19 years ago today, Spongebob aired for the first time on Nickelodeon! In celebration, here is some very early concept art that was drawn for the show! Some of these are as early as 1997!
I work in hotels/resorts, and honestly, take the little shampoos and soaps! We throw them away when you leave (we don’t know if you’ve opened them and messed with them or whatever, so for health and safety it all goes in the trash) If you stay at the fancier places or chains, they’ve actually done some bit of thought into the scents for the toiletries, in that if you use them while at home you’ll remember the time you stayed at the hotel and be more likely to return.
Just don’t take the towels or the robes or any of that shit, it’s expensive.
This is true, all soaps, shampoos, and the like are tossed after a guest checks out of the hotel even if it’s clearly unopened because it is considered a health hazard violation in most places if they’re left there. If someone were to somehow get sick from it, a hotel can be shut down. Just take the toiletries, they’re ordered in bulk as is and only cost the hotel a few dollars to order them by the hundreds
And even if you don’t use them, you can donate them to your local homeless shelter or other similar charity and give someone something they could use that would otherwise go to waste.
PLEASE TAKE THE SOAPS. PLEASE DONATE THE SOAPS. It’s one of the biggest requests shelters/supply banks get. You want to make their fucking day? Show up with socks, undies, diapers, and toiletries.
And here I am not taking them to avoid being wasteful.
And here I was not wanting to steal things from the hotels. The more you know.
Reblogging again because I didn’t even think about donating them to charity. I figured they were too small to be useful, but they would be perfect for shelters and the like.
while we’re on the subject! if u are donating things to a shelter that supports women, especially trans women, please also consider going to the dollar store and buying a couple packs of razors! For trans women who are unable to get HRT, being able to shave helps a lot. Also if u can afford it, get a couple packs of the fancy tampons and pads!!!!
What about the packets of coffee and hot chocolate that some hotels have in the rooms? Are those to take or do we leave them?
i’ve known this for decades, since i did something odd back in the 90′s: i asked. so when i stay in hotels i take any still-full toiletries from my room with me, because they’re very handy for road trips and camping.
you can’t take a full size bottle of shampoo camping, after all, that’s ridiculous. mostly you can just rinse the sweat off in the campsite shower and not worry about being a little funky – hell, i used to not even bother cuz i hated the slimy concrete floors and i’d just swim in the lake or whatever – but when you get weird sap in your eyebrow or congealed bacon grease in your leg hair holy crap do you appreciate those tiny soaps and shampoo bottles.
it’s also because Leonard COHEN (!) was Jewish and this is a quintessentially Jewish line, and changing it to that level of Annoying Certainty is stripping it of its Jewish meaning and imbuing it with that particularly American smug evangelical Christian attitude that makes me tired, so very tired
THAT IS EXACTLY WHY
I don’t think I’ve heard any cover artist sing my favorite verses
You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah
I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
um woah
I will always hit the reblog button so hard for Hallelujah but ESPECIALLY mentions of the elusive final verses which are just about my favorite lyrics ever. Why do people always omit the best part of the song??
In Yiddish
In Hebrew
In Ladino
Yeah, I wonder why the verses that reference specific Jewish mystical and chassidic concepts that aren’t readily understood by American “I love Jews, you know, Jesus was Jewish!” Christians never get any airtime. Funny that.
You say I took the name in vain I don’t even know the name But if I did, well really, what’s it to you? There’s a blaze of light In every word It doesn’t matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah
These are specifically about Chassidic Jewish theories of the holy language, how each letter and combination of letters in Hebrew contains the essence of the divine spark and if used correctly, can unlock or uncover the divine spark in the mundane material word. And of course, there are secret names of God which, when spoken by any ordinary human would kill them, but if you are worthy and holy and righteous can be used to perform miracles or even to behold the glory of God face-to-face. The words themselves have power. Orthodox Jews often won’t even pronounce the word “hallelujah” in it’s entirety in conversation, because the “yah” sound at the end is a True Name of God (there are hundreds, supposedly) and thus too holy to say outside of prayer.
None of this is to mention how David’s sin in sleeping with Batshevah (the subject of much of the song, with a brief deviation to Shimshon and Delilah) is considered the turning point in the Tanach that ultimately dooms the Davidic line at the cosmological level and thus dooms Jewish sovereignty and independence altogether. From a Christian perspective this led to Jesus, the King of Kings, and that’s all very well and good for them, but for the Jews, the Davidic line never returned and is the central tragedy of the total arc of the Torah. Like, our Bible doesn’t have a happy ending? And that’s what this song is about? There’s no Grace – you just have to sit with the sin and its consequence.
Of course, Cohen is referencing all of this ironically, and personalizing these very high-level religious concepts. Like the point of this song is that Cohen, the songwriter, is identifying with David, the psalmist, and identifying his own sins with David’s. The ache that you hear in this song is that the two thousand year exile that resulted from one wrong night of passion and Cohen feels that the pain he has caused to his lover is of equally monumental infamy. Basically, in a certain light, the whole of Psalms is a vain effort for David to atone for his sin and I think Cohen was writing this song in wonderment that David could eternally praise the God who would not forgive him and would force him and his people into exile. But he ultimately gets how you have to surrender to the inexorable force of God in the face of your own inadequacies and how to surrender is to worship and to worship is to praise – hence, Hallelujah. You can either do the right thing and worship God from the start, or you can fuck up, be punished, and thus be forced to beg for His forgiveness. It’s the terrible inevitability of praise that’s driving him mad.
Like honestly, I identify with this song so strongly as an off-the-derech Jew, I sometimes wonder what Christians can possibly hear in this song, as it speaks so specifically to the sadomasochistic relationship that a lapsed Jew has with their God. It’s such a different song from a Christian theological perspective it’s almost unrecognizable, man. This song continues to be a wonder of postmodern Jewish theology and sexuality from start to finish. Don’t let anyone give you any “Judeo-Christian” narishkeit. This is a Jewish song.
(Sorry about the wild tangent it’s just 2AM and I love this song so dang much, you guys.)
holy shit. woah.
This.
That last bit from @stoneandbloodandwater, that’s a great articulation of the well of feeling, memory, storytelling, and culture packed into one of the most Jewish songs ever to get real famous. The song is both surrender and defiance, and that those are actually a single path together, not two opposite choices.
The older I get, the more I find heterosexual couples so…weird. It’s not that men and women are inherently different in irreconcilable ways, is that they’re socialized to believe they are, and it shows in how male/female couples interact. There is this awkward, unnecessary communication barrier between them based on their perceived gender differences. This obviously doesn’t apply to all heterosexual couples; I’m sure there are plenty with great communication and so on. But the large majority of the ones I’ve encountered in the past few years just don’t. It’s uncomfortable to watch.
They have all these weird notions about each other’s genders, and it’s so out of place for me. Like, women will let their husbands get away with not doing housework because “men are helpless” and men will talk about how their wives are “just hormonal” when they come to them with a legitimate grievance that needs to be talked about, and so on and so forth. Just a lot of back and forth that seems perfectly normal to them, but to an outsider who doesn’t experience this kind of heteronormative behavior often it’s like…
i’d like to share my hypothesis that this exact phenomenon is why straight writers struggle to write gay relationships (or project heteronormative constructs onto those relationships). they literally just don’t understand a relationship where one person doesn’t treat the other like they’re part of an alien species.
also, no one has brought this up at all, but i think that neo-pronouns have a place in the queer movement. i personally don’t like most of them, and i’m reluctant to use, idfk, bun-self pronouns, but here’s the thing.
most if not all neo-pronouns exist to reject the use of GENDER as the primary identifying feature of person to person language (idk if there’s an actual word for that, i’m a linguist in spirit not in vocabulary). in english, the set-up for singular third-person pronouns is as follows: male-aligned, female-aligned, and (if you’re not a coward) neither-aligned, neutral. that’s he/him, she/her, and they/them, respectively. even our neutral pronouns have a basis in the binary system of using gender as the main identifier, because ‘neutral’ is generally used to mean ‘on the same spectrum but between the two poles’. think about it–EVERY pronoun we use to speak about someone in the third person is gendered or derived from gender in some way.
not so for ze/zir/zerself. the closest some of these pronouns get to the actual proper pronoun system is how they reflect the use of Mx. as an honorific, and the use of Mx. is almost non-existent. saying you use ey/em/emself pronouns is like taking a linguistic step away from the gender system. you can still kind of trace the roots of some of these pronouns to the previous system (ey/em is likely derived from they/them, for example) but they don’t really lie on the male—-neutral—-female spectrum we’ve used for centuries.
noun-self pronouns take it a step further. it’s not just taking the gender out of the pronoun, it’s putting something else in its place. as a political statement, that holds INCREDIBLE meaning. noun-self pronouns spit in the face of proper english, cishet ideology, and mainstream culture all in one fell swoop. in fact, my own inability to completely divorce myself from the current system and accept noun-self pronouns is probably incredibly indicative of how counter to our culture it is to use them.
there are practical arguments against neo-pronouns that may or may not hold water, but AS A TREND (i’m not using this word to belittle the usage, btw, i’m just describing the rise of neo-pronouns) they have the same roots as gnc dress and the battle against gender roles. they FEEL different and ‘extra wrong’ because it’s been so long since we’ve had any sort of pronoun system that doesn’t rely on gender, in most languages, and that probably means neo-pronouns are all the more important in the long run. taking gender out of conversations that don’t need it may help us move past the friction that always rises around LGBTQ+ identities.
idk, it’s just something to think about.
this is a sweet-ass post and I’m gonna tag @nbpsiioniic in it.
Lotor is coded as half white/half POC with his white side being the side of his abusers and treated as being less than for being half POC (Altean) so,
Nevermind Lotor is proud of who he is. Nevermind Lotor is proud to be of Altean and Galra descent. Nevermind that you just slandered half of Lotor’s heritage in the name of defending him. Stripping his character down, stripping mixed race down, to a single sentence in the name of hate and uwu/woke points. Yes, Lotor is a survivor of abuse and wears that openly. But. Lotor is proud to be of Altean AND Galra descent. Proud of BOTH sides of his heritage. Washing over that and boiling his abuse down to a single sentence is a disservice to a phenomenal, nuanced character. But nevermind any of that. Let’s talk about:
What Voltron Owes Imperialism
or
Why Fandom is Missing the Point
Lotor being coded as half POC / half white may be completely on the money, but to say the Galra Empire is white coded is wildly inaccurate when we look at real life empires across history. Empire is not exclusively white. Empire does not know age, does not know gender, does not know race. Sci-Fi owes a great deal to European (white) imperialism but for this fandom it is important to remember Voltron originally came out of Japan. A country that has also parented deeply imperialistic ideologies and committed grave atrocities in pursuit of that imperialism. It is important to remember BOTH SIDES of Lotor’s heritage because, like all mixed race people, he pulls from more than one culture. But above all, IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER EMPIRE IS NOT THE ANSWER. Imperialism is bad no matter what form it takes.
The Galra as Imperial Japan-
Altea and the Galra both hold imperialistic views that closely mirror real world historical justifications for imperialism, but the Galra are not white coded. The Galra Empire holds more in common with Imperial Japan’s doctrine than with European empires in terms of structure, conquest, and internal justification. Looking at their structure, the Galra work on a class system. We have to assume there are at least a few classes given the complexity of such things, but we have only been shown a serving class and a warrior class, the latter being of the utmost importance and seemingly occupied by most of their citizens. We’ve only met 2 named non-warrior Galra across this war; and we likely were only shown the serving class to demonstrate that Zarkon has always been elitist. Like Imperial Japan, the Galra have a very rigid, militaristic internal hierarchy based on strength and blood, in that order, but always together. They elect their emperor based on valour and fighting prowess. They rise through the ranks based on how successful they are in battle, through honorable rite of combat. And following this ideology, Galra conquer because they are the strongest. Because others are weak and if a species is not strong enough to defend their people and their land then they deserve to be conquered and used for the glory of the Galra Empire. And the Galra consider their blood to be the source of that strength. The strongest are strong because they are pure and it is in their veins. But then we see that ideology tweaked as the Galra expand and spread. We see people like Shiro, who meet their criteria for strength without blood to bolster their claim, who have admirable fighting prowess. So Shiro becomes elevated; they call him Champion and brand him theirs by outfitting him with a piece of their culture, their technology. Because it is not enough for Shiro to be strong; he must be strong in the way they are: as a Galra. We see this again with mixed race Galra citizens like Lotor and his generals who have Galra blood and therefore are strong enough to be a part of their ranks, but they are still considered ‘less than’ because their blood is impure- ideology that was so deeply ingrained in Imperial Japan. This intense stratification in the Galra is perfectly illustrated when we are first introduced to Lotor:
The Galra also match Japan in terms of conquest. Colonization is achieved by sending merchants, missionaries and families to new territories to occupy the upper class and maintain hold on new land. But we learn Zarkon was not interested in this when Lotor recounts how he worked alongside the native inhabitants of his conquered planet. Zarkon was not out to colonize but to conquer. Like Imperial Japan, he sent soldiers and they conquered like locusts. They came in, stripped the area of resources, and put the appropriate fear into the local population. Like Imperial Japan, they preyed on the weak because they were strong. But a large part of why Japan was never conquered isn’t because of their tremendous fighting prowess. It’s because other imperialists, white imperialists, came to their lands, saw similar ideologies being practiced and sought alliance instead of subjection. And Japan eagerly accepted alliance, not out of fear, but because they sought to enhance their wealth through knowledge and technology. Sound familiar? If you’ve paid any attention to the early relationship of Alfor and Zarkon it should.
Why Galra and Alteans got along-
Earmarking Zarkon as Lotor’s white oppressor is an easy and thoughtless conclusion. Something fans like to jump to because the Galra Empire has been winning for thousands of years. Altea is not the oppressed POC wiped out by the evil white coded Galra. Altea is the white coded European imperialists overthrown by the POC coded Galra imperialists. It’s important to look at the other original Voltron paladins to understand this.
In VLD’s narrative, it is clear Alfor and Zarkon lead the alliance of their planetary system, the “formal agreement to work alongside each other.” Look at the screenshot above. On one side, we’ve got Zarkon, with Gyrgen and Trigel, and on the other we have Alfor backed by Blaytz. Instead of showing 5 individuals coming together on equal ground we are shown Zarkon and Alfor shaking hands while the others stand by. This implies that both Zarkon and Alfor had been working with other planets, shoring up allies and additional resources, to protect and expand their culture. Perhaps they were doing so in a peaceful way, but perhaps not.
We have this story of five warriors coming together to form an unlikely bond, but it’s interesting that we never hear anything about the other three paladins or their cultures, no mention of how they may have influenced Altea or Diabazaal. Just a clip of Alfor visiting one of their planets. We don’t even know if any of the other 3 paladins’ people survived the mass genocide that was Zarkon and Alfor warring with one another. The implication in all of this is that Zarkon nor Alfor were interested in adopting or preserving other cultures but rather sought to spread their ‘superior’ way of life.
Altea as Imperial Europeans-
Everything about Altea’s practice and ideology points to a very imperial European (white) concept of Believed Moral Superiority. Their decisions are very paternalistic, holier than thou, and centered on the idea that they are thinkers who only need others, like the Galra and Blaytz, for brawn. Allura and Coran set Alfor up as this great peacemaker, a very European justification with promises of prosperity that is never delivered. Alteans built a giant near-indestructible magical war machine and labeled it ‘Defender of the Universe.’ They had castle ships which they used to maintain their lifestyle and culture during prolonged visits to other planets. Alteans were regularly making off-planet visits to Weblums and Balmera to collect recourses for their technology. And ages before Alfor’s alliance with the Galra, Alteans ventured far enough into space to discover a mystical, magical place of secrets and wisdom which only a select few from their race were bidden knowledge of and access to. All of this adds up to the fact that Alteans have been conquering in the name of exploration for some time. Alteans operate under the guise of spreading peace and knowledge but that only lasts as long as the leader has pure intentions. When a leader becomes corrupted or a new one takes their place, what happens? Oh wait, we saw that in 03×04 Hole in the Sky with Empress Allura.
This alternate reality furthered the story line in so many ways, but for this post let’s focus on how it helped our understanding of Allura. There she was known as Empress Allura where she “put down the Galra uprising and established the Altean Empire 10,000 years ago… Without [her] will to fight and avenge the loss of [her] father, Altea would not have been able to spread peace and stability throughout the universe.” An imperial justification rampant throughout European empires. And Princess Allura lights up at this description of herself and her people.
The show even goes as far as to parallel ‘the Altean peace movement’ with slave labor, a strong call back to European justifications for empire in response to viewing other worlds as savage and in need of control and/or redemption. In that reality, Allura established the Altean empire for peace and justice but also vengeance. She spread that empire because she believed Alteans know peace and prosperity and she wanted to bring their ‘good fortune’ to others. Maybe in her lifetime she was good to her newly conquered subjects. Maybe she had their best interests at heart. Maybe, like Lotor, she had high ideals. But the fact is Allura built an empire and ten thousand years later her legacy is not peace but slavery. Back in this reality, Altea is just a more palatable version of European imperialism because it is an empire that was snuffed out before it could grow into something irretrievably evil. But it was still an empire, one in which Allura believes.
The Point is Empire in any form is Not Good-
Empire must justify itself. Empire is not good. Imperialism is not good. Any of it. The point is that Allura needs to wake up and smell the damn coffee known as freedom. Altea is a call to European imperialist ideology and Allura strongly identifies with this because she was born into it and has believed in it her entire life. The point is that Allura must unlearn her prejudices, unlearn her flawed ideology, and look beyond Altea if she truly wants peace for the universe. Seasons 1 and 2 were about her learning to recognize imperialism. Seasons 3 and 4 demonstrate that she is able to see past it for the greater good. But we have yet to hit the beat where Allura clearly identifies what is bad about her beliefs, about Altea. Allura is not a fickle character rewritten every other season to suit the needs of the plot. Imperialism is something deeply ingrained in her and it will take more than a few heart-to-hearts and minor epiphanies to change that.
Enter Lotor-
Maybe the worst part of all of this isn’t just the glorification of Altea as something it never was, but holding Lotor up as an oppressed baby suffering under colonization. Yes, he has suffered under imperialism, but Lotor is also entirely on board with CONTINUING THIS EMPIRE’S IMPERIALISM! (just maybe a little nicer.. maybe) Hint: If you still want to own people and their lands for the sake of owning them, it’s imperialism. Even if you don’t strip them of their resources and commit casual genocide. It’s still. NOT. GOOD. Lotor is whole heartedly owning the Galra Empire. He is not trying to repay the grievances committed against others by his people. He has not talked of plans to improve the lives of his current conquered subjects. He has not concerned himself with quelling the rebellion against the Galra Empire, his empire. (Side note: a lot of rebels are also coded as mixed race.) Lotor has almost exclusively shown interest in making allies who can bolster his status and gain him access to new resources. He talks of improving the lives of his citizens, Galra citizens. He talks of allowing non-Galra citizens who are strong, who are worthy, to join their ranks. But only if they are strong enough. Fans get upset that Allura is twisted into a naive character to suit the needs of the plot, but that is not what’s happening. Allura has saddled herself alongside Lotor because Lotor is speaking to her in terms of her ideology. Altean ideology. Altea’s way of empire. They are both imperialistic as fuck. Lotor talks of improving upon what his father built, but it is still an empire. And Allura buys into it because Lotor is using her terms of empire. An empire that preaches exploration and peace where WE ARE ALL SAFE AND WARM.
Allura harbours deeply imperialistic views and prejudices. Through the seasons we have seen her slowly chipping away at that mindset, but she is still holding on to an idealistic view of Altea. An Altea that mirrors European empire on multiple levels.
A large part of what makes Allura a compelling character is that her coding opposes itself. She comes from a culture built on a foundation of white European imperialist ideology but she knows the struggles of a POC at the hand of the Galra Empire. We are seeing her slowly understand that Altea’s imperialist way of thinking is not going to end well. She needs to change her ways, her beliefs, if she truly wants the universe to be free and prosper.
Pissed at me for calling out our beautiful ebony princess as white coded? Consider how we as a fandom would interpret Altea and Allura if everything was the same in VLD canon but Allura was still a white skinned, blonde haired, blue eyed woman as she is in earlier incarnations. Same behavior. Same character. Same history. Same descriptions. But Allura was white. How would you feel about Altea then?
Notes: HUGE thank you to @akaiikowrites for being an amazing history buff! If you want to scream at me or with me over this or anything to do with VLD my ask is open!
So I know it can be hard to find good original m/m specifically by category. Some publishers offer tagging systems and some don’t.
QueerRomanceInk is a database (free for readers) that allows you to search original published m/m by a lot of different categories, including orientations like asexual and non-binary, tropes and potential trigger warnings. It’s very fandom friendly re: search parameters.
It’s gaining momentum in the m/m world and will be very helpful given so much quality m/m is actually self-published these days and therefore very hard to find (especially given the implosion of Riptide Publishing in the meantime).
But it’ll only get better if folks check it out! So if you’re someone who is interested in having a place to have a to-be-read and favourite authors list, get notifications for books on sale and new books by fave authors, and don’t want the entrenched drama that is GoodReads, I highly recommend you check it out!
you mean for teams? option skate generally means that the players still have to be there but skating is optional. practices generally are not option i have heard people say certain players like ovechkin don’t have to show up but i don’t know how true that is. but basically, players always have to show up for practices regardless of what thye’re going to do there. it’s about going to work at that point not necessarily playing hockey. and even injured players will go, just depends on the injry because obviously if a player shouldn’t be leaving bed or being around others they shouldn’t be showing up to practice.
i wish more people spread around the quote from a 1998 yoshiyuki tomino interview where he talks about how boys who only build gunpla are fake gundam fans and the true original fans were girls who write fanfiction
There are lots – billions – of religious people who don’t think ‘God is real the way poetry is real’ or ‘God is real the way love is real’, they think that the universe was created by a specific entity with thoughts, intentions, and desires, and which sometimes acts in the world, and which has expectations about our conduct which were communicated through historical prophets. Many of them think you can directly communicate with God through prayer.
There are lots – billions – of religious people who think that humans have immortal souls, which survive the destruction of our bodies and which have an eternal fate of some kind.
Call those type-1s. They have a belief about the supernatural. They think their belief is true, and tells us things.
These are claims about the world. They’re not claims about lenses we can use to see the world; they’re not claims about what makes us empowered and happy to believe; they are statements about what is actually true. If you say to these people ‘oh, you mean you find it fulfilling and empowering to think of yourself as having an immortal soul’, they’ll say “uh, no, I mean that humans have an immortal soul”.
This is true of some religious people on tumblr/participating in this argument, but a lot of religious people on tumblr are a different kind of religious, one which is more common now than it has been historically. They are more likely to agree with claims like “God is how we find ourselves in the world” or “God is whatever you find when you’re looking for God” or “God is love”.
Call this type-2.
There are also, separately, a bunch of people whose attitude about God is “people who have believed in God have gotten something really powerful out of this, or they wouldn’t do it. What is that? Can I inhabit that state and get a good description of what the powerful thing they’re getting out of it is?”
Call these ones type-3.
So now that we’ve described our groups, here are some fights they have!
Atheists: “Okay, it looks like there is no entity with thoughts, intentions and desires that created the world. Also, those historical prophets were recording their own beliefs/interests, they didn’t have any access to what a god thought.”
Religious people-type-1: “We disagree. God exists, and we have a lot of information about what specifically he wants, and he wants this.”/ “We disagree. Souls exist, and…”/ “We disagree. Eight different gods exist, and…”
Religious people-type-2: “You’re treating this like it’s an answerable question, when it isn’t. And then you’re acting like you have the one right answer, you dick.”
Religious people-type-3: “yes, yes, we know, but God is doing something, and that’s really interesting, and you’re missing out on a huge part of the human experience if you’re not trying to inhabit the perspective associated with faith in God”.
Atheist: “…fine, but God doesn’t exist. Like, actually, if you go and check for Jews in Egypt there weren’t any, and this is true for every revealed religion, they make claims that are factually false, and you’re talking about something other than that, but there are still people murdering gays because of that, so I want to talk about that!”
Religious-people-type-1: “You’re equivocating between ‘this belief causes people to behave badly’ and ‘this belief is false’. God exists, and also people do bad things in their mistaken understanding of what God wants. It’s bad that they’re doing the bad things, but we have to find a way to address that other than claiming God doesn’t exist, because as a fact about the world, God exists and cares how we act.”
Religious-people-type-2: “if you’re trying to think about God by checking for archaeological evidence of Jews in Egypt you’re completely misunderstanding how to think about God. God isn’t the sort of thing that even in theory would be disprovable by looking at evidence. And also you are still being a colossal dick. I’m not murdering people over my beliefs, so why do you even care what I believe? My beliefs are mine, they’re private, and they’re a huge part of who I am.”
Religious-people-type-3: “People who are religious are happier; that’s a true fact about religion. People who are religious have tighter-knit communities; that’s a true fact about religion. People who are religious have more kids; that’s a true and important fact about religion which will affect whether the next generation is religious. You’re focusing on the false claims but missing the true ones, and the true ones matter!”
Anyway the current argument on tumblr is unproductive because all of these people are talking at each other without much clarity about what they believe and which people they’re directing their arguments at. And I think a lot of people think that “God isn’t an answerable question” is a concession everyone should be willing to make instead of one specific opinion about religion which you could hold.
This.
When I say I am an atheist, I’m saying something that’s compatible with 2 and 3, but I’m also saying “if you believe 2 or 3, I don’t understand why you consider yourself a theist. That seems weirdly imprecise.”
I can and have gotten a lot out of the kind of Christian practice that goes like “Jesus is this being that is maximally compassionate. He wants you to try to be, knows you will fall short, and doesn’t mind as long as you tried because he’s… well… maximally compassionate. We get together every Sunday and remind one another to try to imitate Mr. Maximally Compassionate as much as we can, and to try to push ourselves to do it more than we usually do and thereby become morally good through practice.”
However, I am uneasy about calling myself “a Christian” because I do not believe Mr. Maximally Compassionate existed. I think he’s a template, used as a reminder to be moralLy good and an inspiration to be more morally good than you currently are.
And an imperfect one at that.
I’m an atheist, someone who used to be type 1, and really don’t understand why type 2′s and types 3′s keep wanting to use the name of the religion that type 1s originally used.
if you say ‘i’m spiritual but not religious/ i’m animist/ whatever’ then fine, but acting like christianity/ islam was never about type 1 stuff, and suggesting it ever was is a strawman from lazy unsophisticated atheists who don’t know what they’re talking about and that’s not an interesting or important question anyway is disingenuous and frankly infuriating as someone who used to be type 1, knows a LOT of type 1s, and tbh thinks type 1 is probably more common than type 2 or 3 at least when it comes to abrahamic religions and maybe even in general, but if it’s not an actual majority is still a HUGELY relevant chunk and not a tiny minority.
Also, i’m someone who cares about the truth. Like, i care about things like ‘people are killing gays because they think god told them to’, but i ALSO care about the truth, and whether or not the actual type 1 claims are true. If there was a religion that had adherents who ALL behaved morally and were super nice and caused no problems, but they also said that ‘you have an imortal soul and dying is not a big deal and some people who die will go to heaven and some will go to hell’ that’s something that i actually care about whether it’s true or not. Whether when i die i go to heaven, hell or oblivion is kind of a big deal to me, i don’t know about you guys.
Yeah, that. I feel like type 2s and 3s want atheists to stop talking about type 1s but I don’t know why that would be required.
Endorsed. I’m even going to go a bit further and state that type 1′s make up the overwhelming (as in, >99%) majority of the religious, and so I’m a little tired of being treated like an unsophisticated /r/atheism philistine for pointing this out and treating it as a baseline in discussions.
It’s usually the type 2′s that are doing this. Type 1′s and I just have a fundamental disagreement about the facts-of-the-world. I think the evidence is clearly on my side, but they don’t… and that’s about as far as most discussions get. They are, at least, usually upfront about the material differences between our positions. Type 3′s, you guys are an odd bunch, and I think you really should call yourselves atheists, but you don’t usually give me grief and so I return the favor. As long as you’re not hurting anyone, you do you.
But it’s the type 2′s who are really condescending toward atheists, which especially bugs me because most of the time their arguments are muddy and confused. They are very slippery and won’t state plainly what they believe, leaving me with no way to actually examine and invalidate their claims, which they then take to mean I’m just a STEM-lord who can be brushed off because I don’t understand Kant or whatever. Hey guys, “communicating badly and then acting smug when you’re misunderstood is not cleverness”.
So, as a type-2 and type-3 believer, your reblog here just gave me a big clue as to why such people wander into your debates and get mad at you:
You assume type 1s are 99% of religious people but they’re really not.
But more to the point, type 1s like to assume that they are and should be 99% of religious people.
And it’s erroneous as heck according to the vast majority of demographic data, but it’s also, specifically, a power play in support of religious fundamentalism, against the rest of us. It’s the claim that they have the only ‘real’ way to believe. And when you accept their claim unchallenged, you are unwittingly supporting that power play.
Can you see now why we’d be against that, and very tired of it?
Anyway, already having typed this response, I see your tags say you’re tired of this, and that’s fine, I don’t know that I’ve got the spoons to really engage at length. But I thought you might want to know that, like, if you’re running into people saying “you sound like a fundamentalist”, and it’s confusing to you, what they’re saying is, “you’re accepting as basis an unsupported statement that the fundamentalists are using to try and trample us, please stop helping.”
*Even leaving aside Christian denominations which do so, and Christians who exist in type 1 denominations as a type 2 or 3 adherent, there are several religions that explicitly encourage type 2 and type 3 practice and belief. Buddhism, Judaism and Neopaganism are among those. That’s at least twelve million Americans. And it’s not a new movement in Judaism either; the Talmud deals with this stuff and there are tons of Jewish in-jokes about how Jews often wind up basically being atheists. This is not new, and the cultural erasure of it by fundies isn’t new, either.
just moving along like everyone else 