News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
No he didn't. He admitted he was interpreting "God's word" wrong his entire life. What happens when his interpretation changes again?
Edgy
I'd love to hear a different way to interpret the man's own words if you have one.
It's not about that. The man is religious, that's not gonna change from one day to the next. You don't need to be religious to be a bigot, that was just his excuse.
What happened to being tolerant of others beliefs? Religion has nothing to do with being an ignorant bigot, it's just often used as an excuse for it.
You are misreading why I'm focused on that. I agree with your viewpoint, except that he believed his bigoted beliefs were God's will. He also believes his release from them was God's will, and that he'd wrongly interpreted God's will before.
Had he made the jump to "God is bullshit" instead of "I have misunderstood God" then I'd have a lot more trust in his change of heart. However, in this circumstance he has very clearly decided that his morals go no further than whatever God "wants" him to believe - and therefore, should he wake up tomorrow and realize God actually wanted him to be like he was before, I have no reason to imagine he'll be anything different than that.
edited for typo
I agree that there are problems with that kind of religious thinking but what I got hung up on in your original reply was this
What says that the next interpretation will be negative? We can't assume that. I know where you're coming from and I was a bit bitchy in my reply, I'm sorry about that.
Who knows why he said those things the way he said it, but if that's what it takes for him to accept the things that are going on around him then it's just whatever, good for him. Who knows, maybe his next realization will be that the bible and religion aren't "all that".
The way I interpreted your post at first was almost like accusing someone of "futurecrime". We don't know what is in store for this person, all we know is that he had a change of heart about something but obviously he is not ready to let go of his religious beliefs. I guess it also made me a bit angry because it sounded like something I might've said a long time ago when I used to be fiercely anti-religion and I really don't that old version of me. It wasn't very productive.
Maybe that was a bit of projection on my part.
I wouldn't dream of taking religion away from someone today. I don't like it but for some people it's all that they know and it's how they make sense of the world. It's a crutch but some people need it and are completely lost without it.
Oh no, I'm not anti-religion at all. Although I did have a period like that in my past, also.
Truly devout/pious folks from any religion I've known have been good people and a joy to be around. I think they'd be good people anyway though, and their religion just gave them a framework.
When folks use religion as their justification for behaving in ways that are clearly at odds with its most basic tenets, that's what I find toxic, and do feel is far, far too common.
I'm probably coming in hot on the topic in general because although I'm a cishet white guy I've just about had it with the ridiculous bullshit from the right in this area in recent years, and it's becoming a real hotbutton issue to me.
They probably would be yeah. Although I have family members who definitely weren't great before they found religion. Two uncles in particular who are great now but were not on this path before. Then I have another uncle on the other side of my family who absolutely refuses to accept that his daughter is gay and him and his wife have put that child through absolute hell. I've seen videos of her mother screaming at her that she was the devil and all sorts of disgusting shit that a child should never hear from anyone let alone a parent. Being trans I've cut contact with them completely because even if they act nice in my face, I know what they say when I'm not around.
Yeah unfortunately it is. Religion is as corrupted as politics are these days. These people seem to think they're only following the word of god but they're just being manipulated. I can't help but feel bad for them even if some of them would literally want to see me dead.
I get it. This all needs to stop. I'm just scared that if all sides just stay angry at each other we will never be able to get past this without things getting even uglier. So when I see someone like the dad in this story, I'd rather forget everything else and appreciate the fact that they've improved and even give them praise. They've admitted to being wrong at least once so maybe now they won't be so quick to hate things they don't understand.
I don't know, maybe I'm naive. All I know is that I'm really sick of all the negativity, the constant outrage and outright ragebait articles, all the pundits and the talking heads who basically just try to make the other side look dumb for views, all of it. It feels like we're all being played, even by the people on "our side".