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.
And the egregious shame in all this is that long ago a wisdom sage gave us the stunning alternative to frame entirely new and more humane narratives. Unfortunately, others soon buried his insights on unconditional deity (non-retaliatory, no conditions love) within another highly conditional religious tradition (wrathful, retaliatory, and violently destructive deity). That’s the core of the problem in a nutshell.
Link to the Dave Smith/Douglas Murray debate on Joe Rogan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah6kirkSwTg
Piers Morgan review of debate with Dave Smith and John Spencer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRuhZO2dHLs
While Dave Smith made important points on the absolute horror of civilian deaths in outbreaks of violence between groups, he tried to relate that element of “collateral damage” during war as equal to a domestic situation of intentional murder of someone. Hence, his conclusion that Israel was committing an intentional massacre of civilians.
John Spencer tried to argue that domestic cases of intentional murder are quite different from larger-scale war situations where the intention is to avoid civilian deaths, notably as Israel warns civilians ahead of time to vacate Hamas areas that are to be bombed. No other country has faced such strict obligations during war.
I would argue that in war, if at all possible, the best response would be to restrain, arrest, and imprison the enemy combatants. But with an opponent like Hamas that is committed to exterminating you with any form of brutal violence, it is just not possible to do that safely.
Hamas is committed to killing Israelis on sight, so the only option of Israelis is to pro-actively kill Hamas combatants first, from a safe distance. But yes, carry out the elimination of Hamas as humanely as possible just as Israel appears to be doing by warning civilians to first leave areas coming under attack.
Adding to the horror of that war, that Hamas refuses to let civilians leave and uses them as fodder for their PR campaign, to show the world what they then frame as cruel Israeli slaughter of civilians. Hamas, a death cult that glories in death, cares not about putting civilians directly in harms way. Hence, their unconventional practice of placing their arsenals among civilians, in mosques, and under hospitals, etc.
Israeli leaders and forces have the primary obligation of all governments to protect their people from further attacks and that involves the commitment to exterminate the death cult exterminators. Such is the horror and “insanity of war” (Gen. Schwarzkopf).
I would ask Dave Smith, if he were the defense minister of Israel, just how would he solve that problem with the barbaric cruelty of Hamas. I heard someone say (i.e. the professor in the Piers Morgan interview) that Smith’s solution was to build a wall around Israel. How would that solve the problem for the long-term?
From what we know of the interviews of Israeli soldiers and leaders, they are not intentionally trying to harm civilians, but the exact opposite. That was an important point made by John Spencer in the Piers Morgan interview with Dave Smith. He asked Smith if he had actually interviewed Israeli soldiers and asked them about their intentions regarding civilians.
And yes, we have heard reports of Israelis sometimes crossing protocol boundaries to act with excessive aggression. Further, it does not help to have leadership angrily promising to come down on the enemy with an “iron fist”.
But Spencer was right to probe Smith as to why his assumption is that the slaughter of civilians is the purposeful intention of the Israelis. That was a confusing part of Smith’s arguments- i.e. his insistent relation of the Israeli war to domestic situations of intentional murder that are more clearcut as to motivations. That assumption, without evidence, without first interviewing individual soldiers and leaders, and hearing their stated intentions, seems weak and biased against defenders. Smith appears to thereby come to a dogmatic conclusion about the motivations of others based on some confusing reasoning from his personal philosophical, moral ideas.
Rather than assume Israeli “intention to commit murder” it may be better to understand the Israeli invasion of Gaza in terms of the emotional traumatizing of a nation attacked so brutally by neighbors and that is the driving emotion in the Israeli response since Oct.7.
But yes, also add in the points below on “Non-combatant cut-off values” (NCVs) that are quite high in Israeli choices to go after varied targets. Also add in the national and racial elements in such choices (“hierarchy of suffering, inequality of compassion”), etc. All such inputs bring balance and cautioning qualifiers to the complexity of situations that are best described as the “insanity that is war”.
I view Dave Smith’s effort to relate the Gaza war situation to a domestic intentional murder situation as not the best of arguments to promote compassion for Gazan suffering. That suffering has more to do with the insanity and horror of war in general. And yes, it has to do with dark impulses like hatred and vengeance that intrude on better motivations to take required actions to defend your citizens.
So yes, darker impulses can intrude into otherwise more rational defense planning and sometimes influence and deform the choices that are made in the heat of actual battle situations (adding an element of callous carelessness when approving the targeting of Hamas operatives with a high NCV (meaning- at the cost of many civilian deaths).
But pulling back to the larger context- Smith could also recognize more that Israel does cautionary things that no other nation has been pushed to do when attacked by enemies. Smith is just not clear on this complexity and nuance and seems quite dogmatically convinced in his understanding and portrayal of the evil that Israelis are committing against innocents. He then appears to take a sort of pacifist approach that simply does not work in the face of persistent evil that is trying to exterminate others, along with raping women and slaughtering young children. Horrors that the Israelis don’t commit in response to aggression that they suffer.
Think also of the compassionate efforts of many Israelis to engage peace-generating initiatives with Palestinians. Those very people were slaughtered on Oct.7.
And yes, as Smith points out, there is the history of brutal Israeli violence during the original establishment of their state. There are the blockades, and other apparent instances of abusive treatment of Palestinians. I also cringe, after surrounding Arab states and terrorist groups attack Israel, when Israeli leaders and military officials then talk about an “iron fist” response to crush and destroy their enemies. What does that talk do to incite the darker impulses in soldiers engaged in the actual response?
Point? There is a long history of both sides feeding the “eye for eye” cycles of hatred and vengeance and no doubt excusing their responses within such cycles as righteous justice posed against the evil that is any response to their “defensive responses to aggression”. We all tribally promote narratives that validate our own responses and actions and then blame our opponents as entirely evil in their responses (which they view as righteous defense against evil).
That is the common deforming of the “Hero’s quest” where people frame themselves as the righteous side set against exaggerated and demonized evil on the other side. All part of the mix that are the endless cycles of “eye for eye” retaliatory vengeance.
Add here also, the larger picture of the past three millennia of “anti-Judaism”, the persistent history of irrational hatred, demonization, and assault on Jews. As one author said, many nations across history have made anti-Judaism an essential element of their identity. What is that about? That is the larger historical background in which Jews have had to defend themselves. Historians/theologians also note the anti-Semitism promoted by the Christian New Testament, notably in John’s gospel.
Some histories of the long history of anti-Semitism (I have read, some time ago, a good history on the antisemitism dating from the ancient Egyptians but can’t remember which one it was):
“Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present”, F. Schweitzer, M. Perry.
“Antisemitism: History and Myth”, Robert Spencer.
“Why the Jews?: The Reason for Antisemitism”, Dennis Prager, Joseph Telushkin.
Moving along…
The professor that Smith engaged on the Piers Morgan’s show, tried to make the point that the Gazan war was different from Dave’s domestic situation. But he got lost in his arguments on the laws of war and international agreements on proper war protocols. He did not make his case clearly in the back and forth overtalking of one another.
It appears to come down to- How would Smith act to defend Israel and eliminate the threat of a death cult that is committed to your extermination and will use its own civilians for PR purposes to gain world sympathy? How do you deal with such people crazed by fanatical hatred? Hamas exhibits the death cult fanaticism that intentionally positions its own people to be hurt/killed during the obligatory defense actions of the IDF. Hamas uses civilians to further their death cult intentions, glorying in death and destruction as pleasing to its God.
Put this in the larger context of religious belief systems. The history of mass-death outcomes from people driven by apocalyptic millennial beliefs that help us understand something of the mentality that believes that inciting and engaging death and destruction will usher in the end of days and provoke God to come down and establish a glorious kingdom for true believers. True believers sincerely embrace the obligation that they must initiate the destruction of apocalyptic mayhem first in order to get God to then come down (i.e. “sky God” mythology) and take up the final battle (Armageddon) to destroy and purge their evil enemies from life. That was the stated motivation of ISIS in Syria in 2014. Start the chaos and God or the Mahdi would come down and finish the job.
Remember Arthur Mendel’s warning (“Vision And Violence”) to beware of embracing any form of salvation that is promised through death cult destruction.
Grok’s take on Mendel: “Mendel’s real insight is warning us to watch out for any idea that promises salvation through catastrophe. That’s where the trouble starts.”
How do you respond to Hamas’s version of the apocalyptic millennial narrative and the murderous cruelty that it engenders toward their own people? The glorying in death? Hamas intentionally facilitates/incites/validates the “slaughter” that Dave Smith charges the Israelis with. Please respond more to this, Dave. Or at least acknowledge that it is a significant factor in the mix.
Most fundamental to government responsibility- The Israeli government has to eliminate entities like Hamas that threaten its civilians. Hamas combatants are too dangerous to allow to them to live and commit further brutality. Dave Smith would do better to make the relationship of Hamas to a psychopathic serial killer in a neighborhood back home who holds hostages and refuses to surrender and then starts killing the hostages. Police are then forced to act to prevent further death even at the possible cost of innocent lives being lost during the police action to free the remaining hostages. As the professor in the Morgan interview said, sometimes you have to accept the horror of some innocents suffering in order to avoid further larger-scale suffering to many others. That was part of the argument justifying the bombing of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. That horror, the argument goes, prevented larger numbers from dying in ongoing war. Smith does not accept that particular example.
But yes to Smith’s point that children suffering and dying causes revulsion at the horror of war and that then creates further hatred and lust for vengeance in enemies. It incites many more to join groups like Hamas to take further revenge in ongoing cycles of eye for eye violence.
What then, Dave, is your alternative to fulfil the obligation to defend innocent civilians from such attacks? We know that past ceasefires have just allowed Hamas to re-arm and plan for further attacks. You suggest that is Netanyahu’s intentional plan? Huh? So he has validation to go after Palestinians?
Also balance the outcome of “incitement for more recruits to join Hamas” with what happened after the Japanese and German campaigns that were committed to mass-death extermination of others (Jews, Nanking, etc.). After their complete defeat in war they came to their senses and reintegrated into the community of nations. Perhaps their ability to let go of the narratives that drove their hatred and violence may have been due to the fact that their particular narratives were more susceptible to post-defeat alteration.
Would the same happen with the defeat of Hamas? The narrative that drives Hamas may not be so susceptible to alteration and it drives, perhaps, a more virulent form of religiously-inspired hatred of enemies and zealous devotion to God. But then, to the contrary, many other Muslims have backed away from the extremism takes on their religion to embrace more moderate positions, just as Christians and Jews have learned to do the same across past centuries.
Note also here that in Islamic extremism the Jews are viewed as a magnitude of order more evil than your average infidel. They are viewed as being demonic, satanic.
Looking beyond specific instances of eye for eye to the bigger picture.
As noted below by the military veteran, we tend to favor and give priority to the explanations and positions of political friends (i.e. Israel as the friend of Western liberal democracies) and we take their arguments and defensive policies/actions more seriously as the right ones. Not so much with the positions and responses of “enemies”. And with Hamas involvement it is especially hard to feel much sympathy for Palestinians who, in polled majorities, support Hamas and its violent jihad. Add Murray’s point that many immigrants to Europe and elsewhere similarly hate Western values and populations.
This on Hamas support among Palestinians– “Poll: Hamas Remains Popular Among Palestinians”, Foundation for Defense of Democracies…
“Mar 22, 2024 — Seventy-one percent of all Palestinians supported Hamas’s decision to attack Israel on October 7 — up 14 points among Gazans and down 11 points”.
https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2024/03/22/poll-hamas-remains-popular-among-palestinians/
Hamas cruelty and barbarity evokes much revulsion and that makes it almost impossible to see past that revulsion to consider any shred of empathy for their members. But we have to pull back from the immediacy of our revulsion and the eye for eye cycles of horror and try to consider larger issues of what feeds such madness and how to end it, by taking more balanced views of both sides. And by “balanced views” I don’t mean sympathy for the cruel barbarity that Hamas commits.
By “consider larger issues” I mean that we have to consider our more fundamental obligation to the human family as an entirety, based on humanity’s fundamental oneness and the Classic Liberal principle that we all have equal rights by virtue of just being human. As varied “spiritual” insights suggest, our fundamental oneness as a family exists outside this temporal realm of dualism- i.e. a shared oneness with ultimate Consciousness/Mind or what most have termed “God” across history.
That fundamental oneness obligates all of us to find lasting solutions to eruptions of tribal hatred that distort the appreciation of our oneness and produce ugly outcomes such as the violence and brutality of the Hamas war. Eruptions of tribal hatred and violence prevent our maturing as human, they derail the love that is supposed to dominate our minds, emotions, motivations, relationships, stories, behavior, and societies.
Further, there are no real “enemies” as we apply that term to our fellow human beings, no matter the atrocities that some commit. To ascribe the category of “enemy” to other humans distorts our understanding of human oneness and the truth that our real enemies in the actual battle of life are inside each of us- i.e. our inherited drives to tribalism, domination of others, and retaliatory destruction of others (the “evil triad” of impulses). That is the real enemy that we should all be focused on fighting. And critical to winning that war is to embrace better ideas/beliefs that embody truly human ideals to shape our narratives. The ideas/themes that currently dominate our religious traditions and our ideologies continue to incite and validate our worst impulses and produce the outcomes we see today in places like Gaza.
So while we do not diminish the horror of what people do to one another, and the necessity to hold them responsible for violent actions, to restrain their violence, and even to kill where it is not safe to capture such people, we hold a still higher obligation by virtue of our being human. The larger context of human oneness orients us to our primary obligation as humans, even while we engage varied “subsidiary” battles against evil here.
I sensed that Dave Smith and Douglas Murray were at times fumbling around for agreement on varied points during their debate. Trying to reach for something beyond their points of disagreement. I would suggest that it would have been helpful if they had tried to wrestle with something more than just the particulars of the Hamas situation, and who deserves empathy for suffering, and what is the better approach to resolving that particular situation. I would have suggested that based on our fundamental oneness as a human family, that we never ignore our higher obligation to “love all our enemies” as family. And then try to figure out just what that means in any given situation.
Then we will find ourselves moving forward in our larger purpose in life, reaching for heroic status, “towering in stature like Mandela”, solving our differences nonviolently with full and equal inclusion of the concerns on all sides.
If we are to solve violence properly and for the long-term future, and maintain our humanity in the face of the horrific evil of offenders in life then an overarching issue we have to grapple with is how in all situations that life brings, especially in the face of evil, how do we fulfill the highest human obligation to “love the enemy”?
Campbell stated this oneness issue well, and the consequent obligation to love all, that when we engage “righteous battles” in life we must keep this in mind…
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Honing my point… some basic issues to solving violence:
A major point made on this site is that with religiously-incited (and validated) episodes of hatred and violence you are dealing with something far more fundamental and difficult to change because the core nature of the narrative involved, the central reality in religious narratives that undergird the entire belief system- i.e. the theology or God that is the cohering center of all religious narratives.
I am pointing directly at the “monster God” at core of systems of beliefs that validate tribalism, domination, and vengeful destruction of enemies. What Harold Ellens refers to in his statements that “sick gods make people sick”. Pathological Gods that incite violence among people because they model the ultimate ideal of solving problems with violence as in an angry God destroying the entire world in apocalypse, a wrathful God punishing people through nature (i.e. through natural disasters, disease, accident, the predatory cruelty of others), and then topping it all off with eternal torture in hellfire. And that is the divine ideal of “justice”.
Read again Ellens statements on how the ideal of divine violence incites, guides, and validates human use of violence. This is how properly understand Hamas and what drives its maniacal hatred of life, its lust for vengeful violence. This affirms just what I argue regarding the common pattern of people basing their behavior on their beliefs, seeking validation in a particularly dominant image of God in our world religions. These quotes of Ellens are pulled from psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo’s book “Cruel God, Kind God”:
Lotufo notes “the pathological nature of mainstream orthodox theology and popular religious ideation”.
He says, “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…
“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…
“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…
“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…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see 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’”.
Admittedly, it is Gordian knot-degree hard to solve a problem such as the Hamas war situation because we have to go after the sacred core at the deepest root of problems like religiously-validated violence. And we have to do so against defensive threats from religious authorities and true believers, against their accusations of “blasphemy, heresy, being deceived by Satan, subsequently condemned to hellfire, excommunication, even threats of violence as in fatwas”. We need more of the spirit of Christopher Hitchens of whom someone said, he was not afraid to walk right up to the religious God and give him the finger. He knew it was a straw man God anyway, a constructed figment of overheated religious minds. Something that has never existed in reality, created by men to function in the totalitarian’s formula of “Fear=control”. So also Charles Templeton did not fear to expose the “naked emperor” God as an Idi Amin-like deity.
(Insert from Google’s ‘AI overview’. I include this not because I think readers are uninformed but because of the highlighted ending- “The term “Gordian knot” refers to a complex and intricate knot, and more broadly, ‘a metaphor for a difficult or seemingly unsolvable problem that can only be resolved with a bold, forceful, or unconventional solution’.”)
Push past the religious threats and smears and go after the “holy of holies”, the ultimate human ideal and authority, what has long functioned as the supreme model for human life- i.e. our common images of deity. Because of the pathology that we have inherited, that still dominates world religions and has profoundly shaped secular ideological beliefs, that core embodiment of human ideals has to be changed and radically so if we are to get to long-term solutions to violence.
Thorough problem solving requires us to go after key contributing factors to problems. And with regard to theology that means radical change of the nature of what Historical Jesus promoted. He overturned the old, entirely. And they killed him for that.
This is why I push here, consistently and persistently, the revolutionary insight of Jesus on an entirely new image of deity as not just love but “no conditions love” of a stunning non-retaliatory, universally inclusive nature. He gave us the ultimate solution to solving violence at its deepest inciting and validating roots. He went directly to the archetypes of the human subconscious that for millennia have been shaped by primitive ideas of deity as tribal, dominating, and vengefully destroying (“Justice” as payback). Hence, the intuitive feeling of many people that true “justice” should be some form of retribution. I mean, after all, deity backs this, right?
Those primitive themes in human subconscious have, across the millennia, shaped our narrative themes, our worldviews, the stories that we all live by.
But then we get those Old Testament prophets probing striking new images of divine justice as “liberation, mercy, universal inclusion and love for the outsider, etc.” And Jesus takes up that prophetic strain with his full-frontal rejection of “eye for eye” retaliatory justice and “love your enemy” based on a stunning new image of an unconditionally loving God. “Sun and rain”, the two most basic gifts of life for survival in agrarian society, God gives to both good and bad people alike. No exclusion of the bad guys as “enemies”. No retaliatory punishment. No discrimination between people. Just scandalously, offensive generosity to all.
(Again, to those minds shutting down now on reading this, it is not prescriptive for criminal justice systems, it is not promotion of pacifism in the face of violence, and it is not prescriptive for business or general commerce/economics. It is about personal freedom of choice in relation to an ideal of love that is based on the reality of a God that is like that. “Be unconditionally merciful just as your Father is unconditionally merciful.” And apply that to real life situations as you wish.)
The stunning new image of deity that Jesus taught- God as unconditional- points to the end of conditional religion and that was an intolerable threat to the religious authorities of his day, to their very identity, their occupation and survival, their reason for existence. It was an overturning of millennia of human understanding of basic justice as punitive retribution toward offenders, even destruction. And that was too much for most people to even consider. That central Jesus insight required, like a seed planted in the ground, a dying to the old before there could be rebirth to the new, at the most fundamental levels of human understanding. The change that he advocated was about a disintegration of the old and reintegration around something entirely new. Like what Joseph Campbell refers to in the “shamanic experience”.
Jesus overturned traditional ideas of justice, of worldviews shaped around that, of the very image of deity that held it all together in human narratives and belief systems, and his rejection of eye for eye and embrace of “love your enemy” was a challenge to the very core identity of many people. His stunning new insight on theology as unconditional then became a threat to the very survival of the self.
Louis Zurcher spoke to these issues in “The Mutable Self: A self-concept for social change”, where people tie their identity closely and dogmatically to some “object” like a religious belief system. Hence, (my take on Zurcher’s points) any threat to the system that they base their identity on is viewed as a threat to their very self, to their very existence and survival. And further hence, the violent reactions to such challenges from others. Like the hyena facing the lion that is about to kill it and not going down without a ferocious defense.
This helps to understand why the Jewish leaders had Jesus put to death for his protest against sacrifice. The entire sacrifice industry was based on images of an angry God threatening destruction and death, and demanding sacrifice, payment, and punishment of sin. If that image of God was wrong then the whole industry that they based their identity, authority, and livelihood on was also wrong. Yikes.
We saw this also in the anger of the Jewish audience in the synagogue, where they tried to kill Jesus for leaving off the divine vengeance statement in his reading of Isaiah 61.
He read this- “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”. But he left off this next statement of Isaiah- “… and the day of vengeance of our God.
He was affirming his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God, an unconditionally, universally loving God. He added further the story of God sending Elijah, not to help Jews, but to heal an enemy, Naaman the Syrian. That was too scandalous to his audience waiting to hear of divine justice that was conventionally tribal and retaliatory toward enemies.
With their very identity based on such beliefs as the deeply ingrained view of justice as punishment and destruction of enemies, to leave off the affirmation of the “day of vengeance of our God” was too much, too offensively scandalous, too outraging. And the Jewish authorities, the priesthood, saw clearly the threat that Jesus’ unconditional God posed to their system. The saw the end of their entire system of conditions- i.e. the demands for atonement as sacrifice, and all the rest of onerous religion as conditions, built on the belief in an angry God threatening punishment and destruction. So they quickly had him silenced, as he threatened more than just their immediate livelihood. He threatened the fundamental worldview of the Jewish nation. The very universe of Jewish religion and culture was at stake and the threat had to be exterminated. They exhibited survival rage.
So don’t puzzle over why endless eruptions of religious violence continue. Such violence is very much incited, guided by, and validated by profoundly fundamental beliefs that have always shaped our narratives, notably images of deity. Hence, “We become just like the God that we believe in.” Or- “Men never commit worse evil than when they commit it in the name of their monster God who makes them sick with hatred, tribalism, lust to dominate and destroy” (paraphrasing Harold Ellens statements on this).
These psychopathological images of deity still reign at the heart of our great religious traditions, despite reformism efforts to deny, dismiss, and refocus attention away from the darker features in religious holy books. And don’t forget that those very images of pathological theology have been embraced in the secular ideologies of the modern era, the same old myths of divine vengeance and threat of apocalyptic destruction- e.g. “Vengeful Gaia, punitive Universe, angry Planet/Mother Earth, payback karma venting wrath through climate apocalypse”.
A few rehash notes:
The professor on the Piers Morgan “Uncensored” podcast is right to challenge Dave Smith that if you haven’t personally interviewed Israeli soldiers as to their intentions then why assume the worse and frame it with your apparent preconceived narrative that they are acting badly, acting “intentionally” to harm civilians? Maybe it has more to do with the unavoidable horror of war as they fulfill their government’s obligation to protect Israeli citizens from people who are committed to exterminate them. Protecting civilians from a death cult that forces its own civilians to be sacrifices in their madness to virtue signal for status within their profoundly deformed narrative and the society/theocracy that they are trying to construct around that narrative.
Israel has the responsibility to protect its citizens from that ongoing threat to exterminate Jews, which means eliminate Hamas and also deal with the background sources of regional terrorism, like Iran. That civilians may be harmed in the Israeli military fulfilling that responsibility seems largely due to Hamas use of their civilians as shields, the refusal to let those civilians leave, and the intentional use of civilian deaths for PR purposes. That is the madness of a death cult that glories in the murder of its own people, framed as martyrs that glorify their God. Martyrdom being viewed as the highest honor that they actively seek.
But as Michael Shellenberger and others have also cautioned, Israel needs constant reminder to ensure that they are maintaining their own humanity by holding the most humane of attitudes toward their “enemies” as still members of the same one human family, as still deserving fully cautious engagement during war (i.e. care to lessen civilian casualties according to international standards), and then eventual forgiveness and efforts at restorative justice post-defeat, restoration into the community of nations as was done with Japan and Germany, post-war.
Another:
And Dave- for balance in your own presentation of your concerns, acknowledge more on the horrors committed against Israeli women- the gang rape and murder. Yes, all sides have been guilty in descending to animal-like behavior during war- note the Russians, British, Americans, and French who raped women after the defeat of the Germans, post-WW2.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPksoZ1e6rw
On how Hamas manipulates numbers in its PR campaign:
Another:
This military veteran in the link below raises a number of challenges to Douglas Murray’s arguments- i.e. that Murray suffers “proximity bias” in that he interacts mainly with Israelis so naturally feels and absorbs their suffering but is less familiar with, and hence less sympathetic, to the suffering of Gazans.
He also points out the high rates of Israeli “Non-combatant cut-off values” (NCVs), the number of civilian casualties that military forces are willing to accept depending on the value of the target that they want to fire upon. There is a clear racial element in this, also a national element. Example- Western forces operating in Western states will not accept any civilian deaths among their own citizens. Whereas Israeli forces appear to accept high numbers of civilian deaths for high value Hamas operatives. And their NCVs are much higher than America’s in Iraq.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zZqSO-IviE
He adds comment on the larger strategic context to consider (“strategic sympathy”). He agrees that while Israel was right to take action against Hamas, the Israelis must recognize that their assaults are increasing enemy reaction from their suffering, as in increased recruitment of Hamas combatants. As he says, it doesn’t mean that you don’t take action, but just that you must take this into account.
He then goes into the “inequality of compassion” and “hierarchy of suffering”. Where outrage at suffering differs according to where it takes place and who is suffering, “first and second orders of suffering”. We feel more sympathy for the suffering of friends, less so for the suffering of enemies. He says that Dave Smith was trying to make this point. And Murray was missing this. Though the civilian suffering is largely caused by Hamas, we must still recognize that what is happening to civilians in Gaza is horrible.
Add also the potential for enemies to be restored when out of the range of peer influence as in the crazed leaders inciting murderous rage in young combatants.
Example: A young Hamas rebel who took part in Oct. 7, right after he was caught and questioned by Israeli soldiers, looked miserably into the camera and admitted- “We were like animals. No human does what we did”. Another captured terrorist stated angrily, “Our leaders lied to us. They told us to kill children.” Both were confessing the very day after committing that horrific barbarism. They seemed sincere and unforced.
Out of range of head inciters of terror, these two appeared to have recovered the remaining shreds of their humanity, of their human spirit, and came back to their senses. That is the hope for others currently crazed by religiously-incited hatred. When the inciting leaders and the pathological narrative used to stir tribal hatred is removed, humanity appears to naturally resurface and people caught up in madness may be restored to the human community.
This may not be true of all but perhaps of many, even most. Listen to the aged Japanese soldiers (Netflix docu) that took part in the rape of Nanking. The shame and regret. Who said that self-judgment is the worst form of judgment.
Moving on
A recent guest on Joe Rogan offered this quote of someone, a refreshing take on theology- “God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh”.
Anyway, weaving into this point today...
Do you seriously want to get to the roots of tribal divisions, hatred, mutual retaliation, cycles of payback violence, punitive destruction of enemies as “justice”, war, and the related horrific outcomes/consequences of this endless “been there, done that” stuff?
Are we really serious about what feeds the ruin of peace and order in our societies? And serious about understanding the fundamental contributing factors, especially those in Western narratives, consciousness, civilization, and history?
My fuller argument on these things, on the greatest “oxymoron” in history, on the great contradiction between Jesus and Christ, is in the following section below this opening section. That’s my main response to “fundamental contributing factors”.
My friend Bob Brinsmead urges me to “not beat around the bush.” In all my comment here I am following my impulse to meaning and purpose by probing the deepest roots of things, notably those “archetypes of the subconscious” that were framed by the primitive mythologies of our ancestors and continue to influence the shape of our most prominent religious narratives today, and have even shaped our dominant “secular” ideologies. Just trying to understand things like everyone else. My impulse has led me to this below…
Historical Jesus is not the same as Paul’s Christ, Wendell Krossa
Point? Solving violence and war thoroughly and for the long-term future. Going after the fundamental ideas/beliefs that incite, guide, and validate our worst impulses.
Despite the comments below on Douglas Murray’s common-sense affirmation of Israel’s approach to the suicidal death cult of Hamas (i.e. the necessary defensive action to eliminate that religiously-inspired threat), I would add with regard to the larger historical context of that region and how we solve that tribal hatred and the ongoing cyclical patterns of violence, that we all intuitively know what is necessary.
This summary of consistent arguments presented on this site:
There is no higher expression of our primary human ideal of love, no more profound statement on theology as related to ethics, no greater reach of the singular human identity marker of love, no greater achievement in life (i.e. true human success), no more potent solution to hatred, tribalism, retaliatory cycles of vengeance and war, than what was presented in the central statement of Historical Jesus… His central theme- “Let there be no more eye for eye retaliation, but instead, love your enemies because God does” (as presented in the Luke 6:27-36 collection of statements).
(Insert note: Any consideration of the unconditional theology of Jesus and related unconditional ethic needs the qualifier that this is not prescriptive on how to run a business, not prescriptive for economics, and not an affirmation of some form of dogmatic pacifism in the face of criminal assault or national scale attack from others. Common sense protection of innocents is always the primary responsibility of governments, meaning the restraint/incarceration of violent offenders and where that is not safely possible, then military force must be used.)
My reference to Historical Jesus considers that person to be entirely contrary to Paul’s Christ myth, his oxymoronic merger of Historical Jesus with his Christ as in the Christian term “Jesus Christ”. I view Historical Jesus as someone entirely non-religious, and based on his unconditional theology and ethics, someone quite entirely “anti-religious” because all historical religion has been highly conditional. No religion has ever presented the “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God” to humanity. Religious traditions cannot present such truth about deity because that would spell the end of all religion as a conditional institution.
Add also the teaching of Historical Jesus that true greatness was to “not lord over others, but to serve others”. Well, there goes the pathology of human domination and control of others, the psychopathology of the primitive mythology of “humans created to serve the gods”. There goes the “divine right of kings”. There goes all forms of elitism that do not get the basic function of government to “serve the people.” There goes elite defense and promotion of the “elite/commoner” divide in society.
Paul, with his Christ myth, re-affirmed the fundamental pathologies of (1) tribalism (true believers “saved”, unbelievers excluded), (2) elite domination (Christ as Lord ruling with an iron rod, religious authorities and institutions mediating that domination and control of people), and (3) justice as punitive destruction of “enemies” (via the violence of world-destroying apocalypse and eternal hell). Hence, the oxymoron of “Jesus Christ”.
Note: The conclusions here on Historical Jesus derive from overall “Search for Historical Jesus” material, “Jesus Seminar” material (latest phase of Search for Historical Jesus), and notably from “Q Wisdom Sayings” research (especially Q1). I am not arguing that my conclusions above reflect what generally comes out of these sources.
Bob Brinsmead expands on these arguments with his 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/
Further notes are coming on the progressive version of “pacifism” in the face of violence, the psychopathology of left-wing compassion that virtue signals for status as morally righteous or good, even as the outcomes of far-left progressive policies destroy the lives of others, and ruin entire societies. I.e. as in mollycoddling repeatedly violent offenders and the promotion of climate alarmism and its destructive “salvation” scheme of decarbonization.
For an independent (me) it appears that I pick a lot on certain segments of the human population more than others. Reason? The main threat to Classic Liberal democracies today is emerging from, probably first and foremost, Chinese totalitarianism. Not the Chinese people but the thugs dominating that society, and their efforts to draw in like-minded groups of cooperating thugs running Russia, North Vietnam, Iran, etc.
Another threat to Classic Liberalism is from resurging Islamic extremism. Not all Muslims but those taking their religion too seriously, just as with extremists in all religions taking the elements of tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of “enemies” too seriously.
And most insidiously, the threat to Classic Liberalism from within our own liberal democracies- i.e. the threat from far-left Woke Progressivism as exemplified by the WEF socialists and others. This has overtaken the formerly liberal side of our societies rendering that segment highly illiberal today, with 70% of Democrats now affirming the need to censor opponents, even to criminalize dissent to the Woke Progressive narrative (e.g. the lawfare against Trump).
And yes, the right side of our societies also has its extremist elements and tendencies to mollycoddle its own inhumane impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. Right-wing extremism lurks perpetually aroung the periphery of our societies.
We all have to face that real battle of life- i.e. the one inside each of us. Those inhumane impulses to tribally exclude others, to dominate others, and to respond to “enemy” others with punitive destruction as “justice”. Win that inner battle first and we are then better armed to fight the larger societal battles against tribalism, totalitarianism, and destruction of “enemies”.
An example of left-wing progressivism that mollycoddles repeatedly violent offenders who commit most of the violent crimes. Is this the result of the felt need of extremist progressives to virtue signal for status as morally superior but then wrongly embracing a form of dogmatic pacifism that does not work to restrain violence?
Again, with any form of criminal justice we don’t abandon common sense. Any common-sense approach to criminal justice must lock up repeat violent offenders. The fundamental responsibility of government is to protect citizens from assault, “whether by offenders foreign or domestic”.
“FIRST READING: The tragedies that would have been prevented by a three strikes law: Massacres, serial killings, murders of police … and that’s just in the last few years”, Tristin Hopper, April 14, 2025