#and christians who think about religious accommodations usually like. remember that we exist? whether they care is another story.

[secondwhisper]

Some thoughts on Cultural Christianity; things I don't often see discussed.

To note upfront: I have lived my whole life surrounded by (English-speaking white) Midwestern US Protestantism. Some of these points will be addressing religious/cultural hegemony broadly, most should address manifestations of cultural & hegemonic christianity in particular, and some may be specific to the flavor of christianity local to me.

Funerary practices // Is it normal procedure to have a memorial event with viewing, songs, and speeches after someone has died? Is it normal procedure to have the interment of an embalmed body, in a coffin, in a graveyard? Is it normal to have little or no private/personal mourning practices (eg no changes in dress, socializing, meals, housekeeping), even for close family? Is it normal to have little or no standard practices for anniversaries of a death, even for close family? // Is it illegal in your area to bury an unenbalmed corpse in the earth? Is it illegal in your area to have sky or sea burials? Is it illegal in your area to create a funeral pyre? Is it illegal in your area to cremate a corpse in a crematorium? If no, have these practices always been legal? Are they normal? // What funerary practices followed the death of your grandparents? What funerary practices will follow your death? Would each of these be considered acceptable to your friends, family, and broader community? Are each of these considered normal?

What religion is // Is it normal for "religious" to mean "believing in (the existence of) a deity"? Is it normal for a religious person to venerate one god, which is probably an anthropomorphic personal male creator god? Is it normal for prayer to just be a way to say "please" and "thank you" to that god? Is it normal for a religious person to want to increase the number of people in their religion? Is it normal for a religious person to think that there is only one "correct" or "true" religion (or subtype thereof)? Is it normal for a religious person to be awaiting a messiah/savior? Is it normal for a religion to have a specific canonical "core set" of written teachings/scriptures? Is it normal for religious teachings/scriptures to present themselves as god-given literally-true recountings of history -- and be considered such by members of that religion? What is the legal definition of "religion" or "religious" in your area? // Did your grandparents identify with any religion? Would you, your family, friends, and broader community describe your grandparents as religious? Do you identify with any religion? Do you consider yourself to be religious? (Are these the same question to you?) Do your family, friends, and/or broader community consider you religious, even if you don't see yourself that way?

Literature & language // Are you familiar with phrases such as "o ye of little faith," "(am I) my brother's keeper?," "fire and brimstone," "doubting Thomas," "an eye for an eye," "man does not live on bread alone," "prodigal son," and "the writing is on the wall"? Did you encounter these phrases from friends and family, before or outside of encountering them in popular media or school? Did your schooling emphasize Greek and Roman/Latin foundations of language and/or literature, maybe even to the extent that it obscured/marginalized/erased other sources and influences? In literature classes, were you expected to understand references to heaven and hell, crucifixion and resurrection, virgin birth, a trickster devil, an innocent walled garden and fruit that transmits knowledge/evil, witch trials, walking on water, crusades, anointing, baptizing, and the general concept of a savior/messiah? Do you use these references and themes when/if you write? Are "goliath," "nimrod," "Jesus (Christ)!" as a profanity, "bedlam," and "pharisee/pharisaical" in your vocabulary? Would you expect that your grandparents' answers to these questions would be the same as yours?

These questions are intended to help you identify whether, and to what extent, your culture & the culture around you are consistent with (US protestant) christian culture. This isn't an exhaustive list, these are just three big topics I think people usually leave out of cultural christianity discussions.

Do note: I am not saying that if you aren't christian, you need to change your end-of-life plans, abandon your literary tradition, limit your vocabulary, and get a degree in religious studies/world religions. I am also not saying that every norm above is unique or exclusive to christianity, nor are all of these norms present in all varieties of christianity. I am not saying that it's bad to be religiously christian or culturally christian! I am saying that many people are unaware of the legal, social, and academic advantages they gain for every degree of similarity with their local religious/cultural hegemony. And I am saying that you should consider the ways in which you may be privileged on this axis, whether or not you are religiously christian.

[connorsaturday]

(You Can’t) Prove It.

[October 10th, 2017]

      One of my favorite comedians is a mixed-race man by the name of Louis C.K. If you aren’t familiar with him, he is a well-known, long-time comedian with several specials on Netflix, and a show on FXX named Louie. While his comedic style can be described as dark, dirty, crass, and possibly even disturbing, his masterful ability to critically and accurately analyze society is, quite simply, profound. There’s one story of his in particular that I quote to people often, where he tells about a time he talked to an atheist about life after death. Upon asking the atheist what he thought it would be like, the atheist responded with this:

           Atheist: “Well, do you remember, like, when you were born and when you             were a baby and stuff?”

           Louis: “W- well, no, not really.”

           Atheist: “Yeah, so, kinda like that.”

      That perspective has always amazed me. I often ask people to imagine this perspective, and they often reply with something along the lines of “that would suck”, but it wouldn’t. It wouldn’t suck, but it wouldn’t be great either. It would be nothing. You would stop existing, stop feeling, stop thinking, stop being anything at all. You wouldn’t experience anymore. You wouldn’t be. But, as a Christian, I don’t believe that will happen to me, or anyone else, for that matter.  But I can’t prove it. Does that mean it’s false?

      Atheists and other religious skeptics often claim that due to the lack of evidence proving God’s existence, that he is therefore not real. This way of thinking is false; a lack of evidence towards one thing doesn’t count as evidence towards it’s disproval, because each side needs its own evidence. It means that it can’t be proven true – but it also can’t be proven false. It means that it is a theory: something that is plausible, but not factual. Even when I say this, people will often misconstrue this, because many people associate the word “fact” with “true”. While this can be accurate in many cases, there are many other cases where things that are not facts can be truths. Universal morals, like how it is bad to murder, is not a fact or law of the universe, but it is a truth. The same goes for religion. Religion is a theory, which means that it is not necessarily factual, but it is true. It took us nearly seventy years to find any evidence towards Einstein’s theory of relativity, and an average atheist would be more likely to support that theory before the discovery of evidence before religion. Funny enough, whether that applies to you or not, we will be using Einstein’s theory of relativity to help explain “my theory” of why science and religion are two parts to one whole: the scientific-religious creation story, and the logical intervention of God in modern times.

      The scientific-religious creation story contains two key concepts that we must tackle, the first of which being the interpretation and wording of the Biblical creation story itself. The Biblical creation story is usually understood as a seven-day genesis of the earth, all life, and essentially the universe – but is it, even according to the Bible itself? The very first verse of the NIV Bible states, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” If you closely analyze the text itself, you can see that it doesn’t actually state that many specifics. Does it explicitly deny the big bang? Or the expansion of the universe? No, it is kept somewhat vague – only stating the necessary info. In addition to this, the text itself is in a paragraph format that is not considered to be prose. I talked about this in my most recent article, but essentially this text is not in prose format, which means that the Bible demands this section to be read metaphorically, whereas later on in Genesis it demands literal interpretation due to its right-justified prose format (the formatting is determined by the original Hebrew text, which contains contextual information in the Hebrew language itself on how to interpret the text).

           The second key concept we must understand to make this creation perspective work is the theory that the scientific estimate that the universe being several billion years old, and the Biblical account of six days of creation, are one in the same. To accomplish this, one must understand Einstein’s theory of relativity (of which we recently found actual hard evidence). This theory basically states that no matter what speed an observer or object is moving, that light always travels at a constant, fixed speed. Therefore, using the theory of basic relativity, one can conclude that the moving object or observer is experiencing time at a slower pace than the stationary observer, because time is the only other variable that can change to accommodate for the difference in speed (and there is evidence of this, as well). If you can understand that time slows down the faster an object is moving, then we can use it to explain, due to Einstein’s theory of relativity, that the six-day account in the Bible is actually equal to the multi-billion-year account of scientists due to the relativity of time itself. For the sake of everyone’s time and energy (including my own), I will not fully explain how Einstein’s theory works and how it relates to the creation of the universe. There are plenty of YouTube videos that can do that.

      In comparison to the first part of my theory, the logical intervention of God in modern times is, luckily, a lot simpler to understand. Essentially, the theory states that, due to the fact that all events can be explained by statistics and human decision making, that these two things are unchanging. The way that God fits into it, however, is in how he chose the distribution of that probability while maintaining the statistical balance. This theory is quite analogous to the law of conservation of energy states that energy is never created nor destroyed, it is simply transferred into different pieces of matter and in different states. Think about it like this: if I flip a penny 1000 times, that the landing result will be half heads and half tails, statistically. According to my theory, however, God controls where and when the heads and the tails results are in the string of events, and can place them wherever so long as he doesn’t change any specific outcome from heads to tails, or visa-versa. By doing this, he essentially chooses and determines the future events while also maintaining the statistical probability that must remain unchanged. If you apply this theory to the entire world and universe, and consider the potentially infinite number of factors and statistical probabilities, it’s pretty reasonable to see how one could assert that God answered their prayer, and that it is simultaneously explainable by random probability and human decision-making.

      So, when put together, my theory offers explanations as to how science and religion co-exist in the creation of the universe and earth, as well as intervention and determination of events in our daily lives. In addition to this theory, however, there are three other key points you need to take away from this article:

1. Think of the science and religion as not separate from each other, but interconnected parts of one world, where science helps explain God’s actions as best as possible.

2. Keep in mind that I do not claim this theory, that I made in a short amount of time and with minimal evidence and research for the second part, to be the best or only plausible theory. I don’t even know if it is truly “my theory”; there very well may be others who have already thought of a part or of all this perspective. I made this for myself, so that I can relieve the cognitive dissonance I had been experiencing due to my inability to sacrifice science for religion, or the other way around. My intention behind sharing this with you is to give you an alternative way of looking at the topic of “science v religion”, as to give you a new option to adopt if you choose to.

3. No matter if you like this theory or not, if you believe in the historical stories or not, it is crucial to know the historical veracity of the Bible is not what an individual’s faith, nor Christianity itself, should be based off. As I have said in previous articles, the morals and metaphors in the Bible are truths – truths that give Christianity and its followers a foundation that is unbreakable and invincible. If tomorrow, the whole of the Biblical stories was proven false by archaeologists, one’s faith in God should not waiver, because as we have covered earlier in this article, the theory of God is one that will never be proven or disproven. It is a theory will always remain plausible, and always remain prevalent in the lives of people everywhere.

      Discussion is healthy. Questioning God is incredibly beneficial to one’s growth in their faith. At some point, however, questions and discussion can only explain so much. We will never truly be able to understand and explain God, philosophically or scientifically. Our views and perspectives on religion are changed and corrected many, many times throughout out our lives, like a hard drive writing over itself. Like religion, science is constantly writing over itself and proving parts of it to be false; is it really that far-fetched to consider the possibility that we simply don’t understand the already existing relationship between science and religion? It can’t be proven true, yes – but it can’t be proven false.

[draqonsoul-blog]

The Way to Locate Your Dream Holiday

Nudist shore or nude beach is really all? Let's start first to find out the significance of nudism or nudist itself. The very mention of both of these words arouses feelings of outrage, humiliation, titillation or even a mix of the three. For the thousands of individuals involved with the movement worldwide, however, the concept of a beach appears, well, natural. After all, we all come into this world wearing just our birthday suits. Nudist or Nudism are ideas that believe about being the way we were born and the way human kind was for the majority of our history: nude except once the weather dictated otherwise. It brings everyone down. Whether the person you're speaking to is a janitor, a doctor, or the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, you never know. Nudists are extremely accepting of everyone no matter the gender, race, gender, size, etc.. Whether you store in the Wal-Mart or Brooks Brothers, nobody knows and no one cares. It enables us to relax and just enjoy decent company.

There is A naked beach a beach. Also the terms clothing-optional shore and beach are used, if clothing is optional to emphasize that. It's one of the conventional and most typical forms of public nudity. A nude beach should not be confounded with a topfree beach or beach, even though a costume is needed for both women and men where upper body clothing isn't required for men or women.

There are unofficial criteria that must be met to be categorized a beach, that is, not a portion of club or hotel. Topless and nude beaches became popular along the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of France. Since then, several beaches in Crete to the Caribbean have become "clothing optional." All around the Earth, you can discover. A wide variety of places may offer the kind of naked beach you seek to you: Unique bed and breakfasts, resorts, camp sites, private clubs, and spas all cater. Sometimes you'll find privacy. Others attract a community of like-minded sun worshipers who have a fondness for a naked beach.

People visit nude beaches for many reasons, for example because they enjoy being naked or partially nude, since they like taking a look at people who are nude, because of curiosity, due to personal philosophy, or simply because they think there is no reason to wear clothing (visit naturism and nudism). Sunbathing with little if any clothes allows a more sun tan.

Australian Male Nude beaches have been variously known as "FKK" (in the German Freikörperkultur), "clothing optional" (C.O.) or even "complimentary" beaches; they are also described as being "au naturel." Though the latter term is nominally derived from French, it's, not employed by speakers of this language to describe nudity (in French, au naturel is used just for food cooked without preparation). In French, naked beaches are known as plages nudistes "nudist beaches" or plages naturistes "naturist beaches" In British English the terms "topless beach" and "nudist beach" are most typical.

Most present naked beaches are used as such for many years and thus have become "traditionally naked". Many are "unmanaged" beach places which have been adopted by the regional users in a bid to keep the shore's "grade". Others' right to existence has been recognized as such by one or some other legislative body--municipal, regional or domestic, and are termed "official" (although not always valid). An individual can distinguish between different kinds of beaches:

* Those not tolerated. Nudity can lead to requests to cover, uncomfortable glares, arrest or a fine. * Those which are unofficially tolerated by the "authorities" * "Official" nude beaches O Nudity is compulsory unless the weather is awful, etc.. O Clothing is optional (i.e., nudity is allowed but not required)

The clothing free areas are normally isolated from the places that are non-nude or segregated. In other cases people maintain a space between individuals dressing otherwise. Signage is utilized to inform beach visitors about what to encounter and/or to segregate regions. People who are not comfortable with nudity are accommodated by this. Beach users who don't like to be watched too far, particularly by people that are clothed are also accommodated by this.

In the United States, the popularity of conventional naked beaches has declined somewhat over past decade due to the influx of abusive users[citation needed], the aging of the nudist community, along with the efforts on the part of religious circles, usually Christian fundamentalists, to shut them down. The amount of nude beaches has, in reality, increased during this period. Most of this growth can be attributed to the continuing stewardship of local nudist organizations and the establishment of working relationships with -- or lobbying of law enforcement agencies and nearby municipalities. In actuality attractions are increasingly being recognized as being a source of tourist revenue. Nude beaches' users are sometimes the target of enforcement regarding laws banning public nudity, frequently because of broad language contained in invoices or regulations meant to target companies that are sexually oriented. Clothes free organizations like the Naturist Action Committee have lobbied against these bills.

In the United States, nude beaches stretch from Santa Cruz, California (home of the Red, White, and Blue nude beach) into Moshup naked beach in Martha's Vineyard. Nude beaches in Europe can be found everywhere from Pori, Finland (Yyteri nude beach) to Banana nude Beach in Greece. Wherever know that a trip to a beach is a natural experience. And the enjoyment of sunning and swimming in a beach is one you'll long remember. So choose your location, check to make sure that your beach is open to the public, and get ready to shed your clothing and your cares at the nude beach. There are nearly 50 places where nudity or topless sunbathing is permitted or tolerated. These nude beach locations include Blacks' Beach, the most popular nude beach in the nation and the country's oldest naked beach (San Gregorio, in which people have been moving topless since 1967)