Christians refuse to admit that original sin is emotional abuse.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

It's a sick cannibalistic death cult.

Their foundational premise which requires substitutionary atonement DESTROYS peoples' self esteem. It makes a lot of people feel like they will never be good enough. Every time I heard a fire-breathing preacher tell the congregation what a bunch of horrible worthless POS sinners we were, "Our righteousness is as filthy rags" etc., I wanted to crawl into a hole and just die because I couldn't handle the mental anguish. And the preachers all congratulated each other after the sermon for preaching such excellent sermons. Since you can never be perfect, they lay an unearned and undeserved guilt trip on you just for breathing because of a couple of fruit-munching simpletons in a fairy tale.

My mistake was taking that bullshit and the preachers' opinions seriously. I had to get the strength up to walk away from it forever. I'm a UU who studies Buddhism.

I think original sin and substitutionary atonement are a con job, a false problem with an unnecessary and imaginative solution.

I had a Methodist minister who graduated from a Presbyterian seminary tell me that original sin wasn't that bad because of God's grace. Well, I've never felt any different whether or not I prayed or read the bible.

John Bradshaw, Ph.D., a former Jesuit priest, wrote a book about why we are an addicted society. It's called HEALING THE SHAME THAT BINDS YOU. We are addicted to doing things because we never feel we are good enough. Nobody loves us just for being who we are. There is always something WRONG with us. So because we feel horrible and shameful even when we don't deserve it, we perform addictive actions or thoughts to take away the pain.

And I've had Christians on DU tell me, "Well you can believe anything you want and be a Christian." My answer is "Wrong. You have to believe in original sin and substitutionary atonement. You wouldn't need to be saved by Jesus were it not for original sin which is made up bullshit to get you to feel bad and be controllable. That is the definition of a Christian. The foundational premise. And every church I went to recited the Apostles' Creed."

For people who have such great faith, they seem to be awfully dodgy and duplicitous about actually stating what they believe.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. the first experience i had with leaving an abusive relationship

was when i stopped going to church. I never felt anything but judgement and hypocracy.

[Warpy]

2. You're expecting reason and logic

from an inherently unreasonable and illogical system. I don't get frustrated with such people, I just feel terribly sorry for them for not having the courage to face this stuff and ask the tough questions of it.

Start to ask a few questions here and there and the whole business topples into a heap of nothingness. But we all knew that.

[LiberalEsto]

3. Not only that, but "original sin" condemns all women

and tells us we have to suffer pain in childbirth because of it.
Any doctrine that condemns half of humanity is sick, misogynistic to the extreme, and dead WRONG

[Manifestor_of_Light]

4. Doctors argued that women shouldn't get anesthetics in childbirth because of the bible.

This was in the 19th century when they discovered ether and chloroform. After Queen Victoria had her 8th and her 9th children with the aid of chloroform, I think attitudes changed.



Dr. John Snow, May 14, 1853: The Lancet, British medical journal, criticized Dr. Snow but not by name, and Queen Victoria's physicians for the use of chloroform during the birth of Prince Leopold.
http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/victoria.html

I assume these asshole male doctors think so little of women that they would gladly let women die in childbirth rather than do a c-section, like they do nowadays in many cases to prevent maternal and fetal death.

I am a grown woman, and had a person here on DU argue with me that "they just needed to turn the baby" after I told her that I HAD to have a C-section or I would have died, because there was simply not enough room, and I am a small person. This woman, who I assume is a natural childbirth nut, said I "must have a deformed pelvis". I am perfectly normal and do not have a deformed pelvis. It's just not big enough and she didn't get the concept. The hole in a woman's pelvis has to be 4 inches in diameter (approximately 10 cm) to be big enough for the baby's head to get through.

[AlbertCat]

7. rather than do a c-section,

Remember.... in the 19th century there are no antibiotics. They aren't even sure that "germ theory" is correct yet. So a C-section may have been more dangerous and a last resort.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

8. Yes, one out of three women died in childbirth before antibiotics and C-sections.

That is why I am sick of natural childbirth nuts who say "But childbirth is a natural process!"

Yeah, and it can turn deadly really quickly.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstetrical_dilemma

[whatthehey]

9. Childbirth IS a natural process

So, however, is death and the two tend to run hand in hand more than most benign folks would prefer. I'm far from the most sympathetic and kind person on earth but give me anything close to omnipotence and arranging the human pelvis for both upright locomotion and easy birth would be fairly high up on the to do list. I certainly wouldn't arrange it suspiciously like an only slightly adjusted quadrupedal structure.

For an omniscient chappy God sure has an awful lack of imagination when it comes to his favored species design come to think of it. He gave plenty of animals teeth that either regenerate or last a lifetime, but not us. He designed plenty, hell most, of them, with hides that managed habitat temperature ranges without artifice, and pretty much all of them without life-threatening parturition. But it's all the fault of that apple (or quince). I wonder what our skins and pelvic structure looked like before the Great Evil Fructiphagery? Did they pop into the current substandard immediately teeth touched apple peel (and probably fell out in the process) or did the big Y do that to Adam and Eve after chewing them out?

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. Great Evil Fructiphagery!

Excellent!

[Iggo]

5. They refuse to admit a whole lot of things.

Especially to themselves.

[Major Nikon]

6. Organized religion tends to prey on weaknesses

It's not that much different than a snake oil salesman that convinces you that there's something wrong and they alone have the miracle cure. Ironically that con game has probably been around since humans have been humans, so the Adam and Eve angle probably isn't all that far off.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

11. see The Elixir of Love for a dramatic version of the gullibility.

It is a comic opera by Gaetano Donizetti. A con man sells cheap wine as a cure all to drunken peasants. The con man is a bass, and the star of the show. Meanwhile the tenor and the baritone are fighting over the soprano. The tenor wins.

[progressoid]

12. Yeah, I had one of those "wtf" moments Easter Sunday.

I had to have dinner with some religious family members. During the prayer I think my eyes nearly rolled out of my skull when I heard something like, "thank you Father for sacrificing your son to save us from our sins".

God creates people. God creates sin. God creates free will. God gets pissed because his people use free will and sin. God then has sex with one of the virgin people. She has a baby God. God makes that son (who is also God) get crucified because, well, that will atone for ours sins. But if we don't believe any of this, - eternal damnation.

Uhhh, WTF kind of tortured logic is that?