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Arizona clergy who learn of child abuse in confessions aren’t required to report it, court rules
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2026
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There are so many phrasing variants depending on translation. Do we believe the bible, or the actions of people who claim to be Christians? Many Christian parents have historically interpreted the bible advocacy not as metaphor for instruction, but of severe physical discipline and corporal punishment. 2000 years surely is long enough for Christians to refine their game to your gentler and kinder interpretation, yes?
See Religion and Child Abuse, Perfect Together, by Donald Capps.
There are plenty of Christians with that kinder interpretation though. You think Ms. Rachel is advocating for child abuse because she's Christian?
The "/r/atheist" position is to tell those that are religious what they believe. It's like telling someone what their music taste is. If a Christian is using their religion to justify their bigotry or abusive behavior; you can call that out. But religion isn't a strict adherence to a religious text. It's significantly more about community and unique to every person.
Edit: I'm not a Christian or religious. I just believe people when they tell me what they believe. I don't try to tell them they believe something else.
I'm quickly starting to take the ACAB approach to religions. If they're not actively trying to weed out their own rotten apples, they're part of the problem. Locally if they're everyday people, but at a much wider scale if they have a platform.
The the equivalent of including anyone that's ever called 911 in ACAB.
Not at all, people calling 911 aren't other police officers.
It's an analogy mate. "Them not being police officers" is a difference not important to the core of the analogy.
You're looking at something like "a pen is to write as a knife is cut" and saying "a knife can write by carving".
But it would be dumb to generalize all "911 callers" as ACAB. It would be correct to criticize the "911 callers" that use the institutions of white supremacy to harass and abuse black people. That's the point. There is a line between "Christian church attendees" and "the church" itself. That line is can be crossed by attendees. But they are not the church themselves.
Same goes for "911 callers". All pay taxes and some benefit and exploit the the structures of white supremacy.
I'm all for "all Catholic priest are bastards" as their relationship with the church cannot exist without knowledge of its crimes and the institutional backing of those crimes. They uphold the structures directly.
But to say that "all Catholics are bastards" would be removing the material reasons for the ACPAB and instead placing the claim within the framing of Idealism
All theists are bastards for selfishly repeating baseless, deadly claims as facts.
Let's grow up, please, magic isn't real.
I see LDS and I already know its a horror story.
Imagine if there were people that spent their entire lives interpreting it and can guide you?
theyre called priests.
Also, most Catholics dont hold the corporal punishment interpretation
Oh, I went to Christian private schools, I've had my fill of their BS. "Preach the new testament, practice the old." That's Christianity in a nutshell.
thats american puritanism in a nutshell
Dumb fuck, that's you, too. You're defending a baby-murdering god in our other thread.
How do you know catholicism is correct and LDS is wrong? They have exactly as much evidence for their claims as you do.
Stop defending death cults.
We have a LOT more theological evidence
Peter is literally cephas, the rock of the church.
He was literally told "feed my sheep"
Theology is not science. Theology is "well, we start with the baseless claim that god exists, then we build more baseless claims on top."
It's lying to protect lies.
baseless? no.
To claim that God does not exist is a logical contradiction
to be created of yourself, and not of a creator is to rely on nothing.
We rely on a LOT of other things. Actually, everything relies on other things, except God.
Yes. There is no evidence of god, no observable base, yet you make an assumption and treat it as a fact.
No, it is not. All of the data my brain has parsed over my entire lifetime suggests to my current self that there is no god. Humans made it up.
I was birthed by humans. Who created god? Himself? Or was he always there? Either way, we can make the same guesses about the universe itself, no god necessary.
And god's dad. And god's dad's dad. Etc.
God exists of himself. That is why he relies on nothing. All evidence points to an omnipotent creator
Why were we made unique in the eyes, tongue and hands?
(retinas, fingerprints and tongueprints)
Maybe the universe is like that with no god required. We don't know.
No. There is no evidence we were created, no evidence that omnipotence exists, and logically speaking the christian god is an impossibility.
There is no evidence for god.
We evolved via messy biological processes.
https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/why-are-fingerprints-unique-and-why-do-we-have-them
I can't stress this enough: It's not magic. Magic isn't real.
The universe relies on a lot of specific conditions. Thus it must have a creator.
There is a lot of philosophical evidence as well as scientific evidence.
Who is responsible for the natural phenoma? God
Even identical twins who share DNA have different fingerprints. We are all unique. This is all more proof of a creator and a soul
That's an assertion with no evidence. It's not like we have other universes we can compare to.
No, that does not follow. You have it backwards again. We evolved to fit our environment, and now you turn around and say the environment was designed for us. You've drawn a target around where the arrow already landed and you're pretending you hit a bulls-eye.
There is no such thing as philosophical evidence. There is measurable evidence, and there is logic we can apply to reach conclusions. There is zero scientific evidence supporting the existence of any god.
What's your favorite piece of philosophical "evid"? I will explain the fallacy.
Why assume any one being is responsible for it? Why assume that being has a mind?
Nope, you failed to read the article. Read the whole thing, not just the part you want to cherry-pick.
Also, you're just plain wrong. Different fingers, even on different individuals, can match: https://arxiv.org/html/2412.13135v1
So your "evidence" for god, which would not have actually been evidence of a creator even if all our fingerprints were unique, is just false.
Please take time to challenge your assumptions. Your faith has taken you dangerously far from the world we actually live in.
We have ZERO evidence suggesting the existence of:
So why are you pretending otherwise?
It relies on the Big Bang to exist. If it has a beginning, it must have a cause.
Why do you assume the big bang was the beginning of existence?
The honest answer is "we don't know what led to our existence, but we learn more the more we look." The dishonest answer is "must've been a wizard."
Do you believe that god has no beginning? Maybe the universe is like that.
The universe, as agreed upon is the combination of time, space and matter
so if it was created, the creator needs to be outside of time, space and matter and be powerful enough to create the universe and be loving enough to create it even though he didnt need it
I suppose? The universe is everything, all of existence, from what I understand. Your model leaves out light, massless photons.
Big if! We have no reason to assume it was.
And so did his creator. Right? Or is this special pleading again?
Also, a god who would give kids cancer is not doing it out of love. I resent my parents for giving birth to me. This life is more suffering than joy, and that is largely thanks to your death cult and others.
If God is outside of time, he has no beginning nor end, so he does not need a creator as he exists of himself
Maybe the universe is like that. We don't know.
You're pretending that science justifies the christian god specifically, which is ridiculous. If (big if) there is some kind of supertemporal framework for our universe, we probably shouldn't call it "god" or anthropomorphize it. That would just confuse people.
The universe is not like that. It has a beginning so it CANNOT be eternal nor exist of itself
You don't know that. Stop treating assumptions like facts. It's okay to say "I don't know." It's not okay to make shit up.
its basic reasoning
No, it's an assumption you are making. It's the god of the gaps.
anything that has a beginning (this universe) in our plane cannot be eternal
How do you know that?
why are you trying to argue the universe is eternal?
Fuck off, that's not what I said.
The honest answer is we don't know. We can't know.
So stop pretending to know it is god. There is no reason to assume that.
Hey so, maybe we cant comprehend an omniponent God because we are not omnipotent?
Hey so, maybe it doesn't exist.
Given all available information, that is much more likely.
You keep using "we can't understand" to reinforce your assumptions. But "we can't understand" means the one thing that you picked is almost certainly not true, because there are endless other possibilities and we have no way to test any of them.
Omnipotence would mean no suffering, if he loves us. You lack imagination if you can't see that. There is no inherent need for our universe to be the way it is.
Welp, i created my minecraft world but i am not very loving of villagers
false equivalence fallacy
The big bang itself has a beginning right? something cant be created from nothing.
God itself has a beginning, right? Something cannot be created from nothing.
Here, again, is the most honest truth: we don't know.
But inventing wizards does not solve any of these questions, it just kicks the can down the road, from the universe to an anthropomorphic yet vaguely defined "supreme" being whose supposed omnipotence fails to prevent needless suffering. You've not answered any questions, and you've added many more by making unfalsifiable claims.
How do you know that?
And how do you know time can't be "created" by something that isn't god?
I'd also like to point out that in order to perform the act of creation, god must already be experiencing time. So where did his time come from?
I cannot invent something that already exists, right? I cant take a lightbulb and say I invented lightbulbs.
God relies completely on hinself, and why must he be experiencing time?
Because he performed the act of creating us. There is no action if there is no time.
Any argument you apply to god can be applied to the universe itself. You have arguments from ignorance and nothing else, which is not sufficient to convince anyone reasonable of god's existence.
We don't in fact know if the big bang is the beginning or if it's correct the theory at all, for what we know there could've been another universe before the big bamg and something happened to it
but the universe has a beginning and end, right?
the universe is definitely not eternal as it has an end.
Spatially, or temporally? How do you know?
It's a question science has not yet answered:
https://scienceinsights.org/is-the-universe-finite-or-infinite/
Go tell NASA what you have discovered, it could revolutionize our understanding of the universe. https://nasaspacenews.com/2025/10/is-the-universe-infinite-new-evidence-challenges-our-cosmic-understanding/