#Athiest convert

[portraitsofsaints]

Dorothy Day Servant of God 1897-1980 Co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement

Dorothy Day was an American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert. In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist movement that continues to combine direct aid to the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf. Her cause for canonization has been opened by the Catholic Church. {website}

[farisjax]

[eileennatural]

it's easter weekend and i'm going to visit cathedrals and also i watched immaculate last night so i will now elaborate on my spirituality. i'm not religious except of course for when i am. hope that clears things up

[guiltywisdom]

There's no wrong way to find God, no invalid reason, no perfect path. Every step towards the loving divine is the right one.

[skipuru]

What metric do we use to evaluate evil? Why is evil vs good such an important part of human society but nobody can definitively tell me what evil is?

Can it be how much sadness it creates in the world? No. An un-named homeless man being murdered by a remorseless psychopath results in less sadness in the world than a sad blockbuster movie. Is Marley and Me an evil movie?

How about amount of physical pain created? Again no. Stealing creates virtually no physical pain and yet is more evil than muscle strain felt from helping your friend move to a new house.

I think the ultimate answer is something theologians have been saying for centuries. Good and Evil are not physical things. They are descriptors implemented by man as a means to define Godly vs un-Godly based on our own emotional responses.

This is why, from an earthly perspective, it appears like God has created evil and is allowing evil to persist and is therefore, evil himself. This is not the case. "Evil" things appear evil because they are Godless.

"Why then do innocent children die of cancer? That surely must be evil" you may ask. I encourage you to ask again. Evil by who's standards? By what metric is it evil? It is sadness and grief formed into anger towards God.

Is death evil? Murder is. Suicide is. Is death? Is the final action of every living being an evil act? I would argue, as beings of God, death is good. It is Godly.

This is not to mean death should be received without sadness or grief or celebrated. Even Jesus cried upon hearing of the death of his friend. Even Jesus cried upon his own death. As I mentioned above, sadness and pain are not metrics for evil.

In the end, God has created death. God has created sadness.

God also created life and joy and happiness.

Happiness and sadness are Godly emotions. Death is not evil. God is not evil. Evil is only found where God is not and evil, as a Godless void, can be filled with God. Evil is forgiven upon the presence of God. Sadness and joy will remain, yes, but evil can be defeated if you allow it.

[cavaliersecondary]

i dont talk about this on here often but i had an introductory meeting with a rabbi at a synagogue i really like yesterday and it went SO well and im going to start attending saturday morning services there :)) im so happy

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

anyway diane was jewish. i have decided this based on nothing

[hammy-fan]

i think i’d make a good catholic if i actually did believe in god

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

ok but like i think the reason that veggietales is the only good christian media is because it’s not preachy. like i never watched the last couple movies as a kid but from what i remember about all the rest of it, even though 99% of it was explicitly christian, it wasn’t like the rest of christian media that was like “remember always that athiests are bad and if you dont convert your friends they will go to hell :)” they never mentioned hell at all they were just like “we’re marketing to christians and so we are going to tell bible stories and biblical lessons because we believe this is true and needs to be taught” but at the same time they were never trying to force kids to convert, or trying to SCARE them into belief like a lot of americanized christianity does. it wasn’t “believe in jesus or go to hell” it was “believe in jesus because he was a cool fuckin guy and bible lessons are great and we should all be fucking nice to each other”

also because they weren’t afraid to be funny as FUCK. fully convinced that “weedeater” is the reason tumblr humor developed in our generation

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

So you want to write about a Jewish Ed Teach - a quick guide to writing a Jewish man of color, by a Jewish moc

Given Taika Waititi is Jewish, I am always so happy when I see fanfic authors writing about Ed being Jewish! We need more Jewish poc rep and I'm always happy to see it. That being said, I've also seen a lot of misunderstandings, so I wanted to to write up a few quick guidelines.

Disclaimer: I'm just one Jew with an opinion, and this is based on my own experiences! I'd love if other Jews, especially other Jews of color, in the fandom would like to chime in with their thoughts as well!

It is possible to be a Jewish athiest! Judaism is membership in a people, and belief in g-d is not required (and, in my community, it's even considered a very personal question!). Some of the most observant Jews I know are athiests; belief in g-d and level of Jewish observance are not directly correlated. Cannot overstate how common it is for Jews to not believe in g-d or go back and forth on the question.

On that note, there are different levels of Jewish observance. Every individual is different, but in general there's Orthodox (very strict), and then, way on the other side, there's Reform and Conservative (Conservative does not equal politically Conservative). Conservative and Reform are very similar, except the Conservative movement tends to be more observant of traditional Jewish law and uses a lot more Hebrew. If you live in an area without a lot of Jews (like where I live!), it's very common for Reform and Conservative movements to have a lot of overlap and collaborate on a lot of stuff together.

Not every Jew keeps Kosher, or keeps Kosher to the same level of strictness.

Synagogue services are not like Christian services, especially outside of holiday services. Ordinary Saturday morning services are often more like a group conversation as we try to work new meaning out of the Torah. The B'Nei Mitzvah, the big ceremony that marks a kid being old enough to participate fully in Jewish life, is more like "baby's first thesis defense" than anything else! There have literally been pauses in services I've attended before as someone ran to the temple library to check their sources.

Not all Jews speak Hebrew. Some Jews might not know any, some might be able to stumble through the more important prayers, some might be able to sight-read okay, some might only know religious words but not modern words, some might be fluent! Just about any level of proficiency is believable.

Ed's got a lot of tattoos! Tattoos are a big traditional Jewish no-no, but (again!) different movements and different Jews have their own opinions. I know a Conservative tattoo artist! It's not something that other Jews would comment on (unless they're just assholes) and it wouldn't make anyone kick him out of synagogue services (no joke, I read that in a fic once).

Hannukah is not the only (or even the most important) Jewish holiday; it's just the one most non-Jews know about. The two biggest holidays are Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. I think Ed's favorite holidays would be Purim (you get to wear costumes and put on plays!) and Passover (retelling of a story along with a big meal!).

Depending on the area and the Jewish demographic, Jews of color can sometimes feel uncomfortable in our own community, especially when other Jews automatically assume we must be converts. While this is a real issue, it is not something I want to read authors who aren't themselves Jews of color write about because it is a deeply inter-Jewish issue.

Depending on the community you grow up in, religious trauma isn't as common with queer Jews as it is with queer Christians. The Reform movement has been advocating for queer Jews since the 1960s (you read that right, yes). I'm not saying there are no queer Jews who have religious trauma, I'm just saing it's a lot less common, and I have always felt immediately accepted as queer in Jewish spaces.

The inverse is not true. Queer spaces are not always accepting of Jews (or of people of color, a double whammy!).

A few stereotypes to avoid: Jews are often stereotyped as being greedy and corrupt. Jewish kids are bullied by Christian kids because "we killed Jesus," when I was ten I had another kid ask to "see my horns." Always avoid comparing Ed directly to animals, especially rodents.

If you're a non-Jew looking to write about a Jewish Ed, I recommend doing some research. MyJewishLearning is a great website that's very accessible.

Every Jew interacts with our Judaism differently, so if you're writing a Jewish Ed, please take a moment to think about what it means for him! Membership in a community? Calming traditions that remind him of home, family, and community? A point of pride - we're a resilient lot! Even just a note in his background that he's not as connected to as he might like to be?

[artist-issues]

so here's something I'm curious about: God's Not Dead. The films, not the statement itself.

I first saw the first film when I was younger and I hadn't yet embarked on my journey on examining just what i was taught and what I truly believed, but I remember finding the film a little uncomfortable.

I saw the second film and Ive never watched the third, and I think what I really don't like the first film is how it bashes other people's walks of life (Muslim father, three brands of athiests, and how it continues the myth that Christians in The United States are being Persecuted for their Faith Right Now.

Oh yeah and how the plots are really really dumb too, since the first film centers around a philosophy class with a professor that is skipping a very important part of most College degrees and the second takes place in a Bible Belt State with a high school teacher answering a students question comparing Marting Luther King Jr to Jesus's Sermon on the Mount and being taken to court over it.

I was twelve or so when I saw that movie and I honestly was not convinced by the film That God's Not Dead (in terms of the actual arguments in the class scenes.

The specific Denomination that I grew up with (Adventist) focuses a LOT™ on the end times so I do know about the future persecution thing well but like, I don't think we're there yet.

Anyway if you don't know those movies, feel free to ignore this ask but I'm genuinely curious about your thoughts on them, wether positive or negative or neutral

Hi! I saw the first God’s Not Dead in theaters. Never re-watched it. Did not see the sequels.

The good thing about God’s Not Dead is that people worked hard to make something that might shine a counter-cultural light on the truth that the God of the Bible exists. Stories that try to point to truth are on the right track, baseline.

The bad thing about God’s Not Dead is that it took things that are real, and genuine, and true…and it made them feel fake. By telling the story with strange conclusions and weird-triumph moments.

The thesis of the movie, that God is not dead, is something that only non-Christians would need to be convinced of. But the movie is clearly made for Christians. So. Yeah, it’s uncomfortable.

But you shouldn’t find every experience that the movie tries to portray uncomfortable because they don’t happen. You should find it uncomfortable because they don’t happen in that cheesy, Hallmark-grade way.

When a student stands up to their professor and says, “no, I’m not going to go along with this, and this is super weird that you’re trying to draw this line about the specific Christian God,” guess what? The whole classroom doesn’t usually get up and agree with you. They normally barely react. So even though some professors do put their foot down and try to mock or “kill” God in the classroom, and some students do push back, no. It doesn’t normally happen in that victorious way.

Just like how some young Muslim converts to Christianity genuinely are treated poorly by their families, or their community, not just in America, but absolutely, certainly around the world. Absolutely, certainly. I literally can think of not one, but two examples I’ve recently heard of, directly, from people I know.

Like I said, the events and life-experiences that the first God’s Not Dead movie are based on do technically happen all the time in America, and the West, and the world in general. They just don’t normally come with crowd-agreement, impactful music, wise one-liners, and celebrity appearances. The worst thing that the God’s Not Dead movie does is show you hints of things that are real, and really happen in real life, but cheeseball way it shows you those things, and the caricatures it turns people into, makes the real thing look fake.

As far as “the myth that Christians are Persecuted Right Now in America” goes…you just have to decide what you mean by “persecuted.”

If you mean, are we getting our heads run over by cement mixers, or dragged out of our homes and imprisoned for studying or even owning a Bible, or kidnapped by hired hitmen once our families find out we’re Christians, like they are in Yemen or Africa or basically anywhere outside the West…no. No, we’re not facing persecution like that. We’re not persecuted.

But if you mean, in the context of this conversation, that “atheists and professors and people in the professional sector of our education systems don’t have a weirdly specific bone to pick with Christians,”then you’re wrong. They do. They have. For a long time.

My second semester in college, in my plain old World History class, the Professor legitimately opened his class by explaining to us students that if we wanted, he would allow us to replace our midterm and our final exams with book reports as long as we read two specific books he assigned us. One was a book about how Jesus of Nazareth was not the Messiah and the Bible was false. The other book was a fictional short novel with heavy themes criticizing specifically Christian religion. Those were the two books he picked for his students to skip taking the midterm and the final, if only they would read those two books. And those were the ones he chose.

Not only that, but literally in the first class, I remember being stunned when he flippantly opened his summary of the 18th century by saying, “If anyone ever tells you you should check out the God of the Bible, and follow him, laugh in their face. Don’t do it. He is the kind of God who likes to make His people promises and then strand them in the desert for forty years!” First class. Out the gate. Like it was a joke.

It’s not a joke. Dude just openly mocked two out of the three major world religions that people identify with across the globe. Explain to me how telling someone never to convert to a specific religion and to mock it instead is anything other than “discrimination?”

Can you imagine a Professor getting up in front of a class and saying, “if anyone ever tells you that you should check out Allah ] and follow him, convert to Islam, laugh in their face! And here’s one short novel and one historically inaccurate essay criticizing Allah and making fun of Islam; if you’ll read these, tell you what, I’ll let you skip the two most stressful exams of the semester!”

No, of course you can’t imagine that. A Professor who did that about any other religion, creed, or god would be fired or taken to court or penalized or dragged on social media, at least. But the only student in the whole room who batted an eye when he said that about the Christian God was me. The only one who said anything was me. And it wasn’t a big stand up, dramatic declaration. Momentous music didn’t play in the background. My friends and classmates didn’t’] gasp or support me or stand up and agree with me.

It was just me raising my hand and saying in a shaky voice with a red face, after the sixth time he’d randomly deviated from talking about the Roman plumbing system to describe how the Apostle Paul and the other Apostles supposedly disagreed about who Jesus was (big lie, not true at all, but often used to “discredit” the Bible) to say, “sir, that’s not true. It doesn’t make sense. There’s a verse in the Bible where the Apostle Peter literally tells the church that the Apostle Paul’s words are directly from God.” And then he was like, “okay, I’m going to move on.”

I mean I just felt kind of stupid because the whole class was confused about the interaction; nobody was treating it like it was as important as me or the professor was, so it felt awkward to “make a stand.” But rest assured, all over the freakin’ country, people are excited to use up way too much of their brain power and emotional energy mocking, disparaging, and trying to discredit the God of the Bible and Christianity. They don’t believe in Him, but they’re so he’ll-bent on making sure nobody else does either?? Like, I don’t believe in Big Foot, but I’m not walking around trying to barter my students into reading anti-Big Foot books by giving them a pass on their midterms. But that’s how lots and lots of “athiests” treat the specific Christian God.

That’s not new. It’s not dramatic. It’s not persecution. It’s alllll part of the same old song and dance.

But it is real. The worst thing about God’s Not Dead is it made it feel fake and caricature, when it happens all the time and matters 🤷‍♀️ Anyway. Hope that answered your question.

[determinate-negation]

i understand the critique of philosemitism and idealized understandings of judaism on the internet but it feels more like you're leading a smear campaign against converts than actually critiquing. the bit about athiest converts just being philosemites feels particularly vile. you can be religiously jewish without believing in god. athiest jews that were born jewish aren't necessarily just jewish for the culture and athiest jewish converts aren't necessarily philosemites either. examine your takes before you say them maybe

i dont think posting a bit about this on my blog is a smear campaign tbh

and for that im asking a genuine question, like if youre not born jewish, were not raised with judaism or jewish anything, are an atheist- why are you converting- why judaism specifically if you dont believe in it- like what gives. not you specifically but why would one do this. how is it not philosemitism

[doberbutts]

Actually I was just joking around with a friend of mine about my dating tastes because the last two guys I've dated were athiests and that's weird for me because LITERALLY every other guy I've dated has been pagan (well no there was a single date I went on with a jewish guy but I don't really count him because it was literally one date) and that's not even on purpose. Like I start dating someone and because they're not talking about religion to me I assume they are athiests and then at some point they let slip that they're pagan and I'm like. Oh okay. Again, apparently.

And because this keeps happening I also keep dating either therians or druids presumably because with my selection of pets and personal interests, I keep selecting "guy who doesn't try to convert me to his religion who really likes animals" and. Well. I somehow keep ending up back here.

Which is fine and all like, I don't really care. But it is really funny that it keeps happening. Even the two atheists were therians. One of them could hardly believe I knew what he was talking about.

[jellybeanium124]

So I just saw your post about not realizing that the bat mitzvah wine is wine and not grape juice and I just wanted you to know that Catholics have a version of that where if you are a secular child and you sleep over at your (Midwestern idk if it's different other places) catholic friends house and their parents make you go to church in the morning you get grape juice for communion when the adults get wine but if you sleep over at your Episcopalian friend's house and go to church with them in the morning you get exactly one shot glass sized dixie cup of real wine (if you're Catholic and you have a different experience from this don't at me I went to one mass ever)

I went to two masses ever at a big-ass church for the first communions of two family friends and lemme tell you it is very weird to be one of the only four people not kneeling when everyone else kneels. very conspicuous. do not recommend.

also WHAT THE FUCK YOUR FRIENDS' PARENTS MADE YOU GO TO CHURCH???? one of my best friend's parents are evangelicals and if I slept over at her house, our parents had to come get us before church but they didn't MAKE US GO BRO WTF???? the other two people in my absolute most core friend group growing up came from an athiest family and a seemingly-not-religious-to-me-but-idk-they-do-celebrate-christmas-tho hindu indian family so maybe the evangelical parents knew none of our parents would be like... cool with that... but there was also like a modicum of respect there. like there was enough respect that I never felt invalidated or lesser or like hatecrimed at their house and nobody ever tried to fuckin convert me.

forcing other people's kids to do churchy things ned and maude flanders s7e3 style* just screams an absolute lack of respect or boundaries or anything.

*bart, lisa, and maggie get put into the foster care system right into the flanders's home and ned freaks out when he learns they're not baptized and decides to baptize them and homer and marge have to save them from getting baptized.

[itsthenatshack1]

The beginning of the splatfest gave me false hope for team future.

I am literally on my hands and knees after temporarily converting to any religion just to pray that team future wins. I don't want to be rude and I don't want to be like this. It's just way too hard for me to even comprehend that this may be the only chance for a futuristic splatoon. I really can't care about how I act at this point. I'll do anything just to see my team win PLEASE. Nintendo really got the athiest praying and holding their breath til they turn purple.

[newsfromstolenland]

Some cultural Christians, who are athiest antitheists, think only their version of reality is rational and they want to save, some of them, it seems like some white versions of it, want to save us all from what they think of us as fairy tales. They don’t think other people’s perceptions of reality or reality tunnels are valid. There are differences between religious systems like Shinto practictioners don’t believe in just one God but think all things have a Kami though there seems to be a heirarchy of Kamis. And there some religions that don’t believe that all humans are evil or tainted by some sort of original sin like Taoism, Buddhism, Islam and Confuscianism. I think I love my train of thought. But they paint all religions with the same brush. There are some religions that don’t even have deities like God or like the Christian God in them like Buddhism. I think there is sort much ignorance against different faith traditions and how they can actually benefit mental health and give people community

exactly!! and they refuse to believe that not everyone is coerced into religion

myself as an example, I was raised not officially muslim. my parents said I could officially convert if and when I decided to, and in the meantime I could attend the khana (mosque) only if i wanted to. only when I became an adult did I decide to officially convert to islam

or there's my dad, who was raised muslim but was always told that he could decide to stop practicing whenever he wanted

sometimes people choose to stay or become religious because it is truly what we want. sometimes religion is a fulfilling part of someone's identity