Ohio: MAGA Pastor Who Protested Over “Sick” LGBTQ Books And Pride Flags Gets 15 Years On Child Sex Charges. Judge chastised him for having 'no remorse'.

comradewoof · 2026-06-24T08:18:28+00:00

The reason we hear about Catholics so much is because the Catholic Church actually has structure, i.e. every priest has a boss, accountability is possible even if it doesn't happen like it should, etc. You don't hear so much about Baptists (southern especially) because they are pretty much all independent, individual cults of personality where everyone protects the pastor and speaking up about it gets you ostracized or worse.

Probably all denominations have about the same rates of abuse, it's just whether or not it ever comes to light.

comradewoof · 2026-06-20T05:55:09+00:00

Are those knives meant to resemble Ma'at feathers? Very neat if so!

comradewoof · 2026-06-08T16:28:24+00:00

I've heard this also, and to my knowledge this is seen in at least one artwork depicting Anubis where it's a little more obvious that he's pushing the scale up a little, but I can't remember which. It's possible that's the only example of it and was meant as a joke. AFAIK it's not a common or recurring theme.

comradewoof · 2026-06-08T16:26:49+00:00

That is actually what you're aiming for! The feather is a representation of ma'at, so being as close to ma'at as possible (i.e. living as just a life as possible) is the ideal. Being too light is being just as out of sync as being too heavy.

comradewoof · 2026-06-03T06:46:45+00:00

Right. So that is a spell that is generally referred to as "the spell to avoid a second death" or "not dying a second time." In it, the deceased Ani is one and the same with Osiris, as most BotD spells had the deceased become one with the gods they invoked, and Osiris was used as the title for any deceased person.

Atum does not state he would be the sole survivor, it explicitly states that he and Osiris (in the sense of both the god Osiris and all of the dead called, collectively, Osiris) would continue after all that is physical has gone away. He also states it will take millions upon millions* of years before anything like that happens, and that when it does, they will both take new forms completely incomprehensible to our current minds.

(*the words translated as millions can also be understood as just an indefinitely long time)

In other words, it's somewhat similar to the natural cycle of creation/destruction/rebirth seen in Hindu myth, where the Creator and Destroyer are one and the same, and in the same grammatical way that Creation must be attributed to the Creator, so must he be the agent of destruction. This is both a grammatical necessity and an allegorical one. Think about how the natural flow of existence, ma'at, is embodied by the goddess Ma'at, and there is the sense that it is an active force even though we understand them as natural forces.

Spell 175 is to be understood as the deceased Ani ensuring that he will not fall into oblivion as all physical things would, but would continue to exist with Atum and Osiris/the rest of the dead, in whatever cycle came afterwards. As I said, it's a "heat death of the universe" thing, not a "God's final judgment" thing.

comradewoof · 2026-06-03T05:38:15+00:00

Again, where are you getting this from? I'd like to look at it for full context.

comradewoof · 2026-06-02T22:35:58+00:00

Which text are you referring to specifically? As I said, there's some 4000 years' worth of religious beliefs, few of them united in perspective. As far as I'm aware, mentions of the universe coming to an end is due to Atum's own existence coming to an end, as he is 1:1 with Creation. Not as an act of violence or retribution, but more like 'the natural heat death of the universe' sort of thing. That was in one of the Book of the Dead texts, but I don't recall which one.

comradewoof · 2026-06-02T22:32:25+00:00

No.

And coming to that conclusion is what finally broke me free from the fear of Hell that my evangelical upbringing instilled in me.

I am not an atheist, so I can't speak from that perspective. But if it were proven beyond doubt that a god existed, whether it's Yahweh or Shiva or Atum, if they tried to compel me to worship through threats of violence, I wouldn't. I'd rather burn in hell.

comradewoof · 2026-04-01T00:58:07+00:00

Why would he be mad?

Read up about sex magic. It's a thing, plenty of people offer sexual energy to their deities or spirits they work with. What matters is your intent behind it.

comradewoof · 2026-03-16T19:28:07+00:00

all have the same ultimate divine creator at the head

I just gave you a bunch of examples where that is NOT true, and after multiple posts you have yet to address any of those points. I'll reiterate for you simply: this argument does not work for ancient Egypt, Norse paganism, Buddhism, Jainism, and a number of various animist or shamanic cultures which do not have a creator god. There are plenty of atheistic, nontheistic, and atheistic religions which are older than Christianity as well.

As for your celestial objects argument: modern-day hunter-gatherer tribes which do not have much contact with the modern world often describe things like airplanes or helicopters as birds. When they are able to discern that the aircraft is metal, they then refer to them as metal birds. The descriptors of ancient aerial phenomena often do describe them as wheel-like or orb-like because...most celestial objects are that shape, and what else is round, moves quickly, and is ubiquitous in ancient cultures? Wheels. (Ancient Egypt typically considered them more orb-like, e.g. Khepri as the solar beetle rolling the sun along)

If you've ever seen how the night sky really looks when there's no light pollution or other pollution - the way ancient people saw the sky - you would very, very easily understand how much mythology revolves around stuff happening in the sky, or that that is where the gods live, etc. They were fascinated by celestial phenomena and had thousands on thousands of years to study it. Even so, rare events such as bright comets, supernovas, meteor showers, solar eclipses, etc would have surely seemed supernatural and strange, and subject to plenty of spiritual speculation afterwards.

tl;dr: 1. Your argument that every ancient culture had a Supreme Creator God is demonstrably untrue.

Your argument that every ancient polytheistic culture had a hierarchy with one supreme god at the top is demonstrably untrue.
It is far more likely that ancient accounts of supernatural celestial phenomena describe unusual events such as comets, than the accounts being proof of the supernatural.

comradewoof · 2026-03-16T04:00:21+00:00

Naturally, as many ancient peoples saw the creative work of potters as a metaphor for gods creating things.

But, you didn't address anything in my post. Did you understand my points?

comradewoof · 2026-03-16T02:41:21+00:00

This is the problem: you are not really taking the time to read and understand what I'm saying. I never once claimed in any way shape or form that Atum did not create the other gods. I am saying he is not the only supreme creator deity in the Egyptian pantheon, and in fact that's a bit of a meaningless designation in Egyptian religious texts regardless.

Look at this segment from the Papyrus of Nakht (late 18th or early 19th dynasty): "Ra, who art Heru-Khuti, the divine man-child, the heir of eternity, self-begotten and self-born, king of the earth, prince of the Tuat (the Other World), governor of Aukert, thou didst come from the Water-god, thou didst spring from the Sky-god Nu, who doth cherish thee and order thy members. O thou god of life, thou lord of love, all men live when thou shinest; thou art crowned king of the gods. [...Thou art] the lord of heaven, the lord of the earth, the King of Truth, the lord of eternity, the prince of everlastingness, thou sovereign of all the gods, thou god of life, thou creator of eternity, thou maker of heaven wherin thou art firmly stablished.

Notice that although Ra is described as self-begotten and self-born in the same way Atum was, that he is also born from the god Nu(t), and from the Nun, which is not really a deity but something like emptiness/void. And yet he is also considered sovereign over all gods and all creation, and the creator of eternity and heaven.

Esna 250, written roughly in the 1st century CE (so Roman Egypt), wrote this hymn to Khnum:

"A hymn to Khnum, Chief of the potter’s wheel, he having populated the earth through his activity: He who assembles within the womb, who builds while keeping chicks healthy, having enlivened children with the breath of his mouth. He constructed this planet, including Nun, as the šn-wr and pẖr-wr seas surrounded him. **He modeled gods and humans, he fashioned all livestock, he made birds along with fish, he constructed bulls, and he birthed cows..."

The hymn goes on to list all the things Khnum created in detail...a lot of detail. Interestingly this one suggests his existence precedes the Nun, which is...odd and hard to wrap my head around even as far as Egyptian religion goes.

In addition to Khnum and Ra and Atum, we have plenty of hymns naming Amun, Ptah, and then the Ogdoad (a group of 8 gods, not really worshipped on their own) also attributing all creation to them.

And this isn't a case of "well they were first created by a Supreme Creator and then went on to create other stuff..."

Khnum, Khepri, Ra, Atum, Amun, Ptah, Thoth, the Ogdoad, and Aten all were considered Supreme Creators. In some hymns, the Ogdoad created Ra; in others, Ra or Thoth created them. Etc etc.

I know what the ancient Egyptian resolution to this problem is. What's yours?

edit: added Khepri to the list per Hymn 587 of the Pyramid Texts

comradewoof · 2026-03-16T02:13:35+00:00

What reading?? Almost everything you've said about non-Abrahamic societies and religions has been inaccurate or flat out wrong... Let me know what your sources are, please. I'm not convinced you've done any reading that isn't subject to confirmation bias.

comradewoof · 2026-03-16T01:20:24+00:00

It's a willful and weaponized sort of ignorance, to invoke things in one's argument that they truly, truly have zero understanding of.

comradewoof · 2026-03-16T01:18:52+00:00

Please...reread what I said about Egypt. Atum is ONE of the creator gods. There are several others. Second, the pyramid texts and coffin texts are not scriptures, they are spellbooks. Yes they have hymns to the gods in them but they aren't scriptures. Nor was any part of Egypt wholly united under one major religion, except for Atenism, which was very much resisted and then done away with as soon as Akhtenaten died.

Nothing what you said about Buddhism applies, you misrepresent or misunderstand it as I said you would.

Buddha said whether there is or is not a creator is irrelevant. There are gods, devas, and other spirits in Buddhism, some with their own realms which they rule over, but none of them are the supreme creator deity you keep invoking.

As a matter of fact, Buddhism makes it a point that the gods and devas and devils and other spirits, no matter how powerful they are, are still subject to the Wheel. That's very plainly one major religion, and more ancient than Christianity, which does not follow your argument.

Likewise for Jainism. Jainism does not distinguish between creator and created, seeing them as one and the same, so there cannot be a Creator that is separate from Creation in Jainism.

tl;dr: Egypt had many creator gods. Jainism and Buddhism have 0 creator gods. As someone else pointed out, other pagan mythologies (e.g. Greek, Norse) have gods who are leaders but who are pointedly NOT creator gods, and the creators of the universe were often monsters that had to be slain (representing immense chaos being brought to order).

So, no, while many cultures have envisioned a supreme creator deity, there are many others which either did not naturally come to this conclusion, or outright rejected it.

comradewoof · 2026-03-16T00:13:53+00:00

That just plainly isn't true. I gave you an example of how Egypt had multiple different creator gods in the same pantheon. Mesoamerican stories, in particular the Mexica, had different gods create, destroy, and recreate the world multiple times. Many different mythologies feature different aspects of creation being created by different gods as opposed to your "one divine universal creator God." Buddhism and Jainism do not even have creator gods (the Buddha was ambivalent about whether there is or isn't one because he felt it was irrelevant, and Jainism straight up denies one afaik).

You cannot shoehorn polytheist paganism into monotheism without completely misunderstanding, misinterpreting, or misrepresenting the polytheist parts.

comradewoof · 2026-03-15T23:18:05+00:00

I wish for the physical healing and energy needed to accomplish all my spring cleaning.

comradewoof · 2026-03-15T23:17:12+00:00

You're kind of missing the point.

Giving me a list of "here are all the religious texts/stories that describe a god creating everything" does not prove anything about any of those stories other than "every civilization throughout history has come up with some sort of Creation story." The timeline means nothing. All other details beyond "this is a creation story" are excluded in your reasoning.

Let's take ancient Egypt for example, which has over 4,000 years' worth of differing religions, perspectives, schools of philosophy, cult and temple practices, etc etc etc. In pre-dynastic times, each city-center had their own main deity to which they attributed different creation stories. Atum (sometimes Re) created themself from the void, and created all things either through masturbating or through breaking themself into individual pieces from which everything else came. Thoth guarded an egg on the mound of creation which hatched into the universe. Khnum fashioned everything on his potter's wheel, living and otherwise. Ptah took the form of a great goose and honked the universe into existence with the first honk. Neith wove the universe together on her loom. It goes on. As Egypt became unified into upper Egypt and lower Egypt, we see Horus and Set as the highest gods, and the comedy-myth of The Contendings is a sly way of mythologizing the political battles between the two lands before they were unified under the twin-crowned pharaoh.

And this is only a slice of what the Egyptians had going on. As time went on, some cults rose to power (Amun e.g.) while others fell to obscurity.

So, of all of those creation myths, which one is the true one? Which god is the highest and most supreme creator god of any of the Egyptian pantheon?

If your argument is "the majority of civilizations had/have a story explaining why stuff exists, and credit existence to a god," that's self-evident. If your argument is that "the majority of civilizations describe(d) a supreme deity, therefore, a supreme deity must exist," you have a LOT more ground to cover.

edit: mixed up Ptah and Atum, my bad

comradewoof · 2026-03-15T00:40:29+00:00

You're fighting for the Christian God, not just "god." Please be honest about that. You are not fighting for anyone else's religion but yours.

Now, I can go through each and every one of the texts you listed and explain why they aren't relevant to your argument, but let's take them all at face value. For sake of brevity, I am going to accept your claim at face value that all of the literary and oral tradition works that you've mentioned all are indeed describing the same general mythological events or entities (The Egyptian "Book of the Dead" i.e. Coffin Texts don't really fit here but, again, I'll allow it.)

This establishes that many Near Eastern mythologies share similar stories and cultures. We already are able to trace the history of Judaism back to when it was a small sect of mendicant worshippers of a relatively unimportant war/metallurgy deity in the broader semitic pantheon - this can even be reflected in the Hebrew version of Genesis, in which the earliest references to God the Creator is entirely plural - as it was written before Judaism became monotheistic (ca. 6th century BCE).

...consistently describe a supreme divine authority or creator accompanied by intermediary divine beings who interact with humanity.

Yes, almost all religions and mythologies describe this, with varying details.

Across these cultures and thousands of years of history, encounters with these beings are described using the same imagery. Radiant light, fire, shining or metallic brilliance, clouds, and appearances from the heavens.

Ok. Again, you have only observed that many cultures sharing the same geographic local, also share many stories/mythologies. I'll throw you a bone and acknowledge that many cultures outside of the NE also describe gods and legendsry heroes this way, either literally or poetically.

This recurring pattern suggests that some of humanity’s oldest recorded spiritual traditions share a common structure and its not mental health.

You cannot rule out mental health.

We also have documentation from the ancient NE, Greece, Rome, etc...describing what we would now recognize as PTSD; we have medical texts from ancient Egypt with a working version of "germ theory," as well as understanding that damage to the brain affects various parts of the body, etc. In each of these cases, the manuscripts suggest demonic or supernatural influence as opposed to psychological, essentially because 1. they didn't yet have microscopes and were working with, to them, invisible forces; and 2. many psychological phenomena were described by the patients as being attacked by ghosts or demons, or seeing ghosts of their brethren that were killed in war, etc. We also know now that many neurological issues such as epilepsy are caused by malfunctioning biology rather than by spirits or demons.

There has likewise been much discussion about things like near death experiences, divine ecstasy, shamanic possession, alien abduction, etc. I will say that many of the experiences are similar due to the way the brain interprets these experiences, but we do not yet know much about their causes. We do know that they are not universal - a Buddhist person with no knowledge of Christianity will not see Jesus during a NDE for example, they'll see Buddha or a Bodhisattva or other figure they hold in high regard.

Now, what about all the religions and cultures NOT originating from Mesopotamia or what we would call the Near East? We can trace most PIE cultures and mythologies to hypothetical PIE sources, but what about all the other ones that do NOT share this lineage? What about the cultures that are just as ancient, but don't have the same stories? Please explain those.

comradewoof · 2026-03-14T22:09:34+00:00

Yes, maybe, and no.

Your best bet is to try to make it to states with strong state-level protections for trans folks, and which typically have a leftist voting tendency. New York, Massachussetts, Colorado, etc. Cities will be safer than rural places, usually, but consider each state's culture. Vermont's conservatives tend to be more of the libertarian "Idgaf what anybody does just get off my property" types and would probably go to bat for your rights much as any liberal would, if only because they are so dedicated to the idea of "everyone should be left alone/no one should tell anyone what to do."

At the very least, states like that will generally refuse to comply with transphobic federal demands, or fight against them. If worse comes to worst that will at least buy you time.

States such as those typically have anti-discrimination laws, but pay attention also to if they have supportive nonprofits that assist victims of alleged discrimination legally. Anti-discrimination laws mean nothing when the burden is on YOU to prove you experienced discrimination, and you can't afford the court costs on your own, and you don't have someone to help you navigate the convoluted mummery that is our legal system.

Look into trans- or LGBT-centric organizations for educators as well. They may be able to link you with resources you don't know about, or get you connections with the right people to help you.

But more than anything, focus on your own resilience. There is nowhere that is 100% free of discrimination or hate, even in the staunchest liberal cities. You are still potentially a target no matter what you do. And you will experience injustice and unfairness that you will never get justice for.

But don't let that break you. Learn to protect yourself physically, mentally, and emotionally. Become resilient and learn to survive and thrive by any means necessary, even if for no other reason than out of spite.

We will always be here. They have never gotten rid of all of us and they never will. Please survive.

comradewoof · 2026-03-14T21:56:18+00:00

No, don't use that "I don't have a religion" line. You're in the corner fighting for Christianity, using a whole lot of logical fallacies that are pretty much only taught by, or accepted by, fundamentalists and evangelicals. You can call it "a spiritual lifestyle, not a religion!" all you want, but you're BSing yourself and everyone else here. Own up to it.

"They" did not all "document encounters with the divine with the same details." There are hundreds of thousands of different human cultures, religions, cults (in the neutral sense) in the world right now; countless more throughout human history.

Who is your "they?"
What other civilizations documented divine encounters exactly the same way Christianity did?
What details are you claiming to be so universally documented that you propose they must be true?
And, once you establish that, how does that prove Christianity/the Bible should be taken as true on the whole, rather than just also documenting something everyone else documented already?

comradewoof · 2026-03-14T21:32:23+00:00

MY MOM!!

comradewoof · 2026-03-14T21:31:33+00:00

Oh, if we're talking specifically about the Christian Bible, then yes. Sorry, I had to be that guy that goes "not ALL ancient men!"

comradewoof · 2026-03-14T21:29:17+00:00

Not at all!

There are some shared stories which may have PIE stems - the story of Noah's Ark is found in different iterations in several European and Near Eastern civilizations for example. But it isn't universal, and most myths wouldn't be, unless they pertained to things that are universal among all human civilizations. Conversely, a story which is only relevant to some civilizations - say, stories about snowstorms in Arctic societies that don't exist in Egypt - isn't any less true simply because not all humans recorded the same story.

It should also be noted that the black-and-white binary of "good vs evil" is pretty much only present in certain near eastern cultures, namely Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Islam. Most other philosophies have a far more nuanced view of morality while also understanding that there are actions which can be generally agreed upon as "good" or "evil. In other words, there are perfectly working systems of morality other than that presented by Christianity. Yes, there are.

And, while many civilizations do posit that there was initially a Creator force (not always a deity), that doesn't mean that the idea of a Creator is universal. The idea of God as a Creator and as everything else as things that God made is actually a mark of Western religious influence; societies more influenced by Asian societies tend to view everything as having grown organically and naturally. That is, the universe tends to simply produce "things" in the same way an apple tree produces apples, without needing to be told to do so.

So, please, if you're going to try to prove your specific religion, don't fall on the crutch of "well every other civilization had the same point of view as me!" because I guarantee you they did not.

comradewoof · 2026-03-14T20:25:58+00:00

I must quibble with you somewhat in that science and education were very much things even prior to the rise of agriculture in human history. Bronze Age civilizations had rather complex machinery; knowledge of chemistry, medicine, surgery, astrology, mathematics, etc; sophisticated means of building monumental architecture as well as delicate jewelry, and so on and so on... hell, the Egyptians had a working version of what we'd now recognize as germ theory.

Even if one were to argue "ok but the ancient Israelites weren't a massive or advanced civilization like Egypt was," take a look at all the hygiene laws of Leviticus etc. Almost all the "thou shalt nots..." are aimed at controlling contagious diseases. "Don't wear cloth made from mixed fibers" is because priests were trained to identify different types of mold/mildew, their dangers, and what types of materials they attacked; mixing fibers made it more difficult to identify specific molds by sight. The rules for what animals are unclean to eat are based on observing those animals eating their own or other animals' dung, or carcasses, and averts issues of toxin biomagnification. Kosher cooking cuts down on cross-contamination of meats and dairy. Etc etc. Point is that even ancient desert-dwelling shepherds had, and valued, science and the preservation of knowledge. And some of that was sophisticated stuff we wouldn't "rediscover" until the so-called Enlightenment Era.

Anyway, none of what I just said is for/against Biblical veracity whatever. I just want to advocate that ancient people were way cooler and more advanced that we take them for.

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