Attack Against Christendom

Discussion in 'Religion & Philosophy' started by Kyklos, Sep 14, 2018.

  1. Paul7

    Paul7 Well-Known Member

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    Jim Jones was one of you.

    "By the early 1970s, Jones began deriding Christianity as "fly away religion," rejecting the Bible as being a tool to oppress women and non-whites, and denouncing a "Sky God" who was no God at all.[15] He wrote a booklet titled "The Letter Killeth", criticizing the King James Bible.[41] Jones also began preaching that he was the reincarnation of Gandhi, Father Divine, Jesus, Gautama Buddha, and Vladimir Lenin. Former Temple member Hue Fortson, Jr. quoted him as saying:[11]

    What you need to believe in is what you can see.… If you see me as your friend, I'll be your friend. As you see me as your father, I'll be your father, for those of you that don't have a father.… If you see me as your savior, I'll be your savior. If you see me as your God, I'll be your God.

    In a 1976 phone conversation with John Maher, Jones alternately said he was an agnostic and an atheist.[42] Marceline Jones admitted in a 1977 New York Times interview that Jones was trying to promote Marxism in the U.S. by mobilizing people through religion, citing Mao as his inspiration: "Jim used religion to try to get some people out of the opiate of religion."[38] He had slammed the Bible on the table yelling "I've got to destroy this paper idol!"[38] In one sermon, Jones said:[43]

    You're gonna help yourself, or you'll get no help! There's only one hope of glory; that's within you! Nobody's gonna come out of the sky! There's no heaven up there! We'll have to make heaven down here!"

    Wikipedia
     
    Last edited: Aug 9, 2020
  2. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    The same pseudo-Christian Prosperity Gospel scam is still popular today in America--in fact, it has cause a crime wave rushing through fundamentalists churches. A number of mega-churches like Oral Roberts "University," Pastor Joel Osteen Lakewood Church in Texas, or the famous money and religion counterfeiter Born Again Christians Darain and Cory Atkinson from Garden City, Kansas.

    American Greed: A Born Again Christian

     
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  3. Paul7

    Paul7 Well-Known Member

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    I'm not defending the Prosperity Gospel, and I'm not a fan of Osteen. You don't judge a philosophy by it's misuse. Why don't you tell us the huge amount Christians give to charity? Much more than sniping atheists. If I can show you greedy atheists does that invalidate that world view?
     
  4. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Terry and Rachelle Griggs is another pair of Christian grifters that ripped off Hawaii residents of four million dollars.
     
  5. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    What is not widely know is that Jim Jones, ordained by the Assemblies of God, was close to a Baptist minister known as Father Divine. It was from Father Divine that Jim Jones got the idea of claiming to be god. When father Divine died Jones attempted to taken over Divine's congregation.

    "Woodmont" was Father Divine's home from 1953 until his death in 1965.
    [​IMG]
     
  6. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    America is Jonestown

    I was doing more research on Jim Jones mind control techniques, which are the following based on the psychological principle of "sensory over-stimulation:"

    Jones moved many of his members to a planned settlement in a disputed territory in northwestern Guyana claimed by Venezuela who was using the camp as a buffer against Brazil taking claim of the region. Jones already knew that the US was onto him from a negative local newspaper article reporting his behavior toward People Temple's members so he sought to isolate them. The members worked in the jungle from early morning to 6 pm, and then attended meetings with Jones lasting until 1 am in the morning. The members lived under extreme austerity while Jones was hoarding millions of dollars. Jones only used other people’s money for his projects. The members were composed of 1/3 young children, and many elderly persons. Members were not allowed to speak to one another, and instead a loud speaker broadcasting Jones voice ran day and night to suppress thinking. One purpose of the long hours of work and sleep deprivation was to weaken psychological resistance, and to prevent discourse among members to gain insight into there true situation.

    Jones had enemies, and his members experienced a lifetime of discrimination and violence which Jones exploited. Jones would mis-read to the members from US newspapers of mass persecution of Christians, and even secretly had his own young son shoot at members from the jungle to create a siege mentality. The church members were physically exhausted, fearful, and mis-informed about their true situation.

    Despots gradually introduced their authoritarian goals to prevent alarm as teaching acceptance of control by participating in performative desensitization propaganda exercises. With over-stimulation comes desensitization over time. Operant Behaviorist psychiatrists often use desensitization with patients who have phobias such as fear of elevators, or insects by slowly and gradually exposing them to their fears to unlearn being anxious. Jones used this same technique to desensitize his church members by acting out mass suicide. In one year the members gathered 81 times to act out, to simulate, the drinking of poison. Jones and his inside advisors took an entire year to gather the arsenic and supplies for the mass suicide. The US government used this absurd participatory method to teach fear in the school during “Duck and Cover” exercises in case a 50-megaton nuclear bomb was dropped on the students: you “duck and cover” and then brush the radiation stuff off. Or, airport stop and frisk procedures by militarized police is another desensitization method for Americans to have agents stick their hands down you pants. The goal is to teach, and enhance fear.

    Jones worked to keep families divided by starting rumors, and separating church members from those they loved as a method of control by fracturing family relationships. Factionalism was useful for diluting the power of the exploited group.

    While Jones preached religion, values and ethics, Jones was himself a sexual predator exploiting sex for blackmail. Jones once invited San Francisco mayor George Moscone to his home to have dinner with Jones’s family and other members. Jones was able to get Moscone drunk and he had sex with a church member. The next morning, Jones called mayor Moscone to thank him for a great time and oh, that girl Moscone had sex with was underage, but it is still a secret. Moscone, fearful of blackmail, appointed Jones as Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Commission. This is why you see Jones popup in San Francisco politics for a short time and then disappear. Willie Brown stayed loyal to Jones however.

    Jone was able to get people to engage in self-destructive acts by challenging their loyalty and religious beliefs. Exhausted Church members were convinced to signed false confessions to prove their loyalty and were later blackmailed. Jones used the law , and the court system to entrap his members.

    Jones as a heavy drug user of amphetamine and wore dark glasses to hide his abuse, but punished those in the church that drank wine. His advisers knew of his addiction, but kept it secret from the members.

    If any of the above behavior control techniques failed, Jones would threaten to kill a defecting member.

    The question that bothers me the most, however, is how did Jones learn all these behavior control methods? He could of learned them from the simple experience of living is America especially during the Great American Depression. He could of learned them from Father Divine such as the “I am god” meme. Jones could of learned control methods from reading George Orwell’s novel “Nineteen Eight-Four.” However, these are not satisfactory explanations for me.

    Welcome to Jonestown.
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2020
  7. Daggdag

    Daggdag Well-Known Member

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    the funny thing to me is that Paul mostly taught that Christians don't need to follow the old laws that Jesus boarded them with his coming, and according to the Bible Jesus literally said that not a single letter of the old law was voided, and that he came to complete the law not to change or destroy it, and that those who said otherwise could not be counted as his followers.
     
  8. Paul7

    Paul7 Well-Known Member

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    Jesus said He came to fulfill the law, the Scribes and Pharisees didn't do that, they twisted it adding thousands more conditions to the law.
     
  9. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    [​IMG]

    The Trumpian fascist plan is to sabotage mail-in voting by dismantling the US Post Office and suppress the 2020 election results. However, even if he loses the election, he will crash Wall Street to destroy 401K, and retirement investment funds. The Trump mafia syndicate knows people can be controlled if their investments are held hostage. This was the fear that Jim Jones used against this own members.

    If you wait until the Trump engineered crash is implemented, it will then be too late to withdraw your funds from Wall Street and will lose everything you have worked a lifetime to earn.

    Trump Threatens To Crash Economy If He Loses 2020
     
  10. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Theologian Paul Tillich wrote about the Old Testament concept of the holy as creative and destructive, but faith can become idolatrous faith as he witnessed in Nazi Germany before escaping to America. Tillich helps us understand how even religious traditions can become demonic:

    “We have distinguished between true and idolatrous faith. The holy which is demonic, or ultimately destructive, is identical with the content of idolatrous faith. Idolatrous faith is still faith. The holy which is demonic is still holy. This is the point where the ambiguous character of religion is most visible and the dangers of faith are most obvious: the danger of faith is idolatry and the ambiguity of the holy is its demonic possibility. Our ultimate concern can destroy us as it can heal us. But we never can be without it” (Dynamics of Faith, Paul Tillich, p. 15)(pdf.).

    Crisis cults have been a topic of my favorite journalist, Chris Hedges who has for many years studied and written about specific sects of Christian Fundamentalism in America that display cult characteristics. Any group can turn into a cult: ideology is only important to the victims while the despot only desires control. Hedges’ most recent article gives an update on the current fascist coup that is moving into place.

    "These crisis cults are... irrational and schizophrenic. They have no coherent ideology. They turn morality upside down. They appeal exclusively to emotions. Burlesque and celebrity culture become politics. Depravity becomes morality. Atrocities and murder become heroism. Crime and fraud become justice. Greed and nepotism become civic virtues. What these cults stand for today, they condemn tomorrow" (Chris Hedges: America’s Death March, August 10, 2020).
     
  11. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    The “The Car Cons,” cometh: Christian brothers Darain and Cory Atkinson. They used the old scam, "Hello, I am a Christian, and I am here to help." 20,000 consumers were defrauded.

    American Greed: A BORN Again Christian or is he?
     
  12. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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  13. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    The Christian fascists are embarrassed and work to removed the evidence of their corruption and fake Christianity.
     
  14. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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  15. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Religious fraud Malcolm (“Mac”) Parker, 56 of Addison, Vermont stole $28 million dollars from ordinary people interested in spirituality. A crime wave has hit Christians of all faiths using the prosperity gospel confidence game since the fundamentalists pseudo-Christians incorporated churches as a business.

    "Lights! Camera! Fraud!"

    The Court the United States explained that for the decade ending in 2009, Parker raised more than $28 million from hundreds of people by leading them to believe they were investing in Parker’s production of a movie entitled “Birth of Innocence.” Less than $1 million of that money was spent toward the creation of a movie, which remains unfinished. Approximately $4 million was sent to a partner Soteriou who spent large sums of money on various luxuries, including more than $100,000 on hotel stays in Telluride, Colorado. Parker supplied Soteriou with this money despite telling investors it would be used toward the movie production. In Court the government estimated that Parker received approximately one-fourth the amount of criminal proceeds received by Soteriou.
     
  16. gabmux

    gabmux Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    If there is a problem with Christianity,,,perhaps that is it
     
  17. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    “All institutions, including the church, are inherently demonic.”—Paul Tillich

    Thank you for the likes. Christian theologian, Paul Tillich, observed the Nazi political party sweeping into the German Churches without hardly any resistance in the 1930s. Today, we have seen the same pattern with the Nixon-Powell (1971) strategy to infiltrate the American Churches with a nationalistic prosperity gospel. Politicians find it easy to exploit the natural affinity between Christian Fundamentalist authoritarians and fascism.

    I have written two essays on this topic:


     
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  18. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    Notice that the Trump fascist regime is using the same psychological manipulative techniques that Jim Jones used against his congregation.

    1. The Trumpian fascists are jamming the channels of public communication with a tidal wave of disinformation, diversions, distractions, and racist agitation propaganda that is not design to convince a skeptical listener, but to motivate the zealot to act. Go into any public space and you will hear Fox agitation propaganda blaring from the television 24 hrs a day. This was not the case at one time in America. Corporate PACs and fascist think tanks are producing political propaganda to amplify the social chaos as much as possible.

    2. The first administrative moves of the Trumpian fascists was to seize complete control of the workforce finances by withholding unemployment payments, issue limited stimulus payments to only take them back later, pass laws giving business immunity against civil lawsuits for endangering workers, deny benefits to workers who do not obey employer demands, or even question workplace policies. Currently, there is some 40 to 50 millions persons unemployed in America by the pandemic during which financial assistant is being used as a truncheon. "Loitering" and "disturbing the peace" law allows lie enforcement to arrest any person for no reason whatsoever--that's why those laws exist.

    3. Any person that is arrested for dissenting can have legal charges stacked against them resulting in decades of possible imprisonment, multiple excessive fines; loss of right to vote; loss of stimulus subsidies; loss of free speech; suffer a beating then charged with assault, getting intentionally blinded, and/or sexually assaulted. Tax audits for any person donating to a progressive candidate--its coming Bernie supports! Background checks of almost anyone will discover some law violation no matter have trivial. The "loitering" and "disturbing the peace" laws allow lie enforcement to arrest any person for no reason whatsoever--that's why these laws exist.

    4. The death cult keeps its members in constant fear. The cult leader has the members’ money who might be blackmailed to face possible private prison sentences. The cult leader directly threatens members, uses other members to beat those that dissent, blackmails former inside advisors, and keeps his victims is a never ending state of emergency with a series of real and fake catastrophes involving real and/or fake enemies one event after another for an extended time. Currently, the media is a key factor of this type of agitation propaganda.

    5. The death cult leader declares his divinity and that he alone can stop the chaos. Fascism is the cult of the desert so that they, therefore, make a desert everywhere they go.

     
    Last edited: Sep 7, 2020
  19. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    [​IMG]

    “Every robber or oppressor in history has wrapped himself in a cloak of patriotism or religion, or both.”-- Eugene V. Debs, 1917 March 25, The Muncie Sunday Star (The Star Press)​

    Trump detests Christians — and he deceived pastors and mocked them after they left Trump Tower

    Trump has said the following about Christianity as reported by public media statements and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen:
    • Can you believe that people believe that bullshit,” Trump said after pastors prayed over him.
    • Cohen’s insider stories add significant depth to my own documenting of Trump’s repeated and public denouncements of Christians as “fools,” “idiots,” and “schmucks.”
    • Trump has declared that his life philosophy is “revenge.”
    • Cohen explains that the only version of Christianity that could possibly interest Trump is the “prosperity gospel.”
    • Trump said, “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so.”
     
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  20. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    WE GOT HIM!!!
    [​IMG]

    During sentencing, the judge said Coontz acted in “arrogant and disrespectful ways” and used a “long-term effort to minimize his income improperly and maximize his business expenses improperly.” Bother Coontz lived in a million-dollar condo, had a Ferrari and Maserati titled in the name of the ministry. Prosecutors said Coontz also had three BMWs, two Ferraris, a Land Rover and a Regal 2500 boat.

    Judge sentences former Charlotte Christian televangelist Rev. Todd Coontz of Rockwealth Ministries to 5 years behind bars for tax evasion.
     
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  21. Aleksander Ulyanov

    Aleksander Ulyanov Well-Known Member

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    I wonder what the cops thought when they saw a Lamborghini with the little clergy sign in a no-parking zone.

    "Spaghetti dinners doing rather well, aren't they Reverend?"
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2020
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  22. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    "Unfortunately, the Trump Organization is — I have described it — is very much like a cult...and it's interesting he used in the Woodward tape today the word cool-aid, which is from the Jonestown Massacre. Which I thought was somewhat interesting. Not only is the Trump Organization like a cult, but so is the White House."
    --Michael Cohen, former attorney of Trump.
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2020
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  23. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    should be easy to tell real Christians from fake ones

    And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. -- Mark 16:17-18
     
    Last edited: Sep 10, 2020
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  24. Kyklos

    Kyklos Well-Known Member Donor

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    "But like the German industrialists who backed the Nazi Party, they [corporations] know that the Christian right will give an ideological veneer to ruthless corporate tyranny. These corporations view the Christian fascists the same way the German industrialists viewed the Nazis, as buffoons."--Chris Hedges

    Chris Hedges has closely followed the infiltration of American Christian churches. Today the infiltration by fascists has fractured even the non-fundamentalists churches including the Catholic Church that has a relatively progressive Pope Francis (Pope calls on global community to confront 'destructive effects of empire of money.).

    This is another pattern in fascist take over a society.

    Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett: Another step toward Christian fascism:Barrett is more than a pious culture warrior who openly defies the pope. She's an abject servant of corporate power.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2020
  25. Paul7

    Paul7 Well-Known Member

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    Never heard of them.
     

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