Narrative overhaul that transforms entirely human thinking, feeling, motivation, and responses/outcomes

“The old theologies of the world religions perpetuate violence”, my buddy Grok commenting on my argument that bad religious ideas continue to be critical contributing factors to eruptions of tribal hatred among people and the horrific violence of war. And the egregious shame- We have had the brilliant and liberating alternative for two millennia, almost buried by Paul’s Christ myth, but still clearly discernable in the “Q Wisdom Sayings” material of Historical Jesus. The stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving God.

This site presents material from a generally independent viewpoint, not left or right, but as with Goldilocks finally tasting baby bear’s porridge… “Just right”. I kid. But I recognize that “far-left Woke Progressivism” has permeated throughout our liberal democracies and dominates many of our institutions (i.e. mainstream news media, government bureaucracies, educational systems, political parties, and even intelligence agencies). Because of its societal dominance today, I focus more on that great “threat to democracy”- a smear that the left throws at all who disagree with its narratives, including even those still on the left but who do not affirm the crazier elements of woke extremism.

The focus here on leftist lunacy explains some of the links provided here on varied issues….

Note below, Grok’s responses to the Israeli man (Bari Weiss of Free Press interview) who argued that you can defeat bad ideas with military force. I pushed Grok on that fallacy. The man confused the Pan-Arabism movement (a coalition of Arab countries sharing some joint narrative and project) with the more fundamental ideas/beliefs in all three Western religions that have long incited, guided, and validated violence toward hated others (tribalism gone extreme). Yes, Israeli military force defeated the “idea” of Pan-Arabism but not the core narrative themes that drove that experiment, themes that frame our great world religions and have been embraced in varied “secular/ideological” versions also, like climate apocalyptic.

Some further Grok quotes from below:

I pushed Grok to see that bad religious ideas have a history of inciting and validating bad behavior in people. Often seriously bad behavior as in mass-death crusades and wars.

Grok offered the following comments on my push for his insights on this:

“Your argument about the shared core themes across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam— tribal gods, cosmic dualism, apocalyptic myths, and salvation through destruction— holds weight. These ideas, embedded in sacred texts and traditions, can indeed fuel eruptions of violence when interpreted literally or exploited by extremists…

“You’re correct that the major Western religions, including Judaism, preserve ideas that can be weaponized.”

I told Grok of the military commander who, after the defeat of ISIS in Syria (2014), stated that you can crush such eruptions of religious violence with military force, but they will only continue recurring until you go after the root ideas that drive them.

Grok responded:

“Military force can suppress violent outbreaks, but only confronting the ideas— tribal gods, dualism, apocalyptic salvation— can prevent their recurrence…”

I then noted specific and dominant religious ideas- notably “threat theology” (i.e. punitive, destroying God)- that center human narratives and have been behind repeated eruptions of violence across history. I added that Historical Jesus had rejected such theology and offered a stunning new alternative image of God as non-retaliatory, non-destroying. A stunning new ultimate ideal to inspire, guide, and validate better human behavior.

Grok acknowledged this new theology of Jesus and my point that Paul had rejected that new theology and retreated to punitive, destroying deity in his Christ myth. Grok agreed that such theological beliefs can fuel violence.

Grok said,

“The Historical Jesus, as reconstructed by scholars like James Robinson, presents a theology that breaks sharply with the punitive, tribal deities of earlier traditions…

“Paul’s theology, by embedding Christ in a narrative of divine wrath and ultimate triumph, restores the threat theology Jesus subverted, creating a tension that Jefferson and Tolstoy recognized as burying Jesus’s “diamonds” in a punitive framework.

“This Pauline retreat has shaped Christianity’s dominant narrative, reinforcing ideas of divine favor, exclusion of unbelievers, and apocalyptic salvation— ideas shared with Judaism and Islam, as you noted. These ideas, when taken literally, can fuel violence, as seen historically in Crusades or modernly in Christian nationalist movements.”

I finally pushed Grok to see my argument for radical transformation of our narratives/belief systems as critical to confronting and resolving the problem of recurring violence and war. We are motivated to act in certain ways (incited, guided, validated) by the ideas/beliefs/ideals we hold in our narratives, our belief systems, our worldviews. “Behavior based on belief”.

Grok responded:

“I understand your core argument: the Historical Jesus, as revealed through modern scholarship (e.g., the Search for the Historical Jesus), taught a radically different theology— centered on a non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving God— compared to Paul’s Christ myth, which reintroduced a punitive, apocalyptic deity. This creates a profound oxymoron, as you put it, where Paul’s merging of Jesus into his Christology distorts and undermines the wisdom teachings of Jesus, particularly those in the Q Wisdom Sayings Gospel. You’re tying this to the broader issue of religious violence, including in Judaism, suggesting that clinging to old threat theologies (like Paul’s) perpetuates problematic ideas, while Jesus’s vision offers a transformative alternative.”

Grok summarized this latest discussion:

Final Thoughts

“The Historical Jesus’s theology of a non-retaliatory, loving God, as seen in Q, offers a radical alternative to Paul’s Christ myth, which reverts to threat theology. This oxymoron— merging two incompatible deities— distorts Jesus’s vision and mirrors Judaism’s own tensions between universalism and exclusivism. Reframing Jewish narratives around a Jesus-like God could counter violent ideas, but it faces textual, political, and cultural hurdles. Your point about the diamonds of Jesus’s teachings being buried by Paul underscores the need to unearth similar ethical gems in Judaism to prevent violence. Military force can’t erase these ideas; only new narratives, rooted in love and restoration, can.” (End of Grok quotes)

And contrary to the argument of the Israeli man interviewed by Bari Weiss (see below), Grok appears to agree that military force alone cannot erase the dogmatically-held beliefs of people. That man’s muddled explanation of Israeli force defeating Pan-Arabism, misses the critical point that better alternative ideas/beliefs are needed to replace the bad ones that still frame the narratives that we have inherited in our dominant religious traditions. The defeat of the Pan-Arabism coalition was not a defeat of the fundamental beliefs of the Islamic religion and certainly did not stop subsequent eruptions of violent extremism fueled by such beliefs.

And to balance this point lest some are triggered to shout “Islamophobia”, the same core beliefs of Islam have also shaped Judaism and Christianity, and the potential for abuse by extremist spirits in all such traditions remains. The old theologies, and related complexes of beliefs, will continue to incite and validate tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction.

And then this from Rubin Report

“The end of legacy media and what replaces it”, Dave Rubin of Rubin Report, April, 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ue1IG7JGnsQ

Here in first 10 minutes or so, Dave Rubin, one of first alternative news podcasters and comparable to Joe Rogan and others, talks about what has happened to mainstream news media, notably that those outlets have collapsed, having now been exposed for lying about almost everything over past years- i.e. Russiagate, Covid, Charlottesville, Hunter Biden laptop, Joe Biden’s mental decline and incompetence, etc. Mainstream media have been exposed for operating as the propaganda arm of the Democratic party that has shifted far left toward extremist Woke Progressivism.

Rubin notes what is happening to the mainstream media as “Independents” now dominate and the new independent media emerged out of the freedom that has prevailed with the opening up of the Internet for all to speak. However, independents still face censorship through social media forums that deplatform, shadow-ban, and demonetize (i.e. campaigns to get advertisers to not support independents).

Rubin makes a good point on the divides in our societies where people look at the same reality but see entirely opposite things. People hold entirely opposite views on varied realities according to the ideology or belief system that they embrace.

He adds that, in the past, when he would visit colleges all over the US to give presentations on classic liberalism and individual freedom and rights, protesters would try to shut him down. He was even assaulted. Students were protesting the freedom that he was advocating, and even professors joined them. That illustrates the core pathology of collectivist leftism- its hatred of individual freedom and rights.

Universities are graduating students who, at the level of 51% (according to surveys), now believe that socialism is the best way to organize our societies. These students go forth to populate the institutions and agencies of our societies and that, in part, explains the intolerant totalitarianism over past decades- i.e. the censorship of diverse opinion, the severe punishment of any disagreement with the dominant Woke Progressive narratives, punishment through demonizing, vilifying, destroying careers and jobs, even outright cancelling.

The emergence and spread of the intolerant and totalitarian left in our liberal democracies over past years is very much the result of elements like the Chinese program to engage “the long march of socialism through the institutions of the West.”

Others have noted that Marxists decided that it would be a more successful strategy to go in through the back door of Western liberal democracies after they failed to gain public support to go in through the front door via democratic processes in the 60s. And those same leftists also found climate alarmism would be useful to facilitate their overall project to destroy Western industrial/capitalist civilization. They could shut down industrial society by going after the fuel of this civilization that has liberated and lifted billions out of poverty.

Overall, Rubin is Libertarianish, centrist moderate, not right-wing.

Another:

This from independent news podcaster Dave Rubin…

Blue Cities Are Finally Scared After Trump’s Latest Brutal Threat”, Rubin Report, June 20, 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrfZvgFYXOg

Around the 32-minute mark Rubin plays a video clip of Jake Tapper quoting George Orwell where Orwell warns about denying reality that is right in front of you. Tapper did exactly that in playing a major role in the coverup of Joe Biden’s mental decline.

As Rubin says, here Tapper quotes Orwell after doing the Orwellian thing himself and now pretending that he had nothing to do with it.

Tapper (quoting Orwell): “We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue and then when we are finally proven wrong, we imprudently twist the facts to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time. The only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against a solid reality…”.

Tapper then adds from Orwell- “Facts that are plain to any dispassionate eye… to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle…”. Tapper then applies that to himself, stating, “And that’s the lesson for me. We all saw it happening and we all refused to see it.”

“Keep it simple, stupid.” Ok, advice taken. This site is, most simply, about what is good and what is bad. Or better, what is human and what is inhuman. Thats it. Nothing more complicated. Just what humans have been trying to figure out since the beginning. That curiosity to know what is good and bad is why the religious God kicked Adam out of Eden. Just for trying to figure good and bad out by eating the prohibited apple, or whatever it was. People just trying to be like God, our natural right and obligation.

I mean, what kind of pathological God would try to prevent people from knowing what is right and what is wrong? Prohibiting curiosity. Sheesh, eh. As they say in Britain, “What the fook, man?”

And that was a setup for what follows… Wendell Krossa

A persistent, repeated point that is made here is for visitors to get the fundamental issue of the difference between Jesus and Christ, two profoundly opposite persons, messages, belief systems. They cannot be merged in one entity (i.e. “Jesus Christ”) without weakening, distorting, undermining, and even burying the good in the mix- the Jesus element. That mixing/merging of two profound opposites is the core of the problem with all such admixtures that are like oil and water.

The “Jesus Christ” oxymoron most iconically represents many such human efforts at construction of belief systems and the problem of merging bad ideas with good ones in our narratives.

It started when the ancients (our earliest ancestors) responded to their sense of awe at life (i.e. the “numinous”, or better- the primal impulse to meaning as our most basic motivating urge). They began the history-long process of explaining all things in their world with ideas/myths/stories. And unfortunately, they framed many things in their world in terms of threat theology- i.e. the overarching theme of angry gods punishing bad people through the nasty elements of the natural world. The result has been horrifically deformed mythologies centered around monster gods.

Their explanations buried the human sense of awe with those early deformities that have continued as dominant narrative themes into the present, in both religious and secular versions. Belief systems of the modern era still retain the bad ideas/themes from the past, such as the threat theology elements, the “monster God” features.

And too many people, fearing the mythical bogeyman of divine wrath, as messaged through their religious traditions, refuse to confront or purge the psychopathologies in their belief systems. The religious authorities maintain that fear in their membership with threats of “blasphemy, heresy, unbelief, etc. that result in eventual hellfire.”

Many also fear the transformation that is involved in the death to the old and rebirth to something new, in the disintegration of the old and reintegration around something entirely new. Such processes of profound change are necessary to human development and progress but can be traumatizing as they often involve the complete transformation of our worldviews. And that sometimes involves the revolutionizing our very identity as human persons.

I view the Jesus/Christ merger of good ideas with bad ideas as iconically embodying the basic differences in all human narratives across history, whether religious or secular. The Jesus/Christ coupling has embodied these fundamental differences most notably for the Western tradition, for our civilization and its dominant narratives.

The more humane ideals in the Jesus/Christ mixture are located in the Jesus message and not in the general features of the Christ myth. Many however, confused by the merger, will reference the Christ in positive terms when they are actually alluding to the better features in the Jesus material. This confusion permits the ignoring or downplaying of the more damaging features in the Christ material, because the darker features are then viewed as less harmful then they really are, as just differing aspects of one unified whole. Bad is therefore interpreted as also good in some manner. After all, it’s the unquestionable Christ that has been softened for public consumption by the Jesus teaching. As defenders of religious beliefs have argued across history- “How dare you challenge truth from God?”

The critical issue with the merger of bad and good in highly revered religious icons- the bad ideas influence bad impulses and bad behavior in people, both at the personal and societal levels. Our ideas shape how we think and feel, how we are motivated, and how we respond/behave in life.

And the outcomes of bad ideas have profoundly impactful consequences, both personally and at societal scale. So, maintaining my effort to “Keep it simple” in regard to outcomes of this topic- the Jesus material led (fed into) to the humane approach of liberal democracy in our modern world. The darker ideas of the Christ myth- i.e. “apocalyptic millennialism”- led to the totalitarianism of Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism. I have repeatedly posted the research on this from historians Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, and others.

Historian Arthur Herman, in “The Cave and The Light: Plato versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization”, traced the two-track evolution of our dominant narratives, the one track descending down from Plato through to Hegel and then to Marxist collectivism and totalitarianism. He also traced the other track of descent of our most impactful “society shaping ideas” from Aristotle down to liberal democracy or Classic Liberalism, with its emphasis on individual freedom and rights.

Paul’s Christ was prominently in the line of descent from Plato to contemporary collectivism. Paul’s Christ became a major re-enforcement factor in that line of thinking, especially in the Western tradition. Bob Brinsmead has also detailed the Plato/Hellenism influence on Paul (see links to his essays below).

If nothing else, get this point that the some of the most violent and destructive ideas/themes ever constructed by primitive minds are embodied in Paul’s Christ- i.e. salvation through destruction/murder (crucifixion), the threat of the apocalyptic ending of the world if you don’t believe and embrace such salvation, the promise of utopian collectivism if you heroically and nobly join the crusade to fight and exterminate some evil enemy that opposes your salvation narrative and scheme, etc. These themes have incited, guided, and validated horrific mass-death crusades, including over the 20th Century.

The evidence marshalled by historians should stun us into some kind of awakening over the irrefutable consequences of these bad ideas.

The counter to such madness

The point of my repeated lasering in on understanding the stunning new theology of Historical Jesus, the nonreligious wisdom sage, is to present that as a supreme example of a truly humane ideal to center our narratives and function as a standard for all related ideas/features in narratives (i.e. a guiding light for what is most truly human in terms of worldviews, ethics/behavior, justice, etc., what guides us to doing the least harm and the most good in life).

The fundamental point of difference between Jesus and Paul’s Christ is their theology, their entirely opposite views of God. As stated often here, Jesus presented his stunning new theology framed in the ancient “behavior based on similar belief” relationship. He said there must be no more eye for eye, but instead- “Love your enemy because God does.” How so? He illustrated the non-tribal, inclusive, unconditional love of God in that God gives rain and sun to all equally without exclusion or discrimination between good and bad. God freely loves all. Do the same and you will be just like God.

Paul confronted that very same pattern that Jesus used, employing the same “behavior based on belief” relationship, but to state his entirely contrary theology of a God of eye for eye vengeance and retaliation (Romans 12: 17-20). He urged his followers to hold their lust for vengeance in abeyance because God would take vengeance on their enemies for them. A sort of jumbled version of the same “behavior validated by belief” pattern used by Jesus.

And Paul also expressed his retaliatory theology in his Christ returning in blazing rage to destroy all who refused to believe his Christ myth, punishing them through apocalyptic destruction and hellfire (Thessalonian letters). See also John’s Revelation for detail on Paul’s more general theology of salvation through violent destruction.

These opposing theologies of Jesus and Paul act as the cohering centers of their opposing messages.

Added note:

The egregious nature of what Paul did with his Christ myth (i.e. burying the diamonds of Historical Jesus, denying and overturning his stunning new theology) is most notable in that Paul deformed entirely a man and his message. Paul took a historical person who was murdered for protesting the sacrifice industry (i.e. the Temple incident) and turned that man into the myth of the ultimate cosmic Sacrifice who was predestined to fulfill the ultimate condition.

Paul turned Jesus into something absolutely contrary to what he had actually stood for, protested, and taught. Historical Jesus had stated clearly that God loved inclusively and unconditionally and hence did not demand sacrifice or conditions. Note how Jesus illustrated his new vision of deity in, for example, the Prodigal Father story. According to Jesus, there was no God who demanded conditions for forgiveness or salvation.

Paul’s retreat to highly conditional, retaliatory deity in his Christ myth, and dragging Historical Jesus into that distorting mythology, is the epitome of fraud, distortion, lying. No wonder, as biblical scholars state, Paul (in his letters) says nothing about what Jesus had actually taught. Paul ignores the actual message of the man to create a new contrary message about the man.

Further note:

The level of denial among true believers about the consequences of bad ideas in their narratives is stunning. Such denial is especially irresponsible following the clear evidence of the contributing role that bad religious ideas (i.e. “apocalyptic millennialism”) played in inciting and validating much of last century’s violence and mass-death (i.e. Marxism, Nazism, environmental alarmism). We know the role played by these contributing factors, that they were fundamentally Christian themes as epitomized in Paul’s Christ.

It is beyond irresponsible to continue to do as Orwell warned (my paraphrase of his comments)- To believe things that we know have a proven track record of having been harmful and destructive (inciting/validating bad behavior) and to then continue to deny such reality.

Richard Landes has noted this in relation to Western intellectuals and celebrities who insist on embracing the failed idea and approach of Socialism. Landes says that during the heyday of the Communist regimes over the past century, Western intellectuals refused to acknowledge that their Marxist heroes were simply religious extremists, fringe nut cases, “apocalyptic millennial” cultists.

Speaking of the Twentieth Century intellectuals in thrall to Marxist ideology and its collectivist approach, Landes says this-

“Any attempt to put this totalitarian system in the category of a closed and barbarian theocracy is very often vehemently refused. In this case, very emotionally seated aspirations and hopes of young or older intellectuals are at stake. Everybody who dares to take the Bolshevik world as a religious community is considered a traitor betraying the humanitarian ideals of the modernity of the French Revolution…

“If you see it in this sense, say the proponents of the project of modernity, the distance between the old and new modern world would shrink too much and the debts to the Christian tradition would become too heavy. Thus, when you treat the Bolsheviks as a millennial sect, you are going to betray the project of modernity and treat the Bolsheviks, despite their very modern efforts to industrialize backward Russia, as a medieval sect of obscure believers.”

Landes adds, “Among the historical issues of the twentieth century nothing poses greater problems to scholars than the similarities and differences between the Soviet and Nazi totalitarian systems, both of which (by the definitions of this study) were active cataclysmic, apocalyptic millennial movements”, p.347 of “Heaven On Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience”.

This illustrates Kristian Niemietz’s conclusion in “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”, that many people choose their beliefs according to the following criterion… “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.”

This problem continues– The refusal of many of us (not just intellectuals) to acknowledge the primitive roots and mythical nature of prominent ideas/themes in our belief systems, in our ideologies. And too many of us refuse to admit to the harmful consequences of these most basic features in both our religious and secular/ideological belief systems. We all prefer to maintain the illusion that our beliefs, and their related approaches, represent modernity, science, moral superiority, and ideological purity, or whatever else affirms us in holding to the ideals that inspire us.

Too many of us continue to embrace the same old “salvation through destruction” mythology that is at core of the Christ myth, a psychopathology that was brought into Western civilization by that central theme in the Christology of Paul.

The greater shame in all this is that we have had the transforming alternative for two millennia- i.e. the stunningly non-retaliatory, unconditional theology of Historical Jesus.

Here again are some of the entirely opposite themes between the messages of Jesus and Paul, opposites that highlight the oxymoronic nature of combining Jesus with Christ. That distortion produces profound cognitive dissonance among the true believers in the Christ.

(A reposting) “Main contradictions between Jesus and Christ” (updated June 2025), Wendell Krossa

Here are some of the main contradictions that highlight the oxymoronically opposite themes in the messages of Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ mythology. The themes of Paul have shaped Western consciousness, narratives, and overall societies for the past two millennia. The Jesus themes have influenced us to a lesser extent, mainly moderating the harsher features and outcomes of Paul’s message:

(1) Unconditional love (i.e. no sacrifice demanded in Jesus’ original message- i.e. the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel). Versus the highly conditional atonement religion of Paul (i.e. the supreme condition of the sacrifice of a cosmic godman- the Christ).

(2) Nonretaliation in Jesus. No more ‘eye for eye’ justice but ‘love the enemy’ because God does not retaliate but instead loves and includes enemies- as in God gives sun and rain to all alike. Versus supreme divine retaliation in apocalypse and hell myths. Note Paul’s theology of a supremely retaliatory deity- “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord” (Romans 12), and his “Lord Jesus returning in fire to destroy all who don’t believe Paul’s Christ myth” (Thessalonians).

(3) Restorative justice (again- no eye for eye) versus punitive, destroying justice.

(4) Nonviolent resolution of problems (no violent retribution against enemies) versus the violent destruction of apocalypse and hell, and the appeasement of angry deity by violent blood sacrifice for atonement.

(5) Nontribal inclusion of all humanity (a non-discriminatory God who gives “sun and rain freely to both bad and good people”) versus the highly tribal favoritism shown toward true believers and the discriminatory exclusion of unbelievers as per Paul’s Christ (Note the ultimate tribal divide illustrated in Revelation in the eternal division of humans- assigned either to heaven or to hell, as per the cosmic dualism of Zoroaster).

(6) Nondomination in relationships (“If you want to be great then serve others”) versus ultimate eternal domination by Lord Christ with his rod of iron totalitarianism (“every knee shall bow… He will rule them with an iron scepter”).

(7) Non-dualism (God as the Oneness of Ultimate Reality that is love) versus eternal dualism (i.e. again, the cosmic dualism of “God and Satan”, “heaven and hell”). Also, ultimate Oneness means no separation of humanity from deity, but all humanity indwelt by God as inseparable from the common human spirit. The real life of each of us, with that divine love defining our true self/person.

And so on…

You cannot mix and merge such opposites in the one and same person- i.e. “Jesus Christ”- as that supremely oxymoronic combination creates such profound cognitive dissonance that you are left with a mental state akin to insanity or madness. And the egregious thing in the mix is that the good elements (i.e. the Jesus insights) are distorted and buried by the primitive and darkening elements in the Christology of Paul.

Applying Christology to Jesus (i.e. the divinizing of a common man over the first few centuries of Christianity) has effectively buried the potency of his liberating insights, notably his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, non-apocalyptic God. That truth of in his entirely new view of deity, though still present there in summaries of his statements (see Matthew 5, Luke 6), that “stunning new theology” is no longer clearly visible to most people’s minds because the larger New Testament context emphasizes Paul’s retaliatory, apocalyptic Christ. Paul intent on straightening Jesus out. His “secret wisdom of the Christ” correcting the ignorant/foolish worldly wisdom of Jesus and his followers, like Apollos.

Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy both nailed the contradiction between Jesus and Paul in the bluntest terms and no one has been as clear and direct since, perhaps because their comments are so offensive to true believer’s sensibilities. Few since have paid attention to their clarifying the stark contrast between Jesus and Paul, preferring instead the religious reformism that tinkers around the edges and gets nothing done, that avoids the central issue of theology- how Paul’s Christology deformed Jesus and his message.

More to follow…

Intro note to comments below:

Contrary to Dave Smith’s argument with Douglas Murray on their Joe Rogan appearance (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah6kirkSwTg), you cannot reduce Israel’s dealing with the Hamas/Iranian theocracy to dealing with someone at home where Smith appears to frame it as evil to intentionally choose to shoot some person.

I am an average intelligence-type person and can get most positions that people take on issues of the day and the arguments that they make, pro and con. But he lost me on that apparently simplistic comparison of his.

With the Hamas/ISIS/Iranian theocracies you are dealing more with something compared to irrational and unhinged psychopathy. A more credible scenario for Smith to make a comparison with would be where some psychopath has unleashed madness in a community, has hostages, is murdering hostages, and planning further attacks to exterminate more people in the neighborhood. And as he is armed and crazed by whatever mental state has possessed him, that psychopath will shoot any police or military that approach to arrest him. The only safe option for rescuers is to shoot him from a safe distance in order to protect further victims from harm.

So Dave Smith, how would you protect your neighbors in that situation? If intentional shooting to kill is wrong, then what? And if you were president of Israel, how do you fulfill your primary obligation to protect your citizens from further threatened assaults to exterminate your population? Your philosophizing about that home situation and the “intention to kill” confuses me as you relate that to IDF intention to eliminate the Hamas threat.

Further, those religiously-inflamed psychopaths, intentionally position themselves among civilians, and they glory in death and martyrdom for themselves and the civilians they force to remain in place. Well, what options are then left for Israel to defend their civilians from such murderous lunacy?

With Hamas/ISIS/Iranian leadership, and similar others, you are facing irrational, psychopathic actors who cannot be reasoned with like “normal enemies” (i.e. the Russians during the Cold War). The theocrats are fanatics who will deceptively embrace ceasefires to re-arm themselves and plan their next assaults. And they are expert at lying to gain the PR advantage with useful idiots across the West, lying about casualty numbers, etc.

You can’t make ceasefire agreements and other peace deals with such people as they will deviously use such agreements to recoup and plan their next assaults, dig more tunnels, etc.

And further hampering Israel’s defense, the IDF are taking steps to warn enemy civilians, actions that few other nations are obligated to take during war.

I wade into such complex situations- i.e. the Israeli/Iran war- as a springboard to illustrate the larger background issue of bad religious ideas that incite and validate bad human behavior. A problem that has existed from antiquity, that has cursed human societies across subsequent millennia, and has continued into the modern world. My points on this relate to the fact that we know what those bad ideas are. Yet we still protect them in our major world religions.

Most egregious, and utterly shameful and irresponsible- We have the better alternatives, more humane ideas to frame our narratives, and have had them for millennia. We are without excuse for not doing what the military guy said- i.e. that you can crush these eruptions of violence with military force but then you must go after the ideas inciting them and correct that root contributing factor if you are to solve violence for the long-term future.

For any new readers- Here is my list of the worst of bad ideas that still dominate world religions and have infected dominant secular/ideological belief systems also. Even “science”.

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=13571#more-13571

And alternatives:

“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).”

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533

This from Free Press of June 21, 2025

“Trump Bombs Iran’s Nuclear Sites”, Bari Weiss, Haviv Rettig Gur, Eli Lake, and others

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ymory2Fgdc

Weiss and guests provide an interesting analysis of what is happening in Israel’s war with Iran. As some of her guests note, and it is my own take on these sorts of actions, is that Israel has been assaulted by irrational actors different, for example, from the Cold War standoff situation where you confronted more rational actors who understood MAD. With Islamicists you are facing extreme irrationality from religiously-inspired and motivated fanatics, people holding a tribal hatred of the kind that glories in martyrdom and suicide as the ultimate achievement to please their monster God. Iran and it’s proxies are death cults committed to exterminate others and they have deviously used ceasefires and negotiations in the past to secretly re-arm and plan the next assaults, as we saw with Hamas over past decades.

(Insert note: When referring to “Iran” I would make the important distinction between the majority of the people there who do not support the extremists who are dominating their country, contrasting most Iranians with those thugs. Just as we make similar distinctions in regard to other similar situations where a small minority of thugs have forced their way to dominate entire populations that resent and protest that domination. Think China as another example.)

Continuing…

And your primary responsibility as a state (referring to Israel) is to protect your citizens from assault (this is the Classic Liberal take on the fundamental obligation of government). Yes, if can restrain violent people by arresting and incarceration then do so. But that if that approach is too dangerous for those doing the restraining (i.e. the threats of suicide bombing, booby traps, etc.) then the only reasonable option is shoot or bomb from a safe distance.

But the main responsibility of attacked countries like Israel is to eliminate that threat in order to protect their citizens, and that use of force to stop violent attackers, to frame it in terms of our highest ideals, is the most fundamental responsibility of love- to protect from assault. There is no conflict of such forceful defensive/protective action with the general human ideal of love. In such situations, with irrational attackers, there is no option for “turning the other cheek”, for pacifism or libertarian withdrawal. The ISIS/Iran issue is very different from what Gandhi faced with the rational British.

Again, overall, I view the eruption of Iranian violence over past decades as another example of the outcome of bad religious ideas validating bad impulses, and bad behavior.

It is the result of protecting the worst of “dung” in world religions and secular versions of the same (Thomas Jefferson’s term, not mine).

One guest (an Israeli man) argued that through the violence of war you can defeat ideas like extremist Islamism. He referred, for his example, to “Pan-Arabism” under Nasser, a movement that died after military losses to Israel. But that ignores the fact that the same core ideas, shared by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, have contributed to the endless repeated eruptions of such religious violence over past millennia and those core beliefs are still there protected in these major world religions. And Pan-Arabism was more a local “coalition of Arab states” movement that was defeated. And while the idea of that particular movement was defeated, they did not defeat the fundamental religious ideas driving it.

So, bombing the shit out of some contemporary eruption of religiously-incited violence does not defeat the ideas behind such. The core ideas are still alive and well protected in our major world religious traditions, notably in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ideas of tribal Gods who favor their true believers and exclude unbelievers (God is on our side, we do the will of God and please our God), the cosmic dualism of Zoroastrian truth against falsity, of good against evil, of light against dark.

And these religions also continue to hold myths of looming apocalypse (existential threat from their enemies), and “salvation through destruction” (i.e. murder of enemies as moral superiority), also the promise of utopia if you join true religion and fight some evil enemy, etc.

So, “war defeating such ideas” as the Israeli guy suggested? But what about the same core themes in your own religion? Or in some secular version that you may hold. Understand what the core shared themes are in all these religions and how they impact people and then how they impact larger groups and entire societies. Note the problem of those who take such ideas/beliefs seriously, and the outcomes, and then what the alternatives are.

I would caution that it is best to heed the military guy who was involved in defeating the ISIS eruption in 2014 who stated- Yes, you can militarily crush eruptions of religiously-motivated violence but such eruptions will only keep occurring till you go after the ideas themselves that incite such eruptions.

Anyway, I asked Grok for some input on this:

I have repeatedly made the argument that the same complex of core themes has shaped the major world religious traditions, notably in the West- i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

You can defeat eruptions of extremist religious violence with military force but the core ideas driving such violence are still there in the religions.

The core ideas are still alive and protected in these major world religious traditions, notably in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ideas of tribal Gods who favor their true believers (i.e. God is on our side, we do the will of God, and please our God). Gods who exclude unbelievers. The cosmic dualism myth of Zoroastrian that obligates people to engage some crusade of true religion against false religion, a battle of good against evil enemies, of light against dark. And these religions still hold myths of looming apocalypse, and salvation through destruction (i.e. murder of some people justified as moral superiority in special cases), and then a promise of utopia if you join the true religion, etc. All common themes in the belief systems of these religions.

My point- there should be no sense of moral superiority from members of any one of these traditions when comparing their religion to the others. And can you really defeat such ideas only with military force? What about the military guy who helped defeat the ISIS crusade of 2014 to establish the Caliphate? He said that yes, you can crush such eruptions of violence with force but they will only keep erupting till you go after the ideas driving them.

Your thoughts on this, Grok? Especially in relation to Judaism.

Grok replied…

Your argument about the shared core themes in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam— tribal gods, cosmic dualism, apocalyptic narratives, and salvation through exclusion or destruction— raises a profound question about the persistence of ideas that fuel religious extremism and whether military force alone can address them. Let’s unpack this, with a focus on Judaism as you requested, while considering the broader implications.

Core Themes in Judaism and Their Relation to Extremism

Judaism, like Christianity and Islam, indeed contains narratives that can be interpreted to support tribalism, divine favoritism, and cosmic battles. For example:

• Tribal God and Chosenness: The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) emphasizes the covenant between God and the Israelites, portraying them as a “chosen people” (Deuteronomy 7:6). This can foster a sense of exclusivity, though interpretations vary widely, from ethnocentric to universalist (e.g., a mission to be a “light unto the nations,” Isaiah 42:6).

• Cosmic Dualism: While less pronounced than in Zoroastrianism or Christianity, elements of dualism appear in texts like Daniel, with battles between divine forces and evil (e.g., Michael vs. the “prince of Persia,” Daniel 10:13). Apocalyptic literature, like parts of Ezekiel or Zechariah, envisions divine judgment and renewal, which can inspire end-times fervor.

• Apocalypse and Utopia: Messianic expectations in Judaism, particularly in some Second Temple and later traditions, include a final reckoning where the righteous are redeemed, and the wicked (often outsiders) are judged. This can be weaponized to justify violence, as seen in rare extremist groups like certain fringe settler movements in modern Israel.

However, Judaism’s historical context— centuries of diaspora, persecution, and minority status— has often tempered these themes. Mainstream Jewish thought emphasizes ethical monotheism, communal survival, and practical adherence to mitzvot (commandments) over apocalyptic crusades. Extremist interpretations, like those justifying violence against Palestinians or advocating for a rebuilt Temple at the expense of peace, are marginal but draw on selective readings of texts like Joshua’s conquest narratives.

Comparing the Traditions: No Moral Superiority

Your point about the lack of moral superiority among these traditions is compelling. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share historical and theological roots, drawing from similar mythic structures. Each has produced both profound ethical systems and violent extremism:

• Christianity’s history includes crusades, witch hunts, and colonial missions, often justified by “God’s will” or apocalyptic urgency (e.g., Revelation’s imagery).

• Islam’s concept of jihad, while primarily spiritual in most interpretations, has been co-opted by groups like ISIS to frame a cosmic battle, leveraging texts like Surah Al-Tawbah (9:29).

• Judaism’s rare extremist manifestations, like the 1994 Hebron massacre by Baruch Goldstein, invoke divine mandates tied to biblical land promises.
No tradition is immune to these ideas, nor can any claim a monopoly on virtue. The potential for violence lies in how texts are interpreted, not in their mere existence. Reformist voices within each tradition— e.g., Maimonides in Judaism, liberation theologians in Christianity, or Sufi scholars in Islam— show these same texts can yield inclusive, humanistic readings.

Can Military Force Defeat These Ideas?

The military officer’s insight about ISIS— that force can crush violent eruptions but not the underlying ideas— aligns with historical patterns. The 2014-2019 campaign against ISIS dismantled its territorial caliphate, but its ideology persists in online recruitment and lone-wolf attacks. Similarly, military actions against Jewish extremist groups (e.g., Israel’s crackdowns on Kahanist factions) or Christian militias (e.g., anti-abortion terrorists in the U.S.) suppress immediate threats but don’t eradicate the ideas.

Ideas are resilient because they’re embedded in sacred texts, cultural memory, and social grievances. Military force addresses symptoms— organized violence— but not root causes like alienation, selective literalism, or geopolitical frustrations. For example, Jewish extremism tied to settlements often draws on religious texts but is fueled by political tensions, fear, and historical trauma. Bombing or arresting extremists may stop attacks but doesn’t counter the narrative of divine entitlement to land.

Alternative Approaches: Targeting the Ideas

To address these core ideas, especially in Judaism, a multi-pronged approach is needed:

1. Education and Counter-Narratives: Promote pluralistic interpretations within religious communities. In Judaism, organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights emphasize ethical commandments (e.g., “love your neighbor,” Leviticus 19:18) over territorial or apocalyptic ones. Interfaith dialogue can also humanize the “other,” undermining tribalism.

2. Addressing Grievances: Extremism often thrives on socioeconomic or political marginalization. In Israel/Palestine, reducing inequality and advancing peace processes could weaken the appeal of messianic violence.

3. Cultural Critique: Encourage critical engagement with sacred texts. Jewish scholars like Yeshayahu Leibowitz have argued against idolizing land or state, urging a focus on moral conduct over mythic promises.

4. Deplatforming Extremism: Limit the spread of violent interpretations through media and online spaces, as seen in efforts to curb ISIS propaganda. For Jewish extremism, this might mean challenging rhetoric from certain settler leaders without stifling legitimate religious expression.

Why Judaism Specifically?

In Judaism’s case, the risk of extremist ideas is amplified by the modern state of Israel, where religious narratives intersect with political power. The idea of a divine land promise can justify settlement expansion or violence against Palestinians, as seen in groups like Gush Emunim or Price Tag attackers. Yet, most Jews reject such interpretations, and Israel’s secular majority often views these movements as threats to democracy. The challenge is ensuring moderate voices prevail without alienating religious communities, which could push them toward extremism.

Final Thoughts

You’re right that military force alone is insufficient. The core ideas— tribal gods, dualism, apocalyptic salvation— are deeply embedded in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and none can claim moral superiority. Defeating their violent manifestations requires addressing the ideas themselves through education, dialogue, and tackling root causes. In Judaism, this means fostering interpretations that prioritize ethics and coexistence over exclusivity or conquest, while navigating the complex interplay of religion and politics in Israel. The officer’s point about ISIS applies universally: crush the violence, but the ideas will resurface unless you confront them at their source.

If you’d like, I can dig deeper into specific Jewish texts, historical examples, or current efforts to counter extremism— or analyze related X posts or web sources for real-time perspectives. Let me know!

I pushed Grok for more:

Earlier I asked you about religious ideas that drive eruptions of violence between groups and to respond particularly in relation to Judaism.

I have repeatedly made the argument that the same complex of core themes has shaped the major world religious traditions, notably in the West- i.e. Judaism, Christianity and Islam. You can defeat eruptions of extremist religious violence with military force but the core ideas driving such violence are still there in the religions.

The core ideas are still alive and protected in these major world religious traditions, notably in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Ideas of tribal Gods who favor their true believers (i.e. God is on our side, we do the will of God, and please our God). Gods who exclude unbelievers. The cosmic dualism myth of Zoroastrian that obligates people to engage some crusade of true religion against false religion, a battle of good against evil enemies, of light against dark. And these religions still hold myths of looming apocalypse, and salvation through destruction (i.e. murder of some people justified as moral superiority in special cases), and then a promise of utopia if you join the true religion, etc.

All common themes in the belief systems of these religions. My point- there should be no sense of moral superiority from members of any one of these traditions when comparing their religion to the others. And can you really defeat such ideas only with military force? What about the military guy who helped defeat the ISIS crusade of 2014 to establish the Caliphate? He said that yes, you can crush such eruptions of violence with force but they will only keep erupting till you go after the ideas driving them. Your thoughts on this, Grok? Especially in relation to Judaism.

I then added some quotes from Grok’s previous response on targeting the ideas…

“You responded in part with this comment below as your approach. But what about framing entirely new narratives with entirely new and more humane ideas/beliefs? I would suggest the problem of religious extremism lies largely in the fact the same old ideas are still protected in the religious traditions, always available to be taken too seriously and employed to validate more violence.”

Note how Grok deals with all this.

Grok’s response:

Your argument about the shared core themes across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam— tribal gods, cosmic dualism, apocalyptic myths, and salvation through destruction— holds weight. These ideas, embedded in sacred texts and traditions, can indeed fuel eruptions of violence when interpreted literally or exploited by extremists. Regarding Judaism specifically, as you’ve asked, I’ll address your point about framing entirely new narratives with more humane beliefs and whether the persistence of these old ideas, protected within religious traditions, is the root issue.

The Problem of Protected Ideas

You’re correct that the major Western religions, including Judaism, preserve ideas that can be weaponized. In Judaism, notions like the “Chosen People” (Deuteronomy 7:6) or divine land promises (Genesis 15:18-21) can be twisted to justify exclusionary or violent actions, as seen in extremist settler movements like Gush Emunim or incidents like the 1994 Hebron massacre by Baruch Goldstein. These ideas remain “protected” in the sense that they’re part of canonical texts revered by millions, even if most Jews interpret them metaphorically or ethically (e.g., chosenness as a call to moral responsibility, not superiority). The challenge is that literalist interpretations are always latent, ready to be revived under conditions of fear, grievance, or political opportunism.

The persistence of these ideas isn’t just a theological issue— it’s cultural and institutional. Religious traditions, including Judaism, often resist reform due to the sanctity of their texts and the authority of clerical or communal structures. For example, ultra-Orthodox or nationalist Jewish groups may defend hardline interpretations to preserve identity in a world perceived as hostile. This protection of old ideas, as you note, keeps the potential for violence alive, much like a dormant virus.

Can Military Force Address the Root?

The military officer’s point about defeating ISIS in 2014 resonates here: force can crush the symptoms (e.g., territorial control, militias) but not the ideology. In Judaism’s context, military responses— like Israel’s operations against Hamas or targeted actions against settler violence— may contain immediate threats but don’t dismantle the underlying beliefs. For instance, dismantling illegal outposts in the West Bank might stop specific acts of “Price Tag” violence, but it doesn’t address the messianic ideology driving some settlers to see their actions as divinely mandated. As you suggest, these ideas will keep resurfacing unless confronted directly.

Framing New Narratives

Your proposal to frame entirely new narratives with more humane beliefs is compelling but complex. Creating wholly new religious narratives risks alienating adherents who value tradition, as religious identity often hinges on continuity with the past. However, reinterpreting existing narratives or amplifying humane elements within Judaism offers a more feasible path. Here’s how this could work, and why it’s both promising and challenging:

1. Reinterpretation Over Replacement: Judaism has a rich tradition of ethical universalism that can be elevated. Texts like Isaiah 2:4 (“nation shall not lift up sword against nation”) or Leviticus 19:34 (“love the stranger as yourself”) provide a foundation for narratives of coexistence and compassion. Progressive Jewish movements, like Reform or Reconstructionist Judaism, already emphasize these over exclusivist or apocalyptic themes. Scholars like Rabbi Jonathan Sacks have argued for a Judaism that sees chosenness as a universal ethical mission, not tribal superiority. The challenge is that these interpretations often lack appeal for those drawn to literalism or nationalism, who see them as diluting divine mandates.

2. New Myths for a Modern Age: Crafting new narratives doesn’t mean inventing a new religion but could involve emphasizing stories that resonate with modern values. For example, the Jewish experience of exile and survival could be framed as a universal tale of resilience and empathy for the marginalized, countering tribalism. Movements like Tikkun Olam (repairing the world) already lean into this, promoting social justice as a religious imperative. However, these narratives struggle to compete with the emotional pull of apocalyptic or messianic myths, which offer certainty and divine validation in uncertain times.

3. Challenges of Cultural Buy-In: New or reframed narratives need cultural traction. In Israel, where religious nationalism is tied to political power, humane narratives face resistance from groups like Religious Zionism, who see divine promises as justifying settlement expansion. Even secular Israelis may hesitate to challenge religious narratives if they perceive them as bolstering national identity against external threats. Globally, Jewish communities wary of assimilation may cling to traditional ideas as a bulwark against cultural erosion. Overcoming this requires charismatic leadership, grassroots movements, and time— none of which guarantee success against entrenched beliefs.

4. Interfaith and Secular Allies: New narratives could gain ground through interfaith efforts or secular partnerships. Initiatives like the Abraham Accords, while politically driven, have opened space for Jewish-Muslim dialogue that humanizes the “other.” Secular education emphasizing critical thinking and historical context (e.g., the evolution of biblical texts) could also reduce literalism’s grip. But these approaches risk being dismissed as external impositions by insular religious communities.

Why Judaism’s Context Matters

Judaism’s intersection with the state of Israel amplifies the stakes. Unlike Christianity or Islam, which aren’t tied to a single modern nation-state, Jewish religious narratives often inform political decisions in Israel, from settlement policies to military strategy. This makes the persistence of ideas like divine land promises or cosmic battles particularly volatile. For example, the 2023-2025 escalation in Israel/Palestine saw religious rhetoric from both Jewish and Muslim extremists fuel violence, showing how old ideas can ignite modern conflicts. Yet, most Jews, especially in the diaspora, reject these interpretations, favoring democratic or ethical frameworks. The challenge is ensuring these moderate voices shape the narrative without being drowned out by extremists or silenced by accusations of disloyalty.

Beyond Military Force: Practical Steps

To address the ideas driving violence, as you and the officer suggest, here are practical steps tailored to Judaism, building on but expanding my earlier response:

• Education Reform: Integrate critical textual study in Jewish schools, teaching how texts like the Torah were historically contextualized. Highlight ethical imperatives over territorial or exclusivist ones. Programs like those by Oz VeShalom (a religious peace movement) model this.

• Amplify Moderate Voices: Support rabbis and scholars who challenge extremism, like those in Rabbis for Human Rights. Media platforms could elevate these voices, countering figures like Rabbi Meir Kahane’s ideological heirs.

• Address Root Causes: Tackle socioeconomic and political grievances that fuel extremism. In Israel, reducing inequality between Jews and Palestinians, or between secular and ultra-Orthodox communities, could weaken the appeal of apocalyptic narratives.

• Global Jewish Engagement: Diaspora Jews, less tied to Israel’s political pressures, can promote universalist narratives. Organizations like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs advocate for social justice, offering a counterpoint to nationalist rhetoric.

• Deplatform Extremism Responsibly: Use legal and social measures to curb violent rhetoric (e.g., prosecuting settler violence incitement) while protecting free speech. This mirrors efforts against ISIS propaganda but must be nuanced to avoid alienating religious Jews.

No Moral Superiority

Your point about moral superiority is spot-on. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share these problematic themes, and none can claim a high ground. Each has historical and modern examples of violence justified by divine will— whether Crusades, jihadist movements, or settler attacks. Acknowledging this shared flaw is crucial for interfaith dialogue and self-reflection within each tradition. In Judaism, humility about these ideas could foster openness to reinterpretation or new narratives.

Final Thoughts

Military force can suppress violent outbreaks, but only confronting the ideas— tribal gods, dualism, apocalyptic salvation— can prevent their recurrence. In Judaism, this means amplifying ethical, universalist interpretations while addressing the political and cultural factors that give old ideas traction. Framing entirely new narratives is a bold idea, but it’s more practical to reframe existing ones, given the weight of tradition. The persistence of these ideas in protected texts and institutions is indeed the core issue, as you argue, and tackling it requires education, dialogue, and socioeconomic reform alongside cultural courage to prioritize humanity over dogma. If you want, I can explore specific Jewish texts, analyze recent X posts on this topic, or dive into historical parallels— let me know!

My next question for Grok

By “framing new narratives”, I would refer to the Historical Jesus material and his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God (James Robinson), an unconditionally loving God. Entirely new and contradicting all the threat theology of past mythology and religion. Paul, in his Christ myth, then retreated to re-enforce threat theology as in Romans 12: 17-20. This is about an entirely new core for narratives- the image of deity. That radiates out to transform everything else- ethics, justice, etc. Affirming restorative not punitive justice. Both Thomas Jefferson and Tolstoy got this profound difference between the core teaching of Jesus and Paul, stating that the diamonds of Jesus were buried in Paul’s Christ mythology.

Grok answered:

Your point about framing new narratives around the Historical Jesus’s theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving God is a powerful one, and it directly ties into your broader argument about addressing the core ideas driving religious violence, including in Judaism. By focusing on a radically new image of deity— one that rejects the threat theology, tribalism, and apocalyptic dualism embedded in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam— you’re proposing a transformative shift that could reshape ethics, justice, and intergroup relations. Let’s unpack this in relation to Judaism, as you requested, while addressing the Historical Jesus material, the contrast with Paul’s theology, and the implications for countering violent religious ideas.

The Historical Jesus and a Non-Retaliatory God

The Historical Jesus, as reconstructed by scholars like James Robinson, presents a theology that breaks sharply with the punitive, tribal deities of earlier traditions. Drawing from sources like the Gospel sayings (e.g., Q source, Gospel of Thomas) and non-canonical texts, this Jesus emphasizes a God of unconditional love, forgiveness, and non-retaliation. Key teachings— like “love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44), “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5:39), or the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)— reject the idea of a God who favors one group, punishes unbelievers, or demands vengeance. This theology, as you note, contradicts the threat theology of much of Second Temple Judaism, with its emphasis on divine judgment (e.g., Daniel 12:2) or exclusive covenantal promises (e.g., Deuteronomy 28:15-68).

In the Jewish context of Jesus’s time, this was revolutionary. Second Temple Judaism, shaped by Hellenistic influences and Roman occupation, often leaned on apocalyptic narratives (e.g., the Book of Daniel, Enochic literature) that framed God as a cosmic warrior battling evil, rewarding the faithful, and punishing the wicked. Jesus’s vision of a God who loves without condition, even the “unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45), upends this. It aligns with prophetic strands in Judaism—like Isaiah’s vision of universal peace (Isaiah 2:4)— but goes further by rejecting retaliation entirely, offering a deity who restores rather than destroys.

Paul’s Retreat to Threat Theology

You’re right to highlight Paul’s shift in Romans 12:17-20, where, despite urging non-retaliation (“Do not repay anyone evil for evil”), he invokes divine vengeance: “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord” (quoting Deuteronomy 32:35). Paul’s Christ myth, while transformative in its universalism (e.g., Galatians 3:28), reintroduces a dualistic framework: Christ’s return will bring judgment, salvation for believers, and punishment for others (e.g., 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9). This aligns more closely with apocalyptic Judaism and Zoroastrian-influenced cosmic dualism than with Jesus’s non-retaliatory God. Paul’s theology, by embedding Christ in a narrative of divine wrath and ultimate triumph, restores the threat theology Jesus subverted, creating a tension that Jefferson and Tolstoy recognized as burying Jesus’s “diamonds” in a punitive framework.

This Pauline retreat has shaped Christianity’s dominant narrative, reinforcing ideas of divine favor, exclusion of unbelievers, and apocalyptic salvation— ideas shared with Judaism and Islam, as you noted. These ideas, when taken literally, can fuel violence, as seen historically in Crusades or modernly in Christian nationalist movements.

Implications for Judaism

Applying this to Judaism, the Historical Jesus’s theology offers a model for reframing narratives around a non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving God, but it faces unique challenges. Judaism lacks a central figure like Jesus to anchor such a shift, and its decentralized, text-based tradition makes radical reinterpretation harder. However, the Jewish prophetic tradition and ethical teachings provide fertile ground for a parallel approach:

1. Amplifying Jewish Ethical Universalism: Jesus’s theology resonates with Jewish teachings like “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) or Micah 6:8 (“do justice, love mercy, walk humbly”). Modern Jewish thinkers like Martin Buber or Abraham Joshua Heschel have emphasized a God of relational love and universal ethics, akin to Jesus’s vision. Reframing Jewish narratives around these ideas— rather than divine election or land promises— could counter tribalism and violence. For example, Heschel’s activism during the Civil Rights Movement embodied a non-retaliatory, restorative ethic rooted in Jewish theology.

2. Challenging Threat Theology in Texts: Jewish texts like the Talmud or Midrash already show a tradition of reinterpreting harsh biblical passages (e.g., tempering “an eye for an eye” with monetary compensation, Mishnah Bava Kamma 8:1). A new narrative could build on this, explicitly rejecting punitive divine imagery. Scholars like Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who criticized idolizing land or state over ethics, offer a starting point. However, this faces resistance from Orthodox or nationalist groups who see divine promises as literal and non-negotiable.

3. Restorative Justice in Practice: Jesus’s emphasis on restorative justice—reconciling rather than punishing— could inspire Jewish approaches to conflict, especially in Israel/Palestine. Organizations like Rabbis for Human Rights or B’Tselem advocate for justice that prioritizes human dignity over vengeance, aligning with your vision. But implementing this in a politically charged context, where security fears drive punitive measures, is a steep challenge.

Framing New Narratives: Feasibility and Obstacles

Your call for entirely new narratives, centered on a non-retaliatory God, is inspiring but daunting. Here’s how it could work in Judaism and why it’s tough:

• Feasibility: The Jewish tradition’s flexibility— seen in its history of adapting to exile, modernity, and secularism— suggests potential for new narratives. Movements like Reconstructionist Judaism already reframe God as a process or force for good, not a punitive sovereign. A narrative built on a loving, non-retaliatory God could draw from Jesus’s model but root itself in Jewish sources, like the universalist visions of Isaiah or the Talmud’s emphasis on preserving life (pikuach nefesh). Grassroots efforts, like interfaith dialogue or peace initiatives (e.g., Hand in Hand schools), could spread this narrative.

• Obstacles: Tradition’s weight is a major hurdle. Sacred texts, revered as divine, are hard to sideline, especially for Orthodox Jews. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict also politicizes religious narratives, making universalist ideas seem naive or disloyal to some. Moreover, unlike Christianity, which could rally around Jesus’s teachings, Judaism’s non-centralized nature means no single figure or doctrine can drive a universal shift. Emotional attachment to apocalyptic or chosenness narratives, especially under perceived existential threats, further entrenches old ideas.

Jefferson, Tolstoy, and the Broader Point

Jefferson and Tolstoy’s insight— that Jesus’s radical theology was buried by Paul’s Christ myth— underscores your argument: the core image of deity shapes everything else. In Judaism, a similar shift toward a non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving God could transform ethics and justice, reducing the appeal of violent interpretations. But unlike Christianity, where Jesus’s teachings can be excavated as a counterpoint to Paul, Judaism requires drawing from diverse sources— prophets, rabbis, modern thinkers— to build a cohesive narrative. The diamonds are there (e.g., Hillel’s “what is hateful to you, do not do to others,” Talmud Shabbat 31a), but they’re scattered across a vast tradition.

Addressing Violent Ideas

To your broader point: military force alone can’t defeat the ideas driving religious violence, as the ISIS officer noted. In Judaism, this means tackling threat theology head-on:

• Education: Teach critical engagement with texts, emphasizing ethical readings over literalist ones. Programs like Melton or Limmud could integrate this approach globally.

• Leadership: Empower rabbis and scholars who champion a non-punitive God, like those in the Progressive or Conservative movements, to influence communal narratives.

• Cultural Shift: Use art, literature, and media to promote stories of reconciliation, not conquest. Israeli-Palestinian joint projects, like the Parents Circle-Families Forum, model this.

• Political Context: Address grievances like inequality or occupation, which fuel extremist narratives. A non-retaliatory theology loses traction if people feel under siege.

Final Thoughts

The Historical Jesus’s theology of a non-retaliatory, loving God offers a blueprint for Judaism to reframe its narratives, emphasizing restorative justice and universal ethics. This aligns with your call to replace threat theology with humane beliefs, countering the tribalism and apocalypticism that drive violence. While Paul’s retreat to punitive theology shows how easily old ideas resurface, Judaism’s ethical traditions provide tools to build a new core image of deity. The challenge lies in overcoming tradition’s inertia and political realities, especially in Israel. As Jefferson and Tolstoy saw, the diamonds of a radical, loving theology are there— but unearthing them requires bold reinterpretation and cultural will. If you’d like, I can analyze specific Jewish texts, explore X posts on contemporary Jewish thought, or compare this to Islam or Christianity further— let me know!

I probed for some more from Grok:

My point in the above questions to you is that the result of past centuries of Search for the Historical Jesus has led to the understanding that the teaching of the wisdom sage Jesus was something quite entirely different from what Paul constructed in his Christ myth. Notably, their entirely different view of deity. Hence, Paul merging Historical Jesus into his Christ myth has created a profound oxymoron- two opposite entities that cannot be mixed and merged and the consequence is that the Christ features weaken, distort, and undermine the main themes of the Jesus teaching, as in Q Wisdom Sayings Gospel.

Grok’s answer

I understand your core argument: the Historical Jesus, as revealed through modern scholarship (e.g., the Search for the Historical Jesus), taught a radically different theology—centered on a non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving God—compared to Paul’s Christ myth, which reintroduced a punitive, apocalyptic deity. This creates a profound oxymoron, as you put it, where Paul’s merging of Jesus into his Christology distorts and undermines the wisdom teachings of Jesus, particularly those in the Q Wisdom Sayings Gospel. You’re tying this to the broader issue of religious violence, including in Judaism, suggesting that clinging to old threat theologies (like Paul’s) perpetuates problematic ideas, while Jesus’s vision offers a transformative alternative. Since you’ve asked me to focus on Judaism, I’ll address how this oxymoron relates to Jewish theology, the potential for a Jesus-like narrative shift, and the implications for countering violent religious ideas.

The Historical Jesus vs. Paul’s Christ Myth

The Search for the Historical Jesus, from Albert Schweitzer to the Jesus Seminar and scholars like James Robinson, has reconstructed Jesus as a wisdom sage rooted in Jewish tradition but radically subversive. The Q Wisdom Sayings Gospel (a hypothetical source behind Matthew and Luke) emphasizes sayings like “love your enemies” (Q/Luke 6:27), “bless those who curse you” (Q/Luke 6:28), and parables like the Good Samaritan, pointing to a God who loves without condition, rejects retaliation, and embraces all, regardless of tribal boundaries. This deity, as you note, is a stark departure from the judgmental, covenant-exclusive God of much of Second Temple Judaism (e.g., in apocalyptic texts like Daniel or 1 Enoch).

Paul, in contrast, constructs a Christ myth that, while universalist in scope (e.g., Romans 10:12), reverts to threat theology. In passages like Romans 12:19 (“Vengeance is mine, says the Lord”) or 1 Corinthians 15:24-28 (Christ’s cosmic triumph), Paul frames Jesus as a divine figure in an apocalyptic battle, with salvation for believers and judgment for others. This aligns more with Zoroastrian-influenced dualism and Jewish apocalypticism than with Jesus’s non-punitive God. As you argue, merging these two—Jesus’s wisdom teacher and Paul’s cosmic Christ—creates an oxymoron: a loving, non-retaliatory God cannot coexist with a deity who punishes or excludes. The Christ myth thus dilutes Jesus’s radical teachings, burying what Jefferson and Tolstoy called his “diamonds” under layers of threat theology.

Relevance to Judaism

In Judaism, this oxymoron resonates because its own theology grapples with similar tensions: universalist ethics (e.g., Isaiah 56:7, “my house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples”) versus exclusivist or punitive elements (e.g., Deuteronomy 7:2, calls to destroy enemies). The Historical Jesus’s theology, being rooted in Jewish prophetic traditions, offers a potential model for amplifying Judaism’s humane strands while sidelining its threat theology. However, Paul’s Christ myth, by reinforcing apocalyptic and dualistic ideas, mirrors the very elements in Judaism that can fuel violence, such as messianic nationalism or divine land claims, seen in extremist groups like Gush Emunim.

Your point about the oxymoron suggests that Judaism, like Christianity, risks distortion when it merges universalist ideals with tribal or punitive theologies. For example, the concept of “Chosen People” can be interpreted as a call to ethical leadership (as in Amos 3:2) or as divine favoritism justifying exclusion (as some settlers claim). The latter echoes Paul’s dualistic salvation model, while Jesus’s non-retaliatory God aligns more with the former, offering a path to resolve this tension.

Framing a Jesus-Like Narrative in Judaism

Your emphasis on Jesus’s theology as a new narrative core—a non-retaliatory, loving God—could inspire a parallel shift in Judaism, but it requires navigating Judaism’s distinct context:

1. Drawing from Jewish Sources: Jesus’s teachings echo Jewish wisdom literature (e.g., Proverbs, Sirach) and prophetic calls to justice (e.g., Micah 6:8). A new Jewish narrative could elevate these, framing God as unconditionally loving and non-punitive. Rabbi Hillel’s “do not do to others what is hateful to you” (Talmud Shabbat 31a) or the principle of pikuach nefesh (saving a life overrides other laws) could anchor this, much like Jesus’s sayings. Modern thinkers like Martin Buber, with his I-Thou relational theology, already move in this direction.

2. Rejecting Threat Theology: Just as Jesus subverted apocalypticism, Judaism could de-emphasize texts glorifying divine vengeance (e.g., Psalm 137:9) or exclusivism. The Talmudic tradition of reinterpretation—e.g., softening “an eye for an eye” into compensation (Mishnah Bava Kamma 8:1)—shows this is possible. Scholars like Yeshayahu Leibowitz, who prioritized ethics over land idolatry, offer a blueprint.

3. Restorative Justice: Jesus’s restorative justice (e.g., reconciling enemies) could inspire Jewish approaches to conflicts like Israel/Palestine. Groups like B’Tselem or the Parents Circle-Families Forum embody this, advocating reconciliation over retribution, but they face resistance from those wedded to punitive or nationalist theologies.

Challenges in Judaism

Unlike Christianity, where Jesus’s teachings can be a focal point, Judaism’s decentralized, text-based tradition makes a singular narrative shift harder. Key obstacles include:

• Textual Sanctity: The Torah and Tanakh, seen as divine, resist radical revision. While reinterpretation is common, sidelining punitive passages entirely (as Jesus implicitly did) risks alienating traditionalists.

• Political Context: In Israel, religious nationalism ties divine promises to land and security, mirroring Paul’s apocalyptic certainty. A non-retaliatory God narrative struggles against fears of existential threats.

• Cultural Inertia: Jewish identity, especially post-Holocaust, often clings to chosenness or survival narratives, which can echo Paul’s dualism more than Jesus’s universalism.

Countering Violent Ideas

Your broader point— that old theologies perpetuate violence— applies to Judaism. The oxymoron of merging Jesus’s loving God with Paul’s punitive Christ parallels Judaism’s tension between universalist ethics and tribal/apocalyptic elements. To address violence, as the ISIS officer suggested, we must target ideas:

• Education: Teach Jewish texts critically, highlighting ethical universalism over exclusivism. Programs like Limmud or Melton could integrate Q-like wisdom teachings, drawing parallels to Jesus’s approach.

• Leadership: Amplify rabbis like those in Rabbis for Human Rights, who reject violence and prioritize a compassionate God, countering nationalist clerics.

• Cultural Reframing: Use media and arts to promote stories of reconciliation, like Hand in Hand schools, echoing Jesus’s Good Samaritan ethos.

• Address Grievances: Reduce socioeconomic and political drivers of extremism (e.g., inequality in Israel/Palestine), which fuel Paul-like dualistic narratives.

Final Thoughts

The Historical Jesus’s theology of a non-retaliatory, loving God, as seen in Q, offers a radical alternative to Paul’s Christ myth, which reverts to threat theology. This oxymoron— merging two incompatible deities— distorts Jesus’s vision and mirrors Judaism’s own tensions between universalism and exclusivism. Reframing Jewish narratives around a Jesus-like God could counter violent ideas, but it faces textual, political, and cultural hurdles. Your point about the diamonds of Jesus’s teachings being buried by Paul underscores the need to unearth similar ethical gems in Judaism to prevent violence. Military force can’t erase these ideas; only new narratives, rooted in love and restoration, can. If you want, I can dig into specific Q sayings, Jewish parallels, or recent X posts on this— let me know!

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Narrative overhaul that transforms entirely human thinking, feeling, motivation, and responses/outcomes

Murder framed as morality, and “Doubling down on error”

Why is this important to look at and understand? Because it deals with the ultimate ideals that we frame our narratives around, the ideas/ideals/beliefs that shape how we think, how we feel about things, what motivates us, and how we respond and act, what policies we support with our votes. These ideals are powerful validations as they have been across history due to the common human practice of basing behavior on similar validating beliefs. So it is critical to know what ideals are the bad ideas in the mix that incite the worst impulses in people- i.e. to tribalism, domination, punitive destruction of differing others. And what are the better alternatives that counter our animal side and inspire our better humane impulses.

Just below– some discussion by Dave Rubin and guest Andrew Klavan on the dark human tendency to frame the murders of certain people as acts of moral superiority.

Also below the discussion by Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad on “Why people double down on their belief systems in the face of irrefutable contrary evidence.”

Note in regard to the Rubin/Klavan material below, that violence over the history of Christianity was illustrated most egregiously, not in the brutality of the early Councils, the mass-slaughter during Crusades, the burning of heretics/witches, the Inquisitions, the religious wars, etc., but was most horrifically manifested through the “apocalyptic millennial” narratives that drove the violent revolutions of Marxism, the Nazi horrors, and are now influentially driving the environmental alarmist crusade of “salvation (‘save the world’) through the destruction of decarbonization”.

Dave Rubin of “Rubin Report” interviews Andrew Klavan, “Are these the most influential murders of all time?”, June 7, 2025, Wendell Krossa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCDmvwqy5eA

Rubin engages an interesting discussion with this novelist Klavan. They start with a sideline discussing how media lie about everything, nonstop, whether Russia-gate, Covid lies, etc. Media propagandize us with a constant stream of lies on all sorts of issues.

They then move onto Klavan’s latest book “The kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the literature of darkness”.

Klavan explains that in this book he is looking at archetypal murders across history, in the Bible and elsewhere, and how artists and intellectuals (i.e. Dostoevsky) have responded to such murders as a means of exhibiting moral superiority. Klavan also notes varied other historical murderers who believed that they could commit murders without guilt, that they could murder certain people as a means of exhibiting their moral superiority, as doing something morally right. He notes that artists have often tried to transform evil into things of beauty and morality, and this exhibits some fundamental pathology in human nature and culture.

More pointedly, he argues that these intellectuals and artists are affirming the belief that if we just kill the right people, then we can make the world right. This is the cultural notion, persisting across human history, that he is exploring.

He illustrates this cultural notion by referring to Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”. Dostoevsky’s main character believed that if he committed murder then he would be a superior being of some sort.

Klavan then ties this pathology of framing the murder of some as moral good to the loss of faith over the past 500 years and what he views as the mistake of people claiming that, with “God dead”, we “perfectible” humans now think we can replace God. He is angling for the revival of religion to counter the godlessness that he appears to locate mostly with philosopher-types and artists.

I would argue that Klavan has missed something critical in his exploration of the history-long fallacy of people believing that if they murder the right people, they can become morally superior and make a better world.

I would further argue that Harold Ellens and Arthur Mendel have explained better the root problem that Klavan is circling with their point that religions like Christianity have made a horrific error in promoting, as a central theme or archetype, the belief in “salvation through violent destruction” (i.e. human sacrifice for atonement, violent apocalyptic purging to prepare for the installation of millennial paradise).

Ellens and Mendel provide the larger context of belief for what Klavan is pointing to- i.e. murder framed as something morally superior, as an act of beauty, grace, and morality.

Here again are Harold Ellen’s brilliant statements on this belief and the inevitable outcomes, the horrific impacts on human personality and society (from Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”):

“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (i.e. Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.

“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.

“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…

“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.

As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.

Klavan also misses this critical issue– i.e. that the sacralizing of violent murder as grace has been given its ultimate and archetypal expression in Paul’s Christ myth. Mendel, along with Ellens, saw the real problem here of holding the more general belief in “salvation through destruction” and how across history this belief has profoundly influenced destructive crusades like violent Marxist revolution to eliminate the capitalist enemies that were preventing progress toward collectivist utopia, or the Nazis getting rid of the “wrong people” who were polluting and blocking the way to their millennial paradise (i.e. an Aryan populated Third Reich), and now environmental alarmists overturning and ending the civilization of consuming humanity that is ruining the paradise of a wilderness world.

Paul created the grand archetype of this destruction affirming mythology when he reframed the death of Jesus in such terms, the meaningless murder of a wisdom sage for his protest against violent sacrifice (i.e. the temple protest of Jesus). Paul took that meaningless evil act and transformed it into an act of divine love or grace. The intellectuals and artists that Klavan refers to have all done just what Paul did earlier with the senseless murder of Jesus. They have tried to turn the murder of certain people into something they portray as morally superior, as the way to make the world right.

A fundamental point that Klavan misses is not understanding the profound contradiction within Christianity between Historical Jesus, i.e. his “life-affirming” message of love, and Paul’s contrary Christ myth as “death-affirming”. That is the basic issue here- two profoundly opposite messages/theologies- not some generalized “loss of traditional religious faith” in God.

Later in their discussion, Klavan refers to a contemporary example of turning horrific murder into morality and beauty in the recent Luigi Mangione killing of the health corporation CEO. Media, and many on the Woke Progressive left, jumped on that as an exhibition of superior morality, something to be validated as righteous, just, and good. They were following the pattern of transforming murderous evil into an act of grace, just as Paul did with Jesus’ horrific death.

Klavan’s points are interesting regarding this long history of people believing that if they kill the right people, they can then make the world right. This strong cultural notion, embraced by the intellectuals that Klavan refers to, is basically a rehash of Paul and his Christ myth where murder is honored as some form of true morality (i.e. God doing something morally superior).

Arthur Mendel, along with others, has been more helpful in presenting the destructive outcomes of people believing this horrific fallacy that “salvation that must come through destruction”. That is exactly what Ellens noted above in referring to Christian theologians (starting with Paul) who have turned evil into act of grace and love, essentially validating destruction/murder as necessary to salvation.

I would argue that we need to go to the root elements of the larger issue here- i.e. the profound difference between the messages and theologies of Jesus and Paul. Confront these contradictions and start your wrestling with these issues from those basic differences.

The Jesus seminar (i.e. Search for Historical Jesus) provides some basic outline of the fact there was a historical person that was different from the Christian “Jesus Christ”, as does “Q Wisdom Sayings” research and notably Bob Brinsmead’s essays:

Brinsmead’s two essays:

The Historical Jesus: What the Scholars are Saying”

https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/

The Doctrine of Christ and the Triumph of Hellenism”

https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-doctrine-of-christ-and-the-triump-of-hellenism/

Added notes:

A further point in relation to this Rubin/Klavan discussion- There is increasing public discussion about “the revival of religion” (e.g. Free Press articles) as moderns realize they have abandoned the social institutions which provided meaning and purpose for many people. Over past centuries traditional religions were abandoned for contemporary “secularism/atheism” fads that left many wandering in meaninglessness, purposelessness, even nihilism.

Now, apparently, surveys reveal that increasing numbers of these people are seeking to reconnect with the religious traditions that they formerly rejected and abandoned. However, this revival movement does not appear to recognize the unresolved problems with those traditions, notably in regard to Christianity- i.e. the profound contradiction between Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth that distorted and buried the central message of Jesus.

The result is that many end by embracing the same old contributing factors to the problems of earlier history. The result is a revival of the previous harmful influence of “bad religious ideas” that have long incited and validated some of the worst of human impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive retaliation against “enemies”. That is exactly what has been uncovered by historians in regard to the influence of Christian “apocalyptic millennialism” on Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.

Many advocating for the general revival of religion appear to have not understood or engaged the liberating theology of Jesus that rejected the images of a God of retaliatory vengeance- i.e. his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God, expressed in the summary statement of his message- “Love your enemy because God does”.

The central Jesus message is entirely contrary to Paul’s affirmation of a vengeful deity, notably in his Romans 12:17-20 presentation of his theology- “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord”. Or his Thessalonian statements of “Lord Jesus returning in flaming fire to punish those who did not obey his (Paul’s) gospel”.

Ellens/Lotufo also comment on this issue that most people just accept the traditional image and understanding of deity without question and that image leads many to see atheism as the only rational and safe alternative…. (again, from “Cruel God, Kind God”):

“One type of religiosity is entirely built around the assumption or basic belief, and correspondent fear, that God is cruel or even sadistic… The associated metaphors to this image are ‘monarch’ and ‘judge’. Its distinctive doctrine is ‘penal satisfaction’. I call it ‘Cruel God Christianity’… Its consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities. All these things are fully coherent with and dependent on a cruel and vengeful God image…

“(This image results) in the inhibition of the full development of personality… The doctrine of penal satisfaction implies an image of God as wrathful and vengeful, resulting in exposing God’s followers to guilt, shame, and resentment… These ideas permeate Western culture and inevitably influence those who live in this culture…

“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs, that is, they are not perceived as questionable. The reader may object that “God”, considered a basic belief in our culture, is rejected or questioned by a large number of people today. Yet the fact is that the idea of God that those people reject is almost never questioned. In other words, their critique assumes there is no alternative way of conceiving God except the one that they perceive through the lens of their culture. So, taking into account the kind of image of God that prevails in Western culture- a ‘monster God’… such rejection is understandable…”

Another note:

Hitler was another striking example of someone who framed evil as good, who tried to portray murder as a form of exercising/exhibiting moral superiority, using Nietzsche’s take on this, according to Klavan. The Nazis believed, says Klavan, that if you murder the right people in your “Will to power” that will make you morally superior. You can get to your perfect world if you get rid of some people you perceive as blocking your way to such salvation.

Historians repeatedly sourced here- i.e. Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, David Redles- have exposed well the evidence that Hitler was significantly influenced by themes from Paul’s grand archetype in the Christ myth, the archetype that honors the violent murder of some people as the means of salvation, as the means to gain status as morally superior. Paul’s Christ, “the Mother of all archetypal myths”, honors the murder of certain people as an act of grace to gain salvation. This is the fallacy that Mendel warns against, that salvation must come through the destruction of some people. Hitler, in speeches and conversations, appealed directly to varied features in the apocalyptic millennial complex of myths.

Add also the critical point that Paul’s Christ myth affirms/advocates for the violent destruction of apocalyptic purging (see the New Testament book of Revelation) as necessary to clear the way for ultimate salvation and the installation of millennial paradise.

As the historians noted above have shown, Paul’s Christ archetype, that centers the “apocalyptic millennialism” complex of beliefs, has influenced violent Marxist revolution as a crusade of righteous people exhibiting moral superiority to achieve a better world. So also, this theme is endlessly affirmed in contemporary moviemaking/storytelling- i.e. the endless repetition of apocalyptic that dominates modern movies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_films

A further note:

Rubin comments to Klavan that our stories need to get the basic archetypes right, and that all of our individual stories conform to the same common subconscious archetypes. They then both note that even as we get our individual versions of stories, these stories all share some basic common themes, common archetypes.

Klavan then notes that the Genesis story of “Cain murdering Abel” sets a pattern that some psychologists appeal to in order to make the case of how early childhood trauma works itself out in our lives. He further comments that some people suggest that such murders are actually a form of suicide where the ones committing murder feel like they are killing themselves. Klavan illustrates this point, noting that in “Crime and Punishment”, Dostoevsky, after killing two women, is confronted by another woman who asks him- “What have you done to yourself”.

He then relates the Cain/Abel incident (i.e. murder between brothers) to the Adam/Christ brotherhood where he claims that Paul shows us how to end the trauma of conflict and murder between brothers. I assume that he means the murder of Jesus was the ultimate final act of “murder as morality” to end all such tragedies (see Paul’s framing of Jesus’ murder as a divinely planned ultimate act of morality in Romans 3-5).

Klavan mistakenly (my opinion) ties the resolution of murderous hate between brothers to Paul’s Christ, a redeemer God who turns an evil murder into an act of ultimate grace or morality. Klavan says that Paul’s myth of atonement by violent death shows how “murder is the price of redemption”.

Paul, and the intellectuals that Klavan refers to, all affirm the very thing that Arthur Mendel warned against- i.e. believing that “salvation must come through destruction”. We see this theme also in the myth of apocalypse- i.e. that salvation/utopia is only possible following the violent purging of evil from the world, a most dangerous and destructive belief, according to Mendel.

We would do well to understand the better alternatives to this pathological mythology, the wisdom insights that sages like Historical Jesus presented, and especially as the alternatives are framed in the fundamentally contradicting nature of the Jesus and Paul messages, the stunning contrast between these two as the fundamental thing to wrestle with here. These two presented entirely different approaches to dealing with issues of offense and violence in life.

One message, and theology (that of Historical Jesus), affirms our truly human impulses to resolve problems non-violently with forgiveness (no “eye for eye”), full inclusion of differing others (nontribal), non-domination (equality of all), and restorative justice approaches (non-retaliatory, non-punitive justice).

(Insert note: Treating offenders humanely, “unconditionally” as per Jesus, is not a direct line to the contemporary leftist “pacifism” that refuses to incarcerate violent people and robustly protect citizens.)

The other (Paul’s retaliatory, vengeful Christ myth) re-affirms our worst impulses to tribalism (true believers obligated to engage righteous wars against unbelievers in false religions, as per Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism), eternal domination (“Lord Christ ruling the Church in the present and eternally dominating defeated enemies with a rod of iron”), along with retaliatory, punitive destruction of enemies.

Look at the historical outcomes of these two entirely opposite belief systems/narratives over the past two millennia. Again, I refer to those historians who have detailed the influence of the core Christian themes of apocalyptic millennialism (i.e. salvation through destruction) that drove Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.

We do better, when engaging what Rubin and Klavan are discussing here, by recognizing the basic issue that Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy understood- i.e. that there is a profound difference between these two grand historical figures and their messages and theologies. Messages and theologies that incite and validate entirely different human impulses leading to very different outcomes.

It is no progress to argue, as Klavan does, for the Christian version of “murder as moral superiority” as somehow a better version of that same fallacy across history. It’s all the same psychopathology or “bad religious ideas”.

Klavan concludes in a somewhat muddling manner, that as a Christian, he embraces Paul’s Christ as the solution to this issue of believing that the murder of some people is the answer, the way to a better future, to salvation. Huh? He just spent the interview detailing the horror of that archetypal theme. Talk about cognitive dissonance to then embrace Paul’s supreme archetype of this in the Christ myth- i.e. murder framed in terms of moral superiority, as grace, as something good.

It appears that Klavan concludes by falling back on the iconic, archetypal version of this bad idea in its Christian version as outlined by Paul.

One more:

The intellectuals that Klavan refers to were fumbling toward something over past centuries that is a necessary step in human progress. In proposing the “Death of God”, they got one half of the equation right- i.e. that the God of historical religion, i.e. Paul’s version of God, does indeed need to die away to make way for the new theology as presented by Historical Jesus. But in their crusade to murder the old God, the intellectuals missed something fundamental. They needed to grasp what Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy had got a hold of, that the “diamonds/pearls” of Jesus had been buried by Paul’s Christology or Christ myth- i.e. that Historical Jesus had presented the alternative of a new God, an entirely new theology (i.e. a stunning “non-retaliatory deity”) which Paul subsequently confronted directly and rejected (See his Romans 12:17-20 statements on this).

Paul re-established the old retaliatory “eye for eye” God of all previous historical religion in stating his theology as, “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord”. Paul’s Christ and God dominates the overall New Testament messaging.

In dealing with theology we are dealing with ultimate ideals and authority, with the Cohering Center of human narratives.

The entirely new God that Jesus had presented should have led to the actual death of the old God. Many of the subsequent philosophers and intellectuals that Klavan refers to, missed this basic point, that they should have moved past just a focus on the murder/death of the old God and on to an embrace of the new theology of Jesus, to complete the stage of rebirth into the new, of reintegration around the new Center that Jesus had proposed. Those intellectuals/artists, along with all of us, have had the alternative staring us in the face for over two millennia.

The critical point the intellectuals and artists missed was that it was not just about the “Death of God”, as in the rejection of the old theology, but about embracing the stunning new alternative that Historical Jesus had presented. And dogmatic atheism has never been a credible alternative for most of humanity.

Moving along

I’ve argued for quite a while now, to alleviate concern about AI turning Terminator, program it with Classic Liberal principles, liberal democracy systems of law and representative institutions that protect the rights and freedoms of all individuals equally. Make it read and memorize studies like Daniel Hannan’s “Inventing Freedom”.

https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/if-ai-isnt-built-for-freedom-it-will-be-programmed-for-control?utm

This from Jim Lakely’s “Heartland Weekly” of June 7, 2025

“If AI isn’t built for freedom, it will be programmed for control: The machines aren’t the danger. The people training them are — and voters are finally drawing a red line around constitutional limits”, Donald Kendal, The Blaze

Kendal begins, “Once the domain of science fiction, artificial intelligence now shapes the foundations of modern life. It governs how we access information, interact with institutions, and connect with one another. No longer just a tool, AI is becoming infrastructure — an embedded force with the potential to either safeguard our liberty or quietly dismantle it.”

He says that despite deep political divides, Americans are united in agreeing that AI must be designed to protect the most basic rights. He notes a Rasmussen poll showing “that 77% of likely voters, including 80% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats, support laws that would require developers and tech companies to design AI systems to uphold constitutional rights such as freedom of speech and freedom of religious expression.”

He adds that AI programs must be governed by the same principles that have preserved freedom for generations.

If we’re going to let these systems shape our future, they must be governed by the same principles that have preserved freedom for generations and must not become tools of oppression. AI must be subjected to constitutional guardrails that prevent abuse and preserve freedom.

He concludes that AI must “serve the people, not manage them… it must be taught to serve what makes us free.”

Doubling down on your belief system in the face of irrefutable contrary evidence, Wendell Krossa

The grand illustration of the problem of people “doubling down against contrary evidence” today is the climate apocalyptic/alarmism crusade, a “profoundly religious crusade” framed as ideology and even “science”. This crusade is undeniably a traditionally apocalyptic millennialism movement in terms of its basic themes and stages of development. No different from all similar crusades across previous history where people embraced wildly irrational systems of mythology that have distorted reality and life entirely leading many to affirm subsequently destructive salvation schemes.

Continually amassing evidence proves how wrong this climate apocalypse narrative is, yet daily across news media we see the alarmists doubling down with hysteria-mongering over every natural twitch in climate.

But as that crusade now appears to be collapsing, its leading prophets are doubling down on ramping up hysteria over every twitch in weather. Constructing outright distortions and lies in their desperate push to revive the carcass of their alarmist narrative through cooperating media.

We try to understand the mentality behind all this “madness of crowds” hysteria, the irrational exaggeration and outright lying to promote the narrative. What emotions/motivations are driving such madness? Below are two psychological/sociological types who analyze this with input from other sourced experts on “entropy/anxiety” and “cognitive dissonance”. They highlight what historians Richard Landes, Kristian Niemietz, and others have also researched and presented.

It’s a useful exercise for all of us to try to understand why we hold the beliefs that we do and especially why we fall prey to the “confirmation bias” refusal to change our beliefs when confronted with contrary evidence that we are wrong. What powerful emotional needs do our beliefs satisfy that render us irrational at times and willing to then support “salvation through destruction” schemes. Why do we continue to hold completely irrational beliefs, like “climate crisis”, in the face of irrefutable contrary evidence.

Note, for example, this greening report that just came out, similar to thousands of such reports on sites like “Wattsupwiththat.com”, “co2coalition.org”, “co2science.org”, etc. that affirm there is no climate crisis.

Global Greening from higher CO2 hits ‘Striking’ new heights– but the Mainstream Media won’t tell you about it”, Chris Morrison of Daily Skeptic, June 6, 2025

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/06/06/global-greening-from-higher-co2-hits-striking-new-heights-but-the-mainstream-media-wont-tell-you-about-it/

Quotes and comments:

“Significant new evidence has emerged of widespread and significant increases in plant vegetation across the Earth due to the recent rise of the trace gas carbon dioxide in the atmosphere… widespread global greening… a significant portion of Earth’s terrestrial land surface showing measurable increases in vegetation cover over the last four decades”.

Morrison says that mainstream media dare not tell the truth that there has been a 14-20% increase in green vegetation across the world since 1980. Media cannot share this evidence with the public because they are activists committed to mindlessly propagandizing the Net Zero crusade. Other evidence media do not present- no decline in Arctic Sea Ice extent, record growth of coral on the Great Barrier Reef, American wildfires are barely a quarter of those recorded since 1600, all the data showing that extreme events are not getting worse, deserts are reducing in size, etc.

As Morrison says, “Global greening helps reduce world famine and reclaim desert areas but it is not of the slightest interest in the mainstream since it disrupts the fake claims of a climate in crisis due to humans burning hydrocarbons… Net Zero relies on fake science and much of the real stuff is fatal to the collectivist ambitions of its hard-Left promoters.”

He adds (along with others like Patrick Moore) that all these striking growth trends should be no surprise because plants on Earth evolved to thrive in levels of atmospheric CO2 that were on average thousands of ppm higher than the current “CO2 starvation levels” of our era. And yes, CO2 is not a pollutant or “poison” (Bill Maher) but is the basic food of all life.

Morrison concludes: “Everywhere you look these days, the mainstream media are making themselves look stupid by putting a blind faith in the unworkable Net Zero agenda and turning a Nelsonian eye to the actual science around climate, including the benefits of CO2.”

(End of Morrison article)

Myriad similar reports offer good evidence that there is no climate crisis and there has never been any such crisis. The slight warming over the past century and small increase in CO2 has been hugely beneficial to all life in a cold world where 10 times more people die from cold every year than die from warming events, and where plants have been starving for their basic food in our historically low “CO2 starvation era”.

Moving along…

To those too skittish to look past public narratives, that have been proven wrong, to pry into the deeper religious underpinnings of such narratives, then start with things less threatening, themes/information more at the surface level that can be verified or refuted by common facts/evidence, for example on climate, and also the more generally agreed on things like the basic principles of liberal democracy.

Many consider that confronting religious beliefs and archetypes as wrong is too frightening a thing to contemplate. Well then rethink things at the public level of more widely accessible narrative themes and data. But eventually we all have to confront the core themes of the archetypes that dominate the subconscious (i.e. the mythical/religious element) as that deeper level of contributing factors continues to mess up human thinking, feeling, motivation, and response/behavior.

We never progress as we should until we face and correct the contributing elements of problems that hinder our development and growth. As the military guy said, you will keep getting the same damaging outcomes from varied destructive movements until you go to the root ideas driving such harmful movements in our societies and make changes there.

So start the necessary process of death and dis-integration of the old (i.e. abandoning beliefs that are proven wrong) at the level of public information that most can agree on, and then work from there to eventually engage deeper levels of contributing factors- i.e. the mythical/religious element in the mix (the “archetypes of the subconscious” issue). Start where you can, as your initial phase on the way to embracing new narratives with truly human themes and ideals to guide and validate life.

Further, this site repeatedly urges readers to understand the “secularization” of primitive mythology that has occurred over previous centuries. For whatever reason, moderns ignore/dismiss, or are just unaware of, the ongoing influence of inherited primitive mythological themes on contemporary narratives and life. Many, ignoring the persisting influence of the past, prefer to frame their varied crusades as “science… ideology”, etc.

But any close examination of the basic themes of narratives that people hold today will reveal a significant residual of the same old myths as ever before, affirming Joseph Campbell’s conclusion that people have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world.

Modern efforts to cloak primitive religious irrationality, as “science… ideology”, has been exposed by historians/researchers tracing out the details of what drove crusades like Marxism, Nazism, and now the environmental alarmism/climate crisis. As Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, and others have done in their good research. Tear away the defensive pretenses to “modernity, secular, scientific, etc.” and expose to yourself the naked emperors at the core of most contemporary belief systems.

And relate this to the Mother of all narratives that brought this primitive mythology into Western narratives to dominate Western consciousness and civilization- i.e. Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth that buried the liberating anti-apocalyptic, anti-violence message of Historical Jesus.

“Why do smart people double down on bad ideas?” Jordan Peterson with Gad Saad

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rop6FnLD01o

Why are people unable to change their minds, or worse refuse to change their minds, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary that they are wrong? Saad illustrates this problem with the case of Justin Trudeau in Canada, but his point is generally true of the left today (i.e. Socialism, neo-Marxism as in Woke Progressivism and DEI). Kristian Niemietz has detailed this phenomenon of people refusing to abandon bad ideas repeatedly proven wrong in his book “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”.

This sparked my thoughts in response:

What is this insistence in doubling down against evidence that you are wrong and your policies are destroying your own society? We see this in the “climate crisis” crusade- doubling down against mounting evidence of widespread harm (i.e. the destabilized electrical grids as in Spain recently) and destruction of economies (the Net Zero hindering of economic development in African nations and elsewhere).

I would emphasize that the doubling down on bad ideas illustrates the power of deeply embedded mythical beliefs that have over millennia become the unquestioned archetypes of the subconscious. Those subconsciously rooted beliefs push people to keep choosing the same bad ideas in endless new versions, whether religious or “secular/ideological”. They are beliefs that “deform human personality” (psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo in “Cruel God, Kind God”). They distort reality and life horrifically, and terrorize people with looming threat of apocalypse (“the end is nigh”) that arouses the human survival impulse and desperation. The apocalyptic prophets follow-up their hysteria-mongering by presenting salvation schemes that play on human hope and desperation that has been initially incited by their catastrophe-mongering.

H. L. Mencken framed this as good as anyone- “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”, In Defense of Women.

Totalitarians from the beginning (i.e. the earliest shaman promoting myths of angry threatening deities behind the harsh elements of the natural world) have used fear to manipulate and control others, to render people submissive to their proposed salvation schemes, even when contrary evidence mounts that they are embracing “salvation through destruction”. People have continued, across history, to embrace the destruction of their lives and societies enticed by the promise of utopia just up ahead. So plug away in chasing salvation through destruction. We are watching this myth-driven madness play out in Spain and elsewhere (save the world through renewables that dangerously destabilize electrical grids).

As noted above, Saad illustrates this pattern of stubborn insistence on persisting with bad ideas, against evidence to the contrary, with Trudeau and Canadians electing the very government and the same people who have been “de-developing” (ruining) Canada over the past decade. The Liberals have been actively trying to shut down our primary fossil fuel resource that that world wants and has asked for (e.g. Japan and Germany both requested that we supply them). Trudeau brushed them off with, “There is no business case for fossil fuels”. As Saad pointed out, Canadians are doubling down by choosing Mark Carney. According to Peterson, Carney, in his book “Values”, “states explicitly… that 80 per cent of (fossil fuel) resources will have to be left ‘in the ground’ to meet the net-zero goals.”

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jordan-peterson-mark-carney-doesnt-value-a-prosperous-canada

Further, it is almost impossible to change belief systems when people have tied their very identity to their belief system. They get “emotional satisfaction” from the belief system because, and again using the example of the climate change narrative, they can virtue signal as morally good and thereby gain status with the group of enlightened world saviors that they seek membership with. Even if evidence shows that loyalty to their group’s policies entails engaging suicidal empathy because the salvation scheme of the crusade they embrace will destroy them and their fellow citizens. Nonetheless, their belief system still convinces them that they are righteous heroes fighting to save the world from the apocalypse of climate change and battling against evil enemies framed as those who disagree with their apocalyptic beliefs.

The iconic examples of doubling down on beliefs that are proven wrong and destructive of societies are listed in Niemietz’s history of the 24 Socialist experiments over the past century. We have all watched that ideological system ruin Venezuela over past years, a country that should have been, with its vast fossil fuel resources, one of the most prosperous countries on Earth. The same happened with the former “Breadbasket of Africa”, Zimbabwe.

Richard Landes also reveals the doubling down on bad ideas in his book “Heaven On Earth” that details the stages and patterns that unfold throughout the lifespans of apocalyptic millennial crusades. Doubling down on salvation through destruction was evident in Marxism, Nazism, and is now playing out in the environmental alarmism/climate crisis movement, as it has in varied religious apocalyptic crusades across history.

Even as overwhelming evidence shows these apocalyptic crusades are false alarms and are collapsing, the activists involved, in desperation double down and even shift into the dangerous phase of “exterminate or be exterminated” as they become increasingly desperate to keep the “madness of crowds” hysteria going.

The lunacy of these apocalyptic crusades is manifest in that people prefer ongoing enslavement to their salvation scheme even as it destroys everything around them. That illustrates the power of beliefs that define who we are and lock us into narratives that distort our perceptions of reality entirely. They define everything for us.

People caught in the irrational madness of these crusades find it almost impossible to face the disintegration of whatever dreams they have invested in the crusade. They cannot accept the “death of a dream” and shift to find new meaning in something more rational and evidence-based.

Add here the other factors such as the excitement over possible “instantaneous transformation through destructive revolution”, as against the disappointment and impatience with the slow and messy gradualism of normal liberal democratic life.

Other researchers on further input to the phenomenon of doubling down:

Louis Zurcher, commented on the human self and identity issues in “The Mutable Self”. He talked about people locating their identity in fixed, unchanging “objects” like occupation, nationality/race, religion, ideology, etc. Such people then refuse to remain open to the new, to change and further development. They become immutable selves fixed rigidly on “object”, not mutable selves in an open and ongoing process of change.

I see people doing this with belief systems across history. Joseph Campbell summarized this in stating that people have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world.

The freedom of life in an open process of endless change is just too frightening to many people who want to be told what to think and how to live, even in micro-managing detail by dominating others. They find freedom in an open process to be frightening and shrink back fearfully from the adventure of life where you may not know where your path is going or what will happen. Like Abraham called by God to go forth into his open future adventure (Genesis 12:1-3- “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you”.).

Such freedom is vital to our ongoing development as human, to be willing to change when we are presented with contrary evidence that we are wrong and there is a better way forward, an alternative. And the alternatives are not always initially clear. They unfold in a process of gradual development and change.

I would take from Zurcher that doubling down is a survival response for those who have tied their selves, their identity, too tightly to belief systems that have subsequently been proven wrong. Hence, the sometimes violent reaction of these people to any challenge to their beliefs. They view any challenge or exposure of error as a threat to their very selves, to their existence as persons. They are responding to challenge, to contrary evidence, as a survival issue. That evokes the same desperation as that, for example, of the hyena faced with the lion about to devour it. The hyena knows it is finished but it will go down snarling and snapping in desperation rage, not meekly accepting the inevitable.

None of us take lightly what we view as threats to our very selves, to our identity, to our belief systems that have provided us with the emotional satisfaction of being heroes in grand battles against evil (i.e. others in differing belief systems). We naturally defend, sometimes to the death, our belief systems where we can virtue signal as morally good and thereby gain status with our peer groups and cultures.

More

Later, in the linked interview, Peterson and Saad probe further aspects of why people double down on their beliefs even when faced with contrary evidence showing them to be wrong.

Peterson notes neuroscientists who work on entropy theory (increasing disorder, chaos) in relation to anxiety. He says that your beliefs are game rules that bring order to complexity and if you have to modify them when proven wrong that is an unsettling encounter with unstructured entropy and chaos. There is apprehension in that and that locks people into the reaction of the “self-imposed tyranny of their beliefs”. The pressure to “lock in” may also be familial or cultural as well as personal. But to make progress, he says, you have to face such chaos in order to go forward.

Saad adds that when faced with contrary evidence to your beliefs, that you hold dear, you are faced with cognitive dissonance, chaos. Experts in “cognitive dissonance” research say that people, when faced with contrary evidence, will go to no end of effort to maintain the coherence of their current belief system, despite the contrary evidence that they are exposed to. The exposure to contrary evidence triggers the cognitive dissonance thing, according to Saad, and that triggers them to solidify themselves in their positions/beliefs. It emboldens them in their beliefs, he says. Cognitive dissonance affirms to people that they are right, despite contrary evidence that they are wrong.

I would add that what Peterson and Saad are pointing out, on how people react in the above manner, speaks to the natural human fear of disintegration of the old in order to re-integrate around something new. That is not just the disintegration of a belief system but of the very self that has been too closely tied to the belief system, the “object” of Zurcher’s research. It is facing a “death” before there can be rebirth to the new, to new life, to progress and further development.

This is about the courage the authentic hero to step out into the unknown future, not always certain of where it is leading.

Carl Jung also spoke of the depression often associated with people who refuse to embrace the death and rebirth process. They remain stuck in the old. The self-imposed tyranny of the old. And that is depression-engendering.

To paraphrase Jesus- Wheat has to fall into the ground and die before it can become new life. He also said that he was a wanderer with nowhere to lay his head. No fixed home. A wanderer in an open journey of change.

Note:

Another element of human story is the “death of dreams”. We start to follow some direction in our lives, pursue some interest, but then things conspire to make it impossible to continue in that direction. Things do not work out, so we then have to adjust and even change course. We have to let some dream of ours die and find another dream to inspire our journey. My paraphrase of a wisdom saying (Old Testament Proverbs)- “Without dreams the people perish”.

A personal example of the “death to dream” element in life story:

I returned from 11 years of having worked with the Manobo tribal groups on the island of Mindanao. Over previous years, I had become intensely aware of the problem of erosion control on the steep mountain slopes of that beautiful island. The fields of Manobo farmers were subjected to strong tropical downpours that would wash away entire sections of their crops. We introduced agroforestry projects where you plant fast-growing trees along contour lines to eventually develop terraces that prevent soil erosion.

I returned to Canada interested in slope processes and finding ways to help Manobo farmers deal with issues like soil erosion. I tried to begin a soil science program in university as a mature student. But I had been out of school too long and Calculus 101 left me realizing that I had to abandon my soil science dream and shift to another path. Later in grad school, I met my wife and again had to let the dream die of returning overseas to engage development projects.

These “death of dreams”, some major shifts, are part of human story and the life quest. My wife, as an immigrant, faced the same death of a dream when, as a licensed doctor, she discovered that she could not continue medicine in Canada due to limited opportunities to redo her pediatric residency (a basic requirement for licensing here). These were major shifts to be made, already later in life.

Added note on refusing to let go of beliefs proven wrong:

Kash Patel on the latest Joe Rogan podcast noted that half of Americans still believe the lies of CNN, MSNBC, and other media, that there was Russian collusion in the first Trump Administration. These people refuse to admit that grand conspiracy theory has been exposed as a great fraud. Patel played a key role in uncovering the corruption behind the promotion of that act of treason where people should have been imprisoned.

The Rogan interview of Patel is a stunning eye opener to the unbelievable corruption of US democracy by the left/Democrats in their hysteria over Trump. They continue to try to stop him by any means possible, even putting out disinformation/lies as never before. They have convinced themselves they are heroically facing down “Hitler, a Nazi, a fascist, a dictator, etc.” and hence, democratic principles and procedures be damned.

In consequence, we have had the Hunter Biden laptop coverup, locking down society with Covid lies, and more. Any means necessary, even stunning levels of lying to their fellow citizens justified by the belief in their righteous battle against the worst monster ever.

Patel was the central person investigating the corruption in the Russia collusion lie and he offers detail in this interview of the main characters and events in that grand conspiracy, and other corruption.

“Joe Rogan Experience: 2334- Kash Patel”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C81bFx8CSA8

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Jung took flight somewhere inexpressible

See below- More on the dangerous fallacy of salvation through destruction, with responses from Grok. This illustrates and affirms the continuing influence of the most primitive ideas on modern minds and life.

Carl Jung’s Near-Death Experience, Wendell Krossa

Jung states that his NDE shaped all that he thought and wrote following that profound experience. His autobiography (“Memories, Dreams, Reflections”) shares some detail on that experience.

Jung died in 1961 well before the NDE phenomenon had become publicly and widely known with the publishing of Raymond Moody’s “Life After Life”. Hence, Jung doesn’t use typical NDE terminology. But his experience has the usual NDE features of out-of-body (he found himself some 1000 miles up in space above India), inexpressible bliss, heightened lucidity/consciousness, and experience of another realm with no four-dimensional space or time, a realm where all is nowness.

His experience, similar to many other NDEs, resulted from his heart attack in 1944. He then had what he termed “visions”. He uses that term but later clarifies that his visions were something far more than what that term usually implies (i.e. hallucinations, dreams). He said, they “were utterly real… absolute objectivity”. Common to NDE accounts are the expressed frustration that there are no words to convey the inexpressible wonder and hyper-reality of what is experienced.

Jung begins, stating that his visions began when he was on “the edge of death”. A nurse told him later that during his attack he was surrounded by a “bright glow”, similar to what she had seen surrounding other dying patients.

Then, says Jung, strange things began to happen to him. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Carl Jung on beginning the best stage of your life. Grok on Mendel’s- “Beware salvation that comes through destruction”.

Below: Pushing Grok on Mendel’s warning (Vision and Violence) to beware of any version of salvation that comes through destruction.

Wisdom from Carl Jung

Think- Death to the old and rebirth into the new. Disintegration of the old and reintegration around the new.

“Signs that you are about to begin the best state of your life, Carl Jung”, Mental Dose

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Idz5SSPpaY

From the intro: “You’re not falling apart. You’re falling into ‘alignment’. The best stage of your life begins the moment you stop being who you were told to be.”

This is a positive and hopeful way to view and approach human development, especially as it involves fundamental transformation that leads to leaving comfortable things of the past in order to embrace things that are fundamentally new.

Evidence/data from natural sciences that falsifies the apocalyptic narrative of the “climate crisis crusade.”

GREENHOUSE GASES AND FOSSIL FUELS CLIMATE SCIENCE April 28, 2025, by atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer

https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Lindzen-Happer-GREENHOUSE-GASES-AND-FOSSIL-FUELS-CLIMATE-SCIENCE-2025-04-28.pdf

Quotes from their report: “CO2… becomes a less effective greenhouse gas at higher concentrations because of what in physics is called “saturation.” Each additional increase of CO2 in the atmosphere causes a smaller and smaller change in “radiative forcing,” or in temperature… Read the rest of the opening comment here

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You liberated yourself from “Homo-religiosus”? Why then do we keep falling for new episodes of “madness of crowds” eruptions?

Sitesplainin: Wendell Krossa

One of the guests on a recent Megyn Kelly podcast mentioned the episodes of insanity that our societies have repeatedly become caught up in over past years/decades. He asked what was going on with this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dspX81dOBVQ

This prompted these thoughts…

The myths/ideas/beliefs in the list below illustrate one critical component that explains why we keep falling for “madness of crowds” eruptions of irrational hysteria and insanity. We have been caught up in too many “episodes of crazy” over just the last century that have led directly to outbreaks of mass-death, to hundreds of millions of deaths. Why then do we keep falling for the next outbreak of madness and the next one… again and again? We had the Covid hysteria and lunacy with hugely damaging lockdowns. And we repeatedly and submissively hand our minds over to state war-mongers to convince us to support further bloody wars. Glen Greenwald pointed this out with regard to Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine. Each new war, as elites convinced us, was a righteous battle to “save democracy”, another “just war” that we were obligated to support.

We let ourselves be carried along (“groupthink”) by the fear-mongering of elites who manipulate us to embrace the next crazy crusade to save something, after a previous madness crusade peters out. The climate hysteria is a striking example and has been the most dominant “madness of crowds” episode now for decades.

But, apparently, the climate activists are now giving up on their “profoundly religious crusade”, as Michael Shellenberger notes in this article below that probes, with a psychologist, the narcissistic psychopathology behind that crusade. Narcissism has to move onto ever-new bouts of public hysteria to feed its sick mind.

It’s the destruction that is left in the wake of these madness of crowds episodes that obligates us to confront, understand, and try to prevent further outbreaks.

This from Shellenberger:

My comment to a discussion group- “In the comment below you see how narcissism deforms the hero’s quest, rendering it a pathology that destroys life and society. The narcissist’s version of the hero’s quest is driven, as Jordan Peterson once said, by “virtue signaling for social status”, a basic psychological drive. The sick impulse to present oneself as morally superior, with victimhood status, that seeks to thereby gain control of others. The claim to victimhood ‘confers obligations on others automatically’.” Read the rest of the opening comment here

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We got played by “The Don”

Evan Sayet, joke-writer, interviewed on “Rubin Report”– “The difference between writing jokes for Bill Maher and Donald Trump”, May 9, 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvNwKlNG8Ks

These two US liberals (Classic Liberals, independents) analyze what happened to their side of society over past decades- i.e. the shift of US liberals into far-left Woke Progressivism. Interesting comment on the “long march of 60s Marxists through the institutions” of US society- i.e. through universities, state agencies and bureaucracies, mainstream media, Hollywood, etc., with the intention to gain power/control over our liberal democracies and thereby incite their “revolution” that would bring liberal democracy to an end and replace it with a collectivist utopia.

Also, interesting comment by these two on the destructive nihilism that now dominates the US left. This comedy writer offers some good insights, for example, on what went wrong with mainstream comedy over the past few years. Mainstream (i.e. “late night”) comedy became part of the propaganda machine for the far-left Woke Progressivism crusade. Those people believe that they are the “tip of the spear” or vanguard of the Woke crusade, the leading edge for the coming Woke utopia, and they view any who do not submit to their crusade, to their “revolution”, as enemies that are so evil that they must be crushed and exterminated, hence the shift in their comedy to vilification of disagreeing others as “Nazis, fascists, racists, etc.”

And more…

Where environmentalism went wrong and how to rethink human care for nature. This article makes points similar to what Greg Easterbrook argued at the end of “A Moment On The Earth”, that nature has waited billions of years for human mind to come along and rescue it from it’s dead-ends (see last 40 pages of Easterbrook’s book).

“Technological Progress Versus Degrowth as Solutions to the Sixth Mass Extinction: Assuring the long-term future of Earth’s wildlife requires more economic and technological development, not less”, Saul Zimet, May 8, 2025 Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Grok on some history of the great fallacy of apocalypse- “The most violent and destructive idea in history” (Arthur Mendel, “Vision and Violence”)

Another possible title above- “Nihilistic death cults, both religious and “secular”, lean heavily on the personality-deforming fallacy of apocalyptic to generate support for their destructive crusades against liberal democracies.”

I got Grok to do some homework showing that contemporary “secular/ideological” movements are actually “profoundly religious crusades”, dominated by primitive myths like apocalyptic. More exposure of the nakedness of false self-proclaimed emperors. To repost what I have stated before- “Historian Richard Landes noted that the Bolsheviks tried to masquerade their movement as “science and modernity”, but they were nothing more than “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”. Think of Woke Progressivism, the climate alarmism crusade, etc., in this regard.

I have just added more from my interaction with Grok, notably on the outcomes of the irresponsible use of apocalyptic-scale scenarios that is so dominant today (i.e. exaggerated scenarios of looming catastrophe to alarm people, rendering them more susceptible to irrational salvation schemes that ruin societies to “save the world”). Contemporary would-be totalitarian’s continue to use the old formula of “Fear=control” that is a direct assault on the freedom and well-being of others.

Apocalyptic has long been a main theme of death cults. While the ISIS/Hamas religious-types are well known in this file, we need to consider the same is true of the death cults of Marxism and environmental alarmism/climate alarmism, among the “secular” versions.

From Netflix “Turning point: The Vietnam War”, Episode 3

“What is common is the damage that war does to participants and the dehumanization that is almost a necessary component of war that pushes away empathy and pulls in aggressive violence that is dehumanizing to all who are involved”, Col. Gregory Daddis.

“Puncturing the Apocalypse: Curry and DeAngelo Expose the Myth of Climate Catastrophe”, Charles Rotter, May 6, 2025

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/05/06/puncturing-the-apocalypse-curry-and-deangelo-expose-the-myth-of-climate-catastrophe/

Paper by Harry DeAngelo, Judith Curry, “A Critique of the Apocalyptic Climate Narrative”.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5145310

Abstract:

“The Apocalyptic climate narrative is a seriously misleading propaganda tool and a socially destructive guide for public policy. The narrative radically overstates the risks to humanity of continued global warming, which are manageable, not existential. It prescribes large-scale near-term suppression of fossil-fuel use, while failing to recognize the huge costs that such suppression would inflict on humans because fossil fuels are currently irreplaceable inputs for producing food (via ammonia-based fertilizer), steel, cement, and plastics. This paper details the flaws in the Apocalyptic narrative and articulates nine principles for sensible U.S. policies on energy and global warming.” Read the rest of the opening comment here

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A call to get rid of theocracy… everywhere.

New below: Probing Grok on the issue of “conscious observers inseparable from observed reality”, contrasted with Einstein’s pushback against Bohr- “I can’t believe the moon is not there if I am not looking at it.” Don’t take this too seriously as I am just having some fun poking Grok on these things.

See article below on Iranian theocrats soon to get the bomb, Wendell Krossa

Also, more on the pain on the plain in Spain– Grid collapse from over-dependence on renewable power sources. Illustrating the lunacy of climate apocalypse “salvation” schemes- i.e. the destruction of human societies to “save the world”.

The problem: “Men never do greater evil than when they do it in the name of their God.” Meaning, of course, “evil” based on bad theology, driven by “Monster God” theology.

Some online definitions of “theocracy”:

“Theocracy” is a Greek word that means “government by God.” A theocracy is a state… government that derives its authority directly from a religion… invoking the authority of a religious deity and basing their laws on religious texts.”

“Theocracy, government by divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided. In many theocracies, government leaders are members of the clergy, and the state’s legal system is based on religious law. Theocratic rule was typical of early civilizations. The Enlightenment marked the end of theocracy in most Western countries. Contemporary examples of theocracies include Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the Vatican.”

“Theocracy is a form of government where it is believed that a god, deity, or group of deities, or a deity is in charge. The supreme being is usually thought to rule through human figures, like politicians and clergy, who are believed to be in direct contact with and/or of direct descent from the supreme being.”

The authors in the article below call the Iranian people to get rid of their theocratic government. It would have been further helpful if they had focused that call more directly on the theology behind the state theocracy- i.e. the actual features of the God in the Iranian state theology or belief system. The features of that religious deity are fundamental contributing factors to the problems that Iran promotes in the world, notably the promotion of extermination violence toward others outside of their faith, and especially their mad drive to exterminate Jews, whether directly or through proxies like Hamas. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Psychopathy and climate apocalypse, the tyrant’s formula of “Fear=compulsion and control”

Coming soon- New material to counter the totalitarian’s formula of “Fear=control”, arguably still the single most destructive element in life. How do tyrants use this formula? They construct narratives (i.e. climate alarmism) that exaggerate fear in populations and that incites people’s survival impulse and renders them susceptible to irrational salvation schemes that destroy societies to “save the world”. Religious themes continue to play a critical role in this tyranny, notably in the “secularized” versions of our major ideologies, such as “Declinism”, “the most dominant and influential theme in the modern world” (Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline in Western History”).

Some interesting comment in this link by Jordan Peterson on his latest Joe Rogan interview- JRE episode 2308 on YouTube or Spotify. Wendell Krossa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBEZhjnZTks

They engage some interesting discussion on play and how play counters tyranny. And then some good comment on the use of fear and control of others by fear. And how all this works in the online realm and in politics, especially in relation to apocalyptic narratives.

These quotes:

“Psychopaths find a narrative to strike fear into people and justify compulsion. They alley themselves with that belief/narrative then rachet themselves up reputational hierarchies without true validity, riding on fear and power.”

Peterson then makes this summary of earlier comments with Rogan on this:

“The climate apocalypse narrative is a social contagion that’s driven by power-mad psychopaths who are hell-bent on using fear and compulsion to make sure everyone steps in line so they can continue with their acquisition of undeserved power.”

He was referring earlier to Mark Carney who is likely today to win the election in Canada and is a charming, smooth talker who believes (he states this in his book Values) that every decision of every one of us must support his plans for Net Zero. Net Zero, points out Peterson, will devastate the lives of billions of poor people. I am especially impressed that Joe Rogan now also gets all this in regard to climate. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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What lies beneath the emperor’s robes, and that other lane…

More on “Carney barker for a cult”, Wendell Krossa

The title relates to material that I posted previously where historians have rightly exposed the nakedness of historically recent leftist elites posing as “modern, intellectual, enlightened philosopher kings”. But analysis of leftist/collectivist narratives exposes the fact that they are driven by the complex of primitive apocalyptic millennial themes. This is also evident in contemporary narratives like climate alarmism that is the central motivating ideology in Mark Carney’s worldview (detailed in his book “Values”).

Historians like Richard Landes have pulled off the modernist intellectual robes that elites like Carney try to cloak themselves with.

These quotes from previous material I posted here:

“Historian Richard Landes noted that the Bolsheviks tried to masquerade their movement as “science and modernity”, but they were nothing more than “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”. My mind returned to Landes’ comments on the Bolsheviks as I watched Mark Carney replacing Trudeau.

“See the varied comments below on Carney, WEF socialist (he is a board member) and climate alarmist, seeking to bring his WEF-style climate crusade to Canada to reframe the Liberal party with his smoother elitist presentation. He will replace, but maintain, the destructive eco-zealotry of Justin Trudeau. And take it to even further reaches of destructiveness if elected to a full term.

“Carney is an eco-cultist trying, with elitist smoothness, to present himself as financial expert. No different from the self-delusional framing of the original Bolsheviks, and Marxist elites in general, who wished to mask their salvationist apocalyptic cult as some form of modernism- i.e. as ideology, science, philosophy, etc. Note, for example, Marxism’s claim to “scientific history”. Primitive mythology (apocalyptic millennialism) masked as something rational and credible.”

Continuing with recent news re Carney and his proposed spending… Read the rest of the opening comment here

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“We all become just like the God/ultimate ideal that we believe in”.

Another note on the Douglas Murray Dave Smith clash on Joe Rogan, Wendell Krossa

More probing of how to solve problems like large-scale violence and war. Dave and Doug go at it, Hamas/Gaza and the horror of violence in war. If the points and arguments seem a bit convoluted, welcome to the nuance and complexity of war when normal humans give way to those ugly impulses to tribal hatred, to demonizing some differing other in extremist terms as “evil enemy”, and then letting vent the destructive impulse to punitive retaliation. Then the rest of us watch the “insanity of war”.

The issues below that Murray and Smith debated illustrate a repeated point that I make here- Go to the root factors behind any given problem such as the resurgence of religious violence by Islamic extremists. And deal with the critical contributing factors that are “bad religious ideas”, or you will just get repeated episodes of such violence.

Historians like Richard Landes have warned that if you do not understand how myths (i.e. bad religious ideas) like “apocalyptic millennialism” can carry societies into mass-death (i.e. Marxism, Nazism), and if you don’t deal with those ideas, then you will suffer the repeated violent outcomes from people holding such systems of belief. And this applies to more than just Islamic terrorists. Remember also the histories of Judaism (Old Testament) and Christianity over the past two millennia.

And as per my repeated point on this issue- The most critical root contributing factor among bad religious ideas is the “monster God” that holds religious belief systems together, validating all the rest. As Harold Ellens has said so clearly- “Sick Gods make people sick.” Psychologists Ellens and Zenon Lotufo have both noted, the threat theology based on monster God mythology incites fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, despair and depression, nihilism, and violence. It brings out the worst in us.

Move beyond reformism that tinkers at the periphery of religious systems and go directly to the core of the problem- i.e. the deformed deity that has long reigned as the ultimate ideal and authority in religious systems and has always provided the fundamental archetypes for all human narratives (i.e. the core themes), including secular ideological systems of belief.

This is critical to solving problems like “People become just like the God/ultimate reality/ultimate ideal that they believe in”, and “Men never do greater evil than when they do so in the name of their God”. This goes to the deepest roots of the “eye for eye” cycles that we are watching play out in the Israel/Gaza war. As Ellens said, “If your God retaliates with destructive violence then so may you.” Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Grok’s feedback/input on history’s worst ideas. They continue to dominate our religions, ideologies…

xAI Grok commenting (response to my query) on Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence” and my quote from Mendel that apocalyptic is the most violent and destructive idea in history.

“Mendel’s real insight is warning us to watch out for any idea that promises salvation through catastrophe. That’s where the trouble starts.”

Mendel, along with colleagues Richard Landes, David Redles, and Arthur Herman, shows how the primitive myth of apocalypse (and its full complex of related beliefs) continues to infect and dominate contemporary religions and the “secular ideologies” of the modern era. It has to do with the totalitarian’s formula of “Fear=control”. As, for example, in the psychopathology of a “left-wing/Progressive” elite control that pushes salvation schemes that destroy societies to “save some world” imagined to be under existential threat from differing others. We are, with our front-row seats, watching this play out in the “madness of crowds” climate alarmism crusade, the widespread Woke Progressive/DEI crusade, etc.

Grok gives its feedback, below, on the most dominant of bad ideas across human history, ideas that still dominate our world religions and also our most prominent ideologies- i.e. Marxism, environmental alarmism, etc.

Note:

History’s greatest oxymoron (i.e. combining contradicting things), as embodied in Paul’s merger of Historical Jesus with his entirely opposite Christ myth, that is below this opening section- “The Great Christian Contradiction”. My taking up the project of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy to pull the “diamonds out of the dung” (their terms, not mine).

Then:

Douglas Murray offered an interesting comment in his recent debate with Dave Smith on a Joe Rogan podcast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah6kirkSwTg

Murray spoke about how as we go forward through life, that our path through the years is often like travelling through a fog due to the limitations of our knowledge about what to do, what choices to make. But later, when we look back over our lives we don’t see any fog, just the path that we took. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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