#religion is a cult

[dragondroid]

When I was growing up, I remember wanting to die.

Not even in a depressive way- it was just part of being Christian to me. Our pastor spoke with tears of joy at the idea of the End Times finally wiping out the sinful Earth. In Sunday School, we were constantly told about how great heaven would be after we died (and told fiery, terrifying stories about how awful hell would be for non-christians). On the radio, there were Christian songs constantly talking about how great heaven would be, and how awful our world was in comparison.

I was seven years old. And I couldn't wait to die.

I fantasized about finally flatlining and walking into the light. I sincerely, dearly hoped that the end of the world would come, with all of its fire and brimstone, so I could be carried into heaven.

I was a child.

To this day, stories about heaven-like afterlives still provoke a very uncomfortable reaction from me. It brings me back to that feeling- of that pragmatic, eager yearning for death.

It's horrible. It can take over my mind for days until the rational part of me manages to shove it back down and remind me that dying is a bad thing, actually.

So, no. I'm not going to respect Christianity. Groups that make kids want to die don't deserve respect.

[hellothereimhannah]

So, who else is fucking triggered by the fact that Louisiana just passed legislation requiring religious doctrine to be posted in all public school classrooms which is blatantly illegal as it directly violates the first amendment requiring the separation of church and state and religious freedom?

[beholdnormalcy]

Why have strict religious regulation on clothing when the Creator made man naked?

Obviously I am not a religious scholar. But I had this sudden thought. All my amature knowledge on a wide range of religions distille down into this bizarre concept. In the Judo-Christian-Islamic traditions, the God created Man and Woman in the Garden of Eden and they were both naked. The Original Sin is Eve disobeying and eating from the Tree of Knowledge. The first realization she and Adam have are that they are naked.

Conclusion: God doesn't care what humans wear. Humans were naked until this Original Sin incident. Only other humans care about clothing.

Yet we exist in a world where there are strict rules about what men and women are supposed to wear. Be it in their daily wear or for religious activities.

The most conservative religious sects require extremely conservative clothing which covers nearly all exposed skin. The most obvious is the burkas required by strict Islamic sects. But all Judo-Christian-Islamic have sects that have similar requirements. Women are usually the most subjugated. Special hats, long sleeves, long skirts, loose and non-formfitting clothing of any sort.

Conclusion: Organized Religions use clothing as a means to control their adherents and to villainize those who do not comply.

I remember growing up in the Church of Christ and the preacher angrily demonizing the cheerleader for the skimpy attire that is their uniform.

While I agreed that the cheerleader uniforms are unnecessarily small and expose a great deal of a prepubescent girl, I disagreed with the preacher villianizing the girls who are wearing these uniforms and not the adults who assign the uniform in the first place.

This disconnect among others of similar veins of thought fueled my distrust of organized religions telling women in particular that they are evil for their choice of clothing.

It is the patriarchy assuming control and asserting dominance over half of the population.

Which is why the most conservative sects of religion force women into a second class, not even a citizen in some sects. Those women have no freedom of choice.

It is dangerous to these women. They are not allowed to go to school, not allowed to drive, not allowed medical care unless the man is making the decisions.

Conclusion: Conservative Religions only exist to empower a small group of men and to subjugate the rest.

What truly worries me is the legislation being enacted by conservative religions are trying to legitimize their existance by refusing agency to others.

If some of these opinions become law, I will not be allowed to choose my own reproductive health. I will not be able to wear the clothing I enjoy. I will not be able to be independent.

These are the very choices the Women's Rights activitist have granted us and it terrifies the conservative right. They are loosing their power and their dominance.

[christinareedy-love]

If christians keep killing all the gays, who will be left to blame the catholic priests molestations on?

[aunti-christ-ine]

[eirrw]

spoilers are below the break and indented

2022-11-13, 15:13

so id written up this whole first impressions review after watching s2e1 of warrior nun but i think it disappeared into the aether?

im through s2e4 now and and opinions are pretty much the same. writing is better but still not great, feels like the got a better budget and/or practice on the vfx, storylines are interesting enough to make me want to keep watching

im sketch about the major new characters (but i always am (especially men)), but as theyre built out i am intrigued how things will go. there's some relationships hinted at that id love to see followed up on cause im a hopeless romantic at heart

theres also some kickass demon murder which is always cool

2022-11-14, 00:07

right so netflix already killed one show i loved this year (rip first kill, you were too stupid to live 🙏). if warrior nun doesnt get a third (final? wrap it up, dont push your luck) act i might actually fuckin riot.

and dont get me wrong, i have ~feelings~ about how the show went down (particularly e8), but those can (and should) be cleaned up

can we talk about the tropes that went into the last bit tho? kill your gays, forbidden lovers, borderline enemies-to-lovers, fuck! also the whole thing felt really male-gaze-ish

dont get me wrong, i was rooting for it the whole time (see: hopeless romantic), as someone who mostly ids as male it felt kinda icky. idk maybe im just drunk

but anyways, it was good solid fun and i think it deserves another go. give it a whirl netflix, take a risk, you have a content problem and making cool shows that ~some~ (not all!) people like helps

also it takes the piss outta the church. i think i make my view on religion fairly clear (and am happy to clarify them if i dont), but i am an absolute sucker for myth and legend and boy howdy do the abrahamics have a lot of that

christianity is of particular interest to me, maybe because its the predominant religion in my part of the world, and the one ive been exposed the most. i also find that in general its the least commonly to be used in a mythological sense

i love shit like warrior nun, or lucifer, or his dark materials (is the show good? i havent seen it), that use christian myth as an inspiration/basis and spiral out from there. like fuckin da vinci code is about the fake history, these build a fantasy out of the legends

i see "a lot" of stuff stemming out of islamic and jewish myths, and im not nearly well-versed enough to say why that is. maybe theyre older religions that hung on to some of the old gods cruft? the creatures and shit that dont really appear in christianity

and dont get me started on the ips that are built on other old religions. norse, greek, slavic, the "old gods" that are classified as myth solely cause no one really believes it any more

theres no difference to christianity, or judaism, or islam, outside of the fact that people still believe in it. its all stories to explain why the world is the way it is and codify a way to live

im mainly picking in the big three here, but i have the same feeling towards all the others. hinduism, shintō, etc dont get a pass

so yeah, more christian myth please. theres a lot of material there and making people mad is fun.

2022-11-14, 12:51

been thinking a bit more about why this bothered me so much can we talk about the tropes that went into the last bit tho? kill your gays, forbidden lovers, borderline enemies-to-lovers, fuck! also the whole thing felt really male-gaze-ish

i think its the build up. they were pushing this from e1 or e2 with the dance scene, but then did the ol classic "we're into each other but we're never gonna talk about it like normal people"

and the relationship never progressed. at all. until the last half hour when its just lets kiss and declare our love for each other

which fair, these chars are young and in a rough spot (mildly) so maybe theres no time for that. but it still felt weird

and something i see pretty often (from a certain crowd) in these situations is the "oh so youre just gonna make 'a' gay now? she never suggested anything like that", and its like, no

bi people exist. and if theyre in a heteronormative relationship then 1, good for them, and 2, they can still be into the same sex! they dont need to talk about it!

and in this case, 'a' had been confined to a bed in a catholic orphanage for most of her life. maybe the whole, oh i like girls too thing just didn't hit for a while.

and 'b' was obviously gay right from her exposition chat in s1, even if they didn't come right out and say it (see: catholics).

i love that it happened but im bothered that there was no depth to it. idk, maybe if they figured it out in like, e5, and were able to spend some time building up to that final release itd have gone down better

i.e. still tropey but at left i could have felt better about it

copied from twitter, 2022-11-13/14 https://twitter.com/virunus_/status/1591887046150340615

[radmalenia]

All monotheistic, abrahamic religions are like this. Islam, christianity, judaism, mormonism, etc...they're all patriarchal misogynistic cults centered around upholding a violently male supremacist system. They absolutely are not even remotely compatible with feminism, in fact quite the opposite.

y'all know Miriam from TikTok? She's a jewish woman dedicated to giving people insight into her and her family's personal life, specifically around her religion, Judaism, and educating people about their customs.

No shade against her - she seems to be a lovely woman and I love the energy she gives off but even here, no matter how positively she tries to portray her religion, I again can't help noticing mysogynistic patterns.

To name a few: not being allowed to touch other men except immediate family members and her husband, not being allowed to touch her husband at all during her menstruation, having to dress modestly and having to cover elbows, collarbones and knees, not being allowed to show her hair to other men outside of the family (the picture on top shows her going to get fitted for a custom made wig and you can guess how expensive it must be to pay for all of those wigs).

Especially the last thing... I just cannot understand how it is forbidden to show your natural hair to non related men, but then to wear wigs and aim for them to look as natural and unnoticeable as possible?

There are other things about their customs that are just so impractical for day to day life and i cannot fathom having to deal with all of these things.

You have yet to convince me that religion and feminism are compatible.

[oxytocinatrocities]

"The House," a parable I drew about leaving the Mormon church.

I've come to think this metaphor also applies pretty well to constitutional originalism and the absurd idolization by both U.S. political parties of a document written hundreds of years ago by men who didn't know about the carbon cycle and owned human slaves.

I want to include some altered version of this in the graphic novel I'm working on, as well :)

[bet-on-me-13]

The cult of...Danny Fenton?

So! Way back when Danny first moved into his new neighborhood in Gotham, he had some trouble controlling his Powers. The different Types and Levels of Ectoplasm in the air when compared to Amity had thrown off his control.

He was used to being in places where his Ectoplasm meshed well with the Atmosphere, like a Water Balloon in a Pool, but in Gotham that analogy would be closer to a Water Balloon in the sewers. It was too different from what he was used to to fully control his Powers.

So it's understandable that he messed up a few times and his neighbors found out about his Abilities.

They took it well at first, Danny wasn't going to go Rogues or anything, and he never used them maliciously, but eventually they got curious.

They asked what his limits were, how he got them in the first place, and what the hell the Ghost Zone was. The answers "None Really", "I died and was reborn", and "A Collective of every Afterlife at once" did spark some interesting reactions from them.

Most importantly, a few of them joked about him being an Eldritch God that they needed to worship. He was good enough friends with them that at that point they felt comfortable pranking eachother, so they did just that.

Danny woke up one day on his birthday, and saw all of his friends and neighbors surrounding the makeshift Throne they had made and put him on while he was asleep. The entire day they chanted stuff like "The Great One requires Ms. Smiths Apple Pie for his day of birth!" And "The Great One Wishes for us to sing the Ritual Song! Happy Birthday to You! Happy Birth-"

After his birthday, they kept up the joke.

It didn't help that his powers had evolved Again! And now he could bestow abilities onto his friends. The jokes they made about their God granting them Supernatural Powers to rule the world with were insufferable.

Then, one day while he was just resting at home, watching a movie on his TV, he felt a Pull at his Core. The same kind of Pull whenever he was being summoned. But why would they summon hi- Oh Shit! It's Mr Jenkins Party today! He was supposed to meet them at the Warehouse they used for special events an Hour Ago!

He quickly accepted the Summoning, but was met with a suprising sight. His Neighbors all tied up in a pile to his right, a spilled table of party food to his left, and right in front of him, Batman and his Family watching him with wary eyes.

Slowly, he opened his mouth. "...so, did you come for the party or..."

[not-a-puzzle]

That’s what you get from a cult that’s based on believing someone deserves eternal torture for nothing more than not believing the way you do based on a book claimed to be inspired by Yahweh, a god that demanded and accepted animal and human sacrifice, instructed abortions, and practiced entrapment in order to try to excuse creating a hell realm of suffering.

[throesofincreasingwonder]

You know what? I want a whole post for this:

Sex Repulsion is not the same thing as, or an excuse for, Sex Negativity

non-negotiable!

I am a sex-repulsed asexual. This means that I am uncomfortable and repulsed by the idea of engaging in sexual acts. This does not mean that I have an excuse to be repulsed by other people's sexual attraction or the right to police how other people engage in or express sexual acts or attraction.

Young queer people need to learn the difference between sex repulsion and sex negativity, and actively work to unlearn sex-negative attitudes. Asexuality, even sex-repulsed asexuality, is and should be fully compatible with sex positivity.

If you are uncomfortable with the idea of other people feeling sexual attraction or engaging in sexual acts that do not involve you in any way, that is not sex repulsion it is the cultural Christianity and you need to seriously work on that.

[dottyistired]

i'm not seeing any posts about it here yet, but they solved the silas birchtree riddle on reddit and there's some pretty juicy lore! first, entering "paranoid" backwards nets this conspiracy board:

then, from the black letters in the corners of some of the pages people pieced together the code "connect the dots", backwards again, gets a whopping 12 page chapter about the ciphertology cult! it's...something.

so in summary, bill puppeted a guy's corpse, became a cult leader, seemingly married over a hundred people, mass-possessed his followers, tried to get them to build his portal. his lone dissenter was a spinster who made anti-bill chick tracts and started a fire. a waco-style shootout ensued, killing silas' already-rotting corpse a second time in a disturbingly detailed manner. at some point he made some of his followers drink the kool-aid too.

entering the lady's name, emmaline butternubbins, into the computer finally gets you the reward for solving all the riddles: hd wallpapers of various graphics from the book of bill. but frankly this is more interesting and fucked up to me.

(alt text under cut, wip)

[Image 1: A cluttered conspiracy board centered on Bill Cipher. Red string and pins connect various newspaper clippings, photos, drawings and pamphlets.]

[Image 2: A history-book style chapter page. Header "LESSER KNOWN AMERICAN CULTS."

"Have you ever heard of Orchard Lake, Kansas? Chances are you haven't. It was erased from every map, book, and historical record, and the US Government's official position on it is "stop calling us or we'll send a drone to your house." (I learned this the hard way.) But if you drive to the exact latitude and longitude of you'll see bullet casings, faded billboards, and bow ties strewn across the desert sands.

That's because Orchard Lake had another name before it was wiped off the record: BillVille.

CHAPTER 3: BillVille

The First Cult In History That Was Right

FIG A: A tumbillweced

As a historian of esoteric religions, I thought I'd discovered the strangest sects America had yct to offer (see "Chapter 3: Kevin's Gate") but that all changed when I found the following items tucked away in an old trunk in an estate sale on the out- skirts of Bootstrap, Missouri."]

[seraphimfall]

i’ve read so much tradcath bullshit the last two years. i can confidently say tradcath men fit into one of two categories:

“protestant-raised and converted to catholicism because of his crippling porn addiction and racist tendencies. reposts crusader and conquistador memes. is hated in his local parish.” tradcath

“catholic-raised band kid who ate his lunches with the religion teacher. smells like mildew. cut off all his friends that came out as gay after high school. now larps as an aquinian scholar and cries after jerking off.” tradcath

[balkanradfem]

So I've found Alyssa Grenfell on youtube. She shares her experience of leaving mormonism, and the inner workings of the religion. I had very little ideas about what mormonism is, only that it's a high-control religion, very difficult to leave, and has people knocking on doors trying to get converts. I've been interested to find out more, and I ended up watching almost all of her content, and some of the information I've got from it opened my eyes on other feminist topics, and I believe is relevant to the current discourse!

So if you, like me, don't know how mormonism works, it started when a guy decided that he too could be a part of the bible; he wrote a bible part two: mormon, and proclaimed himself a prophet. Then he started a religion based on his writings, decided it was more important than the bible itself because he 'translated it from gold tablets god gave him', and started gaining followers by convincing people he's the prophet. Once he had managed to get a following, he soon started to sexually exploit the wives and daughters of these followers, to the point where he had 20-40 wives and had married 14yo children. Families allowed it to happen because he would promise them to be royalty in the afterlife. He eventually got into a lot of trouble for stealing and raping children so he was killed by an angry mob, but the religion continued.

The religion is same as christianity except more rules (no coffee, no alcohol, no smoking), eternal worship of the predator who wrote it, followers are pressured to follow the rules exactly, and, the vital part, the followers have to give 10% of their income to the church. They developed a culture where once every young mormon kid comes of age, they have to go on a 'mission', which means they're removed from their home, and have to spend 2 years (1,5 for women) living in a foreign area, knocking on doors, sharing the gospel, trying to convert people. The conversion rate is extremely low, but at that point kids have invested so much time, effort, energy and passion for the religion, they become devoted to it and start to feel alienated in the world that rejects their religion. And even with the low conversion rate, every new convert means another continuous source of income for the church. So it's very profitable to send out young adults to make these sales. The kids are told that if they don't complete their missions, they will not be able to marry, and marriage is presented as their only life purpose.

So how rich is the church at this point? 230 billion dollars. I've been shocked to hear this because I had no idea. Alyssa explained that the mormon church is as rich as Pepsi, they have more money than Disney and McDonalds. So you might be wondering, like I did, well what are they doing with all that money? I've been left to wonder this for a while, until I watched the video called 'Why are so many influencers mormon?', which explained it. I didn't even realize a lot of influencers were mormon. But, this video showed me something both disturbing, and eye opening.

Before I go into that, I have to point out how patriarchal and misogynistic this religion is. Women are not given any options except marriage, and it's presented as the only righteous way to live. They're groomed for marriage from a very young age, encouraged to start writing letters to their future husbands at the age of 9. They're taught cooking, sewing and childcare, and to coddle any males in the family. It's taken for granted that m*n won't respect women, to the point where male children are allowed to harass grown women and their families will not intervene or consider it a problem. Chastity and purity are promoted to the level where members of the religion are expected to wear special underwear at all times, which hides their entire torso, shoulders, and legs down to their knees, and their clothing is expected to cover this up completely. They're rejected by the religion if they dare to have sex before marriage, or drink alcohol or coffee, or in some cases, tea. The church has a history of allowing and promoting polygamy, in the sense that a male was allowed to have as many wives as he wanted; they've since stopped this, but refused to break up the existing marriages. They're also promoting anti gay and racist propaganda, which Alyssa observed in school where she'd been teaching; a gay kid almost ended his life due to extreme homophobia.

I know all of this is somewhat common in all areas of society, all religions, and all cultures, but in mormonism it seems to be written into the core of it.

So now, why are so many influencers mormon? I didn't even know they were. The influencers themselves are not promoting the fact that they're mormon, nor does it come up in viral discussions. Ballerina farm is mormon. Tradwives are mormon. Whataboutaub, Rachel Parcel, brooklynandbailey, tanner_mann, thebucketlistfamily, Taylor Frankie Paul, Sarah Beeston, Ruby Franke, these are all mormon. Most of the Utah-based influencers are mormon, and there's a bigger amount of successful and popular influencers from Utah, than from LA or NY.

For me it immediately explained why this viral content is like that. Why we're having such influx of highly patriarchal, anti-feminist, very dangerous and sexist content, put in front of the eyes of young women. Why it's being promoted as an ideal way of life. How are these women able to share this life as if they truly believed it was good and ideal. How could they think it's harmless? If they're using the internet to the extent that they're creating content, how would they not be exposed to any feminism at all? And they wouldn't because it's against their religion to engage with content like that, or with people talking about it. Because being raised in a high-control religion, they would truly believe their lives are the ideal. They would be presented with it as their only option, the only way of life possible for a woman.

It's heartbreaking because I can now understand why it was so easy to push Ballerina Farm to give up her entire life ambition to get married and carry children for a male she didn't even want to go out with, the pressure from the religion to do so would be immense, she would have been raised to see this as the only option, everything else in her life would be considered pointless. She wouldn't have an actual choice, she'd be groomed for this from the moment she was born. Mormons don't advertise 'looking for your soulmate', they only instruct women to marry a mormon male who completed his mission and make it work.

So how does the immensely rich mormon church play into this? I couldn't see it until Alyssa explained in a very detailed way how youtube content advertising works. I didn't know about this either, but here's the overview:

How much you get paid on youtube, instagram, tik-tok, or other online content platform, depends on what type of content it is, based on how much advertisers are willing to pay to put adverts on it. For instance, you get paid much more for finance content, because banks will pay premium prices to be advertised in a finance-related video. If you're making content on cooking, you get paid way less, because it's not such a lucrative field. If you're making content on christianity, you get similarly low price as for cooking, christian church is not that rich. But, if you're making content as a mormon, that's showcasing some aspect of a mormon life, even if you don't specifically say you're mormon, the price goes way up, to the point where it's as lucrative as finance. The mormon church is making sure that the mormon influencers are being paid premium prices for their content, because people who get massively interested in the influencers, eventually find out that it's the mormon life being advertised, and some of them consider taking on mormonism. Which gives church more converts, which means the church will earn more money. The content we're watching is one huge advert sponspored by mormon church, and we don't even know it.

Alyssa figured this out because her content falls under the keyword 'mormon', and her comments warned her that the church is advertising on her videos, even when she's making mormon-critical content. She then realized that she too was being paid a premium price for her views, just because they're mormon themed. She went on to discover that even just being an influencer in Utah will fetch a premium price, because most of mormons are based in Utah. For more detailed and comprehensive explanation on this, watch her video!

Advertising is not the only way the mormon church is spending their money, they've also built a shopping mall, and are basically spending their money by investing and gambling and everything any corporation does with their profits. It's making me mad, and also makes the members of the church mad when they discover where 10% of their income goes, because they're told it's being used for charity and community service, and not advertisments and building malls.

For me this solves a mystery of how is it possible, in this day and age to have such influx of tradwives and influencers of 'traditional life', they're being sponsored by an organization making a profit off of it, making sure that anyone making this content is so well paid, they're able to live off of it, and keep creating more of it, and in the process of doing that, groom young women into their lifestyle.

Learning more about religions, specifically high-control religions, makes me realize just how much of it is happening all around us, but invisible, not naming what it is. It's similar to MLM's, the people inside are constantly trying to lure more people in, to make profit for those on the top, while the organization keeps changing names and hides their business structure in order to save their reputation. People can get influenced by it, and sucked in, without even knowing about it. Somehow most MLM's are also in Utah.

Mormon church also asked to no longer be called that, in order to stop being associated with the words like 'cult', which people have identified it as. Now they're working under more secretive names, and hidden business practices, so we wouldn't even know what we're being influenced by, and why is the content in front of us what it is.    

[femrodeeeeo]

women are dismissing the whole ballerina farm thing as white feminism because they want us to talk about another woman while not realising they too only care about women from their own country and region 💀

pissing me off real bad cause there's so many women saying everything is her choice and she can leave anytime she wants as if woc don't go through the same thing when they live life controlled by their parents and the men around them, ending up as miserable housewives(servants) even though they were the smartest in their STEM course. If you can't see that similarity of control through 'family values' and religion you need head back to school and learn some common sense.

[inthefallofasparrow]