Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. Why people like your quick bullshit takes better than your high-effort posts (November 29, via) "but the attention of the internet is best modeled as a random swarm of locusts that will occasionally land on your ripe fields based on its inscrutable whims."

Oh yeah this has happened to me. The posts that get the most views aren't the ones I really really care about and spend a lot of time on. Hey if you really want to make my day, you can leave an appreciative comment on any of my very long blog posts about the bible.

2. Apples (December 12) From xkcd.

3. Journal Club: The Quoiromantic Manifesto (December 17) "'Quoiromantic' was especially a response to asexual discourses where romantic orientation is so common that people are expected to have it as a slot in their identity. Quoiromanticism expresses unwillingness to participate in this framework."

4. I usually do a "Christmas music roundup" post in December, but it turns out I just like all the same songs every year. So instead of doing a whole post, I'll just share them one by one here and there.

Emmanuel (Michael W Smith & Amy Grant- w/lyrics)

5. OpenAI says dead teen violated TOS when he used ChatGPT to plan suicide (November 27, via) [content note: suicide]

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. ‘Good will to all’ rejected as ‘political’ and ‘divisive’ (December 9) "'Peace on earth, good will to all' is the same thing Christians have been reciting every year at Christmastime for centuries, but those Christians can’t say it this year without being — correctly — perceived as 'political' and 'anti-Trump' and 'anti-ICE' and 'anti-MAGA,' because 'peace and good will to all' is the opposite of everything that Trump and ICE and MAGA stand for."

Also from the Slacktivist: The end of 20th-century white evangelicalism (December 15) "I remember what it feels like to identify as an evangelical because loving Jesus and loving the Bible was the most important thing to me only to be told, constantly, that this did not matter at all — to constantly have the gatekeepers of evangelicalism reminding me that loving Jesus and loving the Bible wasn’t nearly as important as voting Republican no matter what. And then seeing 'no matter what' ratcheted into something ever more extreme."

This is so real. I'm also one of those evangelicals who followed Jesus right out of the church.

2. Trump Finds Way To Be Bigger Piece Of Sh*t Than Ever, Re: Rob Reiner (December 16) This is really shocking and horrific, what he posted on social media.

3. Her Christmas lights were going up. Then Border Patrol showed up (December 13) "'It looks completely ridiculous,' she said. But she decided to leave it that way 'as a symbol of what happens when ICE and Border Patrol get involved in your world. Things don't go as planned. And a lot of work doesn't get done.'"

4. DOJ releases Epstein files and the first batch is short on new information (December 19) 

5. A radio station in Amsterdam is a lifeline for Sudan. After USAID cuts, it's faltering (December 21) "From Amsterdam, the journalists at Radio Dabanga try to shed some light on the dire situation. They report on where fighting has erupted, on disease outbreaks in refugee camps, and the aftermath of recent atrocities, such as those in the Sudanese city of el-Fasher."

6. Trump's push to end transgender care for young people opposed by pediatricians (December 19) "Goepferd, who is the founder of Children's Minnesota Gender Health Program, says that for the medical community, nothing has changed about the evidence supporting gender-affirming care that could justify the government's actions."

If heaven is so great, why did God even make this world?

Typical pop-culture depiction of heaven, with sunlight streaming through clouds. Image source.

[content note: stats about child death, discussion of hypothetical suicide and murder]

Let's suppose we believe that the world we live in now is flawed, and heaven is a perfect world where there is no suffering and all the wrongs are made right. (And yes I do believe this.)

Here is my big question: Why do we even have this world, then? Why didn't God just put us in heaven to start with? 

The idea of heaven seems like the kind of thing that people would come up with when they're having problems in this world. Longing for another world, which doesn't have any problems at all. 

But how about taking a step back and asking, if there really is a God who created a heaven, would this world we live in even exist? If we just start with the idea that there really is a God who wants people to live fulfilling lives- what kind of world would that God create? Would They create a world where the strong can take advantage of the weak, where some people are just born with fewer resources and fewer opportunities and that's just the way it is, and then make a second world which is perfect, which people go to after they die? Why even bother with the flawed world?

Christians have a few different ways of answering this, and I find them all weak:

1. Evangelicals (and many other groups of Christians) believe that only people who are "saved" go to heaven. Everyone deserves to go to hell because we're all sinners, but people who believe the correct things about Jesus are "saved" and can escape their deserved fate and go to heaven. So, people need to live on this earth because this is where they will choose if they're going to believe in Jesus or not, which is what determines if they go to heaven or hell. God can't just "skip" this life and put us all in heaven, because God only wants people who would freely choose that.

This argument doesn't mean anything to me because I don't believe in that kind of hell. Yeah, I used to be evangelical, and constantly worried about my non-Christian friends who were in danger of going to hell- I'm so glad I don't believe that any more. I sometimes say "I don't believe in hell" but I just mean it as a shorthand for "I don't believe that everyone deserves to go to hell, and I don't believe that one's religious beliefs are the determining factor in whether one goes to heaven or hell"- because I do believe there will be a judgment, and "the wages you failed to pay your workers are crying out against you." And "whatever you did not do for the least of these, you did not do for me."

(This argument also gets more complicated when someone asks "what about people who never heard about Jesus, and never had a chance to believe in him- it's not fair for God to automatically send them to hell" and then someone answers "God will judge them based on whether they *would have* believed in Jesus, if they had had the opportunity." So... so suddenly God is letting people into heaven based on what they would have done in a hypothetical alternate universe? Okay, then why not just judge all of us that way? No need to actually live out our whole lives on earth- God can just send us straight to heaven or hell based on what we "would have" chosen if we had in fact lived on earth. ... Honestly I've always felt this "God will judge based on what they knew" idea is just shoddily tacked on because we feel bad about people going to hell if they happened to live in a time or place where they never heard the name Jesus. "God will judge them based on what they knew" is not at all consistent with the rest of conservative Christians' beliefs about heaven/ hell/ God/ salvation/ sin/ evangelism/ missions/ etc.)

So the evangelical idea that the reason we have to live in this world is to see who chooses Jesus and who defaults to going to hell just doesn't mean anything to me.

2. In this life, because we have the choice to sin, because the world is not perfect, that's what gives us the opportunity for personal growth. To learn how to become better people, we need to be free to choose good or evil. And suffering helps us become stronger.

I don't think this argument is any good, and here's why: child mortality. Nowadays we have very good medical care and vaccines, so this is not something that most people in developed countries have experience with now, but for the vast majority of human history, it was normal for little children to die. For babies to die. For very rough ballpark numbers, I found this page from the CDC which compares current infant mortality rates to the rates from the year 1900. In the year 1900, ballpark numbers are around 10%-30% of infants dying before reaching age 1. (And if you're considering older children and not just infants, Our World in Data estimates something like 50% of children died before age 15 in the time period before 1700-ish.)

So how does it make any sense to say that it's important for us to live in this world first, before going to heaven, so that we can learn morality and make choices that shape who we are, when a significant percentage of people didn't live long enough for that to happen? And if we say heaven rights all the wrongs of this world, including infant mortality... then that means it's okay that those babies didn't live long enough to grow into people who could make good or bad decisions... if that's okay for them- and they're a significant fraction of the human population, like 10-30%- why isn't it okay for everyone? Why is it so necessary for the rest of us to live in this world, then?

If heaven is so great, why doesn't God just put us all there to start with? People have various answers to that, but the fact is, for a significant fraction of the human population, God basically *did* just "put them there to start with", ie, they died as babies. So if you say "oh but we have to live our lives on earth, to learn morality" well why didn't those babies then have to live their lives on earth, to learn morality? This is not some kind of rare statistical outlier- this is something like 30% of all people. Not *now*, thank goodness, because we have good medicine and vaccines, but if you look at all of human history.

3. There are good things we can do in this world that we can't do in heaven, like fight against injustice. And help people.

Uh... yeah it's good to fight against injustice, but wouldn't it be better if we didn't have to...? 

And hey maybe we can still help people when we're in heaven. Help each other with mundane low-stakes problems. That sounds nice.

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There's a weird paradox about heaven: we claim it's so good, and if you feel sad about someone dying, you can encourage yourself by saying "they're in a better place"- that in some sense it's good that they're no longer in this world, but they are in heaven instead.

But this needs to be just a nice thing to say to help people feel better, not something we actually literally believe. If we really did believe it's better to be in heaven than on earth, we should kill ourselves. "Ah," someone will answer, "God closed that loophole by automatically sending you to hell if you commit suicide." Okay, well then don't kill yourself- kill other people. You're helping them get to heaven, right? Maybe you feel like, if God sends you to hell to punish you for murder, that's an acceptable cost, you're okay with going to hell yourself because you know you've done so much good for other people.

This logic is especially monstrous when people believe in some kind of "age of accountability"- ie, children are innocent, and if they die they will automatically go to heaven, but adults will be judged for their sins and possibly sent to hell. So, it follows that it's better for children to die rather than grow up and be at risk of going to hell. (And there really have been people who murdered children because of this belief.)

And there have been politicians/leaders who didn't care about the large-scale effects of what they were doing, didn't care whether their policies would lead to more children dying or not, because eh it's all okay, it's God's plan.

If we truly believe we're going to heaven... well, then why do we see it as a good thing that infant mortality is no longer common? This weird paradox where we try to believe "they're in a better place"- but that has to be nothing more than a way to try to make yourself feel better about something you can't change. Not a belief that would then inform actual choices you make, which could have real effects in terms of people living and dying. It can't be that. It's just horrible to even begin to reason through the conclusions that follow from that belief.

My approach for dealing with this problem is to believe in heaven, but not with much confidence. I hope it's real, but I don't know. Don't bank on it. Don't go around murdering people (and/or deprioritizing investment in public health) if you don't even know if heaven is real or not, my god.

It's better to have less faith, it seems.

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So back to the main question I want to ask: Why didn't God just put us all in heaven to begin with? Why do we even have this world? And any answer you give has to take into account that God *did* put a nonnegligible percentage of people "in heaven to begin with" (ie, infant mortality rates have been very high throughout history). Apparently it's fine that, whatever lessons we were supposed to learn by living full lives on earth, a significant proportion of people just totally missed out on. And your answer should also take into account that we view it as an extremely good thing that in modern times, infant/child mortality is very rare. 

Advances in medical technology have very much changed the distribution of ages at which people enter heaven. Changed the demographics of heaven. Is that a good thing? Did God intend for it to be that way?

I don't have a good answer for this. I hope heaven is real, I believe in it, but this is an aspect of it that doesn't make sense.

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Related:

Sure Of What We Hope For

A Bit Suspicious That "Heavenly Tourism" Confirms Everything We Already Believe

xkcd comic where a biologist says "The heroes of my field have slain one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse." Image source.

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. 17-year-old trans girl’s suicide over NHS wait times was preventable, coroner rules (October 9, via) "Wait times for each clinic vary massively, from just three months in Nottingham, to 41 years in Belfast, and a staggering 224 years in Glasgow."

2. What Would Billy Say? (October 10) and also Slacktivist's comments about it. Franklin Graham has withdrawn two large evangelical organizations (Samaritan’s Purse and Billy Graham Evangelistic Association) from the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, an organization which keeps an eye on the leaders of evangelical groups to make sure they're not stealing money or abusing people. Uh... why is Franklin Graham withdrawing from this oversight group? Seems very suspicious. As the Slacktivist put it, "Or maybe you’ve got to ask if there could be any possible explanation for this other than the simplest, most obvious one."

3. 男高音艺术歌曲《我会自己上厕所》转自抖音 (2023) This is extremely funny if you understand Chinese.

Okay I'll explain it: So there's a song for Chinese toddlers called “我会自己上厕所” (I can use the bathroom by myself) featuring such profound content as “上厕所时不能吃东西” (you can't eat while using the bathroom), and apparently it became something of a meme on the Chinese internet because everyone found it hilarious, and people were making their own covers of this song. This video is an opera-style cover of it.

See this is what happens if you have kids. You have to listen to songs about potty training, and find humor in them or else you will just lose your mind.

4. Bari Weiss: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (October 13, 34-minute video) Video about Bari Weiss and her media outlet "The Free Press"- apparently she is one of those people who claims to be too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals. Whenever I've come across writing from people like that, it's confusing to me because they might have some "liberal" opinions on specific issues, but they don't seem to really understand the overall big-picture of why liberals would have those opinions, and how they would connect to other issues too.

5. A ‘Hardcore’ theological crisis (October 15) "She is his child and he is going to try to save her even if Almighty God has already decreed since eternity past that she is predestined for damnation."

6. Greta Thunberg: “They kicked me every time the flag touched my face” (October 15, via) "This is not about me or the others from the flotilla. There are thousands of Palestinians, hundreds of whom are children, who are being held without trial right now, and many of them are most likely being tortured, says Greta Thunberg."

7. Photos: Ceasefire in Gaza brings reunions amid devastation (October 15)

8. Doctors Without Borders permanently closes its emergency center in Haiti's capital (October 16) "'The building has already been hit several times by stray bullets due to its location close to the combat zones, which would make resuming activities too dangerous for both patients and staff,' said Jean-Marc Biquet, MSF head of mission in Haiti."

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Links related to the antichrist:

(I hope someday some historian finds my blog and says "wow, people back then believed Trump was the antichrist.")

1. There will be No Kings protests on Saturday, October 18~

2. Opinion: Why I'm handing in my Pentagon press pass (October 14) "Today, NPR will lose access to the Pentagon because we will not sign an unprecedented Defense Department document, which warns that journalists may lose their press credentials for "soliciting" even unclassified information from federal employees that has not been officially approved for release. That policy prevents us from doing our job. Signing that document would make us stenographers parroting press releases, not watchdogs holding government officials accountable."

Also related: Pentagon reporters have now turned in their badges – but plan to keep reporting (October 15) "Current and former Pentagon correspondents who spoke with the Guardian said that coverage would undoubtedly suffer from a lack of proximity to administration decision-makers – though many are intent on proving that the restrictions won’t stop the work, with some even saying they plan to take a more aggressive tack."

3. Protesters and Members of the Press Challenge First Amendment Violations by Federal Forces at ICE Facility in Broadview, Illinois (October 6) "A new lawsuit filed this morning argues that this wanton violence by the federal government is a blatant attempt to interfere with the most cherished and fundamental rights enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religious belief, and the right to peaceably assemble and express disagreement with the government."

4. Documents Allege a Federal Agent at Portland ICE Threatened to Shoot an Ambulance Driver (October 12, via) 

5. Gavin Newsom Vetoes Important HRT Stockpiling Bill For Trans Californians, Signs Other Pro-LGBTQ+ Bills (October 14) "Among all of the legislation passed this year, few bills would have offered such tangible protection for transgender people as SB 418—and yet, it’s the one that won’t become law."

Also from Erin in the Morning: Fenway Health Restricts Treatment for Patients Under 19 In Capitulation To Trump (October 15) "This is a fundamental betrayal to the core mission of Fenway and the patients they serve. Trans patients cannot trust this organization has their best interests at heart."

6. ‘We’re saving God’ (October 16) "The creeds would have to be completely rewritten to be compatible with the Trumpian theology of 'We’re saving God.' Think of all the arguments among different branches of Christianity, every doctrinal dispute about the nature of God, the relationship between God and humanity, eschatology, sin, salvation, sacrament, whatever. Every Christian in every era on every side of every one of those disputes would recoil at the blasphemous nonsense of 'We are saving God.'"

Blogaround

Links not related to the antichrist:

1. SCOTUS Allows For Trans Discrimination In Medical Care: A Full Analysis Of Today's Ruling (June 18) "The ruling effectively greenlights medical care bans across the country and may pave the way for broader restrictions, including for adults, while leaving lower court rulings on bathrooms, schools, sports, and employment remain intact—for now."

Really not good for trans kids. We have to keep doing what we can to support them.

And from Law Dork: Where is the outrage over Skrmetti? (June 20) "In its U.S. v. Skrmetti ruling, the Supreme Court’s Republican appointees shaved off the edges — if not more central parts — of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause in order to uphold laws that bar an exceptionally small number of teens from receiving a type of medical care that only one group of teens need."

The reasoning in this Supreme Court decision is about how the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment applies (or doesn't apply) to trans people. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor draws comparisons with the Loving vs Virginia case, where the Supreme Court ruled that states could not ban interracial marriage. I guess in the Skrmetti case, the majority opinion said that both trans and cis children cannot get treatment for gender dysphoria, so it's not discrimination. And this is like how the argument to ban interracial marriage was that people of every race are equally not allowed to marry outside of their race, so it's not discrimination. And the Skrmetti decision is really opening the door to a skewed interpretation of the equal protection clause, which could lead to rights being eroded in so many other areas.

I'm literally in an interracial marriage, but I never thought about "hey my marriage is about the 14th amendment" or anything along those lines. Learning about Loving vs Virginia in high school, it felt like ancient history, like of course people can marry a partner of a different race, why would that be an issue, aren't we glad we don't have those racist laws like they did back then. When I got married, I didn't think about "some of my ancestors thought this shouldn't be legal" or anything like that- it never occurred to me that anyone would think there would be a legal issue. 

BUT ALSO I grew up evangelical and so back then I totally bought into all the anti-queer stuff, like we can't let gay people get married, we can't let trans people have rights, etc. We usually didn't talk about the details about how you turn that into an actual legal argument, but apparently one argument that was being used in court was "both straight and gay people aren't allowed to marry a same-sex partner, so it's not discrimination."

ANYWAY my point is, I should read more about the equal protection clause. It turns out to be related to a lot of things.

Also related to Skrmetti: After Getting The Ruling It Wanted, New York Times Publishes 6 Anti-Trans Articles (June 20) "In all, at least half a dozen articles have been published by the Times in the 24 hours following the ruling—ink still drying—spreading misinformation, shaming transgender people, and giving prominent space to voices that seek to strip us of our rights."

2. Baby of brain-dead Georgia woman on life support delivered via C-section (June 17) Not sure what to say about this- if I died and was pregnant, I would want them to continue the life support to save the baby. But the key thing is, it should be the family's choice. This case is horrific because it was forced on this family by faraway politicians and heartless laws.

3. The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it (2016, via) "The result of a media — and education system — that fails to present quantitative information on long-run developments is that most people are very ignorant about global development and have little hope that progress against serious problems is even possible."

4. HIV prevention drug hailed as a 'breakthrough' gets FDA approval (June 18) 

5. The Meta AI App Lets You ‘Discover’ People’s Bizarrely Personal Chats (June 12, via) "It’s unclear whether the users of the app are aware that their conversations with Meta’s AI are public or which users are trolling the platform after news outlets began reporting on it. The conversations are not public by default; users have to choose to share them."

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Links related to the antichrist:

1. Federal Judge Grants Class Status To Trans People In Passport Case In Massive Win (June 18) "According to preliminary conversations with expert attorneys, whether transgender people should submit a passport update request immediately depends on their risk tolerance and individual circumstances. A motion to stay the ruling could come within days. Those most likely to benefit from applying immediately are individuals with incorrect gender markers, those seeking their first passport, or those with expired documents who need to travel soon. Expedited processing may increase the likelihood of receiving a passport before any potential appellate or Supreme Court intervention."

2. FULL SPEECH: Sen. Padilla speaks on Senate floor after removal from DHS press conference (June 18) 14-minute video. "If that is what the administration is willing to do to a United States senator for having the authority to simply ask a question, imagine what they'll do to any American who dares to speak up."

3. Trump administration cuts specialized suicide prevention service for LGBTQ+ youth (June 18) "'This is devastating, to say the least,' Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project, said in a statement. The Trevor Project is one of several nonprofits administering the services. 'The administration's decision to remove a bipartisan, evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high-risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible.'"

So, now would be a good time to donate to The Trevor Project.

4. Trump administration actions contradict MAHA rhetoric on toxic chemicals (June 18) Oh, so it turns out, when RFK said we have to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals in the environment that are harmful to children, he didn't mean it like 'let's actually fund the scientists who are doing good work studying which chemicals are harmful.' He meant it like 'here are some words that we will use as an excuse to be mean to autistic children.'

5. The ABA Declares War (June 18, via) "The American Bar Association (ABA) just dropped a massive federal lawsuit against the White House. And it’s not messing around. The lead counsel filing suit on behalf of the ABA is Susman Godfrey, one of the firms Trump targeted. The complaint names the Office of the President, but for good measure, it also names each and every high level government department along with every cabinet official."

6. Federal immigration agents asked to leave Dodger Stadium parking lot, team says (June 20) "Dozens of federal agents with their faces covered arrived in SUVs and cargo vans to a lot near the stadium’s Gate E entrance. A group of protesters carrying signs against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement started amassing shortly after, local media reported."

7. ‘Code Adam’ (June 19) "That video shows Villareal, wearing his blue Walmart vest, approaching the agents and asking them questions. That video shows the agents mobbing him, throwing him to the ground, and hauling him away."

Blogaround

 Links not about that felon:

1. What does Islam have against sleep? (March 29) "Even if you go to bed right after Isha and wake up at the tail end of Fajr, you will get at the most 6 hours."

2. As measles cases rise, some parents become vaccine enthusiasts (March 30) Yessssss. Love vaccines. Love when my kids don't get measles. It's awesome.

3. ‘I Love Him’: A Suicide, a Student’s Diary, and a School’s Reckoning (March 28) [content note: sexual assault, suicide] 

4. Fed'l court rules Alabama AG's threatened abortion-fund prosecutions unconstitutional (April 1) "In short, people seeking abortions that would be legal elsewhere can do so. Ultimately, he concluded, that right protects those who seek to help them as well."

5. 'Zero to Hero' (From Disney’s Hercules) | Sung by London's West End Muses 🎶✨ (March 7) Wow, love this!

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Links about that felon:

1. Deported over a tattoo? Lawyer claims client is not a gang member (March 28) "DHS wants the public to believe these people are criminals and gang members. So if they have proof of that, why wouldn't they release it to the public?"

And: Trump administration admits Maryland man sent to El Salvador prison by mistake (April 1) "'If they're allowed to get away with this, then it means that the immigration laws are meaningless, all of them,' Sandoval-Moshenberg said."

2. Study: Black Lives Matter Protests Beat Trump (April 2) "So if you’re wondering if it makes any sense to go out and protest your fascist overlords, the answer is “absolutely, yes.” Do not listen to the doomers who tell you it’s too late, that there’s nothing you can do, that no one will listen, that you’re too extreme, or that you’re just encouraging people to go out and buy more Cybertrucks. Show up, meet your fellow activists, and agitate for change."

3. Cory Booker breaks a 68-year-old Senate record with a 25-hour speech (April 2) "Booker's speech took aim at President Trump, White House senior adviser Elon Musk and policies that he said show a 'complete disregard for the rule of law, the Constitution and the needs of the American people.'"

4. Top scientists warn that Trump policies are causing a 'climate of fear' in research (April 1) "'A climate of fear has descended on the research community,' the letter says. Researchers fearing for their jobs are 'removing their names from publications, abandoning studies, and rewriting grant proposals and papers to remove scientifically accurate terms (such as 'climate change') that agencies are flagging as objectionable.'"

Blogaround

1. The CIA Spread Anti-Vaxx COVID Disinformation (June 22) "In the Spring of 2020, when COVID-19 was killing tens of thousands of people every day, the US military launched an anti-vaccine propaganda campaign in Southeast Asia in order to undermine worldwide trust in China." I posted a link about this last time, but here is another article about it because it's just so bad.

2. That UK Report On Healthcare For Trans Kids Just Gets Eviler And Eviler (June 24) [content note: transmisia, suicide] "While the Cass Report would like you to believe that there are no risks associated with denying GIDS [Gender Identity Development Services] to teens and tweens, as wait times grew, suicides shot up dramatically."

3. Tzlofchad's Daughters and the Master's Tools (June 24, via) "Marginalized people working in oppressive systems do this all the time. It's a survival technique. A strategy."

4. How China Conquered the Dark Side of the Moon (June 25) "China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe has made history by returning to Earth with the first samples collected from the far side of the Moon — a groundbreaking feat that marks a new step forward for the country’s space program."

5. A Sudoku Celebration For Pride Month! (June 26) 31-minute sudoku solve video. It's a sudoku colored like the rainbow flag. Love it~ happy Pride!

6. Former Uvalde school police chief, officer indicted in 1st-ever criminal charges over failed response to 2022 mass shooting (June 28) [content note: school shooting]

7. Supreme Court allows Idaho to offer emergency medical abortions (June 27) "The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday, in a 6-3 opinion, temporarily allowed abortions in medical emergencies in Idaho."

8. Biden pardons potentially thousands of ex-service members convicted under now-repealed gay sex ban (June 27) "Biden’s action grants a pardon to service members who were convicted under the Uniform Code of Military Justice’s former Article 125, which criminalized sodomy. The law, which has been on the books since 1951, was rewritten in 2013 to prohibit only forcible acts."

Blogaround

1. This tweet

veggietales taught me not to bow down to a giant chocolate bunny. which is why i’m not a christian nationalist

check out my new youtube video about christian nationalism! https://t.co/8ip94pkbX0 pic.twitter.com/zkdJe6n4jX

— Mason Mennenga (@masonmennenga) April 22, 2024

Also related to VeggieTales: ‘VeggieTales’ Co-Creator Phil Vischer Shares Sneak Peek of New ‘Phil & Mike Show’ Idea (April 23)

2. This thread from Amanda Held Opelt. It's been 5 years since Rachel Held Evans died. I still miss her writing. Her blog was a big influence on me.

May 4th will mark 5 years since Rachel died. That is the day her death certificate was signed, the day we started planning her funeral…

(A thread 🧵) pic.twitter.com/aTMUWMxuL6

— Amanda Held Opelt (@AmandaHeldOpelt) April 25, 2024

In 2019 I rounded up all the posts I could find that people wrote to honor Evans: Link Roundup of Posts Honoring Rachel Held Evans

3. Uncovering of mass grave at Gaza’s Nasser Hospital: What you need to know (April 24, via) [content note: genocide] Wow this is really bad.

4. Fare Game: Why China’s Ride-Share Boom Is Leaving Drivers Behind (April 25) "Another screenshot, this one from Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport the same month, showed an even starker disparity: 868 vehicles competed for just 39 passengers. 'Getting even one order feels like amazing luck,' he says."

Also from Sixth Tone: In China’s Array of Dialects, Emerging Writers Find a New Voice (April 19) "With over 10 million speakers, the Shanghainese dialect is widely used in the metropolis and surrounding areas, and has a unique vocabulary that led to the creation of the official Shanghainese dictionary in 2008." Please note, these Chinese languages are called "dialects" but they're actually different languages. I understand Mandarin but I don't understand Shanghainese. A few words here and there which are similar to Mandarin, but overall no I don't understand it.

5. This thread [via] about the Passover sedar at the pro-Palestine protest at Columbia University:

Explaining the seder plate at the Columbia encampment. These students truly embody the meaning of Passover in their provisional seder and their commitment to liberation. pic.twitter.com/5dOT46IeF1

— Arielle Angel (@ArielleLAngel) April 22, 2024

6. Ohio May Soon Jump On Hot Trend Of Making It Illegal To Rape Your Spouse! (April 25) "I’m sorry if any of this sounds flip, but I really am just trying to pull my jaw up off the floor here as I try to imagine the thought process that went into carving out those exceptions in the first place."

Also from Wonkette: That Nex Benedict Died By Suicide Doesn't Let Anyone Off The Hook (April 25) [content note: anti-trans violence, suicide] "Prominent Oklahomans have chosen again and again and again and again and again to spread the lies that trans children are morally inferior, lying about who they are, or less valuable, or constitute a threat to fellow students."

Blogaround

1. Confederate monument melted down to create new, more inclusive public art (October 26, via) "The project is called Swords into Plowshares, taken from a Bible verse in the book of Isaiah." Yessss.

2. With Funeral Portraits, a Photographer Gives Dignity to Rural Elderly (October 31) "But during her work trips to the countryside, Yang would hear villagers discussing their friends’ funerals and lamenting the absence of a portrait or the quality of the photo. 'In their eyes, it is a symbol of dying with dignity,' she said."

3. Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (October 30) This is about child labor on cocoa farms. I don't really know what to make of this... back when I was in college, I read a lot about fair trade chocolate, and I felt like I was morally obligated to only buy chocolate labelled "fair trade" rather than just regular chocolate. But... fair trade chocolate was so expensive, and seemed to only have dark chocolate available, and so many snack foods have chocolate in them, so it's impossible to avoid non-fair-trade chocolate... and the idea that there's slavery in the chocolate supply chain but somehow most people seem to be okay with it, except for a few activist groups here and there... it was all too big and impossible for me to reconcile with my understanding of reality. So eventually I just gave up, just kind of put it out of my mind and didn't think about fair trade chocolate any more.

In other words, it seems like if it's really true that most of the chocolate we buy is made by slave labor (or other exploitative working conditions), then ... shouldn't we all be more upset about that? How could this really be real?

But, maybe that's just how the world always works: Those of us who have more money get to pretend that everything's fine, and we set up our lives such that we don't have to see the damage that is being done to the poorest people in the world. And every now and then we spend a little extra money buying fair trade chocolate, and feel like we did a good thing.

4. Alabama Mayor Kills Self After Right-Wing Blog Outs His Cross-Dressing (November 4) [content note: suicide, queermisia/ transmisia/ anti-queer bigotry] This is really tragic.

5. Sam Bankman-Fried Faces 110-Year Max Sentence After FTX Trial—Here’s How Long Experts Think He’ll Be Behind Bars (November 3) "Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty on all seven counts Thursday after a massive fraud and money laundering trial involving now-collapsed crypto exchange FTX and trading firm Alameda Research, charges that can lead to a maximum of 110 years in prison—and lawyers told Forbes he may face a decades-long sentence, unlike other white-collar defendants."

6. Sarah Huckabee Sanders Decides To Keep Obviously Innocent Man In Prison At Least Six More Years On Top Of 30 He's Already Served (November 4) 

Also from Wonkette: House Speaker Mike Johnson Pushing Christian Extremist 'Ex-Gay' Torture? LORDY THERE ARE TAPES. (November 3) Oh. So Mike Johnson used to work for ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom). Oh. 

When I was in high school, my parents were on the mailing list for ADF, so I read all their newsletters and propaganda- and I totally believed it. It was all about how "homosexuals" have a nefarious "agenda" to destroy marriage and all of society, or something. Years later, I found out all of that was bullshit, and actually LGBTQ people are just regular people, going about their lives, who want to have the same rights that everyone should have. 

Let me be clear: Every single thing that ADF does is built on a foundation of lying about queer people, and demonizing queer people. The bible says "do not bear false witness against your neighbor"- well, ADF bears false witness day in and day out. Their whole entire thing is bearing false witness against their neighbors. Also, the bible says "do not take the Lord's name in vain, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name"- well, ADF claims to be doing all these things in the name of God. They claim they are on God's side. They ask their supporters to pray that God will help them in their court cases against queer people having rights. I hope that the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses Their name.

The Wonkette article also mentions ADF's "Day of Truth" as a response to the "Day of Silence" (I remember a few kids in my high school participated in the "Day of Silence"- the idea is, you don't talk for the whole day, to show support for queer kids who are bullied and silenced). Well ADF invented the "Day of Truth" where high school kids should hand out propaganda to other students, about "the truth about homosexuality" (ie, it's bad, everyone who lives a "homosexual lifestyle" is unhappy, God can help you change, etc). Just disgusting. How will I explain ADF to my children?

7. Amazon Execs Intentionally Made Site Shittier to Rake in More Profit, New Quotes from FTC Lawsuit Show (November 3, via) "'Amazon’s online storefront once prioritized relevant, organic search results,' the complaint states. 'Following directions from its founder and then-CEO Jeff Bezos, Amazon shifted gears so that it now litters its storefront with pay-to-play advertisements. Amazon executives internally acknowledge this creates ‘harm to consumers’ by making it ‘almost impossible for high quality, helpful organic content to win over barely relevant sponsored content.’' "

Blogaround

1. Opinion: 6 Groups Fighting Human Trafficking Better Than Operation Underground Railroad (July 22) "And OUR’s highly publicized 'jump' raids may do little to help actual victims and may even harm them."

2. ‘White savior complex’: Malaysia’s LGBTQ community slams The 1975’s Matty Healy’s onstage kiss (July 25) "The 1975’s concert, which was the headline performance in Kuala Lumpur’s Good Vibes Festival, has sparked a wave of criticism and dismay from the community, who say Healy’s stunt may have done more harm than good to a vulnerable group already under threat in Malaysia’s repressive, conservative society."

3. A blog series from Laura Robinson about Operation Underground Railroad, the group behind the new movie "Sound of Freedom"- and the common misconceptions about what "human trafficking" is:

The Horrible True Story that Inspired Sound of Freedom Is Probably Our Fault, Part 1 (July 16)
The Horrible True Story that Inspired Sound of Freedom is Probably Our Fault, Part 2 (July 16)
Cabal Goggles: OUR and Sound of Freedom, Part 3 (July 19) 
Cabal Goggles Off: Sound of Freedom/OUR, Part 4 (July 23)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Trafficking: Sound of Freedom/OUR Part 5 (July 28)

4. How Hollywood Corrupts Trans Stories (July 15) 1-hour-23-minute video from Jessie Gender. This is about how the trans themes in movies like "Across the Spiderverse" and "Nimona" were very deep and complex and central to the entire plot of the movie, but most movie reviews talked about very shallow aspects, like "there's a trans flag!"

5. Main suspect in the 1982 Chicago Tylenol Murders dies (July 11)

6. ‘The lowest I’ve ever been’: how playing Jar Jar Binks led to abuse, near death – and saving Baby Yoda (July 28, via) [content note: suicide attempt] "It tells the story of Ahmed Best, who played what was meant to be one of Star Wars’ most exciting new characters, only to end up being the first ever recipient of a torrent of online abuse that spilled over into worldwide press coverage."

Blogaround

1. Trip.com Offers Employees 50,000 Yuan Subsidy for Each Child Born (June 30) "China is grappling with a significant decline in its birth rate and the subsequent challenges posed by an aging population."

2. Don't use AI detectors for anything important (June 30) "All these AI versions are rated as more likely human-written than my original unaltered text."

3. Amos and Acts (June 30) "The fascinating thing about the passage Brueggemann highlights here is that the book of Amos was written a very long time before the book of Exodus was. Amos 9:7 presents one side in an argument about the meaning of the Exodus, showing us that both sides of this argument existed centuries before the book of Exodus itself was written. Amos is one of the oldest books in the Bible — possibly the oldest — so the tension between the two sides of this argument date back to the very beginning."

4. The Supreme Court Has Killed Affirmative Action. Mediocre Whites Can Rest Easier. (June 29) "Obviously, my parents were horrified. Obviously, they pulled me out of that school the next year and put me into a predominately Black public school. Obviously, I learned that not everything white people say is true. But Thomas is the guy who never learned: He never figured out how to disregard what white people say about us. Learning how to ignore white folks and their stupid racial theories while living your full life is pretty much the final test towards emancipation, and it’s one that Thomas seems to have flunked for his entire professional life."

5. Death of Coco Lee Triggers Public Discussion on Depression in China (July 7) [content note: suicide]

6. Rating Articles About Twitter Alternatives (July 8) "Rating: written for the kind of person who'd be shocked to learn about the concept of a fursona"

7. The universe is humming with gravitational waves. Here's why scientists are so excited about the discovery (July 3, via) Cool!

8. Let's Talk Emotional Labour of Birth Control (July 10) Wow, is this really a thing, a man claiming that he doesn't want to wear a condom, so he expects his partner to take birth control pills which cause a lot of problems for her? I guess this makes me glad I'm asexual- I do have sex, but if I had to take birth control pills in order to do it, I would NOT, it is NOT worth that trouble. (Though I'm guessing a lot of this is women being coerced by societal expectations- it's not about women feeling like "I really really want to have vaginal sex, I want it so much that it's worth taking birth control pills that change my body.")

Blogaround

1. You're single and pregnant? Now you can claim maternity benefits (August 19) An article from China, saying that now unmarried women can get maternity pay when they give birth.

On the one hand, this is great news! On the other hand, WTF, why on earth was being married a requirement for getting maternity pay??? WTF????

China: we want to encourage people to have more children
Also China: *sets up legal hurdles to make life difficult for single moms and children born "out of wedlock"*

2. Woman with disabilities nears medically assisted death after futile bid for affordable housing (April 30) and Are Canadians being driven to assisted suicide by poverty or healthcare crisis? (May 11) [content note: euthanasia, eugenics, ableism] Oh wow this is bad.

3. Doctor Reacts To Marvel Medical Scenes (MCU) (2021) "WHOA, WE DON'T DO IT LIKE THAT, BRO!"

4. Making A Murder... Scene (July 31) 1-hour-22-minute sudoku solve video.

5. The Manipulations of Matt Walsh's "What is a Woman?" (August 12) 1-hour-10-minute video from Jessie Gender.

Jessie's videos are very good, very in-depth, but also I totally understand if you do not want to spend 1 hour and 10 minutes of your time thinking about Matt Walsh. If you are unfortunate enough to know who Matt Walsh is, then I'm sure you can already guess what his "What is a Woman?" documentary is about, and you'd be exactly right: it's not a sincere attempt to investigate the question "what is a woman"; it's all about mocking liberals/ trans people for saying that the definitions of concepts like gender and sex are complex and there's not one simple answer.

Jessie's video examines the ways Matt treats his interviewees disrespectfully if they don't agree with him- refusing to listen to their answers, editing the video to make them look bad, asking bad-faith questions. And also, it turns out that Matt's team lied about the purpose of the documentary in order to deceive trans people/ allies into participating in the interviews.

But yeah, if you know who Matt Walsh is, none of this is surprising.

6. This tweet about student loan forgiveness:

what’s next? casting down the mighty from their thrones?? lifting up the lowly?? filling the hungry with good things?? sending the rich away empty?? slippery slope

— Erin Jean Warde (she/her) (@erinjeanwarde) August 25, 2022

(If you don't get it)

7. Google’s Revolution in Historical Research (August 18) "If I had been doing this book 25 years ago, say, in the era of BG, Before Google, there is literally no way I could have found it, not if I was a multi-millionaire antiquarian of Bruce Wayne proportions commanding legions of research assistants."

8. Because of Texas abortion law, her wanted pregnancy became a medical nightmare (July 26) [content note: pregnancy loss] "It's just really unimaginable to be in a position of having to think: How close to death am I before somebody is going to take action and help me?"

9. Atheist to send Texas schools ‘In God We Trust’ signs written in Arabic (August 22) Sort of interesting how conservatives' racism/ cultural ignorance/ anti-Muslim hatred is kind of taken for granted here and not questioned... Like I agree with the point that this atheist is trying to make, but I'm not comfortable with how he builds his point on a foundation of conservatives' hatred towards Muslims, without calling it out.

10. ‘In memory of water’: The Zone Rouge and the stupidity of war (August 22) [content note: war] "The grievances that motivated World War I have faded into irrelevance, but people are still living with the consequences."

Related: Collections: No Man’s Land, Part I: The Trench Stalemate (2021) About common misconceptions about trench warfare in WWI.

Blogaround

Lt. Uhura, from "Star Trek." Image source.

1. Nichelle Nichols, trailblazing 'Star Trek' actress, dies at 89 (July 31)

2. The profit surcharge (July 5) "The reason, of course, is ideological: they only add in the tax later so that you feel that the tax is an extra imposition." 

Hmm, my first reaction to this is "yeah when I came to China it BLEW MY MIND how the price that it says is the price that IT ACTUALLY IS. You don't have to budget a few extra dollars in your head for tax and tip. It's WILD." And then my second reaction is, I am not sure this writer has an accurate view of what it means that "profit" is built into the prices of things. As I understand it, it's not just a like a silly extra thing added on because rich people are greedy; it's about compensating investors for taking the risk, and it's an important part of our economy.

I like his post though; it's an interesting thing to think about. It's worth reading. :)

So I think he is oversimplifying it, but probably I am also oversimplifying it because I am not an expert in economics. But it seems to me like there are 2 different mindsets about how to handle one's money- there are people who have less money, who are just trying to meet their basic needs for survival (food, housing, health care), and then there are people with plenty of money, who are thinking "okay, how can I grow my money to be bigger? what are my investment options, and what are the risks for each one?" (Perhaps there is also some in-between category- people who would be struggling, except that they followed some really good advice about investing, so now they are doing fine- is that a thing?) And then if you make some change in policy to make life easier for those who are struggling, then the rich people are like "okay I made this whole long-term plan about how to grow my money, and now you're changing the rules and it screws up my plan, now I'll end up losing money instead" and those in power who are making the policies treat that like it's just as important as lower-income people's need to have enough money to stay alive. (Because those in power are members of the "how do I grow my money bigger?" group.)

I see this sort of dynamic in online discussions about landlords- you have the forums where landlords talk to each other, where they advise each other about the realistic costs and how to set the price of rent to make sure you make a profit- it's not just "rent > mortgage", and you have to consider a lot of risks like what if you don't have renters for a period of time, what if someone doesn't pay their rent, etc. And then you have online threads where renters complain about how evil their landlords are. (And yes, some of them really are evil.) To me, it looks like the landlords became landlords to make money off of a basic human need, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that in and of itself (though many people on twitter certainly do, and say that all landlords are evil or whatever)- but if you do that, then you have to consider carefully what your policies are if you end up with a renter who is dependent on you for this basic human need, but doesn't have enough money to pay rent. Like you need to set your profit margin high enough so that if a situation comes up where you need to show some compassion and not charge them/ evict them (even though it's within your rights legally), you still make money overall. Right? Am I right? Otherwise, that means that those of us who care about justice are expecting landlords to just be fine with losing money if they end up with a renter with a very sad story who can't pay rent. And then, if that's the way it is, then before becoming a landlord, one should take that risk into account and then probably decide it's not a good idea at all, and they'd be better off "growing their money" in a different way. And then all the landlords end up being people who don't care about humanity and just want to make money off people. Maybe to some extent that's true anyway- the nice ones aren't as competitive as the ones who cut corners and treat their renters like crap, so the nice ones don't end up doing as well in the market.

Full disclosure, I am in the "I have enough money, how do I make it into more money?" group. And I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that- though it does mean that I have a responsibility to give away money to people in need. The bible is clear about that. (I read the parable of the rich fool and sweat.) And I don't think there's one "right answer" to the question of how much should I give away vs how much should I save for myself- though there are certainly some answers to that question that are going to get you in big trouble with the God of the bible someday. "The wages you have failed to pay your workers are crying out against you." 

Anyway... I don't have a wonderful conclusion here or anything, but here's an idea: I think investment advice for people in the "how do I grow my money bigger" group should talk A LOT more about the risks, so much so that the idea of losing money feels as normal to them as "oh the rent suddenly increased and there's just no way to make ends meet" feels to the "barely enough money to live" group. Or, maybe I'm not saying this in the right way... what I mean is... if rich people oppose some new policy (that helps poor people get healthcare, for example) because it messes up their calculations about what percentage growth they would be able to get on their wealth every year or whatever, society should respond to that with the same disdainful "well you should have set aside money for an emergency fund instead of buying avocado toast" attitude that society has towards poor people. Well you should have known all investments are risky, it's not our fault you're so irresponsible. That kind of thing.

Gif from "The Emperor's New Groove," where Yzma says, "Ha! You really should have thought of that before you became peasants!" Image source.

3. The Puzzle They Said We Should Never Do... (March 9) A 1-hour-13-minute sudoku solve video, with a complicated ruleset. I love it.

4. I’m a trans woman exhausted by the broken conversation around sports (July 25) "If the people having this debate took care to avoid it impacting normal trans people’s lives, to distinguish between elite sports and school sports, and to prevent this debate from becoming culture war ammunition, that would be fine. But they don’t, because it is a culture war issue." Very much agree with this article. The question of how to categorize trans people in sports seems like it should be a fascinating discussion about biological differences between men and women (averages and standard deviations), the purpose of having separate categories for men and women in sports (and the history behind it), statistics about the athletic abilities of trans people as a demographic, and then breaking those stats down further based on when and how they transitioned, ethical considerations about trans people's need to be affirmed as their gender, and so on. Seems like that's what it should be- but in reality, this discussion is very much NOT that. Instead, it's a culture war, and some of the loudest voices are actually saying that trans people shouldn't even exist- like not even trying to hide it, that's what they're saying. Not cool.

5. A Satanist got a Kansas school to rethink its anti-‘Satanism’ dress code (July 22)

6. Speaking of suicide: How institutions help people and save lives (July 26) [content note: discussion of suicide] "I disagree strenuously with Herrold’s statement that suicide treatment is 'by no means safe and caring.'"

Blogaround

1. 周杰倫 Jay Chou【最偉大的作品 Greatest Works of Art】Official MV (posted July 6) New music video from Jay Chou (in Mandarin Chinese).

2. When concordance-ism eats itself (posted July 14) "And that was not allowed. Pearson came to reject a core evangelical doctrine based on his best attempt to apply our core evangelical methodology and that got him kicked out of his Pentecostal associations and banished into the outer darkness with all the other people who don’t believe in banishments into the outer darkness."

3. Immoderate (posted July 14) Here's a fun little post about how badly-designed the comment moderation filter on Patheos is. "It’s always, on some level, funny when you have to pause and think before realizing that the prudes always turn out to be much dirtier-minded than the rest of us."

4. Webb telescope shows off Jupiter in new image (posted July 18) Everything about this telescope is amazing.

5. Speaking of suicide: How institutions harm people they were made to help [content note: abuse in the medical system, discussion of suicide]

6. What does fasting tell us about the state of scientific literacy? (posted July 18) "But how was I to talk responsibly about this benefit, this personal success story, with so little academic research to back it up?"

7. The Hypocrisy of White Asexuality (posted May 27) "When you’re in a community as white-and-North-American as the asexual one, I think it’s only fair to point out that it’s sauce for the goose to expect that we devote at least a little of our hyperanalytic navel-gazing powers to reckoning with racial identity if we’re going to expect people to sit through our overly-complicated vocabulary lesson."

8. THE Domino Sudoku (posted July 11) This is a cool little puzzle. (35-minute sudoku solve video.)

The Bible Stories As I Read Them Were Never Actually In The Bible

Clipart image of Sherlock Holmes looking for clues. Image source.

[content note: discussion of a suicide in the bible]

Here's an interesting article from Libby Anne: How Did Judas Die? Why Evangelicals Seek to Explain Away Contradictions. She talks about a post on Answers in Genesis which "resolves" the supposed "contradiction" between Matthew's and Luke's (in the book of Acts) accounts of how Judas died.

I remember reading the "answer" to this contradiction a long time ago, in an apologetics book. Basically the issue is that Matthew 27:5 says:

So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

And Acts 1:18 says:

With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out.

So like... uh what exactly happened to Judas?

The "answer" from Christian apologetics is that Judas hanged himself, and then his dead body hung there for a while and eventually fell down and burst open.

I've known this answer for a long time. And so, every time I read Acts 1:18, I read it as "Judas bought a field, there he hanged himself, and then after a while his dead body fell headlong and burst open and all his intestines spilled out." As it happens, I had this verse memorized back when I did bible quizzing- so I knew that the literal words written in Acts did not say "hanged himself", but that was still the meaning I got when I read it.

It's only right now, in 2019, reading Libby Anne's blog post, that I am realizing that's not what the Acts passage says.

It's only RIGHT NOW, that I'm realizing, if we just read Acts and not Luke, we would get the impression that Judas took the money he got from betraying Jesus, and happily went off and bought a field, feeling like he'd gotten away with it. But then he ended up accidentally falling off some tall thing that was in the field, and died from the fall. Perhaps this is God's justice- he didn't "get away with it" after all.

Or, well, I'm embellishing- we can't say for sure if he "happily" bought the field, we can't say for sure if this is a little morality story to show you can't actually "get away with it" ... I kind of added those. But reading it as "Judas was remorseful so he went and hanged himself" is also embellishing. The remorse is in Matthew's telling of the story; that's not the way it's told in the book of Acts.

Luke (the writer of Acts) is telling a different story.

And of course, the idea that Acts tells a different story than Matthew is completely unintelligible for Christians who believe the bible is inerrant. Everything in the bible happened in the same universe, which is also the universe we live in. Therefore if one passage says Judas did this and another passage says Judas did that, the correct account of Judas's life would include both. Indeed, if you read the bible this way, you would see it as quite helpful that Matthew tells us Judas was remorseful even though Luke doesn't- if we only had Luke's account, we might misunderstand and get the impression that Judas's death wasn't a suicide. Isn't it nice that Matthew gives us more information, to help us understand what Luke wrote?

Or rather, isn't it nice how we're not actually reading the story that Luke wrote, we're changing it by bringing in details from a different story...

Yes, if you believe in inerrancy, then this is definitely how you have to read the bible. But I don't believe in inerrancy any more. I won't get into all the reasons why; it's kind of too much to put into this blog post (but if you're interested, maybe read my review of Peter Enns's book "The Bible Tells Me So"). The bible has errors, it has stuff that wasn't true at all but was added for political reasons, it has embellishments that the authors made up to help communicate whatever point they were trying to make- and that's not necessarily a bad thing, because ancient readers wouldn't have expected they were reading a 100% true factual historical account. 

And all this stuff about "resolving contradictions" completely misses the point. It makes us unable to actually read the words that are right in front of us and understand the story that each individual author is telling.

---------------------

Note: In this post I said Luke was the writer of Acts, but hey maybe that's not true either.

---------------------

Related:
The Bible Lied About Lot's Daughters
This Star Wars Fan Theory Is EXACTLY How Apologetics Works
"The Author of Leviticus Would Have Been Cool With It"

Blogaround

Adult dolphin and baby dolphin. Image source.

1. Judge blocks Trump’s efforts to end Temporary Protected Status for 300,000 immigrants (posted October 4) Good news, but wow it would be stressful to live as an immigrant under this policy.

2. Episode 18: Stereotypes of Mixed Race Children Debunked – Sharon Chang (posted October 1)

3. Didsbury church's radical change after gay girl's suicide (posted September 23) "I used to be somebody that would hold a traditional view. But we lost a teenager, at 14, to suicide. And that puts everything else into perspective." Damnnnnnnnn. A church that values actual people's actual lives over beliefs about the "correct" biblical interpretation... wow.

In Your Anger Do Not Sin (a Hulk fanfic) [part 4]

The Hulk, screaming. Image source.

[part 1]
[part 2]
[part 3]

[content note: suicide attempt, abusive Christian theology]

He spit out the bullet and crushed the gun easily. Then he raised his head and screamed louder than he had ever screamed before.

HULK ANGRY.

He yelled, he roared, and the sound echoed through the night air. He pounded the ground with his giant green fists, flinging dirt everywhere. "Banner! Banner!" Hulk punched and smashed again and again. Hitting hard, shaking the ground. It hurt his hands but he didn't care.

He was desperate. He was angry.

He took off running as fast as he could, through the dark forest, roaring. "Banner, save Banner!" They wanted to kill Banner. And it made Hulk angry. Running, jumping, bounding among the trees, punching everything he came into contact with. And screaming, yelling, unintelligible, groans which words cannot express.

He stopped at the top of a hill and roared again. "My Banner!" Angry. More angry. "Banner!" The sound carried over the hills and trees.

Then Hulk was jumping and running again. "God hate Banner!" He screamed it. He grabbed a tree, pulled it out of the ground, and threw it. "Banner! Listen! God kill Banner!" He pulled up another tree. "Hulk hate God!" And another. And another.

Hulk threw himself on the ground and kicked and pounded. "No!" He screamed and thrashed around more. "Hulk hate God."

He pushed himself up to a kneeling position. Hot, angry tears ran down his face. "Hulk hate God."

The Hulk screamed one last time and collapsed from exhaustion.

-----------

A few hours later, Bruce woke up. With his clothing ripped to pieces.

I'm alive, he thought. His whole body felt sore. What happened? he thought. God... He stopped. He didn't want to pray. It didn't feel right. Suddenly he felt like maybe he didn't want God to know all his thoughts. Maybe he didn't trust him.

So he was alive, and that meant he was going to have to go back into the city, back to his normal life. He groaned, overwhelmed. He had thought he was done, that he had a way out, but of course the other guy ruined it. Slowly, he stood up and began walking.

But maybe it wasn't so bad. He breathed in, felt the fresh air. He thought about his body getting oxygen. His body's needs, and the amazing biological processes that kept him alive and provided oxygen to his brain. That's a good thing, he thought. It was so simple, but he had never really thought about it.

He looked at his hands, and they looked perfectly fine. Not a scratch on them, even though he knew that the other guy had been smashing and pounding everything last night. Hulk heals himself, thought Bruce. Hulk takes care of me.

He thought about Hulk, and for the first time, he wasn't disgusted at himself. Maybe he liked Hulk a little bit. Was it because he had saved his life? Maybe. Or maybe there was more to it than that. WAIT. Bruce stopped himself. This is temptation. He was almost at the point of thinking sin wasn't that bad, and wow that was a dangerous place to be.

But he was so tired of fighting it. Last night he thought he was done, that he wouldn't have to fight his flesh ever again. He didn't care if he went to heaven or hell- he just couldn't live like this anymore, so ashamed and so dirty. Hulk saved him. He wasn't going to fight Hulk anymore.

And what about God? A bible verse came to Bruce's mind- "whoever is not with me is against me."

Oh no, Bruce thought, it's terrible to think these things. I need to repent. After all that Jesus has done for me- dying for me, loving me even though I'm so sinful- how can I treat him like this? "You are not your own, you were bought at a price."

Hulk hated God. Bruce had suspected it- of course his sinful nature is in rebellion against God- but last night Hulk had actually said those words out loud. And that was who Bruce was, deep inside. His sin nature literally hated the God who had done so much, shown him so much love and mercy he didn't deserve. No, Bruce couldn't stop fighting Hulk. But he was so exhausted. Really, last night he had decided he was done, and he wasn't willing to go back and take up the fight again.

He thought of praying "Jesus, give me strength," but he didn't. Not now. Not yet. And he knew that it meant he was in rebellion against God. But he was just too exhausted.

He arrived back at his home. He had thought he would never be back here. He took out his key- from under the mat because he thought he'd never use it again- and opened the door. It felt so weird to come back here. It was normal, it was home, but he had said goodbye last night and thought that was the end.

Bruce collapsed on his bed. But he couldn't sleep, and he couldn't pray.

-----------

He stared at his sandwich, which was untouched. He didn't feel like eating. And next to it, his bible. Also untouched.

The other guy is too simple, too emotional, Bruce thought. He doesn't understand nuance. That's why he thinks God hates me.

He doesn't understand... Bruce paused, trying to put it into words. ... He doesn't understand that God can love me and also think I'm a rotten sinner. Yes, of course God thinks I'm a rotten sinner, because it's true. And still, God loves me.

Nuance, he said to himself.

Nuance.

Nuance?

He thought about reaching for his bible, but he couldn't do it. Wow, this looks bad, he thought. First I entertain thoughts about not fighting my sinful nature, and now I'm not even going to read the bible today. Oh I really am a terrible person.

He looked back at the sandwich, then tore off a corner and ate it. Trying to decide if he should repent and try to submit to God again.

Then Bruce had a realization. A very bad, sinful realization.

The other guy...

He stopped. Could he even dare to think these words? This was sinful, this was probably even blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

The other guy...

Ohh if he finished that thought, he was so going to hell.

The other guy...

I can't fight anymore, Jesus, I'm sorry. I'm done.

Bruce hunched forward, with his hands close to his chest, and said it in a barely-audible whisper: "The other guy loves me more than God."

Yes, he was going to hell.

To be continued...