Series List and Newbie Guide

A Quick Newbie Guide.

Herein find links, resources, series list, Disqus markup tips, vocabulary, and disclosures of various kinds.

The First R2D Post Ever. For those who want to start at the beginning. (And let me say: you are brave souls. As of this update, I’ve got more than 1200 posts in the bag.)

The Rules of Engagement. What I expect from folks while visiting here–and what I commit to do on my side.

High and low Christianity. My approach to this blog.

What is a toxic Christian? I use the term “toxic Christian” a lot, so if you’re wondering what that is, here you go.

Judging its validity. Why Christianity doesn’t work for me.

Non-toxic Christian grab bag. Some Christians who I think get the religion (more) right.

Glossary of Terms. Just in case you wonder what a particular word means.

Disqus Formatting Tips. For those who’d like to use markups in their comments.

Disclosures. Various disclosures people might want to know about.

Master List of Series

Here’s the main list of series I’ve done here, all helpfully listed in order. If I missed an entry or you think a series can use a new addition, feel free to drop me a line. FYI: Lists are given from earliest to latest.

This Present Darkness Mega-Mondo-Ultra-Review!

I began this series in a very tongue-in-cheek way. Then it got totally out of control! Now it extends across our Lord Snow Presides off-topic Mondays. I really think we’re going to finish the whole thing. We’re about 1/3 through as I update this section (January 2020).

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The Unequally Yoked Club

This series concerns how Christians talk about and behave in mixed-faith marriages.

I moved these to their own page–please click here for the link!

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The Handbook for the Recently Deconverted

A follow-up series with a slightly different focus than The Christian’s Guide to Ex-Christians. I specifically aimed it at actual ex-Christians themselves, especially folks who want resources to help navigate life after religion. Most resources aim for the Christian half of the couple–and thus contain next to nothing that’s really useful for either spouse.

I moved these links to their own page–please click here to see them!

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The Cult of “Before” Stories

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The Christian’s Guide to Ex-Christians

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Christians Behaving Badly

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Redefining Words

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Defining Moments

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A Glossary of Terms I Use.

Atheism. The state of non-belief in any gods or religions’ truth claims. The null state; atheism is not a belief in and of itself.

Avocadoes. Our hair looks great and we do not want to talk about it.

Bumble and Bother. The blog’s mascots. A pair of ginger tabby tornadoes who enlighten all our lives and make us happy. Look for the FULL KITTEN UPDATE tag for posts about them. Bumble has since found his own friend elsewhere, but Bother’s here pestering us night and day and being ridiculously photogenic. Patreon subscribers who donate $5/month or more get their very own digital photo of Bother!

Cisgender/Transgender. A transgender person identifies as a different gender than the one assigned at birth. Here’s a usage guide that’s very helpful.

Creationism. The belief that the Judeo-Christian god created the whole universe and all life on Earth by magic. It was renamed first “Creation Science” and then “Intelligent Design” some years ago but we will call this belief by its proper name here because we’re totally not fooled. Generally we’ll be using this term in the context of Young-Earth Creationism (YEC), which declares that this magic happened over a period of a few days and also that the Earth is 6,000ish years old, but some Creationists think it happened over many thousands or millions of years.

Deconvert. To leave a religion; also deconversion, the state of having left it. Examples: “I deconverted in the mid-1990s,” or “my deconversion occurred 20 years ago.”

Disengagement. The state of pulling away from overt demonstrations of one’s religious affiliation. For Christians, disengagement looks like not going to church, not using the label of the religion anymore, stopping Bible studies and prayer, and not trying to proselytize. Someone can be disengaged without ever fully deconverting, and some ex-Christians deconvert without ever going through a period of disengagement. Young people are the most likely to disengage from Christianity.

Fundagelical. A non-pejorative fusion of “fundamentalist” and “evangelical.” Does not include hardcore Catholics but they do indeed act a lot alike. Back when yr. Captain was a bright-eyed Christian lass, evangelicals and fundamentalists were very different people. That time is long gone.

Jesus Power, Jesus Aura. Christians tend to think that they are hosts to the very spirit of their god, which makes them possessed–but in a good way, sort of. When they’re really in their groove, they may feel that Jesus is glowing out of every pore and orifice like the Beast at the end of that animated Beauty and the Beast. This power gives them miracle-working abilities and also the capacity to convert anybody they like; it means that they are directly tapping into the power of their god. You won’t often hear them explicitly talking like that, but it’s not hard to see that they think this way when they charge into other people’s spaces and then get astonished that their efforts backfire.

Magic Christian. The Christian who will totally explain all those problems you have with their religion in a way that you’ll totally understand at last, and smooth away all those troublesome objections you have so you’ll totally (re)convert on the spot. Invariably, their attempts involve apologetics nonsense that you’ll have heard six billion times already–and refuted long ago.

Nice Guys™. When the ™ is used, the term means men (or women for that matter) who think they’re “nice,” meaning “generally inoffensive and polite,” when they really aren’t. Niceness gets used as a substitute for any other outstanding qualities and is expected to be rewarded with sex and affection from whatever unfortunate person the Nice Guy™ chooses; when the reward isn’t doled out accordingly, the Nice Guy™ gets furious and weepy. Generally, these “nice” people aren’t self-aware enough to realize that they’re actually not very nice at all.

POC: People of color; non-Caucasian folks. Also: WOC, Women of color.

Toxic Christian. A really nasty Christian who is in the religion to dominate others and feel superior to non-believers. Often fights as much with loving Christians as with non-believers.

TRUE CHRISTIAN™. A mocking take on the way Christians divide themselves up into “true” and “false” Christians and invalidate the beliefs of anybody who differs too much from themselves. It means a Christian who believes basically the same thing as the Christian using the term, who hasn’t gotten caught doing anything really sinful, and who dies in the traces. Any time one of those conditions is violated, the Christian feels free to assign that person to the “false Christian” pile. Obviously, what makes one Christian a TRUE CHRISTIAN™ in one person’s eyes makes that Christian a false one in other people’s eyes, and just about all Christians believe they are “real” Christians and judge other Christians by their own example. It’s all very confusing and it’s really too bad there isn’t a book or something that Christians could use to figure out just what being a Christian should look like. Then we could give one of those books to everyone, and there wouldn’t be any questions at all.

WLC. William Lane Craig, a famous apologist. He’s hinged his career on the use of the Kalam Cosmological Argument, which goes basically like this: Everything that comes into existence had a cause. The universe exists, so obviously it had to have a cause. Therefore, Christianity is totally true. I’m not kidding. If some smartypants decides to ask what caused his god, he’ll say that well duh, his god always existed and is therefore exempt from this argument. I’m not kidding there either.

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Disclosures.

I don’t have any financial connections to any products, people, goods, or services I talk about on this blog unless I specifically mention such a connection. If I receive a product for free in return for a review of it, I’ll mention that fact.

I often monetize links to Amazon and my own original YouTube videos. I get no other reward from these links unless I specify, and I will specify if that is the case.

If I’m personal friends with someone whose name comes up on the blog or I’ve had an unpleasant experience with them somewhere else, I’ll say so.

I reserve the right to talk on my blog about letters or comments I receive. If you left a comment publicly, then I’ll happily credit you with the ideas presented. (If you are a commenter here and end up changing your commenting name/ID or get nervous about your name being in lights, please just tell me in whatever way you’re comfortable with and rest assured I’ll change it as you wish.) If you sent a letter privately, I’ll keep your name out of it unless you said something really terrible, in which case I might. See our Rules of Engagement if you want to know what I consider terrible; this’ll be stuff like threatening people, being particularly insulting, or evangelizing in an especially obnoxious manner.

I do not harvest emails for anything on the blog. I don’t even know how someone might go about doing that. Patheos–meaning the site itself, owned by BeliefNet–has a system whereby you can sign up for newsletter digests and updates whenever I publish a new post. They’ll have their own disclosure with that and I encourage you to read it.

Patheos/BeliefNet pays me for blogging here. I also operate a PayPal and a Patreon that fans and friends can donate to if they wish, and I appreciate all of it.

Bother's not at her best when she first wakes up either.
Bother, feeling frowzy.

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Disqus Formatting Tips.

Disqus uses a few different HTML markups. Use < > symbols rather than [ ] to bracket. Use / to close a tag afterward.

<U> – Underline. Recommended for links as well, since Patheos’ reformatting has taken out Disqus’ natural blue/purple markup color scheme for links.

<I> – Italicize.

<B> – Bold.

<blockquote> – set off quotes in a comment. Make sure to close your blockquote afterward! This can get messy if you’re mult-quoting, so be careful to close what you open.

<spoiler> – to obscure text with a spoiler blanket. Use whenever you write something that might gross someone out, get them in trouble with others shoulder-surfing them, or of course spoils a surprise. We generally don’t spoiler old books or movies, but you do as you like there.

<s> – strikethrough.

<A> – an anchor to an outside source. Use HREF for other webpages, or IMG for just images.
(Samples: <a href=”rolltodisbelieve.com”>Forum</a> –and to hotlink images, <A IMG=”https://media.giphy.com/media/en3LpcUdnwpZ6/source.gif”></A>)

trotting rainbow dash

You can stack HTML tags too: <a href=”rolltodisbelieve.com”><U>Forum</U></a>

To link a YouTube video, just link whatever’s in your upper address bar and it’ll embed all by itself. Disqus handles the code without you having to do anything else so you don’t have to do anything special to link it in comments. Just link the address itself.

The stuff in the white address bar is all you need to paste into your comments. Nothing else in Disqus is this easy.
The https address in the white address bar is all you need to paste into your comments. Nothing else in Disqus is this easy.

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