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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 10th, 2023

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  • Calvinism still has a notion of divine will, even if there’s no divine judgement. Maybe the notion of “will” can be dissociated from the notion of “feeling”, but that’d be a debate in itself, I personally tend to think that it can’t: Awareness can only indicate what is, not what should be.

    As for all the religions with an intermediate between God and men, either they represent God’s will… In which case, God does have a will; either they have their own will. And this just displaces the question, because if God has no will but his angels do, then the angels are effectively the Gods: They’re the ones whose favour prayers are supposed to get.

    Also, when I mention the “societal use” of a religion, what I mean isn’t how the religion is useful to the believer, but how it makes the believer useful to the state and/or clergy. My point was that religion with a personalized God who directly judge human actions tend to dominate because they’re most useful as tools to influence people’s actions.


  • The answer differs depending on which religion/sect/philosophy you adhere to, but God is usually attributed some sort of emotion, or at least a will, because without it the belief in God can’t serve a societal use.

    Say you assume a God without emotions. From this it results that nothing we may do or fail to do would impact them, so there are no sins, no divine laws, prayers and rites are useless… So your belief can’t be a religion; nor can it be used to control people. There’s no physical use to preaching belief in God, and not much of a metaphysical need either since God doesn’t care whether you believe in them. “God” becomes a concept like the laws of physics, there’s not even much meaning in considering it as a being. There’s little difference between an emotionless God and no God at all. So all religions will personify God to some extent.








  • Maybe it’d be an easy choice for the American left, but I’m from the French left. Along with groups such as La Quadrature du Net have been protesting reforms like the aforementioned european directive for adressing antiterrorist contents, of France’s temporary ban on Telegram during the riots or the ban of Tiktok in Kanaky during the uprising, and now we’re supposed to turn around and say “actually censorship is cool”? Are we to empower those we’re fighting in hope that they exclusively use this power against our common enemies? I’ve left Twitter the very day its purchase by the muskrat was officialized and I’ve been telling everyone I know to do as much. Sure, a european ruling would give me something I want, but I don’t trust in what comes next. There’s no way the European Union bans X and don’t end up blocking left wing fedi instances like ml or hexbear, as soon as their existence is brought to their attention.



  • As much as I hate X, I might have to think about this one for a while. Sure, this platform is a vessel for fascist propaganda and a threat to democracy, but on the other hand, creating a legitimate precedent for banning a social network on political grounds might be a slippery slope. The EU has already made dubious reforms regarding internet freedom, like their antiterrorist bill which require website hosts to remove content whithin an hour if it is signaled to them by the police. I’m not sure if giving them more power and legitimacy in policing online content is a good idea…









  • Good question, but I guess it also goes down to what you think Jesus was. Do you think he was God Incarnate or had a divine nature? Do you think he was a prophet of God, but himself simply human? Or just a cool guy, but nothing divine? In the first case, you are a Christian, even if you don’t identify with any of the well known versions of Christianity. After all, many different conceptions of Christianity have existed.

    In the third case, I don’t think there is or should be a term for it. After all, is there a word for someone who thinks Marcus Antoninus was a cool guy? If that’s not something that constitutes an important part of who you are and how you think, why should you be called anything in regards to it? Maybe depending on just how much you like him, we might call you a Jesus fan. Jesus fanboy or fangirl at worst. But there needsn’t be a specific word.

    Now, the middle case, where you recognize Jesus as a prophet is an interesting one, because several religions would qualify, including Manichaeism, Islam and Druzism; and as far as I know there isn’t a term that englobes them all without also including Judaism… If I were to invent a term for that, I might go with “jesuic” or “yeshuaic”, by analogy with the word “abrahamic” that englobes those who recognize Abraham as a prophet.