Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:

Ah dammit I'm watching Sausage Party

Lurdiak posted:

Jenny Angel posted:

I forget who is was but someone on left twitter said he was the Phineas Gage of our era, except instead of a railroad spike he got impaled in the skull by brand engagement


I was raised in a Polish immigrant household that was deeply culturally Catholic but didn't actually believe in God or care much about specific teachings that didn't have to do with rituals and defining a community. I kinda ended up as the exact opposite - I've always believed in the divinity of Christ and was absolutely fascinated by His teachings from an early age, but found the ritualistic aspects of the faith completely unappealing - partially because I was a bratty little girl and sitting through a Catholic mass suuuuuuucked, but also because as the years wore on I found that community more and more lacking. I guess I had this utopian idea that the kids in the religious education classes my parents sent me to were gonna be these kind, Christlike figures, but it turned out I was the only one there dweeby enough to actually want to talk about the Bible at all. The only way I ended up being able to relate to any of them was finding the one kid lamer than i was and being a catty bitch to him until the other kids found enough of my weak-as-gently caress roasts funny. The idea that this alleged community of faith was making me act like an actively worse person was, to say the least, uncomfortable

About that same time, this was when I would've been maybe 12 and my older brother was 14, he announced that he'd gotten into Ayn Rand and had read the whole Bible and decided that God wasn't real anymore, so I started freaking out and thinking like, oh poo poo, I better do the same thing (luckily the only Ayn Rand I ended up being able to make it through was like three quarters of Anthem) or else I'll be left in the dust as these cool older intellectuals forge on. It was dicey going during a lot of the Old Testament, but when I got to the Gospels I just kept getting more and more psyched about how cool Jesus was. Like, understanding how fully hip-youth-pastor this is to say, I started thinking of Jesus as this total badass, grinning like an idiot whenever He outsmarted whatever pack of Pharisee clowns in a really chill, playful way. Everything He was saying made total sense and felt like something I still absolutely wanted to be part of, so I started asking myself whether it was possible to hold onto that but pretty much ditch the parts of the faith that did nothing for me once I wrapped up my Confirmation like a good Catholic

Of course, the answer is yeah, just study the Bible on your own and seek out writings by interesting Christian thinkers and try to lead a life like Christ would've wanted. By college I was getting slightly embarrassed and nervous about it whenever a cultured Harvard atheist had something sharp to say about religious people, but that's really more my class anxiety than anything else. I was still ready to just tear into a giddy speech about how Jesus is Way Cool at the slightest indication that someone was interested in hearing it, and during a teaching program I was part of during the winter of '13, I even uh, kinda accidentally converted another kid to Christianity. We were all staying in the same apartment and some of us would always stay up late talking in the common room, and I learned pretty early on that she'd lost her faith after her dad died and her mom wasn't able to give good answers about where he was now, but still thought that Jesus as a man and teacher was really cool in a way similar to how I did. On the last day of the program someone else mentioned Christians as this vague, far-off concept and she butted in with "I mean, Jenny and I are Christians!". That hadn't even been what I was trying to do, but after asking her about it later it turned out that our talks had helped her restore her faith and confirm her sense that even if some people are absolutely terrible at being Christians, it didn't mean she couldn't try her best to be one

Later on, I mentioned that incident in passing to a high school friend of mine who was a much more traditional right-wing evangelical Christian, and he seemed kinda surprised that I would even care. Like, he knew I believed that you didn't need to be a Christian to enter heaven, so why would I be happy about helping someone else find her faith? It took me a little bit to articulate an answer because yeah, absolutely, if I don't believe in any nonsense about saving souls and being born again, that's the obvious motive out the window. But I was eventually able to explain that it warms up my heart to see anyone commit to any positive belief system in a way that makes them happier and makes them love their neighbor more. If she had come out of those discussions saying "Yeah, I love the moral teachings of Jesus, but they're still really disconnected from any kind of belief in His divinity and these talks have mostly just reaffirmed a humanist atheist view of the world for me", I hope I would've been just as happy

That's kinda a bigger answer than the specific question you asked called for, but I wanted to sorta indirectly respond as well to the questions of like, how and why one can be a progressive Christian. I totally get how tribalism is part and parcel with the faith in the broad cultural understanding of it, but if there's one thing that my brief Smug Rational Libertarian phase did for me, it's entrench the idea that tribal and blindly loyal mentalities are ones I wanna try and watch out for whenever they show up

Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

As far as good Christian writers go, Jenny, what do you recommend? I'm a big fan of Lewis' The Screwtape Letters and The Selected Sermons of Meister Eckhart, I've given a half-assed attempt at Augustine's Confessions but I couldn't really get into it. Any recs?

Death By The Blues posted:

Today was an interesting day on set. Location double booked us on a day with the dinner of a funeral mass of a man who died tragically in a medieval cosplay accident (got cleaved by a sword apparently).

Death By The Blues posted:

Today was an interesting day on set. Location double booked us on a day with the dinner of a funeral mass of a man who died tragically in a medieval cosplay accident (got cleaved by a sword apparently).

Jenny Angel posted:

I just spent the last half hour hype as gently caress for Woodley vs. Wonderboy II and I'm fully at peace with the fact that this means I have terrible middlebrow MMA taste

Jenny Angel posted:

I just spent the last half hour hype as gently caress for Woodley vs. Wonderboy II and I'm fully at peace with the fact that this means I have terrible middlebrow MMA taste

Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:

Todd Starnes is a great place to start

Jenny Angel posted:

I just spent the last half hour hype as gently caress for Woodley vs. Wonderboy II and I'm fully at peace with the fact that this means I have terrible middlebrow MMA taste

Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

As far as good Christian writers go, Jenny, what do you recommend? I'm a big fan of Lewis' The Screwtape Letters and The Selected Sermons of Meister Eckhart, I've given a half-assed attempt at Augustine's Confessions but I couldn't really get into it. Any recs?

Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

Wait, the conservative dude?

Lil Mama Im Sorry posted:

As far as good Christian writers go, Jenny, what do you recommend? I'm a big fan of Lewis' The Screwtape Letters and The Selected Sermons of Meister Eckhart, I've given a half-assed attempt at Augustine's Confessions but I couldn't really get into it. Any recs?

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

Weird question since I just read Altered States: has anyone here tried a sensory deprivation tank before? I just found out there's a place near me that has one and I've been curious about it ever since first watching the movie back in high school, thinking of giving it a go.

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

Weird question since I just read Altered States: has anyone here tried a sensory deprivation tank before? I just found out there's a place near me that has one and I've been curious about it ever since first watching the movie back in high school, thinking of giving it a go.

MisterBibs posted:

Eh, maybe I was being a bit hyperbolic, but man, this movie quickly bummed me out in a way that drained me. I could tell what they were going for, and I generally appreciated the attempt, but man, until we finally saw Hugh Jackman running around slicing the poo poo out of fools, being appropriately heroic, I was in depression-based over the thing.

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

Weird question since I just read Altered States: has anyone here tried a sensory deprivation tank before? I just found out there's a place near me that has one and I've been curious about it ever since first watching the movie back in high school, thinking of giving it a go.

Magic Hate Ball posted:

You should definitely do it.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

I can't ever imagine wanting to.

HUNDU THE BEAST GOD posted:

I can't ever imagine wanting to.

Mecha Gojira posted:

There's a place near my office that offers it, but I have to ask: What is a sensory deprivation tank and what is the intended purpose? Like, it's also at a place that does like water massages and stuff too, so I guess it's supposed to be a relaxing float?

But I'm the guy who can't sleep without a fan blowing because I like the white-noise.

Uncle Boogeyman posted:

Weird question since I just read Altered States: has anyone here tried a sensory deprivation tank before? I just found out there's a place near me that has one and I've been curious about it ever since first watching the movie back in high school, thinking of giving it a go.

Mecha Gojira posted:

There's a place near my office that offers it, but I have to ask: What is a sensory deprivation tank and what is the intended purpose? Like, it's also at a place that does like water massages and stuff too, so I guess it's supposed to be a relaxing float?