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lamortexiii · 4 years

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Cryptic Mystic: Karma, Keepers, or Something Else...

Karma, Keepers, or Something Else…: I am sure that you have heard the phrase “reap what you sow” at some point in your life, otherwise known as karma. Maybe you’ve experienced karma in your life. After all, we receive what we put out into the universe… or do we? Some believe there is a “keeper” or someone watching over us that protects us and provides us good or bad experiences based on how we interact with others (some may say “angels). If this is so, is this individual or universal? Maybe “keepers” are loved ones who have left their physical form, or maybe they are something that our human minds are currently incapable of understanding. For some this may even simply be a grandeur delusion brought on by narcissistic personality traits or possibly a mental disorder. A little unknown mixed in with a little psychology, served on a platter as per usual. Let’s dive right in to 2021 with this debatable topic, shall we?

I’ll start by informing you that karma actually possesses many meanings depending on what culture and country you are in. The most familiar American definition of karma - meaning that bad things happen to those who do bad things and good things happen to those who do good things - is but one definition of many. Now, this definition that we understand here in America is of course defined by what one perceives as good and bad - this can look different for many people. Having said this, there is no “one way” to believe in karma or to define what “good and bad” mean. For our purposes, I am going to define the terms karma, good, and bad in the most generalized sense that a majority of American society would view as the typical definition. Just know, this may or may not apply to your personal beliefs of what defines “good and bad” or your personal beliefs of what the definition of “karma” is. I completely agree that there are many viewpoints and perceptions and do not discount differences in opinions/beliefs by any means.

Karma originated from the Sanskrit term meaning “action, work, or deed.” It was a plain and simple definition, as if I were having a conversation with you and said, “The karma that he is completing on that house looks marvelous!” I realize how utterly ridiculous that sounds in today’s way of speaking - given the word was just used completely out of cultural context, but you get the point. The word “karma” at that time was just another word and carried little significance. That is, until 1000-700BCE when within the Vedic religion the definition of karma actually meant something that you likely would not guess. The definition took an abrupt and dramatic turn and was used to define not only the word “act,” but additionally it was defined as actions that took place regarding ritualistic and sacrificial occurrences.

Karma in itself has ancient roots in religion such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism to name a few. Karma is seen as a sort of rebirth process in which the way that an individual is in the present day affects their future - all within the same life cycle. Within this realm, karma also affects one’s samsara, or quality of life. In Asia karma is portrayed through symbols such as the endless knot, which symbolizes the never ending process of cause and effect. In knowing this, you can see why karma closely relates to the philosophical theory of causality, defined as when one event contributes to another event where the cause is partly responsible for the effect, and the effect is partly dependent on the cause. The idea of karma in this sense is seen as a never ending cycle - one that highly influences the circle of life. This is what we know and recognize in modern American society, as well as in many other first-world countries/cultures.

In current society we then view karma as defining the relationship of cause and effect. Some view this as a very spiritual term, believing that there is a higher power who controls the occurrences of karma. Others simply use the term with reckless abandon - not actually understanding what it means, as society has culturally appropriated the term to fit the American narrative. Yet others (myself included) question the occurrence of karma and the several possibilities that may be at play here. Whether you believe karma occurs due to a higher power, some other religious aspect, sheer luck, extraterrestrials, a delusional belief, something else, or maybe you don’t believe in it at all - and that’s okay! Regardless of what you believe, we’re going to dive into some of those possibilities today. As I always say, once you have read this blog it is up to you to ultimately decide what you believe.

From a personal standpoint, I have been in many situations where either I don’t know how I survived, or at the bare minimum how I managed to come out of certain situations unscathed. I have been in several car accidents that were so much more than just fender benders - coming out of all of those without a single scratch. I have never caused an accident, however for whatever reason I seem to be a target for idiots who don’t know how to drive. I guess I just have that attraction factor. All jokes aside, I consider myself lucky to have not been injured in any of the accidents that I have been in. I have to wonder how this is possible, but then another person can be in ONE accident and it’s all over.

I will share a more intimate incident with you that is much darker than a happenstance car accident. When I was much younger I tried to take my own life. I didn’t want to be in this body on this planet any longer. I remember thinking to myself - there has to be something better than this. I swallowed a bunch of unknown pills doused with alcohol. I attempted this on two different occasions. Both times made me extremely ill. The first time I vomited and then felt very tired. The second time I fell to the floor and almost became unconscious. I was very dizzy and couldn’t stand/walk. I went to sleep for several hours with a low heart rate and shallow breathing. However, after both of these occurrences many years later, I realize that I was put here for a bigger purpose. I have many reasons I am here - sharing this blog with you being one of them. I wasn’t meant to leave my physical form here on Earth either one of those times. I like to think that something is protecting me, however I cannot say with certainty what that is or why exactly…

My biological mother was in a bad car accident when she fell asleep at the wheel. It threw her from the car and knocked off both of her sneakers. She woke up laying in the grass without shoes. She told me that she doesn’t remember much, but that she saw white hands on her shoulders and felt like whatever that was had pushed her through the accident. She came out without any serious injuries - only suffering minor bruising. It is important to note that she has had similar experiences as I have with feeling things and experiencing premonitions.

To touch on karma a bit from a personal experience, I have a short but interesting story to tell. Growing up I didn’t have many true friends and found myself surrounded by individuals who acted in a manner that I did not understand. There was a lot of negative energy on behalf of those around me; jealousy, lies, deceit, bad intentions, and misery. I wasn’t treated very well by my peers or in relationships. In fact, I was bullied, mentally abused, and physically abused by several people as I grew from a child to an adolescent. Interestingly enough, I found that those who did absolutely wrong to me that had the worst of intentions always had something bad happen to them. One person that comes to mind was blown up in an explosion overseas while serving in the military. Another person was in a bad car accident. From what I know currently, all of these people who were utterly nasty to me continue to lead miserable lives - because they are in fact miserable people. Whether this is just their nature or that they just didn’t have the strength and willpower to seek better things for themselves is debatable. Nonetheless, none of them as far as I know are happy in the present day and have likely never experienced true real happiness. As described before, some of these people have had very bad things happen to them. Is this karma or maybe a keeper’s doing? I have no idea, but it is something I have turned over in my mind for many years, and continue to ponder on from time to time.

One theory some hold is that angels are protecting people. This could turn into a really big conversation, so I will try my best to stay objective here and stick to the main topic of karma and keepers. I challenge the theory of angels for the following reasons: The Bible was written by several people with several different versions available, as have all books that we know today. Christianity in itself, as well as several other religions point to the sky (or heavens) as being the source of an almighty power. What if angels are actually extraterrestrials and those who have experienced said “angels” rationalize their experience by putting a name on the experience, therefore believing it was a religious experience rather than something that they didn’t understand - as a form of coping with the unknown. That is my personal theory in relation to “keepers” and the “karma” experienced therein as being related to any type of angelic form. This also covers how extraterrestrials could very well be the forces pulling the strings. As humans we base our logical thinking on what it is we know to be true - or what we have been taught is the truth, but how do we really know? The short answer is - we don’t. It is much easier to put a label on something to be able to process what that thing is than to be left to wonder and be afraid of what we do not know and understand. It is much easier to read what others have written and blindly accept it as being “the truth” or “the way” without seeking further proof. Just a few things to think about - and this goes for any religion. Group-think is a good descriptive term that comes to mind.

The religious standpoint on karma and “keepers” has everything to do with psychology and the human brain and its functions. Think about it as I said before - the human brain naturally tries to rationalize and process new information in a way that is understandable and logical. This varies depending on who you are talking to of course, but is the ultimate foundation for religion. Beginning in ancient times before electricity, technology, and all of the wonderful (and not so wonderful) things we have now, the less intelligent brains of those before us attempted to rationalize what they were experiencing. Let me give you a universal example that is actually more recent - did you know at one point women were seen as being psychotic and even evil for having hormonal symptoms related to their menstrual cycle and even for having a menstrual cycle period? (no pun intended) Women were put through horrible treatment to try to treat PMS, and it was even seen as being a mental illness/disorder for a very long time! At one point in time menstruating women were seen as being involved in magic and sorcery (whoops, you got me!). To quote some religious scripture, “go apart from women during the monthly course, do not approach them until they are clean” Quran 2:222, “…in her menstrual impurity; she is unclean… whoever touches…shall be unclean and shall wash his clothes and bathe in water and be unclean until evening” Leviticus 15, and lastly from the first Latin encyclopedia, “Contact with menstrual blood turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison.” Okay… so… you realize how ridiculous all of this sounds, right? However, it was not ridiculous at the time - the people who lived in those times found a way to explain, rationalize, and describe what they felt was logical for explaining a woman’s menstrual cycle. Freud attempted to explain why people felt this way about menstrual cycles by stating that humans are naturally scared and uncomfortable around blood - again the human brain giving a logical explanation for why these thoughts and beliefs occurred. We know now through research and scientific data (actual tangible proof) that PMS is related to the shift in hormones women experience during that special time of month, which can cause a plethora of symptoms. This is easily treatable today with modern medicine or more holistic approaches - both of which have also been scientifically proven to work.

I know that last paragraph seems a little off course for this particular blog topic, but it carries a strong point that I feel necessary to make. Point being: religion is just another way the human brain tries to rationalize an event that is happening that is unexplained, new, different, abnormal, or scary; the same way that human brains of ancient times tried to rationalize with women bleeding from their vaginas. Having answers and an explanation gives people peace of mind. Once an idea becomes universal, again, it makes it easy to follow and just shrug the phenomena off as being caused by whatever is said by whoever is explaining it as their belief. The same is said for keepers, karma, and everything in between.

From a disorder perspective, it is very possible that some people believe in having a “keeper” because they are divine or special to a point of being above others. This behavior would likely fall under a more Narcissistic Personality Disorder or potentially some form of psychosis or schizophrenia. Reason being, these disorders involve hallucinations, delusions, and irrational beliefs that are of a bizarre nature. All three have key factors that make them different of course. For example, Narcissistic Personality Disorder revolves more around the person having selfish traits and not possessing the ability to connect with others all while believing they are of a certain prestige pedigree or above others. Psychosis and schizophrenia look similarly to one another in that both include symptomology involving hallucinations, delusions, and breaks from reality, however schizophrenia can actually cause psychosis. Additionally, patients diagnosed with schizophrenia may have symptoms of psychosis but not everyone with psychosis will be diagnosed with schizophrenia. Keeping it short here, but those are the basics of those three conditions. Knowing this, it is easy to see how someone could hold a belief that they have someone watching over them because they are special, or that some force is causing them to receive good karma or inflict bad karma on those who do them wrong.

Regardless of which way you choose to look at keepers and karma, both are definitely interesting phenomena that could use more research and productive discussions. Keeping an open-mind is always the path I personally choose to take because there are so many factors and options to consider before making a solid judgement on what the actual root cause of either one of these is. I wanted to kick 2021 off with an interesting yet somewhat debatable topic to really get you thinking. There are plenty more blogs in store where this one came from. This year will be much better than what we knew as 2020 (good riddance!) Here’s to another year full of education, knowledge, mystery, good conversation, and intriguing topics that really get those gears turning in your brain. Stay safe, be you, and never stop seeking the truth - whatever that truth is for you.

Cryptic Mystic Blog by PsychVVitch

www.LaMorteXiii.com

#crypticmystic #lhp #occultblog #witchcraft #wicca #pagan #highermagick #blackflame #coven #livedeliciously #thecraftyvvitch #psychvvitch #lamortexiii #luciferian #satanism #asabovesobelow #knowledge #freedom

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aemonded · 4 years

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What books are you currently reading? :)

Some of these I’m currently reading are books I’ve already read/ started reading, but had to put aside or haven’t reread in a long time. Others are books I’ve read for the first time, but I’m trying to catch up on as well. Lastly, I’ve got some books coming in the mail. I’ll note all categories below.

(Note: Books I’ve already read and rereading have an asterisk next to them, so you know they’re really good. xD)

Books I’m Currently Rereading:

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque*: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.’

Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller* (TW: As a novel and as someone who experienced underage sexual abuse, I acknowledge this could be very triggering and there are sections I have to skip by. However, the film starring Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett is so fantastic, and the material provided here so dark and so twisted, it’s a fantastic example of a double-twist and a fucked-up unreliable narrator): Notes on a Scandal is a 2003 novel by Zoë Heller. It is about a female teacher at a London comprehensive school who begins an affair with an underage pupil.

Jane Austen’s Persuasion* (Note: This is my favourite Jane Austen novel): ‘Of all Jane Austen’s great and delightful novels, Persuasion is widely regarded as the most moving. It is the story of a second chance. Anne Elliot, daughter of the snobbish Sir Walter Elliot, is woman of quiet charm and deep feelings. When she was nineteen she fell in love with—and was engaged to—a naval officer, the fearless and headstrong Captain Wentworth. But the young man had no fortune, and Anne allowed herself to be persuaded to give him up. Now, eight years later, Wentworth has returned to the neighborhood, a rich man and still unwed. Anne’s never-diminished love is muffled by her pride, and he seems cold and unforgiving. What happens as the two are thrown together in the social world of Bath—and as an eager new suitor appears for Anne—is touchingly and wittily told in a masterpiece that is also one of the most entrancing novels in the English language.’

Books I’ve Started Reading, But Had to Put Aside at One Point:

Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America by Beth Macy: ‘Dopesick is an unflinching look at the opioid crisis in the US, which is predicted to kill more Americans in a decade than HIV has since it emerged in the 1980s.'

Tesla: Inventor of the Modern by Richard Munson: ‘Nikola Tesla invented the radio, robots, and remote control. His electric induction motors run our appliances and factories, yet he has been largely overlooked by history. In Tesla, Richard Munson presents a comprehensive portrait of this farsighted and underappreciated mastermind.’

Me by Elton John: ‘In his first and only official autobiography, music icon Elton John reveals the truth about his extraordinary life, which is also the subject of the smash-hit film Rocketman.’

Circe by Madeline Miller: ‘In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child--not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power--the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur, Daedalus and his doomed son Icarus, the murderous Medea, and, of course, wily Odysseus.But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.’

Intellectual Property by Siva Vaidhyanathan: ‘We all create intellectual property. We all use intellectual property. Intellectual property is the most pervasive yet least understood way we regulate expression. Despite its importance to so many aspects of the global economy and daily life, intellectual property policy remains a confusing and arcane subject. This engaging book clarifies both the basic terms and the major conflicts surrounding these fascinating areas of law, offering a layman's introduction to copyright, patents, trademarks, and other forms of knowledge falling under the purview of intellectual property rights. Using vivid examples, noted media expert Siva Vaidhyanathan illustrates the powers and limits of intellectual property, distilling with grace and wit the complex tangle of laws, policies, and values governing the dissemination of ideas, expressions, inventions, creativity, and data collection in the modern world.’

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky: ‘The Brothers Karamazov is a passionate philosophical novel set in 19th-century Russia, that enters deeply into the ethical debates of God, free will, and morality. It is a spiritual, theological drama of moral struggles concerning faith, doubt, judgment, and reason, set against a modernizing Russia, with a plot which revolves around the subject of patricide.’

The Balkans by Mark Mazower: ‘Throughout history, the Balkans have been a crossroads, a zone of endless military, cultural, and economic mixing and clashing between Europe and Asia, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Orthodoxy. In this highly acclaimed short history, Mark Mazower sheds light on what has been called the tinderbox of Europe, whose troubles have ignited wider wars for hundreds of years. Focusing on events from the emergence of the nation-state onward, The Balkans reveals with piercing clarity the historical roots of current conflicts and gives a landmark reassessment of the region’s history, from the world wars and the Cold War to the collapse of communism, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the continuing search for stability in southeastern Europe.’

Books I’m Reading for the First Time:

Darling Rose Gold by Stephanie Wrobel (This is a guilty pleasure basically because I’m a True Crime nerd: It’s basically that Blanchard case in a novel form): ‘For the first eighteen years of her life, Rose Gold Watts believed she was seriously ill. She was allergic to everything, used a wheelchair, and practically lived at the hospital. Neighbors did all they could, holding fundraisers and offering shoulders to cry on, but no matter how many doctors, tests, or surgeries, no one could figure out what was wrong with Rose Gold.Turns out her mom, Patty Watts, was just a really good liar.After serving five years in prison, Patty gets out with nowhere to go and begs her daughter to take her in. The entire community is shocked when Rose Gold says yes.Patty insists all she wants is to reconcile their differences. She says she's forgiven Rose Gold for turning her in and testifying against her. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty Watts always settles a score. Unfortunately for Patty, Rose Gold is no longer her weak little darling...And she's waited such a long time for her mother to come home.’

The Plague by Albert Camus: ‘A gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.’

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway: ‘A Moveable Feast is a memoir by American author Ernest Hemingway about his years as a struggling young expat journalist and writer in Paris in the 1920s. The book, first published in 1964, describes the author's apprenticeship as a young writer while he was married to his first wife, Hadley Richardson.’

Books Coming in the Mail:

The Outsider by Albert Camus: ‘L'Étranger is a 1942 novel by French author Albert Camus. Its theme and outlook are often cited as examples of Camus's philosophy, absurdism coupled with that of existentialism, though Camus personally rejected the latter label.’

Becoming by Michelle Obama: ‘Becoming is the memoir of former United States first lady Michelle Obama published in 2018. Described by the author as a deeply personal experience, the book talks about her roots and how she found her voice, as well as her time in the White House, her public health campaign, and her role as a mother.’

Things Fall Apart: A Novel by Chinua Achebe*: ‘Things Fall Apart is the debut novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, first published in 1958. Its story chronicles pre-colonial life in the southeastern part of Nigeria and the arrival of Europeans during the late 19th century.’

E.M. Forster’s Maurice* (I accidentally ordered a copy when I already own one I couldn’t find and thought I had to donate moving home from uni. Whoops xD (But seriously you can never have too many copies of this book): ‘Maurice is a novel by E. M. Forster. A tale of homosexual love in early 20th-century England, it follows Maurice Hall from his schooldays through university and beyond. It was written in 1913–1914, and revised in 1932 and 1959–1960.’

Howard’s End by E.M. Forster: ‘Howard’s End is a novel by E. M. Forster, first published in 1910, about social conventions, codes of conduct and relationships in turn-of-the-century England. Howards End is considered by many to be Forster's masterpiece. ‘

War and Peace by Tolstoy: ‘War and Peace broadly focuses on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the most well-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves his family behind to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman who intrigues both men.’

I’m also hoping to order The Skin We’re In by Desmond Cole and How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram Kendi next time I get some cash in my pocket; the fact that the library still isn’t open locally and shows no sign of opening soon is wrecking havoc with any budgeting I might usually do. xD But hopefully this gives you some ideas for books to search out! <3

#literature #personal #reading recommendations #anonymous

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theosmatters · 5 years

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Are Atheists Smarter than Christians?

Aren’t Atheists generally smarter than Christians? Doesn’t it seem like the smart minded academics and scientists are Atheists and people of faith are not as intelligent? Culture could give us the idea that those of better intelligence do not have any belief in God, while people of lesser minds have a “God deficiency” in their brains.

Let’s begin by adding some qualifiers to the idea of being more intelligent. If we define intelligent to mean educational attainment level then there are some atheists who are more intelligent than some Christians. As an example Richard Dawkins, a very popular outspoken atheists and public debater against Christians and especially Creationist, is no doubt more intelligent than myself if we compare college degrees. Richard Dawkins has a PhD in biology and is a professor at an esteemed university in England. He can speak more intelligently than the average Christian about many things concerning biology.

However, this is not the end of the story. Popular culture and media seems to have portrayed a false story about Atheists. In Western societies it seems taken for granted that Atheists are the real intellects of society. They are too intelligent, too big minded, for any sort of belief in religion. However upon closer examination we find that in the matters of most importance Atheists are actually not more intelligent than Christians. This even applies to someone of the academic pedigree as Richard Dawkins.

What do I mean by saying Richard Dawkins is more intelligent than the average in certain areas especially biology? I mean he has achieved a higher educational level than many. Yet this is the really important question to ask, “Does this mean he is more qualified to know if God actually exists and if the universe evolved or was divinely created?” Certainly not! The problem atheists have is not one of academic intelligence, it is a problem of sin. They have traded away the intelligence of God for the intelligence of this world.

The Bible is not silent about this issue. The book of Proverbs is essentially teaching a person about how to be wise. Solomon begins the opening section of this book by explaining to us the first step to being a wise person. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge…”(Proverbs 1:7, NKJV). Solomon is clear that for a person to truly gain knowledge, they must first acknowledge their need and reverence for the one true God. If a person is to truly gain wisdom, they must first be in a right relationship with God. Wisdom’s first lesson is, “Do you fear the Lord?” Without this first crucial step, all wisdom and knowledge that follows will be tainted with sin and incomplete without God.

Solomon finishes the verse this way, “But fools despise wisdom and instruction.” (NKJV). So a wise person fears God. Fear here does not mean to be afraid of God. Fear rather means a reverence and respect for God because of who He is and His powerful authority over our lives. However a fool despises wisdom. What does this mean? Solomon means that a foolish person is the one who does not acknowledge God’s authority over their lives. Therefore they shut themselves off to truly gaining wisdom.

This means that Richard Dawkins is highly intelligent by the world’s standards. However he is also very ignorant and by the Bible’s definition, a fool. How can both be true? Because the intelligence of this world is temporary and ironically it is limited when compared to the wisdom of God.

Someone may ask, “How can an atheist like Richard Dawkins be so educated yet still not believe in God? Does this mean we Christians are wrong and since he is more educated in Biology we should accept what he says about evolution being true?” The Bible also addresses this.

The problem that someone like Richard Dawkins has is not a lack of enough evidence for God’s existence. The problem is that he has been so darkened in his heart and mind by sin that he refuses to accept the evidences of God right in front of his face. The Bible teaches that sin is not just when we do actions that go against God’s will, but it is a condition every person has due to the curse of Adam (Genesis 3). We come into this world sinners needing salvation, not saints who lost our way. The Bible teaches that one of the effects of sin on a person before they come to faith in Jesus is it causes spiritual blindness.

Passages such as: John 3:1-20; 2 Corinthians 4:3-4; and Ephesians 2:1-3, 4:17-19 teach us that people with Jesus are blinded spiritually, bound to a sinful nature, and the results are a distorted and insufficient ability to think rightly about the world and God. Practically speaking, this means that atheists can be intelligent by the world’s standards but they are actually fools. The Bible refers to a fool as someone who refuses to acknowledge God. I want to stress again the word refuses. Paul teaches in Romans 1:18-32 that the problem with sinful mankind is not that God has hidden Himself. Rather sinful man suppress the truth about God with his own sinfulness.

Richard Dawkins does not believe in God because he does not want to believe in God. Atheists who claim they are the more intelligent are actually saying they do not want to believe in God. Because once they believe in God’s existence then they become accountable to a higher Being for how they live their lives. Sinful people by nature run from God.

The pop-cultural notion that Atheists are more intelligent than Christians is certainly not true. Society pushes this idea because they want to make Christians feel stupid for believing in a God we have never seen like you can a person. But the Bible says creation speaks very loudly that God is real and exists. Historical evidence shows us Jesus truly lived and rose again. Atheists who claim they are too intelligent for believing in God are trying to give the impression that they have out grown beliefs in the supernatural. They claim that they believe science and facts, thus giving the impression that if you are a person of faith, then you are not a person of science and logic. It’s ironic though that the facts of science can change. What was once thought to be scientific fact 200 years ago has been discarded, or altered countless times. However the Word of God stands unchanged and never proven wrong.

Atheists who claim they are higher minded are deep down trying cover up their own guilt and provide an excuse for themselves to not be held accountable before holy God. Any God fearing Christian is honestly more intelligent than them because they: believe in God, have faith in Jesus, and stand on God’s Word (the Bible) as the source for truth. These are honestly the most reasonable beliefs to have when you look at the evidence. The Bible declares God’s truth and has never been proven wrong despite anyone’s claims to the contrary. Challenge anyone when they make these claims and ask them to back them up with proof. They will also fall upon their own sword if you press them to be consistent with their own belief system that their is no God. Their own worldview cannot hold up to its own weight.

What is truly ironic is that Atheists who claim to be more intelligent than Christians have to borrow from the Christian worldview to make their anti-Christian claims. They steal from Christian philosophies and Biblical teachings to support their own claim that God does not exist.

Atheists are not more intelligent despite their claims. Their refusal to believe in God is not a sign of their intelligence, but rather is a sign of their sinfulness. God has made Himself clearly evident in various ways, but Atheists refuse to acknowledge Him. The Bible tells us sin has darkened mans’ understanding to think right about God. The Bible also tells us the intelligence of this world cannot compare to the intelligence God gives to His followers.

Do not buy into the false pop-cultural myth that Atheists have higher minds and higher intelligence. This is a great hoax to convince Christians to abandon their faith. Their are many intelligent and highly educated Christian scientists, doctors, lawyers, academics, and more. Do not let degree acronyms fool you into thinking that person must know what they are talking about if they say they don’t believe in God. All this means is that they are highly educated fools who refuse to bow the knee to their Creator who grants them the privilege to breathe the air He created to sustain their God-denying lives.

#Atheism

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forestwater87 · 5 years

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Cutting Myself on all this Edge

This post has no reason to exist, except that I keep bothering my friends with literally dozens of messages making fun of this and I need a place to keep it all.

What is “this”? Oh, just some people having some Fucking Strong Opinions about how Harry Potter is the Pied Piper (they use that comparison multiple times. It gets old fast) leading our children into the End Times with its pro-illuminati Satan-worshiping witchcraft lessons. You know, the usual.

And no, this isn’t a battle of Forest vs. the Crazy Christians; I’m like 94% sure I’m not working through any sort of religious trauma, partly because I never went deep into this kind of mentality but mostly because I’m just delighted by The Cutting Edge, a website for a very specific type of Christian (no, not you, Catholics. You’re specifically not invited to the Cutting Edge club because you worship demons) interested in the New World Order, the evils of public schools, and Satan’s favorite color.

No, really.

Satan’s favorite color is green. They don’t . . . really explain why.

This site still exists and is the best thing I’ve ever seen. Hours of fun for the whole family. I mean, look at their logo:

And look at their illustration that goes along with their particular Harry Potter series:

Are you not entertained?!

I cannot stop reading these amazing essays -- which delve surprisingly deep into Potter lore, considering they say that there is no sufficient reason for a Christian to ever read a single page of these books -- and I can’t keep harassing my friends with thousands of notifications, so here we are.

Starting small, let’s read the book review for Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s/Philosopher’s Stone. Or, as they prefer to call it:

This book chronicles Harry's first year at the Hogwart's School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. Prepare to be shocked for the bold, blatant, and bodacious raw Satanism that underlines this story! Since "proper"Drug Use is essential in opening the centres of vision and achieving higher consciousness, we should not be surprised that First-Year students learn Drug Use, Drug creation, in a way that makes Drug use seem glorious! You will be shocked to see '666 ' in the story line, and symbols of Antichrist receiving a "fatal wound"!

That’s the entire subtitle. That’s just how they roll on

THE CUTTING EDGE

Part 1: The . . . Plot? I Guess?

This story introduces us to Harry Potter, an orphaned boy sent to live with his "horrible" Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and their fat, obnoxious son, Dudley.

I feel very comfortable with the fact that Cutting Edge has chosen to put scare quotes around the word “horrible,” like that’s up for debate. Combined with the very normal and sane opinions expressed elsewhere on the site, this really bodes well for their ideas about parenting and childcare in general.

all through this book, any non-witch folk -- like Vernon and Petunia -- are depicting in disgusting language.

Typo is theirs, as is the apparent offense they take to the fictional depiction of people who are very much not real. While there hasn’t been any exciting formatting going on yet in this essay, I will replicate it as much as possible, and any changes made will be clearly indicated through square brackets and ellipses.

Non-witch people are known as Muggles , and they are depicting as being "dumber than a box of rocks", of being physically obscene, and of living the most boring, unimaginative lives possible.

I was going to argue that this isn’t true, but I suppose we don’t really meet any cool Muggles in the first book. I guess I have to give them this, but I don’t feel good about it.

Witches, on the other hand, are depicted as being very smart, very "with it", of being physically normal, and of living wonderfully exciting lives

It bears repeating:

a flashback scene to the time 10 years earlier when Harry's Mom and Dad were psychically murdered by evil Lord Voldemort

Okay. Now I’m no Potterologist, and so I’m hoping any true believers will correct me if I misinterpret the holy texts,* but I don’t think Harry’s parents were psychically murdered by anyone. I’m pretty sure they were quite literally, physically made dead. Just because it’s a beam of magic doesn’t mean it’s not physical anymore, does it? Voldy didn’t Professor-X Harry’s parents and they died of three D10 psychic damage or anything; he just fucking killed them with a wizard gun. Am I wrong here?

*By which I obviously mean Harry Potter. It teaches children how to become Satanists; we’re clearly dealing with a book of immense spiritual relevance.

Skipping a little bit of plot summary, which is a combination of, well, summary of the plot, although Cutting Edge is determined to get Hogwarts’ name wrong, and a little bit of baffling End-Times(?) nonsense thrown in for funsies --

Of course, a Christian would be immediately alerted to this turn of events [in which Harry defeats Voldemort and is scarred] because soon a supernaturally powerful global leader will demand everyone on earth take some sort of a mark in exactly this place on the body.

What?

-- and there’s some weird formatting things going on that I think are supposed to imply something sinister but really just come off as goofy:

They have Harry on a boat headed for nowhere and they had every intention of keeping Harry from ever attending Hogwarts School. However, Harry receives supernatural assistance.

(It’s not letting me do colors on desktop, which is stupid, but that “supernatural” is supposed to be both bold and red)

There’s a long description about the difference between the Real and Fantasy worlds, which apparently Satanists try to live in both of (and so does Harry, making him also a Satanist. This is actually one of the less-stupid arguments Cutting Edge has for Harry’s Satanism, so just go with it) that’s honestly more boring than funny so I’m skipping it. Then we get to a much more fun section: why Rowling’s descriptions of Muggles are . . . teaching children to hate Jesus?

Part 2: Rowling Hates Muggles

Rowling consistently depicts people who do not practice Witchcraft in most obnoxious terms. They are depicted as being really, really dumb, boring, and living a life not worth living . We share these examples, below, with you so you can appreciate the truth of this statement. Uncle Vernon was also the only Muggle quoted in the book as being really opposed to Witchcraft; therefore, when readers see how stupid, ugly, and boring Vernon is, they get the idea that all people who are opposed to Witchcraft must be as stupid, ugly, and boring as Vernon is.

... Are all people opposed to Witchcraft cowardly bullies?

I mean, you are the one going after a children’s book for daring to entertain children, so if the shoe fits . . .

"Harry was glad school was over, but there was no escaping Dudley's gang ... Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader." [p. 31] How do you know your own child does not think of you in these terms? After all, you are a non-magical Muggle.

I actually can’t complain, because this is just accurate. I 100% hate my parents and think they’re stupid because they’re not literally witches/wizards. Our relationship has never fully recovered.

"Uncle Vernon made another funny noise, like a mouse being trodden on." [p. 47] Remember Adolf Hitler, the most famous Black Magick wizard in modern history? He depicted Jews as Rats in his Propaganda Machinery, convincing the Germans they should extermination the "vermin".

GODWIN’S LAW HAS LANDED!

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN AND EVERYTHING OUTSIDE OR IN-BETWEEN, WE HAVE OFFICIALLY COMPARED HARRY POTTER TO HITLER!

We find it highly interesting that, later in the book, when the Evil Lord Voldemort is supposedly killing the unicorn in the Forbidden Forest, the color of the blood of the unicorn is silver!

Okay, but like . . . why? I mean, it immediately follows a description of the Bloody Baron, who is depicted with silvery blood because he’s, like, a ghost, but I’m not sure what that has to do with unicorns or with Satan. Are unicorns associated with Satan? Is silver associated with Satan?

Is everything Satan? Am I Satan?

There’s a lot of rage at a gentleman named Chuck Colson throughout this section, who apparently made the grave error of telling parents it was okay for their children to read Harry Potter because it doesn’t involve contact with the supernatural. And I’ll admit, that seems like a pretty bad defense of the books, because if you define “supernatural” as ghosts, poltergeists, or whatever the hell Voldemort is, then there is absolutely a metric buttload of supernatural stuff in here.

Arguably, a better defense of why it’s okay for children to read these children’s books is that they are books made for children, but YMMV on that one. Probably depends on whether or not you think children are sitting in the giant metaphorical (or literal? Not sure Cutting Edge gets metaphors) lap of the Antichrist every time they pick up the books.

(A visual reminder.)

Part 3: Basically Part 2, But This Time There Are Colors

The next section is on colors, which are very important to Cutting Edge. As linked back in the very beginning of this post, there is an entire essay devoted to the demonic colors used in the Harry Potter books, but we get just a taste of it here:

Rowling makes use of vivid colors in her story line. Some of these colors are consistent with the colors preferred by Satan and his followers in the Occult. Rowling's use of such vivid colors also enables her to paint the Fantasy Reality of Witchcraft as THE most exciting place to live. Wizard of Oz uses the same technique: when Dorothy is in her real world in Kansas, the color is black and white, but when she steps into her Fantasy Reality, the scene explodes in the most wonderful color.

Interesting interpretation. An alternative view is that Rowling needs to use more descriptors for things within the Wizarding World, because her readers won’t have the same frame of reference to draw from that they do with real-life objects and events in the Muggle World, and one can assume that these lovely descriptions are part of her being a, y’know, good and evocative writer, and the colors are just related to how she pictured the world she was creating.

But I mean, yours is good, too.

Actually, the citations provided by Cutting Edge don’t depict anything especially vivid; it’s not like she’s throwing massive amounts of purple prose at the descriptions of the Satanic green of Harry’s eyes. In fact, the only enhancer used is “emerald” at one point. For the most part, this essayist is just . . . noticing when the word “green” appears in the text and calling it a siren song to entice good Christian children out of the colorless world of reality and goodness and into the technicolor dreamland of magic and mayhem.

Also, please remember that Satan has a favorite color, and it’s green. For all birthdays and Christmases (or wait, whatever the Satanic version of Christmas is! Halloween?), please make sure all gifts are green or green-adjacent.

Even though Harry is nearly as powerful as a Black Magick practitioner, and could easily have decided to go over to that side, he declines to go over to the Dark Arts. Dumbledore assures Harry that he is not evil as Lord Voldemort. However, as a symbol of the Black Arts he could perform, Rowling makes Harry's eyes green.

This observation -- and I use the term loosely -- implies that every single Slytherin and villain of the Harry Potter series would have green eyes, to demonstrate their capacity for evil. The fact that this is obviously not the case must just be a red herring.

Part . . . 4, I think?: Drugs, Magic, and Magic Drugs

Harry and his friends learn how to makedrugs, and the glory of taking them.

The fact that they don’t actually take any in this book is entirely irrelevant. (”Drugs” should also be red as well as bolded. It’s very serious business.)

The plant, wormwood, contains thujone, an hypnotic drug, banned by the FDA since 1915 [Christian News, "Latest Potter Book Meets Cautionary Response From Christians, July 17, 2000] ; further, wormwood is used to make Absinthe, a hallucinogenic liquor. Therefore, the drug to which Rowling makes reference is very real, and is so dangerous the FDA has banned it -- to this day, it is banned!

While thujone was illegal at the time of this essay in the United States, it was actually never banned in the UK . . . you know, where these books take place and were written? I don’t think Rowling gives a solitary fuck about our FDA standards. Also, I don’t know if you could just straight-up buy wormwood on whatever the equivalent of Amazon was in 1998 (was it just Amazon?), but you sure can now. Can’t be all that scary.

You can hardly get a better description of drug use, and drug glorification than this!

I wonder why they keep using red to emphasize all these evil things . . . you’d think they’d go with Satan’s favorite color/the sign that Harry is the Antichrist to really jazz up all of the evil.

"The drug message in this book is clear. To reach your goals in life like Harry Potter, you need to know how to make drugs and take drugs in just the right way or else you are a 'dunderhead' and will never succeed." [http://www.fflibraries.org/Book_Reports/HarryPotter ; written by a physician and father who asked to remain anonymous].

The fact that this URL doesn’t lead me to that review is one of the saddest things I’ve faced all month.

The sections on spellcasting are far less interesting, reiterating a pretty simple refrain: all magic is bad, because the books say some magic is good then the books are bad, it’s all teaching children about Satanism. Rinse and repeat.

During final exams, teachers passed out special quills with which to write; these quills had been "bewitched with an Anti-Cheating spell". The reason none of the teachers felt they could trust the honor of the students to not cheat is obvious enough; in Witchcraft, no Absolute Good and Evil exists. All objective, eternal standards of conduct and morality have been rejected. Therefore, teachers knew full well that all the students would cheat on their final exams if they thought they could get away with it. It is a sad commentary that teachers had to place an Anti-Cheating spell on the quills to prevent exams cheating. Christian parent, is this the "morality" you want your students to learn?

Now, it might just be my obvious Satanist addiction to witchcraft talking, but doesn’t it seem more likely that there’s an anti-cheating spell because sometimes . . . children cheat? And no amount of Good Wholesome Christian Teaching is going to completely eradicate the desire to cheat on a test, because of course it isn’t.

It’s not because the school has taught the students that cheating is okay and cool and sexy or whatever -- in fact, if you want evidence that there is an absolute moral standard against cheating, it would be that the teachers are actively taking steps to prevent it! If witchcraft really was all about how there’s no such thing as good and evil . . . well, for one thing they wouldn’t teach Defense against the motherfucking Dark Arts, but they also wouldn’t care if their students cheated enough to provide anti-cheating quills, because they wouldn’t consider cheating a bad thing, because they wouldn’t consider anything a bad thing!

Also, I’m not sure what listing all of the spells in the book and what they do really says about Satanism, except that . . . spells exist, and are used? Which I feel like you should really expect from the book about magic and wizards; if that’s an alarming surprise, then you’ve made a wrong turn somewhere way earlier down the road.

Part whatever: Seriously, Rowling is just ALL ABOUT Satan

This entire section is basically about how JKR must be a Satanist, because she apparently depicts the world of magic and the occult with perfect accuracy, and how could she do that except through being an active practicing witch herself?

Mirrors are believed to be a portal to another dimension, including Time. Occultists believe they can go forward or backward in Time with a mirror being one of the Dimensional Portals. Harry encounters a mirror, "magnificent ... as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gold frame, standing on two clawed feet ... Harry stepped in front of it. He had to clasp his hand to his mouth to stop himself from screaming ... for he had seen, not only himself in the mirror but a whole crowd of people standing right behind him ... 'Mom?', he whispered. 'Dad?' They just looked at him, smiling ... Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life." [p. 208-9]

Intriguing theory, except of course for the fact that the mirror isn’t a portal to jack shit; unless you count the weird trick where he can get the stone (and only the stone) through wishes or whatever the fuck these idiots do, and all it does is show someone what they want. It’s not actually reaching into the past to find Harry’s parents or whatever, just like it’s not actually reaching into a parallel dimension future where Ron is the king of everything. It’s just . . . idk, reading their subconscious and throwing up a neat visual or something. With magic. It’s complex, but it’s definitely not what Cutting Edge says it is.

Not pictured: a portal to another physical, metaphysical or temporal dimension. It’s literally . . . just a mirror, but a mirror that reflects your insides instead of your outsides. It’s clever or something.

Do you realize Rowling has just made the creator of the Sorcerer's Stone 666 years old? Do you realize what this means? Since the number, '666', is a symbol of Antichrist and his Mark of the Beast [Revelation 13:18] and since Rowling ties this number to the Elixir of Life, Harry Potter is teaching children that the way to achieve eternal life [Elixir of Life] is to obey the Antichrist and take his Mark of the Beast!

Fucking. Yes. I don’t even have witty commentary for this, I’m just delighted by every word in that section. I’m smiling so much.

This is a gift and we’re reading it for free!

Wonderful! We have the forbidden practice of drinking blood in this Potter book, forbidden in Scripture [Genesis 9:4-5] but practiced regularly in Satanism. I wonder if Chuck Colson, Focus On The Family, and Christianity Today ever told their Christian followers about this? Have they even read this book, before they issued their acceptance of Potter?

Don’t you dare try to employ sarcasm. People who believe in the Illuminati and New World Order are not allowed to be sarcastic -- even if the thought of this faceless stranger typing that little clever “Wonderful!” and smirking to themselves about how witty they are is a very, very good mental image.

Also, what the fuck did unicorns do to deserve being associated with the Antichrist? I mean, I get the color green; it’s the color of nature and the outdoors, and that shit fucking sucks. (Fuck you, trees!) But unicorns?

Unicorns have never done anything to anyone, ever. Unicorns couldn’t be Satanists if they tried.

This means evil Lord Voldemort -- whose killing curse upon Harry, his Mom, and his Dad had rebounded against him when Harry did not die -- is near death, and is seeking to drink the Unicorn's blood to stay alive long enough to finally achieve eternal life through drinking the '666' Elixir of Life.

Yes, that is -- sort of -- the plot of this book.

This is the specific New Age doctrine being taught here: people will have to draw their temporary spiritual life from The Christ until the time comes when their individual consciousness will have been raised so much they will achieve their personal godhood, and live forever!

This concept is genuine New Age, is consistent with prophecy, and Rowling depicts it very well!

Christian parents, do you want your child to be taught this New Age doctrine? Can you see Harry Potter playing the Pied Piper and leading your children straight to the Mark of the Beast?

Pied Piper count: 1 (that’s not a lot so far, but it’s used in like every essay. It’ll come back)

I don’t know how to tackle this, because I’m not sure Cutting Edge really understands that Voldemort is the bad guy in these books. Children aren’t going to read this book and then go, “Cool! I’m gonna go stab a unicorn and drink its essence because my favorite role model You-Know-Who told me to!”

The unicorn blood thing is unilaterally portrayed as a pretty bad move. Voldemort’s goals in general are pretty obviously not great ideas. I know Cutting Edge doesn’t have the benefit of hindsight here, but Voldemort’s quest for immortality and how bad and wrong and fucked-up that is, is kind of one of the major through-lines of the entire story. It could be argued that it’s not Voldy’s desire to live forever that’s wrong so much as his whole, like, genocide thing, which is legit . . . except that all the methods to attain immortality involve killing someone, or stealing something, or otherwise being Not a Good Dude.

Voldemort is Not a Good Dude, and I don’t know how to communicate that any clearer than the books written for third graders already did.

Part 6: I don’t really know, I just wanted a chance to break this endless essay up and this seemed like a good place to do it. So let’s talk about spells some more

Many spells require both the taking of drugs and demonic possession, so it is a matter of gravest importance that Harry is actually going to learn to cast spells. When Chuck Colson dismisses the casting of spells as innocent and of no real importance, did he know this fact?

I seem to have missed the part where Harry goes off his ass on LSD and gets possessed by B’aal. Was that in the Silmarillion?

whenever a witch changes the physical characteristics of something, he or she is practicing very high-level witchcraft, has a high level of demonic possession, and has had to carry out human sacrifice themselves or have someone else do it for them.

“It’s fiction” is often a bullshit excuse to justify bad framing, but I feel like it applies here, because maybe in the “real” world spellcasting requires you to trip balls and summon demons, but it’s extremely obvious that it doesn’t work like that in Harry Potter! You can’t just say that’s what the books are teaching when the books aren’t actually teaching anything even close to that!

(I’m starting to feel like my emphasis italics are having a similar effect to Cutting Edge’s red bolded letters. Fuck if I’m gonna stop using them, though.)

If Harry and his pals were wearing goat heads and putting virgins into a giant blender or something I think you might have an argument here, but when the people reading your essay have eyes and can see that the things you’re describing aren’t anywhere in the books, you’re just lying. And it’s very obvious, and I still love you, Cutting Edge, but you’re being disingenuous and it’s starting to kill my joy-boner to constantly have to point out the ways you’re misunderstanding a children’s book, especially when I think you’re kinda doing it on purpose. So how about you chill just a little bit and we’ll all read some Harry Potter together.

Magical Drafts and Potions , by Arsenius Jigger. Some of the potions are very real, very deadly.

Wait, did Rowling publish this one, too? How do you know what’s in the book? Does the book list some real potions and how to make them, or is this another thing that’s only available in the Cutting Edge’s copy of the books?

Students were told they could also "bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad." [p. 67] These three creatures are important to an occultists. Satanists have always revered the cat because of its reputed "nine lives", which is a symbol of reincarnation. Cats are also symbols of a witch's familiar spirit.

They have revered the frog because his prominent bulging eyes represent the All-seeing nature of Lucifer. Frogs are also consistently used in many of the potions witches concoct. They revere owls as a symbol of occult wisdom and omniscience -- again because of their eyes.

So fuck cats, I guess. They’re being pretty unfair to owls and frogs too -- especially insulting their poor eyes. They can’t help it! -- but I’m a crazy cat lady and I’m not feeling this slander.

Actually . . . my cat looks pretty high right now. Maybe she is channeling Satan.

Okay, never mind. Fuck all these animals. They’re all evil. This article is entirely right, and I renounce all of my previous statements.

McGonagall has obviously mastered her Craft because she was the tabby cat seen by Uncle Vernon reading a map, back in chapter one. Remember that any time a witch or wizard practices transfiguration, they need expert spell-casting, and demonic possession. I bet no one ever told you that little fact, did they?

No, they didn’t, because it’s not even remotely relevant to the fictional book written for children.

Like, I’m trying very hard to not question anyone’s religious beliefs, so if you believe in the occult and magic and all that then more power to you, and maybe it’s totally valid to think that real-life magic spells requires demonic possession. That doesn’t make it true in the books, though! Stop making shit up!

Potions Class -- taught in one of the dungeons [p. 136] How disgusting must the atmosphere for this class, and others, taught in a dungeon, which was built to torture people to death?

If only the classroom, teacher, and overall environment for the Potions classes was meant to be as viscerally unpleasant as possible. Then putting them in the dungeons would be a really good idea, to reflect the Slytherins’ backwards beliefs and the misery of their intolerance.

Like, JKR isn’t this subtle. When you name one of your antagonists “Bad Dragon,” you’re not aiming for this subconscious-symbolism bullshit.

Part 7: Did you think this book had a good moral? Fuck you!

The fundamental occult/Communist philosophy

Well, I guess we’re talking about Communism now! Because if there’s anything Harry Potter is interested in above all else, it’s Communism.

My favorite things about these essays is how they will pull in other social ills -- abortion, public schools, communism -- and slap them into their argument regardless of if it makes any semblance of sense.

Anyway, Cutting Edge actually has a legitimate argument here, although they take it about 50 steps too far:

the "Ends Justify The Means" permeates this entire book. To achieve a goal deemed good, Harry and his friends consistently break rules, steal, and use Witchcraft against others.

It is true that Harry and his friends break the rules, lie, and otherwise do “bad” things in the service of an ultimate good, and that they suffer relatively few consequences for it. This is a legitimate point, and actual people who know things agree.

I’ve been struck speechless by this article before, but this is the first time it’s because I think they might have an actual point.

Hermione was very mildly punished [for her lie to the professors about why they were fighting the troll], but her lie cemented a friendship with Ron and Harry, leading a child to conclude that her lie served an excellent purpose, and could not be considered 'wrong'.

I mean . . . yeah? I don’t think it’s entirely reasonable to assume that children will take that lesson away, but I read it as a child and I certainly didn’t think Hermione was wrong to lie -- nor do I now, which I suppose proves just how powerful the Satanic conditioning was.

Professor Quirrell told Harry, "There is no good or evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it ." [p. 291] This is standard Witchcraft, and standard Illuminist doctrine. This doctrine is the guiding light to those Illuminists who are driving the world into the Kingdom of Antichrist. This doctrine is very seductive to those immature children trying to grow up in our current culture; since a child's inherent nature is evil, he will find such philosophy more appealing than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Christian parents, beware!

Oh thank God Satan, we’re back to the bullshit. I was getting seriously weirded out by the idea that they had good points buried in here somewhere, but now we’re just faced with the argument that the bad guy says . . . bad things . . . and is defeated because his bad ideas are obviously bad and wrong . . . and this proves that the book is teaching children to believe the bad things?

No one reads these books and wants to be the bad guys, Cutting Edge. Kids aren’t buying Harry Potter wands and robes to pretend that they’re Quirrell, trying to keep people from finding out they have a Dark Lord on the back of their head. (Though now that I’ve mentioned it, that sounds like a very fun game.)

Depicting bad things in a way that makes it clear -- to children, I must reiterate -- that they’re bad isn’t the same thing as romanticizing or promoting those bad things. This is basic stuff, CE.

Revenge Motive : "Hagrid almost had to drag Harry away from Curses and Countercurses (Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair Loss, Jelly-Legs, Tongue-Tying, and Much, Much More , by Vindictus Viridian." [p. 80] Throughout these books, seeking revenge and attacking your enemies is high on the priority list of Harry, his friends, and other students. Do you want your children to adopt this most Satanic attitude? Notice the first name of the author of this revenge book, above, is named "Vindictus, i.e., Vindictive".

Students are taught to depend upon Witchcraft for every part of their lives . All food is conjured up rather than prepared, all the dishes are conjured clean, and even the hospital depends upon Witchcraft to get students well [p. 156]. Neville Longbottom, one of the more clumsy students, received a crystal ball from his grandmother called a Remembrall . The ball glows scarlet if you have forgotten something you should have done. [p. 145]

That’s . . . fuck, that’s actually kind of another good point. Stop kinda making sense, goddamn it!

A lot of the criticism is just that the things wizards do are cool, which will make kids want to become witches/wizards in order to do those cool things, too. And to be fair, the stuff Harry et. al. does are cool, and I did want to be a witch when I grew up. Fortunately, I was in third grade, and so my options for witchcraft were relatively limited; by the time I was old enough to pursue the endeavor properly, I was also old enough to know that it was actually nothing like Harry Potter. If magic actually was anything like those books make it seem, we’d have a lot more witches running around, zapping shit.

Possible reference to homosexuality . When I was first researching Harry Potter, I examined several pro-Potter websites. The author of one of the articles said that one of the probable developments she felt would occur in the latter books was the advent of homosexuality in the story theme. She said such activity was only hinted at in the first books.

Oh dear god, Cutting Edge found the shippers. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.

(I wonder if this means they’ve also read the Draco Trilogy.)

I do have to take issue with one last point in this bit about morals, where they talk about how scarring it might be to a child to see Voldemort possessing the back of Quirrell’s head:

Rowling could not have created a better description of demonic possession by a dark and powerful demon! Christian parent, is this the type of thing you want your child to bring into their minds?

Thing is, I’ve been in a lot of Christian circles for most of my life, and this sounds exactly like the kind of dark, traumatizing thing many religious parents would be happy to put into their children’s minds.

Part Almost Done: Definitely Intentional Satanic Symbols, Really

Hey, did you know the number 11 was occultist? I didn’t, and when I Googled it, 4 of the front-page results were Christian or conspiracy groups making this claim, 2 were unclear, and 3 actually seemed to indicate some level of belief in the power of the number 11. Though I might’ve stacked the deck with the word “occult”; when I changed my search term to “magic,” I found almost exclusively positive articles about the symbolic power of the number 11, so . . . Cutting Edge isn’t necessarily wrong.

But boy, did you know how many times the number 11 shows up in Sorcerer's Stone? Not very much, but if we stretch our credibility a little bit, we might see something spooky!

Harry was eleven (11) when he was admitted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The number eleven is considered sacred to the occultist, as it is the first primary number. Occultists will also add up numbers to get an occult number that is sacred; thus, I was highly interested when the bank vault maintained for Harry by his Mom and Dad before their death was numbered '713' [p. 73]. When you add '7 + 1 + 3 = 11'. Then, we learn that, in the money of the Fantasy Reality, "twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle". When you add 2 + 9 = 11.

When Harry found the wand that was meant for him, it turned out to be 11 inches long! [p. 84]

The Hogwarts Express Train left at 11 o'clock from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. [p. 91]

Oh man, that’s some convincing evidence. Evidence of what, I have no idea, but it uses math and I’m sure it’s very alarming!

" Sorcerer's Stone " is also called the "Philosopher's Stone", and is very, very Satanic! Rosicrucianism teaches that an Initiate will pass through five stages to become the highest Adept possible, to be most proficient in exercising the power of Satanism. They call this process the "Five Stages In The Transmutation of the Soul". The final stage is depicted by the Phoenix Bird; the Adept is then said to have achieved the "Sorcerer's Stone". Thus, the fact that the term, "Sorcerer's Stone" is in the title of this book suggests that the ultimate goal of all students at Hogwarts is to achieve the Sorcerer's Stone.

Wow, that sure is an interesting interpretation of the rock that shows up in the book for like 6 pages and then is immediately destroyed! Alternate theory, if you’re open to it: It’s a rock, named the Philosopher’s Stone because the Philosopher’s Stone is historically the name of a rock, called the philosopher's stone, and it's literally just a rock and doesn't mean anything Satanist because it's a fucking ROCK.

(Pictured: A rock)

There’s a really odd part right after the long discussion about how alchemy and unicorns and whatnot are Satanic Illuminati symbols, where CE just takes a moment to explain the game of Quidditch. No commentary beyond a sassy little “[Even the Quidditch balls are 'enchanted'].” Just . . . sort of letting you know how the game is played.

To be fair, this is quite a valuable service, since I don’t think anyone actually understands how Quidditch works, but I’m not sure what it’s doing sandwiched between two declarations of Harry Potter’s obvious evil.

PART THE LAST THANK GOD: WHO THE FUCK NEEDS A SUBTITLE IT’S ALMOST OVER

The first few paragraphs are standard boilerplate conclusion stuff, reiterating the rest of the story, continued misunderstanding that bad things are done by the bad guys, no there really are drugs and Illuminati propaganda in here I promise, yadda yadda. Nothing noteworthy except for the fact that I found this sentence absolutely hilarious:

But, most horribly, we see depictions of Satanism that are truly End of the Age. We see the symbol of Antichrist, the Unicorn.

And so I leave you with this one final thought, because it’s all I can fit into the saggy mush that was once my brain:

From Genesis through Revelation, God demands His people separate themselves from the evil around them! SEPARATE! SEPARATE! SEPARATE!

S E P A R A T E

#harry potter #hp #rowling #jkr #this doesn't really count as fandom history does it?#i did discover this amazing site through f_w #tagging this as Christianity would be mean i think #but i'm ignoring the wank mostly and sticking to the FACTS #'facts' like 'harry potter's eyes are the color of satan'#WAKE UP SHEEPLE #this is the world's longest post and i'm not sure it's interesting to anyone except me #i got very tired at the end of this can you tell #i refuse to even consider editing this #you will take my thoughts as i have them #if the 'read more' doesn't show up IT IS NOT MY FAULT I FUCKING PUT IT THERE I SWEAR IT #quotes aren't showing up on mobile #can't do red text or fun fonts on desktop #this post is a goddamn disaster and it's what both i and this essay deserve

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kira-ani-mcgrath · 5 years

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I am redeemed You set me free So I'll shake off these heavy chains And wipe away every stain Now I'm not who I used to be I am redeemed

"Redeemed" by Big Daddy Weave

I drew this picture specifically to go with the personal story below the cut. Thank you in advance if you take the time to read it, but no worries if you don't. Either way, have a wonderful day.

Late December 2018 was when the Frozen II calendar leak began circulating. Included in the leak was information on the Russian caption for the page, translated to be a vague movie summary. This plot teaser stated that the group (Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Olaf, and Sven) would be heading north into the forest due to some Arendelle-related mystery.

This was a bit of a let-down for me. You see, since my initial introduction to Frozen in 2013, I have been hoping and praying that the inevitable sequel would include Hans' redemption as part of the narrative (for various reasons that are too lengthy to detail here). Such a plot thread would be easier to accomplish if Frozen II involved travel to some other kingdom (or multiple kingdoms), especially the Southern Isles. With the information revealed in the plot spoiler, it was harder to picture a scenario where Hans would join the rest of the gang for an adventure. Yes, it could be done, but it would be more convoluted, possibly to the point of not being an option altogether. Perhaps I was being too pessimistic, but there was no denying the fact that I was feeling rather down about Frozen II.

A few days later, I was driving home with the radio on, but I wasn't paying attention to it. Instead, I was once again mulling over various ways Hans could be redeemed in Frozen II. Yet the more I considered possible scenarios, the more it seemed that the movie's revealed plot would make Hans' redemption an unrealistic feat. I reached the end of my train of thought, and, feeling disheartened, mentally chided myself, "I should just give up. Hans isn't going to be redeemed in Frozen 2."

At that precise moment, the opening notes of "Redeemed" began to play on the radio. Being quite familiar with the song, I immediately laughed and pointed an index finger to the sky. Not only was the title of the song the exact word my mind had just used, but I have long associated this song with Hans (one of many songs, but also one of my favorites). I had no doubt this was the Lord confirming something to me, as this was not the first time such a "coincidental" occurrence has happened.

It's important to know that, in the years since Frozen, I have created (and am still creating) multiple fanworks that posit different takes on how a Hans redemption could come about (and that's not including all the ideas I've had that aren't developed enough for full-fledged works). There have been several times when I've questioned the value of creating such things, only to have affirmation of my work come from unexpected sources at just the right time. Additionally, I have had many such question-and-confirmation experiences in my life, as well as a noticeable increase in the quantity of such instances within the past several months (albeit unrelated to Frozen and instead dealing with various other matters, such as my faith, my most recent pregnancy, and random everyday life things). Thus, when this specific incident occurred, I immediately recognized it as yet another such moment.

Since that night in December, I'd been internally debating sharing this anecdote with the world. Every few days or so my mind would recall the incident and I'd consider posting about it, but I'd always end up deciding against it. After all, it is highly personal, and it takes quite a bit of explaining to impart the importance of this experience (and I'm still leaving out personal details which make it much more powerful to me). This went on for some time. In mid-late February, I was once again musing upon the occurrence and whether or not I should share it. I jokingly thought to God: "If I hear 'Redeemed' on the radio this morning I'll take it as a sign I'm supposed to share this." And, since you are reading this post, you must know where this is going. I already had the radio on, and after getting back in my vehicle after child drop-off, I flicked through my presets to find a song I wanted to listen to. And, lo and behold, my second-to-last preset was playing the first verse of "Redeemed." (Granted, all of my presets are Christian radio stations, so that does put the odds more in favor of my "wager" coming true. On the other hand, the song is from 2012. That means it's 7 years old, and I honestly didn’t hear the song very often at the time, as more recent songs get played much more frequently. In my mind, the proposition was a joke, but I suppose I should have known better, since a lot of my recent question-and-confirmation experiences have been me joking and God proceeding to do the thing.) And thus, here we are. The large time gap between the second occurrence and this post is because 1) I take a while to get my thoughts out and refine them into something fit for public eyes, especially in a personal case such as this one, 2) it seemed appropriate to do some art to go with this, since I've been lacking in productivity in the creative departments for some time, and 3) life things requiring my attention.

On an interesting side note, I had three additional confirmations of this post while I was working on it.

#1) When I said, "There have been several times when I've questioned the value of creating such things, only to have affirmation of my work come from unexpected sources at just the right time," there's a particular incident that sticks out to me. One night in 2016, I stayed up late finishing chapter nine of my fanfiction, Frozen: Sacrifice and Forgiveness. Even though I posted the chapter, I was really depressed about it. Thoughts such as, "Is this really something I should be investing so much time in?" and "Does God actually want me to write this story?" weighed heavily on my mind, though I kept them to myself. After some internal arguing, I directed an unspoken question to the Lord: "Is this really what I should be doing?" Not much later, before going to bed, I checked my phone and saw an email from FF.net saying I had a comment on the latest F:SaF chapter. The comment was from a fellow Christian who had read through the posted chapters and was very encouraging about my story. It was just the right kind of affirmation at precisely the right time. Fast-forward to Wednesday, February 27th, 2019. I checked my phone in the morning and saw an email from AO3 that someone has left a comment on the last posted chapter of F:SaF. This was quite surprising, as I haven't updated the fic since September 21st, 2017. The comment was very positive, and it immediately reminded me of this post, which was a WIP in a computer document at the time. Not only did the new comment correlate to the aforementioned unexpected sources of encouragement, but F:SaF has been on my mind recently in terms of working on it again. Then, as the cherry on top, I was listening to the daily scripture reading on the radio while driving to work that morning, and the song that came on immediately afterward was "Redeemed".

#2) On Friday, March 1st, I had finished this post to my general satisfaction (as I knew it still required minor edits, plus I still had to finish my drawing) before getting ready for work. Upon entering my vehicle, I thought, "Wouldn't it be funny if 'Redeemed' played on the radio again?" I then instantly berated myself: "That's dumb. You don't need to be looking for confirmation of things all the time." I then flicked through my presets, and the first verse of "Redeemed" was playing on my second-to-last preset — the same song position and the same preset as when I was debating whether or not to make this post.

#3) On Friday, March 8th, I thought to myself as I was getting ready for work, “I really need to finish that post.” When I started my car, the radio was on, but I didn’t care for the song it was playing, so I jumped to my first preset. “Redeemed” was playing, starting from the very first word of the first verse.

Now, the question is: what was being confirmed to me with the original occurrence in December? The most straightforward answer is Hans' redemption in Frozen II. Mind you, not a redemption based on worldly methods such as "cleaning yourself up" and "earning it," but rooted in the Christian standard of unconditional love, mercy, grace, and faith. I'll admit, it seems far-fetched, given the fact that Disney is not a Christian company and the creative team has no Christians on it (AFAIK). Then again, "What is impossible with man is possible with God." Still, I have thought of other meanings for this incident. Perhaps it was simply a reminder to not get so depressed over a fictional character. Perhaps it was merely encouragement to keep going with my various fan projects, despite Frozen II looming in the distance. Perhaps it was a nudge that the sequel would contain a small hint of a future Hans redemption. Of course, that all sounds like me trying to talk myself out of trusting God for something amazing, as I am prone to doing. It's a struggle to wait on the Lord (especially for someone like me who hates surprises and wants to know things ASAP), but the truth of this incident will be revealed when the time is right.

One may wonder why God would care about a fictional character or a fictional story. It's not that He cares about those things in and of themselves, it's that He cares about His children and the salvation of humanity. My prayers (which are mostly just God-directed thoughts as I go about my day) regarding Hans' redemption were always something along the lines of, "Hey, God, it'd be really awesome if Hans gets redeemed in a way that reflects how Jesus saved us." Then I would mentally argue with myself about even making such a request, and always end at a variation of "Whatever is best, Lord." Though a fictional character's redemption is trivial in the grand scheme of things, God can use the most unexpected means to reach someone regarding a matter of eternal importance. He knows that, for me, this isn't just about a fictional character — it's about using that character's story to connect real people with the hope of the Gospel. Frozen was a movie with weak morals and a character that is looked down upon as irredeemable by the majority of viewers. If, by the grace of God, the sequel displays true love and redemption, then perhaps one soul out there will see the truth: anyone can be saved because Jesus can save anyone.

Feel free to message me if you aren't comfortable utilizing public replies or reblogs. Thank you for reading, and God bless you.

Update (Sept. 4th, 2019): So I’ve been lurking on a few Discord servers for a while now in addition to my Tumblr lurking, and overall there is a very negative attitude regarding Hans returning in F2. It’s coming from all directions: antis/haters who don’t want him in it, neutral parties who don’t see an available role for him to play, and fans who have lost hope due to lack of news. Last night I had an unpleasant dream on the subject. While the specifics are hazy, I know it involved the fandom discussing Hans’ absence in the movie. When I was going about my business this morning, I thought about the dream, this post, and the incident that brought this post into being. I mentally argued with myself, as I often do, about the situation. Lately, I too have been feeling disheartened on this matter. As I said, the fandom as a whole has been negative about this, so it was starting to get to me. In addition to that, as new leaks reveal more of the story, the chances of Hans appearing in any meaningful fashion get slimmer. However, no matter how bleak the outlook, I was given a supernatural sign to keep hope in a Hans redemption. Still, there was always the possibility I had interpreted the incident incorrectly, and adding in the other factors at play, this morning I was once again questioning God. I wanted another sign or some kind of spoiler-type proof, then scolded myself for being greedy and for seeking worldly validation of what God has said (instead of trusting Him to fulfill His promises). I had the radio on KLOVE as I was driving, and one of my “Hans songs” came on. It was a “lower tier” one (a.k.a. one I don’t like quite as much as others), so as I listened to it I thought, “It’d be nice if the next song after this was another good song, but one of the top-tier ones. It’d make me feel better about this whole thing.” Of course, I then chided myself, thinking, “Why are you always asking for stuff? Isn’t what you have already enough?” The song came to an end, and the next song began to play. It was “Redeemed.”

#Frozen 2 #Frozen II #Prince Hans #Frozen Hans #Frozen #Hans #redemption #Christian #Christianity #my art #KAM's thoughts #KAM's personal stuff #KAM's art

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storiesofwildfire · 5 years

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So, for those of you who have been around for a long time, you might remember that my backstory for Loki ( which is mostly based on Norse mythology and my own personal headcanons ) used to include Sigyn being Loki’s wife and how Loki lost her and their unborn children relatively shortly after marrying her.

I covered this topic for a few reasons, one being that Sigyn is a significant part of Loki’s life in the mythology and I didn’t want to gloss over her, another being that for a long time when I first started roleplaying Loki, I had a lot of Sigyn blogs follow me and try to back me into a corner when it came to shipping. I had a lot of people treat it as “well, the ship is canon, so you have to ship with me” and for a long time, I wasn’t really sure how to say no to those people.

In the last few months, I decided to remove Sigyn from Loki’s backstory. Well, for the most part. I removed her being married to Loki and I removed them trying to have children together. I also removed the part about her death as the reason they ultimately ended up no longer together.

I have spoken a few times since then about my particular and personal hangups with Sigyn and Loki’s relationship, but I’ve never really elaborated too much on why I made these changes in the first place.

My current biography describes a brief meeting with Sigyn that ultimately doesn’t turn into anything and was more or less instigated by Odin rather than Loki’s actual interest in Sigyn. I did this for a couple of reasons. One, to actually acknowledge that Sigyn does exist and not completely write her off. Two, to pay tribute to mythology’s canon that when Sigyn and Loki first met, Sigyn actually did not like Loki. Sigyn didn’t like Loki until Loki pretended to be someone else, so their relationship, at least in my opinion, is not exactly built on the foundation of trust, love, and common interest.

Now, before I go super deep into this, I do want to state that I am perfectly well aware that there are many different interpretations of the mythology. While I do not believe one is more “correct” than the others, I do try to stay as close to the original myths as I believe I can when deciding which interpretations to go with ( more or less, I just try to stay away from the myth retellings that were clearly heavily influenced at a later date and time by Christianity ). If you decide to go with interpretations that are different from my own, that’s perfectly fine and I respect that! Just please respect that these are my views and choices in turn.

Now... To speak bluntly, I really don’t like the idea of Loki and Sigyn. In the mythology, Sigyn isn’t really elaborated on all that much. Her entire purpose resides heavily on being Loki’s wife and being part of Loki’s life and I’m not exactly interested in a being that exists for the sake of another being. I believe there is a lot of room to work with when it comes to Sigyn, honestly, and there are so many cool ways to flesh her out that I would be interested in, but because of my own personal experiences, it’s hard for me to get behind this ship.

People either highly romanticize Sigyn and Loki’s relationship as being #relationshipgoals or they use Sigyn as a way to demonize Loki by making them an abusive partner/cheater. I don’t personally think there’s a ground for either of those arguments without putting a lot of work and plotting into the relationship itself.

In the mythology canon that I chose to adhere to, Sigyn didn’t like Loki when they first met. She didn’t like Loki until Loki pretended to be another person. Loki’s interest in Sigyn was not because they wanted her, it was because of Odin. More of an arranged marriage sort of deal than because either party was genuinely interested. Mythology canon also can’t seem to agree on if Loki and Sigyn had one child or two, as their children are sometimes interchanged as the same person, sometimes insinuated to be twins, and sometimes Vali is actually described as being Loki’s child with an unknown woman. I have even seen some debate on if Loki’s child(ren) with Sigyn is even actually Loki’s, or if they only claimed such to keep up the appearance of a decent marriage. From what I’ve read and studied, I see no real basis for the idea that they are wholeheartedly and undoubtedly in love and I see their relationship more like one of convenience, appearances, and duty more than anything else.

It also kind of roots back to another way Odin kept control over Loki ( you know, after forcing Loki to become his blood brother... )

Ultimately, I changed my backstory because I wrote Loki meeting Sigyn, falling in love with her in a particularly difficult time in their lives, and choosing to be with her willingly, but the truth of the matter is, I think I was far too out of left field with how I portrayed them to be any sort of myth compliant.

So I decided to keep their meeting, the fact that Sigyn did not really like Loki upon meeting, and the reason behind them meeting in the first place was Odin’s influence, in hopes of binding Loki to someone in a forced marriage would keep Loki under control. As Odin worked Loki’s entire life to keep Loki on a short leash and under his thumb, this made perfectly logical sense to me in mythology and in Marvel.

I did not want to emphasize how important Loki’s relationship with Sigyn is because, honestly, in my opinion, it’s not overly important. It’s more of a multifaceted tool than a genuine relationship.

Please don’t get me wrong, I do think there are a lot of ways to make Sigyn an interesting character. I also think there are a lot of ways to make Sigyn genuinely appealing to Loki. The problem with their portrayal in the myths is that they don’t really expand on Sigyn much outside of Loki. For Loki to hold any sort of interest in her, she’d need to be strong, independent, and have a life outside of them and their relationship. I also don’t want to pretend like they got together because they fell in love when that simply? Isn’t really the case, at least not in the interpretations I follow.

So, because I don’t really ship Sigyn and Loki and because I wasn’t interpreting their marriage correctly, I decided to take Loki’s history with her out and pay a bit of tribute to them meeting and not really liking one another without forcing them into a marriage. By Asgardian norms, Loki’s still rather young, and even if Odin tried to force them into an arranged marriage, the likelihood of that sticking just? Isn’t super high given everything else that’s going on in Loki’s life.

I felt like that left some room open to discuss plotting with Sigyn rpers in the future without automatically adhering to the two most popular tropes I see in the fandom which are “Loki and Sigyn are such a perfect couple who are so madly in love” and “Loki is an abusive partner to Sigyn and she’s too good for him.” Neither of which I think are actually close to canon.

I’m definitely willing to plot with Sigyn rpers and even children of Sigyn, but I am not willing to automatically say that Sigyn and Loki are married and have children together. Something like that would take a lot of plotting and ooc communication and build up. I’m not super fond of the ship, but with the right Sigyn, I could see it happening, but only with the proper development.

Anyway, I just wanted to touch on why I decided to change Loki’s backstory from being happily married to and losing Sigyn to hardly even knowing her in a bit more detail.

At the end of the day, I felt like this decision was more accurate to myth canon and it fit the best into Loki’s life as a mixture of mythology and Marvel.

#c; sigyn #( storiesofwildfire headcanon ) chaos is about that which is possible #index; blog #filed under; blog updates #index; loki #filed under; affiliates #filed under; headcanons #index; mythos #filed under; deities #filed under; norse

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idiopathicsmile · 7 years

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Why You May Already Be A Unitarian Universalist! Or, a short guide to the goofy hippie aunt of the theological world (but the kind of aunt who has been to protests and Seen Some Shit)

Do any of these sound like you:

“I’d like a safe setting to explore my spiritual beliefs, but I’ve got baggage about organized religion!”

“I wish there was a church for atheists!”

“I wish there was a church for people who aren’t sure if they believe in god or not!”

“Over the years I’ve slowly assembled a highly personal grab-bag of spiritual beliefs and practices, but I miss service projects and singing hymns and drinking coffee on Sundays!”

“I need a religious community that supports rights for people of all genders, races, religious beliefs, sexual or affectional orientations, ability statuses, and national origins!”

“I want to raise my kids in a church that offers an extremely comprehensive, LGBTQA-friendly, shame-free sex ed program to all teenagers!”

Or conversely,

“I’ve already found a different personal belief system that feels right for me, but I am intellectually curious about where you’re going with this!” (Perfectly valid!)

If any of the above is true, or if you just feel like killing some time on the internet (also valid), read on!

“So, what do you guys believe?”

Modern Unitarian Universalism is a religion without a creed. That means you can be UU while believing in as many or as few deities as you want (including none or “I don’t know” or even “the very question doesn’t feel that important to me”). There is no consensus within the church on an afterlife (if any), or a holy book (if any), or even which holidays to celebrate, other than presumably, like, the birthdays of your friends and loved ones.

Plenty of UUs identify as agnostic or atheist, but we also have members whose beliefs are informed by Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, earth-centered/Pagan traditions, and/or Humanism, among others.

Asking an individual UU about their beliefs is sort of like asking someone about their taste in music. It’s meaningful to them, it’s shaped by their own history and experiences, and no two people will have exactly the same answer.

“Wait, you guys don’t agree on anything? What even brings you together?”

A DEEP AND EVERLASTING LOVE OF COMMITTEES.

No, sorry, that was a hilarious joke playing off an old Unitarian Universalist stereotype, which is that we are super into discussing things and then voting on them as a group.

Hilarious.

It’s hard to speak for all Unitarian Universalists, and some of them might quibble with the exact wording I’m about to use, but I feel like part of what makes us a bonafide religion is a deep shared conviction that trying your hardest to be kind, fair, and moral is itself sacred.

“If you can’t agree on a religious text, how in the world are you guys on the same page about what it means to be moral?”

I mean, sometimes we’re not? We like a good debate.

But although we don’t have a creed, we do have a common set of principles we try to use as a guide. Here they are, straight from the Unitarian Universalist Association website:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregations and in society at large;

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

“Uh, that’s compatible with every world religion and also, like, Captain Planet.”

Listen, nobody in the Unitarian Universalist church is gonna stop you from using a nineties environmentalism cartoon as a holy text. Embrace your truths. As a group of young sages once said, “Saving our planet is the thing to do.”

“I already believe all of those principles. Am I a Unitarian Universalist?”

I mean, if you want to be!

…although the definition of a UU is broad enough these days that we’ve got a quirky (and in retrospect maybe kind of problematic?) habit of retroactively claiming dead historical figures* who demonstrated a belief in the seven principles during their lives. Like, “That person PROBABLY WOULD’VE BEEN Unitarian Universalist, given the chance! One of us! One of us!”

That said, if you’re reading this, you’re probably alive, so at least for the time being it is your call!

*I am now bound by ancient UU law to list to you some dead historical figures who actually self-identified as Unitarian Universalists (or Unitarians or Universalists, since the two didn’t meld together until a series of meetings in the 1960’s):

Olympia Brown (the first fully ordained female minister in the U.S., also an abolitionist and feminist)

President John Quincy Adams

Joseph Priestley (18th century theologian credited with discovering oxygen)

Ralph Waldo Emerson and a number of the early American Transcendentalists

Louisa May Alcott

Elizabeth Gaskell (author of North and South, among others)

Rod Serling (Twilight Zone creator)

Beatrix Potter

Pete flippin’ Seeger, hell yeahhhhhh

“Who runs this show?”

Rife as it would be for comic possibility, there is no Unitarian Pope. There are no cardinals. Authority is for the most part pretty decentralized. Individual congregations govern themselves, through committees and elections. A minister has to be approved by their congregation before it’s official.

Those Seven Principles above came, like I said, from the Unitarian Universalist Association, which is made up of delegates from churches all over the country, and every year they get together and vote on major stuff. But yeah, congregation to congregation, things can vary pretty widely in terms of how they do stuff, or even whether to use the word “church.” (Some instead call themselves a “society,” or a “fellowship.”)

“What the heck does a UU hymn even sound like?”

Oh man, this reminds me of that classic Unitarian Universalist joke, “Why are Unitarians so bad at hymns?”

Answer: “Because they’re too busy reading ahead to make sure they agree with all the lyrics!”

Priceless.

But in reality, some of our songs are, like, transcendentalist poems that have been awkwardly squeezed onto the melody of some older hymn or classical piece. Sometimes you sing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” seemingly without a trace of irony. Sometimes you’ve got old spirituals about justice (like I said, things can tip towards well-intentioned appropriation) or Christian hymns that have been revised to be nondenominational and gender-inclusive. Sometimes you break out the classics, like “This Little Light of Mine.”

Here’s one of my all-time faves, which is based on a translation of a poem by 13th century Persian philosopher and mystic Rumi. You’ve got to wait until the rounds kick in. So good.

“What’s the official stance on rights for the LGBTQ+ community?”

It’s formally recognized by the UUA that our seven principles are totally incompatible with homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, or any other type of bigotry.

Because the power is so decentralized, I can’t say that every congregation has always been enlightened, but as religions go, I think it’s pretty widely accepted that the UU church has long been on the forefront of LGBTQ+ rights. There have been UU ministers performing same-sex marriage ceremonies since at least the seventies, and there’s a long history of activism within the church.

The UUA website has a section detailing our ongoing efforts to be inclusive of all genders and orientations. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community and nervous about visiting a UU church for the first time, you might also want to aim for one of the churches that’s specifically opted into our Welcoming Congregation Program, which requires the congregation to go through special training and to offer gender-neutral bathrooms, among other things. (Most UU churches at this point have opted in. If you’re trying to find the closest location that’s also a Welcoming Congregation, there’s a checkbox you can click on this handy look-up tool.)

“So for decades when American politicians were arguing that same-sex couples couldn’t marry because it ‘went against religion’, it literally went against this particular religion to discriminate against those same couples?”

Yes. Yes, it was. The Bush years were a weird time.

“What’s the official stance on racial justice?”

We’re in favor of it. (Again: if you take those seven principles seriously, there’s no pussyfooting around opposing racism.)

I’m not gonna lie: at least in the suburban midwest UU churches I’ve attended, we are by and large, uh, pretty white. So I can’t really speak to whether or not a person of color would feel comfortable there. I’d imagine it would widely vary by individual and by congregation.

Our track record with Civil Rights is probably on par with any ultra-liberal, service-based American religion. We had a lot of early white abolitionists (given how low the bar was back then, I’m sure many would be considered racist by today’s standards), we had members active in the Civil Rights movement (if you saw Selma, that minister who gets killed by an angry mob was one of ours), and I think there was even a while pre-McCarthyism where we were closely allied with socialism and our members included some people of color who were key activists in confronting racism and supporting unions.

And then the Red Scare happened and our religion barely survived and we leaned away from socialism, and since then we’ve always kinda been predominantly an upper to middle class white liberal thing, with all the blinders that implies.

But a lot of UU churches have expressed solidarity with Black Lives Matter and with the protests at Standing Rock, and there is a growing movement within the church to confront and examine any latent white supremacy in ourselves and in our congregations.

One of the things that endeared me to my current church was when the minister announced that we were all invited to a racial justice protest, which had been organized by a black Christian church in the Chicagoland area. And the minister said, essentially,

“Listen, they are going to use religious wording that may not align with your personal beliefs. And what I need you to do is imagine you’ve got a Universal Translator like in Star Trek. And if they say “the glory of God” and it makes you uncomfortable, think “the glory of human kindness.” If they say “the spirit of the Lord”, you can think “the spirit of Life.” Because these Christians are out there doing the work that fits with our deepest values, and in the end, we have more in common than not. Sometimes we need to get over ourselves, and follow where they lead.”

At our worst, I’d characterize us as well-meaning but clueless (i.e. using the stories or imagery of world religions as a metaphor, in a way that flirts with appropriation). At our best, we’ve got some activists of color on the front lines, doing cool shit.

“This all sounds...so incredibly Politically Correct…”

Yeah, we strive to be accepting of everyone but I should warn you upfront that if P.C. culture upsets you, Unitarian Universalism is probably not gonna be a good fit.

“Did you say something about comprehensive sex ed for teens? In church?”

I certainly did! Through the OWL (Our Whole Lives) program, specially trained adults teach the youths a multi-year curriculum about bodily autonomy, consent, respect, healthy communication, gender identity, sexual orientation, safe sex (including passing around condoms and dental dams), destigmatizing sexuality, and relationships, among other things. Also, you can anonymously submit questions at any point, and your teachers will do some research and provide an answer next week.

When I was young, this was seventh and eighth grade Sunday school. I think since then, they developed the program to include age-appropriate components for younger kids, and to focus more on high schoolers.

“Seriously?”

When my older brother went through an earlier iteration of the program, the curriculum included a slideshow with photos of actual naked people, who were just random UU volunteers from the seventies. By the time it was my turn, these had been replaced by tasteful charcoal drawings.

“So on a scale from one to ten, how warped is your brother?”

He’s doing great! Actually, he’s a member of his local UU church and a volunteer OWL teacher. Though if I had to guess, he’s probably pretty relieved he doesn’t have to contend with those slides.

“Where can I find out more about Unitarian Universalism?”

Here’s the UUA website. Here’s that nearest-church-finding tool I mentioned before. If you don’t know if you’re ready to jump from 0 to physically stepping into a sanctuary, especially if you’ve got a bit of that ol’ social anxiety, here’s the ask that reminded me to post this whole mess in the first place, about how to maybe ease yourself into things a little first.

“Hang on…if you break these words down into their roots, ‘Unitarian’ implies existence of a single god, as opposed to the widely accepted Christian trinity, while ‘Universalism’ surely refers to the notion of universal salvation, meaning that both terms seem to point to a specific concrete (if perhaps somewhat heretical) doctrine based around Christian concepts like God, Jesus, and Heaven—meaning, in short, that the very name of your religion seems to belie the nigh-endless spiritual possibility you’ve been describing in this blog post…what gives?”

Well, you’re not wrong. The name at this point is largely vestigial. But to understand how we ended up where we are today, and how we arrived there with this awkward polysyllabic soup of a name, I’m gonna need to take you through a couple of centuries of heated theological debate.

“Do you NEED to?”

I mean, ‘need’ is relative, but that’s definitely my plan!

Stay tuned for part II, “A (Very Very Very) Informal History of Unitarians, Universalists, and their Unholy (or Possibly Very Holy) Melding”

#not tryin to push my faith but i do think plenty of folks are already secret UUs #and just need a word for it #and in times like these it can be really good to stand in a room of people with your values #who are sad and angry as you are and for the same reasons #and searching out hope and community despite it all

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orchiddshop · 4 years

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Life Is Like A Boxing Match It's Not About How You Get Knocked Down But What You Do When You Get Up T-Shirt

And you heard one of the last things he mentioned was border security Washington always plays it now is sorted after three years or so and got her fence was against you without borders is not a Life Is Like A Boxing Match It's Not About How You Get Knocked Down But What You Do When You Get Up T-Shirt nation Donald Trump is into restoring the borders of the snake hearing Trump laid out a series of priorities it doesn’t end with border security and begins at border security and and after we secure the border not only build a wall but beneath the ground and and in the air we do internal enforcement but he said the focus has to be on criminal aliens would just we just had a conversation about law enforcement just had a conversation about the violence that the setting are cities that the reality is that there’s heartbreak and tragedy that has struck American families because people came into this country illegally are now involved in criminal enterprise and activity and we don’t have the resources or the will to deport them systematically Donald Trump is set were going to move those people out people of overstayed their. Com citizen man and you’ll find the lot piece out I back to you to back to you to share this IgG next thing on but our guy let me post this shit thing is posted and I can go to YouTube and I can pull up to chat so if you guys remember in the earlier streams I was talking about I was talking about how these lab the faking the test and how the masks the oxygen nature blood they lower your oxygen saturation and it was a Tweet from a from a lab tech that that a lot of the blood that the getting is thick and it’s dark colored almost like tar and I said that that is a hallmark of deoxygenated blood four times as it is the many channel needs to be mandatory listening I wish it was. IT THAT WE SHOULD WORK THE OPPOSITE PREMISE AND SIT AND BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT WE DO HAVE AND THAT IS HOW WE EXPERIENCE MORE JOY HAPPINESS LOVE AND ABUNDANCE LAST WE HAVE TO KEEP A DAILY JOURNAL I THINK IT’S REALLY IMPORTANT FOR EVERYBODY TO UNDERSTAND THIS JOURNAL REALLY HELPS YOU EXPRESS YOURSELF HELPS YOU GET THINGS OUT IT HELPS THEM FOR YOU TO REVEAL AND MAYBE SOME TRUTHS THAT YOU ARE AWARE OF THE SPECIALLY GOING ON INSIDE OF YOU SO WE HIGHLY RECOMMEND AND THE SIX INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO ON BASICALLY HOW TO KEEP A DAILY JOURNAL AT THE END OF THIS WEEK’S REPORT AND CAROL AND THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH FOR OBVIOUSLY PUTTING THE FRONT END OF THIS TOGETHER AND REVIEWING OUR HOT TOPICS AND THERE ARE LEAD ARTICLES AND ALSO I’M BASICALLY HELPING US I DON’T KNOW IF EVERYBODY KNOWS BUT CAROL DOES A LOT OF THE EDITING FOR US IN THE FINISHED PRODUCT OF WHAT WE DO HERE SO WERE VERY GRATEFUL TO HAVE HER IN OBVIOUSLY HAVE HER WORK NEXT IS A LOT OF INFORMATION GOING FORWARD THAT WE WILL CONTINUE TO EXPLORE BUT IT’S REALLY

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#Life #Is #Like #A #Boxing #Match #It's #Not #About #How

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luciana-la-maga · 4 years

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Adira’s Wolf Moon Review - Eng.

Adira's Wolf Moon is a postmodern fantasy saga written by Melina Lema (mel-mellow.tumblr) between 2012 and 2015 (Well, as far as I know). It took concepts and references from a work team of which I was part at a time called La Tríada, founded in 2011 under the name Escritoras Jr. and with an unknown dissolution. In other words, I quitted from my position in La Tríada after having reached Chapter 4 of my personal work called Libro 19, a remastering of the Silver Warriors saga. But that is the subject for another article.

I had the unique opportunity to have a closer look (and my own experience) of the EXHAUSTIVE work to which a person is exposed when saying "I want to write a book". It is a chaotic universe full of corrections, details, worldviews and argumentative debates.

This work begins fully by embarking us on the Germany of 2010 with a grumpy lycanthrope named Adira, the protagonist of our story and first-person narrator of the events. Just a couple of lines below we are presented with her literal and immediate Antithesis: Gloomerly. From the very first moment this story makes an excellent and clever nod to general culture, creating a bizarre friendship between the most estranged characters in the history of fantasy literature. A werewolf and a vampire looking for adventure? It's an arc that cannot fail!

The diversity of characters began in sort of a shaky way, pointing towards the least expected regarding to the typical argumentative plot in a juvenile genre. Alexander and Marcus, with their appearance and prominence in the first chapters give freshness and credibility to the first book. Personally I liked that resource of breaking with the typical group of stereotyped teenagers. The tall, the short, the cute, the ugly, the funny, the dark. By the time this work was written (2011), juvenile novels were having a hard time being involved in so many empty stereotypes to attract teenagers and make them spend money on books. In fact, The Simpsons knew how to explain very well the anti-creative and marketing process of a standardized book in Chapter 492 of its Season 23, The Book Job. Highly recommended.

The personality profiles have so many tones, such depth of parallel stories that really play a lot with the plausibility of the characters. Did Lily exist in real life? Has Christian been inspired by someone the author actually knew?

And this is when the plot begins to tremble a lil' bit about its root concept: The chapters pass and we continue to be introduced to more and more characters, one more beautiful than the other. The Fifth Problem with their rock band Heir, Los Leyendas, all the cast from La Universidad. From here, there, from one country, another ... And Adira is somehow overshadowed by being surrounded with such strong personalities. Her character as a main is not exactly "nice" for the reader, but the author makes up for it very well with a solid origin story that positions us entering Phase # 3 on the path of a hero: The Rectification. (If you want to know the phases of the Path of a Hero according to the composition of La Tríada, comment and I will make a separate article). Adira is popularly known by her enemies as The Girl of a Thousand Lives, I give the plot extra points for the epic name of legend that I love. That popular nickname is due to her ability to preserve her memories and acquired knowledge despite dying over and over again in tragic wars or conflicts.

The rectification in Adira's back story is precisely this odd turn in her way of behaving and the construction of her person outside the war machine that she has forced herself to be one life after another. Meeting Gloomerly, then starting a herd -or family?- along with the rest of the Toledo's, having real friends at the University and the return of David (her only relevant romantic interest), etc.; All these are isolated events that force this rude protagonist to expose herself, to become human, to leave her comfort zone and socialize, to get closer in some way to her condition as a human being and that is precisely what brings us chapter after chapter to see what else there will be. How immersive this universe is and how far Adira is willing to go around this modern world in which she doesn't fit at all. Along with her humanity comes the climax of unraveling the mysterious and important cause for which she and many other werewolf herds fight.

Regarding the great revelation of Azrethar: The matter of the magical portals to explain the passage from one world to the other seemed to me a somewhat hasty decision that left loose a plot arc in the story that is key: Where do all these fantastic beings come from?

This also leads me to a conceptual crack that as an author (and ex former counselor?) I noticed: That is Magic in the Adira universe. Compared to the rest of the great concepts that the novel itself had been working on, this matter of "magic for magic's sake" could have been worked from a slightly more Rowlingnian perspective: Give magic a method and it will come to life by itself, all along. Humans love the feeling of being able to achieve everything if they somehow "automate" it, "methodize" it. It gives it truthfulness. Adira's universe presents us with plenty of tools to exploit this matter of magic in an inexhaustible way and unfortunately it always leaves us wanting a little more. Marcus's powers, Lesthia Academy, Samuel's relationship with dragons, Alexander's mere existence ... And even once inside Azrethar, we walk through the portal and expect to see magic around every corner when ACTUALLY the plot is exploited through racial species. This is a colorful and very useful resource especially because all The University Cast came from there. And yet there they leave us wanting more.

Once in Azrethar, the languages, the continents, the peoples, the kingdoms are presented to us in an overwhelming and -in my opinion- not very organic way. When we turn to Adira's Crescent Moon or Adira: Luna Menguante we hope that those questions so magnetically attractive that one asks as a reader will be answered. Who are the Vulcas? If there's a kingdom of fireproof and sexually active millionaire vampires there should be water vampires somewhere on the continent, or earth-type vampires. And if there is a vampire kingdom, will the kingdom of Tumma be the werewolf kingdom?

Finally, Adira's universe and sex. Maybe it's because we were very young when we wrote about such adult characters and in plots that involved contexts that we never lived in until by that time, but the lack of sex takes away the depth of the characters a little bit. One of the main problems (I include myself very hard) when writing during puberty -or teenage writing- is the lack of approach towards sex. Victim of the time, in the novel the hues lack diversity. I mean, it was 2011 and that demi-feminist sexual revolution had not yet arrived and we only have Ryan and Darren as the only representatives of the LGBTQ community. Simply put, Azrethar is way too big to be that heterosexual. The lack of sexuality in a fantasy world that is governed by cultural diversity is an almost Tolkian mistake but completely admissible and real.

In conclusion, the triggers are exceptional and they are all very well worked. The key to giving the story a proper cliff hanger by a "next generation" we are introduced to is the creation of Thamer. Thamer is perhaps the only one in the entire Adira universe who will be able to tell the story as it's being handed down to us and, as the eldest of a herd of little children whose parents will be legends. I mean, Melissa's twins, then Styx, the exaggerated but valid litter of twelve heirs to the Vulcan kingdom of Atsil ... They all give us hope that the story will continue along with its growth and expansion. And honestly, I look forward to it.

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a-woman-apart · 4 years

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Off with the kid gloves; how about boxing gloves?

For most of my life, I have valued being “considerate.” I, like many others, have claimed to value honesty while telling innumerable white lies. Even though I hated the statement “what you don’t know doesn’t hurt you” I celebrated “lies of omission”, a way of keeping others ignorant about unfortunate aspects of my life, including what I really thought about them.

I swallowed my tongue and pushed down my anger because I didn’t want to “be the bad guy.” Being nice was more important than being honest.

I know that there are times when saying what is right, or being right, is unhelpful. For example, you may honestly believe your grandma’s teal cardigan is hideous, but there probably isn’t a good reason to tell her that unprompted. If she asks, there are probably also ways to tell her your opinion without being needlessly unkind.

There is also something to be said about lying to an abusive guardian who holds disproportionate economic power over you. You’re not a coward if you choose not to be open about your sexuality, religion, or gender identity to a family member who will throw you out or abuse you if you do so. You are allowed to exercise your basic human instinct of self-preservation. They’ve created a hostile environment where honesty is punished, and you are not at fault.

However, when there are topics that are not a matter of your human survival and more a matter of the survival of your delicately constructed image, then your dishonesty not only hurts others, it hurts you.

Every time you muzzle yourself, either to “save face” or “save someone’s feelings”, you tell yourself that how other people feel about you is more important than the things you feel and believe.

Over time, that constant denial of your own right to speak and your own self worth, serves to erode your belief in yourself. At least, that is what happened to me and others who I saw struggle with self esteem.

It’s taken a few years for me to become aware of this destructive cycle, but now that I can see what is happening, I am actively choosing to speak up in as honest a way as I can as often as I can.

We live in a highly politicized world where attacking someone’s ideas is tantamount to a personal attack on the person who believes them. Knowing this, I was��“sensitive” about how I framed political and theological arguments around my family. Now, I almost never hold back, unless I just don’t want to argue, in which case I will change the subject but not concede the point.

Very few people today understand that highly educated people can believe unintelligent, pseudo-scientific, extremely wrong things. If I tell you that your beliefs are unsupported by facts, and your knee-jerk reaction is to accuse me of being dismissive or calling you stupid, then that’s definitely a problem with you and not with me, and guess what?

If you continue to hold completely unsupported beliefs in the face of evidence to the contrary, you are stupid. Stupidity isn’t an ableist buzzword; it’s a description of someone who is willfully ignorant.

If you lack mental capacity to understand something, you are not stupid. If you lack information on a subject, you are ignorant, not stupid.

If you choose to be ignorant, you are stupid.

If, in a debate, you are more concerned with debating how I said something, than whether or not my statement is true, you have a weak argument and likely, you are stupid.

If at any point, semantics, procedure, or decorum are more important to your movement than fighting inequality and oppression on a societal or legislative basis, then you are stupid.

Everyone on the Authoritarian Left (yes I said it) is concerned about platforming bigots, but I am tired of apologizing for stupidity. I am tired of second-guessing myself and questioning myself in the face of people whose arguments are completely disingenuous and demonstrate an egregious lack of critical thinking.

When I noticed how much the misery I experience when being gaslit in discussions by my right-wing, conservative, hyperreligious, Evangelical Christian mother was similar to the angst I experienced when reading ultra-Leftist bloggers on this platform, I realized that radical extremism is always irrational, no matter what side it emanates from.

There is a caveat though. Extremism is often inevitable, but being an extreme force for truth and equality is the best way to escape the partisanship dishonesty of most movements.

So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime--the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. --Martin Luther King Jr.

I will end with a warning. For anyone who even still reads this blog, you are going to see a shift in the content. It is going to be a little less “nice.”

But just remember, there are two kinds of “nice” people:

There are the kinds of nice people who see that you have spinach in your teeth, and bravely face the awkwardness of telling you, because as your friend, they do not want to have you suffer the public embarrassment of going through the whole night with spinach in your teeth.

Then there is the nice person, who, to save your feelings in the short term, and to save themselves the awkwardness of confronting you, rationalize that it’s better not to tell you, even though they know that when you go to brush your teeth that night and realize that you spent the whole night with spinach in your teeth, you will be embarrassed more.

America has spinach in her teeth. I’m going to tell her, and her citizens, because I care enough to be honest. I care enough to have difficult conversations, to try and help make this country a better place before everything is completely wrecked.

#real talk #hot take #willfull ignorance #stupidity #nice is overrated #politically incorrect #will to be awkward #fuck the DNC #neverbiden #self esteem #self worth #virtue for virtue's sake #virtue is the highest good #pholosophy #not ready to make nice #please come at me #I'm ready to be canceled #can't take anything from me that isn't already gone #facts over feelings

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sitandbreatheitout · 5 years

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Day 10/40: Train Up A Child

Start at Day 1

Today, we make a giant pivot from politics to child development. When I started writing my faith journey story, I had some main topics in mind as I considered the big issues that caused me to leave Evangelicalism. Today’s topic is, just like yesterday, NOT one of the “Big Three” (homosexuality, hell, evolution). Also just like yesterday, I am struck by how this seemingly peripheral issue had such a profound impact on my deconstruction.

Becoming a mom inspired me to look back at the “Biblical" advice that had been preached to the parents of my own generation. It’s interesting to imagine what it was like for our parents in the 1980s, before life was made so different by having the Internet at our literal fingertips. They didn’t have as many parenting tools at their disposal as we do now, but what they did have was Dr. James C. Dobson.

Oh, Dr. Dobson. Not many men have had a more profound impact on the American evangelical subculture and the world at large. He first came on the scene in 1970, with his book Dare to Discipline. Dobson had grown dismayed at the social and cultural upheaval he saw around him in the 1960s, blamed it partly on permissive parenting, and thought he had the answer: corporal punishment. To be sure, there was more to his parenting philosophy than spanking and paddling, but he seemed to feel strongly that this specific form of child discipline was a Biblical principle, and it was this main piece of advice that distinguished him from the secular parenting experts of the time.

Proponents of spanking (Dobson wasn’t/isn't the only one) hold to a literal-ish interpretation of Bible verses that refer to using a “rod” when disciplining a child. [I say “literal-ish” because usually the recommended modern implements include hands, belts, paddles, but not literal rods, though sometimes a wooden switch or paint stirring stick are called for, and maybe those are technically rods?] The most well-known verse is Proverbs 13:24, which says, "Whoever spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.” This is the closest the Bible gets to the popular saying “spare the rod, spoil the child,” which actually comes from a 17th century satirical poem.

Even though research has shown how harmful and ineffective the corporal punishment of children is, and 58 countries have outlawed its use, many conservative Christians continue to endorse it. If anything, the secular world’s outcry against it just strengthens their resolve, because it makes sense to the evangelical worldview that secular (i.e., ungodly) authorities would contradict the Bible’s teachings.

I’ve mentioned before the “high stakes” involved in evangelicalism because of the belief in hell. Step one on their path to being saved is admitting you are a sinner. This applies even to the youngest of children, because the theology of “original sin” teaches that Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden resulted in all of humankind inheriting their sin nature. We are all born inherently broken, “fallen” in spirit, soul, and body. In this worldview, it is highly important that parents remain in control of their children, because disobedient children aren’t just rebelling against their parents; their hearts are sinning against God himself. Often in conservative Christian circles, children are {jokingly? fondly?} referred to as “little sinners.” Those who espouse this theology will often point to the demanding tantrums of toddlers as proof that humans have sinful hearts from the beginning. Babies are described as selfish and manipulative because of the way they dominate their parents’ time and attention.

[Look, I get it. Kids are hard work. Sometimes at my weaker moments, I even equate my kids to little jerks, because I find their behavior so infuriating. BUT I’M NOT CLAIMING TO SPEAK FOR GOD. I’d like to think God has more patience than I do, and looks more tenderly on all of us.]

I’d never especially cared for the teaching of original sin, because it seemed unfair to me, but it was one of those mysteries I tried to trust God with. I grew bored over the debates about it in high school and college, partly because I disliked conflict, but mostly because it all seemed so theoretical and distant. Having a child of my own suddenly made it personal. I had to face the implications because she was literally staring into my eyes. What was I going to teach this beautiful baby in my arms about her true essence as a human being? I couldn’t bear the thought of teaching her that she was inherently polluted and broken.

But what did I know? Wasn’t I just being an emotional, sentimental woman? Then I learned that the ancient Hebrew word for God’s compassion and mercy is ra-cha-mim, taken from the root word re-chem, meaning “womb.” But of course. It wasn’t “soft" to feel deep, protective love for my baby; a mother’s love for the child that grew inside her was a reflection of how God herself looked at all of her children. [If God’s mercy metaphorically comes from a uterus, then God gets a feminine pronoun.]

This shouldn’t need explaining, but babies cry to get their physical and emotional needs met so they can survive and thrive. The fact that my infant daughter cried for milk every few hours and that my body automatically knew to respond to those cries was a marvel of creation, not a sign of her selfishness. The idea that "needs drive behavior” doesn’t quit applying when our children grow out of the baby stage. All children (and adults!) have important needs, for things like food, human touch, comfort, safety, connection, and exploration.

So much of parenting (and life, really) turns out to be about the stories my brain tells myself about what is happening. If I believe the child in front of me is acting out of a sinful heart, I’m going to assume negative intent to their actions instead of looking for the message underneath the behavior. Sometimes a kid throws a fit because their blood sugar is low and they need a snack (this is also applicable to adults). Consider how differently we’d respond if we recognized that tantrums are not only normal and sometimes unavoidable, but actually an important and necessary part of how a child learns to deal with their overwhelming emotions?

As my daughter grew older, we noticed that she was experiencing higher than normal levels of emotional “out of control-ness.” That introduced us to a whole new world of therapy, anxiety disorders, neurologists, sensory processing issues, and pediatric sleep specialists. What showed up in my child as anger, aggression, and tantrums turned out to be the result of anxiety fueled by a neurodevelopmental disorder, a highly sensitive nervous system, and fearful, negative self-talk. I can’t imagine the harm to my child’s heart if we had been treating her outbursts as “sinful” misbehavior.

I’m so thankful that I ignored the mainstream “Biblical” parenting mindset that would have utterly failed my daughter. My heart breaks when I consider all the children harshly disciplined for what their parents were primed to see as “sin,” when in reality their poor little bodies were dealing with something else entirely: e.g., sensory processing disorders, trauma responses, ADHD, and autism, just to name a few.

It’s true that many of these conditions are things that we've only really started understanding in the last few decades, so maybe it’s unfair to expect Dr. Dobson’s book, written 50 years ago, to align with the new information we have today. That’s exactly where the idea of “Biblical” advice broke down for me. Evangelicals hold the Bible in very high regard, and many like to refer to it as “God’s instruction manual for life.” The whole conservative Christian system of belief is predicated on the idea that the Bible’s truths and morals are timeless and that’s why we should take them so seriously.

My experience with my daughter demolished my blind automatic trust in all things labeled “Biblical.” I wasn’t anywhere near considering throwing out the Bible yet, but I was becoming more suspicious of the advice given in its name. Learning about the differing Christian beliefs about politics and child development seemed to be proving that Christians could find Bible verses to support any position they wanted to hold. If "cherry-picking” was so prone to happen, then how did we figure out which ideals and values were the ones God truly wanted us to hold? This was the question driving me as my deconstruction began.

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catholiccom-blog · 7 years

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The Galileo Controversy

It is commonly believed that the Catholic Church persecuted Galileo for abandoning the geocentric (earth-at-the-center) view of the solar system for the heliocentric (sun-at-the-center) view. The Galileo case, for many anti-Catholics, is thought to prove that the Church abhors science, refuses to abandon outdated teachings, and is not infallible. For Catholics, the episode is often an embarrassment. It shouldn’t be. This tract provides a brief explanation of what really happened to Galileo.

Anti-scientific?

The Church is not anti-scientific. It has supported scientific endeavors for centuries. During Galileo’s time, the Jesuits had a highly respected group of astronomers and scientists in Rome. In addition, many notable scientists received encouragement and funding from the Church and from individual Church officials. Many of the scientific advances during this period were made either by clerics or as a result of Church funding. Nicolaus Copernicus dedicated his most famous work, On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs, in which he gave an excellent account of heliocentricity, to Pope Paul III. Copernicus entrusted this work to Andreas Osiander, a Lutheran clergyman who knew that Protestant reaction to it would be negative, since Martin Luther seemed to have condemned the new theory, and, as a result, the book would be condemned. Osiander wrote a preface to the book, in which heliocentrism was presented only as a theory that would account for the movements of the planets more simply than geocentrism did—something Copernicus did not intend. Ten years prior to Galileo, Johannes Kepler published a heliocentric work that expanded on Copernicus’ work. As a result, Kepler also found opposition among his fellow Protestants for his heliocentric views and found a welcome reception among some Jesuits who were known for their scientific achievements.

Clinging to Tradition? Anti-Catholics often cite the Galileo case as an example of the Church refusing to abandon outdated or incorrect teaching, and clinging to a "tradition." They fail to realize that the judges who presided over Galileo’s case were not the only people who held to a geocentric view of the universe. It was the received view among scientists at the time. Centuries earlier, Aristotle had refuted heliocentricity, and by Galileo’s time, nearly every major thinker subscribed to a geocentric view. Copernicus refrained from publishing his heliocentric theory for some time, not out of fear of censure from the Church, but out of fear of ridicule from his colleagues. Many people wrongly believe Galileo proved heliocentricity. He could not answer the strongest argument against it, which had been made nearly two thousand years earlier by Aristotle: If heliocentrism were true, then there would be observable parallax shifts in the stars’ positions as the earth moved in its orbit around the sun. However, given the technology of Galileo’s time, no such shifts in their positions could be observed. It would require more sensitive measuring equipment than was available in Galileo’s day to document the existence of these shifts, given the stars’ great distance. Until then, the available evidence suggested that the stars were fixed in their positions relative to the earth, and, thus, that the earth and the stars were not moving in space—only the sun, moon, and planets were. Thus Galileo did not prove the theory by the Aristotelian standards of science in his day. In his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina and other documents, Galileo claimed that the Copernican theory had the "sensible demonstrations" needed according to Aristotelian science, but most knew that such demonstrations were not yet forthcoming. Most astronomers in that day were not convinced of the great distance of the stars that the Copernican theory required to account for the absence of observable parallax shifts. This is one of the main reasons why the respected astronomer Tycho Brahe refused to adopt Copernicus fully. Galileo could have safely proposed heliocentricity as a theory or a method to more simply account for the planets’ motions. His problem arose when he stopped proposing it as a scientific theory and began proclaiming it as truth, though there was no conclusive proof of it at the time. Even so, Galileo would not have been in so much trouble if he had chosen to stay within the realm of science and out of the realm of theology. But, despite his friends’ warnings, he insisted on moving the debate onto theological grounds. In 1614, Galileo felt compelled to answer the charge that this "new science" was contrary to certain Scripture passages. His opponents pointed to Bible passages with statements like, "And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed . . ." (Josh. 10:13). This is not an isolated occurrence. Psalms 93 and 104 and Ecclesiastes 1:5 also speak of celestial motion and terrestrial stability. A literalistic reading of these passages would have to be abandoned if the heliocentric theory were adopted. Yet this should not have posed a problem. As Augustine put it, "One does not read in the Gospel that the Lord said: ‘I will send you the Paraclete who will teach you about the course of the sun and moon.’ For he willed to make them Christians, not mathematicians." Following Augustine’s example, Galileo urged caution in not interpreting these biblical statements too literally. Unfortunately, throughout Church history there have been those who insist on reading the Bible in a more literal sense than it was intended. They fail to appreciate, for example, instances in which Scripture uses what is called "phenomenological" language—that is, the language of appearances. Just as we today speak of the sun rising and setting to cause day and night, rather than the earth turning, so did the ancients. From an earthbound perspective, the sun does appear to rise and appear to set, and the earth appears to be immobile. When we describe these things according to their appearances, we are using phenomenological language. The phenomenological language concerning the motion of the heavens and the non-motion of the earth is obvious to us today, but was less so in previous centuries. Scripture scholars of the past were willing to consider whether particular statements were to be taken literally or phenomenologically, but they did not like being told by a non-Scripture scholar, such as Galileo, that the words of the sacred page must be taken in a particular sense. During this period, personal interpretation of Scripture was a sensitive subject. In the early 1600s, the Church had just been through the Reformation experience, and one of the chief quarrels with Protestants was over individual interpretation of the Bible. Theologians were not prepared to entertain the heliocentric theory based on a layman’s interpretation. Yet Galileo insisted on moving the debate into a theological realm. There is little question that if Galileo had kept the discussion within the accepted boundaries of astronomy (i.e., predicting planetary motions) and had not claimed physical truth for the heliocentric theory, the issue would not have escalated to the point it did. After all, he had not proved the new theory beyond reasonable doubt.

Galileo "Confronts" Rome Galileo came to Rome to see Pope Paul V (1605-1621). The pope, weary of controversy, turned the matter over to the Holy Office, which issued a condemnation of Galileo’s theory in 1616. Things returned to relative quiet for a time, until Galileo forced another showdown. At Galileo’s request, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, a Jesuit—one of the most important Catholic theologians of the day—issued a certificate that, although it forbade Galileo to hold or defend the heliocentric theory, did not prevent him from conjecturing it. When Galileo met with the new pope, Urban VIII, in 1623, he received permission from his longtime friend to write a work on heliocentrism, but the new pontiff cautioned him not to advocate the new position, only to present arguments for and against it. When Galileo wrote the Dialogue on the Two World Systems, he used an argument the pope had offered, and placed it in the mouth of his character Simplicio. Galileo, perhaps inadvertently, made fun of the pope, a result that could only have disastrous consequences. Urban felt mocked and could not believe how his friend could disgrace him publicly. Galileo had mocked the very person he needed as a benefactor. He also alienated his long-time supporters, the Jesuits, with attacks on one of their astronomers. The result was the infamous trial, which is still heralded as the final separation of science and religion.

Tortured for His Beliefs? In the end, Galileo recanted his heliocentric teachings, but it was not—as is commonly supposed—under torture nor after a harsh imprison- ment. Galileo was, in fact, treated surprisingly well. As historian Giorgio de Santillana, who is not overly fond of the Catholic Church, noted, "We must, if anything, admire the cautiousness and legal scruples of the Roman authorities." Galileo was offered every convenience possible to make his imprisonment in his home bearable. Galileo’s friend Nicolini, Tuscan ambassador to the Vatican, sent regular reports to the court regarding affairs in Rome. Many of his letters dealt with the ongoing controversy surrounding Galileo. Nicolini revealed the circumstances surrounding Galileo’s "imprisonment" when he reported to the Tuscan king: "The pope told me that he had shown Galileo a favor never accorded to another" (letter dated Feb. 13, 1633); " . . . he has a servant and every convenience" (letter, April 16); and "[i]n regard to the person of Galileo, he ought to be imprisoned for some time because he disobeyed the orders of 1616, but the pope says that after the publication of the sentence he will consider with me as to what can be done to afflict him as little as possible" (letter, June 18). Had Galileo been tortured, Nicolini would have reported it to his king. While instruments of torture may have been present during Galileo’s recantation (this was the custom of the legal system in Europe at that time), they definitely were not used. The records demonstrate that Galileo could not be tortured because of regulations laid down in The Directory for Inquisitors (Nicholas Eymeric, 1595). This was the official guide of the Holy Office, the Church office charged with dealing with such matters, and was followed to the letter. As noted scientist and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead remarked, in an age that saw a large number of "witches" subjected to torture and execution by Protestants in New England, "the worst that happened to the men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof." Even so, the Catholic Church today acknowledges that Galileo’s condemnation was wrong. The Vatican has even issued two stamps of Galileo as an expression of regret for his mistreatment.

Infallibility Although three of the ten cardinals who judged Galileo refused to sign the verdict, his works were eventually condemned. Anti-Catholics often assert that his conviction and later rehabilitation somehow disproves the doctrine of papal infallibility, but this is not the case, for the pope never tried to make an infallible ruling concerning Galileo’s views. The Church has never claimed ordinary tribunals, such as the one that judged Galileo, to be infallible. Church tribunals have disciplinary and juridical authority only; neither they nor their decisions are infallible. No ecumenical council met concerning Galileo, and the pope was not at the center of the discussions, which were handled by the Holy Office. When the Holy Office finished its work, Urban VIII ratified its verdict, but did not attempt to engage infallibility. Three conditions must be met for a pope to exercise the charism of infallibility: (1) he must speak in his official capacity as the successor of Peter; (2) he must speak on a matter of faith or morals; and (3) he must solemnly define the doctrine as one that must be held by all the faithful. In Galileo’s case, the second and third conditions were not present, and possibly not even the first. Catholic theology has never claimed that a mere papal ratification of a tribunal decree is an exercise of infallibility. It is a straw man argument to represent the Catholic Church as having infallibly defined a scientific theory that turned out to be false. The strongest claim that can be made is that the Church of Galileo’s day issued a non-infallible disciplinary ruling concerning a scientist who was advocating a new and still-unproved theory and demanding that the Church change its understanding of Scripture to fit his. It is a good thing that the Church did not rush to embrace Galileo’s views, because it turned out that his ideas were not entirely correct, either. Galileo believed that the sun was not just the fixed center of the solar system but the fixed center of the universe. We now know that the sun is not the center of the universe and that it does move—it simply orbits the center of the galaxy rather than the earth. As more recent science has shown, both Galileo and his opponents were partly right and partly wrong. Galileo was right in asserting the mobility of the earth and wrong in asserting the immobility of the sun. His opponents were right in asserting the mobility of the sun and wrong in asserting the immobility of the earth. Had the Catholic Church rushed to endorse Galileo’s views—and there were many in the Church who were quite favorable to them—the Church would have embraced what modern science has disproved.

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