So when corrupt preachers rake in tens to hundreds of millions it's tax-exempt because it's not a business, but when a pastor actually cares for the needy like their book says to, that's a crime because it IS a business?
I work in a religious nonprofit that hosts a bunch of community service orgs including two churches, a teen volunteerism org, a food ministry that distributed 10 mil pounds of food thru the pandemic, a music nonprofit, an acting/drama nonprofit and more. We've been getting our ass ridden so hard by local zoning and fire stuff. About to drop $20k plus on a compliant oven hood for a simple oven like you have in you kitchen. I took a cut in pay last year because of this bullshit.
The book is a bunch of non-sensical, contradictory fairy tales written and rewritten by a million dudes, a thousand times over, to manipulate others.
True, but one of the few things it isn't unclear or downright self-contradictory about is that the main dude said to help the poor and otherwise marginalised people.
I love it when people pretend to know what "the book" says better than Christians
As an atheist who's actually read the damn thing rather than just gotten the perspectives of conservative preachers and politicians, I'm not pretending. I do in fact know better than some so-called Christians what their stupid book says.
I also follow the more empathetic parts of it better than anyone on the "Christian Right"
I'm glad you brought this up. I don't know if he stuttered. Never met the guy. But according to The Bible, he did say:
If a man also lie with mankind as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death.
Leviticus 20:13
And:
You shall have no other Gods before me
Exodus 20:3
Now we can go back and forth about what all of that means and historical context and all of that and I would argue that that would be arguing my point, precisely. None of us are born with innate knowledge of "God's word" and God doesn't come down here to clarify what he means about anything. So everybody interprets it to mean whatever they want it to mean (that's you). And who are you tell absolutely anyone else that their interpretation is wrong?
True, but one of the few things it isn't unclear or downright self-contradictory about is that the main dude said to help the poor and otherwise marginalised people.
Absolutely not true. "The main dude" did all kinds of fucking heinous shit, up to and including genocide of the entire human race.
As an atheist who's actually read the damn thing rather than just gotten the perspectives of conservative preachers and politicians, I'm not pretending.
It doesn't matter if you've "actually read the damn thing" because as I've already explained, it doesn't make any fucking sense and has no principles.
You can do what Christians do and cherry-pick passages that affirm your current beliefs, or what you want to believe, but then you're using the same flawed logic they are where you ignore giant swaths of contradictory statements.
even if you just take the overarching themes of it without looking too much into detail about it, you have one deity saying to commit genocide, then later on the same deity (purportedly) says to not be violent, turn the other cheek, yadda yadda. then a few pages later you get some rando coming in and writing fanfic about the deity's son that he never met and somehow changes most of the fledgling religion.