Stupid things religious people say

[Fake Messiah]

[Fake Messiah]

That time my violin teacher tried to convert me to Christianity

“Do you believe in the literal truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ?”

We had just tuned our instruments, the way we did at the beginning of every lesson, when my violin teacher abruptly asked me this question. It was, I realized, Good Friday.

I had come into the lesson already nervous because I hadn’t practiced enough; I was 21, a junior in college, and life was regularly getting in the way.

We ended up spending the entire length of the lesson debating Christianity. Or, more accurately, I spent the entire lesson repeatedly saying “I’m Jewish” and trying to exit the conversation — perhaps I could play that concerto I hadn’t practiced? — while he spent the time lobbing arguments at me.

I majored in religious studies, so you might imagine I was really prepared for this moment, ready to refute each point he made. But academic religious studies is not particularly concerned with debating the factual evidence for biblical miracles. I was taking a course on religious symbolism in children’s literature that semester and had no idea what to respond when he asked me what my parents did — they’re lawyers — and proceeded to tell me that the number of witnesses who saw Jesus rise from the dead meant the case for his resurrection was winnable in any court.

I was thinking about that conversation this week when I saw that the Trump administration had announced new guidance on religious practice in federal workplaces, a document that says “attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views” is a protected form of religious expression.

To be fair, Christianity sees proselytizing as a core tenet of its practice. So any limits on proselytizing could be seen as impinging on their free exercise of religion. On the other hand, proselytizing often has the effect of ostracizing members of any minority religion; even in the most well-intentioned and accepting community, minorities can feel othered, and that’s without someone telling them to worship differently.

This is particularly tricky because, often, the proselytizing party sees themselves as doing good. As I got increasingly uncomfortable in the conversation with my violin teacher, he proposed a metaphor to try to explain why he was pushing me so hard: If you saw someone standing on train tracks, with the train barrelling toward them, wouldn’t you push them off?

He cared about me, he said, so he was trying to save me. (He didn’t specify what he was saving me from, but I think we can all infer that it was Hell.) I can’t remember what I said back. The conversation is a blur; most of what I remember is feeling claustrophobic and panicky.

It’s almost a religious contradiction to explain to someone who genuinely believes that accepting Jesus is the only way to be saved from hell that actually, their proselytizing is harmful.

https://forward.com/forward-newsletters/...sh-violin/

[The Grand Nudger]

They can proselytize to the toaster in the break room if they wanna do it at work. It'll have the same effect and be alot less dickish. I can see the satanic temple having fun with this though.

[Fake Messiah]

There is a new witch in the village. 🔥

Cynthia Erivo's 'demonic' portrayal of Jesus prompts outrage: 'Intentional blasphemy'

Many took to social media over the weekend to express outrage at footage of the three-night performance of Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Jesus Christ Superstar" at the Hollywood Bowl that featured the bisexual black actress Cynthia Erivo as Jesus Christ.

"This is demonic," wrote Kevin Sorbo, a Christian actor who posted a video to X of Erivo carrying a crossbeam while wearing a crown of thorns during the show. The production also starred openly gay singer Adam Lambert as Judas Iscariot.

Many X users echoed Sorbo, noting that Erivo's long, talon-like nails evoked imagery historically associated with demons. The Federalist CEO Sean Davis, also noted the deliberately bald Erivo's resemblance to Nosferatu, a vampire made famous in the 1922 silent German horror film of the same name.

"LGBTQ+ Cynthia Erivo is playing Jesus in 'Jesus Christ Superstar,'" wrote Kristan Hawkins, a podcast host who serves as president of Students for Life of America.

"It's no surprise she looks exactly like how demons have always been portrayed. And let’s be real … if you dress like a demon, act like a demon, and mock God like a demon … don't be shocked when people call it what it is. This is intentional blasphemy from Hollywood."

Christopher Calvin Reid, who hosts a weekday radio show in Huntsville, Alabama, said casting "a woke liberal actress" as Jesus was "a vile assault on Christian doctrine" intended to mock the Incarnation.

"The Bible is unequivocal: 'The Word became flesh' (John 1:14), incarnate as a man, not a genderless symbol for progressive fantasies. Erivo's casting isn't just unbiblical — it’s a deliberate desecration, reducing Christ to a prop for cultural Marxism," he wrote. "This isn't art; it's evil — a blasphemous middle finger to God, cheered by Democrats who'd rather bow to Hollywood than the Bible."

https://www.christianpost.com/news/cynth...trage.html

[zebo-the-fat]

Simple, if you don't like it don't go to see the show!

[Fake Messiah]

Simple, if you don't like it don't go to see the show!

Ah, you know how it is: These people are perpetually in search of victimhood, creating their own alternate reality with phantom persecutors around every corner.

---

So this Catholic priest claims that the souls of recently deceased people contact him in his dreams if they get stuck in the purgatory and then he and his prayer group help these souls get unstuck by praying for them.

Afterlife Interrupted: Priest helps souls who are stuck in purgatory

At least once a week, Roman Catholic priest Fr. Nathan Castle O.P., 69, is awakened by a vivid dream of a person’s death.

This tells him that the spirit of the deceased wants to move on but is trapped by their own issue. They’ve come to Castle for help.

“We think of ourselves — my prayer partners and I — as being the discharge staff at a medical center,” he said. “People die in lots of ways, but we get mostly the ones who die in a hurry, usually because of a trauma to the body and who needed to stay back a bit. Not everybody who dies in a car crash today will need this level.”

“The grandpa got his foot caught in something that was attached to the trailer. He was dragged not very far, but enough to hit his head and cause a hospitalization that ended in his death three days later.”

From the afterlife, the grandpa reached out to Castle.

Castle is very clear: He does not seek this out nor does he publicize any story that he does not have permission to tell.

He does not do readings and is not involved in the occult. He has prayer partners nationwide who take their spiritual lives seriously. They have a standing appointment once every two weeks to pray for the spirits of the people who have reached out.

Castle essentially relays messages.

“(The father and son) both felt very guilty,” he said. “The grandpa on the other side is saying, ‘They’re both grieving hard because they think it’s their fault and it was my fault. I was the one who didn’t watch where I put my foot,’” he recalled.

Catholics know this afterlife space as purgatory, but not the purgatory of the imagination or a Bosch painting. It’s a holding place where people get ready for the next step in their afterlife journey.

The first time Castle spoke with someone in the afterlife was when he was pastor of ASU’s Newman Center. He was on retreat and awoke from a dream —a vivid dream of a man on a radiator with his feet on the bumper of a late-model 1950s car. The man burst into flames.

The next morning, Castle and a friend, who had been a prayer partner and possessed the gift of prophetic speech, gathered to pray. The first thing they did was invoke protection through Michael the Archangel, Mary, various saints and the Holy Spirit.

“We don’t just dive into the spirit world unprotected,” he said.

https://www.phoenix.org/lovin_life/commu...e3765.html

[Fake Messiah]

Let's face it, there is no study that will stop Christians in claiming that the Shroud of Turin is authentic.

Shroud of Turin wasn't laid on Jesus' body, but rather a sculpture, modeling study suggests

The Shroud of Turin, famously claimed to be Jesus' original burial covering, could not have been created on a three-dimensional human body, a new study finds. It is much more likely that the image is an imprint of a low-relief sculpture, according to a graphics expert.

In a study published Monday (July 28) in the journal Archaeometry, Brazilian 3D digital designer Cicero Moraes, who specializes in historical facial reconstructions, used modeling software to compare how cloth drapes over a human body versus how it drapes over a low-relief sculpture of one.

"The image on the Shroud of Turin is more consistent with a low-relief matrix," Moraes told Live Science in an email. "Such a matrix could have been made of wood, stone or metal and pigmented (or even heated) only in the areas of contact, producing the observed pattern," he said.

To investigate how the Shroud of Turin might have been made, Moraes created and analyzed two digital models. The first model represented a three-dimensional human body, and the second model was a low-relief representation of a human body.

Using 3D simulation tools, Moraes then virtually draped fabric onto the two different body models. When he compared the virtual fabric to photographs of the shroud taken in 1931, Moraes found that the fabric from the low-relief model almost exactly matched the photographs.

In the simulation with the three-dimensional body, Moraes wrote in the study, the fabric deformed around the volume of the body, resulting in a swollen and distorted image. This distortion is sometimes called the "Agamemnon Mask effect," he wrote, after the unnaturally wide gold death mask found in a tomb at Mycenae in Greece.

Moraes demonstrated in a video how the Agamemnon Mask effect works by painting his face and pressing a paper towel to it. The resulting image is much wider than a front view of his face due to the distortion caused by imprinting a 3D object onto a 2D piece of fabric.

But a low-relief sculpture wouldn't cause the image to deform and would look more like a photocopy, similar to the Shroud of Turin, Moraes said, because it shows only the regions of potential direct contact, without any real volume or depth.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/...y-suggests

[Fake Messiah]

"Oh no! I can no longer lie into a casket like a corpse and be carried around the streets because the local priest calls it witchcraft. But I know what I'll do! I'll start a petition! That'll show him! And if that doesn't work, I'll crawl around the streets on my knees leaving behind a bloody trail to honor the promise I gave to the statues of saints in the local church."

Priest Calls Coffin Procession ‘Witchcraft’ and Demands It Be Stopped

Every year in late July, my grandfather would tell me about the people who lay in coffins, not for burial but for blessing. He described how, in parts of Galicia, people would ride inside open caskets carried by friends and family through the streets. The ritual was a sacred and public act of gratitude for life spared and death deferred.

Now, decades later, the same ritual—known as the Romería de los ataúdes—has drawn national attention, not for its significance, but because a local priest wants it banned as witchcraft.

Father Francisco Javier de Ramiro Crespo, newly assigned to Ribarteme, declared that for as long as he was a priest, “there will be no more coffin processions.” Taking advantage of pandemic restrictions, he stopped the centuries-old practice. “I am dedicated to evangelizing,” he said, “not to promoting superstitions, folklore, or witchcraft.” Outraged villagers fought back. One, Jorge Rodríguez, had been denied his promise to participate in the previous year’s festival. He organized a petition and collected 500 signatures, eventually brokering a compromise with the diocese: the coffins could appear outside the church, but not during the Mass itself. The town’s mayor, José Manuel Alfonso, did not mince words: “He [the priest] is not in the habit of attending to anyone. I’m not going to convince him or get involved. What concerns me is that there is normality.”

Despite the concession, the tension only grew. Last week, in 2025, the friction reached a new high. After Mass on Santa Marta’s feast day, a middle-aged man, having survived a life-threatening incident, kept his promise. Though denied permission to ride inside a coffin, he crawled the route on bloody knees while his family carried the coffin above him.

The priest, unmoved, claimed ignorance of the event and refused to comment. “It’s a joke and a lack of respect toward a centuries-old tradition,” said one woman who was quoted in La Voz de Galicia newspaper, watching with tears in her eyes as the man limped onward, candle in hand. “Seeing one of our own keep his promise to the saint is deeply moving.”

The Diocese of Tui-Vigo later issued a circular stating that parish priests may release individuals from vows made to saints, basically only deepening the rift. While once a dozen coffins might have been seen in the procession, recent years have seen only one or two. Participation is dwindling. “Not bringing out the coffins drives people away,” said one local. Another added, “The tradition may soon slip into memory.”

https://wildhunt.org/2025/08/priest-call...opped.html