Stupid things religious people say

[Fake Messiah]

A Japanese manga claims a natural disaster is imminent. Now, some tourists are canceling their trips

A Japanese comic book warns of a “real catastrophe.” A psychic predicts mass destruction. A feng shui master urges people to stay away.

This might sound like the plot of a disaster movie but for Japan’s tourism industry, a recent spate of so-called earthquake-related “predictions” like these has led to more superstitious travelers, particularly in East Asia, canceling or delaying their holidays.

Published by manga artist Ryo Tatsuki in 1999, “The Future I Saw” warned of a major disaster in March 2011, a date which turned out to coincide with the cataclysmic quake that struck Japan’s northern Tohoku region that month.

Her “complete version” released in 2021 claimed that the next big earthquake will hit this July.

At the same time, psychics from Japan and Hong Kong have shared similar warnings, triggering some unfounded panic online that has led to a flurry of cancelations of travel plans from destinations in the region.

CN Yuen, managing director of WWPKG, a travel agency based in Hong Kong, said bookings to Japan dropped by half during the Easter holiday and are expected to dip further in the coming two months.

The speculations have scared off mostly travelers from mainland China and Hong Kong, which are Japan’s second- and fourth-largest sources of tourists, respectively. But the fear has also spread to other markets such as Thailand and Vietnam, where social media platforms are overflowing with posts and videos warning people to think twice before traveling to Japan.

Anxieties provoked by these prophecies have, according to Yuen, become “ingrained.” He added that “people just say they want to hold off their trip for now.”

Tatsuki’s work has a significant following in East Asia and her fans often believe she can accurately see future events in her dreams.

She draws a cartoon version of herself in the manga, where she shares visions she gleans from her slumbers with other characters. Some of these dreams turn out to bear close resemblance to real-life events.

Her 2011 quake prediction — or coincidence — made Tatsuki famous not just in Japan but also in other parts of Asia like Thailand and China. The comic book has sold 900,000 copies, according to its publisher. It has also been published in Chinese.

Fans believed she also predicted the deaths of Princess Diana and singer Freddie Mercury, as well as the Covid-19 pandemic, however critics say her visions are too vague to be taken seriously.

The manga’s cover bears the words “massive disaster in March, 2011,” leading many to believe that she predicted the 9.0-magnitude earthquake more than a decade before it hit Tohoku.

In the latest edition, “The Future I Saw (Complete Version),” Tatsuki warned that on July 5 this year, a crack will open up under the seabed between Japan and the Philippines, sending ashore waves three times as tall as those from the Tohoku earthquake.

She’s not the only doomsayer.

Chinese media has been reporting the predictions of a self-proclaimed Japanese psychic who suggested a massive earthquake would strike the densely populated Tokyo Bay Area on April 26. Though the date passed without incident, the prediction triggered immense interest on Chinese social media.

Qi Xian Yu, a popular feng shui master and Hong Kong TV personality known as Master Seven, also urged people to stay away from Japan, starting in April.

Japan’s Cabinet Office took to X earlier this month to explain that modern technology has yet to be able to accurately predict an earthquake.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/19/trave...k-intl-hnk

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^Golly. Predicting earthquakes in Japan is almost impressive as predicting snow in Siberia.

Boru

[Pat Mustard]

People today are so obsessed with rationality and reality that they ignore angels and demons, allowing darkness to infiltrate their lives and suffer from diseases that angels could cure. That is why we need to change our society, beginning with the educational system, so that we start paying attention to the supernatural.

Pastor Breaks Down Why Christians Simply Can’t Ignore Angels and Demons: ‘We Have Emasculated the Gospel’

Allen Jackson, pastor of World Outreach Church in Tennessee, is on a mission to get people thinking more deeply about angels, demons, and the supernatural.

“The most important part is imagining that there are spiritual forces that are impacting your life today without any question,” he told CBN News.

The preacher said there’s been an obsessive move toward rationalism since the Enlightenment — one that has led too many to lose touch with the “spiritual dynamic.”

Jackson said angels are pivotal to the Gospel narrative, serving a primary purpose to help people understand what’s unfolding.

“The whole Gospel story can’t really be understood apart from the angelic involvement,” he said. “Gabriel [who] goes to visit Zechariah is the opening narrative for the story of John the Baptist, and Gabriel going to see Mary and Joseph, the angels that ministered to Jesus after his temptation in the wilderness, the angels that ministered to him in Gethsemane as he’s preparing.”

“It seems to me we’re more willing to trust in a presidential election than we are in the beings that God has made available to us,” he said.

Jackson said some people might avoid the supernatural for fear it feels strange or weird. There’s also the element of uncertainty around issues like healing, which could further spark reluctance among some to fully engage in related conversation.

“I think we have emasculated the Gospel,” he said. “And we’ve been doing it in our formal education systems, and I had the privilege of studying in some celebrated academic settings, but most of them were pretty faithless.”

Jackson said people have to be comfortable realizing Jesus himself clearly believed in angels and demons — and modern scholars shouldn’t be afraid of it.

“We have to be willing to walk this out and live like we believe the Bible is true,” he said.

https://www.faithwire.com/2025/05/19/pas...he-gospel/

No you con man, I just put my trust in what's actually real.

[Pat Mustard]

^Golly. Predicting earthquakes in Japan is almost impressive as predicting snow in Siberia.

Boru

Or predicting langers in Cork!

[Fake Messiah]

Joe Rogan is starting to see the light

Joe Rogan Is Reportedly Attending Church ‘Consistently,’ Christian Apologist Reveals

Joe Rogan, who recently voiced skepticism about the Big Bang theory of evolution, is reportedly attending church on a regular basis.

The 57-year-old Rogan, one of the most prominent podcasters in popular media, is attending church “consistent[ly],” according to Christian apologist Wesley Huff, who is leading Apologetics Canada.

As CBN News Digital previously reported, Rogan caused waves recently, when he cast doubt on the plausibility of the Big Bang theory of evolution, admitting it’s much easier — and even more logical — to conclude there is a Creator, like the resurrected Jesus, who sparked the beginning of life.

“It’s funny, because people will be incredulous about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but yet, they’re convinced that the entire universe was smaller than a head of a pin and that for no reason that anyone has adequately explained to me, instantaneously became everything?” he said.

https://cbn.com/news/us/joe-rogan-report...st-reveals

[Alan V]

Joe Rogan is starting to see the light

“It’s funny, because people will be incredulous about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but yet, they’re convinced that the entire universe was smaller than a head of a pin and that for no reason that anyone has adequately explained to me, instantaneously became everything?” he said.

https://cbn.com/news/us/joe-rogan-report...st-reveals

It is funny, because so many Christians now believe that God caused the big bang. It's the same scenario, just with or without a God.

The alternative is that the universe came into existence in some more fully developed form, which seems even more incredible.

In any case, people who can't understand the evidence supporting the big-bang picture, or can't understand the math supporting cosmic inflation, are not qualified to comment on either.

[Sheldon]

The earth was created by a deity, using inexplicable magic powers, before the sun or any stars, complete with vegetation, and "photons" explain this.

[zebo-the-fat]

Magic!

[Fake Messiah]

And yet he kisses Putin's asshole.

JD Vance explains why he didn’t kiss Pope Leo’s ring

US Vice-President JD Vance has revealed that he made a conscious decision not to kiss the papal ring of Pope Leo XIV when he met the new pontiff, due to his political role for the United States and despite being a convert to Catholicism.

Although kissing the papal ring – also known as the Fisherman’s Ring – is a common act of respect toward a pontiff, Vance explained that kissing the ring of a foreign leader would be against the protocol for a US vice-president.

“So, no sign of disrespect, but it’s important to observe the protocols of the country that I love, and that I’m representing and that I serve as vice-president of, the United States,” he told Douthat.

Vance explained that getting this balance right does not mean he will “just disregard” positions of Church hierarchy, rather “you make a prudential judgment informed very much by the Church’s teachings as reflected by these leaders”.

He highlighted that during his time in Rome he was “not there as JD Vance, a Catholic parishioner” but rather “I’m there as the vice-president of the United States and the leader of the president’s delegation to the Pope’s inaugural Mass”.

“So some of the protocols about how I respond to the Holy Father [as vice-president] were much different than how I might respond to the Holy Father [as a parishioner], or how you might respond to the Holy Father purely in your capacity as a citizen,” Vance told Douthat.

https://thecatholicherald.com/jd-vance-e...leos-ring/

[Fake Messiah]

"Democracy bad. Theocracy good."

Doug Wilson Has Spent Decades Pushing for a Christian Theocracy. In Trump’s DC, the New Right Is Listening.

For the past 50 years, Wilson has been trying to convince America that it has made the wrong choice —that it should choose “Christ,” as he put it, instead of chaos. He is, by his own description, an outspoken proponent of Christian theocracy — the idea that American society, including its government, should be governed by a conservative interpretation of Biblical law.

In recent years, Wilson has been making inroads into the Republican establishment, aided by a growing audience for his work among allies of President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Last year alone, Wilson appeared as a guest on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, spoke at an event organized by the MAGA operative Charlie Kirk, delivered a speech on Capitol Hill at an event hosted by the MAGA-aligned talent pipeline American Moment and was given a prominent timeslot at the National Conservatism Conference, the premier annual get-together for the nationalist-populist right in Washington. In January, Wilson received his most significant political boost to date when Pete Hegseth —who is a member of a CREC church in Tennessee and publicly praised Wilson’s work — was confirmed as Trump’s secretary of Defense.

Wilson and his allies are moving quickly to cement their burgeoning influence in Washington. Later this summer, Christ Church will open its first outpost in the capital, led by Wilson and a rotating group of pastors from the CREC. The new church has earned the support of powerful players in the MAGA movement: Its inaugural prayer services, planned for mid-July, will be held at an event space operated by the Conservative Partnership Institute, the Trump-aligned think tank run by former Republican Sen. Jim DeMint and ex-Trump chief-of-staff Mark Meadows. In a blog post titled “Mission to Babylon,” Wilson explained that Christ Church is seeking to make inroads with “numerous evangelicals who will be present both in and around the Trump administration.”

Wilson has good reason to believe those conservative evangelical elites are receptive to his message. In recent years, a growing number of Republican elites clustered around the “New Right” of the GOP have been looking to Wilson’s work as a kind of how-to manual for injecting a hardline conservative form of Protestant Christianity into public life — a project that ranges from outlawing abortion at the federal level to amending the Constitution to acknowledging the truth of the Bible.

Chief among the sources of Wilson’s appeal on the right is his defense of a masculinist and explicitly patriarchal style of evangelicalism: Women are barred from holding leadership roles at Christ Church, and women in CREC communities are expected to submit to their husbands. Wilson, who has written several books on marriage, masculinity and childrearing, is a gleeful critic of feminism, which he has lampooned in blog posts with titles like “The Lost Virtues of Sexism.” At times, he’s ditched the high-minded theological rhetoric and referred to various women as “small-breasted biddies,” “lumberjack dykes” and “cunts.”

His primary message for those people, he told me, is that “theocracy” isn’t a scary concept.

“When you say ‘theocracy,’ people think Gilead and women in red dresses, or the Ayatollah’s Iran,” he said. But, he argued, that’s only because most people are thinking of “ecclesiocracy,” or political rule by clerics and church officials. What he has in mind for America is closer to a return to the political order embodied by “the Constitution of the late 18th century and early 19th century,” with a weak central state, a small-R republican form of government and a high tolerance for displays of Christian faith in the public sphere.

His ideal political arrangement, he told me, would be a kind of international confederation of Christian nations that he calls “mere Christendom,” harkening back to the alliance of Christian nation-states that dominated Europe during the Middle Ages.

Wilson has floated some more fundamental changes to America’s political system: Amending the Constitution to include reference to the Apostles’ Creed, restricting office holding to practicing Christians and changing voting practices to award votes by household, with the default vote-holder being the male head of the household. His long-term goal, he said, is to inspire a grassroots Christian reformation that would excise the whole idea of secularism from American law and society.

Would this reformation be violent, I wondered?

“Well,” he said, chuckling, “that depends on the bad guys.”

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2...s-00355376

So Doug claims that people have wrong perception of theocracy with Gilead and women in red dresses, or the Ayatollah’s Iran, but then he says that all women are cunts, that only men should hold office and have jobs, and that only men should vote - which is exactly like Gilead and/or Iran.