#FOR CONTEXT i am very much atheist

[ser4fhim]

my friend is bringing me the bible soon im so fuckng excited

[andy-wm]

I don’t think this is what he meant especially because Namjoon said he gets how he feels and shook his hand after. We all know Namjoon is single for a while now after going through a nasty breakup. Jimin and Jungkook’s bond is precious even though it’s now clearly not romantic.

He also said “Although I feel this way it’s not sad…” when speaking about Who. I think Jimin is strongly indicating that he has been single for a while. We should really take his words for what they are rather than trying to twist them into a narrative that makes jikook romantic. In the context of everything he said earlier in the video up until the Who talk it seems that he created Who to have the direct message of searching for his person. He was speaking about the song when he said that he felt this way. Not having those butterflies is what he is referring to when he says he feels flat, not sad but not exciting. Even if currently platonic jikook have a precious bond.

Imo these three sentences sums up MUSE and WHO perfectly instead of those essays wanting to connect it to jikook because we want them to be real :

https://x.com/jkyoongs/status/1814588120291287475

This is exactly what he told, meant and going through when he created this album. It's sad Jikook is not involved romantically but they still have a great bond given their trips and now enlistment but if Jimin is saying he's single without even feeling butterflies to fall in love then we have to accept that guys.

Hey Anon, thanks for this ask. Its so great to interact with someone who disagrees with me but doesn't have a huge chip on their shoulder about my views.

And honestly i can see that there are many ways to look at this situation.

Nobody can without a doubt claim they are romantic partners, just like nobody can without a doubt claim they are not. You and I have differing perspectives based on what we see and how we interpret it. We probably have different ways of seeing the world and different experiences of love.

And if one day we all find out that they were really just friends, I’ll shake your hand and, without screaming or crying, I'll accept that i was wrong. I hope you would do the same.

But right now, I don't think I am wrong on this.

Looking at the whole picture it seems to me that they are very much still romantic partners.

More like an old married couple with complicated and busy lives, but

Clearly still very focused on each other.

Clearly delighted with each other.

Clearly care deeply for each other.

Clearly spend a lot of time together despite being so busy.

Clearly attracted to each other.

Clearly physically comfortable with each other.

That's how i see it.

Am i prepared to die on the hill that their relationship is romantic? No, because I can't possibly know for absolute certain. Same reason i dont believe in god (although i think Jikook is more plausible than an old guy sitting in the clouds watching humanity like he's playing The Sims, just quietly... and yes bring on all the anon haters who are gonna want to thrash me because i'm an atheist).

But on the balance of evidence I'd say ...

they're still together.

Lets talk about MiniMoniMusic.

As for the Minimoni video, Jimin was there to talk about the album. It wasn't a conversation about his personal life.

He talked about not having excitement in his life, about his life being bland, and empty after suspending group activities. They hadn't been active as a team, and he was working really hard. It was a long time since he felt excited about something.

That sense of excitement was compared to having a crush and confessing his feelings. He said he can't remember the last time he felt that way, and the journey of MUSE was to make him feel excited again.

Tracks 1-5 were exploring the exciting emotions, like you would have when you're crushing on someone. That euphoria, the fizz in your belly, the high energy etc. That's what excitement feels like.

The crush conversation... This is the part that's throwing everyone.

He said he couldn't even remember the last time he had a crush, and Joon says I know how you feel and he and Joon laughed about that.

If it was because they've both come out of long term relationships (and we know Joonie's breakup was traumatic) why would they laugh?

They weren't laughing about being single, they were laughing about being OLD.

Remember what came next ... Jimin says the youngest in his band is really young so Jimin asked him about how a crush feels:

"Give me something since you're the youngest"

Because having a crush is something teenagers feel.

Jimin and Joon feel old, like they are a bit past having crushes. I believe that's what they're saying. And honestly, when was the last time you heard 30 year old men talking about their crush?

A crush and a long term romantic partner are two very different things.

At no point did he say he wasn't in a relationship.

+++++++++++++++

Edited to add a better translation of 'crush' , being one sided/unrequited love.

I'm not deleting what i originally posted because the reason jimin asked Evan is based on his youth.

+++++++++++++

One more thing i need to add...

In my experience, it's very difficult to go from being in a long term relationship to being platonic besties with your former romantic partner. It takes a LOT of work, and it requires energy, effort, and very carefully maintained boundaries.

Jimin & JK don't look like they're maintaining boundaries to me.

Based purely on the recent footage - the Are You Sure teaser they released - I see no sign of clear boundaries. Even in the Minimoni conversation Jimin says they drink and talk for 3-4 hours and it gets DEEP. That's a recipe for disaster with a former lover.

It also usually requires substantial time apart - YEARS maybe - to reset the relationship so you can be best friends without falling into old habits. We aren't talking high scool boyfriends who get the odd hour alone together here. We're talking months and months abroad in hotel rooms with nothing to do except listen to Lana Del Rey and... eat bread (apparently) 🤣🤣

Ok look, that last part was a tongue in cheek joke but they have spent YEARS under the same roof with zero reason not to be in each others bed, pants, shower, and anything else that sounds fun.

So honestly I don't buy the 'used to be lovers but now good friends' argument.

Those boys are comfortably intimate to such a level they don't know where one of them ends and the other begins.

[ckret2]

So what happens if You're Athiest? Is it like a ping pong depending on what you did? Or is it more like you choose which judicial system or oblivion. Which does that even count as a belief if you believe in oblivion???

(For context for anyone who missed it, we're talking about this headcanon post, this isn't an actual religious discussion.)

We know, for a fact, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that ghosts exist in Gravity Falls. Let's start with that. This is a universe where, all other matters of theology being up in the air, the existence of the soul and of continued existence after death is Canonically Confirmed And Real.

And so, souls & life after death being confirmably real—they continue to be real whether you believe in them or not.

We don't know much about the afterlife-afterlife in Gravity Falls beyond what little bits we get from Bill. We know he's been to hell and gotten kicked out, and he claims "heaven" is a dimension where you get everything you want. The soul contract on TINAWDC lists "heaven, hell, purgator[y?], big corner, flow state, the dream house, the reincarnation processing center, axolotl’s tank, and consequences hole" as some (but not all) possible afterlives. The Theraprism appears to be an afterlife (Bill shows up there after getting killed, leaving his corpse behind, and he'll remain there until he can reincarnate; and since it's literally located inside a mind, it might be located in the mindscape).

But, while we might not know much about afterlives: we do know afterlives exist.

In most human religions, you go to an afterlife whether you believe in it or not. Believers tend to believe that all humans go to This One Afterlife (or One Of These Available Afterlives Depending On What You Did). Most Christians don't think you can opt out of heaven/hell if you're an atheist. Buddhists don't think you're excused from participating in samsara if you don't think it's real. I doubt the ancient Egyptians believed you'd be pardoned from having your heart weighed if you told Anubis you thought he was imaginary.

You'd be hard-pressed to find afterlife beliefs where what you believe in matters to what afterlife you go to—except in cases where you're rewarded for believing the right thing and punished for believing the wrong thing.

So I am assuming that, if we're talking about a setting where afterlives are canonically real, that's how they operate:

Nobody's setting up afterlives to accommodate the beliefs of people who are wrong about whether souls & afterlives exist

you're subject to an afterlife whether you think it's real or not.

In light of all that, I don't think getting sent to a particular afterlife has to do with belief; I think it has to do with bureaucracy.

If you are born, you are probably the citizen of a country. You didn't ask to be. You didn't consent to being a citizen. But you are one anyway. The government you had no say in and don't even know exists yet decided you belong to them. If you don't agree to be their citizen, tough titties. You were born on the property they've decided is theirs, and/or they consider your parents citizens; so they consider you a citizen too. When you become an adult, they'll ask you to pay taxes to them because they're your country! You never agreed to any of this! But you were born into the system so you're participating in it whether you want to or not. Sometimes you can stop being a citizen, or become a citizen of some other country, but it's very rare, very difficult, and takes a whole lot of paperwork.

I assume that a Generic Non-Denominational Multi-Afterlife setting works the same way. You may be able to choose which afterlife you go to, if you meet whatever criteria there are for transferring to that afterlife; but one way or another, you're going to an afterlife. If you don't choose one, one's chosen for you. You can't opt out of being in the system just because you don't believe it's real.

[cath-lic]

Hello, I was wondering if you believe non-Christians can be saved? I know many Catholics believe everyone that doesn't accept Jesus will go to hell. Personally, I find this outlook very sad and I was curious on other points of view so please anyone respond with their own opinions. I mean to ask you this: If God is love and is forgiving of our sins, why would he send everyone to hell simply because they could not find their way to him?

hi!! YES absolutely everyone is saved!! now, everyone and their brother has a conflicting opinion on this, but i’ll throw in my two cents.

my first, more concrete point: john 3:16. the everyman’s verse!!

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

okay, but what if someone doesn’t believeth? vatican ii’s lumen gentium, no. 16, also covers this. (italics added by me)

Those also can attain to everlasting salvation who through no fault of their own do not know the gospel of Christ or his Church, yet sincerely seek God and, moved by grace, strive by their deeds to do his will as it is known to them through the dictates of conscience. Nor does divine Providence deny the help necessary for salvation to those who, without blame on their part, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God, but who strive to live a good life, thanks to his grace.

however, it’s important to note LG no. 14. bear with me here.

Whosoever knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by God through Jesus Christ would refuse to enter her or to remain in her could not be saved.

i’m not a theologian, i’m just joe off the street—so i may be taking things out of context. forgive me!

however—as much as i am catholic, i believe that this is putting WAY too much importance on the catholic church as we know it today. it is far, far different than the original organization founded upon the rock of st. peter, and i believe that there are many things that god takes issue with in the catholic church (notoriously, jesus criticized large institutions like these). therefore, i don’t know how much i believe that the catholic church today, nor as a whole, was made necessary by god through christ.

my second point: my most fervent belief is that god is love. pretty much all of my friends are atheists, and they are kind and caring and loving people. it is, therefore, impossible for me to believe that they are not saved.

my second-and-a-half point: i take a little bit of issue with your phrasing of “send” to hell.

personally, i believe that hell is not necessarily Dante’s inferno, but a place of complete and total separation from god. i also believe that hell is not a place you are sent to, but rather a place you send yourself.

i mentioned purgatory in my earlier answer to a different anon; this is where that comes in. i generally concur with pope francis when he says that he likes to think of hell as empty (note: he was not issuing doctrine here). i believe that in purgatory, 99.999% (you get it) of people, if not 100%, are able to reconcile with god and see the consequences of their decisions, good and bad, throughout their life.

you know when you tell someone something that is true, but they keep on rejecting it, no matter what evidence you show them? that’s what i imagine is happening to the other .001%.

god is endlessly patient; he doesn’t mind spending eons trying to convince others to have empathy for their fellow man. however, humans are not as patient. they get fed up and walk away—and this is my (limited) understanding of the process of going to hell.

i’ll be honest, i don’t know if hell is permanent, temporary, etc. i’m not sure how helpful it is to debate it, either. but what i do know is very helpfully summarized in this post by the lovely hymnsofheresy.

whenever i have doubts about some aspect of what i believe being incorrect, i remind myself that god is love. he loves us more than anything in the world, and nothing we can do will ever change that. he doesn’t look for reasons for you to go to hell; he wants to be with us all the time.

thank you for sending in this ask, and i hope it helped ❤️❤️❤️

[starleska]

Omg I've been wanting to ask you if you've seen Heretic! I became obsessed as soon as I saw it, recommending it to all my friends like a missionary 😅 I've seen it twice and it gives you so much to think about; the three main performances are brilliant, the story is unpredictable and the psychological horror is so well done! Sister Paxton is also one of my new favourite characters from anything; I just think she's wonderful. I have so many thoughts I should probably make my own post b/c I could go on and on 😅

On a more superficial note, I must ask... Do you have a crush on Mr Reed? (Should I be embarrassed to admit that it's the first time I've ever found Hugh Grant hot, after a lifetime of having no opinion on him and barely registering his presence in films? I feel like I've finally awoken)

hell YEAHHHH all the love for Heretic, i was completely blown away!!!! what a masterpiece of a movie, holy shit - i couldn't agree with you more. Hugh Grant, Sophie Thatcher AND Chloe East all gave such tremendous performances - those first thirty minutes were some of the most tense and uncomfortable exchanges i've ever seen!!! so tightly written and had as many twists and turns as Mr Reed's fortress-like home...you keep on recommending this movie to everyone, i certainly will be too 🙈💖 BEFORE I GO INTO SPOILERS AND HEAVY RELIGIOUS/ATHEISTIC/PERSONAL DISCUSSION UNDER THE CUT: although i am not presently blorboing Mr Reed, my partner is down so astronomically bad i thought they were going to explode in the theatre 😂💖 i totally understand where y'all are coming from, and if spreading the 'gorgeous old man Hugh Grant appeals to your religious trauma and daddy kinks at the same time' propaganda, then so be it!!! here, hot grandpa be upon ye!! (come back to me in 3-5 business days, maybe my opinion will have evolved 😉)

so for context: when i was a child, like. ages 7-14, i was a militant atheist. i was raised in a very lax Christian household, but i fell down the rabbit hole of Richard Dawkins-esque 'reasonable' takes on religion via books and online circles that i equated with being intellectually superior. in retrospect i'm horrified by what a nasty, ignorant person it made me, and am very lucky to have had good religious figures in my life to gently ease me out of that (ironically) cult-like mentality. i'd argue that atheism, theism, theological debates and scientific ideas about the nature of reality constituted a special interest for me for a good chunk of my life...so this movie really scratched a long-forgotten itch 🙈🙈🙈 the thing about Heretic was how equal its messaging was. going in, you'd assume Mr Reed could've been some spurned apostate punishing missionaries for daring to have unshaken, unproven faith. but instead, we see something else: Mr Reed, Sister Barnes and Sister Paxton battling and even collaborating in trying to discover the truth of their respective (including lack of) faiths. that final scene with Sister Paxton hallucinating the butterfly rammed it home: does it really matter whether religion is correct or not? isn't it enough that faith provides comfort and meaning, even if we're wrong when we leave this mortal coil? i think as an ex-militant atheist i find Mr Reed horribly relatable. the way he made himself into this self-styled god by deeming 'control' to be the structure of all religion and using it to act on his own selfish desires reminds me so much of the figureheads of the atheism movement...i know that Heretic was in part inspired by Contact (1997), based on the book by Carl Sagan, which explores the implications for humanity if we made contact with extraterrestial life. the scientific language which people in the atheism community used to dress up intolerance and personal biases is just as flawed as the religion they were criticising. Mr Reed dazzles as an "intellectual", but he's no more informed than either of the Sisters. the way this movie skilfully portrays all parties as reasonable, informed, relatable people all trying to seek meaning is magnificent. it would have been so easy to make either side into a scapegoat: to make an anti-religious movie, or an anti-atheism movie, or even to turn around and call us all idiots for thinking about religion, but it doesn't. it leaves us with this off-kilter but honest message: we don't know, and that's okay, as long as it matters to you. that's why i agree with you on Sister Paxton being such an amazing character: regardless of Mr Reed's theories (or hypotheses 😉) he was unable to subjugate her. what a fucking champ

[dchuntress]

HI!!

I was wondering if there was a there a particular moment (comic book, particular panel, line, event) where you ‘fell in love’ with Helena B as a character? Like a moment where you really became a fan of her or that kicked off a greater appreciation for her.

No pressure if not, just wondering! (Also hope the exam goes well ^^)

HELLO MY FAVOURITE STEPH CEO 🩵🩵🩵🩵

thank you so much for your wishes and for this ask!!!

i don't want to revise history too much and i hope this is a satisfactory answer, but honestly, i know i was in a certain sort of emotional state during that period of 2024 and i'm sure my emotions were heightened a lot, but i'll still try to recap it as closely as possible: ( some personal stuff below )

some quick backstory: i was on a long flight in december 2023, randomly watched the birds of prey movie, enjoyed the hell out of that movie, in april 2023 i randomly thought of the helena character - mainly because of that one scene, where the kid was scared, but helena, this emo goth socially awkward edgelord, stopped to comfort that kid and gave her a toy car to hold onto. i googled her, and was really, really surprised by how different comics huntress looked; like, her suit design? PHENOMENAL. i make graphic edits, and i knew i wanted to do my next on huntress, and doing so, i ended up researching her a little so that i can get her vibes right...

this might be controversial, but this is entirely my personal experience and in no way a commentary on the religion as a whole: i was raised muslim, and in 2023, i became an atheist, ironically enough, a few months before my first umrah (a sort of pilgrimage). i was at a very low point of my life, and i was hanging onto a few loose threads of my faith, but i was losing hope rapidly, and people around me being misogynistic, controlling shits weren't helping much. in the end, the threads snapped, and once i considered that i was totally alone in the whole world, i couldn't return back. i couldn't reaccept my faith no matter what. right now, i don't mind being an atheist, and i thoroughly respect people's religion and faith. i know i have tried to be a good person when i was a theist, and i know i am trying to be a good person as an atheist. i think we're all trying as people, and i think most of us are innately good.

but for many months since i first became an atheist, i was deeply hurt, grieving, resentful, conflicted. i felt trapped because i live in a very religious family, very religious country. talks of religion hurt me personally. and at the same time, i was coming to terms with the fact that i'm genuinely alone and i don't have a safety net. i really felt lost.

to keep things from being too long, another quick context: before helena bertinelli, i got into a marvel comics character, theresa cassidy. she's a catholic, and at first, i tried to just read and write for this character without looking at her faith, but... terry, like helena, is devoutly catholic, and it felt wrong for me to ignore an integral part of terry. so, terry gave me the first bit of courage to re-engage with religion in an impartial light, i was only just reading up catholicism to understand terry's relationship with her faith better.

when i learned that helena bertinelli is a devout catholic, i didn't really know how to feel. i was already somewhat familiar with researching catholicism for terry anyway, so i didn't feel uncomfortable engaging with helena's stories. then i read huntress: year one and i think i just was a different woman.

that was exactly the kind of story i needed, and helena was exactly the kind of character i needed. someone so strong, so powerful, yet so scared, so angry, so uncertain, so lost, so human. she was religious, she knew what she was talking about, yet she was also upset with the kind of people that utilised religion. this story of huntress wasn't just her beating up bad guys and calling it a day, she barely emerged victorious.

because this was systematic. she was born into it, and she barely could escape it, getting almost killed and losing her entire family weren't enough to protect her. she couldn't uproot her problems, she couldn't convince people to share her views in a day, she was alone often times. but she also fought, she had support when it mattered, she survived, she outlasted them all, she didn't give up, she didn't stop believing.

religion may not have been relevant to me anymore, but seeing what it means to helena? for her to carry all those years of pain, to overcome her fear, and reclaim her cross from that bastard who doesn't deserve to be named?

yeah, just. wow! i don't know just how often we see women-centric stories we see like this in mainstream media: messy, unfiltered, realistically harsh. huntress is constantly fighting uphill battles, putting herself through heartbreak, losing and losing, seldom getting her flowers, but she's a woman of ardent faith and hope. not in a "god will save me" way but "i will save myself; god don't give up on me" way.

and circling back to what caught my eye about bop movie's helena: i think i had fallen in love with huntress a bit harder when i learned she was a schoolteacher, the kind that had a soft spot for her kids and would break hell and bend heaven for them. being a teacher ties back to her being hopeful too; helena isn't a nihilistic cynic, isn't a naive idealist, she doesn't know things will change for better, but she's someone who steps out to fight the good fight as huntress and continues to inspire her students as a teacher; if this wasn't a woman who believed in a better tomorrow and worked towards that with honest diligence, would she have outlived them all?

[talenlee]

The Unutterable Smugness Of Being

A complaint I heard a lot, about ten years ago, was that Online Atheists were ‘smug.’ This was seen as a major complaint about us, which didn’t really do anything to bring our attention to the very real problems we had with misogyny and racism and transphobia and islamophobia, but it also worked as a really good kind of social brush to tar a group with because even now, you’ll hear the word used like it’s an automatically necessary descriptor: ‘smug internet atheists.’

Good news, I have no desire at all to ask you to change your mind on internet atheists, because there sure are a bunch of them who seem to be complete tools. Again, the ones I think of as tools, I would probably recommend that it’s much more important to confront them on, again, the racism and the misogyny and the transphobia and the islamophobia and then on the misogyny again because that… that sure is the actual problem, but I’m not seeking to claim unsmugness.

Just, like, what does ‘smug’ mean?

I got started on this thread when I realised if I had to see another well intentioned atheist youtuber bring up a clip of Mike Winger to provide an illustration of a Christian apologist delivering a particular family of bad point, I was going to stop watching them altogether. Not because what they did was fundamentally a bad thing, that they were somehow platforming a bastard, but because Mike Winger as a person to me, is painfully, unpleasantly smug and condescending and almost always, completely and utterly wrong.

I find Mike Winger really smug.

Smug in this context isn’t really a fact or a testable trait. I don’t think people mean smug as smug as like, the dictionary word. Smug means, in the dictionary, that someone is ‘highly self-satisfied.’ This is a complaint I hear a lot about a type of person, usually a type of person I am, usually around me, without actually realising I am a member of that community, which often results in me asking some questions making a mental note about someone to never bother talking to again and peace the heck out. Pretty consistently, I hear it used as a way to describe someone who is right but do they have to be an asshole about it? Or, someone who isn’t right enough, like Jon Stewart when he derided George W Bush for being bad at being a president, was just ‘smug’ about it.

You do know one of the people that atheists present themselves as against is the pope, right? Like, it is a not insignificant thing that there is a man whose job title is ‘the voice of god on earth,’ who is the head of a corporation and a country and who oversees what his church claims is 1.3 billion people. That organisation claims that membership and boasts of its charity work running 5,000 hospitals worldwide, which is a heck of a number, but also seems pretty titchy when you line it up alongside the claimed populace of 1.3 billion. For comparison, India, population 1.4 billion, is estimated to have around 70,000 hospitals. And I know it’s a cheap shot to bring up the way that the Catholic church compares badly to a country, but it is a little weird, right, for a thing that’s ostensibly empowered by god itself and headed up by, again, the voice of god on earth, to boast about 5,000 hospitals when a mere country, a country with comparatively few Catholic people, is able to lap that number ten times and change? Is it smug to think that India builds more hospitals than the Catholic church does? Is it smug to think that owning a golden throne is still bad even if you don’t sit on it?

At that point it’s kinda a positional thing, an aesthetic, right? It’s not what’s said, it’s the overall demeanour of the person saying it. And the thing that messes me up on this front is that like, atheists are people primarily responding to the most powerful social organisations in their societies, who in addition to their positions of actual literal privilege and prestige, are making claims about knowing the creator of the universe personally and being able to make value judgments about who you should or shouldn’t marry or why, based on that insight. Right?

You know they’re still mad about gay marriage, don’t you?

Okay okay, but like, ‘what is smug,’ it’s being highly self-satisfied. And I find Mike Winger smug. Well, yeah, and you might wonder ‘who is Mike Winger?’ He’s a Christian apologist. He has an audience for his youtube channel in which he delivers a really badly made point across ten minutes or so about his faith, usually in an attempt to ‘address’ some problem with his opposition, which, like

You gotta remember that a lot of the time it’s gay marriage.

Now this is entirely a point. This is, strategically speaking, a thing that Mike Winger is actively trying to do. Mike Winger has an affect and a disposition that comes from the overt position that he is an expert in the most important thing in the world, and that he is humble about it, and that everyone who doesn’t agree with him just chooses not to agree with him. And this is where a lot of these professional wheezes wind up falling into a problem of just being bad at their jobs, because rhetorically, they’re not making good points or making them well, because you can always see the seam when they have to ignore the actual argument and make it about something else. Winger believes that Atheists don’t really mean it, even if they think they mean it, because they don’t really mean it, because he says they don’t really mean it.

And remember: atheists are the ones he even complains about being smug.

What I would ask, is if you’re someone on the sidelines, who doesn’t know what the discourse atheism is engaged with, and if you’re not familiar with the parties involved, is to interrogate what the smugness is that you dislike. Delivery? Aesthetics? And if that’s the case, sure, don’t engage with it, seems like a great reason to not bother. But it’s really important to remember that one side of this argument has golden thrones and laws made for their benefit and billionaire lobbyists and asserts it knows the future and is willing to support genocides to make that future happen and that they’re good people for it and that maybe that’s kinda highly self-satisfied too.

Oh and stop responding to Mike Winger, the man is at best an insincere liar and deserves to be spat on in the street.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

[shalom-iamcominghome]

Shalom!

I'm on a journey to convert to judaism but I have no idea how to tell my family. I'm 26 years old so I am old enough to do things on my own and de decide for myself. But I come from a atheist family, besides from my somewhat religious grandma (christian), her very christian sister, my aunt who's more spiritual and my christian cousin (on my dad's side). But both my parents are very atheist, my mom earlier said today she knows g-d isn't real. I still am searching on what I believe and don't believe but I know I feel at home in judaism and this very beautiful community. But it's just, how do I tell them? Do I tell them?

I'll give some context and say that my dad is the only person I have intentionally told about judaism, though the way he found out was essentially through gossip. I don't have the direct experience of sitting someone down with the intention to tell them (though I have come out as trans and in my opinion, it can be similar to telling others about conversion).

So, first off, I would ask yourself why you may want them to know. That might seem like a question with an obvious answer, perhaps, but I think it's important. Do you hope that they'll accommodate your potential needs after you tell them, such as letting you observe shabbos or keep kosher? Do you want them to understand a facet of your identity? When you understand why you might want to tell them this information, you can start to understand what it is that you need from them.

There are many ways to tell them this, so I'll say: do what comes naturally to you. Do you have difficulty speaking, but writing is a breeze? You could write them a letter or email. You could talk over the phone, or have coffee. However, tell anybody in a neutral environment. Avoid revealing this in the heat of an argument, or if there's tension between you and the other person/people. They will be much less willing to be understanding.

If you decide to tell them, you may want to focus on how judaism enriches your life or makes you happy. So perhaps you could go into happy memories of how you came to judaism - they may never understand your decision, but they don't need to understand it on a personal level. If they know that you are fulfilled and happy, they may be more receptive. You don't need to defend your religious beliefs whatever they are, or what practices you keep - just emphasize how they contribute to your life or sense of self.

Finally: you don't have to tell anybody any information you don't want to. I tend to leave out a ton of information when I am talking about my personal identity with judaism. My dad, for example, would simply not care for or remember that I'm converting. He would find it confusing. As far as he's concerned, I'm religious, I'm in a jewish community, and I am semi-observant. You don't have to pour out your heart and soul to appeal to others, and if like me, you like keeping your thoughts, feelings, and identity close to your chest, you can. In the same vein, my family knows I'm trans but doesn't know I'm queer because I'm protective of my identity and I don't think it's relevant. In the exact same framework, this can apply to your journey of conversion. Use your best judgement.

Some more practicalities: try to discern what their opinions are of jews. I felt safe around my dad about my affiliation with judaism because he has been much better about religious tolerance than other things. I knew that he knew very little about jews, but that his ignorance was rather benevolent disinterest because he already has a religion and a community he feels he belongs to. Things like that can be a decent litmus test as to how they might react to knowing your affiliation with judaism. However, there are people who are accepting only if it's strangers doing it, not a loved one. That one is really tricky to figure out until you essentially come out to them, however, it isn't always a guarantee that they will be unaccepting

I wish you all the best, anon. I know you'll make the right choice for you, and I hope you are able to embody all of what makes you exactly as g-d created. You've got this, and I hope you feel welcomed enough here to come back as often as you'd like

[ceasarslegion]

wait, now im really interested in the silica gel drama. how did hlrp sex ed lead to eating a gel packet?

This is going to require a novel's length of context.

To begin, I want to underline that this is not meant to be a callout post, and I will not be providing any identifying traits that could be used to single this person out. The most you will get out of that are she/her pronouns, and her age at the time this happened, which was years ago, and I will not specify what year. I genuinely do hope she got the help she needed after this, because LORD knows she needs it and didn't find it at home. This is also not meant to be a character assassination, nor should anybody who reads this post consider it to be a takedown of any sort, and if you try to find this person through me or any of our mutual friends, you will not be met with kind words. The only thing this is meant to be is a wild-ass story of some of the most off the wall experiences I personally had with this person from my specific side of the story, with a few no-username screenshots attached to prove I am not bullshitting you.

With that in mind, let's get started. This is going to be very long, so I'm throwing in a read more

Back when I was in uni, I joined a growing group of Half Life roleplay blogs. The whole idea of our group was that we each chose a character, canon or OC, and we would blog as if the pre-Black Mesa incident moment in the timeline was a workplace comedy a la The Office or Superstore. I played Barney, because I was already working night shift security at this point and thought it would be funny. Plus, it gave me something to do that wasn't staring at CCTV feeds all night tossing a ball against the wall. We played off of each other very well, yes-anding our way through funny little situations and plotlines we put together. At one point we had roleplayed enough that one of the scientist rpers created a discord server for us to talk as the actual people we are instead of through characters.

Great idea at the time. None of us saw the "Pandora's box" label on the tin before we opened it. Would I still join it if I knew what was about to transpire? Yes, because I met my boyfriend and many genuinely lovely friends through it. Would I hesitate for a second first, though, as the events that are about to transpire flashed before my eyes? Oh, abso-fucking-lutely.

We started off as many fandom servers do: chill for the most part, very loud minority of a few assholes who ruined it for the rest of us, but unlike most fandom servers, we actually won and it ended in them getting banned and the server itself surviving to this day. But the other two lunatics are not who you came here for. You want the christian lunatic.

Let's give her a nickname to make this easier. I have the Sylveon build a bear on my PC desk. Let's call her Syl.

Syl was not there for Half Life, she was there for Portal. She LOVED Portal, Half Life was just part of the same universe for her. Portal wasn't just a game for her, it was her entire personality. Which I didn't see much of an issue with at the time, because she said she was 15. Whatever, I thought; she'll learn to control her emotional attachment to things as she gets older. Syl also said that she was christian. I am a flaming atheist who doesn't even believe in the concept of a soul in comparison and I am NOT the biggest fan of christianity as an institution to put it mildly, but I'm not gonna like, be a dick to you for your personal religion if you are not a dick about my beliefs, so I didn't think much of it at the time.

It quickly became apparent that Syl looked up to me more than any of the other adults in the group the more I would talk about my life growing up as a third culture kid and moving out on my own at 19, working 2 jobs and going to a good university. She would ask me a lot about growing up and uni and moving out and yes, sex ed, and it became even more apparent that she didn't get any actual guidance from her parents or pastors or ANYBODY beyond bible studies and homeschooling, so I kinda stumbled into a mentorship role in her life. I wasn't cold, but I was aware of the age and maturity difference between us and established the appropriate boundaries with her and made it very clear that I am an internet friend, not an irl friend or an educator, but if no one else was going to give her information that wasn't actively harmful then fuck, I guess SOMEONE had to do it. I could not in good conscience watch some kid go through life with harmful inaccuracies about the world and basic human biology when I could have done something about it, y'know?

And the more things I taught her about the real world and how things actually work rather than how her republican bible-thumping rural town said they did, the more I realized she was born into a full-blown cult under the guise of a christian congregation. Oh goody, I had my work cut out for me. I will not get into the details of how messed up this group was because it will be a dead giveaway of where she lives and potentially who she is, but let's just say that one time I said that I appreciated the gesture of praying for me during a stressful week I was having but it didn't really do anything for my mental health because I was an atheist, and she sent me a bunch of bible verses begging me to start believing and said "I just don't want you to go to hell because you're so nice :((" EXCUSE ME??? Another time she said that death was only sad for non-christians because their loved ones were in hell and that proper christians deaths were a good thing because they were in heaven now. Hi, that's the most insensitive death cult shit I've ever heard in my goddamn life.

Okay, set up is done. All of these details will tie in like the world's worst reboot of Pulp Fiction, I prommy.

After a good long while learning about the world from me (which like... a uni kid working night shift security is not exactly an academic source but we take what we can get) and exposure to viewpoints outside of her in-group, Syl began that very painful journey of realizing that what the cult taught you was a lie. Except that she just wasn't grasping that unlearning things was an active process. She started to flip to the opposite side very quickly, but kept all the fundamental brainwashing of the cult that raised her. The concepts were all the same, just slapped a different label on them. This created a noticeable pull between two sides of the same personality: the cult personality, and the person beyond the cult who wanted to break free. Mix that with how fucking 15 years old every 15 year old is, and you have a LETHAL concoction just waiting to blow up at the first sign of a spark.

Remember how I said that Portal was her whole personality? Syl decided that she wanted to be a scientist, and go into an ivy league program like I was in (I was in a SOCIAL science, but sure). Problem was, she didn't have the grades or the ambition, really. I had told her that I still got into an ivy league when I failed math in high school, and she seemed to completely miss the part where I said that I also joined every extra-curricular, then worked for 2 gap years for recognized institutions, and wrote an essay about why my math grade is not relevant to my program. I did it with one bad grade, so she was justified in basically just slacking off and then excusing it with "but its haaarrrdd" when we'd tell her she needs to put the fucking work in NOW if that's what she wants to do.

It quickly derailed from here. Not only was she going to be a scientist, she was going to be like Cave Johnson. And she was going to... replace her body with robot parts so she could be like glados. I don't... think she actually knew what science is, because she would just publically fantasize about running unethical experiments on people in the name of "science," and talk about how one day she wants to basically establish aperture labs for real. All of us who were there kind of agree that we don't think she was joking based on what we knew about her and the cadence of her tone. Here's something she said at the time to give you an idea of what direction she was nosediving in:

This was after a session with her therapist where said therapist said that she definitely has some kind of personality disorder, after which she was weirdly proud of having one and treated it like a badge of honour.

Syl then made a separate group chat for all the best friends she made on the server. There was her, me, @false-pyre, and @imtheaura. She titled it "My Family," despite the fact that we were all adults and she was 15 and she only knew us over a discord half life server where one person in it stepped up to somewhat equip her for real life outside of a cult. Regardless though that GC was more the vibe of a group of friends sharing memes and chatting about the day than the wider server was at the time. The others began to also take on a sort of mentorship role towards her as well, because that's kind of inevitable when you get someone talking about teenager problems in a room full of adults who all made the same mistakes before in their own lives. Well, minus the cult.

And remember how I said that she didn't unlearn any of the cult shit? Well, there was a lot of proselytizing. She decided she wasn't christian for a spell, but still wanted us and everyone to know that jesus was the lord and savior and we had to accept him or we'd burn in hell. Usually said after we'd make some joke about satan being daddy or declaring ourselves god instead, because that is just the type of humor the others and i have with each other. She took it so personally whenever one of us would go "oh my god" "you called?" it was fucking annoying. I lost count of the amount of lectures she gave us, all of which I'd shut down and tell her to get a grip about because I have a big stupid mouth.

The others and I also like to talk about evolution, and speculate about where we're going from here. My fucking god, did she not like that. She bit our heads off about how evolution isn't real and god made everyone as we are and there's no scientific evidence or whatever the hell. Like yeah good luck getting into STEM with that mindset. Whenever we pointed out that she was objectively wrong about that, she'd have a big stupid meltdown about how much we're slandering god and how jesus died for us and we're spitting in his face or whatever. He should spit in MY face inste-*GUNSHOT*

Eventually, we were making some actual progress with her. She was still one fry short of a happy meal and going off about how much she wanted to put living subjects in test tubes in between knocking on our doors and reciting Hello from the Book of Mormon musical, but we were getting somewhere. And then she went back to in person school, and her favourite teacher got fired.

The schoolboard did not say why she got fired, but we all had our suspicions that it was because she openly supported queer rights in a cult town. She was coincidentally retired shortly after making a declaration that queer people are still welcome in god's kingdom. This teacher was the first in person adult Syl had for guidance, so that incident shook her to her core, and she fell right back into the extremism. Hook, line, and sinker, even more extreme than before.

She was WEIRD that week, man. Suddenly everything was about how great god was, how amazing jesus was. Suddenly she understood why her cult member parents "just wanted to protect her" from gay characters on disney+ originals. Suddenly no one could say "jesus christ lol" around her or she'd have a fit. I said "I hate cycle counts lmao i wanna kms" because my then-job (I had graduated at this point) made me do inventory management spontaneously and wouldn't let me go home until I had counted every product in the store, and she bit my head off accusing me of turning suicide into a joke.

It was that incident that made us tell her to knock it off already, that we understood it was a hard week for her and she was in a period of grief, but that is no excuse for how she had been acting towards everyone around her that wasnt christian, and that she was actively relapsing. I'll let the exchange speak for itself:

So uh. After years of helping Syl through this she goes and pulls this bullshit. And then has the fucking AUDACITY to act like nothing ever happened in the wider server. I am genuinely gobsmacked by the balls on her to act like it was all sunshine and rainbows in the wider server after sending this and immediately leaving the same GC SHE made and titled "My Family" just because we told her to stop acting like a goddamn Jonestown citizen after all the work we'd put in to get her out of that mentality at this point.

So I dragged her up in front of everyone and essentially said "no, nuh uh, you don't get to say that shit to the people who have lost sleep and asked for nothing in return trying to help you escape a cult over the last 2 years and then act like we're all buddy buddy to everybody else. You don't get to be that arrogant and self-righteous without any consequences. I don't give a fuck how young you are, you DON'T treat the people who have helped you this much like that, you selfish little shit. How dare you treat us like this after all we've done for you over the years."

Unfortunately, no one involved had surviving screenshots of this, but they can back me up on it if they so choose. And oh boy, DID she face the consequences of her own actions. The whole server basically turned their heads and went "what the FUCK is wrong with you, Syl??" and asked her to at least like, apologize. She proceeded to double down with the added audacity of "you guys taught me how to establish healthy boundaries, that's all I'm doing right now :(( oh woe is me :(((" like WOW, okay. Someone's really going for the persecution complex.

Here's her last goodbye to us all before the mass block fest occured:

Oh, boohoo. You're so hard done by. You spat in the faces of everyone who stayed up all night multiple times helping you through crises and spent the last 2 years teaching you about how the world really worked and then they asked you to apologize after you tried to escape accountability. You truly are god's strongest soldier, the most persecuted minority in the world. Let me play you an ode to how righteous and holy you are and how this was the most important hill to sacrifice all your outsider friendships on on the world's smallest violin.

Syl then went on to post on her roleplay blog that she "was banned because I spoke up for what was right, and they didn't like that" before deleting it. Truly no one has suffered as much as you.

Anyway, the day after that went down, I called in from work, bought this book, and read the whole thing purely out of spite:

It was greatly therapeutic. After that incident, I vowed to never sanitize my own atheistic beliefs for the benefit of others again. If they don't like them, they don't have to talk to me. But I am not changing them for other people or keeping them quiet just to spare your feelings anymore, I have as much a right to my beliefs as anyone else does, including the world's most persecuted minority here.

And well, the silica gel incident?

There was one incident, during the height of Syl's "I am the irl cave johnson and only want to get into STEM to conduct unethical experiments on people. follow jesus" era, the rest of us were joking about how silica gel packets are the ultimate forbidden snack, and said "haha would eating it make you see shrimp colours" knowing full well it can kill you.

Syl proceeded to actually eat a silica gel packet and then send in "it has a sandy texture and tastes bad" prompting the rest of us to go "WE WERE FUCKING JOKING FIND YOUR POISON CONTROL HOTLINE RIGHT NOW"

And because i didnt get this done until now, I'll tag everyone who said they wanted to read this or expressed interest: @captainjonnitkessler @formydarlingtoread @cra-zwizard @chasingnightrainbows

[infiniteglitterfall]

I'm so fucking done right now

I have a friend. We're going to call her "AAAAAAA!!!!"

AAAAAAA!!!! and I have been friends for more than twenty years. LONG before I started converting to Judaism.

She grew up in an area Jewish enough to get the high holy days off. She has as many Jewish friends as I do. She is more knowledgeable about Jewish stuff than anyone else I know who isn't Jewish. To the point that I've sometimes thought about asking her why she doesn't convert.

Sure, she's a staunch atheist. So nu?

I don't think we'd ever had occasion to talk about I/P politics before a couple of years ago. We immediately discovered we had uhhhhh. Very opposing views. We both backed off of what was clearly going to be a charged and messy discussion.

I didn't know enough yet to try anyway. All I knew, mainly, was that (1) Jews are the indigenous people of Israel and (2) both Israel and Palestine have Done Bad Shit!

That's a very, very, very inadequate understanding. But I did feel pretty confident that point #1 contradicted her apparent stance, which was more "Israel is the one that has Done Bad Shit."

We backed off for a couple of years. She would occasionally mention how much she wished I would read Edward Said, so we could talk about him.

She is, to her credit, totally against Hamas's attack. But we conflict on most other issues. And they're so charged for her that we can't really talk about any of them.

It turns out that the reason they're so charged is that her niece got yelled at and called out for "being an antisemite" for supporting BDS in college, and it was traumatizing for her.

In other words, she and her family stopped at "I had really really big feelings of shame and fear about this," and chose not to see "and I tried to find out why this marginalized group was saying that" as an option.

And also, AAAAAAA!!!!'s sister, a local elementary school principal, went through a stressful time recently for similar reasons: Jewish families were accusing her and/or her school of being antisemitic, and one (1) family left.

AAAAAAAA!!!! set the boundary, with me, that we should not talk about the definition of antisemitism, or antisemitism related to the protest movement, after I posted a list of things on Facebook that the ADL is charging the Berkeley Unified School District with.

Including that K-12 students have been saying and/or writing, "Kill the Jews," "Jews are stupid," "Of course it was the Jews," and telling Jewish peers, "I don't like your people."

My friend is angrily convinced that "such accusations are a flood of SEWAGE smeared on protesters, professors, etc. I am not saying there is no antisemitism, though Berkeley is a very weird place for it to crop up in the from-zero-to-a-thousand way it is described. Of course there can be a) isolated incidents that hit fucking hard in these circumstances, and b) deliberate elisions between, again, being against what Israel is doing, and having that portrayed as being antisemitic."

/looks at the camera/

All of this is just context for what I came here to say 😅

I WAS TONIGHT YEARS OLD WHEN I FOUND OUT WHAT EDWARD SAID WROTE, AND WHAT THE ENTIRE FUCK. FUCK THAT DUDE TWICE.

Constantine Zurayk's fiction that the “Arab nation” suffered the Nakba didn’t survive for long. [By 1967,] the meaning of the Nakba had already changed as Palestinian activists and historians began depicting the events of 1948 exclusively as a tragedy for their own people.

...The most influential of those [new books that framed it that way,] particularly for audiences in the West, was Edward W. Said’s The Question of Palestine, published in 1979.

Said, a popular Columbia University English professor [OH HELLO] and a member of the Palestinian National Council, was something of an icon in liberal intellectual circles because of his earlier book, Orientalism. In that work, Said framed the history of colonialism in the Arab and Islamic world within a system of Western racialist thought.

I'm just gonna guess that he didn't go back farther than 50 years. Because before that point, you get 1,300 years or so of Arab and Islamic colonialism, and I don't know how it would make sense to frame that within a system of Western racialist thought.

In The Question of Palestine, the author argued that the game was stacked against the native Palestinians in favor of the white Zionists, because of the same dominant racist ideologies.

THAT'S HIM, OFFICER. THAT'S THE GUY.

That's what my friend has been trying to get me to read for three years? An ahistoric mess that pretends Jews were actually white supremacists at the time that white supremacy was actively trying to wipe us out?

I'M SO TIRED, YOU GUYS.

Said denounced “the entrenched cultural attitude toward Palestinians deriving from age-old Western prejudices about Islam, the Arabs, and the Orient. This attitude, from which in its turn Zionism drew for its view of the Palestinians, dehumanized us, reduced us to the barely tolerated status of a nuisance.”

Yeah, THAT'S what happened.

“Certainly, so far as the West is concerned,” Said continues, “Palestine has been a place where a relatively advanced (because European) incoming population of Jews has performed miracles of construction and civilizing and has fought brilliantly successful technical wars against what was always portrayed as a dumb, essentially repellent population of uncivilized Arab natives.”

This was a harsh and distorted view of the Zionist movement.

I said I was so fucking done, and what I MEANT was that I was so fucking angry, and NOW I'M TEXTING HER SUPPORTIVELY ABOUT OTHER STUFF WHILE I WRITE THIS.

I just.

Please drag Edward Said for me or otherwise Go Off. Thank you

[transfaguette]

Tbh faith is something that is just very alien to me. My immediate family is firmly atheist and although I experienced some catholic traditions because of my great grandparents, it didn’t mean much to me. I think if I tried to become devout it would feel incredibly fake, I just can’t conceptualize myself believing or participating in something in that way. Even in a nonreligious context if someone handed me a set of rules or principles, even if I fundamentally or even enthusiastically agreed with them all, I would still be like, don’t tell me what to do lol. I also frankly have very little self discipline and kinda just do what I want. So I think religion would have to be effortless for me to see myself able to participate in it, and I think that’s the inherent problem. I am truly just a hedonist at the end of the day.

All this to say, I would love to hear about your relationship to, or lack-thereof, with religion.

[llycaons]

reread 50-51: SARAH....

I wonder if the reason asmodeus likes to sing is because of sarah appreciating her sincerely here. I know she said she doesn't like being purely objectified and that's why she went for a singer and not an older model, but I can't imagine people aren't objectifying aria. maybe she's just telling herself that to justify her preference? I'm sure she'd get more lust from being a model...

back to wondering what corruption means in this context but maybe I'm giving asmodeus too much credit and she just thinks that once someone has been assaulted they're spiritually tainted and her job is done. or if she seduces them they're unable to rejoin conventional society and her job is also done

anyway sarah the single exception who asmodeus could not inflict suffering on

every time I see this in media I'm always like wtf that is SO much blood...I am a heavy bleeder too but aren't these people wearing undergarmants? and menstrual blood is fairly thick - it's not like it's the consistency of paint. usually. it's got stuff in it. anyway. variations across humanity and all that it's just weird to see it so constantly in media I guess

but anyway. women both lesbian and not trapped into socially and legally binding contracts with men as domestic and sexual servants for literal millennia....this little flashback actually means so much to me like yes thank you for reminding us of this long long history of misogyny and homophobia that the church had an active part of holding up

ALSO the construct of family and the idea of defying her parents as more painful and inconceivable to sarah than going through with a loveless marriage to a man she didn't choose and sex she presumably doesn't want. I'm not especially well-versed in family abolition theory but in both this flashback and the luka flashback there are parts where it seems very blatantly obvious that the family is the source and site of extreme violence and abuse, and I find that really compelling in a manga that likewise criticizes the catholic church. it goes hand in hand with a lot of the child abuse themes as well - like priest saying that kids aren't the property of their parents. and we haven't even talked about abortion...I don't think we will but we COULD

Sarah's story comes from the apocryphal Book of Tobit, which...I'm going to be so serious here it doesn't make any difference to me what's considered bible canon by the church and what's not. I am an atheist. This is exciting and impactful mythology, but it is mythology. It is all apocryphal to ME. And the way I'm interacting with these stories is literally as supplementary media for a manga I like. I will take all the analyses and references that are there but as long as they're all around the same topic and occupy the same general literary, social, and religious sphere it doesn't especially matter. To me.

anyway why did asmodeus say she saved sarah as she was dying in the street if she was the daughter of a prominent man. did he adopt her or smt

anyway...sarah tried to kiss her and she STOPPED HER...asmodeus...did you even understand what you were feeling...did you think it would have hurt too much to kiss once then never again?

I HATE THIS SCENE SO MUCH BC IT WAS LITERALLY LIKE THIS...I read a book set in medieval italy once and they went and listened at the door to hear the sounds of the new husband and wife having sex

extremely upsetting! the level of possession both fathers and husbands felt for their wives' bodies and the way women were treated as baby-makers was SO fucked and like the manga talks about this historical attitude in the present day too w Becu reading the Corinthians passage about how women have to be subservient to their husbands...

side note but I think the way some of the fandom talks about sex workers is a little reductive. it's not an extremely in-depth examination in canon either but at least dante is mocked bc he comes off as trying to be a holier-than-thou savior...anyway

she rly looks like an avenging angel...she couldn't bear to see sarah experience the kind of violence she regularly inflicts on others...

missed this - asmodeus full of righteous anger - who's the real demon here?

god himself intervened to make sure this woman married a man. LIKE...it doesn't get much more pointed than that. this flashback is so crazy....the church is a violently misogynistic and homophobic institution and always has been! and on a character level, asmodeus, the demon of lust, found a single person she really cared about and couldn't bring herself to be with her in either a violent OR a consensual way...she killed every man who tried to touch her and made her a pariah until an archangel intervened and she didn't even know why and she's still remembering her thousands of years later! CRAZYYY

oohhh asmodeus your terrible logic...your desperate, nonsensical thought processes....

THIS PART!!!!!

this quote again! asmodeus is thinking about it too! I had initially read this as the series simply telling us 'She Is Wrong' to counter a harmful rape culture myth of 'actually wanting it' but it actually is something she deeply believes and acts upon and what she centers her PLAN around so I really should have paid more attention to it!

onto 51, which is one of the most skin-crawingly disturbing chapters of any visual media I have ever read

he literally cannot believe it. he's completely taken aback, utterly confused. he NEVER suspected, not for a moment. and he liked aria so much - he wanted to believe he had a friend a confidante. oh man. and asmodeus knows she can't beat him head-on, so she's using these manipulation tactics to mentally and emotionally break him instead. that's why she's doing this now-right at the moment he's most vulnerable but before he cuts and runs

in the top image, you can ONLY see his right eye - his real one is left entirely in shadow

literally one of the most horrifying panels in the manga. to me

earlier asmodeus talked about the boxes in his heart opening up...but imuri's been slowly doing that work for months

really cool paneling. but this has me second-guessing myself now bc if she knows he's going to have a traumatic experience regardless why is she acting nice? 'if its from ME he'll like it' like maybe she really just doesn't understand humanity...

well bitch. get wrecked

especially since she's the one who put it there in the first place

this is the face that leah made when facing beezlebub...or close

here's the visual of his unlocked box again! it's not just his gentler emotions in there like his desire for intimacy, but his terror, fury, agony...she opened the box alright. and she triggered him really badly

this timing on this entry from bel makes me think it's directed at asmodeus but I don't think we saw the interference. also...does bel just not know? about priest? I don't remember....

[nothorses]

How do you differentiate, between atheist, agnostic, and anti-thiest? I've been reading your past posts about atheism, and I found it interesting how you defined atheism as an active belief in no higher power (might be misspeaking, please correct me if I am). I would call myself an atheist, but my atheism is not an "active" one - the label I find closest to what I am would be an agnostic atheist, where I can't say if there's any higher powers or not, but I live my life as if there aren't/don't ascribe or follow any particular religious guidelines. Would you consider this different from your atheism or idea of atheism? Why do you consider atheism an active belief versus a passive one (given that we're born without any beliefs in higher powers and pick that up later as part of how we're raised or choose to believe)? Sorry this ask got so long but I am very curious about your thoughts, I haven't read or had a discussion on atheism in ages.

There are a couple of asks in this ask, I'm gonna try to get into them individually if that's cool!

1. "How do you differentiate, between atheist, agnostic, and anti-thiest?"

Short answer: I don't! (With the exception of "anti-theist", which is a much more defined ideological position, i.e., being actively opposed to theism.)

Long answer: I think there is a difference between commonly-understood definitions of identities and related labels, and personal use of said labels. "Queer" is a great example: it's a super useful catch-all in academic and broad-discussion contexts, but it has a lot of (often conflicting) definitions. Lots of the people you're referring to in those contexts don't identify with that word at all, even if they fit the definition you have in mind to a T. Sometimes, you'll also be using the word to describe some, but not all of the people who could be described by it- and sometimes, people you wouldn't typically include in the word are included in it anyway just based on the way you're using it.

I think "atheism" works a similar way. There are a few commonly-understood definitions, but even those are very context-dependent; what I mean when I say "atheist" in a conversation about my specific experiences with atheism and how it has shaped my life/values is very different from what an evangelical Christian means when they say "atheist". And both of those are very different from what someone in a completely different, non-Christian-dominant country means when they say "atheist".

Lots of people interpret or use the word differently, and that's fine! Lots of people do or don't identify in ways that contradict use of the word in academic or broader discussions, and that's also fine! It's okay if terms are flexible and vague; like "queer", that can actually make them much more useful than they'd be otherwise.

Which brings us to:

2. Why do you consider atheism an active belief versus a passive one?

I think the "active" vs. "passive" differentiation is actually kind of counter to what I'm getting at when I talk about this.

I think people tend to conceptualize atheism as a "lack of belief" because "atheism" is usually understood to mean "lack of belief in a higher power"; which is (broadly, not always) true. But the conclusion they reach from this point is "so atheism does not, and cannot produce any unique or original ideas".

That is what I'm arguing against.

The piece I see missing from "cultural Christianity" discourse is, imo, that people see atheism as a kind of "blank slate" state. The idea is that atheism is a Lack of something; it's a Void. It's Nothing. Therefore, other things (Christianity) will naturally fill that void. Unless you actively fill it with a different (religion-originated) belief system, you will just naturally "default" to whatever is most dominant in your surrounding culture (Christianity).

But that's not really true! Everything you believe or don't believe about the world influences the way you think about it, how you form your values, the rest of your beliefs... etc. Religions often have a set of values and an internal logic because when you believe one thing, there are lots of other things that necessarily follow from, and support, that one belief. It's just not that simple!

I talk about it more here, but atheism has influenced my own beliefs and values a lot.

I grew up atheist, raised by atheists, who were also raised by atheists. I grew up in a culture where a lot of things were taken for granted that I did not have any reason to believe, and because I had no reason to believe them, I questioned them. I interrogated my own ideas about the world constantly, from a very young age. And from that, I developed an internal set of beliefs and an understanding of the world around me.

I came up with my own answers to questions like, "what is the meaning of life?" and, "what is our purpose?" and, "how should we treat each other?" and, "why should we treat each other that way?".

All of those answers were based in atheism, even if I wasn't really thinking of it that way at the time. All of those answers stemmed from the core understanding that there was nothing, and nobody, to give life meaning, purpose, or rules for me.

It might be technically a "lack of belief" (in a higher power) (depending on context and who you ask), but like... it's not a void. It's not nothingness, it's not emptiness, it's not a lack of purpose, value, morality, ethics, kindness, and unique, original thoughts about the world.

This one idea creates other ideas, because that's how these things work. It's unavoidable. The idea that all of these things must come from religion- and simply do not exist without it- is frankly dehumanizing. Not to mention very culturally Christian, ironically.

[deservedgrace]

Am I being petty? My dad is always saying stuff like “I’m praying for you to be successful” or “god made you perfect”. I know he means well but it’s so uncomfortable whenever he does those things. I don’t want you to pray for me, I need real help. You don’t know the real me and you probably wouldn’t be as proud if you did. He still thinks I’m the perfect Christian boy instead of an atheist who’s figuring out their gender. He claims to love and support whatever I want, but he always leaves out being a girl when listing off topics, and has questioned me at random times about trans athletes when I’m too tired to think of an answer.

In my opinion, absolutely not.

I was actually just talking about the prayer thing with my friend last night. So many christians use prayer as almost a silencing method, whether intentionally or unintentionally. When I left the church I realized just how abysmal my comforting/supporting methods were because while I was in the church, I and everyone around me relied on cutting uncomfortable topics short with "well I'll be praying for you" or ask to pray with you about it, and offer literally NO other support while also expecting prayer to, just fix it magically. Hilariously, the same people that are always like, "god's not a genie, you're praying wrong if you're expecting him to answer every prayer you have" seem to ask for and expect genie-like responses from him while doing NO work of their own to support the people they're praying for. Prayer is Very Very often used as a substitute for support. Even when I was deep in the church it never felt sufficient, but I couldn't say anything because it was supposed to be sufficient and if it wasn't sufficient that was a problem with me and my "sinful nature". Churches and christians that focus on prayer over actually being the hands and feet of jesus (fucking doing something about it) aren't fostering proper community and support. They're fostering a culture of not being able to talk about difficult things, of suffering in silence, and of relying on a silent and unprovable god which often results in being taught to rely solely on yourself.

I really feel for you with the gender thing. I don't know the full context of your specific situation but I see "god made you perfect" used to silence any notion of being trans far, far too often. The implication being, being cis is the default, being trans is going against who "god made you to be", etc. I've noticed this especially of christians who believe in complementarianism (men and women have different roles to fulfill), many of them tend to "love and support whoever you are"........ so long as it falls into their tiny box of what they deem acceptable. I don't want to turn this into a whole thing about gender but even in a worldview that doesn't recognize the existence of trans people, there isn't a definition of womanhood that includes every woman and excludes every non-woman and vice versa for men ("a woman is someone who can have babies" excludes those with infertility issues, something that affects up to 20% of women, "a woman is someone who has XX chromosomes" excludes intersex women, "a woman is someone who has a uterus" excludes women who have had hysterectomies, "a woman is someone who has had a uterus at SOME point" excludes women that simply born without one, which happens to about 1 in 5000 based on a quick google, etc etc). My point being, they're trying to draw these confining and limiting boxes where they can't. Humans don't work like that. Their idea of perfection is something that is simply biologically and sociologically and historically unsupported. Gender is complicated because humans are complicated. It's disappointing that some people can't see the beauty in that and it's devastating that it often causes so much pain and suffering to those around them.

I really hope you're able to find proper support. If possible, I encourage you to (safely!!!) continue exploring your gender. And it makes complete sense that you'd feel uncomfortable about these things. Prayer without proper support is skirting responsibility at best. Tearing down trans athletes and doing the christian "god made you perfect" thing with the implication of cis being the default is not a supportive environment to be around. I'm not going to be able to remember the quote verbatim but one of my favorite god/trans quotes is something along the lines of "god made trans people for the same reason he made wheat but not bread and grapes but not wine; so humanity may share in the act of creation". I'm not necessarily encouraging this as a "gotcha" statement, I can hear in my head exactly how my church would respond to that. But outside the church I think it's a beautiful reframe despite me not believing in god anymore. And if you would prefer something less religiously related: I'm deeply sorry you're not in a supportive environment. There's nothing wrong with you. As far as I can tell you're having a very normal reaction to the shit you're having to put up with and the situation you're in.

[duchessofostergotlands]

I finally got around to listening to Chazzle Dazzle and to answer your question it’s not an issue in Hinduism to read the Bible or go to church. I’m Indian and Hindu and went to a convent school growing up and did all the christian prayers and did nativity plays and so on

Hey :) Thanks for reaching out! Just in case anyone hasn’t listened, we briefly mentioned Rishi’s reading at the Coronation. It wasn’t in a negative way. As an atheist who was raised Anglican I was curious about the theological discussion and we asked for any Hindu people to get in touch to help.

Anyway. Perhaps it wasn’t clear but we both know it’s fine to go to church or read the bible etc. I’ve been to Hindu temples, I’ve read the Bhagavad Gita, so I would expect it to be the same in reverse. But that is different to standing up and declaring that the world belongs to God. If it had been a generic “be nice to each other” bible story, I wouldn’t have had any questions but it’s very much a declaration of the supremacy of the Christian God. So essentially I’m hoping to understand more about the theological side. Is it just that it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t believe what he’s saying (like for me as an atheist I could say the world belongs to god in church because it doesn’t mean anything to me)? Or is it context dependent, because he was there as PM and not as a Hindu representative? Is there someone that Rishi would consult with, a faith leader who decides things like this? Or are there any mentions in Hindu scripture about other faiths? Are you just more chill than the other religions haha?

I’m not sure if any of this makes sense but as I say, it doesn’t matter to me personally who gives a reading and Rishi’s faith is his business so I am not in any way saying it’s a bad thing or he shouldn’t have been included. I’m honestly just curious to learn because I can only view it through my lens, through my experience of faith and religion, and I know that it would have been hugely controversial in the Church of England if the situation was reversed.

[hyperlexichypatia]

Are disability rights a “Christian issue” or “religious issue” that non-Christians or non-religious people shouldn’t support? Where would that idea even come from? 

Before we get started – 

Disclaimer 1: Ableism permeates all of human society, including people of every religion and no religion. Resistance to ableism also permeates all of human society, including people of every religion and no religion. No religious, cultural, or philosophical demographic has a monopoly on ableism, or on anti-ableism. Nothing I am saying can or should be construed as “This religious group is more ableist than that one.” 

Disclaimer 2: In this post, I am mostly going to be talking about atheists and Christians, in an anglophone and specifically U.S. context, because that is the context in which I most often see this argument framed. I am very well aware that there is infinite religious diversity in the world, and disability and ableism issues in every religion, but I do not commonly see religions other than Christianity (and a loose, not-especially-accurate perception of Christianity, at that) being invoked, by professed atheists, as a reason to oppose disability rights. 

Disclaimer 3: My own standpoint is that I grew up Catholic and now identify as broadly a Deist. I live in a heavily Evangelical Christian culture. 

Now that we’ve got that out of the way… Every time I see any reference to disability rights, in the news, in social media, in fandom, in any context at all, I see objections from professed atheists who insist that the very concept of disability rights is an inherently Christian concept that should be rejected by non-Christians and non-religious people. Anyone who advocates for disability rights, regardless of xyr own religious beliefs, is accused of being a fundamentalist Christian in disguise (or occasionally a Scientologist), because this is the only possible worldview that could possibly lead to a conclusion that disabled people deserve equal rights. Obviously, I have a lot of objections to this argument. As a disability rights advocate, I believe that everyone should support disability rights, regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof. If some people come to a pro-disability-rights conclusion as a result of their religious beliefs, I think that’s great, but the important part is the conclusion. Furthermore, if some Christians support an issue for religious reasons, it does not logically follow that non-Christians have to come to the opposite conclusion. If, for religious reasons, some Christians believe it is wrong to stab people in the subway, it does not then follow that non-Christians should believe it is right to stab people in the subway. That’s not how anything works. But in addition to the bad logic of “Christians support disability rights, therefore non-Christians should oppose them”, what darkly amuses me about this claim is that, at least in the U.S., “Christians support disability rights” isn’t even true. Sure, some do. But they’re very much in the minority. Most American Christians either have no particular support for, or actively oppose, disability rights (just like most Americans in general). So the disability rights movement in the U.S. gets stigma from atheists for being “supported by Christians” without actually getting any of the benefits of being supported by Christians. And what’s especially frustrating is that this attitude is based on fundamental misunderstandings of disability rights concepts and conflating them with tangentially-related-but-fundamentally-different Christian theological concepts. A major example of this is the concept of “acceptance.” Many Christians believe that people should accept whatever happens to them, good or bad, because whatever happens to them is a manifestation of God’s will. Under this view, if someone becomes disabled, or has a disabled child, or has another disabled family member, they should accept this as part of God’s plan, no matter how undesirable it may be. By contrast, many people – specifically we’re talking about atheists who’ve specifically rejected Christianity – believe the opposite, that if something undesirable happens to you, you should take any means available to you in order to change it.

A disability liberation perspective doesn’t actually fit into this dichotomy. Regardless of whether you feel that people should accept or try to change undesirable things that happen to them, a disability liberation perspective questions whether disability is an “undesirable thing” in the first place. More fundamentally, it questions whether having a disabled child or family member is “happening to” someone else. When a discussion is framed around an abled family member of a disabled person and how they should deal with their problem, the entire premise is ableist. The point is that it shouldn’t have to be a problem, and more importantly, even if it is a problem, it isn’t your problem. This is so antithetical to mainstream thought that when we express it, people assume that we must really mean something else. When we say “Disability shouldn’t have to necessarily mean suffering” or “Someone else’s disability definitely doesn’t mean your suffering, because disabled people are their own people,” listeners think we’re trying to trick them into suffering for some kind of religious agenda. Nowhere is this more evident than in discussions about killing disabled people allegedly in order to “end their suffering.” The assumptions are clear: Living as a disabled person intrinsically means suffering. Death ends that suffering. Killing a disabled person is the correct way to alleviate their suffering. Therefore, to oppose killing a disabled person is to be pro-suffering. The only reason someone would be pro-suffering is for religious reasons. Therefore, anyone opposed to the killing of disabled people must be a religious extremist out to force their pro-suffering agenda on everyone. Arguing against killing of disabled people has gotten me accused of lying about my religion more times than I can count. 

A similar misunderstanding happens with the disability liberationist principle of rejecting eugenics. Many Christians believe, for religious reasons, that any interference in the natural reproductive process is wrong. This also leads them to reject forms of eugenics that involve interference in reproduction (such as selective abortion or forced sterilization). This is fine, although it’s worth noting that many such people are fine with preventing reproduction by preventing people from having sex (still the most common method of preventing disabled people from reproducing), so it’s not truly anti-eugenics. But for disability liberationists, the problem with eugenics isn’t interference in natural reproduction – i.e., the problem with forced sterilization isn’t that it’s sterilization; the problem with disability-selective abortion isn’t that it’s abortion – it’s the value judgment that being disabled, having disabled children, or being a disabled parent are undesirable. (See my well-written – if I do say so myself – “How to Be Pro-Choice Without Being Pro-Eugenics” series for more elaboration.)

Finally, there’s a certain culture of a certain strain of atheism (or “skepticism”) in the U.S. which defines itself around ideas like “objective reality,” “intelligence,” and “rationality,” in explicit contrast to religious and spiritual ideas (especially within mainstream American Christianity) of subjective knowledge, faith, and intuition.  But disabled, specifically neurodivergent, people’s perceptions and cognition fall outside both mainstream religious doctrine and mainstream conceptions of objectivity, intelligence, and rationality. Because neurodivergent people’s perceptions and cognition aren’t mainstream. Mad/neurodivergent liberation requires dismantling the idea, whether religious or secular, that one type of perceptive/cognitive process is “more intelligent” or “more rational” than another. People who hear or see or experience things that other people don’t, people who make connections that other people can’t, people whose ways of problem-solving fall outside the norms of what our society labels “intelligence.” Neurodivergent cognitive processes may not fit into the binary of “religious” or “secular.” But in a systemically neurobigoted society, the worst way to discredit someone is to call them some variation of “irrational” or “unintelligent.” Most people, regardless of their religion, do not support liberation of Mad/neurodivergent people, because most people, regardless of their religion or lack thereof, are neurobigoted.

So. To sum up.

Most people, regardless of their religion or lack thereof, are ableist. We live in an ableist world. Ableism is normal. If it were at all true that “religious people” (however one defines that) supported disability rights, the disability rights movement would have gained a lot more ground by now. We haven’t, because most religious and non-religious people alike oppose disability rights. In the spirit of my friend who says “Disability rights is a bipartisan issue because both parties hate us,” I would say “Disability rights is a nonsectarian issue because people of all religions and no religions hate us.”