#philosophy and religion

[creantzy]

CW: religious symbolism, mention of suicide, severed arm

[Read from left to right]

Speaking to the memory of him.

[typhlonectes]

[the-cybersmith]

I think we're all being rather too blasé about the fact that most of the anglophonic population doesn't seem to believe in democracy.

I'm not using "believe in" as a synonym for "endorse", to be clear.

I mean the general sentiment is that the nominally democratic institutions of our societies do not represent the will of anyone but a small, ideologically captured elite who do not share our interests, and who do not respect the values important to us.

Democracy has been elevated to a near-sacred status. It is preached in th schools, and the voting booths, and the civic offices, and in the courts, and in the town halls, and in the hallowed halls of legislatures.

It is the value upon which our system of rule justifies and legitimises itself.

In some sense, it replaced the divine right of kings. That failed when people ceased to believe in God.

What happens to our modern civilisation when we no longer believe in democracy?

Neitzche saw the downfall of the old order in Apostasy.

A new Apostasy is upon us. An Apostasy fuelled by increasing evidence that the god of the public will is illusion, and that the heavenly throne of electoralism is empty.

We are carried forward by momentum, not fuel.

The world as it has been suffered a bevy of wounds, and soon it will bleed to death. I know not what will be born from the carrion of Democracy, but I think we are all being unreasonably calm about it.

[perhaps-relax]

Religious alignment chart w/ internet quotes

I am not a theologian, hope this helps

Links and alt text under the cut:

Gnostic Theism: “Tell me the name of God, you fungal piece of shit” @personsonable on tumblr [link]

Anti-gnostic Theism: “If the zoo bans me from hollering at the animals, I will face God and walk backwards into Hell” @dril on twitter [link]

Agnostic Theism: “I don’t care where the sun goes at night, he’s an asshole” Firebringer by Starkid [link]

Gnostic Deism: “When I kill God, I will find the spigot from which he measures out grace and smash it permanently open” @Linux on twitter [link]

Anti-gnostic Deism: “God may not have to beg my forgiveness, but He’s got some ‘splaining to do” -Robert Semple on Quora [link]

Agnostic Deism: “I guess I would scream too-ie if I knew a God could hear me”  @soupygarbagejuice on TikTok [link]

Gnostic Anatheism: “Humanity named kindness, it must know kindness” @realbrucespringsteen on tumblr [link]

Anti-gnostic Anatheism: “Wide-eyed and hackles raised, I will conquer the Devil and rid the world of doubt.” @little-tunny on tumblr/@itslittletunny on twitter [link]

Agnostic Anatheism: “I need to sink my teeth into the material world and unmake God’s creation” @chaumas-deactivated20230115 on tumblr [link]

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

Road (Alan Clarke, 1987)

[buddhistmusings]

I'm not Christian or Jewish so take what I say with a grain of salt.

But I think a big stumbling block in interfaith relations between Christianity and Judaism is the Christian practice of back tracing Christian doctrine into Jewish texts, cultural motifs, and practices.

Like somebody opening up the Tanakh and looking for the Trinity or Christ would probably irk me a bit. Or seeing a Christ where there emphatically is not one. It all sort of suggests that Jews are doing Judaism wrong.

[seraphim-eternal]

For I will not leave you until I have done what I promised you.

Genesis 28:15

[aeshnacyanea2000]

This is very similar to the suggestion put forward by the Quirmian philosopher Ventre, who said, 'Possibly the gods exist, and possibly they do not. So why not believe in them in any case? If it's all true you'll go to a lovely place when you die, and if it isn't then you've lost nothing, right?' When he died he woke up in a circle of gods holding nasty-looking sticks and one of them said, 'We're going to show you what we think of Mr Clever Dick in these parts . . . '

-- Terry Pratchett - Hogfather

[spotsupstuff]

Gold is often connected to divinity in rl religions. In Buddhism, it indeed symbolizes enlightenment and such, and it is often kept pure in order to not ruin its brilliance. In Tibetan Buddhism, statues are gilded with it and the 5 tonne Golden Buddha statue in Thailand is composed of 18 karat gold, almost fully pure.

Within this world, I like to think that gold has caught the eye of the Anemons in a religious sense upon the (,,re/")discovery of the Void Sea. The golden waves of it shaped the perception of their world, from explaining the sun as coated in a layer of Void, to giving an idea of what "cleanliness of soul" should look like. Wheel Flowers are also attributed to the Void as sprouts of it, because of their ethereal gold coloration.

The feeling of the divine has however faded when the motivations behind handling of the Void went terribly south, replaced by the extremist corruption and greed of High castes.

In other words, I wanted an excuse to draw Euros as a šarkan/змей.

[dionysian-mystery]

Screaming crying throwing up.

[liberatingreality]

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

J. Krishnamurti

[typhlonectes]

[lazyyogi]

from Tantra Illuminated by Christopher D Wallis

[lovegrowsart]

it's pretty wild to me that people don't see that aang running off to save katara in CoD is his luke in empire strikes back moment, where he runs headlong into his want and attachment and he's narratively punished for doing so and not learning his lesson - aang runs after katara despite guru pathik's warning, like luke runs after leia and han from yoda on dagobah despite yoda's warning; similarly, as a result, things go to hell in ba sing se like they do on bespin - aang enters the avatar state before he's ready and gets killed, and ba sing se falls to the fire nation, luke fights vader before he's ready, loses a hand, and symbolically commits suicide after vader tells him he's luke's father.

the difference between their character arcs is that george lucas and co. actually went thru with luke's hero's journey and understood the fundamental difference between attachment and love, whereas I don't think bryke understood this difference and then dropped this from aang's arc pretty much completely and replaced it with aang digging in his heels into his want and attachment and he gets rewarded with energy bending from a lion turtle, the avatar state from a random pointy rock, and his forever girl from the self-indulgent white men that couldn't bring themselves to give their hero a compelling character arc that meant he might not have gotten everything he wanted at the end.

[365filmsbyauroranocte]

The Unseen River (Pham Ngoc Lan, 2020)

[buddhistmusings]

Is it just me, or is the Christian reinterpretation of the Covenant really unfair to Jews? Like, the idea that through faith in Christ, the Covenant is fulfilled is kind of demeaning to the suffering of all the people in the Tanakh. If God wanted to establish a Covenant with humanity, granted that as part of a special relationship to the Jews, wherein they suffered incredible oppression, exile, war, and terror... and then he just turns around to suddenly remove the expectation of upholding the law as long as you have faith in this human sacrifice (who by the way is also him, even though he's only supposed to be one god), that would be incredibly demeaning to Jewish people. Like they just suffered so much to try and uphold their end of the deal! And now everybody gets access for just having belief?

And then Christianity fundamentally references the suffering of the Jewish people as a pedagogical device, ultimately to serve Christians? The attitude that the events of the Old Testament are to demonstrate and allude to the coming of Christ is pretty common. So a Christian legitimately reads about the suffering of Jewish people and gets the impression that it was on their behalf. If we think about that, no wonder so many people are willing to use Jewish suffering as a rhetorical device, and no wonder people have such a fascination with Jewish suffering only after the tragic events have unfolded - it's baked into the Christian perspective on the history of Jewish people. Christianity suggests that Jewish people exist on behalf of Christians. I really think that this is part of why Antisemitism behaves so unusually compared to other prejudices.