Saying No to Biometrics (& Augustinian Original Sin)

I have now created the mirror site Children of Job, provoked by Substack’s compliance with online biometric identification mandates, digital currency, etc., and by complaints from (one or two) people in Australia that they could not access my content without submitting to the Agenda.

Obviously, I concur, and encourage everyone to avoid compliance.

The site took about a week to get operational, and cost me around $200; any ongoing costs are minimal, since I already paid for a host for Auticulture.com, which just leaves the domain name costs.

The differences between the self-hosted COJ site and this COJ substack hub are as follows:

• Subscribing to paid content is 1 euro less there (7 rather than 8), since it is my own site (using free Ghost 6.0 software).
• There is no option for private messaging.
• There is no “like” option for new posts. (Hooray! This is a plus for me, since hardly a week goes by that I don’t feel irritated & discouraged by the lack of likes, especially on the written material.)
• There’s no footnote option in formatting but copy-pasting footnotes from Word seems to work well enough.
• There’s a user-friendly tip function, which means it is now easy to offer a month’s access to content for a nominal fee (whatever you can afford), for those unable or unwilling to pay the full fee. (If you do use this option, be sure and message me that it is for paid access, otherwise I will assume it’s a donation.)
• Formatting images over there is a bitch.
• The new site does not allow for free samples of the podcast, which means I will have to do it manually (install the half-length audio, then place the full-length audio below a paywall)
• For all previous episodes of Jobcast and Cognitive Dissident (i.e., prior to Jobcast # 100), only the free sample audios (the first half, usually) have made it here. In the future, if you can’t access the longer version of a specific podcast, contact me and I will fix it. Overtime, I may be able to update all past podcasts, but this isn’t something I fancy doing all at once.
• I am sure there are other differences and probably setbacks to Ghost 6.0, compared to substack, and I will continue to post all material at both sites until such a time as substack becomes impractical, or everyone moves over here.
• Currently, if you subscribe at substack you won’t automatically be subscribed over here, or vice versa, though I can periodically import subscribers from substack to here. I encourage new subscribers to subscribe here as well as, or instead of, at substack, especially since you save money by doing so.
• Generally speaking, all content that appears here will appear on the same day at substack, and vice versa. If you are subbed to both, you will then (I assume) receive two emails, one from each site.
• That’s about it. Since I didn’t get an email after posting this content at CoJ, it seems it is not yet working. If you did get an email from there, let me know.

Onward and outward (and inward)!

About the next Christ Outside of Christianity meet:

Initially, I was going to call these meetings “Christ Contra Christianity,” or something along those lines, but I chose something less antagonistic. However, the more I continue to delve into scripture and talk to nominal (self-nominated) Christians, the more I feel this is more accurate designator of my orientation.

I love Christ despite Christianity and Christian doctrine, even sometimes despite scripture (or at least, the way it is interpreted and applied). Consequently, I want to encourage non-identifying Christians, even those who feel they are not remotely Christian, to participate, and to know they are welcome, while not discouraging self-identifying Christians, at all (since, if you still want to come after all the ways I challenge orthodox faith and scripture, you are also more than welcome).

Thanks to a recent comment at CoJ, I managed to sum up my feeling in a single line today: The whole notion that one must “believe” in “Jesus Christ” to be saved (versus have a direct encounter with the reality the words point towards) is morally as well as intellectually repulsive to me.

Of course, there’s a lot more to it, and a lot more ways I could sum up my feelings, in equally pithy lines. But the above covers quite a lot.

As it happens, today I read the below passage in Elaine page’s Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. Pagels had John Brockman for an agent, and she even acknowledges him in the foreword; so I am by no means advocating her work, or assuming that this passage is entirely accurate. In fact, knowing the source, I suspect it is stacking the deck unfairly against Augustine (let me know what you think). Yet, I still imagine there is enough historical truth not to dismiss it entirely, and I think it gets fairly close to the tension between “faith and hubris” that I am constantly exploring.

Let me know in comments or by DM at substack or email (my first name at proton mail) if you want to attend the next Christ Contra Christianity meet (this Sat, around 1 pm UK time, roughly).