Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Something Still Could: Courage for a Turbid Anniversary (June 9) "The Declaration’s words outran the intentions of the men who wrote them. “All men are created equal” meant, in 1776, free men of property, and everyone knew it. But the sentence did not say that. Lincoln saw what Jefferson had done, perhaps without fully meaning to: created a rebuke (even to himself) timed unintentionally to detonate in every coming day. The distance between what the sentence said and what its authors meant became a standing invitation to everyone it was never meant to include."

2. 134 Days, 68 Places, Zero Internet: One Man’s Journey Through Digital China (June 23) "One of the initial challenges was hotel reservations. At his first stop, a chain hotel in Linfen, another city in Shanxi, he couldn’t get a room in person because the hotel only accepted online bookings. The front desk staffer told Yang there was nothing he could do to help him check in, though kindly drew him a map to another location of the same chain that could accommodate walk-in guests."

Also from Sixth Tone: Through the Eyes of Shop Cats (June 23) "Shop cats originally existed to drive away rats and protect goods in old, simple stores. Now, many old shops are renovated or closed, and the new commercial spaces are cleaner and do not need cats to catch rats. Therefore, the number of shop cats is decreasing year by year, especially in Shanghai."

3. Where Did All the Dinosaurs Go? Answers in Genesis and the Problem of the Missing Evidence (June 12) "We have found, quite literally, billions of fossils in the layers that young-earth geology must assign to the post-Flood world. We have found the rhinos and the horses and the tapirs and the cave bears. Somehow every last one of two hundred kinds of the most charismatic animals that ever lived slipped through that net entirely, and left behind not a fragment."

4. On Christianity and aliens (part 2) (June 23) "But the fact of the matter is that the sin and/or salvation of other intelligent creatures on other planets or in other galaxies is their business and we have no idea. We do not have their Bible, only ours, and ours is about us, not about them."

Also from the Slacktivist: God’s wrath on the jerks (June 24) "God could send a tornado to destroy the house of such a preacher — and only their house, leaving the rest of the community unharmed. And God could have that tornado carve out the full text of Isaiah 1 in deep trench letters in the remnants of that house. But God knows that it wouldn’t help. That same preacher would be back on his cable TV station the next day, explaining that this extremely localized natural disaster was clearly evidence of God’s wrath over a Girl Scout troop welcoming a trans member three states away."

5. 'If you are alive, make any noise': Venezuela searches rubble on Day 4 (June 28) "On Saturday, the government said the death toll had reached 1,430, with nearly 3,500 injured."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Trump’s “Open-Border” Policy For Parasitic Worms (June 19) "So, what went wrong? Why is the average American now cursed to once again know what the [****] a screwworm is?"

2. The “Massive Human Consequences” of Ending Birthright Citizenship (March 31) "'The initial order gave the federal government a 30 day implementation window. This is the federal government that can’t even get TSA lines working at an airport. They’re going to figure out a new class of citizenship in 30 days?' He added: 'There would be really immediate and long term and probably irreversible harms to individuals, babies born here, their families, the services they they get, the quality of their lives, disrupted and impacted in ways that we can’t possibly even fathom right now. No one has ever really thought that the government could do this, and then for them to sort of cavalierly go and do it with no plan: massive human consequences.'"

From a Chinese perspective, this whole thing about "wow it would be an unimaginable bureaucratic nightmare if birthright citizenship ended" seems kind of... odd. China doesn't have birthright citizenship, and yet it's not a constant nightmare of citizens being unable to prove their citizenship. Chinese citizens all* have an ID card, that they have to show whenever they deal with bureaucracy stuff that requires real-name verification. As an immigrant, I have to show my passport instead. (This can be really annoying, though, when the systems are set up to require a Chinese ID card and they don't have an option to use other forms of ID instead.) Finding out that the US just doesn't have a way to easily verify who's a citizen sounds just unbelievable, from a Chinese perspective.

*I have heard of Chinese people who weren't able to get an ID card because of the one-child policy- ie, they were the 2nd child in their family, and so their parents just didn't report their birth anywhere official. (Apparently there are fines for violating the one-child policy. It's not in effect anymore though- it ended in 2016.) This sounds like an impossible situation to be in- you can't do much of anything if you don't have a Chinese ID card. 

(But also, I'm sure China has problems I'm not hearing about. Just because the system works fine for the people I know doesn't mean it's actually fine. What is the situation for undocumented immigrants/ stateless people in China?)

As for establishing babies' citizenship in China- well, when you apply for the baby's ID card or hukou, you have to show the parents' ID card or hukou. (I didn't even get into what a "hukou" is, basically Chinese citizens are all supposed to have a hukou, it's a document that says very officially what city you are a resident of- this may have little connection to what city you actually live in, which is fine but you have less rights when signing your kids up for public school and things like that. Having a hukou proves Chinese citizenship.)

My husband is Chinese, so our kids have Chinese citizenship through him. (Also US citizenship because of me.) *Not* birthright citizenship. If both parents are immigrants, then the kid will not have Chinese citizenship, even if they are born in China. This sounds annoying to deal with- you have to get your baby a Chinese visa, within some number of days (60 days? I'm not sure) after they're born, but they don't even have a passport yet- some countries don't issue passports to their citizens fast enough to meet China's deadline, but from what I've heard it's not really a big deal, China is okay with babies missing this deadline.

The thing is, though, the big thing that makes the overall situation in China completely different from the US: In China, no matter how long I live here, I can never *be* Chinese. And children who are born here, if both their parents are foreign, they can't *be* Chinese. It's like, no matter what, you're always *different*. The concept of being Chinese is very strongly associated with ethnicity and family heritage- if you don't have that, you aren't Chinese, no matter what you do. 

This is completely different than the concept of being American. And ending birthright citizenship would change that.

3. In reversal, Senate votes to block war powers resolution, delivering Trump a win (June 25)

4. The Supreme Court says the U.S. can turn away asylum seekers at the border (June 25) "The Obama administration was the first to try stemming the flow of asylum seekers that way. But the lower courts blocked the policy on grounds that it violated federal law by denying asylum to people who otherwise would have qualified for it, had they been permitted to literally put one foot over the border."

Because of an imaginary line.

5. 4 surprising things to know about abortion in America since Dobbs (June 25) "The number of abortions nationally has increased each year since the national right to abortion was overturned."

6. US Supreme Court rules against Haitian refugees who were given Temporary Protected Status (June 25) and Trump can begin deportations of Syrian, Haitian TPS holders, Supreme Court says (June 25) This is just so shocking and sad, why would you want to send people back to a place that's not safe for them?

7. A federal judge in Boston blocks key parts of Trump's order to limit voting by mail (June 25) "The judge also found USPS has no legal authority to control mail-in voting."

8. Does Trump Know How Passports Work? (June 27) Seems not!

(I did see a blog post that said it literally does say "Welcome, but be good" in this edition of the passport- but this has NOT been confirmed so don't believe everything you read on a blog.)

On ZOEgirl and saying how you really feel

Album cover for "Different Kind of Free." Image source.

ZOEgirl was a Christian band that was active in the early 2000's, around the time I was in high school. It was one of my favorite bands; my favorite song was Different Kind of Free.

Take my life, my liberty

It's all but a breath in the grand scheme of things

Oh I have found eternity

It's a different kind of free

And they can't take it from me

Big words about one's commitment to God, how it's so much bigger and more important than anything else, how it's worth dedicating your life to. 

Anyway, what are the members of ZOEgirl up to now? 

Well, Alisa Childers is an author, publishing books like Another Gospel?: A Lifelong Christian Seeks Truth in Response to Progressive Christianity and Live Your Truth and Other Lies: Exposing Popular Deceptions That Make Us Anxious, Exhausted, and Self-Obsessed. She's all about responding to progressive Christianity and telling everyone why it's bad and we need to stand firm on the truths that conservative/evangelical Christianity taught us. Uh, as a queer ex-evangelical Christian I don't really agree with her on that.

(no idea what the other 2 members of ZOEgirl are doing now- I'm just writing about this because Childers came to my attention recently)

Anyway. Apparently Childers recently made a podcast discussing Sheila Wray Gregoire's book "The Great Sex Rescue" (which I reviewed here). Gregoire wrote a blog post in response: Alisa Childers Owes Evangelical Women an Apology for Dismissing Their Pain. "The Great Sex Rescue" calls out the conservative Christian teaching that wives are required to have sex with their husbands on demand, because men need it, and the wife is obligated to do all the work to make it a good experience for the husband, and nobody cares about women's orgasms, etc. It's very good that "The Great Sex Rescue" is responding to this teaching; it's extremely messed-up that the typical marriage advice from conservative Christians says things like that. But anyway, apparently on her podcast, Childers said no one's actually teaching this "obligation sex" message, no one's telling women they need to prioritize their husbands' "sexual needs" even when they haven't even healed from childbirth, etc. (Fact check: They ARE teaching that!) And apparently the podcast also spent a lot of time wondering if it's even okay to talk about sex and orgasms.

I don't know why this bothers me so much. I sang her songs expressing my feelings about my devotion to God, and 20 years later she has bad opinions about Christian teaching on sex and marriage... Why does this bother me so much? People are allowed to have bad opinions on things; it's not like this is some kind of massive betrayal of me personally because I was a fan of her music when I was in high school.

I guess it makes me realize that... the music, and the experience of enjoying the music, was a different thing than I thought it was. Singing those worship songs, I was fooled into thinking it was an environment where I can be completely honest about my deepest emotional, intimate feelings about God. When I sang those songs, that was real; those were my real feelings. And now, 20 years later, she's the sort of Christian who would condemn me for being a queer Christian- it's not emotionally safe to tell her my feelings about God.

I don't want to show my most real and raw feelings about how I love Jesus, in front of Christians who will judge me and say I don't really love Jesus because I don't hold the "right" beliefs. I don't hold the "right" beliefs about so many things, spanning the whole range of evangelical Christianity, but we can make it simple by just saying I'm queer.

Again, this isn't really something that Childers is doing wrong- as if our favorite singers owe it to us to agree with us about all the big important things in our lives, just because we find their music to be emotionally meaningful. It's more about... like... me wanting an environment where I can express how I really feel, with complete trust that the people seeing it would accept me for who I am, falsely believing that ZOEgirl's music was that environment, and now realizing it wasn't. Realizing I should have my guard up a little more. That I always have to think about who sees me and what they think of me, and filter my expression accordingly.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Southern Baptists' vote to ban women pastors sparks outcry from advocates (June 12) I just have no patience for this kind of thing any more. (I used to, but not any more.) If you are in a church that wants to put restrictions on you because you're a woman or girl, leave. God lives in you, and these churches are rejecting Her.

It's very interesting that the Southern Baptist Convention has had a huge sexual-abuse-coverup scandal, and they apparently can't do anything about that, but if a woman wants to stand in front of the church and proclaim that Jesus is Lord, that's when the SBC decides to take action.

2. Waiting For The Miracle (June 18) "Family and childcare responsibilities let us take one good vacation per year. When I told her I wanted to spend it on a Bosnian village, her first reaction was 'Sure, sounds like it’ll be a good story for your blog.'" Scott Alexander has spent way too much time and money investigating this "sun miracle" and I am so here for it.

3. The Cold Crowdfunding Campaign (2020) "Save the Girl and Save Me From Having to Toss Her Out of the Airlock"

4. Sports Commentary (June 22) From xkcd. This is spot-on.

5. Disagreeing charitably with others: a guide (May 18) "I think a lot of attempts at steelmanning wind up failing to reckon with difference and deeply held disagreement. You wind up acting like other people’s belief systems are failed versions of your own, instead of something that makes sense from experiences and assumptions you happen not to share."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. The Kennedy Center is a reminder that we can win, it will be messy, and Trump will be petty (June 14) "A little past 1:00 a.m. Saturday, a much-rumored tarp began being affixed to the top of the scaffolding and the mood among the dedicated crew that remained — still well over 100 people — shifted yet again, as cries of “Cover up!” and “Traitors!” rung out. Over the course of the next hour, the white tarp was extended to cover all of the scaffolding — and all of Trump’s name."

2. Shared Values (June 22) Doug Muder's news roundup for this week. I didn't have the energy to follow all these stories, so just read his post.

In particular, I'll highlight these links:

What if we covered Trump's age the way we covered Biden's? (June 22) "But the nature of Trump’s personalist presidency, in which the entire government is organized around turning his whims into reality and the barest hint of dissent is swiftly punished, makes the question of his age even more important than it was with Biden, who was surrounded by competent people who could run the government even when the president was less engaged than he ought to have been."

I’m a critical care doctor. I’ve never seen the US harm its children this deliberately (June 19) "A newborn’s first hours in a US hospital used to carry a quiet set of guarantees. A vitamin K injection against catastrophic bleeding. A hepatitis B vaccination. The assumption that whatever a family could afford, the country had already decided this child was worth protecting."

3. Sunday reading (June 21) "The fact that the church of our country, (with fractional exceptions,) does not esteem “the Fugitive Slave Law” as a declaration of war against religious liberty, implies that that church regards religion simply as a form of worship, an empty ceremony, and not a vital principle, requiring active benevolence, justice, love and good will towards man."

4. Science Shocker! It's More Dangerous To Be Pregnant In Abortion-Ban States That Don't Care If You Die (June 24) From a "pro-life" perspective, pregnant women can be neatly divided into 2 categories: the bad ones who want to kill their baby, and the good ones who would do anything to protect their baby- and they enact laws intended to stop the bad ones, assuming that the good ones would never be in a situation where the law would put restrictions on the medical care they need or want. The reality is not like that though. When you're pregnant, your life and your health are so intimately tied up with the unborn baby's- if complications arise, the best course of action is based on your own specific situation, and doesn't match this one-size-fits-all "stopping the bad ones" system of laws that "pro-life" politicians set up.

Sometimes it's surprising to me that people are claiming that "pro-life" policies are about doing what's best for pregnant women. ??? No, "pro-life" ideology treats the pregnant person as a threat to the unborn baby.

When I was a teenager and I went to a gynecologist for the first time, the gynecologist told me "we are pro-life here" and said it in a way that was meant to be reassuring (she also said "I'm sure you've heard horror stories from your friends who went to Planned Parenthood" ??? no, I had not), and I was just so boggled by that. Seriously, if I walked in here as a pregnant teenager, and you say you're "pro-life", that's supposed to make me feel safer??? "Pro-life" ideology would 100% treat a pregnant teenage girl like a terrorist who has taken a hostage and needs to be talked down. Use whatever lies and manipulation will get her to not have an abortion. All these thoughts went through my head, and *I* was "pro-life" back then. I knew being "pro-life" was about stopping those "bad" women- and I agreed with it, too- and so obviously if you *are* one of the "bad" women (for example, a pregnant teenager), you're not going to like it.

But anyway, as I've said before, from a "pro-life" perspective, when women die even though they weren't "the bad ones" and they wanted an abortion for "good" reasons, this is not necessarily slam-dunk proof that these laws are bad. Sure, we have these high-profile news stories about pregnant women who died because they couldn't get medical care, but what you don't see is all the unborn babies who are being saved by these policies. From a "pro-life" perspective, it's about trying to draw a line, to save as many unborn babies as you can (by stopping the "bad" women) while still allowing the "good" pregnant women- who love their unborn baby but had some horrible complication- to get the medical care they need and not die. It's impossible to draw that line in a way that perfectly separates the 2 categories. Maybe you need to err on the side of a few more pregnant people dying, in order to save hundreds of unborn babies.

I don't agree with this but I just want to point out that this logic exists. I don't think it's possible to really engage with and understand "pro-life" ideology if you're just looking at the shocking high-profile cases of women who were denied medical care and died. You have to also consider the unborn babies who are or are not being aborted quietly in the background.

Now, there also is evidence that banning abortion doesn't actually decrease the abortion rate. I don't know the details on that myself, but from a "pro-life" perspective, that would be relevant to the question of whether these laws are effective.

Inspiration and Incarnation: Other Ancient Near East Literature

By User:Daderot - File:Tablet in Akkadian language recording court proceedings with seal impressed envelope, Yorgan Tepe, Kingdom of Mittani, 1450-1350 BC, clay - Oriental Institute Museum, University of Chicago - DSC07088.JPG, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115709323 / Image source.

I've been reading Peter Enns's book, "Inspiration and Incarnation," which is about how the bible was written in the context of ancient Near East culture, and truly fits into that world, and Christians should not view this as a problem, as if it means the bible is not the word of God. Instead, we should view it as God speaking to people in their own culture, in ways they could understand.

In this post, I'll talk about chapter 2, "The Old Testament and Ancient Near Eastern Literature." 

This chapter goes through a bunch of examples of archeological discoveries from ancient Near Eastern cultures similar to ancient Israel. We see that these texts that were discovered are very similar to passages from the bible- so, what does that mean? How should we view those similarities? 

This chapter brings up a lot of really fascinating ancient Near East texts that I had never heard of. I can't fit them all in this blog post, so if you're interested in this topic, you should just go buy the book.

Remember when I said that I don't necessarily care what the bible originally meant in its ancient context? Okay I was wrong, I do care. All the examples from this chapter were incredibly fascinating.

The texts are grouped into 3 categories:

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"Group 1-- Creation and the Flood: Is Genesis Myth or History?"

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. How Emojis Have Become a Language Within a Language in China (June 9) Ah, yes, many layers of memes in Chinese internet culture.

My husband knows all about this, and told me another example: In comment sections, people will say they are 盖楼 [gài lóu] (adding to a building), because a long thread of comments is like a tall building, and the OP is 楼主 [lóu zhǔ] (owner of the building). If people don't like OP, they will write 楼主傻逼 [lóu zhǔ shǎ bī], "OP is a dumbass", but a lot of internet platforms will censor 傻逼 [shǎ bī], so people will just write lzsb instead (write the first letters instead of the characters themselves). But then, some people have a keyboard which will autocorrect lzsb to 兰州烧饼 [lán zhōu shāo bǐng], which sounds like the name of some kind of flatbread from the city of Lanzhou. My husband tells me that he has met people who think there really is a special traditional food in Lanzhou called 兰州烧饼 [lán zhōu shāo bǐng], and he has to tell them it's not a real thing.

"But," he says, "this meme is from 20 years ago."

2. Meet Splash, a furry detective solving underwater mysteries (May 29) Wow, this otter is trained to search for human remains in the water.

3. Elephant Bananza || Donkey Kong Bananza (Original Soundtrack) (2025) My kids have been watching my husband play this Donkey Kong game, and they are all so into it. And now we also listen to the soundtrack all the time- apparently in the game, Donkey Kong can turn into different animals, like an elephant or a zebra, and there's a different song for each. My toddler is getting really good at hearing a song and identifying what animal Donkey Kong would turn into at that part of the game.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. All Americans Need Pride Now (June 8) "At the moment, the focus of MAGA’s sexual oppression is on trans people. But what happens after they have been suppressed, and America still has problems? If you draw the conclusion that we’re still not pure enough, who do we go after next? Gays and lesbians, I suppose, and then women who have gotten abortions. And promiscuous women. And then straight men and women who don’t act masculine or feminine enough."

2. Jesus loves me, this I know, for Pete Hegseth tells me so (June 8) 

3. "Fascism"—New Federal Rule Would Require Federal Funding Recipients To Deny Trans People Exist (June 9) "If finalized, the rule would reach every hospital, university, school district, state government, nonprofit, and homeless shelter that receives federal funding, effectively requiring much of American institutional life to discriminate against transgender people as a condition of receiving federal money."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Mamdani's New Trans Direct Clinic Will Deny Care To Those Under 19 (June 9) "When Zohran Mamdani ran for mayor, he promised to fight back—showing up to protests outside NYU Langone, pledging $65 million for gender-affirming care, and vowing to use every lever of city power to protect trans New Yorkers from federal intimidation. Since taking office, those promises have largely gone unfulfilled: no enforcement action against the hospitals that shuttered their programs, no fines from the Commission on Human Rights despite complaints open for over a year, and no public accounting of the promised funding."

Cleveland Clinic Establishes Second “Detransition” Center in the Country After DOJ Settlement (June 10) "'Detransition services were always a part of gender affirming care,' Adkison continued. 'There continues to be no increased need, and it is a bigoted, sad performative farce the Clinic is choosing to promote.'"

Yes, exactly. If people want to detransition, for whatever reason, they should have access to medical care related to that. But, wouldn't that just be a normal part of a hospital's gender-affirming care/ hormones/ gender-related therapy? Making it into a separate thing only makes sense in the political fiction where trans-affirming doctors are out to get you and want to make you trans against your wishes, and the MAGAs who have common sense are heroically coming to save those victims and establish the opposite kind of clinic, where we help them get back to their correct gender. That's not how it works at all.

4. Judge blocks Trump’s sweeping freeze on immigration benefits for 39 countries (June 5) "The 135-page ruling, from U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island, opens the door for hundreds of thousands of people with pending immigration-related applications to have these benefits unpaused. These immigrants were following the rules, McConnell wrote, but were nonetheless unlawfully targeted by the government because of where they came from."

5. Federal judge blocks Trump admin's effort to move 14 trans women to men's prisons (June 9) "Ultimately, Lamberth found that the mandatory transfer to men’s prisons 'was not a reasonable response' because 'it is fundamentally unreasonable for prison officials to respond to serious risks such as mental health deterioration, self-harm, and suicidality by intentionally creating those risks and offering to treat them after they predictably occur.'"

6. Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at ‘60 Minutes’ (June 7, via) " So, we work on all of these things. We get the piece approved by everyone. And about four hours after our deadline, Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer."

7. White House response to hantavirus and Ebola contrasts with COVID criticisms (June 11) "'The administration is trying to look tough,' Gostin says. 'And that's just no way to deal with an infectious disease that really doesn't know borders. We need to use science and public health rather than political theater and overkill.'"

8. Trump’s Name Is Removed From Kennedy Center Facade (June 14, 1-minute video) Hooray!

9. A plan to get lifesaving food to hungry kids was working well — until it wasn't (June 13) "'This place used to be full,' he says, able to store about 4,000 boxes — enough to feed over 4,000 kids for several weeks of treatment. 'But since USAID left, since the start of the problem with Trump, UNICEF has become weaker,' he says, gesturing at the empty space."

10. Ms. Rachel meets children with parents in ICE custody (June 10, 1-minute video)

Ms. Rachel brings children’s letters from ICE custody to Capitol Hill, including those from Colorado Springs family (June 11) "Mothers of some of the over 3,500 children cycled through the facility told investigative publication ProPublica that children were so distraught they cut themselves or talked about suicide."

"The Purity Myth" (book review)

Book cover for "The Purity Myth"

I'm something of an ex-purity-culture blogger, so I want to read and have opinions on all the books that criticize purity culture. So I read Jessica Valenti's 2010 book, The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women.

Surprisingly, I didn't like it.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. George Washington praying for the return of his slaves (May 28) "She boarded a ship to New Hampshire and never looked back. George Washington sent slavecatchers and government officials after her to recapture his “stolen property,” but her neighbors in the free state of New Hampshire helped her elude those kidnappers. Bounties and rewards were offered for her capture and re-enslavement for years afterwards."

Also from the Slacktivist: A first person, extremely possessive pronoun (June 1) "The subject of this song is, rather, a smallish neighborhood God. This is a puny God who is not the God of Haitian refugees, not the God of second-generation immigrants — not the God of LGBT people, not the God of women, not the God of widows and orphans and the poor, not the God of the sick and the immunocompromised, not the God of any of the billions of people living in any of the other 194 countries of this world, let alone the God of any of the billions of other stars in our universe."

And: Flattening and collapsing, egad! (June 2) "'Love your neighbor' is both necessary and sufficient." Preach!

2. What will it take to get a vaccine for the Ebola strain driving the current outbreak? (June 4) The good news is there's already a lot of scientific research and some vaccines that are likely to be effective. It's just a matter of actually having the money and resources to make it happen.

3. Interesting Pitch: ICR Says NO to Plain Reading of Noah's Ark (June 1, 16-minute video) Young-earth creationism says that the whole fossil record was formed during the year of Noah's flood, when all the animals and plants were buried, rather than being formed by millions of years of slow normal processes. And, therefore, all of the world's oil deposits come from the organic material buried during the flood. 

But, here's a problem: In Genesis 6:14, when God instructs Noah to build an ark, he says to coat it with pitch. !!!! Pitch! Oh no! Pitch comes from oil! There was oil before the flood? How can this be?

Please note that the bible does *not* say that all of the world's oil was formed by the flood. That's a young-earth creationist fan theory. And some young-earth creationists have realized that their fan theory contradicts the bible verse that says Noah used pitch to waterproof the ark, so now they have to come up with another fan theory about how it didn't really mean pitch, it meant pine sap or something.

Anyway, this is a video from Joel Duff which takes these young-earth creationist fan theories very seriously and explains why they don't make sense.

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Todd Blanche says DOJ ‘not moving forward’ with ‘anti-weaponization’ fund (June 3) Hooray! But also, I don't think this is the end of it- they're probably going to do a lot of other shockingly-corrupt things.

2. Musk Attacks Nyong’o For The Same Reason Hitler Attacked Jewish Art (May 26) "Musk is not just some asshole complaining about Hollywood casting choices. He is one of the most horrific mass murderers in history."

Also from Everything is Horrible: Fascists Lie (Even When They Seem To Be Confessing) (June 3) This quote from Vivian Wilson: "Him going further on the right, and I’m going to use the word ‘further’ — make sure you put ‘further’ in there — is not because of me. That’s insane."

3. Republicans' sweeping election overhaul fails in the Senate (June 4) "The SAVE America Act, a far-reaching Republican election overhaul that President Trump said should be his congressional allies' top priority, has officially failed in the Senate." This is good news for overseas voters like me.

4. House passes war powers resolution directing Trump to end hostilities with Iran (June 4) This is good, but it would still need to pass the Senate and also the antichrist would have to sign it, in order to become a real law, so that is unlikely.

5. You Can’t Raise Children to Obey and Expect Them to Defend Democracy (June 4, via) "It begins when a child learns that the person with power does not have to be truthful. Or when a child learns that obedience matters more than conscience. Or when a child learns that being hurt by someone who claims to love you is normal."

6. Screwworm In Texas Cattle Could Drive Up Beef Prices—After DOGE Axed Prevention Efforts (June 4)

7. The Side That Won the Civil War is Now Banning Books About Why the Civil War Was Fought (June 3, via) "Censorship often works like this—indirectly, requiring no specified demands but rather a vague climate of intimidation that encourages “an abundance of caution” when making decisions about what voices should be heard."

8. When U.S. foreign aid changed, AIDS workers in Africa felt it (June 7) "The program is often cited as the most effective public health campaign ever, and is estimated by the State Department to have saved roughly 26 million lives since its inception."

9. Pete Hegseth shrinks military's recognized religions list, erasing atheists and Humanists (June 5) "The Department of Defense/War, under Secretary Pete Hegseth, has just pared down the list of recognized religious labels in the military to a mere 31, making it harder for service members to use the proper identification. A decade ago, as part of a larger mission to be more welcoming to people outside traditional faiths, the list of labels had expanded to well over 200."

10. After D.C.'s Reflecting Pool gets repainted, visitors ask: What changed? (June 5)

11. Deported Filipino sailors say they were falsely linked to child sexual abuse material (June 6) "Soriano Versoza's organization, which helps Filipino sailors with paperwork and other support, documented hundreds of deportations of Filipino seafarers and all follow the same playbook: CBP agents board the ships in the morning at the dock, they round up a handful of Filipino mariners, take them off the cruise ship, and interrogate them."

Chinese Shopping Apps: Ziploc Bags Edition

Here's a post about how I bought ziploc bags from Jingdong, a Chinese shopping app.

This is extremely boring for me. I use apps like Jingdong all the time, to buy really boring stuff like ziploc bags. But for those of you outside of China, perhaps you've never seen what the process is like to search for a product and check the options and prices and pay for it, with an interface entirely in Chinese. I think it's so fascinating how people in different parts of the world can have such different experiences, in the normal boring parts of their life, the things they do every day, which are so boring that they would never think to even talk about them.

Anyway, so, I need to buy some ziploc bags. Let's open up the Jingdong (京东) app on my phone and search for ziploc bags, which is 密封袋 [mì fēng dài] in Chinese.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1.  Toy Story 5 | Official Trailer | In Theaters June 19 (February 20) Part of me is like "why are they making another Toy Story movie" but also part of me is like "I'm going to watch it."

2. How the devil was disguised in the SBC and Paul Pressler's Conservative Resurgence (May 6, via) "By 1998, I had been so convinced of the rightness of the religious right and the conservative movement that when news of the Clinton-Lewinsky abuse case broke, I thought the leaders who spoke against Clinton and sought his impeachment actually cared about the immorality of it all." This is so real.

Add this to the "it was all fake" pile of evidence. All that talk about submitting your life to Jesus, every part of your life, every decision, even your thoughts, sitting in prayer and listening to God, willing to do whatever God wanted, no matter the cost, killing your sinful and selfish nature- and meanwhile, the leaders at the top are lying, sexually abusing people, and chasing political power.

Maybe this is the case any time you have religious people who totally believe "I have to do whatever God says, no matter how hard it is"- we are extremely vulnerable to any leader who comes along and claims "this is what God wants." Especially when they frame it as "I'm just simply telling you what the bible says- if you question or disagree with me, you're disagreeing with God" which I've heard so many times.

What to do about this? I guess if you're a religious person who believes "I have to do whatever God says, no matter how hard it is," you need to maintain some amount of independence, like "I'm going to use my own brain and only believe 'this is what God says' if there is a good reason *that makes sense to me*." You run the risk that you might refuse to obey something that turned out to be a valid command from God, but I think it's better to err on that side, rather than be manipulated by leaders who can claim anything is "what God said" and our feeble human minds aren't supposed to understand the reasons and that's why faith is so important.

3.  How terrible is this family? Family therapist takes on THE PARENT TRAP (May 22, 28-minute video) Yessss, I watched "The Parent Trap" on Disney channel so many times back in the day. 

"There's emotional realism in this film, which the actors kind of like, concoct out of thin air. ... there's no emotional realism in this premise. And everyone's just kind of like, well, your dad and I had a fight, so we got divorced, and we each took a kid, and then they're never gonna see each other. And I as a parent am not gonna see my other child. Ever."

"And apparently there are many adults in both of these adults' lives who know this and are cool with it."

4. Ancestral Genomes (May 29) From xkcd.

5. A cancer vaccine made just for you. mRNA is back and it's fighting melanoma (June 1) This is great news! Sounds like it's still being tested, but hopefully soon it will be widely available.

6. Enhanced Games claim ‘we changed the world’ but only one record broken and three clean athletes win (May 25) "While the vast majority of the 42 competing sprinters, swimmers and weightlifters were taking banned substances such as testosterone, EPO and anabolic steroids, three athletes who were competing clean also won."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Donald Trump’s Horribly Broken Propaganda Film (May 31, 31-minute video) "It's rare to see a bit of art that literally should not exist, that is, in and of itself, morally wrong." Oh good, Big Joel watched "Melania" so the rest of us don't have to.

2. Justice Department says it will abide by court order pausing its 'anti-weaponization' fund (June 1) "A federal judge in the Eastern District of Virginia last week temporarily blocked the creation of the anti-weaponization fund after a lawsuit from Democracy Forward and others."

3. One by one, U.S. civil rights agency dismantles tools to fight discrimination (June 1) "Protecting U.S. workers from unlawful discrimination — already a hard task — could become significantly harder if the government no longer has that data within arm's reach, Gilbride says."

4. Federal judge ends Kennedy Center name change, bars two-year closure plans for now (May 30) "'Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,' Cooper, an Obama appointee, wrote of the federal law establishing the Kennedy Center in his 94-page opinion."

5. Immigrant detainees sue over 'horrific' conditions at Texas ICE facility (May 30) "'No human being should ever have to go through this,' Angye said in a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the organizations representing the detainees. 'I have already experienced torture in my home country of Cameroon and I never thought I would experience such severely violent treatment by guards here in the United States of America.'"

6. CA Gov Candidate Tom Steyer Calls Out Dems Capitulating On Trans People: "I'm Totally In Favor Of Trans Athletes" (May 28) "Steyer responded with a full-throated defense of transgender youth—and, specifically, of transgender athletes."

Also from Erin in the Morning: New York State Budget Released: $0 For Transgender Care Access (May 29) "'As the Trump administration continues to pose an existential threat to the transgender community, we are profoundly disappointed that the FY2027 New York State budget invests zero state dollars to support access to the health care many transgender, gender non-conforming, nonbinary, and intersex people rely on to live in their bodies with dignity and health -- a complete failure to meet the moment,' said Allie Bohm, NYCLU senior policy counsel about the lack of passage."

Inspiration and Incarnation: Introduction

Book cover for "Inspiration and Incarnation"

I started reading Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament by Peter Enns, and it's so good, I decided to write a blog series on it. This post will cover the preface and chapter 1.

Enns is a biblical scholar. I've read and reviewed 2 of his books before: The Bible Tells Me So (published 2014) and Genesis for Normal People (published 2019). I really enjoyed those and I want to read all of his books. This one, "Inspiration and Incarnation," was originally published in 2005, but I have the 10th-anniversary edition, published in 2015. The writing style of "Inspiration and Incarnation" is more formal and academic than "The Bible Tells Me So" and "Genesis for Normal People"- those two had a lot of [in my opinion] unnecessary pop culture references- I know some readers like that, so, that's fine, but I definitely like the style of "Inspiration and Incarnation" better.

Here's the overall idea of this book: In the past 150 or so years, there has been new evidence uncovered about the civilizations and cultures of the ancient Near East. Archaeologists have found writings from people groups who lived near the ancient Israelites- and these writings have many similarities to what we see in the bible. This is something of a problem for evangelical Christian ideology, because evangelicals believe the bible is inerrant and inspired by God, and so they don't want to believe that it's similar to other ancient writings, that it was influenced by them and it borrowed ideas from them, that it has mistakes and anachronisms, that it follows the genre conventions of ancient Near East writing rather than being absolute truth as we would view it from a modern scientific perspective.

The conservative bible scholars respond to this problem by downplaying the similarities between the bible and other ancient writing. The liberal bible scholars respond to this problem by saying the bible is the same as other ancient writing, and therefore it isn't special or inspired by God. Enns claims that both sides are making an incorrect assumption: that if the bible is similar to other ancient writing, that means it's not really from God. He says that, on the contrary, God gave us a bible which is fully human and also fully divine- just like Jesus was fully human and fully God. God speaks to humans within their own cultures.