I know I just restating the point of that post but respecting religious freedom will sometimes require you to respect someone's belief that religious beliefs are categorically untrue, and there are a lot of people who are unable to handle this, and even more people who think they agree with this but haven't really grappled with what it means.

Something that a lot of religious folks don't seem to realize the extent to which non-religious people, more than any other religious minority, are expected to walk on eggshells around other people's beliefs at the expense of their own for the sake of social decorum, in a way which no one else is expected to do with theirs.

To name a bit of an example I have personal experience with. When I was mourning my cousin a couple years ago, I was constantly faced with the situation of people trying to comfort me from a religious perspective.

And whenever this topic comes up, the conversation is always about how "you have to be mindful of their intentions, they're trying to reach out to you and comfort you in the way they know, they're being nice, you have to appreciate the effort they're making, you have to meet them where they're at and appreciate their attempt to help you". Which is what I did, of course. In this situation, replying to their attempt to comfort you with any reminder that you don't believe in this stuff is considered a big social faux-pas that will make you look like an asshole. And to an extent I agree, it can be rude and needlessly combative.

But somethin I feel it's conspicuously absent from any conversation surrounding this type of situation like. Any interrogation of *why* is going "sorry, I don't believe in any of this, this means nothing to me" considered a bigger social faux-pas than trying to comfort a grieving person with religious beliefs you know they don't hold.

Why, even when you're literally grieving, the onus is on you as a non-religious person to be mindful of other's worldviews and tread lightly and meet them where they're at and not contradict what they believe in and never the other way around.

It's also pretty damn infantilising to religious people to be like "oh they are soft uwu babies who can't step back and relate to you and this is the only way they know how to reach out!" No they aren't. Religion doesn't make someone stupid. People who do this are either dicks trying to use your grief to convert you, or they're genuinely well-meaning and caring people to whom it simply hasn't occurred what their words mean because everyone is expected to walk on eggshells around them, and would change their behaviour if it was pointed out the same way that someone using unintentionally insulting language changes their behaviour when it's pointed out. The way "respect people who have different beliefs than you" has turned into "be sure to baby those poor helpless religious people who don't mean to upset you but they just don't know any better and can't learn with their soft sensitive vulnerable religious brains!" is absurd.

my mom died and i will never talk with her again. when people try to comfort me with the concept of an afterlife reunion i feel more alone than ever: my loss is PERMANENT. the pattern of atoms and electrons that she was is permanently disarrayed. eventually i will follow her into that disarray as my own arrangement of being comes apart and other things use the pieces for other lives, but i will not meet her again when we are both gone, because both of us will be nothing.

my grief is for this simple, final, irrevocable loss. the time my mother was with me is over. religious people need to learn what an indignity, what an insult, it is to try to comfort a grieving friend with a sweet, pretty, and utterly false version of the universe that their friend doesn't live in.

I feel a very safe option is just to say "They're in a better place". Is that place heaven or is it a painless void? Up to the person being comforted.

Please do not say that. That's really not safe, at all - it's a direct contradiction of my most sincerely held and most important belief. I believe that life is sacred, and good, and should be protected and extended wherever possible. I think it's better to exist than to not exist, and "a painless void" would be an infinitely worse place than the incredible and beautiful universe in which we find ourselves. I think death is bad.

If you go up to an atheist who believes death is very bad and you say - in effect - "death is good actually", you're putting them in a really awkward position of deciding whether they have the energy to debate you about their core beliefs while they're grieving. It's approximately as bad as walking up to a grieving Christian and saying "God isn't real" and expecting them to be grateful that you said that.

Instead try some of these:

None of these are "safe" - like, don't offer alcohol if your friend is a recovering alcoholic, and don't start singing the praises of someone's deceased dad if you knew they had a complicated relationship and the dad might have been abusive, and don't share a screaming death metal song unless you really know the person and think they'll appreciate it. Unfortunately being kind to other people frequently requires paying enough attention to know them and know their needs. There's no one single safe way to be kind to everyone.

I don't ask religious folks "were they signed up for cryogenics?" or tell them "we will continue the fight undeterred and someday science will abolish death" - and yes that latter thing is what I would want to hear. It would be unthinkably rude. I just ask if they need soup. I may not understand the world they believe in but I understand making damned good soup. (And I ask about allergens first before feeding them, which yes, is a metaphor.)

every time someone says, "I'll pray for you," my first thought is "thanks, but no need," but then (assuming it's someone who knows me and cares for me) I think, "I hope that helps you," but I don't actually say either of those things, because who would that help?

if I'm getting prayed at, and they tell me that's what they're doing, I just rack it up to they're thinking of me but don't know how to say that in non-proselytizing language, because that's the culture they're immersed in

now, if some rando belonging to a proselytizing religion says that or tries to use my grief or incoming baby or job search or whatever as an opportunity to try to rope me into their religion, I respond the way I would if they showed up unexpectedly at my door with their special books or whatever

When people say, “nature is my religion” are they talking about flies that feed on shit, maggots in decomposing corpses, lionesses with stained teeth and mouths full of blood? Are they talking about floods and fires and things from which we should always run? Are they talking about carcasses, rot, death?

Or do they just mean “this particular copse of benign trees is my religion”

You can’t hug a tree without touching all the rot it took to grow it.

You can’t hug a tree

without touching all the rot

it took to grow it.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

No matter how progressive or well-read you are, there are always going to be moments in your life where somebody pushes back against something that's so culturally ingrained you never even considered it before. And you'll say "Huh, it never occurred to me to challenge this but you're right" and that doesn't mean you were "morally toxic" before, it means you're a non-omniscient human capable of growth.

— Chuck Tingle, Chuck Tingle and Riding the Lonesome Train, Talking Scared podcast

twitter will expose you to types of guys that you thought were extinct

the best part about this map is that everywhere in blue and green completely sucks. They're an economic and cultural drain in the country. It's filled with meth and super cults and contributes nothing. Crazy how shit Prods are.

tumblr will expose you to types of guys that you thought were extinct

The "religious liberty" angle for overturning the overturning of Dobbs

Frank Wilhoit’s definition of “conservativism” remains a classic:

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

Conservativism is, in other words, the opposite of the rule of law, which is the idea that the law applies equally to all. Many of America’s most predictably weird moments live in the tension between the rule of law and the conservative’s demand to be protected — but not bound — by the law.

Think of the Republican women of Florida whose full-throated support for the perfomatively cruel and bigoted policies of Ron Desantis turned to howls of outrage when the governor signed a law “overhauling alimony” (for “overhauling,” read “eliminating”):

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/this-is-a-death-sentence-for-me-florida-republican-women-say-they-will-switch-parties-after-desantis-approves-alimony-law-34563230

This is real leopards-eating-people’s-faces-party stuff, and it’s the only source of mirth in an otherwise grim situation.

Keep reading

i am the absolute last person on earth qualified to analyze christian religious themes and symbolism, but. when your son leads you up a mountain to die in the name of a power greater than his love for you, that's got to mean something, doesn't it

I’m going to start screaming

#the Marco Eva Christian imagery continues to dumbfound#hey OP what’s it mean when aforementioned son is stopped at the last minute from completing his sacred/unholy task#by the guy he’ll accept any order from#while you are miraculously delivered from death#Also what’s it mean when you’re fixed to a post and left to die there slowly in public and then your son shows up and#punches out a bunch of guards and rescues you#Mx Applegate I am desperate to know if you were doing this on purpose.

i didn't even think of the crucifixion parallel but you're so right. gee eva how come applegate lets you be mary and isaac and christ all at once

It’s just like. What other pair of characters love each other this much and are so actively looking for opportunities to sacrifice each other. Who does that. I love them.

It's no accident that Eva's the only confirmed-Christian character (Marco might be as well) and this is in their story. Just like the Berensons are the only confirmed-Jewish ones and their entire family loses its firstborn -- Tom, Rachel, Saddler -- on the road to escaping slavery. This series doesn't have a ton of religion, but it doesn't evoke religion by accident either.

America has a weird relationship with cults where they’re terrified of small cults (or organizations they think are cults) but completely normalized massive cults that hurt many more people (eg: LDS Church, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Amish, Scientology, most Megachurches)

To anybody asking if the Amish are a cult, the answer is yes, very much so.

They’re a high control group that isolate you from society. The cult decides how you dress, how you behave, who you marry and how. They control what you know, blocking all information from the outside world. They control how you feel and what you’re allowed to think with threats of both social and supernatural harm. They’re a cult.

The best method to determine if a group is a cult, in my opinion, is Steven Hassan’s (cult expert and former cult member himself) BITE model.

BITE stands for Behavior Control, Information Control, Thought Control, and Emotional Control.

The more points a group “scores” on the model, the more of a cult it is.

I think this model is the best one for several reasons:

This is a great example of Thought Control used by cults whenever they’re confronted with criticism.

#you might notice that there are a lot of similarities between cult techniques and those of abusive partners#and that is an important thing to be aware of

yah that goes in the post

yeah I’m a nonpracticing woman. I was raised female but I don’t really believe anymore yknow?

I’m culturally female. I don’t really believe in one true gender, but I do participate in some of the rituals I was raised in, when I feel like it. And I enjoy participating in the traditions of other genders too sometimes.

I’m only female on Christmas and Easter, for my parents.

I’m not really into the whole female dogma, but the aesthetic went off, ya know?

why does this feel so true?

This is funny, but I read the first line like “nonpracticing doctor”. You went to school to become a woman, but you didn’t bother to get your woman license so now you just use your woman knowledge to write particularly detailed murder mysteries.

Yes exactly thank you

The more I learn about judaism the more I wonder where tf christianity got all its bad shit. Why is divorce a sin in christianity when judaism has recognized the right to divorce for nearly a millennia and has codified religious laws for it. Why does christianity consider sex to be dirty (to the point where puritans considered it a sin to enjoy having sex with your own spouse) when in judaism it's considered holy and it's a literal mitzvah to have sex with your spouse on the sabbath. Why does christianity consider it a sign that you're faithless if you question your religion when in judaism that's considered an essential part to developing your faith. I'm probably stating the obvious here but I still can't get over the fact that there's no historical basis to any of this shit before christianity started, it's like christians just said "hey guys what if we took the torah and built a new religion around it but this time it was actively hostile to human life"

@apocrypals

It helps to understand a little bit that the first generation of Christians genuinely and unequivocally believed the world was going to end in their lifetimes and while they made some adjustments—such as adding the idea of Heaven as a reward for the righteous—they mostly stuck to their guns when it didn’t

I feel like things like “don’t get married, don’t have sex, don’t have children, keep the faith” make more sense when you think the end of days is happening within the decade

Let’s be real: how many of you out there are intentionally not having kids at least in part because of climate anxiety

Well yes and no.

1. Paul started a lot of that 'Monks can't marry and have kids' shit. He explicitly says that this path is not for everyone and is just a him thing (I honestly believe he was aroace) but The Church gotta rule so... Let's take this one line of context and force it on everyone.

2. When the church became the official religion of the Roman Empire, it became a centralized power. Previously most churches were just individual communities going about their business. But there was money to be made off of uneducated people who couldn't read scripture for themselves so the new ruling body just made shit up to benefit themselves.

3. For centuries The Church was the only place one could receive an education in. Because the centralized church started in the Roman Empire, which built its culture off the back of Greek culture, Greek philosophy was considered as undisputed fact. Especially the philosophers from Athens, which was notoriously sexist towards women, more so than other Greek citystate. Before the centralization of the church as a rulling power, a lot of early crunches were spearheaded by women.

4. Once the printing press became a thing and more people started learning how to read there was a major division within the Roman Catholic Church and suddenly they weren't so centralized. They still had power, and are still the largest domination of Christianity in the world, but more and more dominations started to appear.

Some of these new churches were pretty chill and cool and challenged a lot of Catholic rhetoric, even to the point that The Catholic Church held a counter reformation to tackle some of its past corruption from within.... How successful they were is debatable.

Yet there were also many cults that sprung up during this division... Cults like the English Puritans (themselves a freaky sub cult of regular Dutch Puritans) that based their beliefs off of Calvinism, itself a fringe and heavily debated philosophy. After failing to establish a fascist government in the UK, they then went to America and spread their cult all over the colonies.

5. Flash forward to the 1960s and the Civil Rights movement. Once black people gained the right to vote, under a Democrat president, all of the racists in office flipped over to the Republicans. Nixon spearheaded what he called 'The Southern Strategy' where the GOP would spend 60 years trying to brainwash people into giving up their rights by blaming minorities for their woes.

To further push their agenda they founded the Southern Baptist Association, which slowly invaded existing churches and small town communities under the pretense of giving aid to these poor rural areas that had been systemically oppressed for centuries by the ruling class. Instead of giving that aid however they just pointed the blame at POC and other minorities while leaching off of them.

To further spread their control they invested heavily in turning these small town churches into puritanical cults. Ones that would put even the 'lets ban Christmas' original puritans to shame. Then with abolishment of a lot of restrictions around the news and media in general, and the increase in television and radio, they spread their toxic ideology around the entire country/globe.

Now Judaism aint perfect of course some of our religious laws are hostile (though some of the more hostile ones the rabbis argued into submission and thats in the talmud. for example, stoning your kid to death for "gluttony", the rabbis werent thrilled about that and made such gluttonous behavior impossible to achieve. it involves consuming an impossible amount of food and wine in a very short period of time so no parent would ever feel obligated to stone their kid).

but to talk about point #2. that rachelbethhines brought up. uneducated masses. Im not a historian but at least from what ive been taught about jewish history, there's more of an emphasis on early education, at least for boys/men, to learn to read and write. Id like someone else to expand upon it. but i recall recently learning about a famous Rabbi, Rabbi Akiva, according to legend (he was from the 1st century CE), didnt begin his own education until he was 40 (he was a farmer before that). But when he DID, he sat amongst children. This speaks to a lower bar of entry for education, and that even if there were many illiterate jewish people, there was also a substantial amount of educated ones. i mean, another famous rabbi, Rashi, is known for teaching his daughters (he had no sons) to read and write. this was in 9/10th century france. (i should note that wikipedia says that women in this time were forbidden from studying the talmud, and Rashi was radical for doing otherwise. that DOESNT mean forbidden from studying altogether mind you.)

anyways this was disorganized and i didnt really have a point but i had feelings.

💖💖💖👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

This atheist approves

yeah ok I like this take

One of the biggest power moves I have here in the midwest when someone is being racist, sexist, homophobic is that I tell them that I’ll pray for them so that god can grace them with empathy, or that “I feel sorry the devil has made his home in your heart” cause you have not felt joy until you’ve flipped the script on a suburban house mom or an old racist white man.  The joy of watching their face in shock and confusion while they’re called out in Christian Standards the same way they try to cover for their homophobia is amazing.  100% suggest it, at the very least it gets them to shut the fuck up.

Good Christian Hacks, an open-ended series

Works wonders in the South, too.

And if they start to stutter and quote some cherry-picked Bible verse at you, come back at them with “yes, even the Devil can quote scripture, but that doesn’t mean he understands it. I’ll pray for God to grant you understanding in the fullness of His word.”

This made me think of all the “rules of etiquette” that my parents and grandparents generation always tried to drill into us but when we asked “why?” all they could answer was “because it’s polite”

So I looked up how these rules got started

-Don’t wear a hat inside: Medieval knights were more vulnerable if they removed their helmets. Because of this, removing it in a church or in the presence of royalty felt like a respectful act of humility. It’s rude to wear a hat indoors because 1500 years ago some soldiers wanted to show God and King that they trusted them not to stab them in the head

-Don’t put your elbows on the table: In the middle ages European royalty didn’t have dining tables in their banquet halls, they used a long board balanced on trestles and covered it with a table cloth. If you leaned on the table it would unbalance and topple. People are still telling kids not to put their elbows on the table because 1500 years ago some nobles didn’t want to be embarrassed by knocking over a make-shift table and ruining a feast

-Men should pull out a woman’s chair for her: There were several periods in Western history when fashion for high society women was so restrictive that they literally couldn’t bend over when dressed for dinner. Men are told it’s polite to pull out a woman’s chair because women used to have to wear clothing that made it impossible to do that herself

So some dipshits decided to do a thing 1500 years ago and more modern day dipshits decided to keep that ball rolling

Oof, wait till you learn about religion?!

@hexadecimal00

I mean, I’m on my church altar guild and 99% of the reason why the altar and communion elements are set up the way they are is “because 1500 years ago this was done in a dark space with dust and bugs and mice” so it’s a fair cop

Tradition is just peer pressure from dead people.

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett