#fundementalism

[eradicatetehnormal]

Every. Goddamn. Day.

I feel myself getting less and less tolerant of fundamentalist Christians. The recent events with Roe v. Wade are really pushing me over the edge. If anyone tries to argue with me on this, go fuck yourself. Don't even try to act like it's anyone else who's pulling this shit. Most of this country is in support of abortion rights. It's only a select few conservative radicals that genuinely work against it. Yet, it seems they're the fucking cock suckers making decisions for this country.

And of course, we have one of the Supreme Court "justices" calling gay marriage a mistake. As he was when his mother/father decided to keep him. Sorry, that one was too easy.

This country is not built on Christianity. but religious freedom. You're just vain.

The government is not telling you how to live your life or what marriage is. You're still free to be a heterosexual Christian in a nuclear family. All it is is that now other people can live in other ways and you can't stand it. It's YOU who wants to tell people what marriage is, it's YOU who persecutes innocent people for practicing beliefs, and it's YOU that's destroying this country and making it a worse place for children.

[evilelitest2]

Why do you think that Trump didn't get any approval for killing the leader of ISIS?

I assume you are referring to how the US military kills the leader of ISIS and yet Trump is getting booed at a baseball game?  

This is actually a pretty complicated question but two disclaimers

Firstly, quite a few leftist/centrist cites have been like “ok you did one good thing

Secondly, Fox news didn’t exactly give Obama credit for killing Bin Laden 

Ok but unto the actual reasons 

1) While Abu Bakr al Baghdadi/ “Caliph Ibrahmin” as he liked to call himself was an absolute shit head and deserved to die, he didn’t really hold the same role in the US discourse as Bin Laden.  Like I don’t know how many Americans even would know his name if you asked two weeks ago, while everybody knew who Bin Laden was.  ISIS was a threat, more as a group than its specific leader.  this is also partly because while Bin Laden was the scion of one of the most powerful families in the world, Baghdadi was just a random farmer religious nut who got lukcy.  There isn’t much known about Baghdadid compared to Bin Laden honestly.  I mean his nickname was “The invisible sheikh” which is an odd choice for a “Caliph”

2) ISIS was mostly horrific to people in the middle east, while Bin Laden actually organized 9/11.  That isn’t really fair, but many Americans viewed Bin Laden as a sort of Devil Figure and Baghdadi can’t really compete with that 

3) The news was undercut by our stabbing the Kurds in the back and in the process accidentally releasing several hundred ISIS prisoners. So killing the leader doesn’t….really pay off for the massive destabilizing blow Trump had just dealt to the whole region for….apparently no reason? 

4) Because of Trump’s life style and work ethic, if you aren’t already part of the Trump Cult, nobody really believes Trump played any role in the killing of Baghdadi?  Like lets be honest here, the only reason why this operation happened is because Trump likely didn’t even know it was happening and then took credit after he was clued in like 2 days before the killing.  A side effect of constantly golfing and publicly not knowing anything about your own policies means that people who don’t already love you don’t feel inclined to give you any credit.  

This is doubled by the fact that Trump constantly lies, steals credit for other people’s work, and can’t be trusted.  So even if there is a slight chance that he actually helped in this operation, nobody will believe him because his rep is ruined.  

5) Also this is a natural effect of Trump’s combative politics, everybody knows that if the situation was reversed he wouldn’t be nice to us so why bother?  Trump has destroyed any good feeling he might ever have, and once you ruin your credibility, then this is what happens

6) Its not like this is gonna actually stop ISIS, just like AQ stayed around after Bin Laden died.  Its not that this doesn’t make any difference, but presenting it as a slam dunk when it clearly isn’t going to make the problem of ISIS go away is typical trump stupidity 

7) Trump fucked up the delivery.  By making the whole thing show like, it undercuts his own credibility.  He presents it like a TV announcement, he talks about it as if it were an action movie, and he clearly is relishing in the violence he wouldn’t be able to inflict himself, so nobody really feels inclined to take him seriously except for the Trumpers themselves.  Obama presenting it as a serious solome occasion, so people took it seriously.  Trump treated it like a joke so did everybody else.  

Ultimately though, this is really a lesson in politics, specifically what happens when you are deeply unpopular.  The fact of the matter is if somebody is widely disliked, people don’t want to give them credit.  Lets pretend for the sake of argument that Trump worked really hard on military intelligence and played a critical role in the killing of Baghdadi, it doesn’t really matter because...he is massively unpopular and didn’t win the popular vote.  And part of the reason why he is massively unpopular is because he always hits below the belt, so it really isn’t any surprise that he isn’t being given too much credit for this, most of the country doesn’t trust him or like him enough to believe that he really helped play a role in the killing so they don’t feel inclined to be nice to him.  Trump can’t really fix this, because this is the direct result of how he treats his fellow countrymen for the last 5 years, it is no surprise nobody wants to be nice to him now.  

[supercodi]

Dear LGBT Community

[hummussexual]

As an edgy comedian, Bill Maher prides himself on his “politically incorrect” religion-bashing, but his excessive attacks on Islam more aptly reflect a “politically correct” bigotry, as JP Sottile explains.

Excerpt:

Maybe Islam isn’t a puzzling cancer that has to be excised. Maybe jihadism is a means, not an end. And maybe the brutal insanity of the Islamic State is more an echo of the excesses of the Khmer Rouge, Stalin’s purges, Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Robespierre’s Reign of Terror than it is a logical conclusion of the Islamic faith. And maybe … just maybe … the radicalism around Muslim world can be seen in a larger context of history. That means acknowledging the extent to which America and its repressive proxies have set the terms of the debate around the Muslim world for the better part of a century.

Ultimately, it’s most important to recognize that Maher is, at best, misguided when he says there aren’t “Christian terrorist armies like ISIS.” As far as many Muslims on the receiving end of officially-sanctioned violence from the U.S. military, that’s probably a distinction without much of a difference. And if there’s any doubt about America’s own lingering fundamentalism, take note that few things would be more futile today than trying to get Congress to scrub that Cold War-era religious test from the Pledge of Allegiance.

[evilelitest2]

Do you think Christianity (or at least Evangelical Christianity) will ever die out?

Christianity itself?  I mean its has over 2 billion people, so....probably not in my life time, i’d be surprised if it would die out over the course of another two centuries. I don’t even think it is necessarily a good thing if it does cease to exist, certainly it isn’t one of my goals. Even Evangelical Christianity clearly has some potential as long as Christianity exists.  

Now Fundamentalist Evangelical/Born Again Christianity, we might be seeing the end of it as a major force in politics, it already is basically dead as a cultural force on the majority of American life.  Their churches are emptying out so likely in a generation we will be spared their presence for a few decades.  Outside the US though they are still going strong, though again this could be limited if the US goverment taxed Churches as businesses.  

Fundamentalism likely will come back though, its less a theological position as a mindset and these sorts of things comes in waves.  

[evilelitest2]

I am absolutely baffled how people who allegedly support "Christian, family values party" voted for a known adulterer who sleeps with porn stars and openly brags about grabbing women by their intimate parts. Just... how?!

The thing to understand about the Religious Right is that a lot of them are Nationalist/White Supremacists first, Christians second.  But the other thing to understand is the level of insularity, paranoia, and desperation that defines the Evangelical community.   Fundies live in very small insular communities mostly in the rural parts of the Bible Belt and don’t really interact with non Fundies that often.  And within the context of these communities is super conspiratorial way of thinking as the imagine the world as massively corrupt and actively out to get them.  Jack Chick comics are pretty worthless but they do give a good insight into the mindset of Evangelicals in terms of how they imagine everything in the world as out to get them specifically, the entire culture is super clanish, insular, and more than a little cultish.  https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/ChickTracts

And its super paranoid, in the evangelical under the impression that every group that they disagree with is secretly run by satan and all working together to screw them over.  This paranoia is actually pretty common in far right circles, i’m thinking of how Call of Duty has a plot line where all of Latin American invades America at once. 

The last thing is desperation, because they started the Culture War and suddenly find themselves losing it (turns out having culture helps you win a culture war, who knew?)  In the 80s for a while they seemed like the top of the world in terms running the culture, but at this point they are pretty much hated by anybody who isn’t already part of their community. 

 Imagine if you were a fundamentalist Christian who is like really anti homosexuality, like you 100% believe that homosexuality is literally used by the devil to corrupt people’s soul...how do you respond to the fact that society as a whole is becoming more and more accepting of homosexuality and where homophobia is being more and more viewed as retrograde.  While not nearly enough, the fact is the majority of Americans approve gay marriage and more and more TV shows, movies, and video games are featuring homosexuality as normal.  And for somebody who genuinely thinks homosexuality is a sin (because you know...they are bigoted morons) that is terrifying, its a sign that the culture of Evangelist Christianity is dying or at the least losing any hold over popular America.  Like, I cannot understate how desperate the Evangelical mindset is, they know that they are on the verge of losing nationally, and so they are resulting to desperate means.  So Trump might be...the literal opposite to every Christian belief out there, but even if he (hopefully) serves one term, he has still bought them time and manage to win a few victories for their shitty community.  

Imagine if things were inverse, if like 60% of Americans supported say...segregation, and most of the media was on the side of segregation, and the way to push back against that was to embrace an absolutely shitty human being who embraced undemocratic methods but were able to push back against them

I don’t want to make the religious right seem at all justified, they are a vile community whose way of life really does need to die, I just think its important to understand their mindset and why they are so willing to embrace unchristian methods.  

[rather-annoying-blog]

Of course you are and you have no choice, really.

For fundamentalist Christians, martyrdom is paramount for Earth is an punishment for the original sin. 

Happiness is not to be found on Earth but in the afterlife, with God Itself and doing otherwise would be anathema. Considering yourself persecuted is central to the belief of such Christians as they are always battling the forces of Evil: anyone or anything that is not akin to you.

I am not saying they are actively asking for it, rather actively looking for anything they can point out as a form of persecution in order for their beliefs to make sense.

That’s why, for instance, my grand-uncle keeps telling me that my being gay is oppressive to him. And his children and grand-children - who don’t care. In his opinion, I gave in to Satan’s temptations and am now consciously testing him. 

Why would I keep coming to the family reunions if not to oppress him with my sexuality? 

Why would I insist on presenting myself as a normal person if not to test out his faith? 

Why would I keep asking and, even worse, argue for the same rights, something so blatantly against his religion, if not to publicly persecute him and his beliefs into disappearing?

He says it’s a matter of time before the Devil’s forces (the “sexual deviants”, the “baby-killers” and the “godless women”) comes to burn the likes of him again after they “brainwashed, raped and murdered his family before his eyes.” I long wondered how someone can think like that. How can he look at the world and come to such abhorrent conclusions about people who just want to be free to be who they are and have control over their body and mind? 

Then I understood, that’s the only way he can see the world, he needs to see enemies everywhere or his world will fall apart. He needs to see himself a martyr for his faith. What else will ensure the automatic opening of those doors after he died having failed to love his own family? He needs to be oppressed by anything he does not approve of and persecuted by anyone supporting it against him.

[evilelitest2]

True Story

I just got a call from a “prayer ministry” and a recording told me that if I need urgent prayer I should call them and one of their prayer responders will pray for me, what the hell American Christianity.