Didn't have to kill the pope about it imo

I have been to Church exactly one time. My grandmother was catholic and she took us to easter service at a really beautiful cathedral in Mexico (we used to go every year for easter when I was a teen) it was all in Latin and the cathedral was pretty impressive but it was boring as fuck.

I was much more interested in the fireworks shop around the corner that simply had a cardboard sign over the door with sharpie writing on it that said "M9000 Terrorist Toys Sold Here!"

Yes I bought one and yes my dad and I made a crater the size of a volkswagon on the beach that night.

That thing was not a fire cracker that was like a quarter stick of dynamite. Mexico is wild. Also people go crazy with the fireworks on easter down there. Makes 4th of July in the US look like a bunch of kids with sparklers.

Here's just a small example lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6yE2yrPzSs

They're worshipping a god they made up that is only tangentially related to the Bible

i've seen the bible you don't want them to be the other way either.

Christians give the most pathetic excuses when confronted with what's actually in the bible. All of them. The cognitive dissonance drives me nuts every time.

gosh danged superstructure amirite

jesus is cool but christians are sick little perverts???

One time as a kid I noticed they were selling tickets to a raffle in the foyer of the church and I couldn't get over it. The moneylenders Jesus drove off are such ambiguous figures because there's no context in the book it's just 'people selling things at the temple is bad,' so I learned the context and it made modern Christianity seem even less like what Jesus would have wanted. To make a sacrifice at the temple you needed a live animal offering, people living in cities or non-pastoral lives didn't have as easy access to livestock so they had to buy them. Often they did not have the money upfront so the moneylenders would sit outside the temple doing nothing but giving people (often usurious) loans for them to buy animals that they immediately burned. Rentseeking off of the functions of the religion is the only thing that makes Jesus turn to violence (aside from a fig tree being out of season one time)

they love to forget about this one

Grew up as a non denomination christian cultist but found it easy to break away from all the nonsense from the hypocrisy I saw.

As far as capitalism is concerned jesus said that it's easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than a rich person enter heaven. It seems as if this is easily ignored or twisted by mental gymnastics to not apply in this day or age. These people are deluded, it's not even worth trying to understand their beliefs as they've been twisted through the millenia

if you don't like a church, you can go church shopping and check out other ones.

Yeah. I'm not a huge fan of church shopping but sometimes you really do have to cut them loose and nail your theses to the door. I will say you can generally find socially progressive, even openly socialist congregations in most mainline churches.

The poor in spirit line is definitely cope, albeit cope that started in the relatively wealthy community that wrote Matthew.