#they're automatically 'as bad as an evangelical'

[captainjonnitkessler]

Atheists can talk about their atheism in the blandest, most matter-of-fact way possible and will still get accused of being “angry” and “bitter” and “pushy”. I just saw a post where a pushy Christian tried to preach to a room of non-Christians and verbally got their ass handed to them (and then everybody clapped, I’m sure), and one comment said they liked it because “the snooty atheist AND the pushy Christian both got their comeuppance!” The only thing the atheist said was “I don’t believe in God”, after everybody else had listed all the gods THEY believed in. There was a post on AITA where an atheist got badgered about their beliefs - at work, and after their coworkers had a twenty-minute discussion on THEIR beliefs - and after several minutes of trying to deflect the conversation, admitted that they don’t believe in an afterlife. They got voted the asshole because someone in the room was grieving and they “should have been more tactful” - even though they tried multiple times to deflect out of tact and were essentially harassed for it. I once reblogged a post that said calling victims of Christian abuse “cultural Christians” was cruel and someone I thought was a friend publicly announced that I was a bigoted asshole who was just angry because I knew that what they were saying was true.

And once again I cannot stress enough that that’s exactly what the fundamentalist party line is on atheism. Atheists are angry because deep down they know that fundamentalists are right and just don’t want to admit it. Atheists are pushy because they’re miserable and they want everyone else to be just as miserable. Atheists are bitter because they know they can never truly be happy. Atheists are joyless because you can’t know joy without God. There’s a whole fundamentalist movie genre about those snooty, elitist, angry atheists getting taken down a peg by good faithful Christians and some of those plots are identical to posts on this website.

Atheists are allowed to be angry. But I know so many who walk on absolute eggshells around religious people and still get these accusations thrown in their face the second they try talking about any atheist issue. And if your “progressive” space is using the exact same language about atheists as your average evangelical then maybe that’s a good reason to be angry actually.

[thydungeongal]

question: Why is it bad that cultists are a common enemy in Dnd? Have you *met* anyone from the Catholic Church, the ILBP, the Mormon Church, etc?

I mean D&D cultists don't really lean into an understanding of cults as manipulative groups led by a charismatic leader, they lean more on a very American Evangelical understanding of cults as these secret groups within good society trying to make good people do bad things like sacrifice puppies for Satan. Comparing D&D cults to modern religious movements misses the point because D&D cults don't have anything to do with those but are based on a very culturally Christian fever dream about secret satanic groups hiding within the populace. With a dash of orientalism, since the imagery of cultists in D&D owes heavily to classic swords & sorcery fiction, which was rife with orientalist imagery.

And I'm also not saying that that's necessarily bad, because I don't think engaging with media with iffy ideas in it will automatically make people catch moral impurity, that's silly. But it's good to have an understanding of where those ideas and images come from because if one wants to personally avoid replicating those tropes and themes then it's good to be aware of all the cultural context behind them. D&D cults have very little to do with modern cults, because that's not what they're based on, so to compare them to those misses the point wildly.

(Also this relates to people's attempts to make D&D queer, because with a lot of people what they do is just turn the player characters into a wholesome queer found family but otherwise change nothing about the game, so you get the cool heroes slaughtering cultists that are ultimately based on a very American Protestant image of Satanic cults, and the dissonance is weird and a lot of people don't realize it.)

[rametarin]

Angry about something

Please, please, please, let movements be horrible on their own without saying, "The're the [previous thing] of [subject]"

We don't say the Nazis were the modern Napoleonic Imperialists. We don't say the Napoleonic Imperialists were their day's Golden Horde of Genghis Khan. We don't say Muslim pirates and abductors from Tripoli cruising Europe for slaves and conquests were "totally Trans Atlantic Slave Trading it." Muslims were abducting Europeans for slave applications for centuries before Europeans did it for

And when people talk about modern day Intersectional Feminists, capital P Progressives and oldschool TERF-flavor feminists get nasty in accordance with their values all over a pasttime, a hobby, or a group of people that enjoys something and tells them they're doing it wrong thanks to a VERY unreliably narrated assessment of what they are and why they are, they tend to treat their behavior as if it's the same stock mindset of previous experience related to Christian puritainism and religious evangelism.

Don't fucking do this. Their values are not the same. They come from a different place, and you doing this helps them do something they SPECIFICALLY like to do. First, muck around acting like assholes in self-righteous quests to control how people interpret reality and see things, and when called out for it, have their own controlled mea culpa where they apologize because, "that's just the old Christian White Supremacist in me, the feminism part of me isn't like that and can't be like that because feminism is just good and can't be bad. I'm sowwy. :C"

No. Fucking no. Do NOT fucking allow that to happen. Feminism is not a simple act of seeing women as equal, it's an entire dogmatic baggage that necessitates Class Struggle Theory, the willful adoption of the idea the only thing that matters in sexual politics is that "Women Are Oppressed (TM)" even when circumstances and culture are entirely equal and even handed with them, and that society owes them something to compensate for this inherent oppression- at the expense of men. And that Society is the third wheel in their relationship, automatically there to redistribute from the man.

Feminism bills itself as simply a phenomenon of 'equality'... for women.. but it is no more this than Christianity is synonymous with The Good(tm). It certainly is a shitty way to see the world, but it is not the definition of seeing the world. It boils down to making some very very intensely specific logical leaps and shortcuts out of convenience and then dogmatically insisting these values are immutable and unquestionable.

From that position, we come to the other little black box in the equation. The idea that something that exists in culture that represents an icon or concept, oppresses and exploits that icon, object or group, and that it is specifically wrong to objectify that, but only if it's a woman, a group that is "oppressed." (it's however perfectly justifiable to objectify an 'oppressor.' See how that works.) Right before they say some apologetics like, "It's not MY fault cisheterosexual Judeo-Christian Patriarchy is sexually binary! Maybe if you agreed in more options we wouldn't be having this conversation!"

And it's because of this shitty point of view, they argue that even having big booby fictional characters that are female, boobily boobing down the stairs for the appreciation of the audience, they jump to the next facet of their belief system. Male Gaze Theory.

Built off their idea that Classes Struggle (tm) and Women Are the Obligate Oppressed Class(tm), and that any reference or participation by women is inherently an act of an oppressed political group in bondage to and beholden to their oppressive captors, AND that works of fiction and literature are part of culture, these facets of culture give groups their marching orders, programming and ideas on what they are, mean and even their existence. They believe, uncompromisingly, that your very perception and understanding of reality is built solely upon what books written by the state have to say about what is real and what isn't. That if society writes books about a murderer and don't go out of their way to omnipotently, omnipresently dictate with no ambiguity that, "Murder is bad, ackshully," that you endorse a society where murder happens. And, no joke, this is how they imagine murder, theft and antisocial behavior happening. Because it exists in that cultural bubble like evil waves of energy, just going unneutralized to warp the minds of unprepared people who haven't been told what is right and wrong by society, making them rapists, murderers and exploiters of those weaker than them (and they only care when the person exploits someone weaker than them.)

So they see sexy drawn women as depictions of an oppressed minority being reveled over by a slavemaster class, exploiting their image and the idea of that group for profit (which they also despise) and believe the women should also be profitting off their "exploitation" in fiction, and some sort of state council should exist that oversees the expression or interpretation of women in fiction, or else abolish the work from existing for not fitting their moral and social view of how literature and culture are "allowed" to see women. Seeing this very dour, extreme interpretation about how all men depicting women is exploitation, and by default society is meant for a male, oppressor perspective, is called, "Male Gaze Theory."

At no point in this equation did their greviance or conceptual principles cross over with Puritainism or Christians. They are their own totalitarian beasts, and like the Nazis are not Napoleonics are not The Mongol Horde, FUCKING TELL IT LIKE IT IS AND ACCEPT RADICAL FEMINISM IS JUST LIKE THIS.

You can somehow see one radical conservative and condemn the entire conservative or right-wing party as inherently racist, white supremacist and homophobic, but you can't acknowledge that radical feminism has more Ls to its name and more bad ideas and more bad values than rejecting the idea that trans men and women aren't men and women. All their ideological supremacism, all their logical leaps, all of their antagonistic marching into any fandom and demanding the fandom most conform to their ideas of what is mentally, emotionally an socially healthy, are their own. They are not Puritans, they're fucking radical feminists. Do not use the bad behavior of past groups as an ablative shield when you fucking mean what you mean.

"Well complaining about feminism makes me sound like some kind of CHUD..."

That's a you problem. In the past, complaining about the Church when it was synonymous with power would've made you a "pagan" or an "unbeliever." And before the T in LGBT got traction, it was just "anti-feminist" for a biological man to argue with a woman, giving them infinite instant Ls, even if they did identify as a woman. It starts somewhere.

Call it like it is and just realize radical feminism is rotten from the top windows of the attic to the foundations.

[yardsards]

i think one of the most evil aspects of fundamentalist evangelical christianity is how it (and the general culture of those who follow it) encourages parents to treat children

first off, it treats having children as something EVERYONE should do, regardless of if they actually want and are capable of raising said children. in more extreme cases you get shit like the quiverfull movement, wherein couples are encouraged to have as many children as physically possible

and then, those children are referred to like they're their parents possessions, like they are just objects their parents were "gifted" with by god. they're not treated like their own human beings.

AND a core tenet of their religion is that humans are born inherently sinful. they think newborns, who can't even fully control their bodily functions yet, are automatically full of sin. an infant's crying for its basic needs to be met is seen as a sign of their inherent selfishness

a parents' main goal is supposed to be to "purify" that child's soul by any means necessary, the child's actual wellbeing is secondary to "saving their soul"

and, of course, free thought is discouraged in favour of obedience. they believe in a hierarchy: child < wife < husband < god. if you are to disobey the one above you, then you are considered to be disobeying god himself- even if the thing your parent or husband is commanding you not to do is not a sin in of itself. "honor thy father and thy mother"

and again, parents are taught that the best trait for a child to have is *obedience*. obedient to their parents and obedient to the church and scripture

parents are taught to force that obedience by corporal punishment. physical abuse (and yes. "spanking" is abuse. if you disagree then, well, i'm sorry that someone convinced you that raising a hand against someone so much smaller and weaker than you is anything short of abusive) is ENCOURAGED

in fact, if you DON'T hit your kids, you are seen as A BAD PARENT, who is failing to properly "train" their child, and who is dooming their child to a life of wickedness, sin, and suffering ("he who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is careful to discipline him." or, put more simply, "spare the rod spoil the child")

parents are told to ignore their own despair and revulsion towards the idea of harming their child, and to hit them anyway. hit the kid and ignore the voice in your head that says hitting kids is wrong. remind yourself that this is for the child's own good. remind yourself that this is god's will.

you're also supposed to remind the child that you are hurting them for their own good, because god commands it. teach them that people hurting them is a good thing.

and many suggest that after you beat them, give your child comfort (comfort from the distress caused by being beaten by you, who is supposed to protect them from harm) and to give them affection (to drive home the point that hurting them is how you show love). which, if you know about the cycle of abusive relationships (tension, violent incident, reconciliation, calm) then you can see how this is pretty much a mirror image of that

it's fucking evil

look up the book "to train up a child" if you want to see this taken to the extreme. even many fundamentalists thing the methodology is too extreme, but they generally agree with the ideology/principles behind it

[pinnithin]

the "what would your tav's personal quest be called" post got me thinking about my tav who i havent talked about at all but im having a blast playing. this is my second playthrough (excluding the origin runs) so i get to be a little more intentional about choosing their backstory.

enter pyxis, sole caretaker of a small, relatively secret shrine to tiamat in baldur's gate. they're a 22 year old black dragonborn who received a decent formal foundation in cleric work in their youth, but the rest of their magical education as an adult was self-taught (multiclass shenanigans). the only cleric of their order, theyve built a reputation for themself as the annoying evangelist who's always finding ways to squeeze money out of a situation. generally disliked, both for the tiamat worship and their annoying personality, they have a bit of a persecution complex and are convinced they're really, genuinely a good guy when all evidence points to the contrary. they're also very stupid. more on this later.

cue mind flayer abduction and infection. pyxis suddenly finds themself stranded in the wilderness surrounded by people who have no idea who they are and don't automatically treat them with disdain. they can finally prove theyre they good guy they always say they are, and they make promise after promise to help those in need (and complain about all the effort for relatively no coin in private). they're... really bad at being a good guy. they say all the right things to authority figures and people in charge but are generally rude and overly self-important when interacting with the common man.

this includes the companions, whose personal struggles pyxis is largely unsympathetic toward because they're constantly playing the pain olympics. like, yes, hm, that all sounds very tragic. quite the sob story. have i mentioned im the last of my order? that im the only one who can carry the torch of tiamat in my city? we all have problems here. they're not particularly favorable with any of the companions because they have a talent for pissing people off but they're fascinated by wyll's good guy act and how its so much more effective than pyxis' good guy act. hey man how do people actually believe you when you say you're here to help them. teach me your ways.

anyway we finally get around to finding karlach and wyll isn't able to go through with it. that night after mizora visits the camp and punishes wyll, pyxis is in a noticeably sour mood when confronting him about it. how can you be associated with a devil, they demand, especially that devil. and they proceed to reveal that mizora is responsible for pyxis' entire order being wiped out, with the help of one of her warlocks, during a failed summoning ritual about seven years ago. pyxis was the only one left alive after the encounter and now considers maintaining and rebuilding tiamat worship in baldur's gate their sole calling. hence all the evangelizing and gold hoarding.

they conclude this story by warning wyll against working with mizora from the perspective of someone whos been personally wronged by her. when cautiously asked about the warlock's identity, pyxis responds, "i don't know. i never got a good look at him. he left the scene pretty quickly and i was more concerned with not bleeding out. i wonder where he is now, if he's even still alive." because, as stated above, they are very stupid. "anyway, if you need help getting out of your pact, i'll help, if only because she's due for some revenge."

and wyll, unable to say anything about the conditions of his pact, is just left standing there like, oh. oh no.

[father-imperator]

to my jewish friends, followers, and tumblr strangers: chag pesach sameach! i hope you have sorts of good things planned and your holiday is both insightful and full of yummy food :-)

to my non jewish friends, followers, and tumblr strangers: this is one of the most important holidays, and it's a good idea to take this time to reflect on how you're treating jews in the community. even if you are consciously against anti-semitism, you do probably have some internalised biases.

an important one of these to reflect on is snap judgments. i've noticed that in general, if gentiles see the word zionist, they automatically think "bad person, genocide supporter", but the problem is that zionism has quite a loose definition, and before you make a judgement, it's important to keep that in mind and work out their definition of zionism.

to you, zionism probably means settler colonialism, or christian evangelical zionism. to them, it might mean that they think there should be at least one place on earth where jews can exist free of persecution, or maybe that they think jews should be able to live in or make pilgrimage to their homeland of eretz yisrael. i have zionist friends who wholeheartedly agree with me about palestinian liberation, because they believe that jews should have a place where they know they are safe, and they also believe that palestinian people deserve to live free of bombing and exiling in the place their families have lived for centuries.

it's also important to note that if you only do this with jewish people, it's likely anti-semitism. if you see a post of a blorbo in which the poster has a magen david in their profile picture, i know a lot of gentiles will check the account before liking to make sure they're a "good jew". that is anti-semitic. if you don't do that with every single post on your dash, and make sure your politics align on completely unrelated posts, then you are targeting jewish people.

i am not saying you despise all jewish people or that you're a bad person. anti-semitism is rampant in culture and is so normalised and covert that nobody even sees it, and i'm just saying that it's important to assess if that has affected you.

palestine absolutely must be liberated, no one is free until all are free, and i am so beyond happy that you're vocal about the last few months of constant mass murder. the way to be vocal about that is not to attack random jews, that isn't palestinian activism, that's jewish hate.

am yisrael chai and free palestine can and do coexist.

be kind to your jewish friends and wish them a happy passover.

[mzyraj]

Saw a post that I wanted to add on to but didn't want to cause trouble or offense, so:

OP had screenshots of current stuff about child labor and child marriage in the US, and about how conservatives should see how hearing about trans people is not hurting kids like those things are.

I understand the sentiment, but they don't understand evangelical christians, or not the True Believers, anyway - and there *are* true believers.

Because to them it's ALL about Heaven or Hell, and the things they have interpreted as leading to one or the other, what they think God likes or dislikes. As we know, they tend to think God hates gay people and trans people and the rest of us queers as rejecting his design for humanity. They think God wants us all to be according to the agab/sex we were born as and settle down to procreate with somebody of the opposite sex. And so child marriage isn't a big deal, Mary was young too anyway, and better than risk the sin of premarital sex. Child labor's not a big deal, protestant work ethic and all that.

But us queers, we're a seductive path to hell in their view. Even if their kid was born with 'homosexual tendencies' they can keep them away from information and bad influences, pray the gay away and find them a nice spouse of the opposite sex to stay in God's good books.

Their child is sad? Their child is depressed? Doesn't matter as long as they're supposedly going to Heaven. 70 years of misery is nothing when followed by infinite paradise! And so anything is validated in the name of Heaven. These people will beat the shit out of their kids, and feel fine about it if it's to keep their kids on the heavenly straight and narrow.

An extreme case, in 2001 Andrea Yates had postpartum psychosis and murdered her kids. But her mindset at the time was that her kids were turning out too sinful and if they lived to the age of spiritual responsibility they'd go to Hell, but if they died now they'd get into Heaven automatically, so she sacrificed herself to get her kids to Heaven by murdering them.

I've seen people say that they considered suicide/had suicidal ideation as young kids to get to Heaven (I think the change is at 7?) because they were scared they'd be bad and go to Hell if they got older.

And like... for those of us who are atheists or believe in a kinder God/afterlife this is like... batshit. Horrifying. But unless these people deconstruct you can't get through that mindset.

They don't really care if they're hurting people now, it's only ever about what they think comes after.

[beetlemancy]

unpopular opinion but I don't think "wizard hubris" exists. at least not in the evangelical way the majority of DnD discussions go. yes there are clearly limits to magic before things get haywire but that's just a lack of knowledge, not a hard and fast boundary.

gods exist in dnd, but they are not Christian gods - and yet many people discuss them from that perspective. they are incredibly fallible - why do we assume that the instinct to oust them automatically comes from an evil place?

Klingons killed their gods because, literally, "they were more trouble than they're worth". I always found that fascinating, and if we're comparing to our own reality, true.

this opinion of mine is just mine though, I don't think anyone else should be forced to have it. I just think it's super weird how some of these calamity god discussions seem to mirror real life religions in terms of reverence to the prime deities.

also this is NOT me saying that the primes are Actually Bad. my understanding of it is they're literally just vibing.

so, if your gods are neither good nor evil, why fear apotheosis?

[greater-than-the-sword]

I keep seeing all those responses to your post about persecution and... they're so gaslight-y? Almost all of them are directed at trying to cause you to doubt your own judgment and/or talk down to you by making you sound stupid rather than... actually refuting what you're saying. What the heck o.o

I haven’t had a single response that actually makes sense. It’s all “this is stupid/you’re stupid/but actually Christians are bad in my opinion so persecuting them is ok”. A bunch of people just proving my point or just kind of assuming that evangelism automatically entails some sort of abuse (I do hope that this doesn’t come from an experience in these people’s lives because that would suck.) Or I guess, what, do these people think that I should actually be thrown in jail for saying “sin is bad” or (more importantly,) for saying “Jesus can save people from sin”.

Well, I am keeping things very simple here, I will never end up regretting the simple assertion that Jesus saves, so if that is what people are reacting negatively to then whatever. It is not embarrassing to me and it can’t make me look or feel stupid, ever.

The idea that evangelism is automatically abusive COULD come from an experience of people acting in an Un-Christlike manner, and that I would repudiate, but it could also come from the fact that some people just have a vendetta against the gospel message itself, which appears to be the case in most of these replies.