Christians and Q

[joelr]

This country is being torn apart by people who believe in the Q Conspiracy Theories. More important to many on RF, Christianity is being torn apart by people who believe in the Q Conspiracy Theories.

QAnon: The alternative religion that’s coming to your church

QAnon: The alternative religion that’s coming to your church
Teaching susceptible Christians media literacy won’t counteract their sudden, widespread adherence to conspiracy theories because these Christians thrive on a narrative of media cover-up.

August 17, 2020
By
Katelyn Beaty



(RNS) — It’s a rough time to be a pastor. An election year, national racial unrest and a global pandemic each challenged the usual methods of ministry. Taken together, many church leaders are facing the traditional post-vacation ingathering season with a serious case of burnout.

But there’s another challenge that pastors I spoke with say is on the rise in their flocks. It is taking on the power of a new religion that’s dividing churches and hurting Christian witness.

Mark Fugitt, senior pastor of Round Grove Baptist Church in Miller, Missouri, recently sat down to count the conspiracy theories that people in his church are sharing on Facebook. The list was long. It included claims that 5G radio waves are used for mind control; that George Floyd’s murder is a hoax; that Bill Gates is related to the devil; that masks can kill you; that the germ theory isn’t real; and that there might be something to Pizzagate after all.

“You don’t just see it once,” said Fugitt. “If there’s ever anything posted, you’ll see it five to 10 times. It’s escalating for sure.”​

As Carrier says, people are building worldviews on mythologies. Critical thinking and philosophies that relate to real world situations are not being taught to children. Religious thinking is actually part of the problem. People need to build world views out of evidence and rational thinking. We are seeing people leave religions and latch on to these weird "jiggered" world views. But philosophy has become this "ivory tower" that turns people away from it.
Don't take my word for it Carrier says it better, this is very insightful, especially how we are now often using current fiction as source of morals.

start at 50:16

 

[Lyndon]

Is Q is a member of the forum now?

 

[ecco]

The OP was from 2020. It's a growing issue as this story from 2 weeks ago illustrates:
QAnon Conspiracies Sway Faith Groups, Including 1 in 4 White Evangelicals

Religious people in general and very religious people, in particular, are taught to unquestioningly believe and unquestioningly accept. This makes them ideal candidates to become cult and conspiracy followers.

The Q phenomenon and the adoration of Trump are predictable end results. With the advent of social media, they feed each other and feed on each other.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

And ridicule, lots of ridicule, telling them on the emotional level that they left the community of rational people.

Some studies show that it is counter-productive* and thus not rational*, so what does that make you? *Note that you are a human like all the rest of us and objectively like the rest of us not really rational all the time, because that is not possible. Rather it is apparently in effect irrationally possible to believe that it is possible to be rational all the time.

BTW. I am not rational all the time, because I am in effect not sane for a limited parts of my brain, yet I bleed if you cut me. And you bleed if I cut you. In other words I am as much a human like you and you don't in effect use only reason, logic and evidence. Rather you use emotions/feelings like the rest of us, so welcome to all of humanity.

 

[ecco]

I thought the Q person already came out, so to speak, after the insurrection. Probably because they felt genuinely bad.

Who came out?

Why would you think he/she felt bad about anything.

They are making quite a few good dollars by continuing their "campaign".

The latest is that Trump, like Lincoln, will be inaugurated on March 4th. The nearby Trump hotel has already raised their rates for March 3/4

 

[ecco]

That mask theory should be banned.

What mask theory?

 

[ecco]

i don't go around incognito.

Don't interpret the Second Coming

Makes perfect sense if He was just an ordinary human and not anyone's Messiah.

Either that or Jesus lied.

None of which has anything to do with the topic of the OP.

How about one of you start your own thread.

 

[ecco]

I think it is the Christian duty of these pastors (it's never priests, I notice) to stress the importance of truth to their flocks and disabuse them of this nonsense.

I am sure many of them will do just that, as the pastor referred to in this piece seems to be thinking.

The article is from August 2020. If anything, the Q conspiracy has grown in popularity.

 

[ecco]

We are seeing people leave religions and latch on to these weird "jiggered" world views.

I don't see people leaving their religion to become Q believers. Rather Q is incorporating and feeding on their religious beliefs. Remember, one of the main storylines is that the Satanic Elites are the ones kidnapping children in order to drink their blood. It's an old story...

QAnon, Blood Libel, and the Satanic Panic

From the very first, there were cabals that chose which children would be taken and sacrificed, and harvested their blood for use in secret rituals. The clandestine gathering, the child’s blood misused: These are constants across centuries.

In the case of William of Norwich—a young boy found dead in a wood in England, in the year 1144—his premature demise was transformed, ex post facto, into a ritual supposedly performed by Jews explicitly to mock the Passion of the Christ. In this lurid account of ritual desecration, the Jews scourged the boy, anointed him with thorns, lanced him in the side as Christ had been lanced, and staunched the flow of blood with boiling water. All this was meant to consecrate the celebration of Passover. William’s hagiographer, the monk Thomas of Monmouth, laid out this unsubstantiated account in excruciating detail, leading to the canonization of the dead boy. Like mushrooms after rain, accounts of miracles arose around his tomb.

But even in that same account, authored in 1173, the monk was not content to limit the image of depravity to the Jews of a single city in eastern England. Instead, drawing on a secondhand source—a monk named Theobald who supposedly converted from Judaism after hearing of the miracles of St. William of Norwich—Monmouth depicted a grimmer, larger scheme. “He verily told us that in the ancient writings of his fathers it was written that the Jews, without the shedding of human blood, could neither obtain their freedom, nor could they ever return to their fatherland,” Monmouth wrote. “Hence it was laid down by them in ancient times that every year they must sacrifice a Christian in some part of the world to the Most High God in scorn and contempt of Christ, that so they might avenge their sufferings on Him.”
​

Blood Libel

The term blood libel refers to the false allegation that Jews used the blood of non-Jewish, usually Christian children, for ritual purposes. The Nazis made effective use of the blood libel to demonize Jews, with Julius Steicher's newspaper Der Stürmer making frequent use of ritual murder imagery in its antisemitic propaganda.​

 

[Heyo]

Some studies show that it is counter-productive* and thus not rational*, so what does that make you?

There are contradictory studies. The keyword here is "mixed message". When you calmly state "I'd prefer you don't do that again" it is a mixed message where the emotional message doesn't fit the informational one. Say instead "ARE YOU ****ING MAD? NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!". That's a concise message where emotion and information fit together.

*Note that you are a human like all the rest of us and objectively like the rest of us not really rational all the time, because that is not possible.

Agreed. Like most I run on auto most of the time. the difference between me and a conspiracy nut is that I have the ability to think rationally about almost anything.

 

[robocop (actually)]

What mask theory?

"that masks can kill you; that the germ theory isn’t real;"

 

[Lyndon]

"that masks can kill you; that the germ theory isn’t real;"

Yeah there are some real nut cases out there that believe stuff like that.

 

[Colt]

You mean that old false Prophet Jesus?
Jesus' Four Failed Prophecies About Him Returning In The Lifetimes Of His Apostles

Unicorns are not known to exist as far as I can tell.

Jesus said he would send the "spirit of truth" to the "spiritual kingdom" in his followers lifetime. He did. To claim he meant his literal return is a false claim or conspiracy to discredit Jesus among Atheist.

 

[Colt]

The Q conspiracy people are a tiny fringe.

 

[Colt]

Former FBI lawyer pleads guilty in first criminal charge from Durham probeFormer FBI lawyer pleads guilty in first criminal charge from Durham probe


........."admitting he doctored an email that was submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as part of a FISA application used to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page during the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election."


Where do the Right wing conspiracy nuts get their crazy ideas from???

 

[robocop (actually)]

Yeah there are some real nut cases out there that believe stuff like that.

Masks can kill you, but they are like 10000x more likely to save you.

 

[ecco]

The Q conspiracy people are a tiny fringe.

Your definition of "tiny" is nonsensical.


Majority Of Republicans Believe The QAnon Conspiracy Theory Is Partly Or Mostly True, Survey Finds

Tommy BeerForbes Staff
Business
Updated Sep 2, 2020, 09:33pm EDT

• 
  
  Some 56% of Republicans believe that QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory, is mostly or partly true, according to a new Daily Kos/Civiqs poll released Wednesday, a remarkably high number considering many of the outlandish assertions espoused by QAnon supporters.
  
  
  KEY FACTS
  One in three Republicans (33%) say they believe the QAnon theory about a conspiracy among deep-state elites is “mostly true,” and another 23% say “some parts” are true.
  
  Only 4% of Democrats think the theory is even partly true, according to the Daily Kos/Civiqs poll, with 72% of Dems responding that the QAnon conspiracy is “not true at all.”
  
  
  

 

[ecco]

Former FBI lawyer pleads guilty in first criminal charge from Durham probeFormer FBI lawyer pleads guilty in first criminal charge from Durham probe


........."admitting he doctored an email that was submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as part of a FISA application used to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page during the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election."

What does that have to do with the Q conspiracy?

 

[exchemist]

Upon seeing the title, I thought this thread was going to be about a different Q.

Oh I thought you meant this Q:

 

[SomeRandom]

Who came out?

Why would you think he/she felt bad about anything.

They are making quite a few good dollars by continuing their "campaign".

The latest is that Trump, like Lincoln, will be inaugurated on March 4th. The nearby Trump hotel has already raised their rates for March 3/4

Just a rumour I heard online. A twitch streamer I watch often covers conspiracy theories (tin foil Tuesday.)
Thanks to the egging of “Q” certain folks felt emboldened to well go to the now infamous insurrection. I would think any half decent person would feel a tinge of guilt for possibly having a hand in that