By David Futrelle
Fellow penis-havers and potential semen retainers! The resaon you find it so difficult to refrain from cranking your hog is *checks notes* WITCHES!
Damn those Kardashians and their witchy ways!
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Just for my own curiosity, what’s the average lag time before the matrix generates a new troll?
I’ll admit that last one didn’t have much candy in him, but still, it seems wrong not to have some edge lord hyperventilating over a semen post.
Welp, most of what I wanted to say about my thoughts RE: semen retainers’ “thoughts” has already been said. So here’s a pitch-black Russian joke I saw on the net regarding Armenians and another familiar ethnic group:
An old Armenian is on his deathbed. “Listen closely children,” he says. They lean in, ears straining. “Above all else, treasure the Jews.” “Why the Jews, father?” they ask. “Because once they’ve been dealt with, we’ll be next!” he says.
Also, @Surplus: to which specific ethnic group do these women belong to, more precisely? From appearances I’d guess a North Indian one, maybe Nepali? My inner anthropologist is dying to know.
@Paireon
Bangladeshi. Sort of.
https://affairscloud.com/government-grant-citizenship-chakma-hajong-refugees/
@Shadowplay: Oh, cool! Thanks!
…Aaaannd according to that article it turns out they’re refugees stuck with a history of religious and ethnic persecution, including where they’re currently living (still as refugees). Fuck.
Why human is asshoe.
@Miri – 😛 Also, the Bible is apparently a “society” –
Anyway, so he’s misrepresenting 2 or 3 religions, claiming the Kardashians are witches, and characterizing men as thinking and feeling beings while women are only agents of lust…
I’d say that’s probably par for the course on this particular subreddit, but it’s impressive he managed to do all that in one short paragraph!
“Wicken.”
Excuse me, I need to go laugh myself into a heap now.
Okay, now that I’m done with that. This person clearly knows anything about Wicca or any other forms of witchcraft.
But I will admit there is some truth to this. I mean, I’m a practicing (Vanic) witch and force myself to masturbate regularly. Granted, my forcing myself to masturbate amounts to thinking, “You know, an orgasm would feel real good right about now.”
@epronovost:
Unless you hold significant degrees in the study of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, I’d be very careful about making blanket statements about “Abrahamic faiths.” While technically the same collection of manuscripts, the Jews tend to approach the Torah very differently from the way that Christians approach the Old Testament, for example. Heck, their very understanding of “sin” tends to be vastly different.
@Jarred H
I’m not an expert on Abrahamic faiths (I’m Jewish but know little about Christianity and Islam) but I can confirm that the Jewish approach to the OT is very different than the Christian approach. As well, Judaism centers a lot around commentary by later scholars discussing the original text. Another key difference is that most strains of Judaism encourages discussion and debating viewpoints regarding law and practice, which most Christian groups AFAIK discourage.
The Jewish view on sin is different from the Christian view, as is the view on atonement. Judaism places an emphasis on apologizing to those wronged and trying to make the situation right rather than confession to clergy. Some branches of Christianity may also do this, I don’t know.
Since I don’t know much about Christian or Islamic views on these topics, do any other commenters want to chime in?
It’s amazing how surprised he seems to find this out. “Guys! Guys! The Jews… have matrilineal descent!
@Naglfar
Thanks for chiming in. What I know of Judaism is what little I’ve picked up from various rabbis I follow on Twitter and other Jewish friends and associates. I am no way an expert on Judaism myself. So I definitely appreciate someone who can speak to it more authoritatively doing so.
I did spend the first 24 years of my life as an evangelical Christian (American Baptist with some forays into a more charismatic, nondenominational church, to be more precise). There tended to be “one authoritative interpretation” of things. One of the things I appreciated about Judaism as I learned more about it is how the Torah is open to much interpretation and debate over interpretation as a matter of….for lack of a better term, sacred practice in its own right.
@Naglfar –
Catholic and Orthodox Christianity are generally the confessing-in-front-of-a-priest types, while Protestants don’t do that systematically (not sure about all branches). The church my parents go to (Presbyterian) has a “prayer of confession” in the service; the minister leaves a minute of silence. I remember how my mind would wander! Anyway,
seems more sensible, IMO. 🙂 I mean, Protestants are supposed to do that too, but the confessing-to-God part always seemed to be more emphasized.
As for commentaries and discussion, I don’t think any of the main church branches have something like the Talmud. I mean there’s no “official” commentary that’d be equivalent. There are a lot of commentaries but not many people read them. I think (Catholic-turned-agnostic) James Joyce boasted of reading all of Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica – show off! 😛
But arguing over laws and practices is pretty common (edit: though like @Jarred wrote, some groups are very much “my way or the highway”). The Presbyterian Church in Canada is still trying to decide whether to allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages. The U.S. branch already lets Presbyterian ministers choose to do that or not, as they wish – but the conservative elements here still think that’d be too radical. Sigh.
This varies WILDLY between sects. Some American Protestant churches will have you stand up and confess your sins publicly in front of the entire congregation, while others expect you to keep it entirely between you and God, with the involvement of the wronged party falling somewhere in the middle. Many evangelical churches emphasize that the wronged party is obligated to forgive the transgressor, and that the wronged party commits the sin of “bitterness” if they’re not ready to do that just now. This is especially wielded against women who have been abused by men.
Protestant churches vary a ton and it’s hard to say any blanket thing about them.
@ jarred
There’s the old joke about a group of Rabbis arguing over a line in the Torah. Eventually God decides to step in, and manifests in front of them.
God tries to explain “What I am saying there is…”
But the Rabbis say “Oi, you stay out of this.”
@Alan
There’s another joke that comes to mind: If you put 2 rabbis on a desert island, you’ll get 3 interpretations of the law.
@epitome of incomprehensibility:
“We live in a bible…”
In my culture, Protestants are associated with a more private, less showy, less preaching brand of protestantism.
It’s alway a shock when someone remind me that evangelicals and most americans are protestants.
Also, I believe the line about rabbis and interpretations would work just as well for most theologicians :p. I actually have had heated debate about imaginary religions based on whatever is known, so I guess I understand why professional priests do that too.
I mostly know my own sect (Friends General Conference) and Lutheranism (as I majored in Religious Studies at a Lutheran university, although my focus was on world religions).
The understanding of sin that I came to embrace is that sin is more a matter of “not getting it” rather than “breaking the rules.” It is not so much that you Did The Bad Thing, as that you did not understand why The Bad Thing is bad. A term that several of my professors liked to use was “missing the mark.”
Quakers like the FGC do not have clergy, so any confessions tend to be to the offended party as part of trying to correct your mistakes.
I always like blowing the minds of Christians, or cultural Christians, who have never really thought about it, by pointing out that yes, Jews do have a different approach to the Old Testament: for starters, they don’t call it that.
No, I’m not Jewish. I just like blowing people’s minds sometimes.
@Allandrel
I’ve heard this term used as a literal translation of the Biblical Hebrew word for sin. A rabbi I knew was fond of that phrase.
@Rabid Rabbit
I occasionally refer to it as such for the purpose of Christians understanding, but yes, we don’t typically call it that because it doesn’t really make sense to refer to an Old Testament when we don’t have a new one.
Christian often think that Jews wait for a new prophet and covenant, hence why they are often surprised that it’s not called the old “testament” as in the one valid until the new one.
(I don’t know if jews actually expect a prophet, but I am pretty sure they aren’t expecting a new covenant)
What I found amusing is that muslims don’t do the same to christian. I guess if they did, the head of a lot of extremist would explode.
@Ohlmann
Most modern Jews aren’t expecting a prophet/messiah in the present. The only real exceptions are messianic sects like Jews for Jesus, which most mainstream Jews do not consider to be Jews because their beliefs more closely resemble Christianity; and a few fringe ultra-orthodox sects which believe that a messiah has come/will come.
Logically thinking, it seems like an oxymoron that Jews would be consciously waiting for a new covenant?
I was once taught (perhaps not very accurately) that Jews still wait for the Messiah, but there was no mention of covenant, or how the two differ from each other. I don’t see why either Jews or Christians would be perceived as waiting for a new covenant. AFAIK Christians ostensibly wait for a second coming of Christ, but even that isn’t supposed to happen until apocalypse.
Edit: Thanks for clarification, Naglfar.
@epronovost
Yeah, that’s the fun part about this. There are so many cases like this… the people who loudly complain about homosexuality certainly seem to spend a lot more time thinking about sex acts than most of the people actually doing them.
@Jarred H, Alan Robertshaw:
The version I heard was that there was an argument over a point of law amongst a group of (I think) five rabbis, with four on one side and one on the other. Now, part of the more ‘constitutional’ part of the law is that in disagreements like this the majority carries. “I’m sorry, Elder, but it’s four against one.”
Suddenly a bolt of lightning strikes the ground, writing that the lone rabbi was correct.
After a few seconds, the rabbi who had spoken before says, “All right, now it’s four against two.”
(At least one version of that story ends with a coda where someone later hears God chuckling, actually happy that they held to the Law closely enough to side with the purpose of the law rather than his dictates.)
@epitome of incomprehensibility:
Well, the thing you have to remember about the Presbyterian Church of Canada is that it is rather more a conservative group than their American counterparts. Because they’re the leftovers after two thirds of the Presbyterians joined with the Methodist Church of Canada, the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec, and the Association of Local Union Churches to form the United Church of Canada back in 1925. (Mostly because so many of the smaller towns out west weren’t big enough for multiple churches, and they all figured that their similarities were greater than their differences, so they would have more churches by working together than by competing.)
So the modern Presbyterian Church of Canada are ‘descended’ from the people who refused to join up with the newly-formed more generic and liberal Church almost a century ago. It’s sadly not surprising they tend to be more conservative.
@ jenora
I like that version.
Reminds me of some politician over here; can’t remember which one. There was a vote where he was the only dissenter so it was like thirty to one.
“Ah, so we have an impasse.”
Speaking of judaic arguing. Anyone read The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. Can see why it’s controversial obviously; but I think it’s a great book.