person who will be called the Buddha, never existed as a historical person on earth, most Buddhists would find it interesting, probably even humorous, and would go on happily practicing Buddhism.
I went to Catholic school (in Canada) and was taught (by priests and nuns) that Christianity probably started as a mushroom cult, Jesus probably didn’t exist but was a composite of various wandering prophets/lunatics wandering around about that time (apparently it’s been a popular way for idle young men to pick up chicks for centuries), etc… The bible was taught as a (very flawed) historical document and not the literal “word of god” as it was decades before. Even services were performed as comforting archaic rituals rather than stodgy religious services. This was consistent across schools, and even the one that was the seat of a cardinal was no different.
The Catholic religion gets a lot of flack (and deservedly so!), but at least they recognize it’s basically just ritualistic bullshit (in Canada at least). Looking back, I think they are just happy to have people in their weird shroomless mushroom cult.
Christianity’s power rest on Jesus nature as God and human at the same time. Without that the theology would have to be very very different.
Reading the new testament would be informative on this front. It is not about philosophy or morals, it is about Jesus Christ as a specific individual one must suck up to.
That’s very interesting to me. I dont know anything about Buddhism, can you explain why Buddists wouldn’t be affected much if they found out their relifious figure never existed? I think for christians it would be devastating because it would mean all the promises the bible makes wouldn’t come true, like a rewarding after life for it’s followers and a punishing afterlife for non-believers. FYI I’m athiest, but I find religion and it’s verious practices to be fascinating.
Because it’s not about the person, it’s about the Dharma, the teachings. Those exist with or without a historical Buddha, and that’s what guides the practice.
Imagine that someone is showing you the moon by pointing at it. You want to look at the moon, not the finger. The Buddha is a finger pointing at the moon.
Enlightenment isn’t about some mystical truth and seeing into the unknown. It’s about stripping away the illusions that cloud the way we see this reality. Those stories about the Buddha are ways to illustrate some of those illusions and how others might have come to the realization. It doesn’t matter if they really happened. A lot of them are so constructed that they are probably fake, at least to some degree.
One that really affected me was the 72 problems story (or some number lol, I only remember that it’s not 99, because 99 problems is from that Jay-z song, but ultimately it doesn’t matter how many problems “everyone has”).
For the short version, a man goes to the Buddha because he heard he can help him with his problems. He complains about his farm not doing well, his wife nagging, his kids not respecting him, a whole slew of 72 or so problems, and for each one when he asks if the Buddha can help him with that, the Buddha tells him no. Finally he complains that he didn’t help him with any problem and the Buddha says “everyone has 72 problems, but I can help you with your 73rd problem: the problem that you have problems. Problems are a fact of life, if you get so bent up about having problems, you’re going to have a miserable life because there’s always problems. Accept that the problems exist and you’ll find peace.” And then the guy was enlightened (in that specific aspect of life, since enlightenment isn’t a global state but basically just means “learned a deep lesson”).
I’d get annoyed at needing to deal with things. Still do sometimes; enlightenment isn’t some magical state. But when I notice that that is bugging me, I just remember the 72 problems story and dismiss that 73rd problem from affecting my mood. Which also indirectly helps with the problems themselves, because if you’re pissed about having to deal with stuff, you’ll be less effective at dealing with them (especially if your mood rubs off on others or attracts trolls). It truly feels like understanding that enabled an easy mode on some aspects of life. If the whole story was made up, it doesn’t undo that understanding or eliminate that easy mode.
Whereas I’ve known Christians who can’t understand why atheists don’t just go around murdering people because if they don’t believe in the Bible, what’s even the point of trying to be good?
I like that story a lot, it’s a good reminder that we may not be able to change our circumstances but we can always change our attitude. So would you say Buddhism is more of a system of thought and less of a religion? Kinda like stoicism?
There is a mysticism angle to it with reincarnation and all that, I think something like a belief that you keep coming back until you can achieve true enlightenment or something like that. Imo that stuff is a nice idea but I’m agnostic overall, so my belief in that regard is “who knows?”
But I do really like the Buddhist philosophy and think it has a lot of value because it doesn’t have to lean on the mystical side to work. It makes sense with or without any idea of heaven or nirvana. Enlightenment is worthwhile for its own sake.
I don’t think Buddhism is unique in that regard. All religions have at least nuggets of valuable philosophy. My personal belief is that Buddhism is denser and broader than most when it comes to that, but I’m no religious scholar so it could just be a lack of knowledge of others.
IMO the best belief systems pick and choose values and lessons based on their own merit rather than having to take or leave the whole package. I also believe that anyone can evaluate those values, as long aa they are thoughtful, honest, and willing to challenge any and all aspects of them. Someone can be more wise than another, but anyone can get there eventually.
You seem like a very emotionally intelligent person, and I respect you a lot. Thank you for sharing your beliefs with and worldview me. I think we would agree on more than we would differ.
Thanks for the kind words, it feels good to be seen sometimes. You seem thoughtful yourself and I’m happy you asked that original question in good faith. The world would be a nicer place with more like you.
Because it doesn’t change the message at all. And if you follow a religion because you agree with its teachings, does the source really matter??
If you read somewhere you should be kind to others for betterment of the society. You said “that makes sense, I’ll do it from now onwards”, and you later learn it was a fantasy story and wasn’t talking about real life, would you stop being kind? Now replace that with not actively hurting people.
This is why Christianity is so scummy. The only reason these shit heels “give back” is because they expect to he rewarded for it. Oh no, we can’t just be kind to be kind, we do it because we are promised something on the back end. Same energy and douchebags who record themselves donating to say the homeless. It’s all about what they get out of the transaction. A fucking pat on the back.
Even worse, in its effort to capture even the shittiest people, Christianity has created a loophole where its believers can deliberately be shitty while expecting everything to be ok if they confess and repent before the end. Like a divine “sorry you’re upset with what I did”.
Buddha mentions following the doctrine while also not discounting new discoveries of future eras
Good God, tune the self-righteousness down a notch… I can barely see the screen through the smog of smug oozing from your post.
Good
GodBuddha(that’s definitely your thing, there’s no such smug oozing from anywhere)
You may be bathing in it to the point you don’t notice it anymore.
damn ! nobody’s coming out unscathed
Good one.
you wanna keep talking ?
Did that sound good in your head?
Self-righteous, you say? Oozing of smuuuuggg, you say? You’re smelling your own upper lip.
Actually there are many books of Spiderman which means there’s more proof for Spiderman than there is for God.
And New York City is real, so that means Spiderman is real (this is literally the logic that some Christians use to defend the Bible)
Also, there are now more Ikea catalogs published than the Bible, making Ikea the superior religion.
Since Ikea a famous for their meatballs, a part of the holy dish and body of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, our Holy Noodle is more real than the Christian god, or any other god.
Middle English: via Old French from ecclesiastical Latin biblia, from Greek (ta) biblia ‘(the) books’, from biblion ‘book’, originally a diminutive of biblos ‘papyrus, scroll’, of Semitic origin.
Little books. Booklets. Since both God and Spiderman have several books, they will have to play this out by arm wrestling or Parcheesi.
Imagine picking up a copy of a copy of a copy of partial recreation of a blog entry about Spiderman existing in the year 4000, and having a long argument over whether Alain Robert, “The Human Spider” ever existed.
Imagine picking up a copy of William Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” in the year 4000 and insisting “This guy couldn’t have been real, either”.
It’s curious, because I rarely see this argument aimed at the Apostles - particularly John and Peter. There’s just this tacit “They’re liars, it never happened” subtext. No one is brave enough to challenge the entire history of a schism in the Jewish church two millennia ago. Or to consider the apocrypha or the gnostic texts or the plethora of splinter faiths that emerged from this singular moment.
These are things that seemingly happened independent of a non-existent person, without any identifiable precursors. It’s like spilling a bunch of ink claiming Lincoln wasn’t real without asking who won the presidency in 1860.
In Julius Caesar a clock strikes three, and while they had hours (a fraction of the daytime, not a standard unit) they didn’t have mechanical clocks.
But then while we know what happened to Julius Caesar based on historical accounts, even chronicles were politicized, which is why we don’t know of Julia the Elder boffed half of Rome or was just the victim of slander. (Dramatists prefer she did while academics assume she was virtuous). So we know some of the details of the mass assassination of Julius Caesar but we only know some of the general details, which allows a lot of latitude in period recreations.
Jesus existed according to academics (based on third party accounts) but he might have just been an anti-establishment activist or a failed apocalyptic prophet. Not only did Jerusalem have those by the dozen but so did most satellites from which Rome demanded tribute. The miracles and matching Jesus up to fit the prophesies came later. Also Pontius Pilate loved crucifixion and had execution teams on standby where it was considered elsewhere in Rome a dire sentence for the worst of offenders. Pilate was the Roman equivalent of a hanging judge, so it was super-easy for a malcontent in Jerusalem to end up on the cross.
But then while we know what happened to Julius Caesar based on historical accounts, even chronicles were politicized, which is why we don’t know of Julia the Elder boffed half of Rome or was just the victim of slander. (Dramatists prefer she did while academics assume she was virtuous). So we know some of the details of the mass assassination of Julius Caesar but we only know some of the general details, which allows a lot of latitude in period recreations.
We know about Julius Caeser in large part due to the highly politicized nature of the office. If he was a “lesser” consul or emperor, less material would be produced and preserved over the subsequent centuries. The materials around minor prophets in far-flung holdings where the biggest literate portions of the population were ideologically opposed to his contemporaries weren’t going to make it to Cato the Elder in a timely fashion.
That takes us to the documents we do have, which are absolutely larded up with embellishment and gossip and mythological rumor. That’s not an unknown problem for exceptionally historical figures. We don’t discount the existence of the Pharaohs of Egypt because their surviving manuscripts describe them as deities. Nor do we dismiss the existence of the city of Troy because our handful of texts insist the city was frequented by Greek gods and goddesses.
Jesus existed according to academics (based on third party accounts) but he might have just been an anti-establishment activist or a failed apocalyptic prophet. Not only did Jerusalem have those by the dozen but so did most satellites from which Rome demanded tribute.
The significance of the founder of the Christian movement wasn’t that he was one more anti-establishment apocalypse prophet, but that he succeeded in galvanizing an enormous popular movement in a way prior rabbis and rabble-rousers hadn’t.
Blandly comparing Christ to Spiderman only really makes sense if you believe Spiderman has had the same influence on modern American society and culture as a Jewish mystic had on Rome. I mean, maybe 2000 years from now we’ll see it differently. But it seems fairly obvious that’s not the case.
As I understand it, Christianity got lucky. Jesus’ incident led to a movement in a time when it suited the purposes of disregarded demographics, of ambitious warlords and academic philosophers. It was the grain of sand that started a landslide, the planet suitable for intelligent life to evolve.
Jesus (again, according to academic consensus) was the lucky quantum to start a massive chain reaction.
I’m reading it as a joke like “yeah sure, a guy named Jesus was born to a virgin and rose from the dead”- which is about as likely as Peter getting bit by a radioactive spider and swinging from skyscrapers with his webs. Has nothing to do with whether either are influential on society. Of course they both are to varying degrees. One is treated like Greek, Egyptian, or Incan gods or priests or whatever comparison you think best maintains the spiritual elements. The other more like Santa, where kids believe it only so long as their peers and adults play along.
Imo, as long as we move forward as a society eventually to recognize the mystical parts are bullshit, who cares. Humanity collectively still seems to be in Santa stage wanting miracles to exist.
I haven’t really heard that Jesus of Nazareth didn’t exist as an argument against Christianity, just that he wasn’t God and didn’t to miracles/resurrection. There is a ton of exaggeration in all mythology texts, and some are just stories to illustrate a point. But of those that did have factual events, they are rarely a true telling.
Maybe some Israelites left Egypt during a particularly shitty time in Egypt. It is so easy to take a story of a smallish group of Israelites escaping slavery during a plague and being chased by some guards who gave up, and repeatedly embellish that story until God both hardened Pharaoh’s heart and punished him for not doing right by His people (which number far more than could possibly have been living in Egypt at that time) by giving a series of plagues, and then wiping Pharaoh and his army out with a magical sea passage that closed on them. It’s such a trope of all human storytelling it’s been a joke for centuries.
Apply that to literally every story, think of the motivations behind those writing it, and you can get an amazing moral teacher becoming God.
But to the point of the meme, from the perspective of people in the future, there may have been a Peter Parker, but there’s no reason to believe there was a Spider-man without more to go on than the comics. Likewise, religious texts.
I haven’t really heard that Jesus of Nazareth didn’t exist as an argument against Christianity, just that he wasn’t God and didn’t to miracles/resurrection. There is a ton of exaggeration in all mythology texts, and some are just stories to illustrate a point. But of those that did have factual events, they are rarely a true telling.
Can you be more specific here? What are factual events? Are you referring to the Bible? Which events specifically?
Because my understanding is that the consensus among historians is that there’s only like one or two references to a “Jesus of Nazarath” outside of the Bible (Josephus being the main one, and even that is super vague).
The honus is on your to prove that he existed, not the other way around.
There are an unfortunate contingent of atheists that think “Jesus existed” = “support for Christianity.” I’ve had this argument on this very website. (Very common on the internet for someone to assume that a non-mythicist must be a Christian - uh, no, that’s following for that CS Lewis “lunatic or lord” false dichotomy.)
It’s clear that there was a real, vagrant preacher that had a following. Q and the Sayings source were likely compiled quickly after his death - it’s likely that many of the words attributed to him were the words of the real man.
At first, I don’t think he was understood as literally divine, just a messenger of god or prophet. There’s a clear escalation across the gospels if you read them in the order they were written - it’s really John that presents Jesus as the logos, and John was written last.
The most likely explanation was that he was an apocalyptic Messiah figure, who was supposed to lead to the overthrowing of the Romans. When he was killed, the cope became that he was resurrected. They negotiated with the text of the prophecies in the Hebrew Bible, and constructed the fully human/fully divine figure that eventually became the theological party line.
Which story will you remember the most: the boring and mundane, or the fantastical and exciting?
Most stories back then were also passed around by word of mouth, so each retelling will be slightly different (possibly also more exciting than the last). By the time someone decides to write it down it has already been distorted. Probably not much is left of the original story.
Maybe the story of Noah’s ark started out as a real story of a man who managed to save a few of his livestock from a stormy day, and then it somehow got so distorted it became a story about a man surviving a world encompassing extinction level event.
I haven’t really heard that Jesus of Nazareth didn’t exist as an argument against Christianity,
The big reason for this is that the name Jesus is interpreted and thousands of men came to and from Nazareth.
Can anyone disprove one of them wasn’t “Jesus of Nazareth”?
Tap
No more than anyone can prove one of them was.
I haven’t really heard that Jesus of Nazareth didn’t exist as an argument against Christianity, just that he wasn’t God and didn’t to miracles/resurrection.
I’ve seen quite a few folks float the full blown “Jesus was invented by the Romans to trick the occupied state of Palestine into accepting Roman rule” theory.
Apply that to literally every story, think of the motivations behind those writing it, and you can get an amazing moral teacher becoming God.
Sure. Siddhartha (the Buddha), Mohammad, even Confucius to come extent.
But like with most of these, the divinity of a figure is decided on well after they’ve been dead and buried. What I’m stuck on in the denialist “You can’t prove Ancient Historical Figure X existed now that I’ve arbitrarily rejected the veracity of all the existing materials.”
But to the point of the meme, from the perspective of people in the future, there may have been a Peter Parker, but there’s no reason to believe there was a Spider-man
The point of the meme is that religious texts are fictional, because fictional texts exist.
The point of the religion is that society should organize itself around certain traditions and taboos, because it will lead to a utopian future of peace and plenty.
There difference between Jesus and Spider-Man isn’t their magical powers, its their activist base of enthusiastic followers.
I’d rather have Spider-Man as a guide for my morals than that genocidal freak they call God.
You could do a lot worse than Peter. “With great power, there must come great responsibility” is an adage to live by.
- Be God
- Create humans
- Wipe out almost all life off earth in a flood because you’re not happy with the result
Yup, that’s what I call responsibility.
Spider-Man has canonically killed more people than God
Did Spider-Man ever kill every single person on the planet but one family?
In the multiverse crisis he accidentally destroys several other universes
The difference is ‘accidently’. God killed all of earth except one family on purpose and continues to kill people to this day. Assuming Gid is real, of course.
So then God murdered more people than Spider-Man.
Right. You do see how that’s worse right?
Spider-Man has canonically killed more people than God
Are you talking about the MCU Spider-Man? If you want to go there, then every version of Yahweh that exists has definitely killed more people than every version of Spider-Man that exists.
Not to mention Yahweh genocides on purpose rather than by accident.
If you want to go there, then every version of Yahweh that exists
See, this is where the metaphor really breaks down. You’re trying to shoehorn Pop Sci-Fi tropes into a significantly older franchise. There is no “every version of Yahweh”. Like, canonically, there’s exactly three versions. One of them is the wrathful mass murderer. One’s the nice prophet who got strung up for preaching a revolutionary form of compassion. And one of them is a force-ghost that mostly just operates as Bronze Age Babelfish.
Not to mention Yahweh genocides on purpose rather than by accident.
Idk if you’re going to get a harsher sentence for killing thousands of people deliberately than trillions of people through gross negligence.
Either way, even if you narrow it down to the OG Stan Lee Spiderman, I’m sure you can dig around and find the time he blew up a planet of evil aliens or decimated a miniature civilization with a sneeze or unleashed a cyber-plague that obliterated the population of an adjacent timeline, because 70s/80s/90s era Marvel was just full of that crap.
In the end, the Knights and Spider-Man were able to save the day, except that there still remained the issue of a nuclear bomb that was designed to destroy the world. The Knights managed to open up a dimensional rift and Spider-Man threw the bomb through it…
…
The surviving heroes of that world then challenged the Knights, who had to concede that yeah, they kind of WERE responsible for the destruction of that world. The whole thing was never discussed again, but definitely not the finest hour for the good ol’ Webhead.
So, OG Stan Lee Spiderman did a full blown “Noah’s Ark” tier global holocaust. Except he did it in a post-industrial civilization when the population was in the billions rather than hundred-thousands.
I love the one downvote. Like they’re actually upset thier magic book isn’t real.
Yeah, Spiderman fans can be that way.
that’s just Scott. he’s a dick
“YOU’RE a dick!”
well, you’re a towel.
Lol that’s the bot that downvotes everything. its not even an actual person.
You can expect to get random 1-5 bot downvotes per comment, its part of being an Open Source platform
There’s 7 now. Could be the other denominations feeling left out or the Jewish upset the Torah is represented by their even younger siblings, v1.1 and V2.0.
This is just so obvious. Why would God leave multiple versions of his own story around? Why did he not reveal himself to humans for the first million years of human existence on this planet? The only logical conclusion you can make is that humans invented Gods and not vice versa.
Cthulhu definitely exists. He calls to me in my dreams.
Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!
At this point, I would welcome the cosmic horror of the Old Ones
Isn’t Allah and God the same god?
Pretty much, but their believers get very upset if you tell them that
Well the Christians do, in my experience the Muslims are like “yeah, duh”.
They even have the exact same stories in them, I tried educating a Christian on that but they don’t want to know about it.
Yes
In arabic allah literally means god
At least cite Amazing Fantasy #15, heretic.
For some reason I find op citation funnier.
Spider-Man. Respect the hyphen.
And he’s real. And broke.
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/22dd641b-9dec-4118-b3e8-09087b1979c7.mp4
He was always the least ego centric spider-man.
Proof that for every two Jewish people there are at least three opinions
I only see a bunch of ornamented books?
Its called the Mishnah, its a bunch of long dead old people arguing over things of mostly very little significance (even for religious people)
One of my favorite Jewish rabbi argument stories was them telling off God for interfering in a legal debate. A rabbi asks God for a miracle to prove his argument, and when he does, the rabbis say “no, that’s not fair. We have to base our understandings on the rules that you gave us, and divine intervention is not a way to settle an argument.”
Judaism is extremely confused, it promotes logic and reasoning but only based on its own logic and reasoning system (that doesn’t follow science or scientific reasoning). So it makes perfect sense, why let god get in the way of a multi-hour long debate over the logic of laws that were made up?
Didn’t islam have to have special religious scholars for figuring out tiny things? I feel like I remember them having to be called in to issue a special ruling through the Quran that a religious building could be entered temporarily by the police to end a siege between them and some other group. Probably mis-remembering, but I feel like that was it.
Islamic jurisprudence has like several entirely different schools. There are systems for grading which Hadith to take seriously, based on how close the transmitter was to Mo, and which ones you accept inform your interpretation. (Don’t forget shia versus sunni as a large split - other smaller categories and sub categories as well.)
Iirc, there’s a lot of debate on whether actions are permissible versus mandatory, or forbidden versus discouraged. There are four Arabic words that go with those categories that I can’t be assed to look up rn.
There’s also the amazing part where it intersects with Islamic banking, which tries to come up with ways that you can make money without charging interest.
Islamic jurisprudence is complicated af - when I took my grad class on religion, I read lots of those arguments because my professor’s area of focus was medieval Islam.
Didn’t islam have to have special religious scholars for figuring out tiny things?
At least in theory, Islam is traditionally adhered to as an all-encompassing lifestyle. As such, it’s unsurprising to find rulings on the minutia of affairs.
FWIW, deriving new religious verdicts and/or refining the old is a continuous effort as new issues/situations arise.
I feel like I remember them having to be called in to issue a special ruling through the Quran that a religious building could be entered temporarily by the police to end a siege between them and some other group.
Perhaps you are referring to issuing a so-called ‘fatwa’, which is basically understood as a religious ruling derived by an Islamic jurist on a (pressing) matter.
Ah yeah, I meant a Fatwa. Thanks.
What, so Cthulhu isn’t real? But I hear his voice. Who else could command me to torture and eat all those stupid noisy kids?
ICE?
Why you little!
Shub-Niggurath, the All-Mother. Cthulhu does not have interest in pesky kids.
It’s all a part of Azathoth’s dream anyway, long may they slumber.
Those kids were just figments, but then so are we.
Of course he’s real! Don’t let those filthy unbelievers confuse you! Keep up the good work!
Who else could command me to torture and eat all those stupid noisy kids
The eternal hunger.
Proof of cds
But, that’s a CD. The only way it would be comparable is if people worshipped the bible itself. Not sure if I’m following.
CDs nuts!
Walked right into it
Do you like tapes and CDs?
8 track deez nuts on yo mouf
Goteem
He’s saying you can point to a CD to know CDs exist. No one can point to God.
Actually it’s a picture of a cd
Ceci n’est pas un CD
Funny because it only rhymes if you use the English pronunciation of CD.
I don’t see how is this comparable
You dont CDs?
How hard would it actually be to write a sacred book from the ground up, following the same structure? I’m thinking in writing a cryptic book that could easily be interpreted in a lot of ways, but still feel like a real thing, and make another book series that cite it. Like Tolkien did with Elvish, but a book instead of a language.
Mormons
See Scientology.
Oh, they have a sacred book too? TIL
Dionetics by L. R. Hubbard
Oh, but that’s like shitty science fiction and pseudo science. I was probably referring to something like the book of mormon, the bible and the quram.
Like, start by having a mystical explanation for the world origin (don’t mind using science as a base, but mystically interpreted and with a lot of symbols). Then some kind of strict law or precepts for the followers of the protagonist god or gods. Something that antagonizes with the non-believers. Then some poetic books, with very vague symbolism. Then some collection of prophecies, very subject to interpretation, and even better if the prophecies contradict each other. And that would be book 1, that can be “found” in the present by some modern day prophet. That book would serve as the basis of the “new” revelation and interpretation of the prophecies, adding more symbolism, and prophecies, in part two of the book.
That would be if you want to match 1:1 the bible, maybe I can settle in book 1, and have the fiction books to cite it as is, adding the “second part” in the story. I’m thinking in something like Dune, but with the complementary full sacred book, so you could read the book, see that a priest of sorts cites the book, and then go to the book and see if it’s a verse taken out of context or it’s faithful to the intention of the book, to foreshadow if the priest has his own agenda or not. You could read the book and draw your own conclusion of the meaning of things there. You could share a piece of the universe you are reading about in the book series. Or not do it and just read the book. I see it like an optional companion for a cool book series.
Some books, Dune included, cite pieces of texts in-universe, but you can’t read them, only the cites. I think this could be cool.
I wonder if LLM can write something like that, in the same ancient style if instructed to. If the book series is not profitable, I can always start a cult with the source material, like Mr. Hubbard.
The only difference between a religion and a cult, is the number of cultists.
I have a book that proves Megatron overcame oppression and led the Decepticons to Freedom!
To be fair, any text is terrible proof.
Someone should use AI to take the bible and make a competing religion that uses science to disprove otger religions but convinently injects it’s own unscientific narrative just to see how many people get convinced.
so… scientology?
There’s absolutely no science in scientology though.
I know the name but never looked into it
It’s absolute insanity. Like, it legitimately started as a scam and is now a kidnapping cult
Don’t. They are a cult. Don’t get into it. Watch the south park episode, it will teach you everything you need to know about it. But leave it at that.
I’m 0:52 seconds in and already convinced I can’t watch this for 37 minutes
Maybe you just proved Scientology right - learning that story is the “Wall of Fire” and being exposed to it is supposed to make you sick or even kill you if you
haven’t paid thousands for all of the coursesaren’t spiritually prepared.Another thing that is supposed to be deeply traumatic is to flap your hands like a clamshell opening and closing. It harkens back to when your thetans were in an oyster body or something. Operation Clambake was a classic anonymous thing, back when 4chan wasn’t just about racial slurs and posting pictures talking about the Black Veil Brides singer’s shit.
