Edit because this blew up far more than I expected and multiple people have asked for me to elaborate, here's a copy of my elaboration with follow up questions encouraged:
It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.
The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:
1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions) 2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)
Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.
Some highlight examples: * We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is) * We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before * We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...) * We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument) * We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon * We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.
@Rabbit Cohen @just adrienne Hey Rabbit, thanks again for the wonderful source post... sorry if this has resulted in spam upon you waking up, hope I'm representing well as I tackle these endless comments lol
It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.
The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:
1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions) 2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)
Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.
Some highlight examples: * We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is) * We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before * We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...) * We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument) * We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon * We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.
@a13cui my understanding is that it was a replacement for "Christian values" after 1945. The older term having come to mean plain fascism. And that the new term was promoted by people trying to whitewash their long standing Jew-hatred.
when is abortion permitted? Pikuach Nefesh sounds like it wouldn't be ok to kill an unborn baby (not trying to start an argument, but a genuine question)
@foo (A) when it's a person is a philosophical/religious argument, Judaism says at birth (B) Pikuach Nefesh is specifically what permits it, abortion is permitted when it would cause harm to carry to term. It explicitly includes mental and economic health in that (if it would cause mental distress, if it would interfere with your ability to care for yourself or your family) @A13cui :perl: :opensuse:
@𐪅𐪀𐪈 𐪑𐪁𐪉 Not remotely a counter argument. For one equating Israel with Judaism is an anti-semitic (blood and soil, or just thinking a regional government is authoritative of a worldwide culture) or Zionist take (despised by non-zionists like myself as they are colonizers who think Israel can do no wrong).
Also, it's in the blog section talking about America. It's also precisely the wrong usage (it's calling America Judeo-Christian... it's just christian if anything). On top of that, internalized bigotry is a thing in minority groups.
@scottmatter Sidenote: I understand why the combination would be complete trash in the topic of abortion. Anyone trying that might deserve a kick to the shin.
@WahbAllat the guy who wrote this article is like 1% as clever as he thinks he is. Just the same old boring right wing bigotry we've all heard a million times before
@M_U @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Judaism is both a religion and a cultural/"ethnic" group, "Judeo-Christian" is almost always used to refer to the religion of which my statements are representative of the vast vast majority of Judaism.
Also one of the distinct differences is that Atheism and the faith of Judaism are not incompatible. There are many atheist-jews because God actually isn't the center point of Judaism, the main point is the time tested rules (see the argue with everything/everyone) about becoming a better person.
We will always be used by minority groups referring to themselves, mostly because "the vast vast vast majority of us" is clumsy to say and people get the point that exceptions exist. Also, because it doesn't change the fact of the statement being made.
It's also why I mad the example points I did because they're central points that are agreed upon by all major sects as opposed to the many many points which are argued over (once again see the argue with everything/everyone... arguments are a past-time in Jewish culture)
@A.L. Blacklyn @Scott Matter I think it's problematic because all of that is almost always presented from the filter of Christianity looking backwards. Jesus was absolutely a Jew and the vast vast majority of what he preached was in line with Jewish beliefs (if they hadn't shed Judaism as part of their faith and hadn't been co-assimilated with the entirety of Rome, it would be a very very different relationship).
The problem mostly comes from the fact that saying Judeo-Christian about those elements and times really should only be applied when you are intimately familiar with both faiths and are doing the hard work of removing the Christian filter from it.
Highlights on the Jewish view of Jesus: * He fulfilled no significant prophecies regarding the Messiah (the whole point is the thousand years of peace), the vast vast majority of prophecies he's claimed to have fulfilled are mistranslations and/or completely out of context (ie. "virgin birth" came from "young woman of marriageable age" and a prophecy that had nothing to do with the messiah but was fulfilled in the following chapter) * Trinitarianism isn't even universal among Christians, among Jews it's deeply deeply heretical as one of our long defining statements has been "God is One" * Human sacrifice is abhorrent in Judaism, so the idea of Jesus being a sacrifice is abhorrent * In Judaism we already have forgiveness, the biggest distinction is that God will only forgive how you've wronged God. For forgiveness over how you wronged another person you have to ask them. Imagine how you'd feel if I forgave my friend for stealing from you and then they looked you dead in the eye and said they were forgiven for stealing from you... I'd be an asshole, right?
They often use it as a stand-in for Abrahamic (which is often problematic, but has far far more legitimate uses) and I mention in my elaboration comment, though I go more narrow a mention the most obscure Abrahamic faith I know of (Baháʼí) to highlight both facts just because their obscurity I feel makes the point better (though I feel a little guilty for using them as a token, it is also in the effort of getting them and other groups recognition).
@ScepticalScot1 Correct on Judaism, it's an explicit thing.
To be clear, our faith doesn't blanket allow it either... but it's a tiny distinction with how broad our allowance is:
We don't consider it a person until it's birth, until then it's just a potential person (Jewish law only treats it as a person in cases of forced abortion or similar, ie. if you murder a pregnant person who wanted their child, then it's a double-homicide).
Judaism specifically says that abortion is permitted when the well-being of the person carrying it is threatened. But that sounds far more restrictive than it is because we have a broad view of well-being laid out, which includes mental health (being forced to carry a pregnancy you do not want and birth a child against your will is traumatic, therefore abortion is permitted because your mental health would be threatened by denying an abortion... which basically means abortion is permitted in the vast vast vast majority of cases)
(An example of times when it might not be permitted would be things like if they were in the middle of a psychotic episode)
I will forewarn against the usage there because many anti-theists (atheists with a grudge against all faiths) have picked up Judeo-Christian as well and would interpret that as accusing Judaism of also committing similar atrocities (though the government of Israel continually makes that a challenging topic...)
"Major Sects" - the large divisions of Judaism representing the vast vast majority of us "Agreed upon" - Explicitly in our agreed mutual holy texts, considered major defining elements of our faith, or in the case of the afterlife not mentioned anywhere in our texts
Keep in mind that we have more religious texts than are included in the Christian "Old Testament", most significantly the Talmud which is accepted by all Jewish sects I know of and is where many of these elements are established.
How about this follow up: do you have more familiarity with Jewish cultures than a Jew? Do you know what I'm leaving off of the lists that differs between Jewish groups?
It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.
The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:
1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions) 2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)
Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.
Some highlight examples: * We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is) * We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before * We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...) * We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument) * We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon * We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 I have no ability to delete your post without you being on my server, though I'm not seeing it anymore either. I'd check with your admins to see if they maybe flagged it and didn't understand?
And the exact kinds of people I mentioned in my comment are the people who'd not understand because they're indoctrinated by christo-fascism and rejecting it without rejecting what they've learned from it.
Karaite Jews do not accept the Mishnah or Talmud! In modern times they are a small sect with <50k adherents but historically had more followers and trace a long line of ancestors :) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaite_…
@HollyGoDarkly Solid agree, *and also* such claims are generally not even “Christian”, but a particular subset’s views. Plenty of Christians — including lots of large organized denominations — are pro-choice, for example.
@Anthony Sorace @Erika Ensign that falls under "No True Scotsman", they are Christian regardless of being a subset much the same as I won't claim that Zionists aren't jews despite holding objectionable views.
It's a logical fallacy used very often to avoid looking at issues in one's own social groups.
@HollyGoDarkly Oh, I agree, and I’m sorry if it came across that way. I just meant that they claim to represent Christianity in general, which is BS. You’re entirely right that we don’t get to disclaim them so easily.
@a13cui Hi friend... let me just hit this follow button here and see if people will read this simply because I commented on it because this info needs to get out... 👋
@a13cui in my experience, people saying “Abrahamic religions” are using that as a direct substitution for “Judeo-Christian” and using the same christofascist cudgel to also include Islam in their shit.
@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: most jews in my experience condemn the actions of the israeli government. Those that don't are usually zionists and they are contemptable for it.
@morecowbell It's not really a tribute if it mostly gets used to mean Christian. It often implies the speaker doesn't understand or value the important differences between Jewish and Christian values. Also low-key islamaphobic
@Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: as far as the grounds for rejecting 3 times, it's one of the cases where the tradition stretches drastically farther than the origin of it. I wish I had citations, but my rabbi did once find the super obscure origin of it and for the life of me I can't remember where.
@Zorin =^o.o^= @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: That's one of those Christian centric things right there, most faiths don't care much about forcing people to join, just the largest (direct causation there)
It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.
The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:
1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions) 2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)
Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.
Some highlight examples: * We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is) * We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before * We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...) * We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument) * We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon * We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.
@Robrab That's really a combination of anti-semitism and "No True Scotsman"
Most of the "old testament angry bits" are Christian interpretations or mistranslations.
Prime example is the verse they translate as "A man should not lie with another man as he would a woman" (anti-homosexuality) which is far more accurately translated as "A man should not lie with a boy as he would a woman" (anti-pedophilia). One of those two makes a hell of a lot more sense for stoning...
yes i know abortion has no place in Judaism and is an antisemetic trope, wasn't referring to that at all, there is a lot of overlap in the moral base of Christianity and Judaism, it's not 99% disjointed at all.
most people assume "Abrahamic Religions" and "JudeoChristian" are interchangable terms and thus often spout shit they don't realize are just not true, gotta give everyone a fair interpretation given such common misconceptions.
I'm not the original questioner, I dropped them from the thread. I don't think anything I wrote here contradicts your main argument. Just sharing some diversity you may not have been aware of—I think the Karaites pose really interesting theological questions for rabbinic Judaism.
@a13cui this is fascinating but the position on misogyny is untenable. The entirety of the Torah literally defines the patriarchy created to suppress women and classify them as property. You either reject the entire written text of the old testament or reject the notion that women are entitled to the same rights men are. You can’t really accept Judaism as a religion and at the same time reject the patriarchal doctrine that is integrated into the text of the old testament.
@a13cui PS same goes for all modern religions which are based on the old testament ( including Islam and Christianity). They don’t get a pass on the misogyny either. If you love women you must respect them
@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: They're a blatant antisemite using limited visibility on their posts to hide their posts from moderators. I've reported them to their server admins and instituted a contact block on my server (to be clear, only of their individual account and server wide block is not because of personal disagreement but because blatant bigotry that I don't want my users to be exposed to)
@A.L. Blacklyn @Scott Matter They're a blatant antisemite using limited visibility on their posts to hide their posts from moderators. I've reported them to their server admins and instituted a contact block on my server (to be clear, only of their individual account and server wide block is not because of personal disagreement but because blatant bigotry that I don't want my users to be exposed to)
@a13cui yeah the last time I saw someone using the term “abrahamic religions” in an “inclusive” manner it was regarding something that was literally about honoring Christ, so
@CaptMorgan @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: This is a very flawed take and discounts the many interpretations and approaches different groups have to addressing these things.
I will openly say that what you're saying absolutely applies to Orthodox Judaism and can somewhat apply to Conservative Judaism... there's a reason I'm a Reform Jew and not Orthodox lol
Also of note the "Old Testament" is not synonymous with all our texts or the Torah (the Torah is only the first five books). We have many texts that are not included in the Christian Bible.
@fluffy 💜 @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: most of the time I see "abrahamic religions" I barely make note of it because it's academic usage (ie. looking at the Wikipedia page for Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahá'í, etc and seeing "Classification: Abrahamic"), but my experience is definitely not universal, I just suspect the perception of it is possibly warped by proper usage not drawing attention like improper usage does.
@Zorin =^o.o^= @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Also noting that a lot of the "have things figured out" comes from the outlook of arguing as a pastime. Since nothing is above debate, everything gets challenged constantly.
These days, it's not as visible because the vast majority of topics have been challenged to the point that there's little to argue... but there are absolutely topics being fought over (like for instance circumcision which is a very very touchy ongoing argument, mostly due to it's adjacency to the history of antisemitism)
So I forget where I heard this (probably "We need to build" by Eboo Patel?), but IIRC the term Judeo-Christian was invented mid-20th century by a coalition of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants as a way to fight against anti-Semitic and anti-catholic sentiment in the US. These days we definitely need a broader term to encompass an even larger cohort, and it's a shame Judeo-Christian has been misappropriated for evil 😞
@Jared Forsyth wouldn't surprise me, a lot of terms get formed in a positive place and corrupted over time.
The broader term is Abrahamic Faith. It has more valid use cases, but does suffer from the same problem of people using it to talk just about Christianity.
As beloved author Charles Stross (The Laundry Files) commented above, it's the Embrace Extend Eradicate practice, applied to religion.
@zachnfine @a13cui Which sums up pretty succinctly why Christianity is the way it is: It could really have done with some of that, instead of being so open and welcoming to all, that it is now very obviously the product of 2000 years of infiltration, appropriation, and bastardization, by every example of exactly the worst kind of self-serving people with power and privilege, Jesus warned about.
Thanks to that difference, try as they might to appropriate and bastardize Judaism - like they have so many other cultures - Christians have time and again, failed.
Where Christians go out of their way to eradicate basic critical thinking in those they indoctrinate, Judaism encourages it, and that provides a basic defense against the kind of corruption, that Christianity has utterly succumbed to.
'Those who have eyes shall see', and Jews see Christianity's leaders very clearly, for the wolves in sheep's clothing they always have been.
It starts with the Apostles and namely with Luke arguing that Christians did not have to first be Jews. It's obvious why that argument won out (lower standards and dropping circumcision).
And then it was kicked into high-gear with Emperor Constantine who converted the whole Roman Empire to Christianity.
As an important bit of context, the Roman empire/faith was essentially the borg of religions. As it conquered cultures it declared that their faiths were all subsets of their own, assimilating them into their faith.
The issue between the Jews of Israel and Rome was rooted in the fact that Rome wanted to call our God just another manifestation of Zeus and we wholeheartedly rejected that (the story of Hannukah starts with the Romans trying to put up a statue of Zeus in front of the Temple).
So, when the emperor declared that Rome was now Christian, they immediately assimilated their own faith into Christianity. This is why the popular Christian afterlife mirrors the afterlife of the roman faith (seriously compare Heaven/Hell depictions with the Elysian Fields and Pits of Tartarus; and then contrast to the fact that Judaism has no established afterlife).
This is worth reading in full, but one point to take away is that in Judaism abortion is not merely permitted (in certain circumstances). It is obligatory/required (in certain, more limited, circumstances). If continuing a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, abortion is obligatory.
This is complicated by another halachic principle, which is the obligation to abide by the (secular) laws of the place where one lives.
@a13cui This is great. I went to a catholic high school, and I remember contesting anything religious was a huge no-no. The word was the word, and arguing about it wasn't allowed.
Allowing even long-standing ideas to be challenged is one of the most important requirements for a society to progress.
I will however always note that they're Zionists and that non-Zionists don't approve of Zionists.
For a Christian example, it's the difference between saying WBC isn't Christian vs saying WBC is condemned by most other Christians.
Making the Palestine argument applies specifically to the Zionist take that Israel (the political entity) and Judaism are inseparable, and it implies from that that all Jews support the actions of Israel as opposed to the majority (at least as I've seen) condemning it.
He has made a marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?
We persist and have great impact because knowledge and understanding are cherished, and all things old and new are challenged constantly. We don't claim perfection, being Jewish is all about the act of continually striving to do and be better.
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 also of note, I'm American, the Holocaust is pretty much only ever talked about here as a story of the "Allies victory over evil" and little is really talked about with detail about the Jewish experience of it or what really was going on across various stages of it.
@zachnfine @a13cui And this is why I'd much rather listen to Jews than Christians. You keep the parts of history that Christians have gone out of their way to bury, so your explanations actually make sense of the glaring disparities between what Jesus (a Jew) said, and what Christians, from the apostles onwards (Paul in particular), /say/ he said.
I mean, I can't even google anything related to the Bible, without getting endless pages of 'Good Christian Bible study' takes, twisting every word he said into its opposite.
Questioning that is why I got kicked out of Sunday school when I was still an infant, and it wasn't much longer before I realized Christianity was a very Roman creation, even with the poor, Christian education I was given.
Yeah the term judeo christian doesn't really make sense 99.9% of the time. Like most things Judaism and Christianity share in common are also shared by Islam so "major Abrahamic religions" would be more appropriate way of describing whatever that may be.
And that's when they do share things in common. Like for example abortion is only a hot button issue in Christianity its consider a completely acceptable thing for women (or anyone else with a uterus) to do in Judaism and Islam has some limitations but is also largely fine with it from what I've read.
@Eugene Yeah, I can't speak to Islam but in Judaism it's "disallowed" with exceptions so broad that it basically just means you need to be in your right mind, and the only time limit being birth.
@a13cui So if I’m not blocked and understand you correctly the people killing Palestinian children (about 80 in the last couple of years) are Jews but bad Jews that most Jewish people don’t approve of. Good.
I won't say "bad Jews" because that's far too close to "No True Scotsman", they are Zionists and Zionism is Jewish Colonialism, which is a very bad take imo.
And no, you're not blocked. It wasn't a great take to start with, but it was understandable given the propensity for Christians to take the "No True Scotsman" fallacy against arguments such as that.
I believe in giving someone a chance first when there's any grey area on potential hate, plus it was a good excuse to outline the differences on a very common and hot topic that gentiles often know little about. And I think you learned something about Jewish society from it.
For more background, part of the problem with Zionists is that they're supported by White Supremacists and Nazis.
It sounds weird on the surface that Nazis would support Zionists, but it comes from a common White Supremacist principle of "Blood and Soil" in which they believe that different "races" have dominion over different lands (ie. white people over europe, Jews over Israel, Asians over Asia, etc). It's why you'll occasionally see someone spouting antisemitic bullshit, but then pivot to supporting Israel.
(Also "fun" trivia: this is why so many white people claim some vague distant "Cherokee Princess" in their background, it came from an effort to expand their blood and soil claim to the Americas)
@a13cui For your information I am not a Christian but I am a true Scot! Thanks for an interesting discussion and I have genuinely learned a bit more about Jewishness and Zionism. If your prayers might work please pray for peace in this troubled world.
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 I saw in your about you're from Germany and yeah, it's bad everywhere (the honeymoon post-holocaust period is ending and anti-semitism is returning to the "norm"), just from what I understand there's still drastically more taught about the Holocaust and Naziism in Germany than in the US.
Here, we get little more than "Nazis hate Jews", "Nazis bad", and "Bad things happened at Auschwitz". If anything else is covered, it's merely glossed over.
Of course, we're also the country that throws hissy fits at the idea of taking down monuments to people who actively fought to keep slavery (not that it's over with in the US, we just made it state slavery)
@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: praying for peace is a constant for us, but we also believe in Tikkun Olam, it's our responsibility to continually work toward it as well.
I figured you were not Christian, when mentioning Palestine you were calm about it and responded reasonably... Christians tend to only really go that route if they're going to be frothing antisemites, so it'd be really surprising to me if you were. (Not impossible, just unlikely)
Part of the trouble is that in the west Christianity overshadows all other religions to the point that many atheists only known and understand Christianity when they're rejecting religion as a whole. And that's something I'm deeply conscious of.
... I also love getting into arguments with anti-theists because they get so incredibly confused at (a) rational arguments and (b) the fact that I'll context switch right along them when they're not even paying attention to their context. (I jokingly call these people theo-phobes after the idea of homophobes being self-hating homosexuals and I believe many of them have an indoctrinated belief in god and are repulsed by the thought that the things they were taught would be true)
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 btw, 7 hours later I decide to finally hit translate on Täter-Opfer-Umkehr and learn that it's the german for DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender)
I just want to say, thank you for this and especially thank you for your _astonishing_ patience in dealing with the replies. There is clearly a goodly amount of bad faith or even just whataboutism floating around and you have handled it with grace, kindness and aplomb.
@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 oof, for some reason I thought Germany was notable in taking them all down... but I really shouldn't be surprised.
I think it's both (a) and (b), after the war anti-semitism became shameful so it moved out of the public view... but also being out of the public limited it's spread.
But every year the holocaust gets more distant and the reaction to it becomes more and more muted as people try to claim that it's done and gone and not worth talking about anymore and with that Naziism becomes more and more a cartoon instead of a real threat... so of course it starts spreading again.
@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: peace is supposed to come with the Messiah, until then we just work toward that goal because even if we can never achieve it it's always a blessing to work toward.
@Emily K 🪬 @Jared Forsyth Agreed, I cite it as better only because it's actually used in broader valid cases (as an accurate classification of the faiths), but whenever they talk about individual beliefs... it turns to total crap real fast.
Majority of the time they're talking about Christianity, every once in a while they hit a valid chord between the big three... but it's a miracle if it's actually accurate to all Abrahamic Faiths.
@Shaterri (he/him) Honestly I think this has been mostly good faith arguments given how people have responded to my replies. There's one where I drew the line feeling it was making it's way to bad faith pedantry... and the one worse than that you'll note their posts have disappeared or will soon because their server banned them (credit to Venera.social for responding quickly and decisively)
But I can see what people think of as bad faith. There's a lot of common anti-theist counter arguments that I'm familiar with, but I don't think any of them have gone beyond one post and in most cases took my reply graciously and learned something.
For instance calling out Palestine that one time, which while tiresome is understandable since Christians typically pull a "No True Scotsman" fallacy in response to things like that, which clearly marks them as not worth talking to. As tiresome as it is, it's a good barometer question for Jews imo.
@CaptMorgan @a13cui a hot take, perhaps, but I think Christianity does the mysogyny for sport; not because they care much for what’s in the first half of their scripture. The Old Testament is little more than “that’s all the stuff Jesus did away with” to a lot of folks.
@assertchris @Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: it's established well after that, that's prior to the Torah even being written and I believe it was established somewhere in the commentaries (like a millennia later) I think, but as I said no idea where.
It's not as hard to maintain your culture prior to being conquered by Rome and prior to Diaspora, but after it becomes vitally important to preserve your practices if you don't want them to dissolve into assimilation.
@assertchris @CaptMorgan @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: * Except when they want to take something out of context to condemn a group that makes them uncomfortable in some way, then they're all about it
Hi from Germany, a country with a 'very long judao-christian tradition', as a leading politician said some years ago. Not only did he use the term to promote anti-islamism by claiming they are NOT part of our tradition and shouldn't be, but he also seems to have 'forgotten' the nasty details of that 'judao-christian tradition'... He definitely belongs in that 99%-bracket.
@More Cowbell @raf I had to sit on this one for a while, but... you know that arguing with Jews over what is antisemitic is itself antisemitic?
And do you really think bigots are saying "Oh yeah, I'm absolutely a proud bigot!"? And that if they actually believe their bigotry that somehow frees them of being a bigot?
Thank you so much to everyone who's shared this and asked questions!
From the comment section it seems to me a lot of people have learned some things about Judaism and how it differs from Christianity. We even exposed one raging antisemite troll who's been banned from their server (shoutout venera.social for having over a thousand users and taking care of it in around an hour).
There certainly was a lot of mild antisemitism throughout the comments, but as far as I can tell in most cases it was ignorance that has been relieved by this!
(Remember kids, pulling a "what about israel?" is rude to do out of nowhere, but if someone supports the occupation they're bad for being a Zionist and that still doesn't permit you to denigrate their faith because it's the same faith as those who reject the occupation)
What do you mean by that? Or the word “Zionism.” I’m asking in earnest. Please describe what that means for you because I don’t know that we understand these words to mean the same thing.
@heather gold Zionism, in it's current form is Jewish colonialism of the area of Israel/Palestine. It wasn't so bad initially when it was just a push for a Jewish state, but became awful between that state enacting colonialist policies against Palestine. Topped off by the fact that modern Zionists believe that the Israeli government represents the Jewish faith and not just the people of Israel. (ie. Zionists generally believe criticism of Israel to be antisemitic)
The occupation of Palestine is the fact that Israel has forced them out of more and more land, and keeps encroaching on their territory. There's a constant expansion effort by Israel that constantly disregards the impact on Palestine, and is more than happy to push Palestinians out of their homes then declare them the "bad guys" for fighting to keep their land and homes. (They often paint it as antisemitic attacks rather than attacking a nation that keeps trying to steal your home)
Ich verstehe es nicht. können wir Dinge wie eine Abtreibung auch ohne Religionsbezug betrachten? Es ist ein Eingriff, welcher von Ärzten vorgenommern wird mit Zustimmung des Patienten. Meiner Meinung nach hat Religion in dieser Entscheidung nichts zu suchen, egal welcher man angehört.
I do not get it. can we look at things like abortion without reference to religion? It is an intervention performed by doctors with the patient's consent. In my opinion, religion has no place in this decision, no matter which one you belong to.
Agreed, but unfortunately it's often centered around Christianity and fascism, and both for and against throw around Judeo-Christian when talking about how it's being forced by religious groups.
@Shiri Bailem If people were more human and less religious, the problem would probably not exist. I'm not religious and I don't have much to contribute to this discussion, except my opinion, unfortunately :)
@Raroun Critiques of religion and it's impact on people not of their faith (and sometimes of their faith) are valid!
A lot of the time I see the problem being that people's only experience is imperialistic religions (Christianity) and little experience with the variety of experiences and lessons.
Like for instance, in Judaism we couldn't care less if you worshiped our god, let alone any other god. Our primary focus is on the wellbeing of ourselves and our communities (which includes the non-jews). (We don't even care that much if other Jews worship our god, atheistic religious jews are an actual accepted thing!)
Where many Christians take the stance of "let Jesus into your heart and you will become a good person!", Judaism takes the stance of "You must do the right thing whether you like it or not, and if you keep doing it maybe you'll become a better person for it" (do the right thing being things like being charitable and kind as well as not tolerating bigotry even if it's not directed at you).
And most importantly in Judaism: if it can't stand up to scrutiny than it shouldn't be respected (ie. nothing is off limits to argue, and if it falters under argument then it has no right to be respected)
Feel free to ask me questions if you like about my experiences, I just ask that you content warning for others any questions that are potentially sensitive. I won't try to convert you (we have a tradition of rejecting potential converts), we just emphasize sharing knowledge and understanding as one of our primary goals.
I sincerely didn't know how drastically different Judaism was until years out from leaving fundamentalist Christianity, I was in a 4 year relationship with a Jewish woman.
There is so much outright bullshit about Judaism taught in those circles.
I still only know enough to know that there is a vast ocean of information I need to learn.
I love how much Judaism is about learning, from what I have heard, and find it fascinating that debating more minor details is practically a friendly sport.
My life would have been so much better had I grew up in that kind of environment instead.
thanks for this! That phrase has bothered me for a long time and this is helpful to keep in mind so I can push back on it with something more concrete than my bad vibes/general suspicion
Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about this or Judaism in general! (I just ask you content warning for others any potentially sensitive topics)
@Don Hawkins - W7DAH fun fact, atheist observant Jews are a thing because Judaism is not dependent on belief in God.
Feel free to fire your arguments away, I enjoy debating antitheists. I'll even give you a courtesy and forewarning you: I will match the context of your arguments (ie. if your argument is from the assumption of my god existing, my response will follow that assumption; but if your argument is from the assumption that my god doesn't exist, I will respond likewise... a lot of people get confused because they don't pay attention to context switches)
good to know about the Atheism among Jewish-peeps, thanks! As for debating the rest, you’d be wasting your time & mine. There is no God, period, done & done. But hey, u b u.
@Don Hawkins - W7DAH then why spend your time coming to the post of a minority culture posting hostile memes if you're not going to discuss? Sounds like all you're doing then is shitting on people trying to feel superior but backing down immediately when challenged?
@Don Hawkins - W7DAH Also, for arguing in favor of reason there seems to be an absence of it here? And a lot of assumption.
Your response is nonsense if your response to "atheist jews" is "there is no god"? So what?
Are you just trolling persecuted minorities because you think none of us will ever debate you? You think a handful of memes shitting on a post about antisemitism will make you appear enlightened?
it’s called opinion & free speech, nothing to feel threatened by; conversely why do you go to such great lengths to proselytize in a social media space? Why would you characterize someone’s decision not to waste time debating as “backing down” as though some contest had been declared & everyone ‘required’ to participate? Your logic seems skewed. Nice try, & thanks for playing Skippy, but I have better things to do. Don’t you have some doors to go knock on?
why do you go to such great lengths to proselytize in a social media space?
Judaism does not proselytize, and the fact that you make that claim shows an ignorance of both the conversation and our faith. Our tradition is to reject converts by default, and when accepted we have an extensive vetting process. Accusing me of proselytization just exposes your ignorance of religion in general and makes you look like a tool who's only here to shit on people to make yourself feel better.
“also”, I couldn’t care less what others might think. This appears in my profile:
“Better to write for yourself & have no public, than to write for the public & have no self." --Cyril Connolly
Well, if you're posting it publicly then you're on some level writing for the public, and even if you're writing for yourself you're getting something out of it and I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what you get out of shitting on an oppressed minority talking about their oppression? My best guess is a sense of smug superiority in which you claim enlightenment, but what's so enlightened about attacking an oppressed minority asking to not be oppressed? Or misrepresenting an oppressed minority on a post asking people to stop misrepresenting us?
you seem triggered by one, short response; maybe social media isn’t for you. 😎
Ah yes, the "I'm being an asshole, but obviously better than you because I can throw around psych terms completely out of context to claim your inferiority and dismiss your responses". Triggered is referring to PTSD, do you think it's amusing to mock people with PTSD? Quite an enlightened take. I'm engaging a bigot because it's fun and presents a complete picture of their bigotry to others (especially to moderators). If I refuse to engage I get nothing, but by engaging I stand to protect vulnerable people from you and the likes of you.
@Odradek @BathysphereHat I feel there's a special evil in talking about germanies "judeo-christian" history (often done!), as uf that history wasnt mostly pogroms, exclusion, antisemitism, the shoa.
@More Cowbell @raf To quote Avenue Q: "Everyone is a little bit racist sometimes"
The defining question is whether it's rooted in ignorance or willful, which is part of this whole conversation with you.
You can be antisemitic without being willful about it, the question of character is how you respond when called on it. Telling us you know better than us about what is or isn't bigotry that we deal with is itself a form of bigotry.
The judgement of you as a person comes now, in how you respond to this?
If you learn and grow, addressing what we called out, then all the praise for you because that's hard to do. If you back away, well at least you were polite. If you become hostile, then we just write you off as a bigot.
And of course, further polite inquiries in good faith are valid too and fall under learning and growing.
@More Cowbell @raf There isn't a shared culture between Judaism and Christianity, they are very very distinctly different cultures and one has spent a very long time trying to kill the other.
Christianity is a member of the Abrahamic family of faiths and probably has more cultural similarity to Islam than it does Judaism, despite being an offshoot of Judaism. (And Abrahamic can be equally problematic if you're not well familiar with the cultural differences between Christianity and say Rastafarianism, but at least it's an accurate name for the relationship)
Much of the usage of "Judeo-Christian" comes from the belief that there's far more similarity than there is.
It's much like talking about the "Western Culture in which healthcare is a privilege, not a right" despite the fact that that's an american cultural element that's not shared by the vast majority of western nations.
@Ulrich_the_Elder 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 😷 Realized that my tone may not have come across in context, I genuinely want to know because that's a fascinating bit of trivia to have!
I otherwise agree, especially since in the Jewish Bible (parts not included in the Christian Bible) it is talked about, and explicitly permitted.
@wboucek @Scott Matter nondenominational usually refers to "generic Christian", and mixed faith is... well, mixed if it's just those two specific faiths (it implies there are more than 2 faiths present in the case of the potluck, and in the case of a home it's just less specific)
Sects do have a cultural element because they are groupings based on shared beliefs and values.
Ethnic distinctions are a mess in general, especially when talking about ethno-religious groups like Judaism as someone can be of the ethnicity and not the faith, or of the faith group and not the ethnicity. In those cases though we'd typically differentiate by their specific groupings.
Most I know are Ashkenazi Jews, being the most represented group of Judaism in the west (for comparison, you also find Sephardic Jews as prominent in the west, but with drastically less representation).
Because of intersectionality, one can be a member of many many cultures at the same time and the definitions are going to depend on which topics and elements are being referenced. When talking about religious beliefs, a sect/denomination is more meaningful than a region. And there are some elements that are derived from those beliefs that make it applicable as well.
I won't pretend that a New York Jew is the same as a Florida Jew, as a Texas Jew, let alone a Polish Jew, Indian Jew, or Japanese Jew. Just that we're going to share a lot of the same cultural elements where they're rooted specifically in our faith, especially when in the same sects.
Also, fyi, "IQ" is mostly rooted in classism and racism. here's an entertaining video from the show Adam Ruins Everything talking about it: youtu.be/W3oUqKUx2o0
@wboucek @Scott Matter well, neither of those cases would be something I'd call antisemitic, just less precise. They're absolutely valid to use, and are absolutely used more often.
@M_U "smart" and "intelligent" are all vague, undefined terms that are pretty much always problematic.
We have a multitude of different cognitive abilities, and they're basically trying to say someone who's "smart" is cognitively superior... when they're often just well versed on a topic.
It also causes a lot of trauma for people like myself who go through life oscillating between being called "smart" or "stupid" depending on which cognitive abilities are factored into a task. (For instance, I have Executive Dysfunction, but also have pattern thinking and great pattern recognition)
@M_U to elaborate further, saying a particular group has "higher intelligence" in any fashion is still racist and falls under the "Model Minority" bigotry (used to pigeonhole people in those groups and leveraging one group against another).
Jews aren't "smarter", we just have a culture that encourages education, and very importantly critical thinking (our pastime of arguing everything, and nothing being above challenge means that we are encouraged to actually analyze topics rather than just memorize)
@DemocritusDiscoBall Yeah, it's basically the backfire effect and whether or not the person takes effort to combat it. It has nothing to do with smarts and everything to do with pure psychology.
The backfire effect is rooted in the fact that when we take a stance on an issue it incorporates into our identity, the stronger the stance the more it incorporates.
When faced with evidence that the position may be wrong, we experience cognitive dissonance and our brain reacts to that information as a threat. Our natural default response is to double down on whatever it is, both increasing the strength of your connection to it and even less critical of the details you're relying on to support your argument.
It's basically the reason you "can't win arguments on the internet", because if someone is to the point of arguing about it, then they're invested enough that they'll be highly susceptible to the backfire effect. (Instead it's better to make your arguments for the sake of unconvinced bystanders)
It takes effort and mindfulness to push back against the backfire effect, and a conscious effort to allow yourself to be wrong.
@M_U ... okay, that's just straight up eugenics bullshit and will not be tolerated.
It's proven blatantly untrue, and is deeply disrespectful of our cultures. On top of that it's a purely racist talking point.
We have long established that we do not have significant mental or physical differences between "races", especially given that no one is "pure blooded", and especially going back thousands of years.
@M_U tendency towards sickle-cell anemia, tendency for cancer, tendency for blue eyes, tendency for baldness... sure.
No tendency for traits that don't exist (ie. "IQ"), no genetic tendency for education, or open-mindedness.
I've already reported you for racism and eugenics talk.
Maybe step back and look at your arguments vs the counter: that a culture that encourages challenging and arguing everything might be more conducive to understanding and challenging ideas in the world than a culture that emphasizes rote memorization and penalizes asking questions?
Do you assume that magically all groups of Judaism preserved genes for "superior intelligence" (despite being a non-sense idea rooted entirely in racism to begin with) despite varying every other genetic trait throughout? Or are you making assumptions about the genetic makeup of Jews worldwide, just assuming that all Jews are descended from Ashkenazi? Perhaps divine intervention? (I may be religious, but I'll take "easily provable" over "God did it")
💯 I dont get how Christians can claim these bans are "Judeo-Christian", Nearly all of the terrible logic Christians use for being against abortion are mostly based on Christian Scripture(mainly in the New Testament and its vagueness) and one psalm which im not sure is even related
Like, they think our beliefs are that you behave perfectly or go to hell because they see "judged by our acts" under their belief of "any sin = hell". (FYI, we do believe in being judged by our acts, but judged means judgement, it's not some automatic punishment thing but an actual decision... and on top of that, we don't believe in hell)
Non-Christians use it because many of them are convinced that all religions are basically Christianity with slight differences.
@Shannon (she/her) @Pedestriansfirst I suppose you're technically correct, I guess I usually never think about it because there's always more apt descriptions (ie. Nazis are often Zionists because "Blood And Soil").
And yes on the antisemitism of it, I just chose not to say anything about that in favor of a chance at education. (Also a love for getting into arguments with aggressive militant atheists because it's so fun to see their talking points shatter and the confusion that comes from it)
And I didn't bring it up later because I felt from the conversation that it wasn't going to be a problem again from them because they learned some things about Judaism, Jewish Culture, and that religions people can in fact own and acknowledge bad behaviors in their own communities.
@Shannon (she/her) I don't think believing all zionists are jews isn't that messy of a idea because it impacts so little, especially since the zionist behavior of non-jews is already easily discernible on it's own as awful anyways.
And keep in mind that the comparison is that this started from assuming that all Jews condoned the atrocities committed by the Israeli government and has walked away knowing that it's not uniform.
This is a long article, but the theory hits *hard* with me and connects really well.
The basic gist is that autistics almost always define our identities by what we do and our personal traits, while non-autistics almost always define their identities by their relationships (in particular to social groups)
If you don't have it in you to read all of it, definitely read the section: "How does having an experientially-constructed identity impact relationships?".
Terra Vance posits that Autistic people experience empathy and emotions differently because the way autistic identity is structured differs from non-autistic people’s identity constructs.
@bike I get that, I mostly mention that so I don't come across as bashing collectivist societies incidentally. My point was more that I doubt there's that much difference for us, just swap out one set of rules that don't make sense for another set that don't make sense for a different reason.
*(Reposting because my node crashed and lost all my posts and I want to keep this one pinned)*
I've been mulling over making this post for a little bit, but I think it's really **really** important.
It's critically important that you remember and acknowledge the humanity of monsters. Not for their benefit, but for *everyone else's* benefit.
When someone commits a monstrous act or shares a monstrous belief, we want to think of them as an inherently vile and non-human thing.
But doing so shields and protects other monsters.
When you make a Nazi, or any kind of abuser, into a one-dimensional monster. When you make their whole existence *center* on this monstrous act or belief... you make it hard to see their humanity. And that's the point, you don't *want* to see their humanity.
*** You Don't Want To Believe That Someone You Know And Trust (Maybe Even Love) Is Capable Of Such Atrocity. ***
And that's the problem. Because when you reject their humanity, that humanity becomes their shield. Your friend Bob can't possibly be a Nazi or a child-abuser, he's such a loving father and he helped you move!
Because you see their humanity, you can't possibly imagine them as monsters because the monsters have no humanity in your eyes.
There's a reason that when serial killers get caught their neighbors say they couldn't imagine them doing such things.
So don't ignore their humanity, keep it in your mind... so the next one can't use it as a shield.
Doctors still can't fully tell me what is wrong or what my health is going to look like in 5, 10, 20, 30 years. To this gov't I don't exist. I do not matter. My suffering is an inconvenient truth and their solution is to just ignore it. And I am not alone.#LongCOVID #COVID #Healthcare
The state’s legislature on Tuesday is set to debate a bill that would loosen child labor laws, allowing children as young as 14 years old to work overnight shifts. If the new law is passed, teenagers would be able to work overnight jobs on school days.
This is just a stopgap measure til the private prison industrial complex gets more prison labor structure in place, I expect. (And ain’t that depressing as fuck)
"The state’s Republican-led legislature on Tuesday will debate the new law, which also includes a number of changes including eliminating working time restrictions on teenagers aged 14 and 15 if they are home-schooled and ending guaranteed meal breaks for 16 and 17 year olds."
ending guaranteed meal breaks for 16 and 17 year olds.
I'm all for people having negative views of AI, there's alot that's wrong. There's alot that's debatable (albeit those debates are painfully heated).
What I am tired of is the misinformation, especially the "AI is useless and you're deluding yourself if you think it's had any positive impact on your life" crowd.
I try to avoid getting into fights about things like the ethics questions, I will say I absolutely agree with shaming it's use in art, especially anything for-profit. And I hate that I feel the need to make a post about this because I know how visceral the response is in so many.
It's my values that we shouldn't take a tool away from people based on falsehoods.
If you want to say AI should be eradicated because it "steals" artist's works, have at it, let me know if you want to chime in on IP law topics and questions both for and against. (Not a lawyer, just a special interest in IP law a ways back).
If you want to call out it's environmental impact, fire away. (Let me know if you want me to tell you about how that's not an inherent problem but instead a corporate/capitalist one!)
If you want to call out it's negative impacts on education and skill building? Oooh boy, show me that thread because I'm on your side!
Propaganda? I can tell you it's baaaaaaad
But for the love of god don't flood my feed with "It's wrong 60% of the time" or any other variation of "it's fundamentally useless". Let alone pushes to shame all AI users.
Like I said, it's in my values to not deprive people out of falsehoods and to think about broader consequences. It's not a simple situation.
I sometimes wish I could just throw away some of my values because I have lost someone I love dearly over this... but I can't just throw it into the fire because people are upset, because people are pointing their hurt at a tool.
Just please... try and temper your hurt some so that it's not blindly lashing out? Just consider that other people are hurting too and sometimes hurt people hurt other people.
"Revenge quitting" is the inevitable result of a workplace evolution that’s been brewing for years, and business experts predict why the trend will boil over in 2025.
A minority struggling to fit in a world not designed by them.
Conversing with the new live AI's can seem like chatting to an autistic friend.
Lately I've been using Google's Gemini "deep research" option. Give it a paragraph and it scans mostly research sources and produces a report. As it works it describes its "thought processes" .
It feels very much like I'm chatting with info dumping autistic friend about a shared special interest.
@darrellpf Brace yourself talking about it, people come out of the woodwork to crap on anyone saying anything remotely positive about AI, even if it's being used for accessibility purposes (they refuse to believe it can actually do anything in the first place, and the rest of the time they're too reactively angry about it to think about the impact of their actions)
Also in before someone goes on some rant along those last lines, just be on the look out for hallucinations when using it for search or any sort of information (double check it's answers before you rely on them or spread it).
I've noticed this myself actually. I tried playing around with them, mostly asking questions I already knew the answers to, and found that I got pretty good results (not perfect, but mostly correct). Not that this makes me doubt the bad results that others have gotten. Rather, what I suspect is the case is that I just know better how to talk to them, and what to use them for. I also know to check any results. But overall I found the experience pleasant, I like the way they organize information when they report it to me. (This makes me think of the stereotype that autistic people think and communicate like computers. 😆 )
Fun fact: When I was doing this, one of the things I was asking it about was autism. Through that conversation I ended up learning about employment support services for autistic people that I didn't know existed, and it was able to point me to real organizations in my area, even my city! So I'm going through that process right now, and if I end up getting employment because of them, I'll have A.I./LLM to thank for it.
(To be clear, I am well aware of their limitations and how they can give incorrect information. Like I said, I know how to ask, and I know to check that info after. I didn't even believe that those organizations were real when it told me about them, but I checked, and they all were.)
The big elements are they usually are talking about their experiences with earlier models and without web search integration (ie. asking the original Chat GPT 3.5 questions). Newer models have more information and are a little better at catching themselves.
The other element is the big persistent one: LLMs struggle with saying "I don't know", the reality is that they're meant to mimic responses and the response to question is expected to be an answer, the best response being a correct answer... but they also optimize for efficient responses, and nothing is more efficient than answering everything with "I don't know"... so avoiding that means when it doesn't know it then it invents a plausible answer. (This is called a hallucination in the AI field)
And because they are looking for reasons to dismiss them, they also pull edge cases: * Poorly configured AI systems like how Google's AI responses would often just take troll reddit posts for granted because Google just kinda shoved it in there without much consideration * That it struggles with tasks... that are not part of it's logic and processing. (Think of it like the language center of the brain with the bare minimum of any other parts) For example that it can struggle with doing math, especially trick word problems. (They love to pull that out and claim that it can't possibly be AI because the language processing AI gets tripped up by tricky math)
100%, but it's even worse b/c they're doing the passport checks on domestic travel now, and anyone with the "X" vs "M" or "F" is gonna get sent to prison, so air travel isn't an option.
And, troopers in Ohio are randomly stopping people, so I'm not sure it's a safe state anymore.
@boB Rudis 🇺🇦 I haven't heard anything of people being arrested over passport markers, only of their passports being confiscated? Do you have links to any stories on this?
I'll grab the links. Atlanta airport started requiring passports for domestic this week, which will mean they will do "X" checks (there's an EO forcing the passport change). We have turned trans humans back from overseas due to solely trans.
Update: it wasn't the ECB blocking gnome-calculator, it was an HTTP library regression breaking the connection to the ECB. Text in [] is incorrect, retained due to RTs etc.
[The ECB have remotely bricked gnome-calculator]
In the latest episode of "Why the 21st Century is impossibly stupid", GNOME calculator contacts the ECB on startup to get currency rates. It just hangs on startup if this fails, the whole calculator not just the currency stuff. [The ECB has blocked GNOME calculator].
To fix this, you can do "dconf write /org/gnome/calculator/refresh-interval 0", whatever tf dconf is, because when I tried it told me dbus-launch is missing, wtf that is, because it doesn't have a package. Turns out it's in "dbus-x11". I dunno why X11, because I use wayland, but I'm past caring at this point. I installed it and it worked.
Now I can calculate how much postage I need to pay for this parcel.
[A bloody OS-shipped desktop calculator, DDoSing a central bank, and blocking on connection failure].
@kæt yeah, it's completely absurd... apparently it's already been fixed but I don't think it's entered into many repos... I kid you not I just switched to the flatpak version of the same calculator...
My jaw was hanging for probably a few minutes when I realized what was causing the calculator to crash.
This past year has been intense, and especially these past few years... I look at the me from a decade ago and I barely recognize them. Hopes and dreams have changed, life upended multiple times. Disowned my relatives and now I've adopted a large chosen family. Gone from alone to feeling loved by so many people, and one especially in particular. My egg finally cracked. I started HRT. Changed my name twice. Been traumatized multiple times. Unpacked so much fucking trauma. Moved so many times. My profession took off. My profession crashed and burned. And I'm about to start it all over again.
I just turned 39 last friday... and honestly I feel really hopeful for my future... even with a new holocaust looming over my head. But I also look back and am happy where I am...
I get incredibly anxious now when someone I care about is uncomfortable, especially if I might be connected to that discomfort. It goes beyond fawning and can easily turn into me pestering them with excessive check-ins and an overbearing effort to try and comfort a discomfort that may not even be there.
I'm scared of physical intimacy... I've always craved it, I need it... but I don't really pursue it like I need anymore.
I've realized I can get callous very quickly when I sense potentially malicious manipulation, it serves me well but I recognize now that it's definitely the sign of something broken that I can become coldly calculating so quickly
I have a powerful resistance to gaslighting that I've developed from a lifetime of people attributing reasons and understandings to my actions that were not there, from just accusing me of non-existent disrespect (#autism) to calling me lazy when I'm suffering from executive dysfunction.
I am constantly terrified of how I'm perceived and especially that I might be distrusted... I spent most of my life wanting to connect with people, predominantly women (go figure I wanted to be friends with women more than men in retrospect...) and being shut down because I was seen as a man... because there was not a single action I could take that they didn't already do to try and manipulate women... (well... I finally found one action they won't take lol)
While I no longer have a broadly negative self-image, I can say positive things about myself and believe good things about myself... a nugget of dissonance still remains. A part of me still struggles to believe I can be loved despite all the blatant evidence in front of me. I know that part is wrong, but it makes all my love given and received feel so very very raw.
I spent so very very long isolated, especially emotionally... What love I felt wasn't healthy, it was mostly the love of obligation that you get in dysfunctional conservative families. Having spent my whole life without feeling it, genuine love is incredibly overwhelming... I think about my family and it feels like I'm stretched taught over a creaking barrel ready to blow from pressure... So when the people I love give me a way to show them love, it feels like an intense pressure valve release.
I made a guide, it's clumsy and sloppy but it's something.
This is for setting up GPG on Android for people who need secure communication that can't be shut down and doesn't rely on government services, especially trackable services.
I'm getting older and I hate it... aging with chronic pain sucks.
The whole day has been a struggle, struggle to move, struggle to think, struggle to motivate.
I've still lived my life, but it's moments like how hard it is getting out of bed from a nap, or just how hard it is to get myself to do simple things like putting away the groceries...
My muscles just don't want to move, and I'm just so tired...
Bill Text (2025-02-26) Relating to the provision of procedures and treatments for gender transitioning, gender reassignment, or gender dysphoria and the use of public money or public assistance to provide those procedures or treatments. [Filed]
Stonewall & LGBTQIA+ history is being re written, but the 'LGB' is not safe either. Removing Transgender history is generally the first step.Support my conte...
Article about search engine I use, even wilder they just introduced an absurd business practice. You know how companies try to trap you in trials then hope you forget so they can charge you forever for something you don't use?
They just announced that if you're not using it they'll stop charging you. If you use it again then they'll charge you next month.
@bgrinter I've had a browser tab open on the Kagi sign-up screen for months now. Like many, I’m quite subscription-fatigued, but this one is REALLY tugging at me to try.
Something I felt like i should share, because I really don't think many realize...
I don't say this to surrender, I say this to say how big the fight is and how important each and every one of you is to it.
Do you know when the vast majority of people realized how real the threat was of the holocaust?
... when they saw a pile of shoes when the camps were being cleared out.
The holocaust meant nothing to those fighting the war, it would have been trivial for the allies to save so very very many lives... they simply didn't really care, they didn't see our suffering as real... until they saw that pile of shoes.
Don't count on Trump or the Republicans to finally be recognized for the Nazis they are and the majority to suddenly be in revolt.
Prepare for a fight and know that every fighter counts.
And know that every life saved matters, especially when the threat is extinction.
Reminded yet again how I'm pissed at people surrendering and calling it victory...
A reminder: if you're part of the "Block Bluesky/Threads By Default" crowd, you're just handing over victory.
Enshittifying the fediverse because you're afraid of big corpos and think everyone who isn't already here can just die in the hellhole fire of the other networks, "How DARE People Suggest We Build Fire Exits!".
So yeah, screw that self absorbed bullshit.
People are leaving the fediverse for Bluesky, why? Because people over here demand purity to random ideals, because people over here think it's unreasonable that someone might want to connect with friends and loved ones who made a different choice of network.
This is part of a much bigger problem... pissed that I'm surrounded all my life by people who think holier than though infighting and rejecting anyone who isn't pure enough in their ideals, instead of y'know actually pushing for changes that protect people.
I'm staring down the barrel of a gun in my life as my country falls apart to fascism and I'm in the top two of most hated and most at risk minorities... but at least y'all kept people on Bluesky from realizing the fediverse even exists...
This is why I'm pissed at defederating threads just because it's meta, or the bluesky bridge, let alone people bullying the dev into crippling it with "opt-in" systems.
Good arguments by @pluralistic on why we need to focus on liberating people who are forcibly locked into Big Tech.
> #Mastodon 's progenitors should be praised for ensuring their creation was born free – but the fact that #Bluesky isn't free enough is no reason to turn our back on it. Our response to anything that locks in the people we care about must be to *shatter those locks*, not abandon the people bound by the locks because they didn't heed to our warnings.
Day One: They're starting an investigation that will probably lead to them revoking my passport in the near future.
They're starting another investigation into supposed harmful effects of HRT (odds are results will be complete bullshit), which they'll use to enact further actions prohibiting me from getting my HRT.
... Did they just say "LITHIUM-SULFUR BATTERIES"?!?!?!
Time to rewatch those old "hide under your desk" nuclear war videos...
(To be clear, not commenting on the contents of the article further than what's in the headline... just the idea of a sulfur battery is kinda terrifying)
A solid electrolyte gives lithium-sulfur batteries ludicrous endurance Sulfur can store a lot more lithium, but is problematically reactive in batteries. arstechnica.com/science/2025/0…
Put up family photos on the wall... to be clear, my found family not the relatives.
I'd been fussing over a proper way to put them up, but eventually just settled recently on ordering some adhesive clips. Perfect is the enemy of good.
There's now a nice spread of family photos on the wall, and it makes me feel loved. These weren't people born into a family with me... these are all people who chose to call me family. It takes up so much space on the wall and it might not do much for other people, for me it drastically brightens up the space just glancing over seeing the faces of the people I love and who love me.
Seeing talk again about Neil Gaiman as more people become aware of his abuses, and reminded of something I wrote earlier that absolutely relates.
The short of it is, as always, we want to simply repaint people as inhuman monsters the moment we find out behaviors like this. We want them to be "them" not "us", because if they're regular people who do awful things then all of "us" can be awful and I can't conveniently ignore the awful things people do around me.
Likewise, in the case of artists, there's a tendency to immediately see all of their art as complete trash. Not just tainted, but as being poor quality to begin with. Sometimes there's validity when it was rose-colored glasses before (ie. JKR's blatant bigotry throughout her writing that we glossed over mostly because we were kids and not paying attention), but often it's not based in the actual quality and experience of the work itself... just the tainted associations around it.
I'm not suggesting you should ignore the artist and just "get over yourself" or anything like that. I'm saying it's important to not automatically associate good artist with good person.
Because it's such a clear and easy example I love to point out Joss Whedon with this. His good stuff doesn't stop being good, it just becomes unenjoyable because you see him reflected in it. And what I think happens in both Joss Whedon's case and Neil Gaiman's is that their awfulness contributed to the quality, it didn't just fly under the radar.
In the case of Whedon, it's because his fetish was "breaking strong women", to fulfill that fetish in his writing that meant he had to write strong women. Because he so often wrote series, it mean he also had to write stories of them recovering their strength after being broken (so he could ultimately break them again). We connected with the strength of these women, that's what often made his stories so good and he hid behind that.
Dismissing all of that because it's come out that he's awful means we're not paying attention to how other artists show themselves, or how seemingly positive people might just be awful people with the mirror opposite abuses to the positives being celebrated.
*(Reposting because my node crashed and lost all my posts and I want to keep this one pinned)*
I've been mulling over making this post for a little bit, but I think it's really **really** important.
It's critically important that you remember and acknowledge the humanity of monsters. Not for their benefit, but for *everyone else's* benefit.
When someone commits a monstrous act or shares a monstrous belief, we want to think of them as an inherently vile and non-human thing.
But doing so shields and protects other monsters.
When you make a Nazi, or any kind of abuser, into a one-dimensional monster. When you make their whole existence *center* on this monstrous act or belief... you make it hard to see their humanity. And that's the point, you don't *want* to see their humanity.
*** You Don't Want To Believe That Someone You Know And Trust (Maybe Even Love) Is Capable Of Such Atrocity. ***
And that's the problem. Because when you reject their humanity, that humanity becomes their shield. Your friend Bob can't possibly be a Nazi or a child-abuser, he's such a loving father and he helped you move!
Because you see their humanity, you can't possibly imagine them as monsters because the monsters have no humanity in your eyes.
There's a reason that when serial killers get caught their neighbors say they couldn't imagine them doing such things.
So don't ignore their humanity, keep it in your mind... so the next one can't use it as a shield.
And if anyone on the other side of the Bluesky bridge wonders why I can't tag ecoandrewtrc.bsky.social, it's because they're not bridged (This can be fixed by them following ap.brid.gy)
Random thought occurring to me after I struggled to sleep last night...
There's a thing for a lot of people with ADHD where caffeine is kinda like rolling dice... sometimes it helps you wake up and sometimes it puts you to sleep.
I realized last night I was having a mild dopamine crash (spent all my dopamine on the workday) and I was craving caffeine so I said screw-it, if I can't sleep might as well... within half an hour I think I was out.
So it dawned on me that it could be simply related to our dopamine levels at the time. If we're spent then it's practically impossible to settle down. So when you're spent and otherwise tired, then caffeine is reducing the barrier to sleep as well. It backfires on us because we're still up from the combination of drowsiness and low dopamine, but because it's milder than say ritalin it doesn't drop our drowsiness as much as it raises the dopamine to let you settle...
Wanted to share for what other people think of this possibility?
@donburnside Same here. First day I was on Ritalin I slept all day. Caffeine is it formme now, but if I overdo it it can make me jittery but mostly it helps me chill. It's usually not that stopping me sleeping, I always assumed it was.
Thank you for being my family and all the love and kindness you've given me over the years! And thank you for gifting us another trip around the sun together ❤
If I wasn't terrified that I'd have to drop everything and run in a few months, and y'know poor on top of that*... I'd seriously consider setting up a sharkey or similar instance on the side just so I could recommend a place with a friendly UI that I could 100% vouch for... (there's plenty of other instances I like, but so many of them make restrictive decisions that I don't like like blocking Bridgy).
(* mostly just don't like the idea of setting up a server, getting users, and then having to run for my life and the server just disappearing... same reason I limited registration on my current instance)
I could use more recommendations for fediverse servers to suggest to people. Both to refresh lists but also because I need some that are more accessible.
One thing I've run into is the number of places that block threads and bridgy which is a major negative to my recommendations... I'm trying to convince people and those are two great ways to help convince people to move to the fediverse over just moving to threads and bluesky...
"Ad Hominem" is a logical fallacy in which they dismiss the argument by addressing the person not the argument.
Ad Hominem is not calling the person a douchebag while addressing the points of the argument.
Ad Hominem is saying those points should be dismissed because they are a douchebag.
It's thrown around (improperly) often by people who want to basically say "you've lost the argument because you're angry" but what to add elitism on top of entitlement.
Easy test: if you can remove all the insults from the argument and it still makes sense, then it's not Ad Hominem.
My little fur niece and my family still need help. While the goal has been met, it's the bare minimum, if things go well and luck is good things will work out... but things are really hard even then.
Please consider donating more to improve her odds and help support my sister, her husband, and my nephew through this.
Hello to all the big hearts out there. My name is Zee and Bluebell (aka Baby… Tanya Laird needs your support for Help Bluebell Get Well & Stay With Her Family
@Henry willow to be clear, this is my sister's campaign. As far as I know they're stable, they're just holding their breath for worse and cutting back on their own care to cover and prep (ie. my sister has severe health issues, my nephew has dietary issues, and they're cutting groceries).
So donations right now are toward breathing room, toward either avoiding possible bad news putting them back under or if all goes well then toward getting them back on their feet.
just adrienne
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to just adrienne • •@just adrienne @Rabbit Cohen And followed now!
This was from Facebook memories way back, and I like to when it fits, share those things over to the fediverse.
Adding an edit to explicitly credit because they deserve it.
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Rabbit Cohen
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Scott Matter
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Scott Matter • •@Scott Matter things like:
Judeo-Christian Potluck - A potluck hosted by both Jews and Christians
Judeo-Christian Househould - A family in which one parent is Jewish and the other is Christian
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Charlie Stross
in reply to Scott Matter • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Charlie Stross • •@Charlie Stross @Scott Matter antisemitism from ignorance is still antisemitism, it's accidental bigotry vs willful bigotry.
But also the EEE is a perfect reference point for what it's all about!
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Thanks for asking!
It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.
The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:
1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions)
2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)
Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.
Some highlight examples:
* We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is)
* We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before
* We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...)
* We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument)
* We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon
* We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.
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Jacob Vardy
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foo
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️
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Dr. Mikaila
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in reply to foo • •(A) when it's a person is a philosophical/religious argument, Judaism says at birth
(B) Pikuach Nefesh is specifically what permits it, abortion is permitted when it would cause harm to carry to term. It explicitly includes mental and economic health in that (if it would cause mental distress, if it would interfere with your ability to care for yourself or your family)
@A13cui :perl: :opensuse:
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Unknown parent • •@𐪅𐪀𐪈 𐪑𐪁𐪉
Not remotely a counter argument. For one equating Israel with Judaism is an anti-semitic (blood and soil, or just thinking a regional government is authoritative of a worldwide culture) or Zionist take (despised by non-zionists like myself as they are colonizers who think Israel can do no wrong).
Also, it's in the blog section talking about America. It's also precisely the wrong usage (it's calling America Judeo-Christian... it's just christian if anything). On top of that, internalized bigotry is a thing in minority groups.
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A. Lynn
Unknown parent • • •Sidenote: I understand why the combination would be complete trash in the topic of abortion. Anyone trying that might deserve a kick to the shin.
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ZenDra
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fraggle
Unknown parent • • •Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Judaism is both a religion and a cultural/"ethnic" group, "Judeo-Christian" is almost always used to refer to the religion of which my statements are representative of the vast vast majority of Judaism.
Also one of the distinct differences is that Atheism and the faith of Judaism are not incompatible. There are many atheist-jews because God actually isn't the center point of Judaism, the main point is the time tested rules (see the argue with everything/everyone) about becoming a better person.
We will always be used by minority groups referring to themselves, mostly because "the vast vast vast majority of us" is clumsy to say and people get the point that exceptions exist. Also, because it doesn't change the fact of the statement being made.
It's also why I mad the example points I did because they're central points that are agreed upon by all major sects as opposed to the many many points which are argued over (once again see the argue with everything/everyone... arguments are a past-time in Jewish culture)
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Unknown parent • •@A.L. Blacklyn @Scott Matter I think it's problematic because all of that is almost always presented from the filter of Christianity looking backwards. Jesus was absolutely a Jew and the vast vast majority of what he preached was in line with Jewish beliefs (if they hadn't shed Judaism as part of their faith and hadn't been co-assimilated with the entirety of Rome, it would be a very very different relationship).
The problem mostly comes from the fact that saying Judeo-Christian about those elements and times really should only be applied when you are intimately familiar with both faiths and are doing the hard work of removing the Christian filter from it.
Highlights on the Jewish view of Jesus:
* He fulfilled no significant prophecies regarding the Messiah (the whole point is the thousand years of peace), the vast vast majority of prophecies he's claimed to have fulfilled are mistranslations and/or completely out of context (ie. "virgin birth" came from "young woman of marriageable age" and a prophecy that had nothing to do with the messiah but was fulfilled in the following chapter)
* Trinitarianism isn't even universal among Christians, among Jews it's deeply deeply heretical as one of our long defining statements has been "God is One"
* Human sacrifice is abhorrent in Judaism, so the idea of Jesus being a sacrifice is abhorrent
* In Judaism we already have forgiveness, the biggest distinction is that God will only forgive how you've wronged God. For forgiveness over how you wronged another person you have to ask them. Imagine how you'd feel if I forgave my friend for stealing from you and then they looked you dead in the eye and said they were forgiven for stealing from you... I'd be an asshole, right?
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Unknown parent • •@0x506978656C526F626F74🦾🤖 in probably 50% of the cases absolutely!
They often use it as a stand-in for Abrahamic (which is often problematic, but has far far more legitimate uses) and I mention in my elaboration comment, though I go more narrow a mention the most obscure Abrahamic faith I know of (Baháʼí) to highlight both facts just because their obscurity I feel makes the point better (though I feel a little guilty for using them as a token, it is also in the effort of getting them and other groups recognition).
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@ScepticalScot1 Correct on Judaism, it's an explicit thing.
To be clear, our faith doesn't blanket allow it either... but it's a tiny distinction with how broad our allowance is:
We don't consider it a person until it's birth, until then it's just a potential person (Jewish law only treats it as a person in cases of forced abortion or similar, ie. if you murder a pregnant person who wanted their child, then it's a double-homicide).
Judaism specifically says that abortion is permitted when the well-being of the person carrying it is threatened. But that sounds far more restrictive than it is because we have a broad view of well-being laid out, which includes mental health (being forced to carry a pregnancy you do not want and birth a child against your will is traumatic, therefore abortion is permitted because your mental health would be threatened by denying an abortion... which basically means abortion is permitted in the vast vast vast majority of cases)
(An example of times when it might not be permitted would be things like if they were in the middle of a psychotic episode)
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 Oooooof, true but oooof.
I will forewarn against the usage there because many anti-theists (atheists with a grudge against all faiths) have picked up Judeo-Christian as well and would interpret that as accusing Judaism of also committing similar atrocities (though the government of Israel continually makes that a challenging topic...)
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •"Major Sects" - the large divisions of Judaism representing the vast vast majority of us
"Agreed upon" - Explicitly in our agreed mutual holy texts, considered major defining elements of our faith, or in the case of the afterlife not mentioned anywhere in our texts
Keep in mind that we have more religious texts than are included in the Christian "Old Testament", most significantly the Talmud which is accepted by all Jewish sects I know of and is where many of these elements are established.
How about this follow up: do you have more familiarity with Jewish cultures than a Jew? Do you know what I'm leaving off of the lists that differs between Jewish groups?
@M_U @A13cui :perl: :opensuse:
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DressToKILT
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Tammy Garrison, MLIS
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Tammy Garrison, MLIS • •@Tammy Garrison Here's a link to my previous elaboration: foggyminds.com/display/c6ef095…
Feel free to ask follow up questions!
Shiri Bailem
2023-07-29 06:46:57
Tammy Garrison, MLIS
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 I have no ability to delete your post without you being on my server, though I'm not seeing it anymore either. I'd check with your admins to see if they maybe flagged it and didn't understand?
And the exact kinds of people I mentioned in my comment are the people who'd not understand because they're indoctrinated by christo-fascism and rejecting it without rejecting what they've learned from it.
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Feygele Ⓐ Ⓥ🏳️⚧️
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Chadee 🦨🐋, Dream Witch 🌕 🌊
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Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •e. hashman 🇵🇸
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Jewish religious movement characterized by the recognition of the written Torah alone as its supreme authority in Jewish religious law and theology.
Contributors to Wikimedia projects (Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.)Anthony Sorace
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Anthony Sorace • •@Anthony Sorace @Erika Ensign that falls under "No True Scotsman", they are Christian regardless of being a subset much the same as I won't claim that Zionists aren't jews despite holding objectionable views.
It's a logical fallacy used very often to avoid looking at issues in one's own social groups.
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Glyph
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •My Jewish Faith Makes Me Pro-abortion
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Zorin =^o.o^=
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@a13cui It often feels like the Jewish faith has things figured out better than most belief systems.
Especially the "don't try to force others to follow your religion" part. That's a big awesome one.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to e. hashman 🇵🇸 • •@e. hashman :flag_bisexual: Again I said major sects and didn't say there are no exceptions.
I'm not going to entertain this line of arguments any further because I can't see a version of this being in good faith at this point.
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ראַף 🟣
Unknown parent • • •It's not really a tribute if it mostly gets used to mean Christian. It often implies the speaker doesn't understand or value the important differences between Jewish and Christian values. Also low-key islamaphobic
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: it's purpose is to prevent dilution of the faith.
The rejection is just the first step, there's also studying and being approved by a Bet Din (rabbinic court).
We want to insure people don't join the community and the immediately start screwing with our traditions and practices.
Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to fluffy 💜 • •@fluffy 💜 @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: It has slightly more legitimate usage, but only slightly.
Mostly just because it is the actual family name.
But yeah, it's too often used for faux-inclusivity.
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Pedestriansfirst
Unknown parent • • •Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@crows call me breadlady sure, I need to update the original to link this because it got way more traction than I expected!
Happy to answer follow ups!
foggyminds.com/display/c6ef095…
Shiri Bailem
2023-07-29 06:46:57
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Robrab
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Robrab • •@Robrab That's really a combination of anti-semitism and "No True Scotsman"
Most of the "old testament angry bits" are Christian interpretations or mistranslations.
Prime example is the verse they translate as "A man should not lie with another man as he would a woman" (anti-homosexuality) which is far more accurately translated as "A man should not lie with a boy as he would a woman" (anti-pedophilia). One of those two makes a hell of a lot more sense for stoning...
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to CaptMorgan • •@CaptMorgan @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: This is a very flawed take and discounts the many interpretations and approaches different groups have to addressing these things.
For reference, I'm a Reform Jew: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in…
I will openly say that what you're saying absolutely applies to Orthodox Judaism and can somewhat apply to Conservative Judaism... there's a reason I'm a Reform Jew and not Orthodox lol
Also of note the "Old Testament" is not synonymous with all our texts or the Torah (the Torah is only the first five books). We have many texts that are not included in the Christian Bible.
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in reply to Zorin =^o.o^= • •@Zorin =^o.o^= @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Also noting that a lot of the "have things figured out" comes from the outlook of arguing as a pastime. Since nothing is above debate, everything gets challenged constantly.
These days, it's not as visible because the vast majority of topics have been challenged to the point that there's little to argue... but there are absolutely topics being fought over (like for instance circumcision which is a very very touchy ongoing argument, mostly due to it's adjacency to the history of antisemitism)
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Jared Forsyth
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Marge吴静玫 likes this.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Jared Forsyth • •@Jared Forsyth wouldn't surprise me, a lot of terms get formed in a positive place and corrupted over time.
The broader term is Abrahamic Faith. It has more valid use cases, but does suffer from the same problem of people using it to talk just about Christianity.
As beloved author Charles Stross (The Laundry Files) commented above, it's the Embrace Extend Eradicate practice, applied to religion.
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Naomi
Unknown parent • • •@zachnfine @a13cui Which sums up pretty succinctly why Christianity is the way it is: It could really have done with some of that, instead of being so open and welcoming to all, that it is now very obviously the product of 2000 years of infiltration, appropriation, and bastardization, by every example of exactly the worst kind of self-serving people with power and privilege, Jesus warned about.
Thanks to that difference, try as they might to appropriate and bastardize Judaism - like they have so many other cultures - Christians have time and again, failed.
Where Christians go out of their way to eradicate basic critical thinking in those they indoctrinate, Judaism encourages it, and that provides a basic defense against the kind of corruption, that Christianity has utterly succumbed to.
'Those who have eyes shall see', and Jews see Christianity's leaders very clearly, for the wolves in sheep's clothing they always have been.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Naomi • •@Naomi @Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: So there's definitely some distinct history to what happened with Christianity.
It starts with the Apostles and namely with Luke arguing that Christians did not have to first be Jews. It's obvious why that argument won out (lower standards and dropping circumcision).
And then it was kicked into high-gear with Emperor Constantine who converted the whole Roman Empire to Christianity.
As an important bit of context, the Roman empire/faith was essentially the borg of religions. As it conquered cultures it declared that their faiths were all subsets of their own, assimilating them into their faith.
The issue between the Jews of Israel and Rome was rooted in the fact that Rome wanted to call our God just another manifestation of Zeus and we wholeheartedly rejected that (the story of Hannukah starts with the Romans trying to put up a statue of Zeus in front of the Temple).
So, when the emperor declared that Rome was now Christian, they immediately assimilated their own faith into Christianity. This is why the popular Christian afterlife mirrors the afterlife of the roman faith (seriously compare Heaven/Hell depictions with the Elysian Fields and Pits of Tartarus; and then contrast to the fact that Judaism has no established afterlife).
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Hilary
in reply to Glyph • • •@glyph @foo @a13cui
This is worth reading in full, but one point to take away is that in Judaism abortion is not merely permitted (in certain circumstances). It is obligatory/required (in certain, more limited, circumstances). If continuing a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, abortion is obligatory.
This is complicated by another halachic principle, which is the obligation to abide by the (secular) laws of the place where one lives.
There can be direct conflict here.
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Zorin =^o.o^=
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@a13cui This is great. I went to a catholic high school, and I remember contesting anything religious was a huge no-no. The word was the word, and arguing about it wasn't allowed.
Allowing even long-standing ideas to be challenged is one of the most important requirements for a society to progress.
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crows call me breadlady
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korin
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Pedestriansfirst • •@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: they are in fact Jews and you won't find me pulling a "No True Scotsman" on that.
I will however always note that they're Zionists and that non-Zionists don't approve of Zionists.
For a Christian example, it's the difference between saying WBC isn't Christian vs saying WBC is condemned by most other Christians.
Making the Palestine argument applies specifically to the Zionist take that Israel (the political entity) and Judaism are inseparable, and it implies from that that all Jews support the actions of Israel as opposed to the majority (at least as I've seen) condemning it.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Zorin =^o.o^= • •@Zorin =^o.o^= @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: Agreed, I'm a fan of Mark Twain's (yes, the Mark Twain) commentary on the topic:
We persist and have great impact because knowledge and understanding are cherished, and all things old and new are challenged constantly. We don't claim perfection, being Jewish is all about the act of continually striving to do and be better.
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Naomi
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •@zachnfine @a13cui And this is why I'd much rather listen to Jews than Christians. You keep the parts of history that Christians have gone out of their way to bury, so your explanations actually make sense of the glaring disparities between what Jesus (a Jew) said, and what Christians, from the apostles onwards (Paul in particular), /say/ he said.
I mean, I can't even google anything related to the Bible, without getting endless pages of 'Good Christian Bible study' takes, twisting every word he said into its opposite.
Questioning that is why I got kicked out of Sunday school when I was still an infant, and it wasn't much longer before I realized Christianity was a very Roman creation, even with the poor, Christian education I was given.
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Eugene
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Eugene
in reply to Eugene • • •Shiri Bailem
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Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Pedestriansfirst • •@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: 80? that honestly is a lot lower than what I would have expected at this point
I won't say "bad Jews" because that's far too close to "No True Scotsman", they are Zionists and Zionism is Jewish Colonialism, which is a very bad take imo.
And no, you're not blocked. It wasn't a great take to start with, but it was understandable given the propensity for Christians to take the "No True Scotsman" fallacy against arguments such as that.
I believe in giving someone a chance first when there's any grey area on potential hate, plus it was a good excuse to outline the differences on a very common and hot topic that gentiles often know little about. And I think you learned something about Jewish society from it.
For more background, part of the problem with Zionists is that they're supported by White Supremacists and Nazis.
It sounds weird on the surface that Nazis would support Zionists, but it comes from a common White Supremacist principle of "Blood and Soil" in which they believe that different "races" have dominion over different lands (ie. white people over europe, Jews over Israel, Asians over Asia, etc). It's why you'll occasionally see someone spouting antisemitic bullshit, but then pivot to supporting Israel.
(Also "fun" trivia: this is why so many white people claim some vague distant "Cherokee Princess" in their background, it came from an effort to expand their blood and soil claim to the Americas)
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Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 I saw in your about you're from Germany and yeah, it's bad everywhere (the honeymoon post-holocaust period is ending and anti-semitism is returning to the "norm"), just from what I understand there's still drastically more taught about the Holocaust and Naziism in Germany than in the US.
Here, we get little more than "Nazis hate Jews", "Nazis bad", and "Bad things happened at Auschwitz". If anything else is covered, it's merely glossed over.
Of course, we're also the country that throws hissy fits at the idea of taking down monuments to people who actively fought to keep slavery (not that it's over with in the US, we just made it state slavery)
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Pedestriansfirst • •@Pedestriansfirst @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: praying for peace is a constant for us, but we also believe in Tikkun Olam, it's our responsibility to continually work toward it as well.
I figured you were not Christian, when mentioning Palestine you were calm about it and responded reasonably... Christians tend to only really go that route if they're going to be frothing antisemites, so it'd be really surprising to me if you were. (Not impossible, just unlikely)
Part of the trouble is that in the west Christianity overshadows all other religions to the point that many atheists only known and understand Christianity when they're rejecting religion as a whole. And that's something I'm deeply conscious of.
... I also love getting into arguments with anti-theists because they get so incredibly confused at (a) rational arguments and (b) the fact that I'll context switch right along them when they're not even paying attention to their context. (I jokingly call these people theo-phobes after the idea of homophobes being self-hating homosexuals and I believe many of them have an indoctrinated belief in god and are repulsed by the thought that the things they were taught would be true)
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Unknown parent • •Pedestriansfirst
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Dean L. Surkin
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Shaterri (he/him)
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Nicolai von Neudeck 🤒🤕 oof, for some reason I thought Germany was notable in taking them all down... but I really shouldn't be surprised.
I think it's both (a) and (b), after the war anti-semitism became shameful so it moved out of the public view... but also being out of the public limited it's spread.
But every year the holocaust gets more distant and the reaction to it becomes more and more muted as people try to claim that it's done and gone and not worth talking about anymore and with that Naziism becomes more and more a cartoon instead of a real threat... so of course it starts spreading again.
Shiri Bailem
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Emily K 🪬 @Jared Forsyth Agreed, I cite it as better only because it's actually used in broader valid cases (as an accurate classification of the faiths), but whenever they talk about individual beliefs... it turns to total crap real fast.
Majority of the time they're talking about Christianity, every once in a while they hit a valid chord between the big three... but it's a miracle if it's actually accurate to all Abrahamic Faiths.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shaterri (he/him) • •@Shaterri (he/him) Honestly I think this has been mostly good faith arguments given how people have responded to my replies. There's one where I drew the line feeling it was making it's way to bad faith pedantry... and the one worse than that you'll note their posts have disappeared or will soon because their server banned them (credit to Venera.social for responding quickly and decisively)
But I can see what people think of as bad faith. There's a lot of common anti-theist counter arguments that I'm familiar with, but I don't think any of them have gone beyond one post and in most cases took my reply graciously and learned something.
For instance calling out Palestine that one time, which while tiresome is understandable since Christians typically pull a "No True Scotsman" fallacy in response to things like that, which clearly marks them as not worth talking to. As tiresome as it is, it's a good barometer question for Jews imo.
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assertchris
Unknown parent • • •assertchris
in reply to CaptMorgan • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to assertchris • •@assertchris @Zach Fine @A13cui :perl: :opensuse: it's established well after that, that's prior to the Torah even being written and I believe it was established somewhere in the commentaries (like a millennia later) I think, but as I said no idea where.
It's not as hard to maintain your culture prior to being conquered by Rome and prior to Diaspora, but after it becomes vitally important to preserve your practices if you don't want them to dissolve into assimilation.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to assertchris • •like this
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Schafstelze
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Not only did he use the term to promote anti-islamism by claiming they are NOT part of our tradition and shouldn't be, but he also seems to have 'forgotten' the nasty details of that 'judao-christian tradition'...
He definitely belongs in that 99%-bracket.
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Philip N Cohen
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@More Cowbell @raf I had to sit on this one for a while, but... you know that arguing with Jews over what is antisemitic is itself antisemitic?
And do you really think bigots are saying "Oh yeah, I'm absolutely a proud bigot!"? And that if they actually believe their bigotry that somehow frees them of being a bigot?
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •Thank you so much to everyone who's shared this and asked questions!
From the comment section it seems to me a lot of people have learned some things about Judaism and how it differs from Christianity. We even exposed one raging antisemite troll who's been banned from their server (shoutout venera.social for having over a thousand users and taking care of it in around an hour).
There certainly was a lot of mild antisemitism throughout the comments, but as far as I can tell in most cases it was ignorance that has been relieved by this!
(Remember kids, pulling a "what about israel?" is rude to do out of nowhere, but if someone supports the occupation they're bad for being a Zionist and that still doesn't permit you to denigrate their faith because it's the same faith as those who reject the occupation)
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heather gold
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •heather gold
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to heather gold • •heather gold
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to heather gold • •@heather gold Zionism, in it's current form is Jewish colonialism of the area of Israel/Palestine. It wasn't so bad initially when it was just a push for a Jewish state, but became awful between that state enacting colonialist policies against Palestine. Topped off by the fact that modern Zionists believe that the Israeli government represents the Jewish faith and not just the people of Israel. (ie. Zionists generally believe criticism of Israel to be antisemitic)
The occupation of Palestine is the fact that Israel has forced them out of more and more land, and keeps encroaching on their territory. There's a constant expansion effort by Israel that constantly disregards the impact on Palestine, and is more than happy to push Palestinians out of their homes then declare them the "bad guys" for fighting to keep their land and homes. (They often paint it as antisemitic attacks rather than attacking a nation that keeps trying to steal your home)
Raroun
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •können wir Dinge wie eine Abtreibung auch ohne Religionsbezug betrachten?
Es ist ein Eingriff, welcher von Ärzten vorgenommern wird mit Zustimmung des Patienten.
Meiner Meinung nach hat Religion in dieser Entscheidung nichts zu suchen, egal welcher man angehört.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Raroun • •@Raroun @Rabbit Cohen
Agreed, but unfortunately it's often centered around Christianity and fascism, and both for and against throw around Judeo-Christian when talking about how it's being forced by religious groups.
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Raroun
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •If people were more human and less religious, the problem would probably not exist.
I'm not religious and I don't have much to contribute to this discussion, except my opinion, unfortunately :)
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Raroun • •@Raroun Critiques of religion and it's impact on people not of their faith (and sometimes of their faith) are valid!
A lot of the time I see the problem being that people's only experience is imperialistic religions (Christianity) and little experience with the variety of experiences and lessons.
Like for instance, in Judaism we couldn't care less if you worshiped our god, let alone any other god. Our primary focus is on the wellbeing of ourselves and our communities (which includes the non-jews). (We don't even care that much if other Jews worship our god, atheistic religious jews are an actual accepted thing!)
Where many Christians take the stance of "let Jesus into your heart and you will become a good person!", Judaism takes the stance of "You must do the right thing whether you like it or not, and if you keep doing it maybe you'll become a better person for it" (do the right thing being things like being charitable and kind as well as not tolerating bigotry even if it's not directed at you).
And most importantly in Judaism: if it can't stand up to scrutiny than it shouldn't be respected (ie. nothing is off limits to argue, and if it falters under argument then it has no right to be respected)
Feel free to ask me questions if you like about my experiences, I just ask that you content warning for others any questions that are potentially sensitive. I won't try to convert you (we have a tradition of rejecting potential converts), we just emphasize sharing knowledge and understanding as one of our primary goals.
JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •I sincerely didn't know how drastically different Judaism was until years out from leaving fundamentalist Christianity, I was in a 4 year relationship with a Jewish woman.
There is so much outright bullshit about Judaism taught in those circles.
I still only know enough to know that there is a vast ocean of information I need to learn.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖 • •@JamieGC I mean, I think any honest rabbi will say the same thing? lol
It's a constant learning experience, especially for someone not raised in it.
And Christianity loves to paint such a horrific picture of Judaism and pretend it's an authority on the matter... and then people believe them.
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JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •🙂
I love how much Judaism is about learning, from what I have heard, and find it fascinating that debating more minor details is practically a friendly sport.
My life would have been so much better had I grew up in that kind of environment instead.
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖 • •JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖 likes this.
✨mo✨
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •undead enby of the apocalypse
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to undead enby of the apocalypse • •@undead enby of the apocalypse My pleasure, thank you for reading and taking it earnestly!
Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about this or Judaism in general! (I just ask you content warning for others any potentially sensitive topics)
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Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Don Hawkins - W7DAH • •@Don Hawkins - W7DAH fun fact, atheist observant Jews are a thing because Judaism is not dependent on belief in God.
Feel free to fire your arguments away, I enjoy debating antitheists. I'll even give you a courtesy and forewarning you: I will match the context of your arguments (ie. if your argument is from the assumption of my god existing, my response will follow that assumption; but if your argument is from the assumption that my god doesn't exist, I will respond likewise... a lot of people get confused because they don't pay attention to context switches)
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Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Don Hawkins - W7DAH • •Dweebish likes this.
Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •@Don Hawkins - W7DAH Also, for arguing in favor of reason there seems to be an absence of it here? And a lot of assumption.
Your response is nonsense if your response to "atheist jews" is "there is no god"? So what?
Are you just trolling persecuted minorities because you think none of us will ever debate you? You think a handful of memes shitting on a post about antisemitism will make you appear enlightened?
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Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •“also”, I couldn’t care less what others might think. This appears in my profile:
“Better to write for yourself & have no public, than to write for the public & have no self." --Cyril Connolly
Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Don Hawkins - W7DAH
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Don Hawkins - W7DAH • •@Don Hawkins - W7DAH
When did I call for government censorship of you?
Judaism does not proselytize, and the fact that you make that claim shows an ignorance of both the conversation and our faith. Our tradition is to reject converts by default, and when accepted we have an extensive vetting process. Accusing me of proselytization just exposes your ignorance of religion in general and makes you look like a tool who's only here to shit on people to make yourself feel better.
Well, if you're posting it publicly then you're on some level writing for the public, and even if you're writing for yourself you're getting something out of it and I'm just trying to get to the bottom of what you get out of shitting on an oppressed minority talking about their oppression? My best guess is a sense of smug superiority in which you claim enlightenment, but what's so enlightened about attacking an oppressed minority asking to not be oppressed? Or misrepresenting an oppressed minority on a post asking people to stop misrepresenting us?
Ah yes, the "I'm being an asshole, but obviously better than you because I can throw around psych terms completely out of context to claim your inferiority and dismiss your responses". Triggered is referring to PTSD, do you think it's amusing to mock people with PTSD? Quite an enlightened take. I'm engaging a bigot because it's fun and presents a complete picture of their bigotry to others (especially to moderators). If I refuse to engage I get nothing, but by engaging I stand to protect vulnerable people from you and the likes of you.
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A. Lynn
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Niedliche Nacktschnecke
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •I feel there's a special evil in talking about germanies "judeo-christian" history (often done!), as uf that history wasnt mostly pogroms, exclusion, antisemitism, the shoa.
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@DemocritusDiscoBall ooh, such delightful words. I enjoy linguistics, so many fun quirks.
And isn't Intransigent Intelligence just all of us? It sounds to me like "Intelligence suffering from the backfire effect"
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@More Cowbell @raf To quote Avenue Q: "Everyone is a little bit racist sometimes"
The defining question is whether it's rooted in ignorance or willful, which is part of this whole conversation with you.
You can be antisemitic without being willful about it, the question of character is how you respond when called on it. Telling us you know better than us about what is or isn't bigotry that we deal with is itself a form of bigotry.
The judgement of you as a person comes now, in how you respond to this?
If you learn and grow, addressing what we called out, then all the praise for you because that's hard to do. If you back away, well at least you were polite. If you become hostile, then we just write you off as a bigot.
And of course, further polite inquiries in good faith are valid too and fall under learning and growing.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@More Cowbell @raf There isn't a shared culture between Judaism and Christianity, they are very very distinctly different cultures and one has spent a very long time trying to kill the other.
Christianity is a member of the Abrahamic family of faiths and probably has more cultural similarity to Islam than it does Judaism, despite being an offshoot of Judaism. (And Abrahamic can be equally problematic if you're not well familiar with the cultural differences between Christianity and say Rastafarianism, but at least it's an accurate name for the relationship)
Much of the usage of "Judeo-Christian" comes from the belief that there's far more similarity than there is.
It's much like talking about the "Western Culture in which healthcare is a privilege, not a right" despite the fact that that's an american cultural element that's not shared by the vast majority of western nations.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •@Ulrich_the_Elder 🇨🇦 🇺🇦 😷 Realized that my tone may not have come across in context, I genuinely want to know because that's a fascinating bit of trivia to have!
I otherwise agree, especially since in the Jewish Bible (parts not included in the Christian Bible) it is talked about, and explicitly permitted.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U @e. hashman :flag_bisexual: I appreciate the apology.
Sects do have a cultural element because they are groupings based on shared beliefs and values.
Ethnic distinctions are a mess in general, especially when talking about ethno-religious groups like Judaism as someone can be of the ethnicity and not the faith, or of the faith group and not the ethnicity. In those cases though we'd typically differentiate by their specific groupings.
Most I know are Ashkenazi Jews, being the most represented group of Judaism in the west (for comparison, you also find Sephardic Jews as prominent in the west, but with drastically less representation).
Because of intersectionality, one can be a member of many many cultures at the same time and the definitions are going to depend on which topics and elements are being referenced. When talking about religious beliefs, a sect/denomination is more meaningful than a region. And there are some elements that are derived from those beliefs that make it applicable as well.
I won't pretend that a New York Jew is the same as a Florida Jew, as a Texas Jew, let alone a Polish Jew, Indian Jew, or Japanese Jew. Just that we're going to share a lot of the same cultural elements where they're rooted specifically in our faith, especially when in the same sects.
Also, fyi, "IQ" is mostly rooted in classism and racism. here's an entertaining video from the show Adam Ruins Everything talking about it: youtu.be/W3oUqKUx2o0
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U "smart" and "intelligent" are all vague, undefined terms that are pretty much always problematic.
We have a multitude of different cognitive abilities, and they're basically trying to say someone who's "smart" is cognitively superior... when they're often just well versed on a topic.
It also causes a lot of trauma for people like myself who go through life oscillating between being called "smart" or "stupid" depending on which cognitive abilities are factored into a task. (For instance, I have Executive Dysfunction, but also have pattern thinking and great pattern recognition)
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Shiri Bailem
in reply to Shiri Bailem • •@M_U to elaborate further, saying a particular group has "higher intelligence" in any fashion is still racist and falls under the "Model Minority" bigotry (used to pigeonhole people in those groups and leveraging one group against another).
Jews aren't "smarter", we just have a culture that encourages education, and very importantly critical thinking (our pastime of arguing everything, and nothing being above challenge means that we are encouraged to actually analyze topics rather than just memorize)
Dweebish
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@wboucek @Scott Matter yeah, false inclusivity is a huge pain in my ass...
It's why now is the time of year for me to greet people with Happy Holidays and Season's Greetings!
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@DemocritusDiscoBall Yeah, it's basically the backfire effect and whether or not the person takes effort to combat it. It has nothing to do with smarts and everything to do with pure psychology.
The backfire effect is rooted in the fact that when we take a stance on an issue it incorporates into our identity, the stronger the stance the more it incorporates.
When faced with evidence that the position may be wrong, we experience cognitive dissonance and our brain reacts to that information as a threat. Our natural default response is to double down on whatever it is, both increasing the strength of your connection to it and even less critical of the details you're relying on to support your argument.
It's basically the reason you "can't win arguments on the internet", because if someone is to the point of arguing about it, then they're invested enough that they'll be highly susceptible to the backfire effect. (Instead it's better to make your arguments for the sake of unconvinced bystanders)
It takes effort and mindfulness to push back against the backfire effect, and a conscious effort to allow yourself to be wrong.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U ... okay, that's just straight up eugenics bullshit and will not be tolerated.
It's proven blatantly untrue, and is deeply disrespectful of our cultures. On top of that it's a purely racist talking point.
We have long established that we do not have significant mental or physical differences between "races", especially given that no one is "pure blooded", and especially going back thousands of years.
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U tendency towards sickle-cell anemia, tendency for cancer, tendency for blue eyes, tendency for baldness... sure.
No tendency for traits that don't exist (ie. "IQ"), no genetic tendency for education, or open-mindedness.
I've already reported you for racism and eugenics talk.
Maybe step back and look at your arguments vs the counter: that a culture that encourages challenging and arguing everything might be more conducive to understanding and challenging ideas in the world than a culture that emphasizes rote memorization and penalizes asking questions?
Do you assume that magically all groups of Judaism preserved genes for "superior intelligence" (despite being a non-sense idea rooted entirely in racism to begin with) despite varying every other genetic trait throughout? Or are you making assumptions about the genetic makeup of Jews worldwide, just assuming that all Jews are descended from Ashkenazi? Perhaps divine intervention? (I may be religious, but I'll take "easily provable" over "God did it")
Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@M_U I didn't report you for being antisocial, I reported you for racism. "Positive" stereotypes still cause harm and are still racist.
And I have no tolerance for for talk of eugenics, you are now blocked server wide regardless of whether your admins take action.
miawgogo :KirbyVerified:
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to miawgogo :KirbyVerified: • •@miawgogo :KirbyVerified: it's because they believe Judaism is just Christianity minus Jesus.
Like, they think our beliefs are that you behave perfectly or go to hell because they see "judged by our acts" under their belief of "any sin = hell". (FYI, we do believe in being judged by our acts, but judged means judgement, it's not some automatic punishment thing but an actual decision... and on top of that, we don't believe in hell)
Non-Christians use it because many of them are convinced that all religions are basically Christianity with slight differences.
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Shannon (she/her) @Pedestriansfirst I suppose you're technically correct, I guess I usually never think about it because there's always more apt descriptions (ie. Nazis are often Zionists because "Blood And Soil").
And yes on the antisemitism of it, I just chose not to say anything about that in favor of a chance at education. (Also a love for getting into arguments with aggressive militant atheists because it's so fun to see their talking points shatter and the confusion that comes from it)
And I didn't bring it up later because I felt from the conversation that it wasn't going to be a problem again from them because they learned some things about Judaism, Jewish Culture, and that religions people can in fact own and acknowledge bad behaviors in their own communities.
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Shiri Bailem
Unknown parent • •@Shannon (she/her) I don't think believing all zionists are jews isn't that messy of a idea because it impacts so little, especially since the zionist behavior of non-jews is already easily discernible on it's own as awful anyways.
And keep in mind that the comparison is that this started from assuming that all Jews condoned the atrocities committed by the Israeli government and has walked away knowing that it's not uniform.
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