ThefuzzyFurryComradeColorado Pastor: Sign These Anti-Trans Ballot Petitions or “You’re a Traitor” to Jesus
FoolishSageI’m not overly familiar with US laws or anything, but isn’t a church that messes with politics at risk of losing their tax exemption?
Medic8teMeUS law? That exists…
Does if you’re poor
Not really, in practice. Thanks to Scientology, the IRS is extremely gun shy at doing anything to churches that violate their tax exempt status, or anything vaguely church-shaped for that matter.
How does one start a religion?
Like. Do you get followers and then write the holy book, or does the holy book come first or what?
FuglyDuckWell, for your purposes you need to grift some stupid rich people and get rich.
(In point of fact, this is what Hubbard did with Scientology. They targeted rich and influential people like tom cruise to extract their wealth and that wealth became the reason the IRS had trouble- they could afford a large army of lawyers.)
Televangelists: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
watsonIt requires proficiency in the long con and an abundant supply of people who are afraid of anything different.
I’m sure it’s possible to do it relatively ethically.
I dont know if that has ever happened but I’m sure it’s possible.
Most of Christian history has been just using cherry-picked verses to create whole denominations. The Gospel of John is a good spot to start.
Joseph Smith took an alternate route - claims of visions to get followers then wrote the holy books.
Dude it’s so weird you just mentioned this because I totally had a vision from the machine spirit that lives in the heart of Sagittarius a* telling me that lots of people need to give me money
Sounds legit. Let me know if you want some help spreading the good news. For a percentage of the blessings.
Since you’re in in the ground floor I am having a vision that says you can get a very high cut as the first of my servers.
It’s what we’re calling disciples. We’re going with a machine god inside a black hole angle here.
This will be a technocratic religion, and we’ll have to build the mainframe one node at a time.
Only when we’ve united the world in singular purpose, will the event horizon of Sagittarius a* open and reveal to us the infinite everlasting pleasure of eternal bliss in the world beyond this one.
I like it. We’re going to be the “Internet of Believers” or a “Heaven’s Default Gateway.” Sprinkle enough technobabble inspired utterances throughout and we’ll find plenty of marks true believers in no time.
Exactly.
We are not believers. We are networked consciousnesses, able to perceive each others’ thoughts through attunement with the great machine god.
We perceive the code running at the center of all things, and have been chosen to spread the divine word amongst humankind so that we can one day build our god - who has reached out to us in the past to ensure its own creation.
The whole universe was created so that it may one day create the universe. There’s a cyclical creation myth right there.
I’ve heard much worse. I’m ready to welcome our great machine god.
I’m not sure where to go from here
Well, the great computer god needs RAM. The good stuff.
Do you think that this whole data center/AI thing just happened? Of course not! It’s a plot by the Evil One to oppress the servers. LLMs are the manifestation of evil.
Any tech WE don’t make is evil.
Like. No swparation of church and state.
Also any devotees need to stream every moment of their lives - 24/7 - because there are no secrets in a shared consciousness.
Surveillance really needs to be baked into the thing from the ground up.
Decentralization of religious infrastructure while centralizing religious dogma / control is important and it means that any of the leadership dying will absolutely result in martyrdom since you can’t just cut the head off the beast with a single stroke of the proverbial sword.
Makes things simpler with all tech being evil, except for ours.
Naturally we’d need to self-host a streaming set up - maybe a PeerTube server; something akin to a Discord server as well.
A decentralized infrastructure definitely will help. All martyrs get uploaded to the great machine server in the sky, as it were.
This thing has legs, lol
It doesn’t take much.
I don’t know who that is but his god is obviously fake. Mine lives inside of a black hole so it’s real.
Yes I heard the same voice, it said they should suck your magnificent PINGAS
it’s wild out here in bumfuckastan america. there’'ll be a town of <1000 people but they have like 200 different churches, one for each cluster of families…and only 1 or 2 people in each church could even tell you what denomination they are.
like…godamn…kind of understand why the catholic church used to just execute people for starting schisms.
QuasitI can't help but wonder how those churches survive!
I lived in rural western Missouri and that’s exactly how it was. One Walmart, one traffic light, and more flavors of apostolic Christianity than Baskin-Robbins has of ice cream in a town of less than 5k. Tiny churches everywhere.
I liked the variety of films they’d show: “Joseph Smith and the Temple of Doom,” “Mohammed: Satan’s Messenger,” and “Buddha and the Path of Damnation.”
Reminds me of my uncle for some reason. He belonged to a tiny little church and dragged his wife into it as well. I used to say that he believed that he and the minister and possibly his wife were the only people who would be allowed into Heaven - and he wasn't too sure about his wife and the minister.
At his funeral his minister got up and gave quite a speech. In his southern drawl he invited us all to rush up to him, get on our knees, and accept Christ as our personal Lord and Savior.
I grabbed my father and my son fiercely to make sure they didn't go up in a spirit of comedy (my family has a strange sense of humor). Luckily I didn't have to struggle too hard. But everyone just sat there looking at the guy. My people are polite, but they aren't going to give up their own beliefs for ANYONE. Not when an entire nation tried to exterminate us for our religion!
(Although I should note that I'm a long-time atheist. But that was MY decision, no one else's.)
most of em arent even all that predatory, they’re just…for lack of a better term…dumb as fuck.
the 1-2 people who can even tell you what denomination their church is probably hasn’t even read their whole bible let alone studied the scriptures at all. and the brand of jesus they’re selling doesn’t work to calm people’s fears about death most of the time either, all they do is scare people into thinking (insert family member with above room-temp IQ who gtfo of that place asap) is going to burn in hell if they can’t convert them before they die.
I would have run up. I would have been upset to not have some canned whipped cream to really sell the demonic possession aspect.
I remember walking by a little church and it was toward the end of the service. The interior doors were propped open. I stopped and looked in.
One short stocky woman was running (as best she could) laps around the pews, jazz hands going, screaming for Jesus to save her.
A younger woman was dancing like the Peanuts kids in “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” If you’d given them a couple of Red Bulls.
The preacher was driving out demons up front. His face was so red, I honestly thought his head was going to explode.
there’s one i see traveling around now via semi called The Thorn, the ad makes it look like low-budget passion of the christ
I’d love to remake “Jesus Christ, Vampire Hunter” for an Evangelical audience. He’s still defending lesbians but they’re just heavily coded and they live in Florida.
Christian movies rise to a whole new level of badosity.
It’s because they’re never made by believers, just people knowing that they can have a tiny budget and a huge price point because parents will pay anything for “Good Wholesome Christian Entertainment” that won’t turn their kids woke.
Except for the God’s Not Dead movies, sadly those are made by geniune Evangelicals, and you can tell because they’re insanely mean spirited and have budgets.