It is utterly insane to me you can verbatim say

Mike Johnson isn’t a “bad” person

Not only because you just, a few comments ago, accused me of defending him, but just on its face.

How is a man doing his best to deprive millions of healthcare, starve children and support a Christo whitenationalist fascist regime headed by a pedophile not a bad person???

I am utterly befuddled at your moral compass.

I’d say that a Christian is a person who follows Christ. It’s not complicated.

Sure it’s not complicated if not for the many complications I’ve already listed but you’ve just decided to keep ignoring.

At this point you keep responding but refuse to address anything I’ve said so what point is there?

Wasn’t one of your reasons for not responding that you said it wasn’t worth your time?

Religion has been used by those who hold power to oppress and control the masses for centuries - this is nothing new.

And yet none of this is an explanation for how Mike Johnson or any number of other powerful figures who do things you disagree with aren’t Christian.

With this latest reply you’ve opted to go the route of simply saying “I’m right, you’re wrong” while not responding to any criticisms or flaws with your reasoning because it’s “not worth your time” meanwhile you have the time to be increasingly aggressive in restating the same things.

It would seem to me that you’ve proven that it’s not about time at all but a lack of merit to the primary point that you are asserting so strongly.

I have to wonder why you are so invested in believing that bad people can’t truly be Christians when you’ve already acknowledged that other bad people can indeed be Christian and you’ve acknowledged further, that being a Christian has no hard definitions given the highly intepretive nature of this religion (as can be seen via the many sects, readings, translations, breakoffs and more).

Its almost as if you badly want to associate being Christian with being supirior to non Christians and allowing awful people to correctly declare their religious statuses hurts your wanting to denigrate others by asserting that your faith makes you a better person.

That’s just one plausible explanation. Of course I wouldn’t need to hypothesize if you engaged honestly and actually covered any of the many holes in your reasoning but you ~“don’t have the time” (as your multiple comments avoiding answering oh so clearly show).

This is exactly it and why I hate seeing all the self congratulatory gotchas on social media as if they care about the logical consistency of anything they are saying.

You didn’t just get one over on them, you expended precious mental effort arguing against a firehose of bullshit, and not fighting against it.

See, what all these gotchas miss, is they have absolutely no intentions nor pretense of caring about consistency.

If you’re an out group, they hate you as an out group, and thats it.

Any words that happen to come out of their face holes or their slender typing sausages are just there to batter you down until they can do what they really want to do and what they are increasingly becoming emboldened to do (violence).

The MAGAts are happy to see ICE committing violence against the out groups. This is the primary thing they voted for. They’re happy to see Donald enact discriminatory laws against trans people.

People have gotta realize that any time spent arguing against bad faith points is time wasted on burning yourself out accomplishing nothing and or time that could be spent trying to get people who don’t pay attention to pay attention rather than trying to argue against people who actively wish you physical harm for your inalienable traits.

That’s a pretty broad brushing of a diverse religious group.

That’s a ridiculous assertion. I’m sure the follow up sentence ought completely clear up what you must mean here

It sounds like you’re clumping in Catholics with everyone else.

What in the world???

Are you really taking my very obvious example of a person no one would argue is not Christian, to imply that every Christian must somehow be Catholic?

I cant even begin to see how you misinterpreted my comment in that way.

You just lumped them all together with your grievances with the Catholic Church. It gives intolerance, kind of hypocritical.

I did no such thing, and I refuse to believe that you think I did, given that this example couldn’t be any clearer.

Its especially ridiculous given my example is used as a means to establish that the definition of Christian is indeed far wider not narrower than the poster I responded to.

This is precisely the opposite of your claim of me narrowing the definition of Christianity with that example. It’s uttterly backwards.

You are defending his supposed faith and his identification as a Christian, when it couldn’t be further from the truth.

The fact you think or are willing to lie to pretend you believe that rebutting your no true scotsman argument is somehow a defence of this man is telling.

It’s either that you see being Christian as being a compliment, which by itself shows a feeling of superiority to those who are not Christian, or you feel that him being Christian somehow means something greater at large that you would rather not discuss.

From my point of view, you are either following Christ’s teachings or you are not.

That can be your point of view, but your point of view would be (by your own admission) cherry picked and based on whatever set of rules you decided fit within a book filled with rules and contradictions to those rules.

A true Christian would resonate with Christ’s teachings and be demonstrating them - not teaching the opposite and twisting Jesus’ teachings from a position of power.

There are almost certainly people with different views than you who run the same line, in fact, I am sure of it, because I’ve seen it multiple times.

I don’t believe Mike Johnson is a sheep led astray or someone has been manipulated into hate, but someone who is empowered by hate, who thrives on his authority, and is a person who literally believes God elevated him specifically into authority.

What you let loose at the end, is the idea that you think that Mike Johnson holds his beliefs vehemently, and that you belief he thinks he is doing as is right by god.

How then, can you call him any more or less Christian than yourself or anyone else if from his point of view, picking and choosing what he sees fit, he is a Christian?

If there are no hard qualifiers, as you admit there are not, as the religion and the various sects are largely based on interpretations of a book translated and added to multiple times over thousands of years, how can you disqualify so easily when convenient to you?

Personally, I don’t think most of the people leading any given religion actually believes in the core beliefs of said religion, as doing so would make it harder to change as needed, but you seem to think opposite, which oddly conflicts with the whole angle you are going for of them not being real Christians.

You assume bad faith from me and good faith from Mike Johnson, a person who has shown they are not in good faith on many different occasions.

I don’t assume bad faith from you, the evidence demonstrates it. Here you are again, outright lying about my point of view because you can’t really argue on the other points; the points of contention.

To assert that I, someone who you can see clearly is progressive, supports progressive policies and finds what is happening abhorrent align with Mike Johnson in any way, just because I did not let your fallacious dismissal of that which you think “hurts” your religion slide can’t be be seen as anything else.

Its crazy because primaries are probably the best ways to shift the party towards functioning better for your interests.

This is a new sort of self sabotage I’ve never seen from anyone being serious.

What people need to understand is that the primary goal of the old gaurd at the DNC is to guard the rich.

They also need to simultaneously understand that supporting the democrats despite that and changing them from within, is currently the only pragmatic plan of action.

Is this a shower thought or just a luke warm take

I invite you to do more research on this. It’s not cherry picking, I assure you.

You quite literally confirm that you are cherry picking by acknowledging that indeed there are ridiculous rules and guidance that are in the bible that you don’t follow. You therefore would inherently be cherry picking if you did not follow every single one of them or, to give you as fair a shake as possible, the vast majority of them.

There are plenty of denominations and sects of Christianity out there that don’t teach hate. Why wouldn’t there be? Jesus taught love.

That’s a nice idea in theory, but plenty doesn’t mean most, and I think most would be false which is why you went with plenty.

Most sects of Christianity, at some point, due to the fact their morals were roughly frozen about a millennia ago, will inevitably run into some pretty backwards points of view that don’t really have any basis in compassion or empathy and end up either creating out groups to be looked down upon, undue pressure on members, or discriminatory views against marginalized people.

More than any of that, the very fact that its all based on belief based on faith, believing without knowing, means that a critical vulnerability is inherently open the second you allow that belief in.

If you can believe anything without any evidence, then its suddenly a lot easier to believe other things for the same reasons as well. After all, your indoctrination (as most people are indoctrinated as children), will have tried to disarm your attempts to reason your way out of believing without evidence.

Anybody can claim to be whatever they want to. If somebody is doing the direct opposite of what Jesus taught while deferring to the Bible like Mike Johnson, I’d argue that they aren’t following Jesus or are like him. I’d argue that Mike Johnson is closer to the Pharisees that Jesus notably had issues with, than a Christian.

I would argue most Christians, yourself included don’t actually qualify as Christians if we go down this line of thought to its logical conclusion.

I believe that the pope is a Christian though, and clearly other people do too - otherwise he likely wouldn’t be the pope.

Why do you believe a position that is in charge of covering up the sexual abuse of minors, and causing an aids epidemic in Africa is any more Christian than Mike Johnson, someone who is guilty of supporting the current American fascist regime?

They both have done heinous and reprehensible acts, yet we allow the Pope position to be qualified as Christian because they are traditionally good at weaponized civility?

Why are you defending Mike Johnson?

Not a single thing I have said could possibly be read to be defending Mike Johnson, and as such I can’t read what you’ve written here as anything but the most clear evidence of bad faith.

Feel free to respond with a rebuttal, but you won’t be getting anything else out of me.

This is to be expected behaviour with such a ridiculous strawman argument at the end there.

If your views are so fragile that you must lie about the point of view of the person you are arguing with, self reflection is the only remedy.

Now this seems in bad faith and like projections wrapped into one.

What strawmen have i used exactly? Are you denying that people talk about starting third parties or revolutions? Those are extremely common talking points amongst the fringe of the online left.

As for respect, surely you mean civility, because respect should be based on the merit of ideas, not a given.

Those ideas have no merit whatsoever, so they certainly don’t deserve respect, and I don’t think anything I’ve said thus far has been uncivil, so I am still left thinking like at the start of this comment that your reply here is in bad faith.

Gotta say this difference seems very arbitrary. He bought a company, and platform. Both direct how people spend their time. A platform is obvious but a company, he directs what the people who work there work on. Its definitely a match to somewhere far past where money buys you things.

Many of the practices and laws you mentioned

This is just “I cherry pick differently for equally arbitrary reasons and am therefor the arbiter of what qualifies as truly Christian”. The fact you say mostly really hammers that in. Like you feel you’re more “Christian” than them to a degree that matters.

And there are surely many people (especially in power) who use Christianity as an accessory, as a tool to manipulate others into hate, and as a platform to grow their power.

Yeah, like literally the leaders of every sect out there…

I wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Johnson was one such example.

Doesn’t mean he isn’t Christian though, unless you also don’t think the pope is…

In fact this is exactly why its important not to separate these people out. These are fellow Christians that the non wealthy and powerful ?Christians lower their guards to due to religious belief.

No, that was absolutely that. Do you not think he gained a massive amount of control with that?

Some serious nofap cult logic.

This no true scotsman does not actually help anyone as it allows people to completely skirt the problems with religion by ignoring any symptoms as incorrect practices.

In reality, all religious people are cherry picking. Its inherent unless you want to live like a caveman. Can you imagine if people actually did all of the things prescribed at various points of the bible?

No cooking, washing dishes, doing chores on saturdays, no eating pork, no mixed fabric clothing, having slaves and concubines, not taking loans etc etc.

People like to pretend the bible is all well and good because they sanitize the hell out of it, only pay attention to very carefully worded and translated 10 commandments, ignore the first half, and then a huge chunk of the second half and call it good.

In reality, unless we dismiss basically every Christian as non Christian, we have no reason to dismiss bad people who are Christians as non Christians.

They’re just bad people who are also Christians, and a good chunk of the times, it is where that Christianity, the logic required to stay with it, and the social situations that occur as a result in weaker resistance to awful ideologies, charlatans etc.

I’d say, at least for me, I try to remember that “cynical” is not always correct. Under the same idea as “trust, but verify"

Isn’t that already what cynicism prescribes?

Believing or showing the belief that people are motivated chiefly by base or selfish concerns; skeptical of the motives of others.

Negative or pessimistic, as from world-weariness.

Expressing jaded or scornful skepticism or negativity.

Skeptical of the integrity, sincerity, or motives of others.

It would seem, at least to me, we might not be disagreeing much but instead at a point of not quite getting our ideas across to each other, which is fair because words can have multiple meanings even within the same context.

I would say my point of contention are these 2 sentences

I extend the benefit of the doubt, but less so when there is some real risk or cost to me.

I lose little to nothing in keeping myself open to the possibility (and hope) that someone is being honest with me, while still looking for the signs that they might not be.

As to me, they seem somewhat contradictory, as the first with the benefit of the doubt seems contrary to the second with looking for the signs that they might not be worthy.

So basically this hasn’t been proven false, hasn’t been proven true, but has supporting evidence for at least major parts of the narrative.

In essence, its not a smoking gun but could be a compelling story if packaged correctly and the relevant information was gotten more concretely.

More than that, it seems usual sources aren’t debunking nor covering it.

Do you believe in mainstream media outlets still?

My belief is that they can be used to confirm a story, but the absence of it does not confirm anything because they all are under the chilling effect of the regime if not owned outright by a right wing billionaire member.

Just to be clear, what I am not saying is “believe everything without evidence” what I am instead saying, is that relying on compromised sources as your version of truth, despite that in the past typically being most reasonable, may no longer be. I mean, why are we all here on lemmy anyways right?

We can all hope so, but the reality is the title is more “you first” thinking rather than practical solutions that actual people will do.

To put an at least temporary stop to this, people will have to continue resisting until midterms, where anything short of a democrat sweep will seal the US’s fate.

All the people who don’t want this, center right to tankie should be campaigning their asses off about this, because this will continue to be the reality until you accept that pragmatism often requires taking shitty solutions and working them into being better rather than just hoping magically for a hail mary.