By David Futrelle
As No-Nut November nears its climax, one reactionary Catholic tweeter is asking those who’ve given up nutting to porn whether or not their intentions are pure.
Avoiding the lake of fire, if such a thing exists, might seem to be a perfectly valid reason to give up any number of sins, but not everyone seems to agree. Indeed, some of the most contentious challenges to Classical Theist come from fellow reactionary Christians raising thorny theological questions.
I’ll leave the finer points of this discussion to those who have a better understanding of God’s feelings about people wanking it than I do. But I will point out that Classical Theist not only disagrees with these commenters, but also himself, or at least the earlier version of himself that tweeted a somewhat different, and rather less dramatic, version of his argument back in September.
In case you’re wondering, yes, Mr. CT has opinions about all sorts of other things. Like contraception.
The ordination of women:
And the proper storage of female intellectuals:
Well, that’s enough theology for today. Please return to whatever you were doing, or not doing, as the case may be.
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@Alan:
I did know that, but thanks for adding the detail, it’s very cool (and there are only so many nesting footnotes one can do without readers getting lost, at least when one doesn’t have Pratchett levels of talent and wit).
[Apologies if this comment appears twice, I think I messed something up.]
Sorry for the weird ramble last night. I was a little stoned I guess! But it zonked me out for 8 hours and I really needed that.
There have been a lot of fascinating books written on the “history of hell.” It’s remarkable how much of what various groups believe is found in their holy books is actually derived from other religions, or (especially in the case of hell) taking fanfiction as canon.
Dante and Milton wrote fanfiction, and lots of people took that as canon. There’s no other way to put it.
And that’s just some of the really widespread “not actually in the Bible” stuff. The amount of extra-Biblical material the the Darbyite “Rapture believers” go in for is even more impressive, especially given that they tend to also be big on “the Bible as sole authority.” (Or not to mince words, “THEIR READING of the Bible as sole authority, so really THEM as sole authority.”)
@WWTH:
In Soviet Washington, swamp drain you!
@ObSidJag
Hi. That’s a slur. Please don’t.
I have family in Iran. I’m worried.
On that cheery note…
I’m not a Zoroastrian myself or a major expert, but I can tell you all a few things. Would you like to start with similarities between Zoroastrianism and Christianity or a rough timeline of Persian interactions with neighboring societies?
@Naglfar, FlyByKiwi:
And I’m pretty sure I got ‘biblical fanfic’ from Fred Clark over at Slacktivist, who has made some pretty pointed comments about how unbiblical depictions of Hell are. Not to mention how unchristian the whole idea of being smug about other people going to Hell actually is.
@Penny Psmith:
Thanks for that; you’ve obviously gone into it in far more detail than I have.
@Alan Robertshaw:
I knew that it meant ‘to uncover’, but I hadn’t thought of the ‘exact opposite to occult’. That makes perfect sense, and actually potentially ties a few other old things together, even though both words have shifted in meaning since then.
@Allandrel:
Dante wrote fanfiction, yes, but it was at least vaguely official fanfiction, given that the Catholic Church was pretty much watching over his shoulder. He wouldn’t have been able to publish it had it been considered heretical at the time.
As for the Darbyites, yes. It is truly amazing just how modern much of what they believe is. There was an incredible profusion of weird Christian sects in the U.S. in the 1800s (due in part to there not being an official state religion to try and stamp them out) and several of them are still actively around today. The Seventh Day Adventists started out as a doomsday cult that had to explain why the world was still here. The Mormons ‘found’ their own ‘newer testament’. The entire modern concept of the ‘rapture’ comes from the footnotes made by essentially one conspiracy theorist back in the 1800s
Fred Clark has commented on how the ‘plain reading of the Bible’ is a problem, because it is still just a reading of the Bible, except that the people involved aren’t admitting it’s just a reading. Which means they insist that any attempt at arguing against them is arguing against the Bible itself. Problem is, this has been going on long enough… well, there’s an old joke that the difference between a cult and a religion is that in a cult, there’s somebody at the top that knows it’s all a scam, while in a religion that person is dead. The whole ‘Darbyite’ readings have long since become a religion in that sense, in that most of the people running things seem to be true believers rather than just in it for the control.
It should be noted that their whole basis for masturbation being a sin is not even understanding what Onan did wrong in the story in question. ‘Spilling his seed on the ground’ was a shitty thing to do because by tradition he was supposed to get his brother’s widow pregnant, at which point her first child would be considered to be his brother’s. He was taking advantage of the fact that she was expected to have sex with him and dragging things out by making sure she wouldn’t actually get pregnant.
@Phaos
I can’t speak for the Christian view on masturbation, but the Jewish view is a bit more complex, as this Wikipedia article explains. Like any issue in Judaism, there is a lot of debate among rabbinic authorities, with some calling it the worst sin possible and others saying it is acceptable for some or all purposes. My view, as a somewhat less observant Jew, has always been (possibly TMI): “it’s fine, I just don’t do it myself because dysphoria.”
I’m kind of curious what no-fappers think of women masturbating. Or if they even consider that at all.
@Snowberry
If I had to guess, I’d say they probably think that women are incapable of getting the supposed effects of semen retention because they don’t produce semen. That’s just a guess based off of what I know about their thought process, so I could be wrong.
A while ago, there was a Guardian story noting that the NoFap community is only about 5 % women but the women members tend to have a lot of interaction (mostly respectful?) with the men. Presumably, a good portion of male NoFappers consider the movement at least somewhat applicable to women.
Based on the examples David has quoted, it seems there are plenty of male NoFappers who never notice/acknowledge the women in their movement or consider gender inclusivity. Naturally, these people tend to be more on the “deeply misogynist weirdo” side of the NoFap community.
The more extremist SemenRetention community is probably very much a male only club.
Mels:
?Whoops?! Sorry, my bad. Will attempt to do better in the future.
@Lumipuna
I’m not quite sure how that would work. The whole basis of their movement suggests that women are evil and out to get your semen, so I’m not sure how they could get along with the women respectfully. Maybe it’s because I’ve only seen the extremists, but I’m rather curious how and why women would be involved with such a movement. Does it mean that some of the men have wives who support their involvement? I do know that some women complain about their husbands using porn excessively, so maybe they suppose the whole thing because it helps their husbands stop using porn?
@Joseph Zowghi
Let’s start with the similarities between Zoroastrianism and Christianity. It’s one of the major religions that I didn’t get to study in college, and it’s been on my To Study list ever since.
Hope your family stays safe.
@Jenora Feuer
Fred Clark’s work has been invaluable to me in understanding Evangelical thought (or what passes for it, since they discourage thinking). As a Quaker, I’m always more aware of my how beliefs differ from those of other Christians than of what I have in common with them.
The NoFap movement isn’t necessarily synonymous with the Semen Retention folks. (Though admittedly there’s a lot of overlap.)
It’s my understanding that some of the NoFappers are part of the movement because they previously overindulged in porn and it had a negative impact on their lives, so they’re trying to go cold turkey, sort of like alcoholics.
Given that it’s a group on the internet mostly composed of men, I’m betting that there’s still a lot of misogynistic ideas within the group. But the basic concept of it isn’t that women are evil or semen will give you superpowers, but that they should abstain from something that made their lives worse.
IIRC, the Guardian story interviewed one young woman who said her life had indeed suffered from porn use.
Generally, these people seem to conflate masturbation with porn use, as well as conflating masturbation with male ejaculation. It’s like they mostly watch or used to watch porn compulsively, with masturbation as a side habit.
@Lumipuna
That makes a bit more sense. I typically tend to associate the NoFap movement with semen retention, which is a much more misogynistic movement.
If people’s lives are being negatively impacted by porn, I support them overcoming their issues. However, it seems that this NoFap movement has a lot of misogynistic pseudoscience and might not therefore be the best approach.
A lot of anti porn groups are made up of either TERF/SWERFs like Gail Dines (or, as others here call her, Professional Liar Gail Dines), or Christian conservatives like Fight the New Drug. The OP appears to be from the Christian conservative type.
It still astounds me how people can turn something as simple as not masturbating into something so complicated.
The first time I heard about nofap (I don’t even know if it was called that back then) was through a guy on the Internet saying what boiled down to “I stopped masturbating for [time period] because [reasons]. If you relate to [reasons], maybe try this too?” It seemed like such a normal thing to say, because you couldn’t really lose anything by trying since you could go back to whatever you did before if you felt no benefits. Where’s the harm?
I never anticipated later learning that people have theological debates on the subject. Though, typing that out I realise that of course religious people would, so I guess I never thought I’d come across it without looking into it.
@Allandrel:
I recall you mentioning being brought up Quaker before.
Me, I was brought up Anglican Church of Canada (what’s basically the Episcopalian church in the U.S.; the modern U.S. ‘Anglican’ church tends to be composed of more conservative folks who thought the Episcopalians were being too touchy-feely). As a(n also Anglican) friend of mine put it, ‘The Church of England is basically Catholicism Lite: all the ritual, half the guilt!’
That said, after the priest who was going to do confirmation classes had a heart attack, I never really got back into it. Much like my father, I basically ‘decided religion was not for’ me. (Quoted because the Church bulletin on my parents’ 50th anniversary literally said that about him.) There’s no big deconversion story, and no active ‘the church is doing things wrong’ bit going on.
(Well, my mother isn’t happy about the newer Book of Common Prayer, but that’s more to do with the poetry of the language in the original rather than anything to do with religious beliefs. She’s much more of a ‘church as community centre’ sort of person than ‘church as rules handed down from on high’.)
As you say, Fred Clark has helped grant insight into how these people think, as it was something I’d never really been exposed to. Despite attempts, that level of religious intensity isn’t really a major political force in Canada, at least not anymore. Heck, in the last federal election, one of the points the election swung on was whether or not the Conservative party was going to try and re-open the abortion debate. The leader of the party mostly tried to dodge the question, because while he would probably like to, and so would a number of the other Conservatives, he (unlike some of the other party members) realizes that would be pretty much a death knell for the party in a lot of the country.
@Jenora Feuer:
I used to know a lot of people who did re-stagings of late-medieval English religious plays, and/or studied them as scholars, so the first thing I heard described as biblical fanfic was the Mary Magdalene from the Digby manuscript, which— well, I’d go further and call it crack!fic (she goes off to Marseilles and converts the pagan French! There’s a comedy pagan priest and his sarcastic acolyte! The King and Queen go on a pilgrimage and get shipwrecked!)
Speaking of Christian folklore as fanfic gives a whole new meaning for terms such as “canon” and “word of God”.
(/s)
The term ‘canon’ originally started as a way to refer to bibical canon, actually.
From the Jewish angle – I’ve heard midrash and agada described as our own kind of biblical fanfic (this seems to be a fairly common description among my religious geek friends). Which, if you know a bit about them, is really quite accurate. It’s taking the biblical stories and either reinterpreting them (“No, when it says that Abraham did X, what it really means is that he did [a version of X that is more in keeping with the religious mores of the time]”) or just making up whole new stories that supposedly also happened.
Then, being a fandom of sorts, they start arguing whose story is better, or more canon, and expanding upon the previous expansions (which again, start off as basically headcanons) and so on.
@Penny Psmith
I haven’t heard them described that way before, but the term definitely fits. I’d say that we could also consider the Zohar to be a kind of fan fiction, seeing as it was written later and expands the ideas of the original sources.