Stupid things religious people say

[Fake Messiah]

The lady in the previous post is nothing compared to this one from the 5th century who was one of those Christians who willingly spent decades wearing heavy chains or rocks, confined in cages with no space to move, starving, denying themselves sleep, and jumping in the fire just to please their god (and be popular).

Chained in faith: 5th-century female skeleton may be world’s 1st self-mortifying Christian nun

Some 1,600 years ago, a mysterious woman was bound with four heavy metal rings around her neck and others around her arms and legs. Iron plates on her stomach completed what was effectively an armored structure.

When the woman died, she was buried under the altar of a church some three kilometers northwest of Jerusalem’s Old City. Burial under the altar is reserved for only the most honored individuals.

But this woman was the mistress of her own torment: Many historical sources document extreme practices of self-flagellation in the Byzantine period. These practices included not only wearing heavy chains, metal rings, or rocks but also confining themselves in very small and isolated rooms or even cages with no space to move, prolonged fasts, exposing the body to the elements, denying themselves sleep, and jumping in the fire.

“Theodoret of Cyrrhus described these practices in his book ‘Historia Religiosa,'” Adawi said, referring to a prominent 5th-century theologian. “He mentioned a few examples of monks wearing iron chains.”

The work names two women, Marana and Cyra, who bound their entire body in chains, including the neck, waist, and limbs, for 42 years.

While the mystery around the chained nun’s identity might never be solved, she must have been an important personality within the community, perhaps a venerated figure.

“Only VIPs were buried under the altar of a church,” Adawi said.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/chained-in...stian-nun/

[Fake Messiah]

"It’s a fascinating premise" - wouldn't you agree? That the aliens find plausible a religion which even the 85% of humans don't.

The Catholic Aliens Are Coming

As I grew older and studied my Catholic Faith more, I began to consider the theological implications of intelligent alien life. Is it possible that God created intelligent life somewhere else in the universe? How does that impact our teaching on original sin and redemption? What would it actually be like, theologically speaking, if aliens came to earth? And, as Vatican Observatory Director Br. Guy Consolmagno asks, would you baptize an extraterrestrial?

I was delighted when I discovered a newly published science fiction book that tackles these questions. Pilgrims by M.R. Leonard is the story of first contact with aliens…who land at the Vatican, speak Latin, and are Catholic. It’s a fascinating premise, and I was curious how Leonard would work out the theological consequences of such an event.

How in the world (or more precisely, worlds) can there be Catholic aliens? Did God reveal Himself to them? Did they fall like Adam and Eve did? I was intrigued to discover how Leonard would address these theological issues. I won’t give it away, but ultimately I was satisfied, even surprised, by how he tied it all together. It’s not that he directly answered every single possible objection to the idea of alien intelligent life, but his explanation of why the aliens are Catholic comes across as plausible and theologically sound.

https://crisismagazine.com/editors-desk/...are-coming

[Fireball]

Somewhere else in the universe, an alien is nailed to a tree...

[Fake Messiah]

Another Christian has an epiphany that tolerating gay people is wrong and that they should be forced into heterosexual marriages. They will suffer, but that suffering will lead to something beautiful - as all suffering for God does.

A conversation in a gay bar changed my opinion on sexuality

It is probably worth saying that I began theological college with fairly standard liberal views on sexuality. But as we recorded our interviews in the heart of Chicago’s LGBT community, I realised that I was hearing a range of perspectives that confounded my neat certainties. If part of being a liberal meant honouring everyone as they shared their story, I had to face my own hitherto dismissive personal attitude towards those championing traditional sexual ethics.

And what Brian was about to say did not compute with my view of Christian flourishing. He told me that he had always known himself to be gay – but because of his theological convictions he had chosen to marry a woman, and had since fathered a child. He said that falling in love with his wife was “an experience that I can only say was through God himself bringing my wife and me together.”

There was one story shared at this time which proved as pivotal for me as meeting Brian on the dancefloor. One woman participant shared her fear, and her tears, about the fact that her female partner had recently started binding her own breasts, and was exploring having a double mastectomy as she explored a change of gender identity. A complicating factor was that at the same time she was pursuing IVF via a sperm donor. The participant in the seminar was trying to come to terms with the fact that her own identity as a lesbian would be profoundly changed, if in a few years’ time she and her partner presented to the world as a straight couple with a child.

But as I returned to the UK, I couldn’t help but ask myself whether the scenario that woman was facing, considered alongside other deeply personal stories shared within the group, really represented an authentic expression of ‘life in all its fullness’. Over the coming months, rather to my surprise, my continued study of Christian Ethics led to my being fully persuaded by the existing teaching of the church on sexual ethics.

In the course of making this documentary, I had met two kinds of people who confounded my expectations: those living joyfully and (in their own words) flourishing within the bounds of a traditional sexual ethic; and those living with fear and confusion (in their own words) when embracing the opportunities of a progressive vision.

In the book that I wrote, I explore whether there is a way to hold together the compassion of Christ towards all people with the traditional teaching of the church, and whether a commitment to ‘compassionate orthodoxy’ can offer a conceptual way forward in the damaging disagreements we face.

https://www.premierchristianity.com/opin...44.article

[Sheldon]

Another Christian has an epiphany that tolerating gay people is wrong and that they should be forced into heterosexual marriages. They will suffer, but that suffering will lead to something beautiful - as all suffering for God does.

A conversation in a gay bar changed my opinion on sexuality

It is probably worth saying that I began theological college with fairly standard liberal views on sexuality. But as we recorded our interviews in the heart of Chicago’s LGBT community, I realised that I was hearing a range of perspectives that confounded my neat certainties. If part of being a liberal meant honouring everyone as they shared their story, I had to face my own hitherto dismissive personal attitude towards those championing traditional sexual ethics.

And what Brian was about to say did not compute with my view of Christian flourishing. He told me that he had always known himself to be gay – but because of his theological convictions he had chosen to marry a woman, and had since fathered a child. He said that falling in love with his wife was “an experience that I can only say was through God himself bringing my wife and me together.”

There was one story shared at this time which proved as pivotal for me as meeting Brian on the dancefloor. One woman participant shared her fear, and her tears, about the fact that her female partner had recently started binding her own breasts, and was exploring having a double mastectomy as she explored a change of gender identity. A complicating factor was that at the same time she was pursuing IVF via a sperm donor. The participant in the seminar was trying to come to terms with the fact that her own identity as a lesbian would be profoundly changed, if in a few years’ time she and her partner presented to the world as a straight couple with a child.  

But as I returned to the UK, I couldn’t help but ask myself whether the scenario that woman was facing, considered alongside other deeply personal stories shared within the group, really represented an authentic expression of ‘life in all its fullness’. Over the coming months, rather to my surprise, my continued study of Christian Ethics led to my being fully persuaded by the existing teaching of the church on sexual ethics.  

In the course of making this documentary, I had met two kinds of people who confounded my expectations: those living joyfully and (in their own words) flourishing within the bounds of a traditional sexual ethic; and those living with fear and confusion (in their own words) when embracing the opportunities of a progressive vision.

In the book that I wrote, I explore whether there is a way to hold together the compassion of Christ towards all people with the traditional teaching of the church, and whether a commitment to ‘compassionate orthodoxy’ can offer a conceptual way forward in the damaging disagreements we face.  

https://www.premierchristianity.com/opin...44.article

So they present an example of what they consider a moral relationship that is allegedly flourishing, and of a relationship that they consider immoral that is allegedly not. That's a poisoning of the well fallacy clearly, perhaps a hasty generalisation fallacy as well. Not that it matters, the pressure on minority groups differ in many ways, and must impact broadly on the success or failure of relationships within that demographic. If as a society we are more accepting and tolerant, we might remove many of those pressures, and the result might be that again broadly speaking within those minority demographics, relationships might have a better chance. 

I don't the myth of Jesus's or the morally repugnant idea of vicarious redemption, or the empty threat of hell, or the saccharine notion of  heaven, in order to empathise with, and feel compassion for others, maybe I am just a nicer person than many Christians?

[zebo-the-fat]

Why are the god botherers so interested in other peoples sex lives?
pervs!

[Sheldon]

Why are the god botherers so interested in other peoples sex lives?  
pervs!

Especially if they think their deity sees everything, all I can say is he must have seen some freaky shit at mine over the years. 

[Fake Messiah]

Aha! Stop putting millions of years in the book of Genesis. God obviously created the world in six days as the historical account in the book of Genesis states.

The scientists who invented the notion that the world was created during millions of years did this because they have an agenda and that is that they hate God. They want to sin, like they want to eat ice cream during lent.

To Christians: Don't be embarrassed by the Book of Genesis

About 200 years ago ideas about millions of years of earth history were becoming popular with early geologists. That wasn’t going to “work” if Genesis continued to be interpreted as plain historical narrative, with creation in six days and a worldwide flood. A workaround of Genesis was needed.

Theologians first tried inserting millions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2. That “gap theory” workaround was popular for over a hundred years. Thomas Chalmers popularized it in 1814, and the Scofield Bible of 1909 made it a favorite of conservative Christians for many more years. However, theologians finally recognized its problems. For one thing, there is no mention elsewhere in Scripture of pre-Adamic humans or of a pre-Adamic cataclysm. Nor is the Hebrew construction consistent with any change in time between verse 1 and verse 2.

In this case, the required millions or billions of years are inserted into each of the six days of Genesis 1, where the Hebrew word “yom” is used for day. However, the majority of Hebrew scholars realized that in the Old Testament there are only a few times where “yom” can mean a long period. It never means a long period when connected with numerals in a narrative as in Genesis 1.

Old Testament scholars such as Todd Beall and Steven Boyd have shown that the Hebrew language used in Genesis 1 is historical narrative, not poetry or other figurative language.

All attempts to put millions and billions of years into Genesis assume that the fossils were formed before Adam. That means God was the originator of the disease, violence, and death seen in the fossil record. And so our Creator God would not be good, nor would His creation be very good.

The Book of Genesis is not some knock-off version of the truth. It needs no workarounds. The voices of those that make them sound much too similar to that of the serpent who questioned Eve: “Has God indeed said…” We need to consider the possibility that mainstream scientists don’t know the truth about origins. As discussed elsewhere, their speculations about origins are based on anti-theistic presuppositions. Those presuppositions guide their interpretations of data left over from Creation. When scientists who are Christians replace those presuppositions, they find interpretations of the same data consistent with the plain reading of Genesis.

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/to-...nesis.html

[Fake Messiah]

‘Miracle spring water’ lands Christian TV channel with £150,000 Ofcom fine

A religious TV channel has been fined £150,000 for giving UK airtime to an evangelist selling “miracle spring water” that was claimed to cure illnesses such as lung cancer and diabetes and produce huge financial windfalls.

During two episodes of the show, fronted by the US TV evangelist Peter Popoff and his wife, viewers were repeatedly asked to order the ministry’s miracle spring water.

Those providing the testimonials claimed that pouring the water over their hands brought about recovery from illnesses such as lung cancer, diabetes and intestinal disease, as well as curing drug addiction.

Others said they subsequently came into large sums of money – in one instance $64,000 – started a new business opportunity, received a new home or were “delivered” from student loan debt.

Each time, Popoff repeated or sought to bolster the claims using phrases such as: “Did you hear that? You mean God took care … after you used the miracle spring water?”

The licensee that operates the channel, Word Network Operating Company Inc, initially said its audience was predominantly in the US and it had a “limited understanding” of Ofcom’s concerns, which it attributed to a “matter of cultural or market difference”.

The parent company subsequently said it had taken the decision to change the contract relating to the Peter Popoff Ministries so that it would no longer air on its channel in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/m...rd-network

[brewer]

‘Miracle spring water’ lands Christian TV channel with £150,000 Ofcom fine

A religious TV channel has been fined £150,000 for giving UK airtime to an evangelist selling “miracle spring water” that was claimed to cure illnesses such as lung cancer and diabetes and produce huge financial windfalls.

During two episodes of the show, fronted by the US TV evangelist Peter Popoff and his wife, viewers were repeatedly asked to order the ministry’s miracle spring water.

Those providing the testimonials claimed that pouring the water over their hands brought about recovery from illnesses such as lung cancer, diabetes and intestinal disease, as well as curing drug addiction.

Others said they subsequently came into large sums of money – in one instance $64,000 – started a new business opportunity, received a new home or were “delivered” from student loan debt.

Each time, Popoff repeated or sought to bolster the claims using phrases such as: “Did you hear that? You mean God took care … after you used the miracle spring water?”

The licensee that operates the channel, Word Network Operating Company Inc, initially said its audience was predominantly in the US and it had a “limited understanding” of Ofcom’s concerns, which it attributed to a “matter of cultural or market difference”.

The parent company subsequently said it had taken the decision to change the contract relating to the Peter Popoff Ministries so that it would no longer air on its channel in the UK.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/m...rd-network

Popoff was exposed as a fraud in 1986 by James Randi. Suckers are born (reborn?) every minute.