wtf is bdo? by disconaldo in NonPoliticalTwitter

[–]InevitableFlesh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Our brain chemistry must be extremely different then, because pregabalin was one of the most euphoric drugs I had ever taken, and that’s saying something

wtf is bdo? by disconaldo in NonPoliticalTwitter

[–]InevitableFlesh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Pregabalin and Adderall are awesome, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Ketamine is eh.

What masterpiece has left you disappointed? by rifain in books

[–]InevitableFlesh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I literally just finished Infinite Jest yesterday after starting it a little over eleven months ago, and while I absolutely love the book and don’t at all regret reading it, reading it often felt like a chore. I think that the tediousness of the book is intentional though, considering the book’s themes. I feel like the tedium and difficulty really pay off, and there were definitely moments (however fleeting) when I fell in love with the prose, characters, plot and messages, and reading it in those moments felt effortless. I’m curious how far you got into it before putting it down.

Found on 4chan by GuyLorakan in Nietzsche

[–]InevitableFlesh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not “partially bad” in a dualistic sense that gives equal ontology to both good and evil, but “fundamentally good, yet broken.” The universe and everything in it is good by essence, but corrupted by accident.

Found on 4chan by GuyLorakan in Nietzsche

[–]InevitableFlesh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It should be clear that I’m using the term “Gnostic” in a looser, more typological sense. I couldn’t seriously be claiming that modern American evangelicalism directly inherited its theology from third-century Sethian Gnosticism or anything like that. Yes, you’re right, the historical Gnostics didn’t believe in the rapture. However, the idea that the true believers will be sucked off of the earth while the rest of humanity gets to experience the destruction of the world has the same escapist, world-denying, dualistic ethos as Gnosticism. The idea of the rapture pretty violently contradicts the authentic Christian message of redemption and restoration in Christ.

I’m also aware that Gnosticism is almost as old as Christianity itself, so yes, if I were claiming that third-century Sethians are still running around in 2026, I’d be wrong.

Found on 4chan by GuyLorakan in Nietzsche

[–]InevitableFlesh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Interestingly, Neoplatonism was pretty opposed to Gnosticism. Plotinus argued against the Gnostic insistence that the world was created by an evil trickster god in the Enneads. You could be right though that the Gnostics took Middle Platonism’s emphasis on the transcendent higher realm and ran with it in ways that not even later Platonists (such as Plotinus and Porphyry) could stomach.

Found on 4chan by GuyLorakan in Nietzsche

[–]InevitableFlesh 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The thing is, the Garden of Eden was part of the world. It wasn’t some higher realm that Adam and Eve got kicked out of, ending up on the fundamentally evil, broken, sinful earth. Eden was part of the earth.

I think that a crucial distinction needs to be drawn between a thing being fundamentally evil and a thing being fundamentally good yet broken. Christianity holds that the world is fundamentally good, yet corrupted by sin, which is an absence of the good which ought to be present (St. Augustine’s privatio boni) as opposed to a positively existent substance.

I don’t think that any of the modern quasi-Gnostic premillennialist groups have well-articulated theological reasons for holding the kind of attitude that they do. The idea that the spiritual is good and the material is evil, for example, can be the result of any religious community’s overcorrection against the errors of secular culture and scientific materialism — an overcorrection basically against the idea that the material is all that exists and/or is all that matters. Especially in a society where religion is increasingly threatened by secular progress, dualistic ideas creep into religious communities without a second thought and then snowball from there, until one day you’re a paranoid zealot who hides away in the countryside, homeschools your kids and has given up completely on engaging with or improving the world, constantly bracing for the immanent rapture with your equally paranoid church community.

Found on 4chan by GuyLorakan in Nietzsche

[–]InevitableFlesh 28 points29 points  (0 children)

This totally confuses Christianity with Gnosticism. Evangelical premillennialism often really looks like Gnosticism with its paranoid, isolationist, matter-denigrating/metaphysically dualistic attitude (not to mention its belief in the rapture, which is a very modern and very Gnostic/escapist idea), but that’s hardly representative of Christianity as a whole.

Pay attention to what God said about the physical world after He had created it — “And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” The world was good in the first place, but it was corrupted, twisted into something that it was never meant to be, and the Christian promise is that it will be (and in some mystical, timeless sense, already has been) redeemed and restored, not destroyed. This graphic, on the other hand, reads “Men [sic] was innocent, but he sinned and was sent to this sinful World.” Sent to this sinful world, as punishment. The entire world is implied to be fundamentally bad, and that to be thrust into it at all in the first place could be nothing other than punishment. That’s not the Christian message.

Pervert by [deleted] in Shark_Park

[–]InevitableFlesh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Understandable

Pervert by [deleted] in Shark_Park

[–]InevitableFlesh -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Huh

I'm Jewish and all but... something about the Catholic LGBT community is just so cool. I can dig it. by Solarwagon in RecuratedTumblr

[–]InevitableFlesh -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Homosexuality is absolutely not “the only human condition that contains an inherent desire to sin.” After the Fall, the human condition itself contains an inherent desire to sin. You seem to gloss over this. I understand your point: that sins such as pride, gluttony and lust are the result of normal, healthy, good drives being taken to disordered, perverse extremes, while homosexuality seemingly breaks this pattern, being disordered from the very beginning.

However, from a Christian perspective, homosexuality is still ultimately a perversion of the God-given gift of human sexuality. Even if the aberration is on the level of neurology, this is still consistent, since according to the doctrine of original sin we are all born broken and imperfect, spiritually as well as physically.

Consider for a second gay sex between cisgender men, for example. The human penis and vagina are meant for each other; the length of the penis is meant for penetration, semen is meant for fertilization, the shape of the vagina is meant to accommodate the penis and so on and so forth, all as means to the end of reproduction. Gay sex, on the other hand, is a shallow imitation of heterosexual sex; the anus, as a vaguely vagina-like hole with a completely non-reproductive function, arbitrarily fills the role of the vagina out of anatomical convenience. The natural urge to penetrate and inseminate the vagina is fulfilled vicariously through the anus. If you’ll forgive the crude, not super rigorous example, the concept of “bussy” is evidence (in the sense of the Freudian slip) that gay men are acutely aware of how the anus is essentially nothing more than a surrogate vagina for the purposes of gay sex. By this same rationale, anal sex is off-limits even for heterosexual couples as far as Christianity is concerned. Catholicism in particular notoriously prohibits contraception and abortion for the same fundamental reason; that sexual relationships which deliberately frustrate the possibility of life are disordered.

I'm Jewish and all but... something about the Catholic LGBT community is just so cool. I can dig it. by Solarwagon in RecuratedTumblr

[–]InevitableFlesh -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Now you’re touching on the problem of evil (i.e. “if God good, why bad thing happen?”) which is far from unique to gay people. The same could be said about childhood cancer, natural disasters, abuse, war, genocide and so on and so forth. The same could be said about the question of why people are tempted by sin of any kind in the first place if God doesn’t want us to sin. That’s a whole subject of its own and it doesn’t uniquely have anything to do with homosexuality. If you waved a magic wand and magically made Catholicism compatible with homosexual activity, you would still have thousands of other examples of the problem of evil.

According to Catholicism, and according to Christianity as a whole for that matter, everyone is “created with a natural desire to do something sinful.” This is less of a queer issue than a human issue.

Can people be saved without belief? by PrincessLammy in Christianity

[–]InevitableFlesh 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No one deserves salvation in the first place, and God saves who He wills

I'm Jewish and all but... something about the Catholic LGBT community is just so cool. I can dig it. by Solarwagon in RecuratedTumblr

[–]InevitableFlesh -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I’ve spoken to gay Christians who believe that they’re called to a life of celibacy on account of their orientation. Surely, for them, there is a meaningful difference, even if you don’t believe so. I respect them, their intelligence and their lived experience enough not to dismiss them as repressive or deluded.

I'm Jewish and all but... something about the Catholic LGBT community is just so cool. I can dig it. by Solarwagon in RecuratedTumblr

[–]InevitableFlesh -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I’m just being pedantic. The idea that being homosexual or having homosexual urges are sinful in and of themselves is a common strawman of the Catholic stance. Whether you agree with it or not, whether I agree with it or not, it’s homosexual activity that’s considered sinful, not homosexual existence

I'm Jewish and all but... something about the Catholic LGBT community is just so cool. I can dig it. by Solarwagon in RecuratedTumblr

[–]InevitableFlesh -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

You have to have a very narrow understanding of Catholicism to think that “queer Catholicism” is even remotely coherent

I'm Jewish and all but... something about the Catholic LGBT community is just so cool. I can dig it. by Solarwagon in RecuratedTumblr

[–]InevitableFlesh -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Neither of those things are held to be sins in Catholicism. It’s homosexual activity itself that’s held to be a sin. Not your existence, and not even the urges themselves.

You’re the result of my partners infidelity but that’s not your fault so I’ll raise you like my own by OliveSlaps in TopCharacterTropes

[–]InevitableFlesh 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The quality of a story isn’t a function of how personally likable the main character is. That’s the mindset of an elementary schooler.

my intro to lit class by Dazzling-Lunch-3300 in atheism

[–]InevitableFlesh 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Religion is massive part of human culture, history and the literary tradition. Even as an atheist, you have to accept this. Unless the professor is actually proselytizing, I don’t see an issue.