The Problem Is That Christians Aren't Religious Enough, Not That They Might Spend An Hour In Church - The Magical Thinking That Making Religion Go Away Will Fix Everything

I had held this quote sent to me from another website for several days because the person who said it has never, to my knowledge, attacked me or lied about me - we have, on other topics, had rather cordial interactions.  But I think I'll answer it.

I really think it's time to start confronting these twisted fcks in their most comfortable seats - the Sunday church pews where their one Hour of Absolution clears them of the sickening acts they do during the other 167 hours of the week.

"Hour of Absolution"?  What religion holds that you gain absolution from sins by going to church for an hour a week?   I'd like a list.  I'm not aware of any that teach that.

"Most comfortable seats"?   Gee, I'm used to atheists claiming that religion is a matter of controlling people by threatening them with things like eternal damnation in everlasting fire, terror, telling them that gratifying their desires, breaking commandments, doing what is most comfortable and fun will get you in more than just hot water.    As someone raised as an Irish Catholic in a parish which had priests trained in a the quasi-Jansenist seminary in Quebec, going to church wasn't any kind of comfortable experience.

If sitting in church were as comfortable as sitting in front of a computer and typing in anti-religious invective, people would be inclined to spend as many hours a day in church as they do sitting in front of their TVs.  That a minority of people sit for an hour a week in Church, even those who profess to believe in religions that encourage or require that attendance shows that it's hardly the most comfortable place people find to sit.  If it were that comfortable, everyone would be doing it.

If they are Christians sitting in church is the only place they're very possibly to be told:

- They are to do unto others as they would have those people do to them, not in front of TV, not in front of a movie, not reading a novel, not sitting in a classroom.

- They would be told things like a way to get to heaven instead of going to hell is to do to the least among us, the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the imprisoned what you would do to God.

- They would be told to love their enemies and pray for them.

- They would be told if you have money to give it to people who won't pay you back.

- They would be told that a widow giving her last two cents to those who are poorer than she is has given more than a billionaire who gives millions or billions of their surplus away.

- They would be told that there is a societal obligation to provide for the destitute, the ill, the alien among us and, again, to prisoners, not only a mere pittance but a liberal living.

None of those are things you're likely to hear any given hour of TV or the movies or to encounter online.

If someone, if society in general practiced those teachings we would have a far more radically egalitarian, democratic world than we have now.  I wish people would go to church and hear that more often, I think we're in trouble because too few churches who teach that instead of heresy like the prosperity gospel, what Garrison Keillor called "the church of the brunch" and the quasi-deist ex churches and those which do teach that don't get people coming in because they've been successfully converted to the American state religion of consumerism, sports and brainless entertainment.  Really, they might call it "Christianity" but it's entirely more like the Roman imperial state religion, the folks who nailed Jesus to the cross.