#weaponized religion

[sixbucks]

Speaking as a non-religious person, I can confirm.

[immaculatasknight]

Manufacturing a clash of civilizations

[texaschainsawmascara]

Laurent Gauthier

[grif-hawaiian-rolls]

"I don't miss!"

I,, might've gotten a little carried away with gravhammer Donut, ya know, just a smidge

local artist not immune to putting their favorite in vaguely god-like finery

[clatterbane]

This is a thing that actually happened when I was in college.

A Virginia Tech official has filed an $850,000 libel lawsuit against the student newspaper for identifying her as the school’s “director of butt licking.”...

Yeagle’s attorney, S.D. Roberts Moore, said the title implies Yeagle committed “a crime involving moral turpitude” and that the actions of the paper “injured Yeagle’s employment, office, and professional standing without justification.” Moore argued that under Virginia state law, the act of “butt licking” could be considered felony sodomy. The law states “if any person … carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth … he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.”

Yeah, she ended up seriously losing the libel suit. This particular hot vexatious mess was not dismissed outright, but made it to the state Supreme Court.

The fact that "your poor taste student paper joke called me a nasty felon" ever passed for a vaguely plausible legal argument in this situation serves as some illustration of just how ludicrous the legal space was. Which is precisely the type of legal space that authoritarian ideological weirdos are trying so desperately to drag us all back into--and no doubt employ in at least equally good faith wherever they see an opportunity.

Just thinking about how republicans are going after normie sex shit like "internet porn" and "dildos" now

we fucking told y'all

[whereserpentswalk]

Imagine if in the future there was a culture that viewed nuclear explosions and power as the ultimate sign of divinity. Like, that was the most powerful earthly expression of God/a god/the gods in their religion.

Entire fields of barren land turned into basically open air temples that are constantly nuked during worship as a way of honering their gods mabye sacrifices would be put within the blast radius to give them fully to the gods. Thousands watching from a safe distance in prayer.

Some temples might be filled with eradication to the point where worshippers have to wear hazmat suits to even be there, and in a way it keeps them at a safe distance from the divine. Perhaps the oldest and most honered priests enter sections of the temple nobody else can, because they're finally old enough so that they'll die before the cancer from the radiation has time to set in.

Mabye nuclear war would be their ultimate taboo. Using the power of heaven to wage war on earth. And the warnings of mutually assured destruction have shifted into warnings of divine punishment.

Mabye they see the ancients as foolish for fearing nuclear power. This is a place of honer, great deeds are esteemed here.

[mic-check-stims]

Nicholas D. Wolfwood board for anon

X-X-X X-X X-X-X

[rhisardthewizard]

Deaths that result from resistance against settler-colonial violence is ALWAYS the fault of the colonizers. Not the colonized.

Don't want a war? Don't spend 80 years doing an apartheid against the indigenous.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Bulletin/Novus: Nine out of ten foreign-born people have holidayed in their country of birth

By: Alex Alma

[ Note: Auto-translated from Swedish ]

A new survey from Novus shows that over 85 percent of foreign-born people have at some point traveled back to their country of birth for a holiday. Among those who came to Sweden as refugees, the proportion who have holidayed in their old home country is 79 percent.

Holidaying in the country you fled from has become a topic of discussion in European countries in recent years. Bulletin has commissioned Novus to investigate how foreign-born people view repatriation, their children's growing conditions and holidaying in their country of birth. The sample consists of 1050 foreign-born people and the survey was conducted between 18 and 24 August.

The survey shows that only two percent of foreign-born people plan to return to their country of birth in the future, while 16 percent answer maybe. 76 percent believe that they intend to stay, among those who have come to Sweden from a non-European country, the proportion is 81 percent. 53 percent of foreign-born people believe that Sweden is a better country for their children to grow up in compared to their home country, while 9 percent believe that Sweden is worse than their home country. 33 percent answer neither.

Holidays in the country of birth

In the Bulletin/Novus survey, 85 percent of foreign-born people have visited their home country as a holiday destination at some point. Among those who came as family immigrants, 92 percent have traveled back to their country of birth to holiday at least once, while the figure is 79 percent among those who came as refugees. The group of foreign-born people with the highest proportion have never holidayed in their country of birth are the adopted, where 41 per cent have not visited the country of birth since they came to Sweden.

Novus points out that it is in the nature of things that those who participate in their surveys are reasonably well integrated in Sweden, since they answer questions in Swedish. The political conditions in their countries of origin may therefore have changed as time has passed.

But 79 percent is still a very high figure considering that we are talking about those who have come to Sweden and claimed that they are refugees.

In Norway, Aftenposten reported in 2018 that 24 percent of immigrants from Somalia, 40 percent of immigrants from Afghanistan, 55 percent of immigrants from Iran and 71 percent of immigrants from Iraq regularly traveled to their home country. According to Aftenposten, the data had been produced by Norway's statistical authority SSB. A difference with Bulletins/Novus is that the Norwegian figures are the proportion of immigrants who regularly holiday in their home country, while the Swedish figures report those who have travelled at least once.

Most countries allow people who have become citizens to return to their home country on vacation. At the same time, the fact that so many who originally came as refugees are returning indicates that the need for protection no longer applies, or perhaps never was so great.

The regulations for asylum seekers who have not been granted citizenship differ depending on the country. In Sweden, there are no restrictions for refugees who have been granted a permanent residence permit to travel back to their home country. However, refugee status can be revoked if it turns out that the person no longer needs international protection from their home country, and in cases where asylum seekers have been found to provide incorrect information about their need for protection. Other countries have stricter regulations. Switzerland, for example, does not allow asylum seekers to travel back to their home country to see relatives or vacation, except in very special circumstances. If this happens, the foreign-born person loses the right to continue to have a residence permit in Switzerland, according to UNHCR.

In Germany, too, asylum seekers' holiday trips to their home country became a political issue, as holiday trips were considered incompatible with the claim that one is fleeing for one's life and seeking protection in Germany due to danger in the home country. In a statement in 2019, Germany's then Interior Minister Horst Seehofer warned refugees that they would be investigated and stripped of their residence permits when traveling to their home country.

"If someone, a Syrian refugee, regularly vacations in Syria, he cannot honestly claim to be persecuted in Syria," he said, adding "we would have to strip him of his refugee status."

According to DW, for example, in 2016, investigations led to 66 refugees from Iraq and Syria being stripped of their residence permits, and were no longer considered to be in need of protection because they had gone on trips to their home country.

Angela Merkel has also criticized refugees' holiday trips to their home country, and said that it could be interpreted as meaning that the need for protection should be reassessed.

CORRECTION: The article previously stated that Sweden does not have restrictions for those who have been granted asylum to return to their country of origin. The Swedish Migration Agency has pointed out: "That statement is directly incorrect, refugee status can be revoked if it turns out that the person no longer needs international protection from their home country or if they have provided incorrect information about such a need." The text has been corrected.

==

Legal immigration and legitimate asylum/refugee protection are all good things.

But western societies are being taken for a ride by people who are exploiting their empathy. When you claim to be fleeing a toxic ideology but then have no problem wandering back, we're justified in assuming you're not on the side that you claimed to be or that benefits us.

Revoke status and deport.

[mars-ipan]

Your priest au has me considering becoming religious again. Which was probably not the intention but oh well.-💐

it was not the intent but also you are a human being with free will so. if my yaoi makes you believe in god then i think that’s beautiful

[sanddollarpoems]

An ordinary morning

Used to hold so much meaning

Now just a rehearsal

Of traditions once learned

[texaschainsawmascara]

by Charles Kraft

[rubystims]

👼/🗡️/👼

👼/🗡️/👼

👼/👼/👼

A Paladin (dnd) gifset for anon!

[vizthedatum]

As a highly spiritual person who keeps learning how much they do not yet know, I want to write yet another hot take.

The “law of manifestation” I hear from Western esotericism and other magical practices…. is not actually magic.

It is extreme awareness of your alignment with yourself and what you want or don't want.

Awareness, attunement, whatever you want to call it.

It is embracing the chaos within you and finally making sense of it. You do not know what will happen. You are not in control, but you still take action with free will and intent.

It is not a feeling. It is not a spark. It is not something you've always known.

It’s not your greatest desire, necessarily.

It is a quiet hum that's always there - the one you can't silence but one that never bothers you. The one that you can drown out so easily. The one you wish you could decipher, even though, it says you already have.

It’s there even when you despair.

It's there when you're overcome with pleasure and happiness.

It is there with every rejection, every acceptance, every success, everything that you cannot control, everything that goes right -

and it tells you,

consistently

firmly

neutrally

who you are at any given moment, without judgment.

—

You know what? Fuck it. My hottest take of them all? On top of this one?

I think EVERYTHING is magic.

Even the most mundane. Like the dust that settles upon the pile of untouched papers.

And the catastrophic. The dying. The filthy rich. Climate change. Tears cried from a great movie. The euphoria of a love before it inevitably ends. The love that never does end.

Even the shattered glass that I haven't cleaned up for weeks and the disdain I felt from so many—my grief and my anger.

Even my helplessness.

And all the things that have led me here—I am still breathing and okay… doing better than I thought I could.

So.

Maybe it is magic after all.

[daisywords]

EVERYONE HOLD UP I think I just discovered the missing piece that connects the worldbuilding and the plot and the characters and everything and surprise surprise it's an element I was considering near the wip's genesis but discarded and now it's back in full force babey