If you are a Trumpist who is very convinced that Joe Biden stole the election through some kind of nefarious means, one of the stupid things you probably believe with your whole little black heart is that Dominion Voting Systems were one of the nefarious means by which he did that. Like they think they programmed the machines to register votes for Trump as votes for Biden, just like President Fitzgerald Grant's team did in Defiance County, Ohio, during the 2010 Presidential election. Oh wait no, that was not real life so much as it was an equally fictional plot line on Scandal.

Over on "America Stands," a show produced by Kenneth Copeland Ministries, host Greg Stephens and his guest, preacher/non-etymologist Mark T. Barclay, discussed how angry they were about Dominion Voting Systems, not just for cruelly stealing the election from Donald Trump, but for using the word "dominion," which is for Christians only.

You are probably thinking, "But wait! I have heard that term in other contexts before!" and yes. Yes, you have. It's not a word that only appears in the Bible. In fact, for several years now, many Christians have been insisting that Dominion theology is a thing liberals made up to make them look bad. But all of those things could be the work of Satan, maybe. Or the anti-christ.

The gist of it is they are upset because God gave believers "dominion" over all the things and specifically used the word "dominion" because of how God spoke English before English was even invented and so it feels like the word is being stolen from them. Almost as if they don't have "dominion" over the term "dominion" anymore! And how is that fair?

And that's not the only thing that has been stolen. "They" (Dominion Voting Systems? The anti-christ? The Grinch?) also stole Christmas and Easter by inventing Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

Transcript via Hemant Mehta at Friendly Atheist:

STEPHENS: Barclay, I hear Dominion software, it makes me angry because the believer was given dominion, and… how dare they use that to steal an election? That name — something rises up in me, this whole Dominion software thing, there in Michigan.

BARCLAY: 99% … 99% of anybody who uses the word "Dominion" is Christianity. And, again — this is just how I see it, guys, and I think I see it right. I mean, I don't want to sound arrogant, but look — They're stealing Christianity and everything important that's us. It's called Anti-Christ. They steal Christmas from us. It turns into Santa Claus and flying reindeer, etc. They steal Easter from us and it's a bunny with eggs … and this word "dominion." That's our word. That's a Bible word. It's almost like, how dare you even use it in this context?

And then, if you look into Dominion — you know, I'm not an IT guy, but I'm not deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid either — you look into this software, and what it does, and how easily it can be manipulated. And by the way, who's manipulating it and who's governing it? This is Anti-Christ, anti-America, anti-justice, anti-fairness — and it's being proven! And so they need to do something about it, like maybe just get rid of it.

So what they're saying here, really, is that this is a very long-held grudge. Jesus was probably born in June or October based on the star alignments described in the Bible and the early Christians mostly just decided to do Christmas in December so it coincided with Saturnalia, because pagans didn't want to give up their holidays. In this instance, it was really the Christians doing the stealing. Also, Saint Nicholas was born in like 270 C.E. — I could see if they were mad over him being a Catholic saint, but there were not a whole lot of other options at the time. Martin Luther would not be nailing jack shit to anything for over a thousand years. The reindeer? That started being a thing in the early 1800s and Christians are free to never acknowledge reindeer as their personal saviors if they don't want to.

As a non-believer, I would just like to say that I have never tried to steal Christmas by telling Christians they have to believe in Santa Claus. I myself stopped believing in Santa Claus at the age of four when my mother could not give me a satisfactory answer to how much the elves were getting paid, so I would be the last person you'd want to put on the stand for your Miracle On 34th Street-style courtroom trial to offer proof that Santa Claus is real.

As far as Easter goes ... it literally comes from the name of the pagan goddess Ēostre, so I'm not certain how anyone stole that from them. The bunny and the eggs also come from pagan rituals the happened before Christianity did. If they want it to be less pagan, they should probably call it something other than Easter. In most languages the term for the holiday is derived from the Greek term Pascha (which means Passover), anyway.

It is a good thing that these guys have solid jobs being wrong about stuff publicly, because they would never make it in the rough and tumble world of etymology.

[Friendly Atheist]

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