To all mothers, it's your day! I hope those close to you are pampering you. To all non-mothers, appreciate your mothers!

glassmountain:

stfuconservatives:

nextyearsgirl:

This is an enormous chain and I’m sorry, but I need to say this:

The laws in the Old Testament were set forth by god as the rules the Hebrews needed to follow in order to be righteous, to atone for the sin of Adam and Eve and to be able to get into Heaven. That is also why they were required to make sacrifices, because it was part of the appeasement for Original Sin.

According to Christian theology, when Jesus came from Heaven, it was for the express purpose of sacrificing himself on the cross so that our sins may be forgiven. His sacrifice was supposed to be the ultimate act that would free us from the former laws and regulations and allow us to enter Heaven by acting in his image. That is why he said “it is finished” when he died on the cross. That is why Christians don’t have to circumcise their sons (god’s covenant with Jacob), that is why they don’t have to perform animal sacrifice, or grow out their forelocks, or follow any of the other laws of Leviticus.

When you quote Leviticus as god’s law and say they are rules we must follow because they are what god or Jesus wants us to do, what you are really saying, as a Christian, is that Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was invalid. He died in vain because you believe we are still beholden to the old laws. That is what you, a self-professed good Christian, are saying to your god and his son, that their plan for your salvation wasn’t good enough for you.

So maybe actually read the thing before you start quoting it, because the implications of your actions go a lot deeper than you think.

/An atheist who understands Christian theology better than Bible-thumpers do.

^

(mic drop)

boom

Yes and no.  The reason Christians generally don't celebrate Passover or otherwise sacrifice animals is indeed because Christ dying on the cross is supposed to be a sacrifice of infinite value, freeing everyone from the need to sacrifice.

But on the other hand, it is possible to observe the moral laws without being technically beholden to them, a distinction that you ignore in your treatment of theology.  There are few theologians who will argue that being washed free of sin by accepting Christ means you can go out and murder, rape, steal, and so forth, which is where the assertion that Christians are totally free from the law logically leads.  How exactly such actions affect a person is interpreted very differently by Calvinists, Lutherans, Catholics, etc., but they generally agree that it is still undesirable to behave in that way.  The idea that there is no obligation to follow the moral laws laid out in the Old Testament has been discussed seriously for hundreds of years, and it did not wind up in mainstream Christianity: it is included on Wikipedia's list of Christian Heresies as Antinomianism.  

Between the two extremes of "follow all the laws" and "follow none of the laws," there is a lot of argument in theological circles about the degree to which old laws should be followed.  If you look at the example Jesus himself set, it basically boils down to the idea that the laws exist to help people, not harm them; he intervenes in the stoning of a woman to suggest that he who is without sin cast the first stone (nobody has the stones to be the one to start, so they wind up leaving her alone) and he heals others and allows disciples to pick and eat corn on the Sabbath (violating the rule about not working on the Sabbath.)  The one time he really does enforce the rules is when he takes a whip and drives all the bankers (moneylenders) out of the Temple, because he gets angry that people are being exploited and shortchanged in what is supposed to be a holy place.

From what the Bible says about Jesus, I don't think he would countenance people who want to kill, imprison, or generally make life hell for gays (they are, after all, the modern equivalent of those who wanted to stone a woman for being a prostitute, rather than showing her sympathy) and I'd say that hate-mongering is probably the kind of stuff he has in mind when he says people will appropriate his name to say horrible things (interpreting scriptures to suit political causes is literally older than Christianity.) However, I'm not sure that the best counter to oversimplified religious extremism is another oversimplified argument, and a viewpoint identified with heresy.

The whole of human interaction is subject to feedback.

You don't block an attack that can't hit you, unless there's some other compelling reason. This is why a denial, too hot or too sudden, can be as instructive as an outright explanation. When you get shut down (whether for dating, or business deals), there is a reason for shutting you down. If it was never conceivable, no one would take the effort to shut you down - they would just stare blankly or laugh. Being shut down means that you're within the realm of possibility, but not accepted. This is not a yes/no issue, but a matter of distances in a mental topography that can be charted.

So a line of attack is never wasted. Someone literally cannot respond to it without giving away information.

Yes, this means my advice to everyone is, "Just go up and hit on him/her. You'll learn a lot."

I met a guy I hadn't seen in four years.

The first thing he asked me was if I was going to the Avengers premiere.

So yeah, Avengers? Pretty big.

When I first started posting my opinions on the Internet and started receiving wildly extreme feedback - offers of marriage, death threats, and everything in between - I was astonished. With time, I got accustomed to it. Now, though, I think I can understand it.

There’s a sort of game people play here called “Marry, Fuck, Kill”: it is an exercise that invites the reader to use their snap judgment as to which of three people to do each act with. I won’t go so far as to suggest that we all do this in real life (except on that most primitive of reptilian brain levels), but structurally, on many blogging sites, there is no difference between someone’s rant and a Marry, Fuck, Kill post. Small wonder, then, that snap judgement abounds.

This world needs more people who are not afraid to do batshit crazy things that follow logically from their principles.

I stare at nothing
A single white feather falls:
This is no haiku.

Of course this set off comments like,

This attitude is exactly what’s wrong with the majority of oh-so-accepting, holier-than-thou idiots. The willingness to blindly accept something that admittedly makes no sense. Instead of nodding and saying “yeah, cool, I don’t get it but you must be right”, take the time and effort to consider it, and if it still doesn’t make any sense, don’t be afraid to reject it.

I don’t think people get it. When you say “Take the time and effort to consider it, and if it still doesn’t make any sense, don’t be afraid to reject it,” you are setting yourself up as having the right to judge other people. You’re saying you get to judge not just what they do, but who they are and what they think about themselves.

Why does everything have to make sense by your rules? Giving slaves freedom made no sense at one time. Giving women the vote made no sense at one time. Giving nonwhites civil rights made no sense at one time. Progress can only be made by willingness to do things that make no sense by conventional wisdom.

friendlysoviet was more succinct:

Luckily I don’t care for non-humans. And non-humans are not people. So why is this a “People Tip.”
Once they revoke their humanity, I will shoot on sight.

And this is the entire problem - the idea that someone must do something that pleases you in order to have basic human rights (and not be shot on sight.) If you believe that human rights - including the right to believe whatever you want about who you are - belong to all humans, then they must be humored, no matter how out of touch with reality they appear to be. If, on the other hand, you suggest that someone's ideas must fall within a certain range of values in order for them to be considered human, then you basically believe it's OK to deny human rights to anyone who you find politically or ideologically unfit.

A part of our culture.

Limbaugh calls Trayvon Martin case a "manufactured racial incident." Way to overshadow one family's tragedy by recontextualizing it as part of a conspiracy.

I was literally inarticulate when I first heard this. My incredulity is now sprouting further incredulities, little microsatellites that flare into explosions of interrobangs and run-on sentences.

Is it me, or is Rush on some kind of mission to prove that he should be taken less seriously than Howard Stern? Mind you, I don't think he should have to express "remorse or regret" over this incident, as the article said, because for all his brutal insensitivity to the dead and slut-shaming of the living, he didn't shoot a man in Florida. George Zimmerman did.