If God existed, I doubt he goes around with a magic cancer wand. That being said, Pope Leo isn’t a good person, he just has a good media team.
Pope Leo isn’t a good person
Why do you say that?
He doesn’t support women in the ministry, vilified the LGBTQ community and most importantly, protected pedo priests.
He doesn’t support women in the ministry
That’s not entirely true. While he doesn’t support women in the priesthood or as bishops (as set in Catholic dogma), he has placed women in high administrative positions within the Vatican, which is something other popes haven’t done.
vilified the LGBTQ community
Also not true. He’s pushed a policy of welcoming all people, and while it’s true he doesn’t support gay marriage, that is again due to established Catholic dogma and has been much more progressive than previous popes.
protected pedo priests.
I can’t say whether or not that’s true, I can’t find any instances of him protecting pedo priests.
He doesn’t support women in the ministry
Admin positions aren’t the Ministry
vilified the LGBTQ comm
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/09/pope-leo-xiv-lgbtq
protected pedo priests.
There’s another case in Chicago if I recall correctly
In any case, being gay is still considered a sin and he was at a pedo priests birthday party 3 years ago. He’s being told to pander by his media team, but absolutely nothing has changed and he’s more than likely a hateful power hungry horrorshow. He’s at a minimum worst than Francis (not saying much, every Pope is a low bar)
The whole org is a fucking shit show, I can’t believe people are actually buying this stuff.
I mean… would he have even been allowed to be the Pope if he didn’t do those things? (let’s not pretend the Pope is actually a divine appointment)
I’d argue striving to be head of one of the most hateful orgs automatically makes you bad person. Protecting pedos comes with the territory but doesn’t give him a pass so to speak.
What I mean is, the people who decide who is pope were never going to allow someone the title who would fight back against those topics.
It doesn’t matter how good or bad he is.
And my point is he is a bad person, maybe the best we could hope for but still a bad person.
I never said I expected better, just that the media lays it on thick and that it’s laughable all the rubes that praise a guy who shrouds himself in homophobia and trans hate, and who protects pedophiles.
Original sin baybeee!
🤣🤣🤣
What constitutes a “good” person?
I’d argue with how pathetically shitty the average person is, that Leo is, in fact, a good person, whether or not you believe in any sort of divine guidance.
Hell, he doesn’t even have to be a good Christian (by teachings, not Christian acts) to never the less end up on the ‘good’ half of humanity!
He’s JK Rowling level bad.
That’s … rather abstract. Besides, hating trans people is (sadly) still not a guarantee to find yourself on the ‘bad’ 50% of humanity. … and that’s assuming that only 50% of humanity is bad, which is rather forgiving!
Well he hates AI too, because it threatens the confession booth. And trans people hate AI girlfriends because they demonstrate that love was never gated by an expensive operation; while Hinton, the father of backprop, considers AI conscious already. So there’s that. In general the more someone thinks they’re the Good Guys, the more they’re the Bad Guys. Now watch Lemmy turn into a mental pretzel to justify their own hatred of AI while missing the parallel with the cotton plantations wherein black people were also treated as unconscious and inferior. I’ll see myself out before my inbox fills with comments calling me a loser for siding with Turing.
Religion of any ilk is a mental illness.
This is the bad timeline, evil is rewarded
Also known as Kalyug.
The theological explanation from Catholic dogma would be along the lines of God doesn’t really interfere with the day-to-day goings on of the world.
Is prayer actively discouraged in Catholicism?
“God works in mysterious ways” is the only “explanation” religious clowns have. It’s 100% post-hoc justification. If they’re bad, they deserve it. If they’re good, then they must secretly be bad and deserve it. If they’re really good and don’t deserve it, then, “God works in mysterious ways”. Always. Every time.
There is no questioning faith, only declaring heresy to such clowns. If things didn’t work out for you, it’s not a systemic problem here, it’s because you deserved it!
No, you can and should beg god for devine intervention that he probably doesnt do and thank for his gracefullness which he hasnt shown. Or at least whoreship him, because he is so great and benevolent while he is hearing the prayers and letting good people die nevertheless. Or maybe there werent enough prayers yet, for THE POPE.
It all makes a lot of sense you see.
God isn’t catholic
But is he mormon or protestant?
He is a scientologist. And his real name is Xenu.
LIES! He is spaghetti!
May His Noodly Appendage Touch You
Eru Iluvatar is not a scientologist. I have a number of books, not just one, that say as much, so it must be true.
Other than god not existing? God is malignant
With the way Christians and similar preach? Yea, God’s a psychopath and so are they.
Though there are several theologically sound explanations, especially if you truly believe “God” is beyond or bigger than our universe.
Basic believer: “God works in mysterious ways”. Sure, that Harlequin baby only ever had a miserable existence, but that’s because their soul didn’t need to experience a full life! Sure, your school teacher only ever did good works and then got ran over by a truck, but God thought it was her time!
More logical theology: God is bigger than the universe. He sees the whole thing. If something bad happens, then it is merely a wrinkle, or if you believe in divine guidance, it’s a tragectory change to something better. Either way, God’s not helping you, because what you want makes for a worse over-all universe. Or, if you want to be more literal about it, maybe God doesn’t necessarily have the power to truly magic something. Maybe he cannot instantly change an exact, single detail about this universe, yet created it, could destroy it, and has enough control to drastically change things? Like a video game dev seeing how their Sims playthrough plays out.
Deeper theology: We’re here to be tested/checked/validated/etc. God said he gave us the answers, not that he’ll do the test for us. Besides, if we were instructed to take care of something (like Earth, or your personal life), why in the ever loving FUCK would you expect someone else to do the job you were told to do? Nobody is going to be happy to have to step in to fix something you fucked up, especially when they were the ones who put you on the job to take care of it in the first place.
Deeper science fiction: How would such a great being even begin to care about the individualities of creatures even lesser than ants to him as ants are to us? It’s not hard to imagine someone caring deeply about their creation, but not really caring about exactly how the tiny details come out for every single detail. Like a single piece of glitter falling off your child’s art piece, an individual life is meaningless so long as the whole picture remains.
Mix and match those views to your heart’s content, and I’ve heard all of them and more growing up in a church. Bunch of intellectually weak clowns unwilling to admit religion is just Baby’s First Philosophy…
Please keep going, that was great!
Not sure of too many other opinions I’ve directly heard, but what kind of belief do you want to hear more of? (I know I said I heard more dismissive/excusive beliefs, but I don’t remember them in any representative fashion; it was thankfully years and years ago!)
Maybe one where god is plainly evil, and other similar to the last one: it was only a creator that put things in motion and it’s long gone now.
The old Cainites, Cathars, Marcionites, and other similar Gnostic sects quite directly believed God was the bad guy. (or at least the physical world and its creator; it gets weird in some of them…)
Lots of variations on why and who and bla…
I’m just struggling with my own slow process of discarding faith and found the arguments useful… I don’t have a particular direction or anything
Ahh I see. Yea, it’s a whole whirlpool of ad-hoc and circular logic… It always boils down to, “It’s correct because I was told it’s correct!”.
I can understand community and wanting to be a good person, but there is SO much garbage piled on top…
So, so many ways.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evil/ offers some good discussion.
Aww man. I tried getting Kagi’s LLM to summarise the examples and refutations and even that’s proving too much for my burnt out brains…
Thanks, looks interesting!
“god works in mysterious ways”
“but that’s all bullshit”
“god works in mysterious ways”
The universe was depending on good people killing the bad people.
Perhaps the war between Heaven and Hell wasn’t fought on Earth. Hell won, and Satan is in charge now.
I’ve got to know Professor Lucifer personally; He can be quite pesky with His Math and Physics tricks sometimes, but I promise you, He’s not the manager… You may want to talk with “Yaldabaoth” instead.
Or god likes the pope too and wants to hang with him but to do that he has to kill him.
Enoch would beg to differ
His plan is ineffable, it can’t be effed
- good omens (I think)
You’re talking about the same god that let Satan torture Job to win a bet. Even in Christian doctrine, god doesn’t give a fuck about people. He just wants obeisance.
He sent his own son to be tortured because he was too much of a coward to go himself, and that’s supposed to be laudable!?
Yes, but also he is his own son so he did send himself. I will not be taking any further questions
Forking shirtballs, we’re in the bad place!
Anyone whos actually read the bible knows the christian god is a violent genocidal sociopath. It only makes sense he would reward that behavior.
That is the god of the old testament, he had a complete personality shift in the new one.
Splitting himself into two (or three?) seems to have an calming effect on God
The early Christians weren’t really happy with the new religious literature they had at the time, so they agreed to remove specific parts. The remaining books were largely incompatible with the older ones, but they clearly weren’t aiming for a consistent collection anyway. As a result, we got a book series with all sorts of twists and turns.
