andillformthehead

[andillformthehead]

From deconstructing to deconversion.

I learned more, Jesus most definitely wiffed that prophecy about his generation seeing the coming of Yahweh's kingdom that he believed he would be king over. He absolutely did not intend to be sacrificed on the cross, that got written in after the fact by those who wanted him to have known. He was turned into one with god centuries after the fact and turned into a substitutionary atonement for our sins as an excuse for crusaders to go do hideous things in his name and yet not fear being punished for it when they died. The whole concept of penal substitutionary atonement favors abusers and evildoers once you take a step back and look at how it forces reconciliation based on a single moment of verbal "repentance" without adequate apology to the victim or evidence of changed behavior beforehand. It has since been used to great effect to persecute so many people groups.

I dug deeper into archeological podcasts by people with legitimate research papers like Dan McClellan and Bart Ehrman and the scholars they recommended and trust, and learned that Yahweh was originally a lesser deity in the Mesopotamian pantheon associated with war and revenge and possibly the forge. He had a wife, the mentioned Asherah who Israel was later told to reject in an effort to centralize the cult worship and keep the people unified during exile. It's ancient religious propaganda to excuse bloodlust and pursue religious "purity." I am thoroughly disgusted.

So I left. I dug into the Bible and discovered an abusive and openly manipulative god at its center, one that delights in killing and punishment then pretends it's for everyone's own good. One that allows certain approved people to argue back without him getting murdery about it, provided they grovel every other sentence, only to outright ignore them.

I don't believe a lesser god with large ambitions had the authority to send everyone else in the world to burning torment, even if I still believed hell was an original doctrine and not made up by later Christian churches to use as a threat to force conversion, I don't believe Yahweh could send me there for pointing out abusiveness.

It left me a bit at loose ends, because my left ovary was restored years after I lost it to ectopic pregnancy complications. Confirmed by ultrasound techs, fully functional. So I still believe in deity, I just don't know which one seems to have adopted me after I was forced out of Yahweh's cult eight years ago. I decided to start with Celtic spiritually since ethnically that's my heritage. There's not much there of past worship records, but the more I've learned about ancient gods and goddesses of all ancient religious practices the more I don't think any of them got it right anyway. So new isn't bad, it's just uncertain and that makes it uncomfortable. But my groundwork is no abuse, anti abuse, always. It's curiosity and questioning, it's learning history to look for the abusive patterns in it and make sure not to repeat them in my own life.

Nothing is certain except the past, I now know we can make this world better. Leaving that ancient apocalypse cult freed me up to believe we can do better.

[andillformthehead]

I'm having deconstructing thoughts.

I've been reading and watching a lot of Bart Ehrman after reading and watching a lot of Michael Heiser. I was raised Christian and abused the entire time, so several thoughts are coalescing. Michael Heiser specialized (past tense, he passed away of cancer this year) in Old Testament textual criticism and historical/archeological research. Bart Ehrman specializes in the same things in regards to the New Testament and early Christianity. Dr. Heiser was a Christian and Dr. Ehrman is an atheist, but both speak with respect for and genuine curiosity about their given topics. Neither man (though I'm watching conservative thought begin to try to rewrite Heiser's legacy already, complete with edited videos that say the opposite of what he said in life) ever tried to persuade or demand that anyone must agree with their every word or else face some existential consequence the way churches do. As an abuse survivor I gravitated to both as credible teachers, because instead of forcing me to believe something or tailoring information to force my mind down a certain road they both simply give all available information along with their opinions and lots of counter opinions and let me as a reader make up my own mind. That level of respect for others, who they don't even know, boundaries and intelligence felt safe to learn from.

My current thoughts are this. Dr. Ehrman points out that the first written gospel book was most likely Mark due to the presence of identical sentences in the other two synoptic gospels. He points out that there were apologetics happening already even then, that Jesus very much did predict the arrival of God's kingdom on earth before his disciples generation passed away which is why nothing was written down until 100 years later when it became obvious that prophecy had very clearly failed.

Which means by necessity, Jesus spoke a prophecy which failed to happen. We criticize modern day "prophets" for the same thing.

I've read the apologetics to try to reconcile that, but they all devolve into self contradictory word salads that leave the reader to simply choose whether they want to believe the apologetic or not. Especially given that there are whole stories which can be shown to have been added to the gospels as they were copied by scribes and not kept unedited, such as the woman caught in adultery, I've come to the conclusion that apologetics are just storytelling (aka lying) to calm believers when they find out uncomfortable truths about reality. Like when people used to believe they could ward off germs with nice smells, or when people believed the sun revolved around the earth. It makes logical sense and calms a fearful mind until the physical proof shows it isn't true. I don't trust apologetics at all, they might reach the right conclusion by accident sometimes but they get it wrong way more often.

So with that said, what's really bothering me is that I was raised to believe that God hated anyone who wasn't an Israelite until Jesus came and died to include us. Except, one of the stories Dr. Heiser expanded on was the one of Naaman who was healed of leprosy by Elisha. Naaman was by all accounts an honorable man already, he just wasn't an Israelite. After he was healed he asked to take some soil of Israel home with him, to keep on him as a signal of his loyalty to Israel's God when he accompanied his king into the temple of Dagon and knelt to support the king. Naaman was told by Elisha that doing that was completely acceptable and to go in peace. Nothing else was ever said and nothing else changed about Naaman's life but we're told right then because he believed God had healed him and gave his loyalty to God in place of whoever he had worshiped before, that was enough for God. That's all he needed to accept Naaman. No death, no sacrifice, just belief. Dr. Heiser once had a conversation with a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints about whether he would say that LDS members would be saved or not. Dr. Heiser said yes, he believed they would so long as they worshiped God and believed Jesus died for them. He believed that because of stories like Naaman and others where God accepted a pagan man who never would know any of the laws. But that begs the question, why did Jesus need to die to atone for our sins if God was already capable of accepting us before that?

Back to Dr. Ehrman, he talks about how historically, we have no original texts that were written by the disciples because they believed the world was going to end within their lifetimes. They believed that because Jesus believed it. He points out that it doesn't appear that when Jesus started his ministry that he knew he was going to die the way he did. In Mark Jesus is completely silent through his trial until he cries out asking God why he has forsaken him before dying. Which would be a weird thing for God to say if he knew beforehand what was happening, that always bothered me. Jesus was killed by Rome for claiming to be king of the Jews, and he was charged with that on the testimony of Judas most likely. Jesus' wasn't that large of a following, his ministry was mostly supported by women and had plenty of female leadership. It was surprisingly progressive for its time, evidence of equal female leadership and communal caretaking such as sharing food and housing each other. Then Judas wanted to take control and betrayed Jesus. Dr. Ehrman believes Jesus really was claiming to be king of the Jews in secret but given the stricken silence and everything I know about how abuse affects you I'm more inclined to suspect it was a lie to get rid of Jesus. Most likely because patriarchy hates it when women are treated like equals. Then us gentiles got ahold of it, as evidenced by the fact that Jesus and his disciples were all lower class and in those areas would have spoken Aramaic while the whole New Testament is written in Greek. Public schooling didn't exist back then, common people didn't learn multiple languages. That was for businessmen and the wealthy who had time for such things. But it was written in Greek during the time of Plato and his dialectic methods of philosophical argumentation and suddenly it's about rules and hellfire if you make the slightest mistake instead of being about taking care of each other and loving God. Now we have hell, a concept absent from the Old Testament, to terrify people into line or risk burning for eternity. Now instead of the freedom we were promised by the New Testament writers we have the same type of convoluted and impossible morality laws they had in the Old Testament made up entirely by men with little to no input from God. There is nothing new under the sun.

What if Jesus really was just a Rabbi trying to help people as best he knew how? What if we've turned him into a conveniently manipulatable figure head when that wasn't what he wanted and then set him in the background to wear a crown while we actually worshiped Paul and his writings? Paul, who claims to carry stigmata and has terrifying and confusing apocalyptic visions after committing murders. I feel like it's worth questioning because if that's true, both of those men would want us to figure it out and fix it. Both of them would want us to figure out the truth and get back to caring about each other.

[andillformthehead]

There is something indefinably calming about these.

Glitter Mixing  1  |  2  |  3  by jazzy_glitter

[andillformthehead]

Esteemed and Beloved Eldergoth Auntie Jilli, I was wondering if maybe you could help me? I saw once a year or two (or three? what is time) ago a 90s-era goth sewing pattern website of the url "gothfashion.io" or at least that's what I thought the url was. It doesn't pull up anything now. Would you happen to know what site that is? It had so many useful patterns on it TT_TT Regardless, I hope you have a wonderfully spooky day!

I bet you're looking for Antimony & Lace! (Which is "gothfashion. INFO".)

They're a fantastic resource, AND they're here on Tumblr! https://antimonyandlace.tumblr.com/

[andillformthehead]

My soul just made a long, drawn out, yeeeeeeesssssss.

Anyone wanna... ya know 👀

...🙈...

Go book shopping, then have a picnic in the park and read our new books under a nice shady tree?

[andillformthehead]

iconic

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jim kirk: *has idea*

jim kirk: *takes breath*

"muffled crashes heard throughout the enterprise, quickly getting louder, concluding with the appearance of a figure in the doorway*

leonard mccoy: no 

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One of the cutest gifs I've ever seen.

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This is easily the cutest thing I've seen all day.

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gothicchristian:

I’m so Goth, when I walk into the room you hear Toccata E Fuga in D Minor.

[andillformthehead]

Universal Monsters by Jason Edmiston / Website / Store

Part of the ‘The Universal Monsters Art Show’ at the Mondo Gallery / Tumblr

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Reblog if you're shorter than 5'8.

LOL JK…peasants.

[andillformthehead]

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Okay, so when I said my photodumping was over, it was before I saw this.  Now I'm done :)

[andillformthehead]