Under your rules we can morally eat people in comas.

Ah, I agree! If fruits and vegetables deserve moral consideration because they “want to live,” then coma patients, clearly not demonstrating any ambition, are demonstrably and ethically fair game. I mean, they’re just lying there, right? No subjective experiences, taking up valuable hospital space and depleting emotional energy while not contributing anything… a head of cabbage with a Medicare plan.

Waste not, want not.

Ah, and there it is. You’ve neatly demonstrated the argument that religion, at its core, can’t exist without a generous dose of authoritarianism. You’ve brought the receipts straight from Proverbs 3:5; a.k.a. “don’t think too hard about it,”. The church cheerfully instructs us to toss out reason the moment it gets inconvenient. Submit to God, submit to the church, submit to authority, don’t ask questions and just nod along.

You mention Pentacost, but even the bible is inconsistent on what Jesus told his disciples. Were they supposed to go out and spread the word immediately? Or wait in Jerusalem to be clothed with power from on high? Was the Spirit received quietly on Easter, or did it come down dramatically at Pentacost? Please understand that I’m not trying to undermine your personal faith here, just illustrating how things can appear to an outsider who did take the time to learn more the world’s various holy books.

Your perspective is familiar, and can be comforting in its own way. No room for pluralism. No room for nuance. Certainly no room for growth. And that, I think, is the fundamental dialectic underpinning our conversation: the church longs for an absolute, immutable scaffold onto which society can be safely and unquestioningly constructed. Meanwhile, I see all of human history, including the panoply of religious teachings, as a rich and chaotic mosaic to be studied, questioned, and woven into an ever-evolving understanding that supports pluralistic, humane, and thoughtful governance.

While our back-and-forth may seem combative, I appreciate your openness to discussion, and thank you for spending the time to help me better understand your perspective.

Edit: adding that I agree with you that Jesus was not a communist, as communism as a term was not coined until the 19th century.

The only baseless assertions I’m seeing in thread are coming from you.

The first, drawn from your replies, seems to be that only those inside a belief system are qualified to critique it. I’d love to hear the logic behind that. Are we only allowed to analyze something if we’ve taken a loyalty oath? Do I need to be a card-carrying member of “Joe Jimbob’s McChurch USA” to point out inconsistencies in religious practice? And even then, would I only be allowed to critique that church, and not the broader system it’s derived from?

The clergy, across all denominations, has historically used the Bible as a tool of control. The sheer number of splintered sects is testament to the unlikeliness of divine clarity and more a case study in cultural evolution. Or is pointing that out off-limits to outsiders, too?

Which brings me to your next claim: that my understanding of Jesus must’ve come from some specific church’s Bible. That’s a bit of erog propter hoc, putting DeCartes before the horse. One doesn’t need to be religious to find value in religious teachings. Christ’s egalitarianism doesn’t require Sunday attendance to appreciate. And you certainly don’t have to be a capitalist to notice the glaring contradictions in the modern Christian zeitgeist.

If I had to venture a guess, that poster is just another .ml poster clocked in for another shift at the local troll-farm. May not even be a real person…

The word “Communism” wasn’t coined until the 1800s, so technically there would have been zero communists in ancient Rome. That doesn’t mean that the concepts weren’t around; broadly speaking, egalitarian socialism has been a precept of many societies and religions for millennia.

I don’t think you quite grasp what Christian dogma actually is, and you’re doing a stellar job of proving it by passing judgment. Funny thing: the people most qualified to critique a system are usually the ones not inside it. Remember when the church opposed the printing press because they were worried people might start reading the Bible for themselves and realize the clergy were editorializing? Turns out they were only half-wrong. Most folks still haven’t read it, and judging by takes like yours, they definitely don’t understand what Jesus actually taught.