Jackie's Fridge

Yes! My mum taught me this trick when I was very young and it’s worked so well.

To build on the conversation theme, I’ve found that it takes less effort than you think to converse if you keep the focus on the other person. It just takes brief words of support, like cool/seriously?/that sounds great/awful/tiring/what have you. My go-to is “wild!” because it can be used positively or negatively and interpretation is up to them.

If they ask me about my own hobbies though, that strategy falls apart and I start breathlessly blabbing out WAY more details than I should. Haven’t figured out a solution to that yet. Easier not to volunteer anything personal and keep it on them.

Oooofff I am sorry. Hopefully you can recharge and you have some reliable ways to extract yourself from dealing with the energy vampires.

It’s wild how fast your defences can fail once you get to a certain point.

I engage with them no matter what. My reasons being: if I can handle it, I get a gauge on what mood they’re in and how to talk to them that day, which makes things easier for me since I don’t have to guess. If I can’t handle caring about their response, at least it gets them talking and I don’t have to offer up anything about my life. Just keep steering the conversation back to theirs and they basically handle all the heavy lifting until I can find an out.

Obviously this does not work perfectly all the time but it usually gets me to the finish line.

Dude. The shroud of Turin was a known fake in the 1300s when it was made. The church decided to adopt it anyway because it was a great money maker with tourists, even though according to your other reply they don’t mix money and faith. I do love that you lead with the most thoroughly debunked religious fraud in Christian history as your strongest evidence though. That genuinely gave me a laugh.

Witnesses are notoriously unreliable and easily swayed. And you never said witnesses of what. Just vague “miracles” of the trust-me-bro variety? Which Roman officials? Were the letters corroborated by contemporary evidence and writings from reliable scholars?

Magic does not exist. Ghosts and the Easter Bunny are fake too, sorry to ruin that for you.

You are absolutely divorced from reality aren’t you. Side note: Look up the No True Scotsman fallacy.

There you go trying to explain and rationalise the divine words of your infallible god. So why even include the Old Testament? If Jesus “fulfilled” it like an Amazon order, it’s over. Stop using it to judge people. No more Leviticus, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, Proverbs…

Christians hate being reminded that the Old Testament is just Torah fanfiction, so you should be happy to lose that stuff.

And yet that seems good enough for the in group more often than not.

Is that not the church’s whole thing? You’d think they would be better at it.

Matt 5:17

I could but I don’t care enough.

You haven’t provided proof, only claims. It doesn’t make me uncomfortable, juat disappointed that some people are so credulous.

I hate the institution for enabling by design bad actors throughout its entire history. Any good it does or has ever done can be handled as well, if not better, by secular organisations.

Those “few” people aren’t just two-faced congregants. They are the people who hide sexual predators within church ranks, people who impose their beliefs on others, traumatise patients outside Family Planning, lobby to divert public funds away from public education in order to funnel it into churches where there is no accountability for how funds are spent, etc.

Catholicism is the largest, richest paedophile ring in the world, insulated by generations of power and wealth. Southern Baptism spreads bigotry and white nationalism. Prosperity gospel preys on the poor and desperate. Religion enables so much suffering and all it offers is the promise that if you give it your money and time in this world, you’ll get it all back AFTER YOU DIE. What kind of ridiculous claim is that? If all the riches are to be found after death, why does the church need so much money and devotion? It’s a parasite, full stop.

1. Choose your own translation doesn’t matter if the “word of god” is so malleable.
2. Nope.
3. Cop out. Jesus said he wasn’t there to invalidate the old stuff.
4. I’m not your dictionary.
5. Did not make that claim.

Bonus 6. I’m tired of you.

Literally said “not all Christians” but my point still stands. And I have better things to do than visit a religious institution I don’t respect.

Motality standards do evolve - with human society. If your god was all-knowing and benevolent maybe he could have set that precedent early on instead of allowing slavery to continue literally to today.

You’re claiming your god decided “nah jk bro slavery isn’t cool I was just joshing ya” at about the same time humanity did? What is he even good for? And why does he need you making excuses for him? Kick that bum to the curb. He’s not worth your time, let alone your worship.

They had better demonstrate more than repentance, and there had better be legal recourse, victim-guided restitution and safeguards established. None of this “just move Father Barnes to a congregation in El Salvador and hide all documentation without doing anything further” garbage, as the church has done consistently forever.

You are typing the words yourself and not getting it. That is definitely some sort of talent.

If there is a claim that something supernatural happened, it better have rock solid evidence to support it. Calling something a miracle because you want it to be true does not make it true. Proving it does. And the only proof of any “miracle” in the bible is - guess what? - cited using the bible. That’s what circular reasoning is.

If you make a claim with no objective, testable, flasifiable proof, all you have is a claim. And until you provide robust proof, I will dismiss your claim.

Repeating the lie does not make it true. I’ve seen Christian “love” in action. Much of the time it is two-faced, disingenuous, and conditional. Not all Christians are like this of course, but enough are that it’s become a standard.

Perhaps you are a good person who just happens to swallow the lies of religion. I know people like that as well - people who are good not because of their religious upbringing but in spite of it. I hope some day you realise you have it within you to be more moral, kind, and accepting than the religious organisation you follow. And to do it without them.

And it was still wrong. You’d think your all knowing god would know that if he’s such a moral peraon.

Bats don’t belong on that list.

As for talking donkeys, you can’t bring obvious fiction or superstition into the real world by proclaiming “MIRACLE”. That’s now how reality works.

And “hey the slave didn’t die so by all means carry on owning another human being as property” is not the moral flex you think it is.

You haven’t proven the bible is accurate or moral. You’ve only proven that you are brainwashed by your religion into justifying atrocities and need to work on bettering yourself.

Finally, why are you explaining your holy book? A book that supposedly contains the infallible word of a god should not need mere mortals to explain it. God should have hired a holy ghost writer.