Try harder. I was only mildly offended,and I think it was mainly because I think you don't love me...or you would have tried harder. You always hurt the ones you love! 😅
Thou shalt not emit carbon which the non- backbones need to sustain themselves. - Canon exception- private jets have Absolution,if the owner/guest/renter/pimp will be attending a Climate Climax within the following 13 months.
Man finds a way to take Belief and screw his fellow man for it. It's some kinda Axiom. Govt houses the most vile psychopathy,because: Power.
China's psychology is unique and interesting...and utterly frightening to me. Millenia over Millenia of peasant submission to the State,in a way that other Empires only dreamed of. Is it now in their DNA? I quail for them whole praying for their collective deliverance from their overlords.
"Religions are absolutely incredible vehicles for amassing government power and draping your positions in layers of additional authority you can never achieve through secular means alone. It also gives you a huge body of built-in justifications for your inconsistent behavior, punitive activities against your citizens to consolidate your power . . . "
Correct, along with other observations. Also dealt with here, along with related matters of Power and Interest . . . https://les7eb.substack.com/
Plenty of Hell Notes seen being burnt in China, BTW.
Will gradually move on to China as This Century becomes the century of The Great Eurasian Union and The West falls into decline.
It's interesting to see the small pockets of "traditional" Chinese culture- practiced mostly quietly at home- in mainland Chinese communities as opposed to the global diaspora, in keeping with my anecdotal observation that self-isolating immigrant communities tend to be "More <Chinese> than <Chinese>" pretty much wherever they go.
You write a great stack. In re: "this century," I find Russia the more interesting variable these days as it represents a nuanced actor. China's methods and motivations are a dull but incredibly dangerous, relentlessly plodding Skynet without culture or character, a mechanization of brutality.
Offensive? If truths offends, the fault is not with the truth but with the listener.
You'll notice that the legalism, inherent hypocrisy, literalism, and inhumane practices increases the farther south-and-east from Europe you go geographically (more or less) and temporally. Or to pre-christian Central/South America, at least for inhumane practices.
Neither gaelic (or gaylick as I've heard it pronounced), teutonic, slavic, ugric, illyrian, dacian, thracian, scythian, alan, armenian, kurdish, celtic, or classic greek had any of that.
Worship, don't worship, it was on you. Dare to try and make it without a god's blessing or approval, it's on you. Dare to defy the gods or even challenge them, it's on you. Freedom, autonomy, choice of action, and individual consequences - none of the jewish-christian-moslem "I'll punish the entirepeoplefor the transgressions of one of my chattel, sorry meant to say people".
There's an expression which translates to "godless" in english, which completely mutilates most of the original meaning. Today, in swedish and german too (gudlös and Gottlos resp.) means a) acting in a savage manner, and b) atheistic and c) criminal.
Gudlös originally meant someone who didn't acknowledged any particular god, without deyning the existence of them. A laid back, take it as it comes, "If any god wants something all they have to do is ask me"-attitude. Such people were respected and feared for their sheer audacity and courage. Understandable in an age where everyone believed in gods the way moderns believe in the milkman.
Personally, what sticks in my craw is the slave mentality of most religions, especially the Abrahamic family of them. Lots and lots of ridiculous rules, the kind a sadistic HR-department enforces in the forms of various woke-training programs simply to establish who wields the power and who is the subject.
That, I cannot respect nor accept. The very idea that man should cower or make abeisance and show obsequiosness before some charlatan in a robe claiming to speak for some spirit or demon or other otherwordly creature - never. I'm a free man. I live standing up. Any god showing up making demands get a slap to the face and a stern telling-to. That doesn't help, they can talk with my axe.
That is the correct attitude towards gods and clergy. The god is not needed. It is not worth more than man, certainly not more than your own blood.
What was offensive about that? Religion is what you get when you strive for empire. Belief is what you have between you and creation and your creator. The latter you can share as you like with whomever. The former is what you will be expected to follow whether you want to or not, on threat of your existence. Right?
As for this government, since Christianity is off limits, the new God is The Science. You can doubt that, but you will bow down or you will be cast out.
>> As for this government, since Christianity is off limits, the new God is The Science.
Don't be so sure. That's what the government looks like right now. Christianity is absolutely NOT off-limits for the voting sensibilities of many Americans, just not the ones currently cheating as hard as possible to stay in power. The backlash against the present madness is just as likely to come from a powerful evangelical movement as anywhere else.
My mother is evangelical. I grew up in evangelical churches. I went with her to her Tuesday night church meeting this week. The pastor made a video after Jan 06 calling for Trump to declare Martial Law, mentioning his (the pastors) AR- 15, that got about 100,000 views before the MN Attorney General convened a local meeting and got 40+ other pastors in the community to condemn him in the local paper. So yeah, an evangelical counterrevolution could happen. But I'm also pretty certain this globalist government has it pretty well in hand to make sure it won't happen through any election. (I get my radical nature from Mom)
The thing is, I (and a lot of people in here) are not in disagreement with much of what that pastor said. Maybe just not coming from the same starting point.
If backlash doesn't come from the Christian right no backlash will come at all and a backlash is necessary or our society will collapse from within or be destroyed from without. Another generation of rainbow flags flying above military bases and brass focusing more on combating toxic masculinity in our ranks, rather than enemies buying real estate next to our strategic installations, will have us all speaking Mandarin and worshiping the state.
All the Uighurs will be worked to death by then and the CCP will need Christians, polytheists, and gender mutilated confused atheists people to take their place in the slave mines.
Loved Bastard Easter, THERE ARE NO VIRGINS ANYMORE, and religious bullshit lawyer games. Maybe in that order, maybe not, depending on whether this is an exception-that-proves-the-rule day. But to go really deep, you need to examine the technicalities of what you can and can't eat or drink within the hour before communion, and does it start an hour before Mass or do you get the half hour of preliminary blather as a bonus?
You really just need to examine what, if anything, the technicalities serve.
Personally, I always assumed it was like not eating 2 hours before getting into the pool so you don't die. Because churches used to be full of water. It's possible I'm remembering it wrong.
As someone not raised Catholic, I've never actually been clear on the relative weight of those penances.
Are Hail Marys worse than Our Fathers? Is it because they take longer? Is there an exchange rate? (Forgive my honest question- my gods are transactional.)
As someone who went to Catholic school back in the dark ages of daily Latin Mass, it's the opposite. Hail Marys are a 10 to 1 trade-off with the Our Father in the rosary, that being the appropriate value of women to men. I had to look this up but there's also a Glory Be in the sequence, which CAN be traded off for the O My Jesus that Mary exclaimed (not making this up) at Fatima.
Wow, that was a LOT to comprehend. Whew. I paid my $5, and really got my money’s worth this month. And lots to think about……. But I was never offended. As a young girl, mama took me to church every week, and I did the same for my daughter. She no longer attends, and I’m pretty sure she’s flushed religion down the toilet with conservatism. I believe in God, but no longer respect organized religion - the locked doors during Covid pissed me off. As far as the government , fuck them. Don’t tread on me…….
I'm a hardcore Lutheran and agree with you on most of it. I would argue though that a lack of legality in modern Christians practices has led many problems in our society. Extreme love and tolerance towards homosexuality has led us to Drag Queen Story Hour and little Johnny growing hormone induced breasts waiting for the day when he is old enough to get his dick chopped off. (Can't wait until age is officially an arbitrary construct and we can be whatever age we feels. Little Johnny won't have to wait and I can get the senior discount at Sizzler!) If you claim to be a Christian but think it is ok to be gay then I have to wonder what other portions of the text you selectively edit out of your conscience.
I don't think government should step in to restore Christian values but they need to stop tipping the scales in favor of "marginalized" groups. A private property owner should be able to refuse housing to a gay couple, black single, white throuple, weird incel, or cat owner if he wants. The same should apply to a gay landlord if he doesn't want to rent to "breeders" or a cat person who doesn't want to rent to a dog person.
The government needs to get out of the way and let society decide if gays need to hide in the closet or if people who like cats should be allowed to sleep inside. (They should not. Cat people need to be ostracized from civil society and wives who start feeding stray cats only to have the stray cats have kittens that wives and children insist on keeping should be publicly shamed and ridiculed. Also, husband's who correctly diagnose stray cats as pregnant should be honored with a public day of acknowledgement for being right and reimbursed for the ridiculous amount of money it costs to have four cats spayed and neutered. Also, we need to get a puppy or a rescue dog who isn't good around cats.)
I agree that government should not be forcing association on anyone by anyone, as in the examples you give.
That said, the statement, "The government needs to get out of the way and let society decide if gays need to hide in the closet or if people who like cats should be allowed to sleep inside" makes me question what the boundaries are.
May "society," somehow separate from government, decide to kill gays to make sure they stay in the closet where they belong, or merely discriminate against them in hiring and lodging practices?
To me the important element is "equality under the law," at least if we're still talking about a society at all resembling America. You should be free not to associate with people as you describe, but not to treat others in a way that would be illegal if done to anyone else.
I think that's a fair basis.
You seem to have other issues with the cat stuff. I'm afraid I can't help there. Good luck, though.
I just think property and business owners should have more licence then they currently have to discriminate but physical violence is a clear violation of a person's rights. That would be the governments place to step in and adjudicate.
I think the cat situation will resolve itself in time.
Good news about my position on the matter makes me exempt from having to clean up explosive cat diarrhea from the carpet.
The utterances of "Who let that cat in!" seem to be getting more frequent.
Also, we have lots of big prey birds circling our property on a regular basis.
Well, to be honest, I think EVERYONE should have license to discriminate except the government- they lose that privilege by taking everyone's money.
I am 100% in favor of people living their values in any ways that don't hurt me or take my shit. It provides the most robust public arena for the actually useful values to rise to the top.
To be honest, Brothermouth had a very similar situation with his ex many years ago (re: cats). The rule was that any strays had to be fixed before being adopted. Even then, it took a long time for him to put his foot down.
But that whole situation was a mess. I fuckin' hated his wife, and she made me associate cats with weird lazy people for a long time.
Interesting article, with useful caveats. Thanks, Gutter--well done.
BTW, I'm one of those Jesus (or Yehshua/Yahshua/etc) lovers. 'Christian', one might say. 'Catholic' even, by some definition (mainly mine). And I don't want a religious government, either.
Too bad we've got one, what with the morphing between COVIDianism, Climate Change hysteria, and the obsession with genitals, lack thereof, or the everchanging self-identity of everything from groins to pronouns.
That was a fabulous read. What a wonderful start to a very gloomy saturday morning. It very much mirrored some of my own musings on the subject. Thank you for putting into a much more erudite and cohesive form than I could have managed.
Precisely why church and state don't mix, period. Whenever you try to mix them, they both inevitably corrupt and destroy each other sooner or later. Thus Thomas Jefferson knew that, and wisely erected a "wall of separation" between them to protect both from each other.
Conservatives claim that the "wall" was intended only to keep government out of religion, not the other way around. Liberals tend to (but not always) argue the opposite. But both are two sides of the same coin, and thus both are equally true.
Those "rats" were capybara, the world's largest rodents. They look like giant hamsters or guinea pigs, and apparently spend about half of their time in the water. Hence them being declared "fish" for the purposes of Lent, lol. It was a special dispensation in the 1600s, that to this very day they still never reversed.
Bless me father for I have sinned. It’s been 58 yrs since my last confession. And it’s a trend I don’t intend to break. I remembered questioning at age 7 as I was making up sins to whisper to the priest as I innocently kneeled in the confessional why I needed a middle man. For me, it was always about the ritual…the smell of the incense, the chanting, the robes, that resonated with me. The theatrics sort of like watching the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.
Not sure why your followers would be upset over your perspective. Anyone secure in their beliefs, no matter the subject, should be open to all viewpoints. Yes, the tenor of how you put pen to paper (or keystroke to computer screen) is at times raw and fierce but it’s clear and erudite in its content. Many times I’ve felt as I’ve read your take on different subjects it was like walking around the corner of the house and being hit by an iced snowball right in the middle of my forehead. WTF? She actually went there! I love that about your writing. It makes me fire up my neurons.
I think that man has gravitated to a belief outside of himself since we’ve crawled outside of the primordial soup. Long before organized religion or the formation of a bureaucracy, we’ve pondered the unknown. Even those who say they don’t believe in a God, Supreme Being, or the Divine, still have gods they worship (environment, science,et al). We are all hypocrites to some degree, and it’s worthwhile to know our failings to keep our hubris in check. Quibbling over who’s God is more powerful, more compassionate is peeing in the wind. Every religion is permeated with politics and peccadilloes. For me it’s about the search for the spirit, not the joining of a club.
So you think the myths about Thor & Co are both stories and also true, as some people take the Garden of Eden?
And where the same differ from the other stories what then? Is it all cotton masks and N100 respirators or polio vaccines and the mRNA kluges are much of a muchness because they have the same shape, and the truth of the matter is a side issue?
Or is it something else?
Atheists, theists, those I grok. Not sure what this is. Curious to find out, natch, but of course, none of my business.
I wanted to expand on my response below, as I wrote it in transit.
I'm not sure what you're asking me. Are you asking me to define my PERSONAL religious views? Are you asking me to explain my opinions on comparative theology, or the objective correctness of the various religions I mention in the article?
I'm not sure about the repeated references to masks and vaccines. Are they a serious part of the question, or intended as an insult?
>> So you think the myths about Thor & Co are both stories and also true, as some people take the Garden of Eden?
Yes, I do. I think there's probably also a foundational truth behind the story of Eden, and lots of other religious stories- that they're all either allegorical or games of telephone about things that are or were real or true.
I know plenty of people from various major religions that don't think their religious origin stories and mythology are literal narratives that occurred precisely as they are described 2-5000 years later after being passed through between 2 and 10 translations.
But I want to understand exactly what question you're asking me, because I stated that I wasn't arguing the "reality" of this or that faith because it wasn't the job of the article.
Whether or not they are provably true, all successful religions do the things I describe. It isn't intended as an endorsement or a denouncement of them, because I don't believe I have sufficient authority to say that any faith is devoid of truth.
You tell me to "bite you" when talking about cotton masks, which I'm not in fact talking about. Is this because you're comparing one's personally-held faith to COVID mandates?
I consider objective science to be a very different entity than proving or disproving the largely unknowable framework of faith systems. For one thing, in this country, I'm not beaten by the police or fired on the basis of religion.
Simply that this writing doesn't intend to do what billions of humans have failed to do until now- definitively prove or disprove all religious beliefs once and for all- doesn't mean it isn't doing what I said at the outset it was there to do, which was to examine the social constructs common to all religions.
Personally? I think the majority of religions are expressing some correct hypothesis about the nature of the universe and many incorrect ones, that most of these hypotheses have become deeply distorted over long periods of time by corruption (as discussed in the article), translation, lingual drift, and cultural amnesia, and that they function in certain ways as social memes whether or not they have a high degree of fidelity (again, as stated at the outset).
Have I addressed what you wanted to know? Do I not understand the question correctly? Or was it just a criticism with a question mark? Help me.
The short answer is "Yes". You are dealing with an impertinent elephant's child in the main.
And of course the dull, tedious fury from two years of the utilitarian Narrativist people killing my family and torturing them because they can manage neither common sense nor metaphysics. IOW "it's not you, it's me"
LLL, if you don't mind. See EC above. (And if you do, no worries. My curiosity is not your problem)
Once you write, "mind you, I am not going to think or write about whether or not this is true / real" I lose interest.
Honest injun, it's too much. After two Hell years of "well, practically-speaking, in terms of nudging the population in this or that useful direction, and setting aside physics, ethics, constitutional law and the [expletive deleted] Geneva convention, we can ....[Rhetoric Appended Here]..."
Who gives a rat's shiny pink pustulant backside.
It's a [redacted] piece of cotton. I can see the gaps from six feet away. I do not want to listen to your myriad rationalizations any more about its social utility. Bite me.
The religious snark is hilarious mind you. People are stupid funny.
Try harder. I was only mildly offended,and I think it was mainly because I think you don't love me...or you would have tried harder. You always hurt the ones you love! 😅
Thou shalt not emit carbon which the non- backbones need to sustain themselves. - Canon exception- private jets have Absolution,if the owner/guest/renter/pimp will be attending a Climate Climax within the following 13 months.
Man finds a way to take Belief and screw his fellow man for it. It's some kinda Axiom. Govt houses the most vile psychopathy,because: Power.
China's psychology is unique and interesting...and utterly frightening to me. Millenia over Millenia of peasant submission to the State,in a way that other Empires only dreamed of. Is it now in their DNA? I quail for them whole praying for their collective deliverance from their overlords.
Ummm I may be babbling...
Check out my discussion with Ben Bartee on his most recent stack about this exact topic.
Where's the button to downgrade on grounds of not being offended?
On the back of the computer
"Religions are absolutely incredible vehicles for amassing government power and draping your positions in layers of additional authority you can never achieve through secular means alone. It also gives you a huge body of built-in justifications for your inconsistent behavior, punitive activities against your citizens to consolidate your power . . . "
Correct, along with other observations. Also dealt with here, along with related matters of Power and Interest . . . https://les7eb.substack.com/
Plenty of Hell Notes seen being burnt in China, BTW.
Will gradually move on to China as This Century becomes the century of The Great Eurasian Union and The West falls into decline.
It's interesting to see the small pockets of "traditional" Chinese culture- practiced mostly quietly at home- in mainland Chinese communities as opposed to the global diaspora, in keeping with my anecdotal observation that self-isolating immigrant communities tend to be "More <Chinese> than <Chinese>" pretty much wherever they go.
You write a great stack. In re: "this century," I find Russia the more interesting variable these days as it represents a nuanced actor. China's methods and motivations are a dull but incredibly dangerous, relentlessly plodding Skynet without culture or character, a mechanization of brutality.
Western propaganda? Dealt with in the current and prior Substack essays - The China Mirage.
Hop onboard? Free to subscribe.
Sure, it's good stuff, and recommended.
Just read the "China mirage" essay.
Offensive? If truths offends, the fault is not with the truth but with the listener.
You'll notice that the legalism, inherent hypocrisy, literalism, and inhumane practices increases the farther south-and-east from Europe you go geographically (more or less) and temporally. Or to pre-christian Central/South America, at least for inhumane practices.
Neither gaelic (or gaylick as I've heard it pronounced), teutonic, slavic, ugric, illyrian, dacian, thracian, scythian, alan, armenian, kurdish, celtic, or classic greek had any of that.
Worship, don't worship, it was on you. Dare to try and make it without a god's blessing or approval, it's on you. Dare to defy the gods or even challenge them, it's on you. Freedom, autonomy, choice of action, and individual consequences - none of the jewish-christian-moslem "I'll punish the entirepeoplefor the transgressions of one of my chattel, sorry meant to say people".
There's an expression which translates to "godless" in english, which completely mutilates most of the original meaning. Today, in swedish and german too (gudlös and Gottlos resp.) means a) acting in a savage manner, and b) atheistic and c) criminal.
Gudlös originally meant someone who didn't acknowledged any particular god, without deyning the existence of them. A laid back, take it as it comes, "If any god wants something all they have to do is ask me"-attitude. Such people were respected and feared for their sheer audacity and courage. Understandable in an age where everyone believed in gods the way moderns believe in the milkman.
Personally, what sticks in my craw is the slave mentality of most religions, especially the Abrahamic family of them. Lots and lots of ridiculous rules, the kind a sadistic HR-department enforces in the forms of various woke-training programs simply to establish who wields the power and who is the subject.
That, I cannot respect nor accept. The very idea that man should cower or make abeisance and show obsequiosness before some charlatan in a robe claiming to speak for some spirit or demon or other otherwordly creature - never. I'm a free man. I live standing up. Any god showing up making demands get a slap to the face and a stern telling-to. That doesn't help, they can talk with my axe.
That is the correct attitude towards gods and clergy. The god is not needed. It is not worth more than man, certainly not more than your own blood.
What was offensive about that? Religion is what you get when you strive for empire. Belief is what you have between you and creation and your creator. The latter you can share as you like with whomever. The former is what you will be expected to follow whether you want to or not, on threat of your existence. Right?
As for this government, since Christianity is off limits, the new God is The Science. You can doubt that, but you will bow down or you will be cast out.
>> As for this government, since Christianity is off limits, the new God is The Science.
Don't be so sure. That's what the government looks like right now. Christianity is absolutely NOT off-limits for the voting sensibilities of many Americans, just not the ones currently cheating as hard as possible to stay in power. The backlash against the present madness is just as likely to come from a powerful evangelical movement as anywhere else.
My mother is evangelical. I grew up in evangelical churches. I went with her to her Tuesday night church meeting this week. The pastor made a video after Jan 06 calling for Trump to declare Martial Law, mentioning his (the pastors) AR- 15, that got about 100,000 views before the MN Attorney General convened a local meeting and got 40+ other pastors in the community to condemn him in the local paper. So yeah, an evangelical counterrevolution could happen. But I'm also pretty certain this globalist government has it pretty well in hand to make sure it won't happen through any election. (I get my radical nature from Mom)
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/01/11/in-video-full-of-lies-minnesota-pastor-urges-trump-to-enact-martial-law/
Yeah, this is worth bearing in mind. This is not a crazy, off- the- wall example.
The thing is, I (and a lot of people in here) are not in disagreement with much of what that pastor said. Maybe just not coming from the same starting point.
I asked him directly, "So, I heard a rumor you are a radical?"
I found him to be a patriot, in the tradition. Though on theology I think he is a bit too literal about the Kingdom of God.
I think he's a little too indiscrete for someone in his position, but I can understand his feeling.
Demanding martial law and bragging about brandishing guns on social media is probably not the way to go, though.
If backlash doesn't come from the Christian right no backlash will come at all and a backlash is necessary or our society will collapse from within or be destroyed from without. Another generation of rainbow flags flying above military bases and brass focusing more on combating toxic masculinity in our ranks, rather than enemies buying real estate next to our strategic installations, will have us all speaking Mandarin and worshiping the state.
All the Uighurs will be worked to death by then and the CCP will need Christians, polytheists, and gender mutilated confused atheists people to take their place in the slave mines.
Loved Bastard Easter, THERE ARE NO VIRGINS ANYMORE, and religious bullshit lawyer games. Maybe in that order, maybe not, depending on whether this is an exception-that-proves-the-rule day. But to go really deep, you need to examine the technicalities of what you can and can't eat or drink within the hour before communion, and does it start an hour before Mass or do you get the half hour of preliminary blather as a bonus?
You really just need to examine what, if anything, the technicalities serve.
Personally, I always assumed it was like not eating 2 hours before getting into the pool so you don't die. Because churches used to be full of water. It's possible I'm remembering it wrong.
Oh you are going in deep! That will be 5 Hail Marys, 3 Our Fathers and 10 Tongue-lashings for you. Assume the position!
As someone not raised Catholic, I've never actually been clear on the relative weight of those penances.
Are Hail Marys worse than Our Fathers? Is it because they take longer? Is there an exchange rate? (Forgive my honest question- my gods are transactional.)
As someone who went to Catholic school back in the dark ages of daily Latin Mass, it's the opposite. Hail Marys are a 10 to 1 trade-off with the Our Father in the rosary, that being the appropriate value of women to men. I had to look this up but there's also a Glory Be in the sequence, which CAN be traded off for the O My Jesus that Mary exclaimed (not making this up) at Fatima.
It's apparently a Gutter-mind day for me...so forgive me if this sounded like a proposition... wait...is that work?
Well, it is the time of year to be naughty or nice...
Say no more, say no more!
* wink wink nudge nudge*
Great..
Now I feel an obsession to go watch Monty Python clips..
Wait, is that a new kind of kink I'm not aware of?
🤣
Wow, that was a LOT to comprehend. Whew. I paid my $5, and really got my money’s worth this month. And lots to think about……. But I was never offended. As a young girl, mama took me to church every week, and I did the same for my daughter. She no longer attends, and I’m pretty sure she’s flushed religion down the toilet with conservatism. I believe in God, but no longer respect organized religion - the locked doors during Covid pissed me off. As far as the government , fuck them. Don’t tread on me…….
Well said, all around.
I'm a hardcore Lutheran and agree with you on most of it. I would argue though that a lack of legality in modern Christians practices has led many problems in our society. Extreme love and tolerance towards homosexuality has led us to Drag Queen Story Hour and little Johnny growing hormone induced breasts waiting for the day when he is old enough to get his dick chopped off. (Can't wait until age is officially an arbitrary construct and we can be whatever age we feels. Little Johnny won't have to wait and I can get the senior discount at Sizzler!) If you claim to be a Christian but think it is ok to be gay then I have to wonder what other portions of the text you selectively edit out of your conscience.
I don't think government should step in to restore Christian values but they need to stop tipping the scales in favor of "marginalized" groups. A private property owner should be able to refuse housing to a gay couple, black single, white throuple, weird incel, or cat owner if he wants. The same should apply to a gay landlord if he doesn't want to rent to "breeders" or a cat person who doesn't want to rent to a dog person.
The government needs to get out of the way and let society decide if gays need to hide in the closet or if people who like cats should be allowed to sleep inside. (They should not. Cat people need to be ostracized from civil society and wives who start feeding stray cats only to have the stray cats have kittens that wives and children insist on keeping should be publicly shamed and ridiculed. Also, husband's who correctly diagnose stray cats as pregnant should be honored with a public day of acknowledgement for being right and reimbursed for the ridiculous amount of money it costs to have four cats spayed and neutered. Also, we need to get a puppy or a rescue dog who isn't good around cats.)
Hey, watch it. They don’t call me the crazy cat lady for nothin’.
It's the toxoplasmosis!
I agree that government should not be forcing association on anyone by anyone, as in the examples you give.
That said, the statement, "The government needs to get out of the way and let society decide if gays need to hide in the closet or if people who like cats should be allowed to sleep inside" makes me question what the boundaries are.
May "society," somehow separate from government, decide to kill gays to make sure they stay in the closet where they belong, or merely discriminate against them in hiring and lodging practices?
To me the important element is "equality under the law," at least if we're still talking about a society at all resembling America. You should be free not to associate with people as you describe, but not to treat others in a way that would be illegal if done to anyone else.
I think that's a fair basis.
You seem to have other issues with the cat stuff. I'm afraid I can't help there. Good luck, though.
Agree with equality under the law.
I just think property and business owners should have more licence then they currently have to discriminate but physical violence is a clear violation of a person's rights. That would be the governments place to step in and adjudicate.
I think the cat situation will resolve itself in time.
Good news about my position on the matter makes me exempt from having to clean up explosive cat diarrhea from the carpet.
The utterances of "Who let that cat in!" seem to be getting more frequent.
Also, we have lots of big prey birds circling our property on a regular basis.
Well, to be honest, I think EVERYONE should have license to discriminate except the government- they lose that privilege by taking everyone's money.
I am 100% in favor of people living their values in any ways that don't hurt me or take my shit. It provides the most robust public arena for the actually useful values to rise to the top.
To be honest, Brothermouth had a very similar situation with his ex many years ago (re: cats). The rule was that any strays had to be fixed before being adopted. Even then, it took a long time for him to put his foot down.
But that whole situation was a mess. I fuckin' hated his wife, and she made me associate cats with weird lazy people for a long time.
Interesting article, with useful caveats. Thanks, Gutter--well done.
BTW, I'm one of those Jesus (or Yehshua/Yahshua/etc) lovers. 'Christian', one might say. 'Catholic' even, by some definition (mainly mine). And I don't want a religious government, either.
Too bad we've got one, what with the morphing between COVIDianism, Climate Change hysteria, and the obsession with genitals, lack thereof, or the everchanging self-identity of everything from groins to pronouns.
Crap.
That was a fabulous read. What a wonderful start to a very gloomy saturday morning. It very much mirrored some of my own musings on the subject. Thank you for putting into a much more erudite and cohesive form than I could have managed.
In other words, don't be a Pharisee.
Precisely why church and state don't mix, period. Whenever you try to mix them, they both inevitably corrupt and destroy each other sooner or later. Thus Thomas Jefferson knew that, and wisely erected a "wall of separation" between them to protect both from each other.
Conservatives claim that the "wall" was intended only to keep government out of religion, not the other way around. Liberals tend to (but not always) argue the opposite. But both are two sides of the same coin, and thus both are equally true.
Those "rats" were capybara, the world's largest rodents. They look like giant hamsters or guinea pigs, and apparently spend about half of their time in the water. Hence them being declared "fish" for the purposes of Lent, lol. It was a special dispensation in the 1600s, that to this very day they still never reversed.
Bless me father for I have sinned. It’s been 58 yrs since my last confession. And it’s a trend I don’t intend to break. I remembered questioning at age 7 as I was making up sins to whisper to the priest as I innocently kneeled in the confessional why I needed a middle man. For me, it was always about the ritual…the smell of the incense, the chanting, the robes, that resonated with me. The theatrics sort of like watching the musical Jesus Christ Superstar.
Not sure why your followers would be upset over your perspective. Anyone secure in their beliefs, no matter the subject, should be open to all viewpoints. Yes, the tenor of how you put pen to paper (or keystroke to computer screen) is at times raw and fierce but it’s clear and erudite in its content. Many times I’ve felt as I’ve read your take on different subjects it was like walking around the corner of the house and being hit by an iced snowball right in the middle of my forehead. WTF? She actually went there! I love that about your writing. It makes me fire up my neurons.
I think that man has gravitated to a belief outside of himself since we’ve crawled outside of the primordial soup. Long before organized religion or the formation of a bureaucracy, we’ve pondered the unknown. Even those who say they don’t believe in a God, Supreme Being, or the Divine, still have gods they worship (environment, science,et al). We are all hypocrites to some degree, and it’s worthwhile to know our failings to keep our hubris in check. Quibbling over who’s God is more powerful, more compassionate is peeing in the wind. Every religion is permeated with politics and peccadilloes. For me it’s about the search for the spirit, not the joining of a club.
Keep throwing those snowballs.
So you think the myths about Thor & Co are both stories and also true, as some people take the Garden of Eden?
And where the same differ from the other stories what then? Is it all cotton masks and N100 respirators or polio vaccines and the mRNA kluges are much of a muchness because they have the same shape, and the truth of the matter is a side issue?
Or is it something else?
Atheists, theists, those I grok. Not sure what this is. Curious to find out, natch, but of course, none of my business.
I wanted to expand on my response below, as I wrote it in transit.
I'm not sure what you're asking me. Are you asking me to define my PERSONAL religious views? Are you asking me to explain my opinions on comparative theology, or the objective correctness of the various religions I mention in the article?
I'm not sure about the repeated references to masks and vaccines. Are they a serious part of the question, or intended as an insult?
>> So you think the myths about Thor & Co are both stories and also true, as some people take the Garden of Eden?
Yes, I do. I think there's probably also a foundational truth behind the story of Eden, and lots of other religious stories- that they're all either allegorical or games of telephone about things that are or were real or true.
I know plenty of people from various major religions that don't think their religious origin stories and mythology are literal narratives that occurred precisely as they are described 2-5000 years later after being passed through between 2 and 10 translations.
But I want to understand exactly what question you're asking me, because I stated that I wasn't arguing the "reality" of this or that faith because it wasn't the job of the article.
Whether or not they are provably true, all successful religions do the things I describe. It isn't intended as an endorsement or a denouncement of them, because I don't believe I have sufficient authority to say that any faith is devoid of truth.
You tell me to "bite you" when talking about cotton masks, which I'm not in fact talking about. Is this because you're comparing one's personally-held faith to COVID mandates?
I consider objective science to be a very different entity than proving or disproving the largely unknowable framework of faith systems. For one thing, in this country, I'm not beaten by the police or fired on the basis of religion.
Simply that this writing doesn't intend to do what billions of humans have failed to do until now- definitively prove or disprove all religious beliefs once and for all- doesn't mean it isn't doing what I said at the outset it was there to do, which was to examine the social constructs common to all religions.
Personally? I think the majority of religions are expressing some correct hypothesis about the nature of the universe and many incorrect ones, that most of these hypotheses have become deeply distorted over long periods of time by corruption (as discussed in the article), translation, lingual drift, and cultural amnesia, and that they function in certain ways as social memes whether or not they have a high degree of fidelity (again, as stated at the outset).
Have I addressed what you wanted to know? Do I not understand the question correctly? Or was it just a criticism with a question mark? Help me.
The short answer is "Yes". You are dealing with an impertinent elephant's child in the main.
And of course the dull, tedious fury from two years of the utilitarian Narrativist people killing my family and torturing them because they can manage neither common sense nor metaphysics. IOW "it's not you, it's me"
LLL, if you don't mind. See EC above. (And if you do, no worries. My curiosity is not your problem)
I'll respond when I'm done finding translations for all the acronyms because I'm still confused but for other reasons now.
In other words, longer letter later, and... I couldn't figure out the EC.
It's cool. I'm happy to hash this out at your pace. I respect your intellect and skepticism and you're entitled to a little patience.
Ooh, is it "earlier comment?"
When you veered into the covid stuff you completely lost me as to the purpose of your question.
Is there a purpose to your question? Is it actually a question, or an angry response to something dressed like a question?
Once you write, "mind you, I am not going to think or write about whether or not this is true / real" I lose interest.
Honest injun, it's too much. After two Hell years of "well, practically-speaking, in terms of nudging the population in this or that useful direction, and setting aside physics, ethics, constitutional law and the [expletive deleted] Geneva convention, we can ....[Rhetoric Appended Here]..."
Who gives a rat's shiny pink pustulant backside.
It's a [redacted] piece of cotton. I can see the gaps from six feet away. I do not want to listen to your myriad rationalizations any more about its social utility. Bite me.
The religious snark is hilarious mind you. People are stupid funny.
Feel free to write the article where you definitively prove or disprove the validity of everyone's religions for them and I'll give you feedback, too.
I'm generally a pantheist and have never pretended otherwise.
Sorry the product is what it says it was on the tin.