[Car Talk with Martok] Jesus Christ, it's a Straight Line!
[Car Talk with Martok] Jesus Christ, it's a Straight Line!
“Holy potatoes” 🤣🤣🤣🤣💀💀💀
Just take the train!
Isn't the train full of zombies?
Yeah, but zombies can be defeated with potatoes.
Instead of rescuing Jason Bourne, they blow a hole in the planet. Brilliant!! 🤣
Going off on a tangent here, I dislike it when people use that phrase "Jesus Christ!" like that. I get that religion has caused much of the evil in this world... (arguably less so than capitalism but... whatever!:-P), though that doesn't (shouldn't) matter. It demeans us to sink to that level, whatever our own personal thoughts are on the matter, and regardless of the particular target. / end of my Ted Talk here
And like, isn't that the meaning of Rule 1, where generally "othering" a group is a strong no-no (the chief one in fact, hence it appearing first)? Granted that religion is a choice unlike e.g. race or sexual preference, but even so? Jesus himself was an extremely chill dude - "Love Thy Neighbor" and all of that - so it's not his fault that after his death people later abuse his name to gain personal power, using it to do things like diddle children, which is vehemently NOT what "love thy neighbor" meant there!?!?!?!
Star Trek shows us a world where we can rise above all that:-). A famous person semi-recently said: "when they go low, we go high".
I have no love for religion when it has killed people in my community and when it has been used to spit hate in my face, as a gay man, on a constant basis throughout my life. I am certainly not going to be respecting one of their 10 Commandments in not taking the lords name in vain when they don't respect the commandments in loving thy neighbor. I do not respect a religion that does not respect me. It is as simple as that. This is a two way street and the oppressed and scapegoated minority is definitely not the one who should make the first move. Especially when "Do not take the lords name in vain" could be applied to a trillion other things, such as using the Lords name to justify support for a party of hateful bigots that stand antithetical to everything the bible claims Jesus to be. Wanna make clear, I'm talking about religion as a whole there and not specifically religious people. It's just hard to reconcile as a gay guy.
I wrote Rule 1, it doesn't really apply here because Jesus Christ is a generalized swear. It's not used as an anti-Christian epithet. It's not used as a form of hate speech in regards to the religion or the people who use it. It's an expression of extreme surprise. It wasn't used in regards to Christians or in specific to them. Didn't attack them, didn't question them, didn't refer to them. I said two words that have been used in this capacity for at least 200 years.
Lastly, the title is just quoting a movie. "Jesus Christ, it's Jason Bourne." And that's one of the primary reasons why I definitely don't care about using the phrase. There aren't really any protections for it in media outside of normal swearing. It's been adopted into the main stream as an expression of frustration. Religion has little to do with it anymore.
It certainly has done all that you said are more... religious fascists even killed Jesus himself, then others turned around to use him as a martyr for their own cause. Jesus the idea can be a bit like Santa Claus - it can mean whatever the fuck you want it to, especially if you can gain something (profits, power, gratification, etc.) as a result?
Regardless, I like how welcoming this community is. We can do yet still more though, to avoid "othering" half the people on planet earth? (Muslims also consider Jesus as one of the Holy Prophets, and similarly to Christianity makes up 1/4th-1/3rd of all people; Hindi is much more of a stretch but they too incorporate Jesus Christ into the pantheon of various "gods" and "avatars" and the like...; and too there are Mormons, who consider themselves Christians even while mainstream Christians do not in return, and on and on it goes - there really are a lot of people who at least claim to follow what Jesus says!)
Btw - you will enjoy this one, I think, even though it is not all that relevant to this discussion imho - that isn't what taking the lord's name in vain means. Mostly, as far as I've heard, that is "claiming his name" (calling yourself by a form of it?) yet denying all the great responsibility that comes with it. i.e., it is the very self-professed Christians who in the act of demeaning you ("treat others as you would wish to be treated in return"?), were the ones performing the very act of "taking HIS name", but "in vain". It's just a fucking swear man, not a commandment-breaker, don't sweat it:-).
That said, when I was growing up, the F-bomb (YOU KNOW WHICH ONE) was a generalized swear. It was also a short-form word for a cigarette? And on top of that, partially reclaimed by some within the target community, much as the N-word. Do you see how none of that matters? I had to expend SO MUCH effort to throw away my false religious roots (Will & Grace on TV helped so much with that:-P ngl I could not stand to watch it especially when 2 men kissed - I FORCED myself to watch, over and over again, to get past the idea that it was "not normal" or "unacceptable" or "morally wrong"). So please believe me when I say: that it made up a general swear for so long is nowhere near an excuse. Whatever THEY do is on them, while what WE do is on US. Yes, fuck religious Christo-fascists who instead of lifting a finger to help someone go extremely out of their way to heap heavy burdens upon other people (btw those are Jesus' very own words - in Matthew 23:4)... but regardless of the past, who have we decided to be, here, in this place, at this time?
If it's a direct quote from a movie... that actually might be a good counter-argument. Except wait a minute, if I used that argument in order to say the F-bomb word, or the N-word, would you (or the current mods I guess) allow me to get away with that then? Whether you/they did or did not, you should not, is what I am saying. Because it "others" people. See also my reply to the other comment below my prior reply.
Rule 1 is "No bigotry," and trying to force rules and speech limitations imposed by your own religion onto those who don't share them seems like a pretty bigoted thing to do.
I would love to argue back - e.g. I never tried to "force" anything here, I did not submit a report/complaint, nor have I downvoted a single item across this entire thread, I merely shared my own thoughts etc. - but you are coming to this conversation too late: I already see that people are not able to offer rational discourse on this particular subject matter, which is far too emotionally charged.
I'm more of a "Christ on a cracker" man in polite company, or "fuck me sideways" otherwise.
This feels different though. I may be inadequate at explaining but I will try. Both of those involve a juxtaposition of things that are normal but are odd when conjoined: fucking + ... sideways? Christ but... as peanut butter?
Calling out a proper name as in "JFC man!" is more like "oh no, somebody pulled a joey!" (or conversely, "watch out - she's a Karen!", MY CHILD vibes intensify...:-P). It specifically pulls up the name, in an intentionally derogatory manner. Thereby it is "cheap", as it ties in to the aforementioned "othering" effect - which is POWERFUL in its allure and an ever-present bias making up human thought patterns, and therefore needs to be watched out for or it will suck us in.
Ironically I would be okay if this community added an exemption to its rules, like "no othering of a group - unless the group in question is Christianity, because fuck those people, amirite?!:-P" What I cannot stand though is when something like this "sneaks through". Beehaw does a fantastic job at explaining who they are - with not only mere sidebar text but multiple pages of a help document detailing what the rules are, and how they will be enforced. Likewise, Blåhaj does a fantastic job of not only talking the talk but then walking out that walk, i.e. "please bear in mind that this is a server that is very protective of our minority members and bigotry of any variety will be squashed with great prejudice." In contrast, this community says "generally "othering" of a group will result in removal/ban." - except, again, unless the target in question is one of those that the people in power happen to disagree with, I guess?
This is not very Star Trek of us, imho. It does not matter if Christianity is deserving of respect or not - there are a lot of historical reasons pointing to... well... both sides yay and nay there - but what matters is how we treat people - ideally with a spirit of outright welcomingness to all, but failing that, at least with equity and fairness? (or at the very minimum, I would hope, transparency)
Hey, I'm sorry that "Jesus Christ" as an expletive feels alienating to you. I hadn't thought about that perspective. As a lifelong atheist my feeling is that Christianity, and by extension blasphemous expletives, are so thoroughly enmeshed in Western culture that that's what comes out when I'm startled. I don't feel like I'm using the words to show distaste for another group; I feel like the words are part of my culture even though I'm not religious. My guess is that saying"Jesus Christ" is generally not intended to be a statement on Christians. But I can see how someone who is religious might see it differently. I suppose lots of people see their relationship with Jesus as a part of their identity that distinguishes them from people who don't believe, and from that perspective I can see how a perceived attack on Jesus feels like a personal attack.
I'll also mention that since I didn't have a religious upbringing I was never taught to have any particular reaction to blasphemy, which tends to make me see those expletives as less-offensive alternatives to scatological or sexual expletives. I don't have a good perspective of what such language feels like to someone who was taught that blasphemy is bad.
And why not add one more paragraph - I agree that when I view him as a moral philosopher and proto-socialist I find a lot of what Jesus said and did to be admirable.
Well, something to consider is that as an exclamation, “Jesus” etc started among Christians as an invocation of protection, not as an expletive. Same as “oh my god!”. We’ve kind of dropped the second part for brevity, (“save me!”)
In the way we use it, it’s usually more of an exclamation than an expletive, but, eh, as far as which is more offensive, it’ll always depend on who you’re talking to- even between Christians
I find it the height of irony how the class of people that Jesus hated most were hypocritics - calling them "den of vipers" and even more descriptive "like whitewashed tombs, looking good only on the outside but on the inside full of rot and decay".
Jesus hung out with prostitutes and "tax collectors" - today that would be LGBTQIA+ and homeless or renters rather than landlords - and argued for women's rights.
In America the people who showed up to overthrow the government on January 6th called themselves "patriots", and similarly people say how they "follow the teachings of Christ". But... how trustworthy are the people saying this?
Anyway, I've been a bit of everything in my life from Christian to Atheist and several forms of in-between, but regardless of my personal thoughts about the actual subject mainly what I was saying above was about the meta-subject of the wording causing "othering" and making people feel welcomed. Not people who "follow Christ" by like diddling kids (aka who do NOT do that, whatever they claim), and rather people who regardless of whether they do the former, find the latter repugnant, yet can come from a wide variety of backgrounds (including other varieties of non-mainstream Christianity such as Mormon, or Muslims also consider Jesus as one of the Holy Prophets).
I would not like to see people making fun of gay people. Or women (or men). So why is it okay to make fun of Christians? And not merely the hypocritical Christo-fascists, but all Christians (and again, also Mormons, Muslims, etc.)? Even the ones feeding & helping to house the homeless, or the ones who fought to end slavery in the UK? It's easier to build a community by "othering" the outsiders, by making everything about "us versus them". I'm watching the Republicans in the USA do that right this very weekend, ending much of the spending programs for things such as healthcare and science, and when asked they can't even say why really, except that they need to "pwn the libs".
Which makes me think that it's not enough to be against something - we need to be for something. One thing this very community is for is inclusivity, creating a safe and not merely tolerant but outright welcoming space for people to come and chat. Unless, that is, you are part of that "other" group, over "there".
That does not make me feel good. How does it make you feel?
