this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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-William S. Burroughs, Advice for Young People
A long time personal mantra of mine is "never trust anyone with a 'Jesus fish' or a cross on their business card." People who feel the need to advertise how religious they are are often the least trustworthy, in my experience.
Also, churches are often horrible clients. Years ago, I did consulting work and dealt with lots of churches. Most of them were really shitty and don't like to pay their bills. We had exactly two churches, out of probably dozens, that were good clients.
I'm a Christian and this is been my experience so I totally get why some people feel like the church, as a whole, is shit. A lot of times it's a well deserved reputation unfortunately.
It’s the same argument of why some Christians are terrified of atheists.
To them, the only thing that stops someone from raping, murdering, and stealing their way through life is the book they had shoved down their throat in Sunday school. They can’t envision a world where people just have morals all on their own, it has to come from an external source like religion. So someone without that external moral compass must be deranged and dangerous in their eyes.
Of course, to a normal person, this view itself is utterly deranged, and speaks more about the religious person’s complete lack of inherent morals. If the only thing stopping you from raping, murdering, and pillaging your way through life is some old book and some stories about a cool dude, then you’re not really a good or trustworthy person. Especially since that same book says you can do all those terrible things, and as long as you go “sorry teehee” right before you kick the bucket, you get to go to the McDonald playplace in the sky anyway.
And we've got people saying that churches shouldn't be taxed because they're like charities...
It’s not wrong. I used to freelance full time. I quickly learned to never trust any company that claimed to be religious. Most companies I worked with were fine. But if I saw a jesus fish on the owner’s car, or a cross on their business card, I knew they were going to try to fleece me. Everything from exceeding contract scope, to just outright refusing to pay after services have been rendered. If you have convinced yourself that God is on your side no matter what, it becomes very easy to justify your shitty actions to yourself.