Catholics are not real "Christians". So they dont believe in the Pope's position or respect the Pope.

I cannot fathom telling a guy who has dedicated his life to the church though that he doesn't understand the bible. Then again that is the republican MO, if you think you know better than an expert clearly you do.

Thing is, they claim that they care about religion. Not sure how many deadly sins they are gobbling up with all of that because something doesn't add up.

Just a distraction

Is cult mentality. They would rather cling to even the most ridiculous ideas than admit to themselves that they were duped by an obvious conman

Where I'm at the Christians have mostly completely lost the plot. There's this complete perversion of the faith called Prosperity Gospel that basically believes money is proof of divine blessing. So being rich is proof you're in Gods favor.

Also where I am there's is non-0 number of Christians who legitimately believe we/someone needs to rebuild ancient buildings in the middle east so Jesus can return.

It's a death cult that believes money is proof that God approves of you. While simultaneously believing unending war/genocide in the middle east is a necessary evil. So they can just shrug their shoulders while people are slaughtered and say "God works in mysterious ways!"

Send help.

Pete Hegseth, the bible-thumping secretary of war, used the fake Bible quote from Pulp Fiction at the Pentagon prayer group earlier this week.

Pete has a shit ton of "crusauder" (and totally not white-nationalist) tattoos. Christianity is a label/identity for people like him, not a lifestyle or personal moral code.

The issue here is that there's a lot of room for interpretation. Slavers used the bible as defence for their actions.

^My basic understanding of whats going on.

Ex-cultist here. Specifically, fundamentalist Christian in the US.

So what we're seeing here is a division between in-groups and out-groups, and drawing that circle closer as a means of guarding against valid criticism. Consider; the standard response of most cults when they are under attack is to double down on its assertions that it is telling the truth. Most cults are built with a persecution complex as key part of exploiting their believers.

This tactic triggers their emotional response to rally to the defense of their cause, because "We're under attack! We're being hunted! The Worst Thing Possible is going to happen, and it is THIS PERSECUTOR'S fault!" This also forces a false choice in members who are doubting the leadership, forcing them to either cut all social ties and side with the enemy (they are trained to see this as a fate worse than death) or rehearse their dogma and rally without question.

You wanna hear something that’ll absolutely destroy whatever little faith in humanity you may have left?

I once knew a guy who knew for a fact that Southern Baptist was the only true Christian religion. His reasoning? And he was absolutely dead serious when he said this and for him is was 100% a mic drop moment:

“Because his name was John the Baptist, not John the Catholic!”

This was something his aunt had said to him years ago, which I guess underscored its infallibility. He was by far the dumbest person I had ever met, and I’ve met a lot of dumb people.

When I was a teenager in the '90s, my mom's church did a six-week series of lessons on Wednesday nights about how the Catholic church only pretends to be Christian, followed by another series of lessons about how the Pope meets all of the criteria to be the Antichrist.

As Jesus said, "Love your neighbor, but only if he believes in me in exactly the same way you do."

Kinda like chimps, they're funny at the zoo, but give them machine guns