• potatopotato@sh.itjust.works
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    3 days ago

    I feel it, but really the evangelicals believe in a sort of Rokos Basilisk sorta thing where if they don’t make everyone else an evangelical they’re damned. So effectively their religion may not matter to us, but it’s a zombie brain virus to them which makes it our problem.

    • njm1314@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      So by not being Christian not only do I live a better life for myself but if I’m wrong I get to send a bunch of Christians to hell?

    • faythofdragons@slrpnk.net
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      3 days ago

      I guess that’s why I don’t understand the Basilisk. I was raised evangelical, so the idea that there might or might not be an entity that will later punish me for an arbitrary action that is not currently disclosed elicits a “…and?” from me.

      Most people didn’t grow up not being able to sleep at night because you were afraid your pubescent wet dreams were going to send you to hell. The Basilisk ain’t got nothing on Jesus.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        Roko’s Basilisk is much like Christian hell in that it’s not an introductory belief. (Ok hell can be but that’s hell for your enemies). Christianity reaches out with offers of healing (of the psychospiritual variety), moral guidance, proto anarchocommunism (outdated and rare in modern day), connection to heritage, and acceptance and support within empire. Fear of hell is meant to keep those in in and obedient, draw them deeper, and to fire them up to action or redirect their anger.

        Roko’s Basilisk serves similar roles and can even serve as an insight to the social development of hell from thought experiment within a religious group to a memetic source of obedience, escalation, and terror even though internal leadership and authorities tried to shut it down. But for those deep in the ideology who are prone to infernal anxiety it makes perfect sense that they’d lose their shit over it

      • Rothe@piefed.social
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        3 days ago

        Before it destroys civilised society. Seems a bit late for the US unfortunately. The combined power of capitalism and fundamentalist religion is pretty much an unstoppable force there.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I think so and I think it’s weirder than many first assume. They’re far more concerned with orthodoxy than orthopraxy. This is why they seem far more concerned with opposing things like Trans acceptance than with things like cracking down on bad behavior within.

    • mfed1122@discuss.tchncs.de
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      3 days ago

      Yeah, this is why the basilisk is probably the most toxic and stupid thought in the atheist sphere in a long while. Ironically, it actually IS an “information hazard”, just not in the hardcore epic way that it was originally envisioned. It’s just an information hazard because it’s stupid and makes people act like assholes. I think it’s absolutely hilarious personally.