#thats basically the whole reason for my atheism like i believe in Me and This Life

[to-junipterandmars]

S3E12 my beloved. one of my fav episodes in the entire series house vs his biggest weakness: human connection

[nightcoremoon]

Callout post: me

lying, manipulative, hold grudges, constantly paranoid, would absolutely 100% check out a teenager if nobody was looking because "it's a harmless crime", liar, cycle through idealization and devaluation, 'sick of fat people trying to be the next civil rights issue and making it that much harder to get civil rights for people who are ACTUALLY oppressed like gee idk poc and muslims and the mentally ill and queer people', frequently fantasizes about committing violent acts against people I rationalize they deserve it including family members, untruthful, attention whore, pedantic AND pretentious, tells lies, doesn't believe in one sister's claim of sexual assault (went to smoke weed with the alleged perpetrator), UNAPOLOGETICALLY AGAINST ASEXUAL EXCLUSIONISM (LITERALLY FUCK YOU DUMBASS FOURTEEN YEAR OLDS WHO SHRIEK THAT QUEER IS A SLUR, SHUT YOUR GODDAM FUCKING WHORE MOUTHS YOU DUMBASSES AND GO THE FUCK OUTSIDE OR READ A BOOK), would absolutely punch a child over an insignificant internet argument, secretly sought out sexual pleasure from two friendly seemingly platonic encounters with two girls I just met within twenty four hours, overreacts to the slightest provocations and has bitches at or vagueposted at several people who did not deserve it, has used mental illness and physical handicap to evade trouble from being late for work because video games and laziness and excessive sleep, has spent maybe a thousand dollars on fast food in 2018 alone, evades bills for medical care from an actually great clinic, lying sack of garbage, gave up on calling out family's bigotry and is now an accessory to prejudice, despises terfs predominantly for their refusal to fuck me because of being trans and yet meanwhile would not engage in sexual relationship with another trans woman or cis man unless reeeeeeeeally drunk, can and will blame being sexually assaulted as a child which probably didn't even happen because I don't think I remember it, unabashed furry, probably as addicted to video games and masturbation AND LIES as I almost was to alcohol, pretended to have almost been an alcoholic just to "win" facebook arguments about addiction, doesn't give a fuck my dad almost died from heroin JUST because he's a *little* homophobic and racist and classist and xenophobic because of a christian upbringing, would literally fucking murder him if he EVER PUTS HIS HANDS ON ME AGAIN, only slightly depressed because of laziness and a lack of drive and ungrateful to my family because hey they didn't kick me out for being trans so HEY THATS SUPPORTIVE ENOUGH FOR SOME OTHER PEOPLE SO WHY CANT I BE HAPPY WITH THAT, legitimately salty about ~the friendzone~ and just makes fun of incels because everybody else does, takes the moral high ground for not being a misogynist even though I don't deserve a pat on the back a lap dance and a blowjob for not hating women, overly sensitive about stupid things, thinking about faking having a trigger warning for more discourse credit, HUUUGE ASSHOLE to men I deem unattractive for no other reason than every single ugly fat guy I've ever met has been an asshole, rationalizes it after the fact because they eventually say something shitty because all men are terrible, probably a little bit of a cisnormative misandrist because trans men tend to be much better people, finds trans men attractive (specifically and significantly more so than cis men) so must clearly be fetishizing them, relatively okay with people referring to me as deadnamed and the wrong pronouns so probably just lying about being trans to everyone including myself, not 100% okay with the hijab for 'no reason other than all organized religion is evil and opposed to its mandate and the shame it forces on many women in many situations the exact same way I'm opposed to no sex before marriage and wives being subservient to their husbands and treating women as property in the torah and quran alike because ITS ALL BRAINWASHING' so is clearly not unlearning islamophobia and doesn't want to let that go, hypocrite because I believe in the basics of judeochristianity

and loathe atheism and atheists entirely because their smugness and smarm literally sets my blood pressure through the roof of what is safe and normal and yet claim to hate all organized religion, mansplains yet gets so pissed off when other people mansplain to me, judgmental of other cultures because they don't have the exact same values that I have, james gunn apologist, talks and talks and talks about anarchosocialism all damn day but would beat the shit out of a coworker for leaving me to do things because they're lazy because "any job worth doing is worth doing well" and other capitalismisms, literally couldn't give less of a fuck that his mother is dying because people die but it's no reason to make my life slightly harder and making me work hard when I work because BOO HOO MY LEGS HURT FROM THE LITERALLY MOST MILD CASE OF MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY I COULD'VE BEEN BORN WITH, hasn't actually performed real suicide attempt ever but still claims to have done so to attain sympathy that may result in physical affection, countless other shitty terrible things that yeah I recognize are bad but CANT SEEM TO CARE BECAUSE I HAVE DEPRESSION... WHICH IS THE WEAKEST FUCKING EXCUSE IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE GODDAMN WORLD

I am not a good person, okay?

I just pretend to be sometimes.

I'm sick of doing it, I'm sick of trying to do well and earn people's approval by doing and saying the right things only to just be ignored which is a step up from receiving many anons that hey, never actually told me to kill myself, but did take my words out of context to paint me as a racist. I am not the kind of racist who would vote for trump and march with the kkk. that is one of very few good things I can say about myself. but I'm an arrogant, violent, and angry opinionated perverted manipulative judgmental lying asshole. I'm not a good person. I have let myself fall so much and I deserve to be alone. my only connections to people were built on personal gain and I swear to myself that I do love them but those feelings fall away in direct correlation to how much they interact with me. I could love you to the point of obsession and stalking and one month later be completely and totally disinterested. I'm a bigot who pretends to not be bigoted and just parrots what other people say not because I believe it but because it's the right thing to say, and I only say what the right thing is to say because whenever I say a good thing something good will happen to me and if I say a bad thing something bad happens to me. it's all just self preservation, nothing else at all. but now I'm at the end of a road of just trying to do good and I'm alone. out of the only two friends that I can really say that I have left, one is far away and trapped in a guilt spiral that I caused by being too clingy, and the other has been behaving in a way my mind has decoded as defensive around me which makes sense as I have been very... the best way to describe it would be the way a dudebro incel interacts with any person who possesses a vagina/breasts but sneakier. in both relationships I've pushed my own wants and desires in extremis... I can't for the life of me recall the last time I have ever offered something in return other than my own company or paying for a meal at a restaurant or I guess transportation. and instead of sex I just want them to express even the slightest bit of intimate platonic physical affection towards me but that's still a lot to offer someone who has clearly expressed the existence of a sexual and maybe something near the realms of romantic in one of the cases physical attraction because for this aspec it's practically the same fucking thing.

and I've manipulated them to attain this goal. at this point my shit brain has considered just fucking going to town on my wrists with a razor blade to draw sympathy so that I'll get a hug or something beyond just a simply hello/goodbye, and finding a way to induce tears to concoct a sob story to reach the same end result, and one time very briefly via threat and intimidation so you can clearly see that I've gone far too into irredeemable territory. I've been playing and replaying cry of fear because it's just too similar to my own issues and the first ending where he just kills everyone he loves and then himself... I see me in that ending. and it scares me so much more than the sprinting screaming twitching one hit kill chainsaw guy ever will. I don't want that to be me, I want to change something, but I just can't get the help that I need. I had hoped to go for a domino effect, where if I could be cuddled for like five minutes or something, I'd have the energy to be more hygienic, which would make me feel capable enough to take on two jobs, which would get me the cash flow I need to pay my bills and take care of my hormones, which would put me in the headspace necessary to effectively use psychological help, which would let me get over my illnesses and actually become a more successful person instead of the pathetic husk I am here in non-fantasy land.

but that won't happen.

I'm just sitting here in the dark angsting about how nobody will touch me in a way that would produce oxytocin, and it's making me so sick, so physically sick, that it's affecting my brain too. I'm in pain, nauseous, vengeful, spiteful, paranoid, judgmental, and lonely. I'm stuck and I can't even kill myself because my mind wants me to stay alive and suffer through all of this because "oh it gets better" people have been saying that for well over half of my life. I was six or seven years old when I asked my mother to kill me, and that same level of desperation and bitterness has only gotten worse as time goes by. when does it get better? I'll tell you when it gets better, after I'm in prison or comatose or forty five years old with a cane and bad eyes and high blood pressure and lung cancer from all the secondhand smoke I've breathed in my life. when my life is over, that's when it gets better. I DONT WANT THAT. I WANT A NORMAL FUCKING LIFE RIGHT NOW. I WANT NORMAL FRIENDSHIPS AND A NORMAL HOME AND A NORMAL EDUCATION AND A NORMAL CAREER AND A NORMAL FAMILY. or at least I want someone to hold me and make me feel like I'm not so horrible and broken that I can't be touched.

but that's too much to ask for.

[icymirss]

I'm Breaking Up With the Atheist Community

This piece was originally published on Sunday, 11 Sep 2011 00:45:04 +0000 by PaxSkeptica (@PaxSkeptica) and originally hosted at http://pax.skeptica.net/. We are republishing it here as it does not appear to have been archived anywhere else.

Twitter Tagline: "Guys, it's been a good run – I think we gave it our best – but it's over. #atheism"

I've been telling everyone today that I'm breaking up with the atheist community. Two questions came up that required a rather lengthy answer and involved several links, so I turned here. (Besides, it may as well be a matter of record.)

The questions:

What brought you to this conclusion?

What would you suggest as an alternative for the atheist community?

What brought me here? I don't know. A lot of things. I'm tired of reading the same shit every day that's just pissing on Christians and science-worship (yes, I mean that; more on that in a second). I'm tired of listening to people who would as likely as not primarily define themselves as skeptics, when by their behavior you can see that they are not particularly skeptical people. I already wrote about the weird response I got when I questioned a racist joke made by a prominent atheist. I guess the straw that broke the camel's back came today when I asked JT Eberhard why he was bothering to debate this moron.

You can see from said moron's "opening" (I love how this is described like it's going to be some kind of high-stakes chess match) that he's pretty much just shoveling the same shitty, thoroughly-and-repeatedly debunked half a dozen arguments that have been limping along since the 13th century.

Origen – God is the best explanation for the universe. The argument is as follows:

Whatever begins to exist has a cause,

The universe began to exist,

Therefore, the universe has a cause. This cause I call God.

Brilliant. That frankenstein bastardization of Aristotle and an unsubstantiated claim about a deity wouldn't pass for logic in an introductory class at a public high school. This isn't a serious debate any more than me punching an old lady is a heavyweight prizefight. So what's the point? Why waste time skewering an opponent of zero intellectual value when the cost involves diving into a cesspool of stupidity, ignorance, arrogance, and hatred all destined to be slung your way? Why, to convert people.

When I asked JT (and, unexpectedly, several of his followers who chimed in) what the reason was, he started telling me all about this duty to those of us in our 'religious' demographic (his words; I can't quote it here because it was not shared publicly, as much as I'd like to). He basically said that even though I had undoubtedly "read and memorized" all the arguments and counter-arguments, some had not, and that by doing this he was increasing the accessibility of this information. Now I could do a whole post on just what's wrong with that line of reasoning, but let me just say this: That's as religious as anything I've ever heard. To read the quote (again, I wish I could show it) gives the sense that JT is some sort of shepherd guiding newly minted atheists into the fold.

Another commenter gave me his... testimony? Untestimony? "I'm with JT, entirely," he began; and he proceeded to tell me of his difficult and laborious (de)conversion that would have been sped along if only some righteous preachers bloggers like JT Eberhard, PZ Myers, and Greta Christina (his list, not mine) had been there to help him through the transition. (Oh, glory!) Even JT answered at first (and perhaps most tellingly) by saying that his reason was "because a lot of people read this guy". That's the same kind of perverted marketing Christians use to evangelize. That's all it is: evangelism.

I recently rearranged all my lists on Twitter, with one primary purpose in mind. I gutted sec-r, my list of secular humanists, skeptics, and atheists. The reason is, and I experienced the same thing on Google+, most of what these people share is utterly vapid. It's a mix of self-righteous quotes, bitter condemnation of Christians mixed with "OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE THEY DONE NOW" link-sharing, and ejaculations about science, logic, reason, the Archimedean point, or whatever other naturalist trope is floating around the tubes. Seriously, what's the difference between this and this, when you get right down to it? Everything on #atheism is stupid quotes, usually about how atheists are better than believers. Here's a small fraction from my access just now:

@JakeCatrain Jake Catrain Atheist: One who has no belief in god or gods. (Sorry christians, thats it) #atheism Retweeted 4 times

@GodlessAtheist Godless Atheist Christians worry about internal damnation. I just have to worry about what's for dinner. #goodtobeanatheist #atheism

@agaytheist Geoff Robert Warning! Clicking on a Deepak Chopra video link takes you directly to a Deepak Chopra video. - George Hrab #skepticism #atheism

@Monicks Monica Dear Theist: do you fear god? You might suffer Bogyphobia: Fear of fictional characters. Look it up! #atheism #atheist #snark (◕‿~)'

Seriously. Those aren't hand-picked. They're the first four results. What's the difference between that and this kind of crap? I can tell you the difference as I see it: nothing. Nothing at all.

My point is that criticisms of atheism that used to offend me now strike me as basically true. "Atheism is just another religion," Christians sometimes say, or, "What's the point in believing in a negative?" Well, for these people, it basically is. I know there's a hundred one-liners out there already zinging toward me to prove me wrong: "atheism is a religion like bald/not collecting stamps/off is a hair color/hobby/television channel." I would like to start that sentence with the words not believing in god, which – though some of these same practitioners would define 'atheism' as such – is clearly not all that's going on here. It's not just believing in a negative, it's reveling narcissistically in believing in a negative. What else could you call rubbing in people's faces that you don't believe in something which they hold very dear? And not just once, as a mean joke, but basing your entire life and personality around it?

I remember watching the South Park episode about atheism, where Trey and Matt had Cartman go to a future world where religion was no longer, and factions of Atheists fought wars and killed each other while screaming, "Science, damn it!" When I first saw it, I thought it was an infuriating caricature. But then you see these atheists all over Twitter who painstakingly list quasi-synonyms in their Twitter bio ("science, reason, logic, naturalism, antitheism"), and endlessly retweet Randall Munroe's, "It works, bitches!" and all of a sudden you can see the "grain of truth" behind this particular stereotype.

It's certainly not everybody. Consider the context – a Maddox-style rant penned half at two in the morning – before you judge me too harshly. I'm still an enormous fan of CFI, and applaud efforts like FFRF. Obviously I'm still interested in science for the public interest. I love being an atheist because there's no religion in my life, as far as I can help it, and for the reasons outlined above and more, I view a large swath of the atheist subculture (at least online) to be more or less a pseudo-religion: a community built around (the denial of) religious ideas. Even that is too much religion for me, so I'm just going to gracefully back away and let them do their thing. JT also told me something like, "Everybody has their niche and what they're good at." Maybe he's right. Maybe we're like vampires, and we're each individually shaped by the Embrace that was our faith snapping in half and reason inexorably leading us to atheism. Maybe we're all left bitter or wounded in a different fashion, so each has a way of dealing with it. I'm not categorically against what they're doing: it's just not for me.

As for a replacement for the atheist community? It hadn't really occurred to me. After all, I'm not really in the market for one. I much more strongly identify with late 19th century leftist politics (libertarian anarchism, secularism) and pacifism rooted in skepticism than I do with atheism per se, let alone the "gnu atheism" that is so preponderant online. So unlike, I suspect, most members of the online mega(un)church, I'm not so much a part of the community that I'm going to feel any withdrawal. There's no void for me to fill.

PS – Since you read all that, here's your reward: http://www.youtube.com/embed/Ti3t7MAwaaM

[unproduciblesmackdown]

yallnve realized by now that this is a fulltime 100% narnia blog...and as i havent slept since finding out someone somewhere was set on making "the silver chair" into a movie & the dynamic world of narnalysis is the best i can offer,

first of all im like.........ya rly gonna just jump into the silv chair!! im not really interested w the details on what anyone plans to do with the content b/c i donno, ive never been really interested in the book. not because its like bad or anything, actually it's probably the most cinematic in terms of things actually happening at a steady rate. i just like what i like, maybe because its sort of lower scale? whatever. its not like its hard to make into a movie i dont think, is what im saying. that would be either the horse and his boy or prince caspian, probably the latter b/c like a genuine 1/3 of it is an expository flashback. but all of the books are bit tricky to adapt coz theyre just short, you have to pad basically all of them in some way or another. but sure. silver chair. w/e

the thing is that you Have to assume despite starting afresh that theyre doing this one since the first three books have been recently filmed? and this being the fourth. but How Are You Going To Just Jump Into This One. thats an awful lot of exposition thats being built on, at this point in the game we're neck deep in the Lore. you'd really just have to have read the previous books or at least seen the movies. are they counting on the audience to have done that? but at the same time its really not fair to fully rely on that. in the book you can go "read the other books" and wave it off in a sentence of "and then they explained it all" which does tend to happen in the actual text a fair amt. its a bit awkward in movie form though? its a plot point right off that eustace knows who prince/king caspian is. so then you have to sum up dawn treader. and that has to do with what happened in prince caspian, in which the plot of lww is pretty important. like, alright, possibly you could just explain tvotdt & take it from the perspective of the girl who doesnt know crap about narnia yet? but thats not nearly as good a starting point as lww. on account of that ones meant to be a starting point! i'll see scholastic / any publishings that try to push magician's nephew as the first book In Hell, frankly. strongest narnpinion right there. the published order over the chronological order

anyways i'm sure it can be figured out, its just.......Interesting to think how the silver chair intro might be made into Intro To Narnia v.2.0? will they even try or will it be "ok but seriously just have read the books or whatever before you come in here." mystery unfolds

another thing thats interesting is that lww is clearly abt like, hey kids here's a version of the resurrection for you. whereas silver chair doesnt have anything to do w any Biblical Events at all (tho of course neither does prince caspian, tvotdt, or the horse & his boy). it is instead about how atheists will try to steal your firstborns for.................reasons. (no reason, theyre just evil.) this one is just a major amplified version of another particularly ridiculous CS Lewis Apologism Favorite that runs through the books: that when it comes to having no Faith (in aslan but you know also the abrahamic god) everyone who doubts aslan/god is like, actively lying to themselves, because they have that Gut Feeling telling themself that their faith is not only whats righteous but also whats true. the gut feeling of truth is a big theme in the books, shit hinges on it all the time and makes doubt all Clearly Sinful instead of a reasonable result of aslan effing off for centuries or whatever. and speaking of, god only knows if lewis is really suggesting that real life doubt or nonreligiousness is 100% populated by people who are clenching their fists like "i know in my heart jesus is real but i dont want to believe it so i won't, damnit!" which yknow makes no sense for like....life, and uh? i dont know what its supposed to mean for like....other religions? i dont think he's about putting the nuance that not every concept of religious Faith is the same as in christianity into this book, i dunno abt his thoughts irl. lord knows its a mystery how he thinks that "if jesus wasnt lying and jesus wasnt Insane then christianity is real" argument means anything. nothing in the world fits that argument for finding out if something is true or not........and also it hinges on that concept of "insanity" which......like.......i'm sure is all about nice 1940s ideas of how "insane" people act. its shit, throw it out, i mean. and besides? as though theres a Logic argument to prove christianity as truth? have you just Solved religion, lewis? have you? sometimes, i swear..

anyhow so in the silver chair its just a big ol festival of his "atheists are lying to themselves" and "atheism starts by someone who Knows The Truth (jesus is real) lying to others, likely aka the devil or whatever, and the stand-in for the devil is a witch again." and lewis really seems fond of the allegory of the cave. smh! like, in that allegory "knowing" that your faith is true is impossible! but youre also out here arguing its logically provable? and don't forget the gut feelings thing. but it makes NO sense for him to drop it into this book universe because in this allegory the prince captured by atheists & the protags are people who have hopped into the cave and seen the sun and shit!! they dont need to be the people who have only ever seen shadows who need to be convinced that an outside world can exist!!! bitch!!! get your allegory in order. silver chair just.....lord. the lying babysnatching atheists

a n y w a y s . . . thats a weird conflict to put in your third act, and its also a weird argument to make re christianity, that even though you acknowledge its impossible to know that your faith is in something thats real, you're willing to risk it? its sort of like that idea that you might as well be religious even if you dont "believe" any religion is true, because you lose nothing and potentially gain both comfort in life and reward in an afterlife. but its kind of a big deal in christianity that you're supposed to believe that what you believe in Is Literally Real. maybe apologists are allowed to do that sort of thing in their arguments, i suppose. its like in the last battle where he has a dude who believes in another deity accepted into the christian afterlife b/c despite a lack of belief, his virtuous nature is, from a practical standpoint, accepted to be for all intents and purposes to be equivalent to having believed in the christian god, like if he happened to follow all other rules except the Believing In Jesus one then he's good to go anyhow. interesting in that its also supposed to be pretty vital in christianity that one has to accept jesus as god in order to be Saved all up into heaven! i suppose that guy in the book was meant to have been converted right before death or whatever. at that point its very unclear who is exactly dead or not, but probably everyone. still, aslan clearly makes the argument that "basically you might as well have been believing in me, so you're good to go." fascinating stuff. another one to ask lewis abt

uhhhh another point is that i think theyre intending to make other movies also? but not all four remaining ones!! and if i had to guess which one they'd be leaving out uhh lets say....the horse & his boy....................which conveniently is the other sort of sparsely plotted one. two kids ride horses towards narnia, briefly have to have a shenanigansy undercover sneak through a crowded city, ride towards narnia some more, and then one of them stays at some guys house while the other kid goes into narnian battle where he himself doesnt actually do anything, but that fact is described pretty funnily. its still sort of a fun one, on account of the sneaking around hijinx, and the fact that it happens to give ANY of the details of what tf the pevensies did for like the twenty years they reigned over narnia's golden age which the lww just tells you absolutely n o t h i n g about! the answer is: a lot of battling probably, on account of narnia went from being ruled for a century by someone who could kill you in a second and also why would you have invaded narnia at that time, it wouldve been like trying to invade russia. but then a bunch of kids took the throne and upended the whole system and the snow went away, it seems like a destabilizey time to invade or whatever. imo. but then again they mightve bought themselves a few years on account of aslan having shown up and all. but lbr, they were just put into battle right off and coronated three seconds later, theres no reason on that front that they wouldnt shy away from having more battles. and the books said there were a lot of battles. and in thahb, its like, well we've been battling a lot lately and now we're in shenanigans and we'll just have to battle our way out of it, which they absolutely do. edmund straight up decapitates a guy. how ARE they supposed to just transition immediately into english schoolchildren after a couple decades of that mess??? they even have the fancy courtly speech. its magic i suppose

the point is its kind of a fun book, oh also, aslan is TOP shenanigans in this one. he straight up actually attacks one of the protagonists, for Reasons, but still. not that he doesn't murder the pevensies in the last book. i mean, i guess you could argue that its just like Divine Coincidence where what with the unaligned timelines betwixt england and narnia, aslan couldve just picked the moment everyone was gonna die anyway and just tossed them over to X point in time in narnia. but I Donno.....im kinda with that university student who's stressing about whether aslan cause ww2 for the purpose of sending the pevensies to the wardrobe. like, that train accident that killed everybody killed four people on the platform & five people on the train in different carriages and everything, or maybe the numbers are switched because i dont remember where lucy was. im saying, that was a hell of a crash. but sure. anyhow, even more fun, aslan appears as a cat to the Other protag while he's spending a night on the edge of the wilderness, and scratches him for saying he once threw rocks at a stray cat. like, hard #same, aslan!!! wtf dude why arent YOU being claimed by satan

whats also fun is that it doesn't really take place in narnia, which is also the reason besides pacing that you wouldnt really want to make this one into a film? because uhhhh the whole worldbuilding lewis crapt upon everyone for calormen is clearly racist as fuccck. if you arent already familiar with all the books (namely this one and i suppose the last battle) then its like.....i guess its some sort of vague notion of the ottoman empire? its really just a mashup of any number of white-english-variety racist notions. everyone is brown, is it an inaccurate stab at an amorphous amalgam of middle eastern culture? east asian? are people islamic or hindu? just try and guess what he was going for because its just. not based on anyone needing to know anything about reality. lewis was against seasoning food i guess, because it will mention i guess like, people cooking with onions like the heathens they are. (spoilers: this country just exists in the narniaverse to represent Those Heathens). its not necessarily an Evil place, they are noble savages ok!! with their formal seriousness and cutthroat customs.......b/c they are not as advanced and peaceful as the white northern christians, see. closer to the less developed violence of their inherently backwards ways and Cruel Society reigned by violence DONT CONVERT OR YOU'LL DIE, KIDS. but also.....you wont be white? the reason of calormens existence is really never explained. telmarines came from englandverse on accident thru a magic portal just lying around, possibly thats whats meant to have happened there too? its never attempted to be explained. anyways its basically the intro to the disney aladdin.

lewis is entirely inconsistent and self contradictory all throughout the series for the sake of the authors convenience. this is part of what makes the stories fun and the worldbuilding charming. it is also what allows him to pull stunts that have you pinching the bridge of your nose in exasperation and writing out essays to try to figure out how narnia is supposed to work. it is also what allows him, five books in, to be like, "here is the country to the south where the demon-worshipping gross scary brown uncivilized folk sit around hating narnia and confirming any racist notion you have about any nonwhite nonchristian country or culture." thanks, clive

its of course ludicrous and, of course, the protagonist shasta just so happens to be white despite being raised calormene. spoilers, he is narnian. or really from archenland, which isnt narnia but is still white and pro-narnia so its alright. i mean, technically narnia is allied with calormen at all points in time of the series? calormen just quietly tries an invasion in that book and also in the last book. so thats interesting. i suppose lewis is anti-crusades, which is big of him. the pevs arent out here trying to conquer calormen and convert them to narnianism. so that must not be the Destiny of the true christian? or are we meant to believe calormenes are beyond help? shasta who is of course secretly not "really" calormene is still representing someone undergoing "conversion," yet again, the guy is white. i suppose being brown is whats hopeless?

theres an inadvertently laughable line at the start of the book where a calormene expositorially points out that shasta is white by comparing him to the "accursed but beautiful" narnians. who are all white? is he just talking about the pevensies? the archenlanders (i cant remember where theyre meant to have come from either.) are like, all humanoid narnian natives white?? wtf, aslan. anyways, the dialogue is unnatural and funny enough, but its also like.....ok lewis, we got it, whiteness is the standard for all universes and everyone wishes they were white. stupid, sexy narnians.

what alllllmost suggests that being a poc isnt an automatic fastpass to hell is that im fairly sure the second protagonist aravis is a nonwhite calormene?? i dont remember it ever saying she was "fair" like the narnians the way the book immediately points out that shasta is. she is of course escaping an arranged marriage (the calormene plot to sort of vaguely try to invade narnia is also based on forcing susan to marry a dude she doesnt like yet who she apparently genuinely considered as a suitor when he wasnt acting like a jerk? so not only a dude who isnt white but a dude who isnt aslanian christian. its a whole complicating element to just toss out in this otherwise flat af worldbuilding, dude!! not to mention? despite the battles and shit, susan was out here considering marriage? how absolutely fucked up would it have been if any of them married and then effed off back to england. moving along) but she is from the start portrayed as equally sympathetically as shasta and nothing about her is pointed out as being Bad and Reprehensible, which the narration has no qualms about doing. she even gets to spend some time with her calormene friend, who is not exactly meant to be as sympathetic or noble but certainly isnt portrayed as at all evil. like...theres at least the occasional exception apparently, in which maybe not every person is inherently evil and violent and cruel. who knows

also aravis definitely later marries the white protag?? but apparently interracial marriage isnt entirely Unthinkable here. wait, also, aravis claims to be somehow a direct descendant of the calormene god tash? first of all, is that true, comma, possible? in the last book its confirmed that tash is real, albeit, like, a demon. dunno what c.s. is telling us with that one. is aravis related to a demon. we can only guess on account of the theme of Inconsistency

anyways. i suppose you could make it into a movie if you just threw out the racist shit. but the "calormen is also distinguished from narnia via its religion" element is also a touch janky. can it be thrown out too? if they intend to produce the last battle, will it be thrown out then. it kind of comes up again. if you get rid of those elements though, the stakes get a little blurrier and more political and more "wait well why would they have any beef with each other in the first place" if you cant just easily point out that the calormenes are shaking their fists at the narnians and their demon worship and their jealousy at not being white. again, are all centaurs white or something? wtf

truly calormene is the most racist ass shit in the whole series, but the concept comes up in less painfully direct ways other times, too. why are there native species in narnia that are considered inherently evil?? sure, the white witch as the stand-in for the devil wasn't originally from narnia. was she creating shit too? i dont remember what she was up to on account of i havent read the magicians nephew in a hot minute. i know they had to take a pegasus into a garden of eden type shit to smoke her out of wherever she was lurking for some reason or another. still. whys there whole types of creatures who are universally and unilaterally condemned? i know we're meant to believe that they just have evil intent according to their nature, but uh....theres no point at which any of these creatures are given a chance? maybe they served the white witch because she was nice to them for once. you're not given the chance to know. EXCEPT for the fact that you get shit like: giants are evil save for the occasional exception, like in lww when a "good" giant is described as having like, a long family line, and "traditions." not like Those Sorts. they do talk in like prince caspian and shit, when their numbers are miserable and theyre discussing tactics, whether to get help from the gross hags and harpies and etc and ppl will talk about Those People and Sorts and Rabble and its like...jfc. b/c apparently sommme of them can be decent! if theyre a giant or whatever. and meanwhile the dwarfs are always chaotic neutral or whatever. not believing in aslan but not necessarily being anti-narnia coz they live there. but sometimes being good guys!! but sometimes being bad guys, and jadis was cool to them apparently. like.................theres definitely cases of Types of narnians who fall outside the "born good / born bad" system, and thats pretty fucked. wolves too? theyre the Talking Beasts aslan definitely created, but on the side of the white witch? how was she having trees be on her side, too? whats going on around here. whats the moral meant to be. smh

uhh well anyhow, you could do a nice essay on gender re narnia. on account of sometimes its staleass typical sexist tropes like uhh, say,, the devil stand-ins keep being women? witches, ok. and the idea of "women need to be protected as pure creatures" as a basic sexist notion, and even lewis taking a relatively subdued jab at the idea of calling that sexist. susan being the miniature mom character type, and of course the infamous last battle bit where, in an attempt to describe her lack of spirituality as a self-insert of what lewis considered his own period of fake maturity via rejection of christianity, she's of course not only described as not believing in narnia (which????? what is anyone supposed to make of that. again, in the allegory of the cave shit, she's been outside the cave!!! she lived in narnia for YEARS AND YEARS and then WENT BACK. how are we supposed to believe she just convinced herself it wasnt literally real? its not quite the same as someone losing their faith in christianity.) but as like, wearing makeup, damn her. even if he wasnt trying to make the point that "look at boys and go to hell" which, i suppose he couldnt, as in narnia susan was being courted just fine as queen, yet i suppose also she didnt marry anyone—anyways, of course its still sexist to slight the way she decides to dress as some form of false maturity, even if its meant to be metaphor. just clumsy af & not great when again, devils are always witches around here. and being younger is to be more spiritually pure which like............mmm ok. this is sort of another one of those weirdly sexless fantasy universes, why do those keep happening. i mean sure this is a christian fairy tale for kids. but nobody even gets married save for in the last paragraphs of a couple books. its left a bit ambiguous whether thats even spiritually acceptable in the narnia rules, unless its to Continue the Line a la the telmarine monarchy from caspian the first to tirian the whateverth. hm

but also of course you get the young girl characters being...somewhat almost allowed to fight (archery mainly) but anyways at least being given equal status to the boys who are there also. theres even mention of once apparently narnia being ruled by a queen w no kings around. fantastic. and theres some non-witch lady characters on occasion. the human characters are where the dynamics are most at, i suppose, but anyways this at least has some nuance & at times seems to go just a bit beyond what you might expect from some old dude in the 50s. still not that surprising or innovative, but not completely flat, and seeming to contain at least a little reflection upon the topic

the essay of race re: narnia would be really short though. Its Racist Af. if you threw classism in too, you might get a bit more length out of it. but really its just so flat in this subject, and totally needless. there's the fact that even narnia is ruled by white english people but.....you can really do without juxtaposing this with the heinous nonwhite country somewhere over there. the rest of the books operate just fine w/o this

tolkien mentioned HIS scary brown backwards civilization to the south a lot more fleetingly in lotr but its....v much the same worldbuilding as narnia??? aka middle earth is pretty much an imaginary proto-england where you dont want to go too far east or south or you run into dangerous &/or inherently evil territory!! ok, jrr.....who was the other people in the inklings?? what did they write. could no one rein these guys in. coz lewis is over here with his Alternate Universe england. with uhhhh wilderness to the north and west and the dangerous evilish racismland to the south. and the ocean and dont forget narnia is a flat earth to the east. also? why are the lone islands like that. can aslan take care of some of that shit. for gods sake. anyways. the all-white good guys / evil poc should be thrown out of everything, thats not what makes the worldbuilding in either lotr or chronarnia at all interesting. yet is it is surely a subsection of the inherent Englishness of both examples........it warrants analysis but not "carrying on into films or anything based on either's precedence in the fantasy genre."

god who knows what im talking about at this point. im just saying "if they arent looking to even bother trying to wrangle the horse and his boy into something not ludicrously racist then i wouldnt be at all surprised." still, do you suppose theres like a curse where unless all narnia books are given some sort of film adaptation, the world won't know peace? more likely the world would end, maybe. the curse of clive. i dont really remember but that elder bbc series sure didnt cover the whole saga

well this is long enough but lets all set off in more endless, doomed narnalysis, such as

my thesis on trying to figure out what. the Fuck any reader is supposed to make out of edmund's role in the lww

whats the deal with merpeople?!

where are all these witches coming from, anyways

seriously if the narnians were just less murderous to the Undesirable species would they have been on the pro-aslan side all along

if there was only two humans staying in narnia at its birth, wouldnt their line like, die out immediately with their kid.

where did the archenlanders come from

where did the calormenes come from

oh yeah and like. are we seriously meant to believe that, at the end of the world, when aslan reveals that being goodnatured supercedes having the Wrong Religion, there is only one calormene in all of a) current existence and b) history who fits the bill? really. why even bring it up, then.

how did narnians react to their four monarchs completely disappearing......for real.....and what happened to the line to the throne?? was there just no ruler until the telmarines came in and took things over for the rest of the few centuries or whatevs.

when was that deep magic in lww written? at the start of narnia? coz thats the magicians nephew. again, how tf did the white witch get any leverage in that one. how was that supposed to be a good idea. wtf. see my thesis

whats the white witch supposed to represent as a stand-in for the devil? not helping that i dont remember the details of magicians nephew for shit, but she's definitely in the Multiverse lore of narnia as being from a different world as narnia and england. wtf is like...her nature

how weird is it in narnia that you have a god who drops in confused alien children to both go on personal journeys and save the world? is narnia-aslan/earth-jesus also dropping other children from other worlds into other other worlds? via other forms? hmm

lewis is all but inviting us the readers to be filling in the blanks with narnia fic. he's basically like, outright actually inviting fic with people wanting to speculate what happens with susan, who must inevitably return to narnia as lewis intends her to represent his own departure from (and obvious inevitable return to) christianity

a weird detail that is also never elaborated on: in addition to the narrator freely inserting loads of opinions into the narration, there's a time or two its made clear that like, the narrator has gotten this info from interviewing the characters. how'd you know about that last battle, "they all died and this happened in the afterlife" shit, huh. just another weird element

sussing out other lewispinions, like how he hates all schools apparently

narnia vs middle earth!! both quasi englands, both pre industrialization, both with christ figures running around some more than others, both with the need for rightful kings, totally different roles for humans tho. well, thats the whole comparison

and, inevitably, more.

[unrestrained-opinions-blog]

Does God Exist?, Is God Logically Possible?, Omnipotence, Omniscience and a Simple Request:

Show me proof of God’s existence. 

Good luck.

Hint: it is absolutely impossible.

The existence of God, as it is commonly described in the Bible and by many other religions, is completely paradoxical. Omnipotence cannot exist because it creates paradoxes. The same goes for omniscience. It’s just about that simple.

Here’s a link to the omnipotence paradox wiki for reference: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox 

Nothing could ever exist that can do everything because in order to be able to do everything that being must be able to make it so that it can’t do a certain thing, and then if it can’t do that thing that means it can’t do everything, and if it can’t do everything then it’s not omnipotent...

Sound confusing? It likely does, but follow along carefully. It shows how the very concept of omnipotence makes absolutely no logical sense. No further explanation should be needed. It explains itself.

You may say that your God is not bounded by logic or science, but that means by nature the existence of your God is unfalsifiable meaning that it does not demand my respect or that of any one else who has any respect for logic or legitimate theories.

Here’s why I can’t respect that sort of claim:

You might as well make up anything you want because if it doesn’t follow the laws of the universe then it can never be disproven or falsified. And if you can’t falsify it then that means it can’t be tested. If your argument can’t be tested to generate proof why do you expect anyone to believe it? I’ll believe it when Jesus finally decides to come back to Earth. But thats just the thing. You can keep waiting forever and simply say “he’ll come eventually,” and no one could ever definitively say you're wrong because time will keep going and going and there is always a next day for Jesus to show up.

You could go on forever with this kind of stuff. If God is within a universe he created that only follows certain rules how can he just break those rules? The whole universe as a system loses consistency and everything falls apart into chaos. It is completely devoid of logic. The creationist’s counter-argument might be “well God is outside of the universe looking in.” Well that doesn’t make any sense either. The universe is supposed to literally be everything, including all space. How can God reside in a space that doesn’t exist? There is no space outside of space. Well of course God gets an exception according to the creationist, throwing logic out of the window.

The further you go the more absurd it gets. So according to Christianity, God can do anything and everything. His will becomes reality. Can you possibly imagine a logical explanation for how God would do things such as impregnate Mary that are seemingly magical? It’s ludicrous. Ignore the creationist exception argument and assume God must follow his own universal natural laws. God would have to manifest a physical presence on Earth, present some sort of sperm whether it be synthesized or human-produced and introduce it into Mary’s genitalia with physical contact. Teleportation simply doesn’t work, so that’s not an option. And if not physical contact, God would have to manage to propel the sperm into her vagina from a distance! Can you imagine? For fuck’s sake if he can do whatever he wants anyway why even bother using Mary as a middleman? Just spawn Jesus into existence with your godly magic!

On a different note, some theists, especially of the Christian faith, will describe their god as perfect or morally perfect. A perfect god cannot exist because perfection does not exist.

There is no such thing as perfect.

The idea of perfection as a truth is completely illogical. I can see no logical argument to be made for the existence of inherent perfection. The word “perfection” describes something completely subjective. Who decides what perfection is? Well of course the creationist gets to use another exception and say, “well God knows everything so he knows what perfection is and we can’t fully understand it.”

Morals follow similar reasoning. Morals are completely subjective and as universal truths are completely meaningless and useless. Morals are not facts. We can’t “prove” morals. We simply create morals by ourselves and for our own benefit. The creation of some morals may be influenced by facts, but morals themselves are just as subjective as the word “perfection.” Once again the creationist will use a unfalsifiable argument and say, “God gave us morals and you are unable to understand the wisdom of their truths.”

This excerpt covers mostly everything including omniscience, that I hadn’t fully addressed above, and the subject of God’s sentience: http://www.humanreligions.info/god_is_impossible.html

There is no direct evidence that any god(s) exist. Likewise, there are no purely theoretical arguments that prove any gods either. In addition to the lack of reasons for a God's existence, the Argument from Incoherence holds that the very concept of god is self-contradictory and impossible, therefore, theism is false and atheism is true. Omnipotence and omniscience contradict free will and themselves are logically impossible; its omniscience is impossible for it to validate and there are questions about its own being that it itself cannot answer (therefore, nothing can be omniscient). If it is a perfect being, then, there is no need to do any creating. If it is eternal and immutable, then its very thoughts are eternal and immutable - in other words, it has no mental states. If its basic emotional, behavioural and instinctive drives are all fixed (i.e., not created by itself, therefore, not under its own control, and unchanging), then it is hard to imagine how the being, existing in a world without stimulation nor change, can be conscious at all. Without free will, morality, omniscience the remaining "god" is only an automaton: a being that follows necessity and logic. But the concept of a creator god is even more problematic - for this 'creator of everything' must have inherent traits that it itself did not create. It must be intelligent and rational (therefore, it can't have created intelligence nor logic). It must have desire, drives, motivations, an amazing omniscient thinking mechanism, and it can't have created itself. So it seems impossible and untrue to say that "everything must have a cause, therefore there is a god". Each property of god is itself a contradiction of the idea that god is the sole creator. All those uncreated self-traits lead to an impossibly unlikely situation where a complicated and multi-faceted being is invoked in order to explain a Universe that is said to be too complex to have self-created. The very concept of a creator god contradicts itself, and is impossible and incoherent. The First Cause of everything is not a god at all, it is merely the natural laws of an atheistic universe.

If God were to be omnipotent and omniscient and perfect then why is he emotional and vindictive? It makes no sense at all. A god wouldn't have a gender, an appearance, emotions, or even conscious thoughts ... none of it makes sense at all, but OF COURSE the creationist will once again say, based on absolute assumption with no evidence or reasoning, “we were created in God’s image, not the other way around.” If that’s perfection then literally anything could be perfection, but that just brings me back to one of my previous points. The very concept and existence of sentient beings is rare, and is not inherent or guaranteed given a universe. Life or sentience is only a product of simpler science down to the atom, many times more complicated than what makes it up, so why would sentience, something so complex and reliant on other things, be at the heart of the origin of the universe or the Earth?

For the creationist there will always been another excuse or an exception.

Wanna try the Ontological Argument? That’s logically fallacious too. Don’t bother with that. I hope you’re picking up on a trend at this point.

And to finish I ask: “Well... then ‘who’ created God???”

Do I really need to go any further? This just one of the classic, simplest examples of why God makes no comprehensible sense. It is completely inexplicable and paradoxical. Utterly inconceivable. It is just as inexplicable and apparently paradoxical as the origin of everything, and no one claims to know that, so why do you claim to know that God exists? Any conclusion that requires infinite explanations can’t make sense. Who created God? Who created who created God? Who created who created who created God? I think you can see why this doesn’t work. (I’m not talking about the Big Bang, which created our universe. I’m talking about “what” “started” everything that ever was, ever will be, or ever could be. “What” started the possibility of a reality. “What” always has been and always will be.)

You creationists can try to beat me or someone like me in an argument about religion and god, but you will always lose because you have no logical premise or facts. Your arguments will always be based on assumptions from an ancient book. You have no other resource. Don’t bother arguing about something unless you can actually bring forth evidence or any semblance of logical thinking or rational thought, otherwise you aren’t truly arguing at all. 

“I’m right,” is not an argument.

Creationists, for fuck’s sake, why are you still trying?

[lee-needs-a-nap]

I was pissed about this a couple days ago, and I thought I was over it, but I’ve had a tough week so I’m just gonna let it out.

So I’m an atheist. I’m not that quiet about it, except around my family because I just don’t see a reason right now to get into this argument with them (except my brother, which I know he hates). At school, even though it’s a catholic school, all belief systems are pretty much accepted and there’s no conversion plot by the friars or anything. So I feel free enough to discuss my atheism and opinions on religion pretty regularly. I enjoy it too.

But earlier this week I mentioned how I wasn’t that happy knowing that some of my catholic friends think I’m going to hell, partly because I’m an atheist, and also because I know at least one of them thinks that transitioning is a sin. I’ve discussed my apparent sins with them several times, and I can usually view the topic with a good amount of humor, because I don’t think I’m doing anything morally wrong and their beliefs in and about sin are unfounded. However, it does bother me that my friends think that I’m doing something morally wrong and therefore on some level I’m a bad person. I think it’s pretty reasonable to be bothered by that. 

I will readily admit that I can be an asshole and a dick about a lot of stuff, but I think there’s a difference between being an asshole and being a bad person. The only thing I’m hurting by being an asshole is feelings, and when I go too far, I do apologize. I feel guilty when I go too far, and especially if I don’t realize until later that I crossed the line.

But I was pressing one of my catholic friends about my “sins” and joking about it, kind of showing the ridiculousness of those beliefs in a sort of defense of myself. When walking back home with two other friends, both christians, I half joked again that I don’t appreciate that our catholic friend thinks I’m going to hell, and one of my friends got really defensive, and told me I was being a dick.

Now, I understand I was being a dick, but he was saying it to basically tell me to shut up and that I shouldn’t say those things at all. So I defended myself and said that I think it’s reasonable for me to not like the idea that I’m seen as a bad person for doing things that aren’t morally wrong. I also said, and have said many times, that I think religious beliefs are irrational and unreasonable. So he said, “As a christian I’m offended.”

So of course I countered with “You’re offended that you think I’m going to hell and I don’t like it?” because that’s bullshit in my opinion. He wanted me to shut up and he pulled out the “I’m offended” card. I then continued by saying I should be the one who’s offended, and also brought up the fact that the beliefs he and our friends have are the same ones that lead to legislation in the world that takes away civil rights, including the rights of trans people like me. At this point I had changed from joking around to frustrated and pissed off.

He threw up his hands and walked away, saying “I don’t want to do this. I’m done.” and the friend that was walking with us followed him to go comfort him (because he’s a baby and makes everybody go comfort him and solve all his problems for him) so I just went home.

About twenty minutes later, I had thought about it and realized that I was going to have to apologize or else they’d see me as an even bigger asshole and not talk to me. I want to clarify, I don’t care what people think of me usually, but what people think about me affects how they act towards me, and when their actions towards me are negative I have a problem with that. Which is the same reasoning I have for being bothered by being considered a bad person because I “sin”- it affects their behavior and actions towards me in a negative way, even if they don’t intend it. Actually, that’s my main issue with religion as a whole- irrational and unreasonable beliefs lead to irrational and unreasonable actions that affect other people. Religion doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

So I decided to be the bigger person and apologize to them for being argumentative (even though I was just voicing my beliefs and then defending myself) and crossing a line (which I still consider necessary to cross in situations like this). Neither of them responded, and that pissed me off. It’s one thing for them to not apologize (which I think they should, I think I deserve an apology), but they didn’t even acknowledge my apology, which is just common courtesy. I even apologized to our catholic friend I was talking to about possibly making her uncomfortable, and she at least said it was okay.

A few days later, I was having what I thought was a fun, exciting, and lighthearted informal debate with my other catholic friend. I was getting passionate, as I often do when talking about these things, and after a while my friend told me I was yelling at her. I apologized, and tried to explain that I was just very passionate about the discussion. But the discussion basically ended when she told me I was insulting her by sitting there and yelling at her for 25 minutes. Obviously I had a very different perception of the conversation than she had, so I did sincerely apologize and say that my intention was not to be insulting, and I didn’t realize that I was being insulting, so I was sorry.

This situation I feel is less of an issue for me than the first, because I realized that I had started a debate without her really agreeing to it, and also I was being a dick, so she didn’t really have anything to apologize to me for. But the first situation got me angry because I do feel like my friend telling me he was offended by me simply talking about my thoughts is ridiculous, and was intended to just get me to shut up.

That’s what gets me mad most. I’m told to shut up and keep my thoughts and opinions and (non)beliefs to myself, but my friends get to talk about their religious beliefs all the time. Also how I’m always expected to apologize for talking about my opinions, but they never seem to feel the need to, even though their beliefs do real harm in the world on a much more regular basis.

I also feel like I’m pretty damn respectful to the people, just not the core beliefs. I’ve been to a few masses at school, and was incredibly respectful. But people like my friend who walked away take it personally, as if I’m criticizing them when I criticize their beliefs. I don’t want our intellectual disagreements to affect our friendship, and I think I do a pretty good job of that on my part, but they certainly don’t. It’s the nature of their beliefs that don’t allow them to really. I, on the other hand, don’t think they’re stupid or anything, just that they’ve been indoctrinated and duped into believing something that’s not true. 

I’m just sick of the double standard that surrounds the topic of theism vs atheism. Theistic beliefs are given free passes on so much, and are in a place of power over atheistic beliefs, which have to constantly fight to be recognized at all.

I’m just pissed off and frustrated about a lot of this stuff, and I hate not having many friends to talk about my atheism without judgement (even though my religious friends say only god is going to judge me)

On that point, saying that god will judge me is still saying that I have done something that needs to be judged. You think I’ve done something wrong, but the judgement you’re talking about is just if I’ll be punished for it. My friends need to stop fucking telling me that they’re not judging me and only god can judge me, because they’re fucking lying. Maybe not lying, but at least not being at all rational or logical.

I think it’s pretty reasonable for me to be vocal about my (non)beliefs because especially in this political climate, it’s harmful and false beliefs that are affecting legislation that will change my life, and others lives in pretty negative ways. The separation of religion and government is incredibly important, and I advocate for it strongly. And one of the ways I feel is effective to help separate the two is to show the unreasonableness and irrationality of the beliefs.

Another thing that pisses me off is that now it’s considered offensive to criticize religious beliefs, because like I said before, people take it personally and think I’m attacking the people. I’m not, I’m attacking the religion and the false beliefs. I’m comfortable with going after christianity because that’s more acceptable than criticizing judaism or Islam for some reason. If I criticize those religions, I’m anti-semitic or islamophobic, which I think is ridiculous to conclude. I’m not against these people, and I’m not telling them they can’t believe something, just pointing out that it’s not rational to believe what they believe. I would never force someone to not be religious, I just advocate that their religious beliefs are not imposed on me by telling me what I can and can’t do.

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and other notable atheists are labeled as Islamophobic because they talk about how unreasonable and irrational and false islamic beliefs are, and how they are right now in this current time causing so much destruction and chaos and pain and suffering. I don’t think thats islamophobia, I think it’s reasonable criticism that can actually be very constructive.

So I think I’ve decided that if I come off as a dick or an asshole or a bigot, I don’t care after a certain point. If a person really has put their beliefs in front of actual human connections, I don’t want to interact with them.