Mx. Luna CorbdenThis is my client, Natasha Helfer, reading her poem I Have Served You at the riverside vigil immediately following her LDS disciplinary hearing in 2021:
#exmo #exmormon #ReligiousTrauma #LDS #Mormon #Sexcommunicated #memoir
YouTube
See, on our side, we have the Problem of Love.
We can't think like they do. We can't extrospect, we can't walk a mile in their shoes. Our empathy for them projects our own thinking styles onto them. It's our biggest weakness. We approach them with reason that appeals to us, but not to them.
When I apply their thinking styles with an outsider's freedom to poke holes in their ideology, I come up with all kinds of things that would be broken *by their own value system* and using their own words.
5/3
#AbuseCulture
#psychology
#philosophy
#exvangelical
#exvie
#exmormon
#exmo
#religion
#ReligiousTrauma
#atheism
"Proud to be God's cuck" bumper stickers.
4/3
#AbuseCulture
#psychology
#philosophy
#exvangelical
#exvie
#exmormon
#exmo
#religion
#ReligiousTrauma
#atheism
I know this doesn't feel as rational as the Problem of Evil. But it is meant to address authoritarian religious theologies, which are all the rage right now, and have been for most of human history. But those past religions were allowed to enforce their dominance through, well, force. They had the goods to back up their claims. Christianity, as it stands in this moment, is trying (and failing) to straddle post-Enlightenment values (freedom, love, equality, reason) with an Edgelord God of the Past.
The Problem of Authoritah is designed to shine a light on those particular contradictions in a way that the Problem of Evil cannot.
Because authoritarian reasoning works differently than we are used to. The basis of the Problem of Evil makes a fundamental error. It assumes authoritarian adherents to religion are against "evil." They are, dear reader, not. But they are all *for* authority. And that is the lynchpin in their fragile Jenga tower.
If "might makes right," then why isn't the Almighty making Alrighty? That's the soft spot this line of thinking is meant to address. Whatever omnipotent God wants should be how it is, and if it isn't, then he's a big babypants who can't do what needs to be done.
"Well," they may think, "that's why we Christian Nationalists are trying to take everything over. To make way for God to return and rule in style the way it's meant to be..."
But then WHY does "omnipotent" GOD need their relatively weak-asses to do that for him? That sounds like cuck behavior to me. Either on the part of God or on the part of God's servants. Take your pick. He can't do it on his own. How very, very sad.
I'd be interested to see this one brought up at a theism debate or on one of these videos or podcasts. That's an experiment I'd bring my biggest popcorn for.
3/3
#atheism #ReligiousTrauma #religion #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #philosophy #psychology #AbuseCulture
Free will is supposed to be the escape hatch here (as it is for the Problem of Evil), but show me one person on earth who truly has free will, who can do whatever they want for good or for evil? It doesn't seem like God (supposedly Supreme) has done a very good job giving us free will, because we all have *someone* ruling over us... it's just not Him. Doesn't that seem kind of... weak? God seems like a push-over. He is very bad at his job.
Continuing on free will, since when does a strong and mighty ruler let anyone under their power get away with doing whatever they want? Doesn't this indicate God is *impotent*? Maybe, possibly, a Big Pussy?? It seems like he doesn't have the strength or the will to do what is needed.
Supposedly, he's all about love, but not only is love a sign of weakness, he's not even strong enough to enforce the love, resulting in all kinds of pain and suffering. Like a huge muscly dad watching his kids come home from school bullied and bleeding every single day without doing a damn thing about it.
The "love" motive sounds like an excuse made by a sad loser who is all talk but no walk. All hat and no cattle. All AR-15 but it's Nerf™ brand.
2/
#atheism #ReligiousTrauma #religion #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #philosophy #psychology #AbuseCulture
Let's set aside the Problem of Evil for a moment, and examine a new idea:
The Problem of Authoritah
(As in "Respect my authoritah!")
Given:
1. God is omnipotent
2. God wants all the Glory
3. One day God will rule over all the earth, every knee shall bow and call him God.
Then:
Why doesn't he just rule earth *right now*?
If he made the universe, then why didn't he design it so that all the best evidence points directly to his glorious right to rule? Why is earth made so that the best evidence on the question of his very existence always weasel away from that conclusion? What a sad, sad creation he made, when he wanted so badly to be worshipped, but even his existence is not blatantly obvious?
It's almost as if... Satan got the better of him. And how can that be, if God is omnipotent?
(Stay with me here.)
1/
#atheism #ReligiousTrauma #religion #exmo #exmormon #exvie #exvangelical #philosophy #psychology #AbuseCulture
Remember the analogy they taught us at church, that we had all these puzzle pieces and God had the picture on the box, so even if the puzzle didn't make sense we had to trust that it would come together?
I'm just going to update that analogy here.
Church gave us the picture. And we had a box full of pieces. We tried to cram the pieces together, but they just wouldn't form the picture. That's because we had the wrong picture. If we instead had just tried to put the pieces together as they actually fit relative to each other, we'd see the real hidden image emerge.
And it isn't anything like the box cover church gave us.
This is another way to understand the different approaches of fundamentalist religion vs science. Science doesn't start with the picture, just the pieces, and only puts them together in a way that works.
JoYo
"...our valued tradition of unselfish cooperation for You Giving Us Your Land, Your Lives, and Your Labor or else!"
The LDS Church directly participated in, and encouraged the US government to engage in, massacres and land theft of the Paiute and Shoshone peoples and I just fucking can't with this trash.
(The book the Bear Creek Massacre by Darren Parry, a descendent of the atrocity, documents one such event.)
And then there's the fucking cultural genocide that continued into my lifetime with the Indian Placement Program and Oaks has the gall to fucking use words like "compassion" right next to "colonize."
Ok I gotta calm down and clock back in. I'm here for a quote about attending meetings. That's all I want.