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.
There are times when you must speak, not because you are going to change the other person, but because if you don't speak, they have changed you. - Mary Quinn
Bluesky is just another place where we are all expected to go to worship celebrities. At least on Mastodon I can follow hashtags and connect with people who share common interests. And as someone already observed, so. much. furry porn.
Image text: @agnieszkasshoes: "Part of what makes small talk so utterly debilitating for many of us who are neurodivergent is that having to smile and lie in answer to questions like, "how are you?" is exhausting to do even once, and society makes us do it countless times a day."
@LuckyHarmsGG: "It's not just the lie, it's the energy it takes to suppress the impulse to answer honestly, analyze whether the other person wants the truth, realize they almost certainly don't, and then have to make the DECISION to lie, every single time. Over and over. Decision fatigue is real"
@agnieszkasshoes: "Yes! The constant calculations are utterly exhausting - and all under the pressure of knowing that if you get it "wrong" you will be judged for it!"
My addition: For me, in addition to this, more specifically it's the energy to pull up that info and analyze how I am. Like I don't know the answer to that question and that's why it's so annoying. Now I need to analyze my day, decide what parts mean what to me and weigh the average basically, and then decide if that's appropriate to share/if the person really wants to hear the truth of that, then pull up my files of pre-prepared phrases for the question that fits most closely with the truth since not answering truthfully is close to impossible for me.
652 likes, 13 comments - autisticbookclub on July 28, 2023: "Small-talk is so incredibly distressing! ☹️
Lies + confusion + masking = absence of authenti..."
I believe that part of the problem - at least in my case - is that typical person immediately sees 3-4 possible generic answers to such questions.
For me... It's like opening Pandora Box and have the brain flooded with not just answers but long chains of interactions, where none leads to anything positive. A "simple" question is like like an abyss that's gonna suck you down and exhaust you while you're trying to escape it so much, that you feel like lying down and trying to remember that air is meant to be inhaled again after it's exhaled...
There was this scene in the original Terminator movie, where the robot sees the spinning list of possible answers to "cat question". For me, this list doesn't stop. Even when the conversation is already finished, the list continues to spin.
Imagine if you're working as a cashier and you say to your customer, "hey, what's up?" and then they start a ten minutes monologue about everything that's happened to them today and how that's made them feel. You're just sitting there like "I'm at work, I'm just being polite, you're holding up a line of customers, I'll get in trouble with my boss for being so slow, etc.". All you wanted was for the customer to say "Yeah, you?" and move on.
In the UK and America, and probably most places, saying "how are you?" or "what's up?" is the equivalent of saying "hello" or "I would like to start a conversation with you" -- it's very rare that you actually want to know about the other person's day. For a lot of autistic people though, we take those questions literally.
Edit to add: you can't always assume that people don't care about how you are. Got in trouble with my doctor for just saying "fine" when he was actually asking what is wrong with me. So it always feels like you have to make this calculation of what does the person really mean? I understand that neuro-typical people just sort of magically know the context in a way that autistic people don't - I think it's just a lived experience where we both have to say "I don't understand how that is, but I trust that it's the way you experience things" and move on.
The truth is that neuro typical don't even consider the context. We say something along the line to "not too bad, and you?". We just know that doctors and parents want a longer more detailed version.
To doctor the longer version, to parents the diluited version (otherwise they get worried).
Basically this is the rule. We think of it as a synonymous of "hello", same meaning different spelling
No idea, even hello what does it even mean? Just an empty word to exchange the information that you recognize the other person and that you don't dislike them.
Any combination of sounds recognized by the interlocutor is fine for the purpose.
One can say "hi", "what's up", "how is it going", "how are you doing", "ciao". Each of the has a combination of sounds expected as response to understand that the interlocutor doesn't dislike you as well. For the "how is it going" "what's up" type of greeting, response is "not too bad and you?".
It is just how language evolves. Someone found "hi" was outdated, and moved to "what's up". I guess gen z moved to something else again.
@Zeth0s @SRo it's because we fundamentally process language and interactions in a different way, our brains aren't wired for "small talk" or non-meaningful communication. Also the example earlier of context mattering where sometimes they might be asking with sincere interest and it can be catastrophic to fall back on a pattern like that.
And that's simply because we're either following an unnatural pattern that we've jury-rigged together from years of painful trial and error or we're thinking much harder about the words being said than you are.
We call this masking and it's a severe drain on our mental resources every single day and it's why it's claimed that we have a social problems (claimed because those problems completely disappear when interacting with fellow autistics, they're considered problems only because the majority expect us to do all the work of accommodating them and none of the work themselves).
Also, hi/hello are different from "what's up?" and "how're you?" despite being used the same by allistics (non-autistics). Hello is purely an acknowledgement, it doesn't even need to lead to a conversation, it's just basically saying "I know you are there and recognize you as a person".
Think of it like this: if you're in a dark house and hear a sound... do you say "what's up?" or "Hello?"
The others are formalities, evolved originally from real interest eventually into empty phrases. It has a lot to do with how allistics connect socially vs autistics.
We've recently begun to unravel the fact that allistics connect their social interactions and relationships to their identity while autistics connect values and actions. Because of that, I believe allistics put a lot more meaning into the form of an interaction than into the actual things accomplished in it.
"How're you?" was originally an expression genuinely asking someone about their day, a genuine expression of caring. However, since it became associated with caring it eventually became a formality, a shape of conversation in which "Hello" became seen as cold and uncaring... so everyone changed their patterns of speech for it and felt it much warmer... despite dropping what actually made it warm.
Us autistics however, we often struggle with casual lying because we care intrinsically about our actions, even the small perceived as meaningless ones. When we ask how someone is, we have the intent of asking that question.
Small talk is all about the "form" of the interaction. It's tied to allistic identity in that allistics typically seem to define themselves by the forms of their interactions. Autistics however couldn't care less about the form if nothing actually happens in it because we tie our identity to the actual things happening.
An allistic might consider themselves caring if their interactions take a caring tone and form... and they're often right (but not always, there's always that person everyone humors but can't stand). An autistic however might consider themselves caring based on the individual elements of the conversation, what was actually talked about and what happened during the conversation (ie. the person opened up, became less stressed, you got an update on what was going on, you were able to share inspiration, etc)
"not too bad" is what i do (where "too bad" implicitly means death)
unless i'm receiving a call in which my response is "what's up?" which is ambiguously either (a) responding to a meaningless pro forma questionin kind, or (b) expressing immediate interest in knowing what the call is actually about
Because people get weirded out and start to exclude me when I start a 10min monologue on my emotional state and life situation instead of "I'm fine, thanks"
ugh working retail this is the 'question' that bugs me the most. No, this customer does not actually care about how I'm feeling, they're just continuing a shitty tradition that I want no part in. By now I just straight faced, monotone 'I'm doing good how about you' in hopes that they understand that I don't care, finish the exchange and move on. On my worst days I just don't answer.
@Caesium @MadgePickles Taking calls for my job I've developed "I'm doing alright, how can I help you?"... internally it's my own "fuck your formality, get to the point"
It gets better over time. I think working on self awareness helps. If we have a better idea of how we actually feel we can at least answer honestly. It's a little trickier when concealing the truth is required. I had a boss who often paused for a moment and said 'I don't know' when people asked 'how are you?' It disarmed people and they tended not to ask. He made no effort to engage in small talk and that suited me. Looking back he must have been on the spectrum.
Pulled from an uncredited facebook post with an image of the text:
Quickest player death
D&D story time.
I was running the first session of a new campaign. Everyone starting at level 1. We had an EIf Druid, a Half Elf ranger, a Dragonborn Sorcerer, and a Tiefling Rouge. As the party was going through introductions:
5'2 90 Ib. Tiefling “I don't like to be touched.”
6'3 250 Ib. Dragonborn “I pat her on the head.”
Tiefling “I bite his hand”
Ok so you bite his hand... roll to hit
Rolls NAT20.
Roll 1d4 damage...?
Rolls 4 doubles to 8
Dragonborn sorcerer only has 8 hp.
Ok so you bite his hand off and he is now bleeding out.
No one has any healing pots or magic. All level 1 characters.
We started a new Pathfinder game a couple weeks ago (an evil campaign for off weeks) and one of our party members made a snake-person sorceress (not sure what race it was exactly.) In the very first encounter, they got their character killed :)
i use text-to-speech as an accommodation for my ADHD. if you struggle to pay attention to long bodies of text and haven't tried this yet, i highly recommend it!
but if you already do this, i'm looking for software recommendations! i'm curious whether there's any favorites or particularly good options, and also it'd just be lovely to hear from the community.
@puzzler Brains are so funny, I can’t focus on spoken word at all. I need the text. But it’s a day-to-day crap shoot as to whether I can focus on text either anymore.
I hate to promote a Microsoft product, but Edge has "read aloud" built in as a right click option. It comes with a fairly decent variety of voices. I'm finding it helpful for my AWS training. I haven't found anything from my Android cell phone yet.
I have the opposite problem. I can't listen to podcasts, because I sort of drift away, and then at some point I notice the noise stopped.
macOS was supposed to have auto-captioning for all audio… and it does. In the US. Where I have never even been. But the Apple text-to-speech is apparently very good (for the reasons mentioned above, I will never find out…) You can say "hey Siri, read this page" in Safari, for instance. (So I hear. As in read.)
There's real insights here, but damn it with the pathologizing. They literally treat having moral principles as if it were a disordered negative trait...
Standing up for your values might be decided to be a pathology - If you're autistic
This article picks apart a bunch of biases by the researchers of a given paper. The object of study was the differences in behavior between a group of autistic people and a group of non-autistic people when choosing between prioritizing value for oneself or value for the community.
I recommend reading the paper itself too. If that is, understandably, too much for you, I suggest you go for the introduction, the conclusion, and the segments mentioned in the article.
If you ever doubt yourself or your abilities, or your competence, I want you to remember that a man named Elon Musk bought a social platform for $44 billion, ran it into the ground and then changed its named to X. 😐
If you EVER think you aren't good enough, remember that you are smarter than Elon Musk. Remember that there's a billionaire somewhere, who has the sense of a drunk seal. And remember that racism and patriarchy exist to prop up those who wouldn't be able to hold a candle to your genius.
You belong. You're smart enough. You can DO THIS. Impostor syndrome can go to hell. 😤😤😤
Overall it's been pretty good. I mainly needed it to stop the problem of having an Android phone and MacBook, where sometimes texts from iPhone users "slip" to Messenger on my laptop and I don't see them until I'm at my computer. I cant get it to take over my native Android messages, and it glitches when I get a call on WhatsApp where I have to open WhatsApp manually to answer, but still worth it.
With the uptick of AI image generation and soon video, and the current strike where it's one of the key issues, I had an interesting thought:
Once this is in full swing (and hopefully in a way that's equitable for actors), I'm imagining we'll eventually have an AI actor version of the Willhelm Scream. Have this one background actor who's in *every* movie and cinephiles will point, and I don't mean like Stan Lee cameos where they get dialogue and a face shot, I mean like Alfred Hitchcock cameos where it's a game to spot them.
* One of the points I've heard they're striking over is because studios want to pay a background actor for one day of work to scan them in and then use their likeness forever. I hope they come to an good arrangement for the actors in this, they deserve to get paid.
There's a lot of girl in there but I am, in fact, quite nonbinary. Should any of my siblings require it on this day I can steal your unused pronouns and the worst thing that happens is you become a tomato 🍅
@stevegis_ssg Also, one of the few good things about the craft beer thing is that it’s made haze fashionable, and brewers of Proper Beer have taken to not bothering to fine their brews.
As we all know, the ancient rites of Reinheitsgebot clearly requires all beer to be brewn only from the blood of the innocent, to be consumed under the pale moon of the supreme goat being. This climate plan's refusal to pay tribute to the mother of a thousand young is simply outrageous.
I keep hoping someone will pipe in and debunk this story because I don’t want to live in a world where someone that F’ing stupid has that much influence.
@DocVoitane There is an outside chance it's a sophisticated fake-out to identify those MAGA loons who are so ignorant/stupid they'd buy it so they can be targeted by the grifter responsible, much like the obvious typos in bad 419 scam emails (to weed out the less gullible) ... but I'm not optimistic.
When this came out I thought “yeah, I should fire up the grill and have some brussels sprouts with a plant-based beer.” Then I realized I didn’t have a grill. So I got one. Thanks, Joe Biden!
@voidampersand BRB, gonna go patent a grill attachment for the exhaust stacks of pick-up trucks that are rolling coal, to get the BBQ properly smoked (in diesel fumes).
REAL MEN drink UNfiltered, UNpasturized, fermented beer ! 😎 What's all that crap of isinglass / jelly , filter / white / added carbonation / etc. .. you just put old semi-rotten seeds in a bucket of water and you let them ferment ! Then you drink it .. "if you have the guts" you survive .. if not you die .. 😂 Water, barley, all you need 😂
Edited to update: BlackQueerLife instance now has a properly-set-up channel for receiving money contributions. If you wanted the Fediverse to be more welcoming to Black people, it's one practical way to help opencollective.com/blackqueerl…
=
New instance for Black queer people:
"My intention for BlackQueerLife is that when Black queers are searching for a place in the fediverse to call home, we are accessible to them." - @tillshadeisgone
Please do not post any more high quality facts like this. I will not tolerate it. If you want to post high quality facts, kindly make a second account.
to be fair, Bluesky has a wall between them and the former billionaire. but ya, no billionaire supports me ... oh oops except for the vc's paying for my day job...
the national news here yesterday decided to do a few puff pieces on zuck, threads and meta. I wish that (boot licking) at least funded good journalism and reporting, but the last several years don't point to that.
It's still run by Zuckerberg...Find me on:Twitch | https://www.twitch.tv/willneffTwitter | https://twitter.com/TheWillNeffDiscord | https://discord.gg/neffIn...
Threads was made by Meta - which is, of course, Facebook, the company we all rage-hated LAST year.
And BlueSky was created by the same guy who created the original Twitter - who we all hated when it started out - and now is only letting people join by invite causing the rats trying to leave the ship to literally fight with each other.
Then there's Twiter, being turned into WeChat by a petulant man-child with the attention span of a squirrel.
Can you imagine the audacity, the profound lack of humanity or humility, it takes to be a billionaire and think "this is fine; I deserve this -- I earned this"?
unless it's the human right of safe passage for asylum seekers and Global South migrants, someone the EU is happy to let die in the Mediterranean or on other militarised borders.
@Feders_dub obviously migrants should be rescued when they're in danger, but it is not the EU who puts them in danger, rather themselves.
No country accepts any migrant who wishes to come into it. There is a process. It takes time, it's hard, but that's for a reason; each case needs investigating.
I doubt all the migrants who cross the Mediterranean are refugees. Coming to Europe for a better life is not a valid reason when you aren't in danger in your country.
@julianfairfax @Feders_dub You're wrong, Julian. It is a human right to seek asylum in any country of your choice. For this, you must first be able to travel to that country. Technically, any refugee should be able to purchase a plane ticket to any country of their choice, even without any papers, and request asylum upon arrival. But governments worldwide have outsourced their infringement of that human right onto airlines, forcing airlines to check passengers' papers before they board... That was a political choice, which forces refugees to travel by land or sea. Land is also becoming increasingly difficult due to border fences, leaving sea as the only viable option. And then the EU prosecute civilian sea rescue organisations into oblivion, pull back their own coast guards, and just watch people drown by the dozens, or even hundreds... All of this is caused by politicians wanting to refuse people an inalienable human right: the right to request asylum in any country. So it is definitely the EU that is putting these people in danger. They could also say, we respect people's right to request asylum, so anybody can fly to the EU by regular airlines without a visa and request asylum upon arrival, as that human right was intended.
Since many of you have recently fled Twitter, I'd like to introduce my Patreon. It's a lot like paying for Twitter Blue, in that it's functionally useless, but it's only 1/8 of the price. And instead of your money going to a grossly incompetent billionaire, it supports my two amazing cats, Fishy and Ruby. Unlike a certain someone, they are not transpohic, do not create faulty exploding rockets, and they most certainly do not kill chimpanzees with experimental brain chips. patreon.com/lowqualityfacts
Fair warning they do occasionally state high quality facts. Still as I understand it Low Quality Facts is an essential source of amino acids, so highly recommended.
as they are cats, I'm sure they would kill a gorilla with exploding brain chips if they could. Just to ear the yummy brain meat, of course. 🤣
I say this as a catdaddy to a clowder of 6. They're all wannabe murderers, which is only to be expected from avatars of Eris, goddess of chaos and whimsy.
Or maybe yours are sweetness and light & wouldn't hurt a fly. Always possible. 😉
Peter Thiel like "I think this is a fantastic idea, but I think it could be engineered a little more effectively by fixing the kites to the ship itself, a "mast", if you will. Here's a billion dollars"
Even if a retrofit mast would be made of carbon fibre, that only means the mast itself would weigh less. It would not affect the forces of the wind acting on the ship hull. (These forces obviously are the very point of a mast with sails.) The existing ship hull is not designed to have large forces pulling it from some point in the middle of a deck. (For a kite attached to the bow of the ship, it it hopefully different. That is where cables from tugs are attached.)
I wonder how long it will take before they a) realise you can combine kites with sails for even greater efficiency and b) it's quite hard to charge money for using the wind.
I guess it's annoying that anyone could get an inflated valuation from this since any such system would be sold with really narrow margins for the foreseeable future. But to be clear it's not "sails" & it's not stupid, it's just not cost-effective at present.
Let me guess: you have to lease the sails and if you stop paying they disintegrate, but actually it's all due to a cloud service so sometimes you're in a dead zone and they disintegrate anyway?
These are more akin to what some catamarans have on board. Their version of it in basic terms is a kite attached to the bow that can be used for free propulsion and fuel efficiency. Not a bad idea.
"If only they would loosen up those pesky child labor laws, so that someone could fly those kites..."
(Yeah, I'm aware of the technology that they're talking about, which makes it all the more laughable, because they've been talking about it for fifty years and still haven't gotten the media a picture that doesn't make them look dumb.)
“Giant kites? You mean sails?” “Nah bro this has AI and IoT on it, we still brainstorming a name with the 12000$/month branding consultancy we just signed”
TBF this is a GOOD idea purely in engineering terms: kites can take advantage of wind speeds and directions that vary at different altitudes, aerofoils bolted to the deck on rigid masts are limited to surface winds. But it's still only a supplement for engine power: modern supply chains can't cope with VLCSs getting becalmed.
The real answer is marine nuclear propulsion. Or teleportation booths. Or sparkly unicorns. Or something.
@cstross and the kites operate at a higher height where the wings should be faster and more reliable. I love dunking on tech bros as much as the next mastodoon, but if they can make it reliable and cheap, then let's take every weapon against climate change we can get.
@cstross I read, somewhere, that it takes an implausible amount of kite to equal the power of a ship engine. My brother's been messing with kites for decades, one crucial piece of equipment is the device that lets go of the kite fast, not sure if there needs to be a ship version of that.
Here's the LARGEST diesel engine in the world, per wikipedia, the Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C. Two-stroke cycle, 14 cylinders, puts out 80MW (or about 107,000 horsepower), weighs over 2,300 tons. Used for powering 170,000 ton (and up) container ships.
It's hard to see how to replace a medium-sized city's power station with any kind of sail (or to abolish this scale of shipping in a century when climate change will cause frequent local crop failures).
@cstross The big advantage of kites is that they're completely retractable and don't affect vertical clearance, which is strictly limited at most cargo ports due to their loading cranes (preventing the use of masts).
Also, even if this doesn't replace engines, it's still quite useful. There are some long-distance ferries in the pacific islands currently using a combination of sails, solar, and diesel generators (running scheduled service between high-clearance ports) that saw an over 90% reduction in fuel consumption compared to their predecessors. Kites could possibly expand this to low-clearance ports as well.
@almostconverge yeah but - and I promise I'm not joking - being able to waggle the kite about makes it pull harder. Physics is... odd.
So far it's been cheaper and easier to just make bigger ships though - this idea has been kicking about for at least a couple of decades now without any takers, and I'm not sure what has changed to make it suddenly viable.
Reading the article, it is clear that this is not simply sails using a sexier name, though, but a rather different technology. Even if it is the wind that is used, of course. But no masts and rigging is required. On the other hand, it probably will work only for more restricted relative wind directions, unlike actual sailing ships.
@Jennifer_Pinkley while I shouldn't be amazed at Americans lack of curiosity and inability to understand what they just read, the note is not about "tech bros and sails" is about naval companies (those who are killing ocean life with carbon emissions) finally accepting to use something less lethal than 100% engine-propulsion. But hey, isn't it better not to understand and pretend to be snarky and stuff?
@cstross It actually is a lot higher energy in potential: Up high you get a lot stronger wind, and you basically have two computer-controlled kites, one in the air and one anchoring in the water, and you use the energy difference between the two to drag you a long.
VERY cool if it can be done, but well, even up higher the wind is not always reliable.
Next week they will discover "sailing against the wind." This is what happens when you devalue the humanities! It is possible to be a brilliant coder and also the most ignorant person alive!
Next thing you know, these geniuses will invent a new Bluetooth headphone protocol that gives you unlimited usage and higher fidelity by using a 3.5mm cable.
World's 1st tiltable Rotor Sails installed on SEA-CARGO RoRo-Dealfeng New Energy Technology Ltd.-Norsepower, a Finland-based provider of auxiliary wind propulsion systems, has successfully installed two 35-metre tall Rotor Sails for SEA-CARGO
Schiffe stoßen jedes Jahr drei Prozent der vom Menschen gemachten Kohlendioxid-Emissionen aus. Deshalb sucht die Fachwelt schon länger nach klimafreundlicheren Schiffsantrieben.
Using kites as power generators for ships is a lot more effective than a sail in most if not all circumstances.
Kites can draw power from higher winds, witch tend to be a lot more powerful than surface winds. Also: using kites to convert wind energy into electric power to turn turbines is agnostic to direction.
I mean try putting a sail on a cargo ship ... it does not work at scale.
misleading framing: this is an old story and the main people working on this are thousands of kms from silicon valley. I am supporting a project in France and it is ran by engineers, marine transport specialists and yes, sailors. It’s hardcore engineering, not app building and it is an idea that can make a massive difference to #carbonemissions that the #IMO still hasn’t committed to cutting.
Schiffe stoßen jedes Jahr drei Prozent der vom Menschen gemachten Kohlendioxid-Emissionen aus. Deshalb sucht die Fachwelt schon länger nach klimafreundlicheren Schiffsantrieben.
these aren’t traditional sails, kites have several advantages over a sail. Firstly they scale better, there’s no need for a massively strong mast, secondly they are more efficient with small power kites producing huge pulls, thirdly you have the option to fly it very high up where the winds could be much stronger. This is wind power technology but a step up much like going from a square rig to a Bermuda rig, it’s more efficient.
At least they're not repeatedly inventing trains or, worse, trying to invent things that are objectively worse than trains because they're scared of them for some reason.
Several years ago, an author on Chris Haye's podcast relayed a story about some tech people talking how great it would be to form a non-profit who's purpose would be to supply internet access, information, media, and books to communities. Author dryly pointed out they re-invented libraries.
I'd say it's going to suck when they try to invent British colonialism, but who am I kidding? They've been doing British colonialism for years already.
(Oh, hey! Coincidentally, it's Independence Day weekend.)
i remember seeing articles about that style of kite-wing for cargo ships sometime in the late 1980s! (wish i still had the huge pile of "stuff of the future" magazines that I collected and read)
It's a good idea. And when the cargo gets there they could move it on cars, but get this: the cars are all attached and have metal wheels and run on two parallel [sound of two silenced shots, breaking glass]
actually this is not new. A move back to sailships is in development for years already.
With modern weather models being able to reliably predict winds for 4-5 days, sails have been competitive for well over a decade now, but the momentum of the fossil fuel tankers kept them out.
The main advantage of fossil fuel tankers was that they enabled more reliable course planning. Weather models back then couldn’t predict more than 2 days of winds — less than a single tour.
The Kites as a Service business model will be amazing, with an ad-supported free tier, then annual subscription Pro, Ultimate, and Enterprise tiers that unlock business critical add-ons like 99% uptime, dedicated customer success partners, and hardware to attach the kites to your ship.
not really, the objective there is to get some wind power *without* having to drastically redesign the ship to accommodate them.
There are also people resurrecting the Flettner Rotor but in foldable form for similar reasons.
Even the class societies are talking about the challenges of reintegrating wind power into modern shipbuilding (although their site search is terrible for this sort of thing).
But what if the wind dies? What’s next? Dipping large wooden sticks with flat parts on the end into the water? Some sort of big wheel turned by steam produced by burning stuff?
Did anyone even proof read this article? It talks about Mastodon instances rather than actual users or posts, and doesn't have any real statistics, just opinions. According to my first Google search, it looks like Mastodon grew 4x in 4 months. statista.com/statistics/137602…
@EposVox honestly: truth. federation is great in concept but almost completely ruins the user experience.
i recieve a link to a post, instead of being able to click on it and interact i have to, right click, copy link, open my instance, click the search box, click paste, hit enter, click the post, then i can interact.
if i click a link to a calckey or other instance *in my dedicated mastodon app* it opens in browser
also defederation breaks the whole idea of a federated network. if you want to block a instance that is dedicated to hate speech, fine
but, you are at the behest of your instance owner, and there is no explanation required, so you can just have a user you interact with, just, disappear, with no notice or explanation, and i still can't see half the replies under any post because my instance limits m.s, which is for better or for worse, the largest instance
All this is true, and sure we may never get big, but there's value in having that alternative there. A corporate-owned web is not the web I want to use.
Gee. A repost of someone's blog post whining that Mastodon isn't Twitter and isn't friendly to corporatism, with a side of slamming Linux and open source solutions. Oh, an added bonus of an update at the end stating that the author left Masto.
Very, very disappointing, Ars. You're much better than this clickbait.
Yeah Ars has been kind of surprising me lately with a few (not many) slip-ups like this. They used to be above and beyond clickbait and low effort quick-win articles like this
did y'all fact-check this at all before republishing it? like, *has* the twitter migration 'not panned out'? By what metric has it failed? "Everyone is very aware at this point " is not a citation.
Are people expecting most Mastodon users to deploy their own instances? I feel like a lot of the discomfort the writer feels could've been solved by just starting with an account on a large, generally default instance, and moving to something more private later.
Discover ability does need to be addressed, but that might also be part of what I'm liking about the platform. I don't feel like I'm having content shoved down my throat constantly.
the very fact that I get my news from Ars Technica (and other sources) on Mastodon now is enough for me to say that the #TwitterMigration worked out quite fine in my case… (although I wish more accounts made the move like AT and Flipboard did)
this article is interesting. Some definite good points, like how surprisingly complicated it can be to follow someone on a different instance. And that's without mentioning how completely useless Mastodon search is.
Good read. You kind of glossed over the whole Fediverse thing. With Reddit having a moment, then Lemmy or Kbin could be big. If the same happens with Instagram and @pixelfed goes crazy then we have a much bigger proposition on our hands than just Mastodon, which will actually be a big boon for Mastodon. I am also tired of telling people "it's decentralised" and them just not giving a shit. However, tell them it's not owned or controlled by some Fascist Billionaire, they are much more interested. While decentralised isn't a selling point, there are many benefits that are. Most importantly, it's the community experience here that's just so nice and that's thanks to good moderation. You are 100% correct to point out how difficult this will continue to be but having good moderation as a core philosophy may prove to be the best selling point of all.
What's interesting is that the quality of discussions and posting here is so much higher. The people on the fediverse seem to love it and the people on twitter seem to hate it.
Yes, sometimes i wish there were more to read on Mastodon. Nobody reads my posts here, but nobody read them on twitter either. On the up side, Mastodon weaned me off my habit of scrolling twitter an hour a day just to keep up. Facebook and Instagram are now unusable with all the unwanted content you have to wade through. So, I’m happy with Mastodon. I learn a few things everyday. I see dog and cat posts. I donated to @moderators. I’m happy 🙂
should have left this on his blog where you found it. This dude's attitude is exactly why he and his ilk deserve to grow old on a melting planet run by nazis
@rtme Yes. I’m one of the nerds who also thought the internet was much better when most people weren’t on it.
However, as I grew up I understood that theres another game, and if you don’t play it you also get shut out.
But there are people like Musk who worship the game. And then there are people like this guy who want to change the game to be better. But people like me & him are blocked by the people who want to #deny the game.
But the game will be played, no matter what. Sorry
![Series of tumblr posts:
cryptotheism: Unironically the biggest death knell I heard for twitter was the fact that, as far as anyone is aware, there are no longer any furries working at twitter.
howieduet:
The rats have fled the sinking ship The wolves have fled the sinking ship The dragons have fled the-
cryptotheism: #are you implying that furries are the hidden backbone of social media apps-?! I'm not even joking furries account for like 30% of all modern tech infrastructure.
ayellowbirds: [charmander in a comic] i think you're lowballing the furry dev amount tbh](https://foggyminds.com/photo/preview/640/513065 "Series of tumblr posts:
cryptotheism: Unironically the biggest death knell I heard for twitter was the fact that, as far as anyone is aware, there are no longer any furries working at twitter.
howieduet:
The rats have fled the sinking ship The wolves have fled the sinking ship The dragons have fled the-
cryptotheism: #are you implying that furries are the hidden backbone of social media apps-?! I'm not even joking furries account for like 30% of all modern tech infrastructure.
ayellowbirds: [charmander in a comic] i think you're lowballing the furry dev amount tbh")
🍅
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
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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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Shiri Bailem
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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Shiri Bailem
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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Shiri Bailem
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
Unknown parent • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
Tammy Garrison
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem
in reply to Tammy Garrison • •@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
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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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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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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
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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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fluffy 💜
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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
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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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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
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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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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
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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.
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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
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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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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.
JamieGC 🏴 🏳️🌈 🖖 likes this.
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✨
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
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)
Don Hawkins - W7DAH likes this.
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
in reply to Shiri Bailem • • •Shiri Bailem likes this.
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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