Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- transformation:church [2025/07/05 16:37] – that's not a useful thing to say naptastic
+++ transformation:church [2025/07/25 14:32] (current) – this is such crap naptastic
@@ Line 31: / Line 31: @@
 The early-warning sign of judgment is losing your sense of humor. Most churches have a set of things you're not allowed to laugh about. They call them "sacred," and they become slaves of the sacred.
-Personally, I hold that nothing is more sacred than anything else; everything is sacred, and everything is profane. Every part of human experience is sacred, the pleasurable, the miserable, the mediocre. And every part of human experience is profane, ridiculous, silly and worth being laughed at. Everything is sacred, and nothing is sacred.
+==Worthiness==
-:?: I wrote this and now I'm questioning it. Is genocide sacred? Is it not sacred? Is it worth being serious about? Is it worth joking about? We **are** slaves to that about which we can't laugh... but I've gotta think about this some more.
-===Worthiness===
 The concept of worthiness has been made one-way, and that's not how it should be. Institutions need to be worthy of their members. Churches have failed to stay worthy of their membership, and look how damned they are.
-===Society Is Falling Apart===
+==Social Discord==
 There has never been a time that religious authorities didn't decry the current condition of society and assert that things are getting worse, not better. It's a dishonest and manipulative way of getting people to repent and join the flock; once they've joined, they can share in the judgment of people outside and society at large, which helps keep them from wandering away.
@@ Line 47: / Line 43: @@
   * the truly unfair judgments, like racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, etc., are being dismantled, and those who believe those attitudes to be correct are threatened, and think the world is therefore deteriorating;
   * our measurements of the conditions of the world have improved.
+//[I wrote that in probably 2008. It's now 2025 and a bit mad to realize how completely my optimism has been destroyed.]//
 As the world progresses, and people have their needs met, societies turn away from religion, church, and belief in general, in part because this attitude doesn't ring true to them at all anymore. (If society collapses, will people turn back to religion?)
-===Anti-intellectualism===
+//[I think we're going to find out.]//
+==Apocalypticism==
+(write this later)
+==Anti-intellectualism==
 Opposition to the teaching of evolution was only superficially about "this goes against the Bible." Biblical literalism is a modern failing. Why did it come into existence?
-Churches, as an emergent being, recognized the potential threat from humans learning what evolution does. Right now, evolution selects for profitable churches, at the expense of other concerns, like behaving ethically. The Emergent Church decided it would do everything in its power to stop the teaching of evolution so it could continue doing the harmful things it does while still making more money.
+Churches, as an emergent being, recognized the potential threat from humans learning what evolution does. Right now, **evolution selects for profitable churches**, at the expense of other concerns--such as ethical behavior. The Emergent Church decided it would do everything in its power to stop the teaching of evolution so it could keep making money and it wouldn't have to stop hurting people.
 ====Structural Dishonesty: What Church Is Made Of====