Can we appreciate how incredibility messed up it is to have Christians trying to tell other religions are not valid? It is terribly messed up to try to convert Muslims to Christianity.
With that being said it is important to note that this is a small group of people in Christianity. They are ruining the reputation for all denominations and creating Christian hate which will hurt Christians everywhere in the long run. I wonder how they would react if there was Jewish protest in front of there Church
Exactly. They’re always whining about being persecuted when they aren’t, and don’t seem to grasp the fact that doing this kind of shit is what will get them persecuted.
I think the “try to convert” part makes no sense. Conversion is a very personal thing, and you can’t force someone to do it. You can invite, but that’s about it.
I don't think the app is designed to try to convert people. Filtering by immigration status is the giveaway.
Oftentimes, American-style authoritarian organized religion equips you with a very particular type of doublethink which makes it possible to promote an app like this and wholeheartedly believe that it will be used for good things because you and all the people around you are the best type of people that exist, while being aware and planning for it to maybe be used (and making sure it's useful) for something totally different.
“Trying to convert” has biblical basis, and most religions have some kind of evangelism component to it. But there’s a lot of ways to go about that. One is the aggressive approach (i.e. high pressure salesman; join or you’ll burn in hell!), and the other is the example Jesus and other scriptural people set (i.e. serving others and getting them to want to ask the questions). Many religious people to the latter, and it’s the obnoxious people who do the former that give religion a bad rap.
So my recommendation is if you want people to join your church, instruct your members to go out and do good in the community. Be a good friend, offer to do service for them from time to time, and engage with service opportunities in your community. Eventually people will ask, and they’ll care a lot more about what you have to say than if you’re telling them to go to church or they’ll burn in hell…
I disagree with the word “most” here. Most Christians I know are conservatives, and most of them are definitely not narcissists. Most roll their eyes at all the “culture war” nonsense going on.
If you truly believe that most are narcissists, I urge you to go out and befriend some Christian conservatives, you’ll probably be surprised at how not-narcissistic they are.
Someone on lemmy commented that the purpose of those conversion drives is not to garner new members (though it’s a nice benefit if it works), but to help reinforce the “us” versus “them” division in the people out knocking on doors. It really makes a lot of sense to me.
I agree with that. I think the point of Mormons being forced to go door-to-door and engage with the outside world in a way that is guaranteed to create discomfort and hostility... is that they'll learn the the outside world equals discomfort and hostility. I can't imagine that it has any nonzero effect in terms of converting people to Mormonism at all.
I think how it works for Christians probably depends on the nonuniform details of how exactly they do the proselytizing, but I'm imagine it works mostly the same in most cases.
Picking them out in particular is interesting, because I have a good friend that’s Mormon, and we used to hang out a lot. They really have their own community, I was definitely an outsider (but not obviously so, as I don’t have facial hair, etc.). We briefly dated, but that didn’t go anywhere for obvious reasons, and later I realized that in her world I’m probably the “bad boy” (few others would consider me that, but everything is relative).
They were nice people, but overall they just were …boring. I don’t even remember most of the ones I met, and I doubt I could pick even some of her closer friends out of a lineup. I don’t mean to be nasty, but few of them had any sort of interesting life experiences, which is weird, considering many of them traveled abroad for mission trips.
At one point the Mormon single women in the area created a video to convince more single Mormon men to move there. There was a serious shortage. Even in that situation they still felt like they had to stay in the Mormon community.
On the flip side, a few years ago, friends of ours moved to a new neighborhood and had a housewarming party, and one of the families that joined them were neighbors that were Mormons (who preferred the term Latter Day Saints). But the wife had rainbow rings on and I think one of the daughters had purple hair…so, they seemed unlike other Mormons I’ve met, but I didn’t get the chance to ask about it.
Mormons aren’t forced to go door-to-door, it’s absolutely a choice. In fact, Mormon missionaries pay their own way (less so in poorer countries, but still).
Perhaps you’re thinking of Jehova’s Witnesses? I don’t know much about their proselytizing, but I have invited them in before and they don’t seem particularly interested in following up, especially if you don’t buy their stuff.
Welcome back! I'm sure you have a lot to catch up on after being in a coma or whatever. Number 1, an angry mob tried to kill the vice president and 12 million people think they were right to do it and it's a shame they didn't succeed.
Billionaires can only become billionaires by forced monopolies and lobbying. Remove the politicians who are being bribed and replace them with normal people. No more billionaires.
Are you aware what usually happens in countries where they start killing politicians? Like historically in actuality, not just the "how it plays out in the original plan" way?
You clearly don’t know the Christian Nationalists I know. Let me ask you something, only for true believers. If you really truly believed in your heart that God was calling you to kill in his name, would you do it?
Then do you have some context to understand what I’m asking? Because I know my share of Christians that either get uncomfortably quiet with that question or very confidently answer yes.
It’s mind boggling that there are people who think God couldn’t come up with a better solution than murder. I mean a micrometeorite could take anyone of us out at any point. Or he could wait for us to yawn and have a murder hornet fly into your mouth. Or y’know, being God and all and capable of doing anything, he could just have his giant disembodied hand come out of the wall, grab us and pull us to the other side, a la Legend of Zelda and that’s just if he insists on making it a spectacule and not just snap* aneurysm.
As a Christian: this is absolutely despicable. Jesus taught us to love our neighbors, and a huge part of loving someone is to respect their boundaries.
So screw this app and the people that built it. If you want to invite your neighbors to learn about Jesus:
Set a good example
Get to know them
Invite only when it’s relevant (i.e. to a kid’s baptism or whatever)
Yeah. I'm not religious but I've worked with church groups and actually every one I can think of immediately, was out for good and doing Christ things. I think the more prejudicial ones just are more vocal about what they're doing.
If I were the devil and this world was mine to seeWell, I’d witness all the atrocities and it’d probably frighten meSo I’d run back home with a story to tell**I’d tell all my demon friends that I always preferred Hell— Colby Acuff
One of the existential terrors of deconstruction is realizing the human species is plenty capable of evil and atrocity, that no demons are needed
Then when we’ve seen the absolute worst humans could imagine, Sir David Attenborough comes along holding Nature’s beer.
As the saying goes: one bad apple spoils the barrel.
I think most Christians are fine, at least the Christians who understand and try to follow Christ’s teachings, it’s just the few “Christian influencers” or whatever that are a pox on society. I try to distance myself from them as much as possible, and encourage the rest to be better examples.
It’s because they craft their entire identity around that particular thing. It does not matter what the belief or how illogical the belief, if you question it, or are simply not prepared to go along with it, they get really angry and incoherent.
I mean I know people who are vegan or religious or atheist which are not annoying, but as you said some people make it a huge part of their identity and it sucks.
I somewhat agree with you. The problem is that all those bad apples are the loudest of the bunch, which is why people, understandably, try to avoid all Christians like the plague. I did too for MANY years, until I was the target of a miracle myself. But that didn’t change my behavior towards people, I still treat EVERYONE with respect, and as kindly as I am able to (sorry, still human, so not always possible, lol).
The same is true with Muslims as well. A lot of people in the west dislike Muslims generally because of the relatively small percentage of extremists, yet the Muslims I work with are fantastic people. My coworker (Christian, I believe) married an Iranian woman (Muslim), and said the people in Iran are generally quite awesome, it’s just the minority who is in power that causes the problems.
In general, most people are pretty chill, regardless of religion (or lack thereof). So please, if you feel like a stereotype is accurate, go out and meet people from that demographic in real life (not on SM), and you’ll likely realize most people are good. It doesn’t really matter what the demographic and stereotype are, most people don’t fit it.
I have a bunch of friends, coworkers, employees and business associates that are Muslim. Some live in my country, some in the US, Egypt, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Irak, all over the place, and all of them, without exception, are amazing people, super humble, can take jokes, even about religion, and are incredibly respectful of everyone else regardless of any perceived difference. My family and I went to the New York side of the Niagar Falls for New Year of 2019, where we know absolutely nobody. When we got to the AirBNB late at night, my wife and I went out to buy some water, some food for breakfast the next day, and everything was closed. We found a small store that was open and when we walked in we were greeted by this guy originally from Iran, Muslim. We started talking like we were friends for years. Before he left he offered to make us dinner the following night. I’m Dominican, and I have yet to meet someone as nice and outgoing as this guy and his family. We met almost every day for the 2 weeks we spent there, and I am grateful that I met them. We had an amazing time. I’m sure there are some nasty people out there, just like there’s a bunch of nasty people everywhere and from all walks of life. Bottom line is that we can’t tell who is who just by race, religion, nationality or any of those things. Take the time to know the person, more times than not, you’ll be grateful you did. I’m sorry, I’m feeling really hyped with this thread. You guys have restored some of my lost faith in humanity. Thank you very much.
I don’t think they should “target” anyone. The entire basis for this app is creepy at best, and it shouldn’t exist in this form. If people want a way to discuss things, they should instead share anonymous experiences.
But yeah, there are a lot of weird, culty “churches” out there, where I suspect the leadership is knowingly manipulating their congregations. But there ale also a lot of accusations of culty behavior that really aren’t applicable, so it’s a mixed bag. At the end of the day, I think most people are decent, regardless of religion, it’s just the really vocal minority (the brainwashed minority, as well as those who left) that make the most noise.
JFC, I installed the app and added “my address” and immediately was given a list of names and addresses to “pray for”.
How am I supposed to pray for so many people!? What am I, an ATM?! Gelatians 4:20:69 had nothing to do with Gelato!1! This is getting 1 star and reported on the app store.
Dude, that’s beyond creepy. I know of 1 christian that will certainly never install that thing. Not that I can right now, since I have absolutely no Google or Apple store at my disposal. #degoogled all the way.
“The app boasts influential supporters, including the former leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, Jim Henry, and controversial Christian data-harvesting firm Gloo. It puts a lot of features at the fingertips of the faithful, including the ability to filter whole neighborhoods by religion, ethnicity, “Hispanic country of origin,” “assimilation,” and whether there are children living in the household.”
I dare one of them to show up to my front door. They are going to be in for a fucked up conversation that will make then second guess their life choices.
Are the JW’s using this? Two stopped by my door a few weeks ago to convert me or us (my wife is Catholic, I’m atheist). I noticed that they drove separately, and I wondered why they hated the environment so much (we live off the beaten path). And I’m pretty sure they ONLY stopped at our house, one parked in our driveway and the other along the road in front of the house. It definitely didn’t seem like a general canvass.
One stopped by my house last week. I told them this is an atheist household and the bible is a fictional story book, no offense. I quite enjoyed the face they made.
In my younger days told a Jehova’s Witness that Jesus was my favorite fictional character because he had the coolest superpowers. They went from overjoyed that I was engaging with them to Charlie Brown sad walking away in the space of a sentence.
These days I’d probably be more rude but less offensive.
My favorite interaction was on a college campus. They had set up a table and were telling every passerby “Jesus loves you!” So I cheerfully returned “and Allah loves you!”
I will forever cherish the physical recoil and look of revulsion that crossed their faces. I’m an atheist, for context
Funny stuff religions are. The Allah of the Muslims and the Yaweh of Israel is the same God. The split comes from the segregation of the people back then. Which just confirms my point. None of them investigate, and just follow whatever their “leaders” say without ever thinking to question anything.“Go house by house and say THIS. Do not deviate from the script.” They’re like cattle, seriously.
Oh please let them come, I’ll gladly tell them all about how “Jehovah, or JHVH-1 as WE know him, is no true god but an evil space monster from some corporate sin galaxy sent here to take our SLACK! He’s been fooling them! But J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, High Epopt of The Church of The SubGenius, knows the truth, and he has a plan to save all his followers from certain death come X-Day. We’ll all be Ruptured up into the PleasureSaucers for orgies with the alien sex goddesses and the MWOWM machine will make our every possible desires true. You want that lost comic collection back? Want revenge on that one priest? Well “Bob” will give it to ya, young evangelist, here, take this pamphlet to get you started…”
This is real bad. I’m a christian (albeit a very unorthodox one), and this goes against everything Christians are supposed to follow according to the bible. This can only be construed as church authoritarianism. Maybe this is why I’m looked down upon by most “Christians” out there, but I could not care less. If a christian says or does anything that does not align with LOVE EVERYONE,that’s not a christian, but a “faith merchant”. Their “privacy policy” is tailored to make it seem like they are doing God’s work, when reading it with the intent to understand clearly displays the intention to gather data on you and everyone around you. And I’m sorry, but anyone that does this is guilty of wanting data to sell until proven otherwise, no exceptions.
- Who Has Access to Your Data
“Your password is not accessible by or shared with anybody. Not even we can access it. It is stored in an inaccessible encrypted format.”
So, ONLY the password is encrypted, everything else is stored as clearly as a traffic sign. Noted.
“None of the information entered by you is shared with anybody unless you specifically give us permission to do so by opting in to affiliate your Light role with one or more of our partner organizations; by opting in to have your contact information available to other Light roles in your neighborhood; or by creating an administrator role in a partner organization.”
Where have we seen this before? Ah, right, in EVERY parivacy policy on every single company known to sell our data for profit without caring about anyone or anything except getting more money.
Funny thing is, there’s no mention anywhere on how they are getting the data on what they call the “blessees”. Care to take a wild guess on how that’s done?
I am genuinely sorry that this is happening, and blown away by how disgusting this is. No wonder most people don’t want anything to do with us, Christianity has become everything Jesus spoke against.
Thanks for the comment man. I apologized because it bothers me to no end, and for vetter or for worse, calling mysrlf a christian puts me in the crosshairs of people that are understandibly upset at that behavior, and I’m not narcissistic enough to just pass by and not try to make it a bit better if possible. Unfortunately, because of their radical religious way of thinking and blatant inability to exercise critical thinking, they won’t listen to anyone but their “church leaders”, whom, for the most part, only have their own interests at heart.
You and people who hold beliefs like yours should just pick a new name for yourselves, I’ve tried to convince family members of this for years. Let the jerks have the name they tainted, pick a better name for your beliefs, and get out of the way for people to condemn the institution of Christianity for it’s actions.
You shouldn’t feel responsible for them. You should just let them suffer the consequences of their actions and get outta the way.
Most of us would, for sure, if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re called Christians because we follow Christ. However, from my very personal perspective, the name is irrelevant. So much so that our own bible does not mention “christians” anywhere. Having said that, I am a die hard follower of Jesus, people can call me Jesuit, Jesus freak (yes, been called that plenty of times, I find it funny), or whatever. But first and foremost, I’m a human, full of flaws, an expert at finding out what doesn’t work (I guess Normie’s call those “making mistakes” 🤣🤣), with lost of situations in my life, and a firm believer that, should everyone decide to respect others, love them with their flaws, and be willing to help EVERYONE else as long as it’s not detrimental to themselves, their environment or others (in thayvsame order), we would have so much peace in this world that it’ll probably get boring haha. Anyway, switching gears real quick: Does anyone here have experience with Arch based Linux distros? Preferably EndeavourOS? I live what I’m seeing, but I can’t find a reason why none of my flatpak installations are showing in my apps. I really want to try Arch to find out why die hard Arch users are so proud of that, but so far it seems like a distros made exclusively for people that like to be in pain. What gives? If you can pint me in the right direction to a community where I can vent and maybe find solutions, I would really appreciate it. Oh, and God forgive me, but FUCK MICROSOFT!
I’m not a Christian but sometimes I hear Christians talking the way you just have and it’s the most compelling thing about it and draws me towards it. Love and forgiveness all the way. I use Debian so I can’t help with your arch question. I do think that Jesus would use Linux though.
I mean that’s exactly where we are headed in the US.
Project2025 in part wants to institute laws against blasphemy… They quite literally want to make the united states a theocracy, absolutely no fucking exaggeration here. It’s literally what they want.
Thanks for the link! And thanks, people down vote too fast when people ask questions. I wasn’t even asking for proof, I was just curious and wanted to read more
I wish it was never invented in the first place. I would much rather have a world where we argue over which scientific theory, or whatever, is right—rather than the one we have now, where a majority argue about whose ‘flying spaghetti monster,’ unseen for centuries (if ever), is better and why it trumps even the most solidly proven scientific facts.
Scientific theory doesn’t tell you to love your neighbor
It doesn’t and religion shouldn’t need to, in fact if the only thing making you a general good person is a religion, then you’re not a good person. Morals and personal strength can and should be derived from other sources.
We don’t need any more hate in the world.
Religion is directly responsible for the bulk of the hate, in case you haven’t looked at the world around you. How many wars were started in the name of a religion? Whole groups of people are being discriminated against because of religion right now. There’s a war right now because of religion. X religion people hate Y religion people just because they believe in a slightly different flying spaghetti monster. Countless lives throughout history have been lost in the name of x or y religion.
A world without religion would still have hate, crime and greed because humans are humans, but it would be so much better than currently.
As it turns out, the vast majority or “religion” is completely harmless and is kept personal. The problem is the 1% who are constantly the target of bad PR (for good reason)
What are you saying? Are you advocating mass arrests? Good luck finding every Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and all other beliefs. Your statement seems overly broad.
No maximally-cruel executions for free-thinking (allegedly having or expression thoughts, or doing deeds, contrary to those mandated by some religion). Burning at the stake, totally fake, yeah.
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