#Cultural Christianity is about your idea of sin and of morals but its also shit like. How many wives can you have

[bijoumikhawal]

honestly my hot take is you can end up being culturally Christian if your family is irreligious enough even if all of you belong to a completely different religion, and even if you aren't irreligious being a minority within a majority means the majority culture and customs impacts you, whether you adopt those customs or run from them

[lucienne-thee-librarian]

If I may...I think the problem is also amplified on various ends by two separate phenomena: 1) on the end of "people saying really gross shit to celebrities online by @ing them or even just obviously sexual shit like talking about mommy milkers in the mentions of some random person's tiktok or selfies that you find hot unprompted", it's also fueled imo, by the good old problem of people kind of thinking "if I say it on the internet it's not real". There is some truth imo, to the idea that people saying nasty or overly familiar things sometimes (not always there are plenty who KNOW its bad and are doing it on purpose AND it's still not an excuse ofc) just. Aren't really considering that this is a real person who will see their comments context free and thus it's easier to not just sexually but emotionally objectify someone in that like, these people kind of lose sight of the fact that if they went up to a stranger on the street irl and said this exact shit they'd get a "WTF creep" type of reaction AND they know that deep down which is why they act so different offline than online.

2. On the other front, I also think that purity culture is one of those terms certain people online need taken away like "gaslighting" because they throw it around without actually knowing fully what it really is or what it means??? I'm super glad you brought that up actually because god, I see it all the time. Like...the "you, a fellow adult, need my consent before you can wear Revealing Clothes around me or else you're a pervert and that's violating" thing or the "you need to Confess Your Sins before masturbating over someone or else it hurts them...somehow...even though ironically you're going to actually creep them out way more by y'know, telling them this shit they did not need to know instead of just rubbing one out already in your own damn room and leaving that between your ears like horny people with perfectly normal desires have been doing for as long as there have been humans and it has to date harmed nobody" - that IS very much purity culture.

But like you said, the way it gets thrown around...purity culture is a specific phenomenon usually rooted in certain religious ideas about sex and virginity and how the Wrong sexual activities can taint your moral worth and how what matters most in relationships isn't love or consent but Purity, doing things The Right Way. It's also tied up with modesty culture which I don't think would be too dramatic to say is its own form of rape culture - smarter people than me have written about it in much more depth.

But the point is, I lived a form of purity culture because of the flavor of Christianity that was my family's faith and that was my entire life for about the first 18 at least, years. I didn't even have it close to as bad as many did but it still did profound damage. And I can safely tell you purity culture is NOT "anyone anywhere not being totally down with whatever overly personal shit you want to say TO THEM DIRECTLY 24/7 just because they decided to be publically visible online or have a job that makes them famous". And as a survivor of ACTUAL purity culture, it is really starting to fucking grind my gears to see people online throwing the term around for things it does not apply to.

No but there’s something genuinely troubling about the way internet culture around sex (and the general allergy to nuance that so many social media users seem to have) has eroded the distinction between actual sexual harassment and objectification and just plain old sexual desire and attraction and any kind of sexual expression, or between purity culture and any kind of sexual boundaries, in a way that cuts both ways and doesn’t actually benefit anyone.

So you end up with people sincerely asking “isn’t this just purity culture talking?” when they’re being asked not to call strangers “daddy” or say things like “step on me” to their face. You end up with people advocating for actual sex pest behaviour in the name of avoiding nonexistent sex pest behaviour (asking people for their “consent” before you think about them while you’re wanking.) Either anything to do with sex is considered inherently good and sexualising other people to their faces is nbd, or anything to do with sex is inherently bad and nobody should so much as bring up the topic in a conversation with other adults, regardless of the tone and setting. There’s no distinction drawn between things that are actively said or done to someone or directed at them and things that a given person could just potentially come across or look for of their own accord.

And yeah, sometimes there is nuance and complication around these things and you have to use your brain in a debate around them. You can’t just say “if it could make someone uncomfortable, don’t do it” (plenty of people are “uncomfortable” seeing gay people kiss or hold hands in public, after all), or “you need everyone’s consent before doing anything that could potentially be construed as sexual” (same problem as before, and whilst this is absolutely true if it concerns things that are being done to them or actively involving them, phrasing it like that quickly devolves into the idea that you can “consent” to what another person is wearing.) So discussions of this kind end up getting sidetracked by the kind of people who think that “I don’t consent to not having everything my way” is a reasonable stance to take.

It’s just very frustrating that there are people on both sides of the debate who can’t see any meaningful difference between saying “I’d like Dennis Morennis to rail me” on their private tumblr account, or having some choice pleasant Dennis Morennis-related thoughts while getting off in their bedroom, and actively going up to Dennis himself and asking to be railed. And it’s tricky with the internet because these days you can never tell when people are trolling or not, but I think there genuinely are people who think like this. And that’s worrying.

[icarus-suraki]

Since I seem to enjoy Starting Shit on the Internet today, I'm going to share some thoughts on the OnlyFans debacle.

First: sex work is real work. I said it, I believe it, that settles it.

It seems a lot of people (often young women, I've noticed?) are really celebrating OnlyFans banning all NSFW content. They’re having a great time saying things about how they hope all the (cis) men who liked NSFW OnlyFans content die mad about the NSFW ban and so on. It’s downright gleeful. And it seems like they're celebrating on the grounds of stopping trafficking and protecting minors and so on. And that's a noble thing, ending trafficking and protecting minors--do not misunderstand me: trafficking and abuse of minors is a real and serious issue and I absolutely support ending trafficking, rescuing victims, and protecting minors.

It is my opinion (insert Vine here) that OnlyFans banning NSFW content is going to hurt sex workers and also will do absolutely nothing to protect minors or stop trafficking.

A considerable number of people here in the US lost their jobs during the pandemic. And, among those people, are those who desperately need income. They're of age, they're legally allowed to do these things, and they need some way to survive. And, in the absence of a UBI or even a country that seems to care about the wellbeing of its own citizens, you have to find a way to survive. And a lot of the people who found themselves unemployed discovered that they could earn enough of an income through OnlyFans to actually survive. They could keep the lights on, get food, pay for medication, put gas in their car so they could drive to job interviews. It became a means of self-employment.

Are you thinking of the people on OnlyFans and elsewhere who are doing sex work as actual people? Or are they just a mass, just a concept, onto which you can project your ideals of Purity Culture? You’re giggling gleefully about unhappy men with blue balls, but I feel like you’re forgetting the women who are still stuck in a Capitalist situation.

"But they didn't start doing it willingly!" You can't prove that that's true for everyone on the site. You cannot prove that. You do not speak for everyone. Maybe some people turned to OnlyFans out of desperation, sure. But others may have felt relieved that they had it there. Others may have even felt liberated or enjoyed the work. I don't know. And you don't know either.

"But if you make sex work legal, that makes trafficking easier!" Yes, yes, I've seen the whole "Nordic System" argument. I've read it. My issue with it is that everyone is using it in the wrong way.

Remember when Oregon decriminalized possession of small amounts of most drugs? It was a decision made on the grounds of harm reduction. If you won’t get arrested for having some crack in your pocket, you can feel safer. Look at what the War on Drugs has accomplished: legal slavery and police brutality. It doesn’t work. And it’s an excellent experiment to try something else.

If sex work is declared protected or legal (and banks and credit cards cannot therefore refuse payment made to legal providers of the service), then any sex worker who is threatened, abused, harmed, attacked can make a report without fears of repercussions for doing sex work. Do you know how many sex workers are killed? If only there were some way to report a threat or a risk to the police without repercussions...

Beyond that: if someone is trafficked and they make a report about what's happening to them, it can be taken seriously because sex work is considered a legitimate area and trafficking would be very much outside the laws related to sex work. Same thing with minors in the same situation: it’s outside the laws, so it’s a crime, but someone reporting it would not be held as a criminal themselves. Collateral damage.

To go back to Oregon for a minute: if you decriminalize possession of small amounts of drugs, are you going to stop drug deals altogether? No. Oregon knows that too. But you can assist the people who do use drugs when they come forward with information about, say, murders connected to drug deals. And you can also provide a means for them to leave their situation if they so choose. 

Yes, ACAB, but we can at least provide a measure of protection to people who need assistance. See how this works? If a sex worker knows about minors being abused or trafficking going on and they make a report about it, they themselves don't have to worry about getting caught up and charged for also being engaged in sex work.

More protection for more people.

Lastly, and this might make you mad, you can thank the US Conservatives for a lot of this.

It’s the good ol’ Moral Majority come back from the dead. Again.

Any time someone yells about pedophiles or trafficking, it gets everyone concerned--and rightly so. But the problem is that it immediately becomes "if you're not overtly against it, then you must be tacitly for it, so agree to this bill." And so, anyone who's progressive or vaguely left-leaning signs off on legislations or statements about how sex work is bad and sinful.

But in doing this one thing, the US Conservatives and especially the Conservative Evangelicals of the US, can then convince more and more people to sign off on a longer and longer list of laws or beliefs that the Conservative Evangelicals want to push through. That’s their goal: to push through their ideas of a Good and Wholesome Christian Nation, with all the white supremacy and misogyny and homophobia and transphobia that entails.

So you start off with the existing laws regarding sex work, then you start sliding into "all of these kinds of sex work are illegal" and then "all sex work is illegal" and then "all pornography of all kinds is banned" and then you start slipping into lawmaking like ending access to birth control (because that encourages casual sex) and ending the rights of LGBTQ people (because "perversion"). You've seen it before, you could see it again. (And yet we can't seem to get child marriage completely banned in the US. Funny how that works.)

I don't mean to "slippery slope" this stuff but, trust me, it seems bad now but it can get so much worse. And I hope it doesn’t get worse.

“If you’re a feminist, how can you be in favor of sex work?” Because sex work is work. And, if you look back through history, you’ll find that banning sex work and punishing sex workers didn’t make things better, it drove everything down deeper and made everything worse. Less safety, less security, more risk, more punishment.

It seems like a shallow version of feminism if all you’re doing is sneering at cis men and turning up your nose at sex workers. I think you ought to reexamine your beliefs.

[oniongrass]

I wish I could just like. Erase all Christian influences from my brain or something. Growing up in a Christian-majority country means I learned so much about the religion I never asked for. And in some ways even worse than the directly Christian stuff is the background stuff. The ways it’s soaked into culture to the point we don’t even notice that some of the things we take as fact are actually only a Christian thing. Like just our whole morality system, which influences our politics, philosophy, legal system, etc. has the idea of sin and repentance at its core. Even when writing fantasy religions, creators automatically make it so the god(s) are not supposed to be questioned and there’s some sort of afterlife system. I can’t think of any other concrete examples because it’s so hard to identify and I’m still unlearning if (but also cuz this is a spur-of-the-moment 1am post.) I know so much about Christianity and my perspective has significantly been shaped by it but the same does not go for my religion! They don’t know shit about it! It’s just upsetting to be non-consensually impacted by another’s religion, likely more than you are by your own religion (and boi doesn’t that cause some feelings of shame and imposter syndrome), while knowing the other side has to deal with none of that and doesn’t even realize how much society caters to them.

[catcomixzstudios]

How To Life Chapter 43 - Christianity

The Abrahamic God Quartet Part 2: God Takes A Fucking Chill Pill

You remember the God of Abraham, don’t you? That weird genocidal asshole who could never quite get humanity to be the way he wanted? Well, he’s back and… oddly much more chill than before.

Welcome to the second part of the Abrahamic God Quartet: Christianity. My personal feelings on this one are mixed to say the least. On the one hand, it is currently the largest faith in the world and has historically and currently done tons of good for it. It’s considered pretty much the foundation for Western culture (for better or worse) and has influenced many people to do and create great things.

But you can’t be a part of the largest religion in the world and not have some horrible things come out of it too. Along with the good, Christianity has also brought us the Crusades, Inquisitions, and televangelists. The story behind the faith itself has way less bloodshed than the prequel, which instead gets largely replaced with guilt-tripping. So there’s that.

Like most religions before it, I’m willing to wager that a majority of people involved are reasonably decent people. I may have some disagreements about certain aspects of their faith, but I’m by no means trying to take away people’s ability to believe in what they do. In exchange, however, I plan to poke fun and point out serious flaws to it because I also have the right to believe what I do.

You remember back in the first part, the scene where God got pissed at Adam and Eve from eating an apple that gave them knowledge of good and evil? Well God still has a hate-on about that. Because of that (completely preventable) event, humanity was forever doomed to be sinful (sin being something that upsets God). After how things went with the last Testament, God had decided to take a new approach to try and fix this issue he’s technically responsible for. Much like getting cold diarrhea on a hot day, God’s way of helping seems like it would make things better, but it really just makes a bigger mess.

Christianity kind of picks up where the Old Testament left off; God had kind of just fucked off after multiple bouts of genocide and strange dickitry. Things were quiet for a while, until God told a woman, Mary, that she is going to have a surprise baby complements of the holy spirit (whatever that used to be slang for). Her husband Joseph was naturally thrown off by this (since the two have never had sex), but he eventually dreamed about an angel telling him that God’s the baby-daddy, so everything’s good.

The baby, Jesus, was kind of a big deal. Many considered him to be the King of the Jews. Word began to spread about this and eventually reached the ears of King Herod. Being kind of a prick, he ordered all of the male infants be put to death in the city the family is residing him, Bethlehem. Luckily, Joseph got another angel dream warning him to get the fuck out before said baby massacre. They eventually found themselves in Nazareth.

We jump ahead to Jesus working to become a minister. The first step was his baptism. The man Jesus picked for the job, John, was immediately in awe of Jesus. That probably got exacerbated by the sky opening up and a booming voice telling John that Jesus is his son. (Jesus is kind of also God himself too, but explaining that particular relationship would take a whole other book.) More people reasonably began to believe that Jesus might just be an important figure. So important is he that the Devil (an alleged douchebag) visited Jesus while he’s alone fasting (or rather, starving) in a desert. The Devil tempted Jesus, but he ain’t having none of that shit.

Jesus really started to gain followers by that point. He had a relatively successful sermon with some good points, turned loaves of bread into fish (thanks?), and walked on water. He appointed twelve apostles to act as his main bros and help spread the overall mostly good messages he had. Jesus was on a roll.

He continued to travel around, magically curing diseases and preaching about ridding yourself of sin and devoting yourself to God. And it’s easy to make a good case for yourself when you’re literally bringing people back from the dead with your magic powers. Jesus even made time to hang with some of his apostle bros, where he is surrounded by a cloud that claims him as his son. They chose to believe that it was the voice of God, and not some jackass with a fog machine and a megaphone behind some rocks.

Shit started getting a little more heavy around this point, though. Jesus had gained enemies as well as followers, and their time for retribution is coming. The Man himself, meanwhile, started getting more aggressive with his campaign, including one instance where he starts wrecking up a temple that he alleges is full of thieves and scoundrels. He began prophesying about stuff like wars, earthquakes, and the cosmos themselves going ape-shit within the time of the people listening to his words. He even started getting in conflicts with the other Jewish leaders of the time.

The enemies Jesus had gained finally catch up with him. During what was dubbed “The Last Supper”, he foresaw that one of his apostles would betray him. I imagine one of them, Judas, was probably very nervous at that dinner after that for no particular reason. Immediately after that bummer of a dinner, Jesus was caught by the cops. Surprise surprise, it turned out that Judas sold him out to a Jewish elder who had gotten quite sick of Jesus muscling in on their turf.

Jesus was put on trial. The overseeing judge was reluctant to punish Jesus, but luck was not on his side, and he got sent to be crucified anyway. After his death, he was wrapped up and they store him in a rock tomb. The tomb was put under guard by the request of the Jewish priests.

That isn’t the end of the story, however. When someone went to check up on what should have been Jesus’ dead body, they find the place empty! The only logical answer was that he rose from the dead. This got apparently proven as he began appearing to the apostles who didn’t betray him and telling them to spread the word about his teachings. Once he was done screwing around on Earth, he got beamed up by a ray of light up to Heaven (or possibly to an alien spaceship) to be the right hand of God (whatever that used to be slang for).

That’s pretty much the end of the interesting stuff in the New Testament. Alot of it is repeating stuff from before followed by boring stories. The only other point of interest I found was the very last book, The Book of Revelations. Man, it’s mostly boring up to that point, but the New Testament goes out in a spectacular bang of insanity.

As for afterlife beliefs, Christianity comes with Heaven (the good afterlife) and Hell (the bad one). Whether you end up where you do is because of deeds or how you worship depends on what branch you believe in. Honestly, neither is really to my tastes; Heaven seems to boringly good, and Hell seems too full of fire and pain.

GOOD IDEAS:

- Jesus did teach some good ideas (treat others the way you want to be treated, judge not or you’ll be judged, respect others, etc)

- I will give it props for being the most “down-to-Earth” religion that has been covered so far. Most are just about Gods dicking around humanity, but this one actually seems to care about us

- Revelations is completely bat-shit insane and hilarious read

BAD IDEAS:

- Jesus didn’t come up with the golden rule before anyone else did

- Judaism didn’t really have a concept of an afterlife, but Christianity just had to bring one in

- Jesus is a mary-sue

LIKELIHOOD OF TRUTH: ~51%. While Christianity does bring forth many good morals, some of these end up ignored by the people who still believe in it today. The story itself does have a more personal touch since the human characters actually have a role in the story (besides being targets for sex/murder from gods). The suffering that Jesus went through loses a bit of its edge when you consider that, as Matt Dillahunty of the Atheist Experience best described it, it’s basically “God sacrificing himself to himself to serve as a loophole for rules he himself created.” I get that he apparently died for our sins, but usually the tragic part of martyrs is the fact that they die and stay dead for a cause. In terms of content, it’s certainly not the worst. It is followed by all kinds of people (for better or worse) and remains a cornerstone of Western culture. And for what it’s worth, has a way more interesting story than the next entry in the Abrahamic God Quartet.

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[thurisazsalail]

tbh, look. 

here’s a thing that happens to people trying to leave restrictive groups, especially cults and cult-like environments

you finally develop the courage or ability to critically think. that sounds laughable, but this is a skill ACTIVELY SHUT DOWN in cult environments- this can happen in companies, in political parties, in churches, wherever. You either fall exactly in line with Authority, or you are a Heretic and will be punished. Punishment is terrifying because it can mean physical damage or psychologicaly torture, loss of your entire support system, your loved ones, everything. So you don’t fuck up. You say whatever they want you to because there is nowhere to go if you leave. The “opposing side” knows what the fuck you did, or knows you don’t fit in and have ‘crazy’ ideas or harmful ideologies, and DOESN’T WANT YOU.

you eventually get the courage to stand up for yourself or someone else. this invites said punishment. this is a very easy time to break. try to persist anyways. if the transgression is punished and then “forgiven”, you stay in the cult. if its’ so egregious that others kick you out, like your family disowning you, your church shaming you in front of everyone so they treat you like you have an infectious disease, whatever the form...

you try to leave the group. but there’s nowhere to really go. see above: because you were with this group for so long, you have a lot of really fucked up notions about what is right and wrong, how society works, who is “EVIL” and who isn’t, etc. No one outside of the cult wants to deal with you, and no one wants to hear your harmful shit that you ABSOLUTELY believe is right because of the cult. The cult told you that everyone outside of the cult is awful, morally degenerate, will never accept you, hates you- the only safe place is the cult. they may not LIKE you, but they “love” you. No one else ever will. Now you think they might have been right.

Crossroads + Crisis: do you go back to the cult, admit your sins, and say they were right all along? Or do you try to forge ahead in this “new” world, try to undo the long, painful process of everything you thought was right being wrong? 

Most people go back. They have nothing and no one else. 

Tomi Lahren did and said a LOT of really fucked up shit, and helped foster her fucked up ideology onto other people. 

She’s intelligent, she knows what she’s saying, yeah. Don’t wipe away consequences magically; I ain’t Catholic, that ain’t how reality works.

 BUT ALSO she is now trying to take a stand and break with her party. 

Don’t underestimate that. Thank her for understanding how dire this is. Right now, she is being INUNDATED with hatred from people who are telling her that she is a worthless, shitty woman for breaking with this cult, that she is a shitty Christian, that God hates her, that everyone hates her. 

SUPPORT HER FOR THIS CAUSE. THANK HER. TAKE A MOMENT TO TELL HER THAT SHE IS NOT A BAD CHRISTIAN, AND SHE IS NOT EVIL FOR CHANGING HER MIND. I don’t personally agree with a lot of stuff she says. In fact, it’s diametrically opposed to my existence. 

But this is a BIG step for her, and we need to create an environment that makes it safe to challenge her culture, her family, her coworkers, and her people. 

Otherwise... we are as bad as Fox has been saying.

huh!?

[confrontingbabble-on]

Every religious belief system...is a complete blasphemy...in the eyes of every other religious belief system...and all are a complete blasphemy in the eyes of rational unbelief...

For example, as outlined by Atheist Ireland ...

“Here are the 25 blasphemous quotes that we first published on 1 January 2010, along with the quotation that has caused the Irish police to investigate Stephen Fry.

1. Jesus Christ, when asked if he was the son of God, in Matthew 26:64: “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” According to the Christian Bible, the Jewish chief priests and elders and council deemed this statement by Jesus to be blasphemous, and they sentenced Jesus to death for saying it.

2. Jesus Christ, talking to Jews about their God, in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” This is one of several chapters in the Christian Bible that can give a scriptural foundation to Christian anti-Semitism. The first part of John 8, the story of “whoever is without sin cast the first stone”, was not in the original version, but was added centuries later. The original John 8 is a debate between Jesus and some Jews. In brief, Jesus calls the Jews who disbelieve him sons of the Devil, the Jews try to stone him, and Jesus runs away and hides.

3. Muhammad, quoted in Hadith of Bukhari, Vol 1 Book 8 Hadith 427: “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” This quote is attributed to Muhammad on his death-bed as a warning to Muslims not to copy this practice of the Jews and Christians. It is one of several passages in the Koran and in Hadith that can give a scriptural foundation to Islamic anti-Semitism, including the assertion in Sura 5:60 that Allah cursed Jews and turned some of them into apes and swine.

4. Mark Twain, describing the Christian Bible in Letters from the Earth, 1909: “Also it has another name – The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies… But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy — he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.” Twain’s book was published posthumously in 1939. His daughter, Clara Clemens, at first objected to it being published, but later changed her mind in 1960 when she believed that public opinion had grown more tolerant of the expression of such ideas. That was half a century before Fianna Fail and the Green Party imposed a new blasphemy law on the people of Ireland.

5. Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag, 1963: “Get in line in that processional, step into that small confessional. There, the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original. If it is, try playing it safer, drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!”

6. Randy Newman, God’s Song, 1972: “And the Lord said: I burn down your cities – how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That’s why I love mankind.”

7. James Kirkup, The Love That Dares to Speak its Name, 1976: “While they prepared the tomb I kept guard over him. His mother and the Magdalen had gone to fetch clean linen to shroud his nakedness. I was alone with him… I laid my lips around the tip of that great cock, the instrument of our salvation, our eternal joy. The shaft, still throbbed, anointed with death’s final ejaculation.” This extract is from a poem that led to the last successful blasphemy prosecution in Britain, when Denis Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence after he published it in the now-defunct magazine Gay News. In 2002, a public reading of the poem, on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, failed to lead to any prosecution. In 2008, the British Parliament abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

8. Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath, in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979: “Look, I had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.”

9. Rev Ian Paisley MEP to the Pope in the European Parliament, 1988: “I denounce you as the Antichrist.” Paisley’s website describes the Antichrist as being “a liar, the true son of the father of lies, the original liar from the beginning… he will imitate Christ, a diabolical imitation, Satan transformed into an angel of light, which will deceive the world.”

10. Conor Cruise O’Brien, 1989: “In the last century the Arab thinker Jamal al-Afghani wrote: ‘Every Muslim is sick and his only remedy is in the Koran.’ Unfortunately the sickness gets worse the more the remedy is taken.”

11. Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”

12. Salman Rushdie, 1990: “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes.” In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because of blasphemous passages in Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.

13. Bjork, 1995: “I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”

14. Amanda Donohoe on her role in the Ken Russell movie Lair of the White Worm, 1995: “Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”

15. George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”

16. Paul Woodfull as Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly, The Ballad of Jaysus Christ, 2000: “He said me ma’s a virgin and sure no one disagreed, Cause they knew a lad who walks on water’s handy with his feet… Jaysus oh Jaysus, as cool as bleedin’ ice, With all the scrubbers in Israel he could not be enticed, Jaysus oh Jaysus, it’s funny you never rode, Cause it’s you I do be shoutin’ for each time I shoot me load.”

17. Jesus Christ, in Jerry Springer The Opera, 2003: “Actually, I’m a bit gay.” In 2005, the Christian Institute tried to bring a prosecution against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer the Opera, but the UK courts refused to issue a summons.

18. Tim Minchin, Ten-foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins, 2005: “So you’re gonna live in paradise, With a ten-foot cock and a few hundred virgins, So you’re gonna sacrifice your life, For a shot at the greener grass, And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgment, He’s gonna kick my heathen ass.”

19. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, 2006: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In 2007 Turkish publisher Erol Karaaslan was charged with the crime of insulting believers for publishing a Turkish translation of The God Delusion. He was acquitted in 2008, but another charge was brought in 2009. Karaaslan told the court that “it is a right to criticise religions and beliefs as part of the freedom of thought and expression.”

20. Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor, 2006: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” This statement has already led to both outrage and condemnation of the outrage. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world’s largest Muslim body, said it was a “character assassination of the prophet Muhammad”. The Malaysian Prime Minister said that “the Pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created.” Pakistan’s foreign Ministry spokesperson said that “anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”. The European Commission said that “reactions which are disproportionate and which are tantamount to rejecting freedom of speech are unacceptable.”

21. Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great, 2007: “There is some question as to whether Islam is a separate religion at all… Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require… It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or ‘surrender’ as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing—absolutely nothing—in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.”

22. Ian O’Doherty, 2009: “(If defamation of religion was illegal) it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form. It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other.”

23. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, 2009: “Whether a person is atheist or any other, there is in fact in my view something not totally human if they leave out the transcendent… we call it God… I think that if you leave that out you are not fully human.” Because atheism is not a religion, the Irish blasphemy law does not protect atheists from abusive and insulting statements about their fundamental beliefs. While atheists are not seeking such protection, we include the statement here to point out that it is discriminatory that this law does not hold all citizens equal.

24. Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister for Justice, introducing his blasphemy law at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting, 2009, and referring to comments made about him personally: “They are blasphemous.” Deputy Pat Rabbitte replied: “Given the Minister’s self-image, it could very well be that we are blaspheming,” and Minister Ahern replied: “Deputy Rabbitte says that I am close to the baby Jesus, I am so pure.” So here we have an Irish Justice Minister joking about himself being blasphemed, at a parliamentary Justice Committee discussing his own blasphemy law, that could make his own jokes illegal.

25. As a bonus, Micheal Martin, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level, 2009: “We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.” Just months after Minister Martin made this comment, his colleague Dermot Ahern introduced Ireland’s new blasphemy law.

26. Finally, here is the quote that has caused the Irish police to investigate Stephen Fry for blasphemy. Asked by Gay Byrne on RTE what he would say if he was confronted by God, Fry replied: “How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault. It’s not right. It’s utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?” Questioned on how he would react if he was locked outside the pearly gates, he responded: “I would say, ‘Bone cancer in children? What’s that about?’ Because the God who created this universe, if it was created by God, is quite clearly a maniac, utter maniac. Totally selfish. We have to spend our life on our knees thanking him? What kind of God would do that?””

https://atheist.ie/2017/05/25-blasphemous-quotes-in-solidarity-with-stephen-fry/

[thosemintcookies]

Ok so it's like 5:40am bit it's just... so much Christian discourse is about sexual chastity and it's like.. to what end do you abstain?? Because I feel like more than sexual chastity (other than for health reasons- idk what the situation was about venereal diseases and safe sex practices were back in the day) I feel like adultery was more about betraying vows and partner trust? The first sin was brought into this world through deception and lack of trust in the partner where eve was made to doubt Adam and Adam did lie to eve (I mean other people have different opinions and interpretations and I can adopt other views but I think this is what I'll adopt for the sake of this argument)

So like idk man like theres a lot of writing about lustful feelings or coveting for people who arent your partner and I gotta say the modern versions might be talking in sexual terms but emotional fidelity is more the pressing issue here imo? To cover is deeper than physical want, it's like yearning. Can bad interpreters stop thinking with their genitals and think about how covetousness plays out in the real world? Jesse's girl isnt just about wanting to fuck her. It's about the holistic woman. Let's not forget jesus spent his time with women, and sometimes without the presence of men. He himself, and early Christians (let's not forget Paul wrote all of Roman's 16 commending women he knew, not merely as wives of servants but servants of christ themselves) saw autonomous value in women. Respecting wives has been a huge theme throughout the bible.

But then theres sexual chastity for the sake of chastity which has become popular in Christian discourse and the other day I just had the thought like... to what end? I get that sex itself with many partners can be unsafe (see above) but things like premarital sex? Gay sex (okay here's the thing: the famous verse in leviticus was also written amidst like anti incest works about what counts- sisters (mom and dads side) cousins, in laws etc etc but kinship worked differently for the Israelites necessarily because they were not a particularly monogamous culture I guess at the time it was written- we cant simply transfer our ideas of relationships onto the verses 1:1. And also we have to remember that there are many stories of figures actually marrying their sisters (though only through one parent, oft the same father) and cousins and such and these were not particularly seen in the bible as morally contestable. The meaning of marriage and love and familial bond and stuff- marriage doesnt have the same connotation as it did then (people are quick to say God made Adam and eve so one woman and one man was the divine design but also forget about the rampant nonmonogny?? Hello?? Pick a consistent way to exercise theological concepts and frameworks??) And marriage also had a different connotation and cultural meaning for people living under Roman rule in the day of jesus.

I dont know it just seemed important to note. Also extra marital relations were also seen with a different weight. Like even take the case study of hagar and Ismael?? Abraham was promised many descendants and that was a covenant fulfilled through Ishmael who who also multiplied and also became a nation. Sarah was made a separate promise, and theres an interpretation that goes more like isaac was the fulfillment of the promise with Sarah, not abraham. I think that's significant both in realizing 1. God also recognizes women as significant agents and human beings (like how do we keep disavowing Mary, mother of jesus, and stripping her of that same kind of majesty, there is precedent for God wanting to honor women) and 2. Hagar's relations with abraham as legitimate and consensual because Sarah had consented to that union, and (she only grew to hate them after becoming bitter (to jealousy?) once the child was born

Anyway this all to say that I dont think sexual chastity and premarital sex (esp considering marriage as the legal institution we know now is not God-centered and again the cultural context is so off) arent necessarily as black and white as Christians tend to think it is. Sexual relations and behaviour (by which I mean more specifically romantic entanglements involving partner trust and mutuality) I think was "policed" more as a way to talk about honoring your partners and like basic tenants of respect for other human beings? Consent being the main issue here. You dont need to tie your balls down at the hint of desire as puritan Christian discourse kind of advocates for. It leads to bad sex later on in life. Just dont partake in the dissolution of trust and respect each other.

Oh shit its daylight now I have to be up in an hour fuck

[tumblunni]

HELLO GHOSTCRAFTER PLEASE BRING ME YOUR FINEST GHOSTS

HEY GUYS DID YOU KNOW WARHAMMER NOW DOES FANTASY? GUESS WHO JUST FOUND OUT WARHAMMER DOES FANTASY

seriously ive like Always wanted to do tabletop games as a hobby, but i was never socially confident enough and also Warhammer In Particular Requires Money

But i just Took A Risk And Dived Into The Store and then the cashier was really helpful AND also it turns out the series has changed a lot since i was a kid! Now there's multiple scenarios including a fantasy one, instead of just the grungey edgelord sci fi! Sure its grungey edgelord fantasy too but fantasy is better cos fantasy can have GHOSTS!!! man i wanna learn more about the rules cos yo can you mix and match stuff? Could i have ghosts AND zombies AND vampires??? Do i really have to restrict my monster wuv...?

Oh and also NO BIGOTRY ANYMORE which is always a plus! There was only one female faction in the space thing back then, and they were creepy bondage sexy ladies who stab themselves and use their orgasm power to fuel their magic or something. Like it just said "magic fueled by suffering" but uhh..when theyre all skimpily dressed and doing O-faces it uhh..DOESNT SEEM LIKE THIS IS PUNISHMENT TO THEM. I cant believe people reccommeded that to me as a 12 year old just cos it was the only "girl one".like i mean i know the definition of the gane is gonna be violent and Dark but like you should still categorize some stuff as maybe Even Darker And Perhaps Not Sell To Smol Childe. Having green blood on your axe is a bit tamer than goddamn fifty shades in space! So yeah glad that's not the only option now and i can have a wonderfully ghoulish lady ghost who's like a bedsheet spoop but a wedding veil and then there's a skeleton underneath it. Mmmyeah thats quality monster! TRULY WHAT ALL WOMEN ASPIRE TO BE

Oh and yeah the ghosts just look SO GOOD! they have a great design aesthetic of floaty smokeyness but also skeletal zombieness. And the smoke colours are very Aesthetic to make up for the fact you cant actually have translucent plastic. And they all have super dynamic poses swinging all.sorts of cool.weapons on chains and sticks just so they had an excuse to spice up an otherwise ordinary figure. And then MAN when there's the ones that are dynamically posed AND also have a really unusual design?? God my heart just explodes. I looooove these spoops~

And man i hope i can work up the courage to go back and ask the cashier more questions next time! I wanna know the specifics of the rules and how creative im allowed to get with them. How different can i paint them? How am i allowed to mod my figures? Can you mix and match figures from each faction? Do you just have to rp as the plain army description for each faction or can you make up your own division of the ghost dudes who are Not Tormented and Not Ruled With An Iron Fist and instead have a Nice Boss Who Takes Them Out For Milkshakes? Also can i put little top hats on them?

And maaaaan seriously i already have so many ideas for alternate plotlines for these guys!! Its SUCH A WASTE! the short summary mentions that you become a ghost if you're "not good enough for [warhammer equivelant of heaven] and evil enough for [warhammer equivelant of hell]". But then ALL OF THEM ARE JUST EVIL ANYWAY. "Not evil enough" but still every single unit description is "he was an executioner/hunter/serial killer/world's worst criminal ever/he has so style he has no grace t t this stabman stabs u in th face." Like seriously where are my actual morally gray dudes who did bad stuff for good reasons or good stuff for sinful reasons or straddled the line between redemption and temptation or like MAN THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS OF PURGATORY PERSON! Like why not bring up all the completely good people who might get unfairly sentenced here if this world's angel faction has as many corrupt priests as the real world? Ghosts of unwed mothers, unbaptised children, lgbt and other minorities the church is bigoted against, people falsely accused of crimes by corrupt pastors, peope whose mental illness is blamed as 'demon possession', teenage brides who didnt accept their 'holy' arranged mariage to a man twice their age, poor people who just didnt donate enough to the church caddy, etc. Or even just plain normal people? Like if you don't believe that humans are inherantly good you might damn Ol George Farmerson for "not doing anything with his life". Norse mythology had a "bad place" like that, everyone went to Helheim even if they werent evil, just for not "dying a warrior's death". And a lot of the worst child abusing christians twist the scripture to claim that all children are born sinful and have to work off this goddamn debt they gained through no fault of their own.

So yeah i was thinking of having a Nighthaunt faction division where i replace all their weapons with stuff like gardening tools and etc. Farmer of doom! Librarian of death! Single mother of pain! Kindly grandpa neighbour of ultimate power! Just all the lost souls of people who weren't super evil dudes. Maybe even theme it like theyre all from the same village? Maybe the entire place was damned for the sins of one man. Just generally criticize the hell out of the way all these dumbass gods organize their damn afterlife.

And then i could have a warden/general character who's Actually Nice and Actually Tries To Help These Ghosts Work Off Their Sentence. Kindly support worker type person. Treats it like voluntary work and extracurricular classes for people recovering from illness. Does all this paperwork and arranges little art classes and weekly walks around the park for all the grandmas. "Let's do the five-point recovery star to help plan our goals for the future!" Support ghost is here to help u accept ur new damned existance, and help progress up the employment ladder of hell~!

And then i was also thinking SHAMELESS CHARON CROSSOVER! i mean itd be so cool to have a ghost dude who's been damned for being a corrupt tax collector or something. And if he was all hunched over and grumply with some claw hands. And if he was this physically weak type due to his crimes not really being of the fighty sort. And if he was a grandpa. And small. I AM ABSOLUTELY JUSTIFIED IN SAYING CHARON WOULD FIT PERFECTLY INTO THIS WORLD!! Also it woukd actually be cool if i could mix and match units and i just had one single holy creature in this army of doom. Like a lil pixie type thing like rotom! An innocent barely-sentient angel glowybab, who's inexplicably latched onto this motley crew of spoops and seems to see a spark of goodness in them. Like the whole "youre a punished ghost cos you suck but you did One Good Thing so here's a small chance to escape your fate" myth thats common to a lot of cultures. And the dude usually ruins his one chance by being greedy again, blablabla. That would really fit Charon! So like i dunno maybe this rotom-equivelant lil celestial fairy could be the soul of a baby or a cat or something that he saved when he was alive? Like i dunno his final heist went catatrophically wrong and he accidentally knocked over a lantern and set the place on fire. And he could have been able to escape if he'd just been as selfish as usual, but he heard a kid crying from inside the burning building and he ran back inside to try and save them. And uhh.. He still failed. They both died. And now he's stuck on afterlife death row but this lil angel still comes to visit and cheers him on. And a bunch of other redeemable and/or falsely accused non evil ghosts all ended up becoming his buddies too and now they're all fighting together to find a better future~! (Charon: I'VE NEVER HAD SO MANY FRIENDS! :'D ...what is their resale value)

SO YEAH IN SUMMARY I LOVV GHOST AND ADDING GHOST MAKES ALL UR GAMES MUCH MORE BETTER now plz let me be nice to ghost, srsly it sucks that their whole deal is "theyre all being tortured constantly and not even their boss gives a shit about them". I dont wanna play as a ghost torturer!! I BOUGHT THIS GHOSTE BECOS I LOVV THIS GHOSTE

[roscoerackham]

Why factions is bad

I'm just going to articulate this as best I can...

Fundamentally, the difference between the Alliance and the Horde is based entirely on a thematic, racial divide. It's based *entirely* upon race.

And by race, I don't mean "ugly races" vs "pretty races", because both sides have two flavors of elves and the Alliance has literal Werewolves. I'm talking about concepts of monstrosity and corruption.

Corruption is a common concept in fantasy, and one that long predates Warcraft. You see it in things like vampire folklore and Japanese ghost stories, but the common version found in Warcraft can trace its pedigree to Tolkien; the idea that sin and a desire for power can lead to monstrosity. Look at Gollum, for instance, who is so warped by the ring and his desire for it that he's transformed into a mockery of a hobbit. It's a lens built on Christian views of sin and post-war anxieties about the corrupting effects of political and military power, but it's also linked to the victorian fear of degeneration; the idea that one could 'adapt' to an environment of evil by losing one's moral code and becoming a mockery of one's former self. (You can see examples of this fear in *The Picture of Dorian Gray* and *The Time Machine*).

Degeneration theory was unfortunately used to justify a lot of racist theories and practices; the idea that whatever people you wanted to oppress were mentally, physically, and morally inferior. (There's tons of academic papers and articles on it; take a dive into post-colonial theories and histories if you're interested.) However, it was also used as the basis for reconstructing these fairy tale fantasy archetypes; look at the Orcs in *LotR* for instance. There are instances where they clearly *understand* morality, they just don't *give a shit* about it. They were created without morality, in the same way you could breed grapes without seeds.

So this created this model of evil in popular fantasy, popularized by Tolkien but made manifest in *D&D* and eventually *Warcraft*. Races are evil because they're monsters, and races are monsters because they're evil. Being evil causes one to degenerate into a mockery of their former selves, but some races are degenerate and evil to begin with.

Warcraft's factions are, at least in part, built on this model, and this anxiety over physical and spiritual degeneration. The Alliance, at it's heart is a faction that is *not* degenerate, or has somehow resisted or refused degeneration. They're the old, 'pure' Azeroth, the ones who refused the legion's corruption or managed to maintain their kingdoms in the face of war. Even their members who are corrupted (the Worgen, for instance) are resisting it in some way, and are capable of hiding it. It's a classic "world-threat" model of constructing fantasy; the noble hero trying to maintain the last bastion of light in an encroaching darkness.

The Horde, conversely, has already 'degenerated'. Many of their number are already monstrous in appearance by fantasy stock tropes alone, and have had their faction allegiance set in place by precedent. Others fell into corruption and were permanently transformed by it (Orcs, Undead, Blood Elves, Nightborne) with no way of concealing it. The interesting thing is that the Horde is shown to visibly struggle with their dark pasts and inner demons; they're penitent for what they did, but unapologetic about what they *are*. They're imperfect^1, and this imperfection has marked them as outcasts that must stick together to survive. And despite *all* of this, despite the fact that under typical fantasy rules established in Tolkien and carried forth over *decades*, they'd be 'degenerate'; they can *still be the heroes.* At the end of the day, my undead Rogue is just as heroic as a human Paladin when it comes to the game's story; he saves kids, tends to the sick and wounded, fights against tyranny, and faces impossible odds. Being deemed as corrupt or degenerate by society has no bearing on one's ability or moral character, and quite frankly that's inspiring in a lot of ways. *Warcraft* is probably one of the most prominent deconstructions of popular fantasy to emerge in the past few decades.

But the factions fight each other. They *have to* fight each other; *Warcraft* is a victim of it's own RTS origins and the established tropes of the genre. It's always going to be Orcs vs. Humans; Corrupted vs Uncorrupted, because that's the foundation the game is built on. They factions define themselves in opposition; in order for the Horde to be outcasts, they need a place to be outcast *from*. In order for the Alliance to be uncorrupted, there needs to be a corruption to compare them to. Without that division, the factions fall apart because there's not really and philosophical difference between them. There's a *cultural* difference between them, for sure, but philosophically they have the same goals and desires, made manifest in different ways. Both factions want to protect Azeroth, both have their own branches of spirituality, both dabble in forbidden arts, both factions are grossed out by Sylvanas and her whole Valkyr thing (even the Forsaken are starting to think it's a bit much at this point). The only thing keeping the division going in the Doylenian/out of universe is the Outcast factor.

...and that's kind of a bad look, especially for the Alliance. Would you want to play an Alliance character if your main motive for PVP is "the other faction did some bad things a long time ago that I'm mad about, and is also gross"? Maybe, but it wouldn't feel *heroic*, and that's the archetype the Alliance is supposed to invoke. Being the bad guy is a niche appeal; everyone likes being the hero .

So they need to continually refresh the conflict with acts of aggression and grudges. Old scars. The cycle of violence. Competition over resources. It's all very realistic in terms of how conflicts actually form. But it would look problematic if the Alliance were the aggressor, because then the attack would look like it was racially motivated Imagine if the Theramore situation was reversed, and Varian dropped an unprovoked mana bomb on a peaceful Horde settlement? (And if you say, 'there are no peaceful Horde settlements', you're missing my point).

Even the Purge of Dalaran is widely referred to in terms like 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing', and that was in response to something the Horde did.

So it's always going to be the Horde that pokes the hornet's nest on the macro scale, and then the Alliance can have their own atrocities later, but they're always '*provoked*'. They can show the Silver Covenant committing genocide, or aggressive Alliance leaders executing prisoners or being 'just as bad'; but the Horde has to set the ball rolling in one way or another.

And that *sucks*, because you've got these two cool narratives (the badass traditional fantasy heroes and the outcasts who manage to triumph despite their dark pasts) which both are really appealing to different people and can make for amazing stories and adventures. They can do *so much* stuff with that.

...but the game is *War*craft. They fight. And this also makes for awesome gameplay and faction pride, but there's always going to be this weird tension. The Alliance is always going to have this uncomfortable racist underpinning to it, no matter how hard Blizzard tries to obfuscate it. And the Horde is always going to have to pick up the Villain ball at their own expense in order to keep the fight rolling, invalidating a lot of the faction's identity.

So for many people, the faction war feels uncomfortable, if not *pointless*. Conflict for the sake of conflict.

I hope that BFA takes a long, hard look at this conflict. Breaks it down, examines it, considers its origins, and considers where to take it forward. I hope it's a total deconstruction and reconstruction of the conflict; revealing the problematic underpinnings, addressing them, and *redeeming both factions.* Finding a way to capture their essence, and giving them something to fight for beyond race. Because war is fun; Warcraft is fun^2. PVP^3, Rivalries, shouting "FOR THE HORDE/ALLIANCE". *That* is fun. That's the spirit of the game. But seeing one faction get handed the villain ball repeatedly so the other faction doesn't look genocidal is not fun for anyone involved.

**TL;DR: The faction war is based almost entirely on race with no philosophical underpinnings. Horde are outcasts, Alliance are traditional fantasy heroes. Horde is typically the aggressor because it would look bad if the Alliance shot first, and the fact the game is tied so intimately into this problematic conflict model really sucks.**

^1: This is a lie, Tauren are actually perfect in 98% of cases.

^2: Citation needed.

^3: PVP may not be fun for everyone, consult your local Reddit for details on if PVP is right for you.

[essaysonmedia-blog]

A Former Mormon Missionary’s Perspective on ‘The Book of Mormon’ Musical

This is a musical about naive outsiders inserting themselves into a foreign culture…written by naive outsiders inserting themselves into a foreign culture.

A couple disclosures at the outset: I’m Mormon. I haven’t seen the show live, I’ve just listened to the album. I thought the musical was largely funny.

But I have issues. 

It would be petty and pointless to catalog the inaccuracies of Mormon belief in The Book of Mormon, especially since a major plot arc involves the gleeful distortion of Mormonism as it gets translated into Ugandan culture. But I will argue that The Book of Mormon fails as satire. Successful satire distills some true essence from experience and infuses it with humor or criticism or ridicule. The Book of Mormon, on the other hand, lobs its humor, criticism, and ridicule at targets that are far removed from (and at times purely antithetical to) actual, real-life Mormonism.

There are times when the satire stung because it was good satire. The opening number, “Hello!,” for example. There’s something ridiculous about overly enthusiastic 19 year olds marching door to door in ill-fitted short-sleeved button-down white shirts, like so many knife salesmen, trying to “teach” people about life, the universe, and everything. I get it. That was me. Touché. 

But thereafter, any real resemblance to authentic Mormon experience dissipates. Listening to The Book of Mormon felt like listening to a song about me, composed by a Martian whose source material was stuff people wrote in my high school yearbook.

Spooky Mormon Hell Dream

Let’s begin with “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream,” which is an excellent demonstration of how the show suffers as outsiders-looking-in.

The premise of the song is that Elder Price is racked with guilt for having broken a mission rule. He’s haunted by visions of fire, brimstone, pits of sulphur, and yes, Johnnie Cochran. While this vision may sound like familiar ground to many Protestants and Catholics, it is utterly divorced from Mormon experience.

"Fire & brimstone” preaching has always had a hold in American culture. One of the nation’s earliest and most influential preachers, Jonathan Edwards, described man’s relationship with God like this:

The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times so abominable in his eyes as the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours.

Elder Price’s “Spooky Mormon Hell Dream” fits neatly into this theology. It’s less compatible with Mormonism itself, where “hell” is reserved for the slimmest minority of the human race who have rejected God after having received a perfect knowledge of him. I think it’s fair to say that most Mormons believe that (contrary to Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s depiction) Hitler, Johnnie Cochran, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Genghis Khan are probably ineligible for hell as it’s commonly understood. In Mormon cosmology, the lowest regions of heaven will eventually welcome the redeemed “liars,… adulterers, and whoremongers” of the world.

When Joseph Smith first preached this, many early Mormons struggled with the idea, seeing it as flirting with Universalism. Brigham Young, for example, said the teaching “was a great trial to many.” “My traditions were such, that when the [teaching about heaven and hell] came first to me, it was directly contrary and opposed to my former education.…I did not reject it; but I could not understand it.”

But this radical departure from the common understanding of heaven and hell would ultimately become fundamental to the very nature of Mormonism. Mormons no longer saw themselves as “sinners in the hands of [the] angry God” of Jonathan Edwards. Rather, they worshiped a God with such profound feeling for humanity, that when he sees human sin and suffering—he weeps. 

I really don’t think this is splitting hairs. Parker & Stone are lampooning an idea that has nothing to do with Mormonism, an idea that Mormonism has rejected since 1832. I honestly question whether any Mormon missionary in the past 100 years has ever spent a second fretting over the agony of hellfire.

I Believe

I’ll turn my attention now to the show’s flagship song, “I Believe.” The rhetorical device in the song works like this: it catalogs a bunch of weird shit that Mormons supposedly believe and then punctuates each one with the full-throated, shoulder-shrugging, blind faith of “I am a Mormon! / And a Mormon just believes.”

I won’t comment on the catalog of supposed Mormon beliefs in the song, but I will argue that the main thrust of the song is antithetical to Mormon experience.

Joseph Smith famously claimed that he saw God. Of this claim, he later wrote, “I don’t blame any one for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself.” His attitude about his own experience mirrors the Mormon approach to epistemology. It’s the LeVar Burton approach. 

If Mormon missionaries were ever to wear you down enough to the point that you let them in your house, you’d find that their approach is the opposite of Elder Price’s. Rather than asking you to “just believe,” they would ask you to find out for yourself that what they’re saying is true.

Joseph Smith didn’t see his revelatory experience with God as an exception, but rather as a model that everyone could achieve. The Mormon scholar Terryl Givens wrote:

Joseph apparently believed that the personal epiphany he experienced in his visitation by the Father and the Son—heralding full immersion in the divine light, with all its epistemological fullness and certainty—betokened an order of knowledge that was the right and destiny of all faithful Saints. That very real possibility informs Mormon life, worship, personal aspirations, and shared purpose. To attend any LDS testimony meeting, for example, is to enter into a rhetorical universe in which a language of calm assurance and confident conviction and even professions of certain knowledge overwhelm the more traditional Christian expressions of common belief. It may well be that this sense of shared knowledge—its possession or pursuit—is an even more potent community builder than shared faith.

(emphasis mine)

Elder Price’s “I Believe” also runs afoul of several critical passages of the Book of Mormon, which emphasize the importance of the personal investigation and verification of truth claims. 

Again, it’s not that my feathers are ruffled over an apt parody. It’s that The Book of Mormon fails as a satire because it ridicules Mormonism for traits absent in Mormonism. To call it a strawman is an insult to scarecrows everywhere. 

It’s telling that the show’s most effective satire, “Hello,” is also the only song that requires only external knowledge of Mormonism. 

Evangelical scholar John Mark Reynolds went so far as to call the musical a minstrel show. “When [African] Americans were hurt by the cruel stereotypes, they were told it was 'just a joke' and were painted as petty for not laughing along.” His criticism is excessive by degree but not by kind. 

(And of course I haven’t mentioned the play’s alarming depiction of Uganda, but others have.)

So yeah. The Book of Mormon is funny, I guess. But it’s also irresponsible. And I question the morality of ridiculing (rather than satirizing) a minority group for cheap laughs.