linked tree (includes options to donate to Ghanaian projects)
petition to show support
Misplaced Lens Cap
Xuebing Du
No title available

No title available
taylor price

No title available
todays bird
h
$LAYYYTER
No title available

Product Placement

ellievsbear
2025 on Tumblr: Trends That Defined the Year

pixel skylines

JBB: An Artblog!
NASA

Love Begins

oozey mess
cherry valley forever
we're not kids anymore.
seen from Italy
seen from Singapore

seen from United States

seen from Sweden
seen from South Africa
seen from United States

seen from Pakistan

seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Norway

seen from Indonesia
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom

seen from United Arab Emirates

seen from United States

seen from Colombia

seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from Ecuador
seen from United States
@atheostic
linked tree (includes options to donate to Ghanaian projects)
petition to show support
im obsessed
oh, of course. because he died for our sins.
I think christians who say things like "love is love" and allowing degeneracy are simply coping with the fact that they enjoy and dont want to give up theyre sinful lives
"Love is love" is a dumb justification for behaviour which seemingly goes against the teachings of the Bible, but a lot of behaviour which seemingly goes against the Bible (I'm talking about homosexuality) doesn't seem to clearly actually go against the Bible when you look at the original text.
Leviticus 20-13: If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. now since it is part of the old law, I've come to the conclusion that 2 people of the same sex having intercourse is a sin, but a person who has that attraction but chooses not too can be saved just like the rest of us. and yes there are some other things in the Bible that aren't outright forbidden such as abortion, but we still understand them as wrong. thank you for giving your perspective about this friend.
it does still make me insane specifically how many queer people lovingly embrace astrology. I went to a poetry workshop yesterday that was genuinely quite good but also included an option to disclose astrology designations during introductions and so many people broke out some variation of "I'm a [x] sum but I have a [y] placement and it SHOWS" girl no it doesn't. that's meaningless correlation you completely invented the causation
I'd say that rejecting biological determinism in favor of space gas determinism isn't the slay the astrology queers think it is but if I'm being completely honest I fear that many members of our community haven't even really rejected biological determinism so much as sprinkled a layer of glitter on it
yes that's how confirmation bias works
or we could just let people (especially a group of people prone to complex relationships with faith) have whatever spiritual beliefs they want and mind our own damn business 🙄
okay. genuine question. assuming that by "people prone to complex relationships with faith" we mean "queer people," I'm also part of that group. why is other queer people's uncritical engagement with astrology okay but my criticism is not? for what reason is my mode of engagement with this particular spiritual belief not okay?
i've shared this story before but a few years back i attended a very large scientific conference (SFN) and went to a panel focused on advocating for LGBTQ+ people in the sciences. the panel was aimed at lab directors / mentors in how to support their students & promote equity but of course the room ended up being mostly the people who were supposed to be protected, but whatever.
the panelists were great except there was one person (a mentor who had several students working under her) on the panel who, in the course of giving advice to a room of about a hundred people, said that she has her students fill out astrology charts...and she uses this information to decide which students would work best together on which projects.
she couched all of this in "but of course they consented to this, they didn't have to do their charts!" but she didn't explore at all how her power as a mentor could have been a coercive factor. there was no comparison about how if you had, for instance, had your subordinates take an online test for "which prophet from the bible are you" and used this to decide which people get grouped together for the privilege to work on particular projects...your university would absolutely get sued.
the mood in the room noticeably shifted when this person explained her methods, and the few lab directors that were in the room to learn (older, traditional, white cis men who we really fucking need on our side!!!) were incredulous. and i think a lot about how that was a huge "what the fuck?" moment for them!! in the middle of what was supposed to be a panel on supporting LGBTQ+ people.
like what are we doing here. why have we swapped astrology into queer culture in the place of fully unquestioned religious dogma instead of, i don't know, treating it like "whatever spiritual beliefs they want" --- to be set aside in professional circumstances and not used to determine employment or housing.
if people want astrology to be really, truly treated like any other protected religious belief, then BE CONSISTENT.
you 100% cannot fucking ask for that shit in housing groups or in workspaces. if someone would be rightly kicked out of a queer space for saying "we're pagan, so we don't really want to live with a muslim" then don't just do the same thing but with a different set of spiritual terms. ok rant over lol.
Dozens of churches in the formerly Catholic-dominated Canadian province of Quebec have been transformed into everything from gyms and restau
A lot of people hate to hear this, but they in particular really need to understand it.
If you were raised in the US, and you weren't specifically raised as a specific religion other than Christianity, then you are culturally Christian. Yes, even if you were raised atheist. Yes, I know you hate that idea. People who were raised in specific other religions in the US are usually still influenced by it, just not as thoroughly.
But specific Protestant values and attitudes have worked their way so far into US culture that we do not ever think about. (They've gotten into US Catholicism, too, Catholics elsewhere are frequently WTF at US Catholics, or so I'm told.) The "Protestant work ethic" is one of them, that "manager in your head" you should kill. Purity as a principle. The nobility of suffering (very Calvinist specifically). The prosperity culture (again, very Calvinist). A whole list. I'm honestly not good enough at Christian history to list it all. After all, I wasn't raised Christian myself. But I can see and acknowledge that I was raised in a culture with a Christian hegemony. If I pay attention, I can see where it's affected how I think. And when I do pay attention and look at it, I can change it. I can root out those patterns in my head. It's a lot of work, but it's well worth doing.
Denying that you are culturally Christian on the basis of your absence of Christian upbringing, or absence of Christianity now, just shows that you don't understand what cultural Christianity is. It is the culture that you have marinated in all your life, if you grew up in the US. The same way you've marinated in racism, classism, sexism, right on down the line (and generally they are all one thing). All of that affects you, and the only way to fix it is to acknowledge it and work on it.
This isn't a "hot take". It's just a fucking fact.
I'm posting at 10:30pm US Pacific time on a Sunday night, and fucking nobody is going to see this. Or reblog it. But I feel better having said it.
a) Except people don't say this just about American atheists. They say it to me, despite knowing that I'm a Latinoamerican Latina who was raised atheist from birth and who comes from a tribe that prides itself in resisting Christian missionaries. In fact, they say that because I'm Latina I must necessarily be culturally Christian because all Latinos are culturally Christian by virtue of their ethnicity.
b) Atheists, including American atheists, have their own culture, you don't get to assign us a culture that makes you feel better. How we raise our children is very different from how theists of any stripe raise their kids. How we interact with the world is very different from how Christians do.
We don't need to adopt a religious culture in order to have culture because we have our own.
We aren't "raised atheist", we're raised secular. There's a big difference. We're not taught or told to be atheist, that's not common in atheist parenting culture.
Most atheists either raise their children by teaching them about various religions or just ignore religion altogether, and in either case, they make it clear to their kids that they are free to believe whatever they believe and they'll be loved no matter what.
Does that sound like Christianity to you?
By the way, Jewish atheists exist in the US -- Russel Glasser, for example, was the president of the Atheist Community of Austin for several years, and his sister Kerryn was a host on The Atheist Experience along with her brother.
To say that they must be culturally Christian is rather antisemitic, just as it's bigoted to say that Indigenous people must be culturally Christian because they're Latino. Latinos are not a homogeneous group with a hive mind.
Oh dear…I hope Dr. Josh can help! #unicorn #kjv #mesopotamia
"Yet if the soul should with the body die, A flame that flickers when the oil runs dry, Still but the heart that drives the strange machine— And what remains of this you once called "I"?"
Omar Khayyam, Rubiyat
The Prince of Egypt is a beautifully designed movie and an example of good audiovisual storytelling, but the story it tells is horrific*.
Kids getting killed left and right, with an infanticide headcount that makes Game of Thrones look like Sesame Street. Someone being given as a sex slave. Literal rivers of blood.
How it passes as wholesome child-friendly content among conservatives, I'll never know.
* Which isn't necessarily a bad thing; horrific stories have their place just like warm and fuzzy stories do. But stuff like mass infanticide and sex slavery aren't usually considered child-friendly.
fuck/marry/kill father son holy spirit
That's one guy, you fucking shit
Council of Nicea, 325 C.E.
Question for people who are vegetarian for religious reasons
Would eating an alien lifeform be allowed according to your religion/your denomination's interpretation of your religion?
For this scenario, let's assume that the alien does not clearly fall in the scientific category of "animal"; that is, they are either definitely a plant or some other thing (kinda like how fungi are neither animals nor plants but their own weird thing).
And you're not in an extreme scenario where if you don't eat the alien lifeform you'll die of starvation or something.
getting an abortion for whatever reason isn’t a “controversial” thing btw. healthcare and basic human rights are normal and a good thing, not something controversial
Killing a healthy human being is NOT normal and good, is NOT healthcare, and is a violation of their human rights.
You're wrong for this.
a) Ah, so if the embryo was disabled then it'd be okay to kill it?
b) Humans don't have the right to use someone else's body without consent. If someone is using your body without consent, you are in your right to stop them from using your body.
(video tweet: https://twitter.com/Etherelle/status/1484410925490708481?s=20)
the work of etherelle: https://t.co/dPhLw3xuRx (carrd)
happy belated st sebastian day. no idea how to tag this.
The eyes here really seal the deal, though the toothpick-arrow is also a nice touch.
Also reminds me of the story that was circulating around awhile ago, where the narrator had made some sort of jam-filled bread effigy of Jesus for Easter or somesuch.
@gallusrostromegalus !!!
T'was me with the Bread Jesus Story and the Bread Jesus Attempt One and Bread Jesus Attempt Two and I am SO GLAD THAT SOME OTHER PERSON IS MAKING TERRIBLE CARBY CATHOLIC EFFIGIES.
atheist quarterback throws a hail darwin
agnostic quarterback throws a hail maybe
christian pitcher throws a christian baby
"Allah, perchance, the secret word might spell; If Allah be, He keeps His secret well; What He hath hidden, who shall hope to find? Shall God His secret to a maggot tell?
So since with all my passion and my skill, The world's mysterious meaning mocks me still, Shall I not piously believe that I Am kept in darkness by the heavenly will?"
Omar Khayyam, Rubiyat
HATE people who will demonize hasidic people or orthadox folk in general.
no theyre not some evil brainwashed cult. why are you taking what antisemites say and pointing it towards your own people?
genuinely seen a weird amount of people treat being "too" observant as some sort of weird, alien thing to do that somehow is insanely harmful to everyone it touches. How about let others live?
Legit question: Aren't Hasidics the ones that don't allow men to even sit near a woman in an airplane? Or am I mixing them up with someone else?
And isn't there an organization by ex-Hasidics to support fellow ex-Hasidics because getting out of being Hasidic is difficult and traumatic?
Your Life. Your Journey. Your Choice. Learn More Footsteps is the only organization in North America providing comprehensive services and pr
I feel like (regardless of which religion you're talking about) if leaving a certain denomination is as hard as leaving a religion (if not harder), then that denomination is toxic (that goes for denominations like the Amish and Jehovah's Witnesses too, I'm not saying this is a Jewish-only problem by any means).
Lots of Jews/members of other religions are super observant without being toxic. The problem isn't how observant someone is, it's their radically toxic interpretation of the religion and how said interpretation informs their actions (because, ultimately, the main issue is harmful actions).
If a support group is needed to leave a denomination, that says something about that denomination, and it's nothing good.
All that being said, I don't condone harassing someone simply because of their religion or denomination (though I do support calling out people's actions if/when they are harmful).
OTD Jew here who grew up yeshivish, attended a Chabad school and had satmur friends.
While I have major problems with the community I grew up in I do also think that the demonization you see on the internet makes it INFINITELY harder for OTD Jews to speak about their experiences.
And if you were genuinely thinking that this is a cult that brainwashed people then you would actually listen to those who have grown up/lived in these communities who have a right to talk about their experiences.
I think another OTD blog put it best:
In my personal experience a lot of the work done towards helping people leave the community is done with consideration of people's current situation. Simply put people losing their faith is an incredibly stressful and traumatic situation in and of itself without any familial pressure.
Me wearing jeans for the first time a month ago was scary for me not because my parents would kick me out of the house but because I was taught that God disapproved of that.
For example my parents who have been incredibly supportive of me are still be disappointed with me.
And that is okay.
Because a lot of the thing that is missing in this conversation is perspective reality. When my parents genuinely believe that I am risking kares (not a perfect transliteration) if I eat chometz on Pesach they try to stop me out of fear because that is their reality. Because they love me.
If you really cared about OTD Jews and their experience in these communities you would listen to them when they say don't use their experiences to promote antisemitism.
And besides things are a lot better than they once were.
If anyone is questioning or otd you can always message me.
"And if you were genuinely thinking that this is a cult that brainwashed people..."
When did I ever say that Hassidic Judaism is a cult that brainwashes people?
I said that, if it's the flavour of Judaism that I'm thinking of, I think it's toxic. There are lots of toxic denominations of various religions, but that doesn't make them cults.
"...then you would actually listen to those who have grown up/lived in these communities..."
a) So listening to an organization by ex-Hassidics for ex-Hassidics and questioning-Hassidics doesn't count because... why, exactly?
I explicitly listed a Jewish ex-Hassidic source in my original response, but you act as if I'm getting my opinions from out of nowhere.
b) When did I ever say we shouldn't listen to members of the denomination, let alone to ex-members of the denomination about their experiences?
I'm perfectly willing to hear out anyone, especially about their experiences, but that doesn't mean I have to ultimately agree with them or condone their every action.
"In my personal experience a lot of the work done towards helping people leave the community is done with consideration of people's current situation."
I never claimed it wasn't nor that it should be any different.
"Simply put people losing their faith is an incredibly stressful and traumatic situation in and of itself without any familial pressure."
Yes, which I acknowledged in my original response. Your point being...?
"Me wearing jeans for the first time a month ago was scary for me not because my parents would kick me out of the house but because I was taught that God disapproved of that."
a) I never so much as implied that the only issue with losing one's faith or exiting one's denomination was that one would get kicked out of their home.
I never even touched on the subject beyond saying that leaving can be "hard and traumatic". I'm well aware that situations can be more complex than just getting kicked out. Atheists often have to deal with the exact same kinds of situations when they become atheists if their previous denomination was toxic, regardless of which religion they were.
b) And I think that a denomination that teaches people to be scared of wearing or not wearing certain clothing is toxic.
Not because the person will get kicked out, but because they're being made to be anxious and scared over a piece of fabric. I think the same thing about Christian denominations who guilt women and girls about what they choose to wear. Like I said in my original response, I'm not singling out Jewish denominations.
"When my parents genuinely believe that I am risking kares ... if I eat chometz on Pesach they try to stop me out of fear because that is their reality."
a) Yeah, I get that.
And the fact that they were taught that they need to fear for your safety and well-being based on when you eat what you eat (beyond the "you're allergic/intolerant, don't eat that!" kind of way) when you don't follow their denomination's dietary rules is problematic. It's harming their peace of mind because they were taught that something harmless isn't harmless.
b) I never implied nor suggested that people who genuinely ascribe to a toxic denomination are inherently bad people or doing toxic things out of malice.
As I've said on multiple posts before, I get that people genuinely believe that the teachings of their religion/denomination are true. Because that's what they were taught. But it doesn't make what they were taught any less toxic.
It's entirely possible to do something toxic with the best of intentions.