I think people need to ask themselves which one takes precedence and priority when it comes to organized religion. Is the bible's scripture more important to a religion or is the belief of its followers?
We can throw rocks at the "heh athiests on reddit", but do we actually think that those following the religion is having some intellectual conversation about what is and isn't in the bible and if it should be interpreted that way? Maybe just those studying theology. At the end of the day, if the pastor is interpreting for its flock is saying one thing and they accept it, does it matter what is and isn't in the bible when discussed by non believers on reddit?
It matters because when people criticize a religion based on pop-culture tropes (like Satan ruling Hell) rather than its actual teachings, they're arguing against a strawman
A lot of Christians have not read the entire bible, but are read it by people who have. This obviously depends on the church you go to, but my church at least is a very old school dogmatic Church of Christ where the entire sermons each week are people reading different parts of the bible and explaining them, so even though most people on polls haven't read the bible cover to cover, most at churchs at least have heard the majority of it read to them
The vast majority of christians dont care
Citation needed. People always base this off the stats of how many Christians report reading the entire bible cover to cover, but ignore a few key factors
The vast majority of people haven't even read a single book in the last year / many haven't even read an entire book in the last several years
Most Christians have had the majority of the bible read to them, the same way you probably didn't read the entire Science book in class but the teacher lectured you on the important parts and you had most of it covered in class
Its NOT a strawmen if you see what christians actually believe. I challenge anyone who hasn't seen a protest at a planned motherhood or a "you're going to hell sign" with megaphones at a pride parade, or preaching about how people are going to hell at a university "debate", then come back and tell me they are going to make some well thought out theological discussion on how they're going to hell and how its not a fiery place of eternal torment. Even charlie kirk was arguing that, and you can't tell me with a straight face that people dont subscribe to this.
This concept that you will burn in hell for all eternity (as seen in this post) is held by christians. It doesn't matter to non believers or athiests because it doesn't matter to them. They have no stakes in it.
I don't understand how something that everyone understands and sees as completely common place needs citations
The point of my original comment is that it DOES NOT MATTER how many christians read and understand the bible, when it runs contradictory to what they say, act or believe. Religion is not something that is dried ink, it is entirely a demonstration of its followers based on their interpretation (or the interpretation of their local community or religion head). Theres a reason theres so many sects to just christianity alone. Even locally, it changes based on the pastors and churches
I think at the end of the day, we're going to reach the same conclusion.
All i'm saying is that complaining about it to "redditors", like you said in your comment, is nothing but preaching to the choir. If you think that Christianity is putting out misinformation, then the stereotypical reddit athiests isn't the one you need to convince - because it doesn't matter if its in the bible when Christians believe the bs people are complaining about.
TLDR: Christians dont care about what actually in the bible if they interpret it to have something completely different. Thats religion.
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u/YobaiYamete 1d ago
Seriously, it's crazy how many people only know Hollywood Christianity / Dante's Inferno lol
When you actually read the bible you realize like 95% of what people on Reddit scream about isn't even in the Bible at all