#faith&history&etc

[thebirdandhersong]

I'd love to know how you honour the Sabbath and keep it holy if you do observe it, if you have certain family/community practices or traditions, what denomination you're a part of and how that affects/forms your Sabbath-keeping, how and when you started observing the Sabbath, and what hopes/goals/thoughts you might have, if you don't observe and want to/don't observe regularly/don't observe in a way that is restful!

[thebirdandhersong]

@imissthembutitwasntadisaster

Race to the tomb.

[valtsv]

every so often i get the intense urge to write some kind of story about either angels or dragons but then remember i don't have any fucking clue what i'd actually write about, just a loose collection of characters and worldbuilding and speculative biology/character design ideas. they need to add the shinji chair emoji in the next update i need it rn.

[stayatsam]

the concept of the derogatory phrase “cradle catholic” for those baptized as a baby and raised in the church is kind of hilarious to me because of adult converts envy over the cradle catholic is contradictory to their desire to raise their own children catholic (thereby raising cradle catholics)

like what do you want me to do about it i’m sorry you didn’t go to catholic school and latin mass dressed up in bed sheets as saints when you were 13 not really much i can say

[widowshill]

— And do you or do you not have difficulty remembering such simple instructions? — Only during thunderstorms, sir.

THE SOUND OF MUSIC (1965) / DARK SHADOWS (1966)

[mourningmaybells]

I’m sorry for being a hater I need to spend more energy promoting books and horror book reading… queer and fat horror protagonists have always existed you just to read the original book (smiles sweetly)

[atlantic-riona]

hot take but I think a lot of current fantasy has lost the "what the heck" nonsensical vibes and that's why a lot of it is so bad

[lith-myathar]

Being obsessed with moral purity (and the appearance thereof) is far more likely to turn you into an abuser than a kind and compassionate person who cares for their community and there are so many cautionary tales about this in media and yet *gestures at all of social media*

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

<3

[moncuries]

the birth of christ, Donald Jackson, 1998, illuminated manuscript - the St. John’s Bible

in preparation for a piece that subverts illuminated manuscripts and saint imagery, i came across the St John’s Bible and if you are at all into religious imagery in any way, check it out as a resource. each page is hand drawn and written by Jackson. in this particular image, christ is represented as this huge ass beam of light in gold leaf. kind of like a reverse alien abduction.

[spaceratprodigy]

was drawing faith and max smooching and I've decided I need to draw them kissing each other's scars for the millionth time

[neige-leblanche]

gonna maybe play devil's advocate on the depiction vs glorification discourse and bring up how writers letting you know how much they Don't Condone a thing is a really really easy way to break the immersion of the story, and i'm being subjective, but it often comes off a little patronizing. (does anyone else remember hearing "the grinch had an awful, evil idea" as a kid and thinking "we get that you want us to know it's bad, please just say what it is")

this is absolutely not to say writers don't simultaneously Tell A Story and Make A Point all the time, but it's a skill in itself. demanding that every story has a practicable Moral will just get you a lot of beginning authors cramming preachy schlock into their writing, entirely disproportionate to the number of those who set out to tell a story vs those who set out to philosophize and/or proselytize

[melancholyjones]

[Image description]

A reply posted by user arvethli

[Begin image text]

The people saying that their church encouraged them to question their beliefs seem to conveniently be missing the fact that Christianity is an actively proselytizing religion, seeking to convert non-Christians ("heathens" 🙃) and that this has been used as a religio-political colonization method for centuries, and is the cause of a lot of harm done by the church. Whereas iirc, Judaism and a lot of other religions are pretty anti proselytism.

[End image text]

I wouldn't go so far as to say other religions are "anti" proselytism, but the broader point I agree with. While Judaism, Islam & Buddhism (& others I'm sure) have also been used/are being used as tools of colonization/imperialism, iirc none of them have proselytism as a core tenet of the doctrine itself, like Christianity does. That's what sets Christianity apart as a destructive force compared to other religions. It's not uniquely violent in its idealogies, but it is the only "major" religion that directly instructs practitioners to go out of their way to convert others (as in, to leave their own communites/enter into others' communities with the intent of spreading Christian doctrine). & that's the distinction I think a lot of modern (western, evangelical) christians don't/won't/can't fully grasp the weight of.

Regardless of how personally entrenched in formal missionary culture any given individual is, proselytizing is so normalized in overall western Christian culture that it assumes itself simultaneously intrinsically good (or at least neutral), but also as a universal trait amongst ALL religions, & therefore a constant power struggle. Which is why simply acknowledging that other religions exist in public space is interpreted as attempted conversion.

I think this is also a factor in why concepts like cultural appropriation & closed cultural practices are so difficult to understand/cope with for so many white western Christians. Staying in your lane is antithetical to both "white" cultural hegemony & evangelical praxis.

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

[zvaigzdelasas]

New York University led by troubling example when the school shared an updated code of student conduct last week. Ostensibly aimed at curtailing bigotry, the new language instead shuts down dissent by threatening to silence criticism of Zionism on campus. Students who speak out against Zionism — an ethno-nationalist political ideology founded in the late 19th century — will now risk violating the school’s nondiscrimination policies.[...]

Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the new NYU guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include “Zionists” and “Zionism.” Referring to the university’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy, known as NDAH, the updated conduct guide says, “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”[...]

“Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’” the guide says, “does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH policy.”[...]

The entire premise of the guidance — that “Zionist” must be functioning as a “code word — is a flaw egregious enough to reject the entire document outright.

The language here is of utmost importance. The text does not say that “Zionist” can and has been used by antisemites as a code word, which is no doubt true. Instead, it takes it as a given that, when used critically, “Zionist” simply is a code word.[...]

According to NYU’s guidance, then, Zionist and Zionism are either antisemitic dog whistles when invoked critically or a protected category akin to a race, ethnicity, or religious identity. Ethically committed and politically informed anti-Zionism — including the beliefs of many anti-Zionist Jews like myself who reject the conflation of our identity and heritage with an ethnostate project — is foreclosed, and the long history of Jewish anti-Zionism, which has existed as long as Zionism itself, is all but erased.[...]

“For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity,” the NYU guidance says. And this is of course true. That does not, however, make Zionism an essential part of Jewish identity.

There are conservative Christians for whom the damnation of homosexuality is a key part of their Christian faith too, but Republican lawfare to see homophobic positions enshrined as protected religious expression have been rightly and consistently condemned by the liberal mainstream.

“The new guidance sets a dangerous precedent by extending Title VI protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people,” NYU’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine said in a statement in response to the updated conduct guide.[...]

“Furthermore, the new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group’s understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections.”

27 Aug 24

[sonicboomseason3]

a brief recap of what has been going on with the sonic movieverse in the past several months:

paramount has come out in public support of israel

keanu reeves, a man who has publicly rubbed elbows with none other than benjamin netanyahu, reportedly gets cast as shadow for the upcoming third movie

james marsden, the guy who plays tom, got exposed as having written a letter of support for a convicted pedophile

there's fucking??? zionist propaganda in the knuckles series???

kind of connected to the last point but adam pally, the guy who plays wade, is evidently pro-israel too

this is a complete and utter joke.

EDIT AS OF 4/30/24: if people see this version of the post, i'd really appreciate it if you reblog it instead of the other versions, as it's the most updated one with all the information that i want included. thank you :]

you know, it's been a few days since i've made this post, and some of you (not most) are staying determined in defending/justifying/giving the benefit of the doubt to keanu for that photo with netanyahu, whether it's because "it was a decade ago," "him being civil to someone he ran into at a party one time doesn't mean anything," "he's probably just silent because his pr managers won't allow him to speak up," etc. i've made my thoughts on the matter quite clear by directly responding to these people, but at this point, i'm tired of both seeing them in my notes and repeating myself, so take this as my final word on the issue.

i can't help it if you don't think the photo with netanyahu is damning, and i'm done engaging with everyone going out of their way to tell me that. i obviously disagree, especially after finding out that 1. the host of the party, arnon milchan, is a former israeli spy who has a history of developing israel's nuclear program and promoting apartheid in south africa (information that had broken out a few months prior to the party and thus would've been fresh news around the time keanu chose to attend) and 2. keanu has been caught hanging around at least two other weirdos, but if you don't find any of that to be cause for reasonable concern, then there really is nothing else i can say afaik.

with all that said, i'm beginning to realize how strange it is that these people's first instinct when seeing this post is to start debating about keanu's political stances without ever acknowledging any of the other bullet points. you guys realize that this isn't just about him, right? i know tumblr reading comprehension is known for being piss-poor, but like… you realize that i was trying to make a point of how there are MULTIPLE terrible things that have broken out about the people and company involved in the sonic movies, right? and yet, a lot of the people leaping to speak on keanu's behalf in my notes are completely ignoring the parts where i bring up paramount, pally, etc. all in favor of zeroing in on the singular point about keanu and making bad faith assumptions about me for holding him accountable. really makes one wonder where your priorities lie if, in a post that talks about so many other things, me accusing an a-list celebrity with, according to google, a net worth of almost $400 million is where you draw the line and apparently the only thing worth your acknowledgment.

ultimately, what i'm trying to say is that the intention of this post was just to gather up everything that i had been hearing for the past several months and put it all together in one place. there were a bunch of people who didn't know about at least one of the bullet points before seeing this post, and i'm glad that i could help inform them, that was what i was hoping to do! but as for the keanu thing, i've said pretty much all i can say for now, and i don't want to derail the original post even more than i may have already. unless something new comes up, i'm done talking about him.

[reasonsforhope]

People ask me sometimes how I'm so confident that we can beat climate change.

There are a lot of reasons, but here's a major one: it would take a really, really long time for Earth to genuinely become uninhabitable for humans.

Humans have, throughout history, carved out a living for themselves in some of the most harsh, uninhabitable corners of the world. The Arctic Circle. The Sahara. The peaks of the Himalayas. The densest, most tropical regions of the Amazon Rainforest. The Australian Outback. etc. etc.

Frankly, if there had been a land bridge to Antarctica, I'm pretty sure we would have been living there for thousands of years, too. And in fact, there are humans living in Antarctica now, albeit not permanently.

And now, we're not even facing down apocalypse, anymore. Here's a 2022 quote from the author of The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells, a leader on climate change and the furthest thing from a climate optimist:

"The most terrifying predictions [have been] made improbable by decarbonization and the most hopeful ones practically foreclosed by tragic delay. The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse. Over the last several months, I’ve had dozens of conversations — with climate scientists and economists and policymakers, advocates and activists and novelists and philosophers — about that new world and the ways we might conceptualize it. Perhaps the most capacious and galvanizing account is one I heard from Kate Marvel of NASA, a lead chapter author on the fifth National Climate Assessment: “The world will be what we make it.”" -David Wallace-Wells for the New York Times, October 26, 2022

If we can adapt to some of the harshest climates on the planet - if we could adapt to them thousands of years ago, without any hint of modern technology - then I have every faith that we can adjust to the world that is coming.

What matters now is how fast we can change, because there is a wide, wide gap between "climate apocalypse" and "no harm done." We've already passed no harm done; the climate disasters are here, and they've been here. People have died from climate disasters already, especially in the Global South, and that will keep happening.

But as long as we stay alive - as long as we keep each other alive - we will have centuries to fix the effects of climate change, as much as we possibly can.

And looking at how far we've come in the past two decades alone - in the past five years alone - I genuinely think it is inevitable that we will overcome climate change.

So, we're going to survive climate change, as a species.

What matters now is making sure that every possible individual human survives climate change as well.

What matters now is cutting emissions and reinventing the world as quickly as we possibly can.

What matters now is saving every life and livelihood and way of life that we possibly can.