Wed Jan 17 16:55:57 2024 UTC by CrazyPaya234
On an alt because my brother knows about my main, and I don't want this attention to come towards my parents and make it to my grandparents [somehow]
I never had a relationship with my grandparents from either side of my family. On my father's side, they died before I was born, and on my mother's I barely ever saw them. And when I did, it seemed as though they had no intensions of speaking or interacting with me. I was at home for the longer weekend because my parents needed help cleaning out the attic, and in one of the old boxes there was a old picture of my grandmother and my mom when she was younger. The picture got me thinking about why my mother's grandparents always had acted so strange around me, as if they were avoiding me entirely. I brought the subject up to my mother while we were cleaning up the attic, and she told me why. She told me that my grandparents had always been hyper-religious, specifically catholic. This came as no surprise as I had deduced such from various mannerisms they had shown in the little time I had meet them. She finally said that the reason my grandparents didn't want to be around me was because I was left handed.
WHAT.
She explained further that the left-hand had been interpreted as the devil's hand as a catholic superstition. Because of this, my grandparents had always been wary of me, which grew out to them avoiding having a relationship with me entirely. I'm at a loss for words as to how these insane traditions continue to be prevalent in religious circles, especially in older individuals. It saddens me that despite how Christians often claim to be a welcoming community to all people, that many exclusive and elitist traditions continue to be practiced. I hope as time goes on, we open our eyes to realize how absolutely batshit insane these traditions, and maybe religions as a whole, really are.
So much of Catholocism is extra-Biblical it's NUTS.
For example... the whole bit about no meat on Fridays. It had such a cultural impact that this is why restaurants do fish and chowder specials on Fridays.
There is absolutely no Biblical basis for it, but try telling that to a devout Catholic.
https://www.archspm.org/faith-and-discipleship/catholic-faith/why-dont-catholics-eat-meat-on-fridays/#:~:text=In%20recognition%20of%20Friday%20as,year%20(see%20Canon%201251).
Also the reason priests can't marry has nothing to do with Jesus being celibate* and everything to do with medieval inheritance laws and making sure church land never leaves church ownership.
*In fact (assuming he existed at all) Jesus almost certainly was not celibate. You pretty much could not be taken seriously as a teacher in Judaism in that time period unless you were married. (Who tf was getting married at Caana and why would it have been his problem that they were out of wine if he was just another guest? But if he was the one getting married, well...)
Yeah, if he was real, he seemed to be pretty close to Mary of Magdolin (or whatever the place was), who was a prostitute during a time when celibacy wasn't really celebrated. I wouldn't even rule out him having kids.
Also Protestantism was a thing because of how corrupt the Catholic church got. They needed the Crusades funded, so they offered forgiveness for sins in return for either service in the Crusades or a financial donation in lieu of service. Then over time, that just became another thing that could be bought whenever, frequently after someone's death, which is fucked up on another level because people were guilted into paying for the souls of their loved ones so they could get into heaven even if they didn't confess in time (which they might have, or they might have lived a good life, but if you want to be sure to see grandpa after you die, better pay up just to be safe).
All the signs are there that Christianity is just a scam, I wish everyone could see it as well as understand that there's secular reasons to not do evil shit, it's just not as arbitrary about defining what is and isn't evil.
The more I read the Bible, and the more I read about the Bible, the more utterly laughable it becomes to me that anyone takes Christianity seriously.
The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself. — Richard Francis Burton
They made up their own story because they didn’t like the original with its reality of there being no afterlife + hell being a graveyard on earth for people mourning those they failed to respect, honor and love in life / heaven being a place on earth accessed via a mindset of what essentially boils down to communism - all of which is hard to exploit for power and profit without some keypoint-switcheroos…
It's actually the opposite for me - it has grown into an amazingly elaborate culture - but believing in it as in being a believer is, yes, strange.
According to some sources she wasn't a prostitute. The dark ages era or medieval era church just cast her in that role, partly because they wanted to make Jesus mother look even more holy and important, partly because they felt Mary Magdolin was seen as too important by Christians, and partly because it would make her a useful patsy for a story about Jesus forgiving the sinner.
On the other side it is an important part of Christianity that everything is part of the divine intention or something, especially about the lowest being the most virtuous etc.
Not in all Christian confessions priests can't marry even.
My favorite extra-biblical notion in Catholicism is their weird veneration of Mary. Catholics have this belief that Mary was this divine demi-god that was not only a sinless, flawless, human being, but also stayed a virgin her whole life. Despite the fact that the Catholic Bible literally says that she had other kids with Joseph and that Jesus had brothers.
It's this super bizarre JK Rowling-ization of the Bible that a council unilaterally declared, like, 400 years after Jesus. There's no mention of any of the shit they claim Mary did in the actual Bible yet all Catholics I've ever met vehemently defend these belief.
Because they can't admit they have a goddess cult baked into their supposedly monotheistic religion.
Of course that's what happens when your entire religion is the accumulation of thousands of years of marketing scams and cultural assimilation.
I was taught that when the Church was converting the pagans, they grabbed a lot of pagan beliefs/rituals and repurposed them. It was just easier to turn Mary into the local Goddess than it was to eradicate the Goddess completely. See Yukle logs and the Easter bunny.
It's funny, though, that from converted natives such things went back to descendants of white colonists.
I don't know many Catholics. I would appreciate if you could explain some of the things Catholics believe Mary did that Protestants dispute.
Sure! I was raised Methodist protestant and my wife Catholic. Neither of us are practicing any more. One grain of salt I'll add to this is that Protestant beliefs vary WIDELY on a lot of subjects, so this is going off my own experience. This is all about Mary the mother of Christ, not to be confused with Mary Magdalene.
Catholics and Protestants both believe that Mary was a virgin when she had Jesus, but Catholics believe that Mary never had sex in her entire life. Protestants are more willing to accept that Mary was not a virgin her whole life and went on to have more children. In fact in both bibles, his brothers are named: James, Joseph (Joses), Jude (Judas), and Simon. Note that these are not necessarily the same as the apostles but they are mentioned in both the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. It is also mentioned that Jesus has sisters. The Catholic interpretation is that these are not literal siblings, but perhaps other family. (The Catholic assertion doesn't check out in the original greek btw).
Catholics have a concept called "Original Sin", which all people are said to be cursed with due to Adam and Eve's fuck ups. This Original Sin is why we commit sin at all. This is another Catholic extra-biblical concept. Mary, however, is "Free from Original Sin" for reasons that are never explained, and that's why she was chosen to carry Jesus. Because according to Catholicism, Mary was literally perfect and never did any sin in her entire life. Protestants generally don't believe in the concept of Original Sin at all, and subsequently believe that Mary was just a regular poor girl.
The Veneration of Mary and the other Saints is another extra-biblical Catholic special. TL;DR: If you check enough boxes and the Church has enough political will, you can posthumously be awarded Sainthood which a pagan would interpret as being elevated to the status of a minor god. Saints are a whole different class of person in Catholic cannon. Not only are they getting into Heaven first, they apparently can appear to people through miracles, and its certified Catholic kosher to worship saints as you would Jesus or God himself. Its not un-typical for Catholic households to have literal shrines dedicated to specific saints, and to pray to saints directly. Ironically they are usually praying to the saint as some sort of divine middleman because for some reason Catholics are afraid of praying to God directly. Mary is considered even better than a saint, so think all the above x100. More so than saint shrines, its common for Catholic households to have shrines dedicated to Mary. You also may have heard of the "Hail Mary"; it is an actual prayer. If you've never heard or participated in one, look up a video, its unironically like a cult chant. Seeing it in person is extremely bizarre if you aren't already familiar with it.
Protestants do not recognize the Veneration of any thing or person beyond the Holy Trinity. Worshiping saints by praying to them is considered blasphemy. The creation and worship of shrines to anything other than the Trinity is considered Idol Worship, which is a form of blasphemy. All of this extends to Mary. Worshiping or praying to Mary is not ok. Protestants also don't have nearly so many cult chants and prefer to improv praying directly to God but that's another rabbit hole.
3a. I don't feel like I got across how important Mary is to Catholics. Mary in Catholic lore is like a fuckin super saint. She has titles like "Masterwork of God", "Mother of the Church", "Queen of Heaven", Etc. She "appears" to dozens of other people who go on to become Saints. She was prayed to widely during the Black Death, has entire churches devoted to just her, and has a specific shrine in literally every single Catholic church on Earth. In Protestant lore, Mary is not much more than a footnote.
This is getting pretty long winded at this point but you get the idea. This is only the tip of the iceberg with Protestant v Catholic btw, they are astoundingly different in doctrines and practices while believing a lot of the same core bullet points.
Long, but an interesting read; thanks!
The saint thing is so wild and hilarious to me. If you’re interested you should google Carlo Acutis, who is the patron saint of social media and the internet.
Hilarious.
Thank you for all of that information. I love reading this kind of stuff. Growing up in the Midwest, I always heard that Jesus had cousins, and possibly one brother so this was interesting. It is surprising to hear how Mary can be treated so differently in two branches of Christianity.
Once again, thank you for this post.
It's old Roman superstition, basically. The Latin word for left is sinister and it had negative connotations even then. Predates Christianity by a decent bit yet that didn't stop the Romans who later turned Catholic from perpetuating their superstitions as dogma.
It's not really surprising that having a wrong sword\dagger\wine goblet\handjob hand was considered sinister among Romans
The reason for eating fish today is money making in the past.
"Fishermen were hurting. So much so that when Henry's young son, Edward VI, took over in 1547, fast days were reinstated by law — "for worldly and civil policy, to spare flesh, and use fish, for the benefit of the commonwealth, where many be fishers, and use the trade of living.""
source
Its origins in worshiping the fish god "Dagon" are... interesting to say the least.
But it is by far the only example.
Easter is reputedly (I heard - ofc really who knows) the name of a mesopotamian sun god's wife, where the worshipers would have an orgy with temple priestesses/prostitutes and then the next year do human sacrifices of the babies born from the previous years orgy. Exodus 23:13 be damned (“Do not invoke the names of other gods; do not let them be heard on your lips." emphasis added). Notably, b/c Easter herself was supposedly visited by her dead husband (now the sun god) and in so doing turned a nearby bird into an egg-laying rabbit (or... vice versa? or something?), they would take the blood from the sacrifices and dip eggs into them. To this day the South American celebrations of Easter will only color their eggs red, not pastel as is done in many Western areas... and supposedly they have little idea why - it's just their tradition started sometime in the past and now mostly forgotten.
And the link between Christmas and the yearly winter solstice - worshipping a tree, the date of December 25, etc. - is very well-known.
If even 1/10th of any of this were true, that would be strong support for what you said - a LOT has been added over time. The Bible itself, even the Old Testament, while it does single out left-handedness as being "odd", often presents left-handedness as an ADVANTAGE (or strength and riches), or at least not terribly cursed - e.g. Judges 3:15-21, Judges 20:16 1 Chronicles 12:2, etc. Then again, the "tradition" of Catholicism (which I grew up under) is that people should never read the Bible, b/c we are too dum-dumbz to understand it, and the people should trust the priests to ~~fondle the children~~ explain everything properly.
So yeah, you probably are better off, even if you develop a relationship with them as an adult, to have avoided that indirect indoctrination as a child.
Hmm, what other religion does that remind me of 🤔
but really
Ngl, but I expect there to be stupid atheists one day. I know I know but consider that right now most atheists are "first-generation", i.e. people who put in the effort to do the thinking, really decide what they want, and then stick with it. But give it a hundred years, and people will inherit that the same as any other belief system (other examples: "America is a first-world nation, and we should defend ~~Putin~~ our country to the death (by genociding anyone who disagrees with ~~me~~ me).") that is accepted unconditionally.
That thought somewhat gives me compassion: that humans are stupid. Not all, but most it seems - or at least *I* am:-P. Then again, some of us aspire to more, and question EVERYTHING, and to the extent we follow that, we have many chances to improve on a daily basis.
Unlike "religion", where often you aren't allowed to question anything at all, despite the literal, exact, and direct quote from the Bible not just casually suggesting but COMMANDING precisely that (e.g. I Thessalonians 5:21). Even Jesus hated religion - calling the religious hypocrites (Karens) "vipers" and "white-washed tombs, nice to look at on the outside but full of rot & decay on the inside".
Not that most Christians would be aware of that - what the Bible or Jesus said I mean - b/c the rich old white men would rather that they not actually read, just blindly obey.:-(
You can jerk off all you want as long as you don't eat meat on Fridays. But you also have to eat Jesus meat on Sundays.
Better Jesus meat than Jesus juice.
(For those that don't know "liking Jesus juice" means to "like" children.)
I may have been better off without knowing that 😶
It seems so weird to me when people think that their beliefs and practices come from words on a page.
That's just not how culture works.
It's a living thing, like language. What we do and what we think it means is passed down, influenced by events and neighbors, sometimes changing slowly over time, sometimes proving incredibly durable, sometimes undergoing rapid mutations.
Christianity doesn't come from the bible anymore than words come from the dictionary.
Ah yes, how could I forget that fish is famously not meat?
And bats are birds. :)
Leviticus 11:13-19
13 And these are they which ye shall have in abomination among the fowls; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, and the ossifrage, and the ospray,
14 And the vulture, and the kite after his kind;
15 Every raven after his kind;
16 And the owl, and the night hawk, and the cuckow, and the hawk after his kind,
17 And the little owl, and the cormorant, and the great owl,
18 And the swan, and the pelican, and the gier eagle,
19 And the stork, the heron after her kind, and the lapwing, and the bat.
And that in Canada, beaver was officially declared to be a fish.