The Smith/Murray debate on Joe Rogan re the Hamas/Gaza war, and contributing factors to violence in general

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:

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/hamass-quiet-removal-of-1850-people-from-death-count-another-red-flag

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

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/first-reading-the-tragedies-that-would-have-been-prevented-by-a-three-strikes-law

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on The Smith/Murray debate on Joe Rogan re the Hamas/Gaza war, and contributing factors to violence in general

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.

I asked Grok about Joseph Campbell’s similar statement on this and Grok responded…

“Campbell nailed it—life feels like a novel in hindsight, with all its twists and turns weaving a story we couldn’t predict. Like he said, you don’t see the pattern while you’re living it, but looking back, it’s as if someone planned the plot.”

And a point or two on the debate between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith on their recent appearance on a “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast:

First an intro note: These debates illustrate “nuance”, difference in concerns (both legitimate), the complexity of problems and solutions, differing emphases on differing moral values (again both sides offering legitimate positions), and more. Its not simply about who “wins” or who “loses”, as in tribal mentality and opposition.

Murray was defending the Israeli military actions in Gaza as necessary, despite the civilian “collateral damage” deaths, because Hamas is committed to the extermination of Israelis. And the IDF is trying to be as cautious as possible while facing opponents who do not follow the traditional protocols of war by hiding among civilians, etc.

Unfortunately, the only safe and rational response in some situations is directly bombing/killing your attackers, but yes, as “humanely” as possible, as the Israelis do in warning civilians ahead of time to vacate areas to be bombed.

When you are dealing with people dominated by religious ideas/beliefs/themes, there is often no shred of rationality remaining in such minds. You cannot reason with such people who believe that God is on their side, and they are fulfilling the will of their God, they are heroically fighting a righteous battle to help their God defeat his enemies, to exterminate that “evil” from the world. There is a mental, emotional deformity operating in such minds that cannot be safely reasoned with.

There is no proper way to negotiate with such people as they will trick, deceive, and manipulate to gain advantage over your more rational approach and your desire for peace. They are bent on extermination of your group and society, and your only safe and necessary “defensive” action is to kill them in as humane a manner as possible.

But yes, Dave Smith made good points on the brutality of that Israeli war on Hamas in terms of the children and other innocents being killed. That is unacceptable. But then how do you act defensively to stop people committed to exterminating your people? Especially when that enemy does not follow the normal patterns of combatants in war. They hide weapons among civilians, in hospitals and civilian neighborhoods. And if you make ceasefire deals with them, they rearm for the next attack to exterminate you. What else can Israel do? What other approach would Smith propose to defend Israel?

Too often the more cautious approach to dealing with such people has ended horrifically for the more rational side in conflicts with such people. As Gad Saad warns, beware falling into “suicidal empathy” when dealing with such enemies. That appears to be what has happened with the US trade deals with China, as also with Western “multi-culturalism” that did not require that immigrants adapt to Western values and practices. Some of those immigrants in places like Europe now seek to transform Western liberal democracies into theocratic states dominated by their religion.

So also, this applies to the Woke Progressive use of an extremist pacifist-like treatment of violent criminals in US cities over past years. That has ended badly for innocent others.

In the Murray debate on Rogan with Dave Smith, Murray appeared to be making the better points in regard to the Israeli defensive action to eliminate Hamas, but Smith made good points on what the death of civilians was doing to further hatred and desire for further revenge among Palestinians. They gave some sense of the complexities of war and how do we respond to defend our populations and yet maintain our own humanity.

After a terrible start by Murray, lecturing Rogan on who he should platform and defending “expertise” as in Covid “experts” who lied to us, Murray then found his footing a bit better and made some helpful points re Churchill, Israel, Ukraine, etc. But yikes, the arrogant snobbery in his opening comments. Does success do that to people? I’ve read and appreciated much his books “War on the West”, and “Madness of Crowds”.

The bigger question/issue for all of us is– Where are the heroic figures like Nelson Mandela? As he left the prison where he had been confined for decades, he said, “I set aside my feelings of hatred and committed to working for an inclusive South Africa”, committed to forgiving his enemies and including his former oppressors in a new society.

Where are the courageous heroes like Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin who chose to end the insanity and destruction of endless “eye for eye” cycles of revenge and make peace? People who find a way to end violence. No matter the cost to them personally.

And you wonder why I repeatedly post the central statement of Historical Jesus on this very issue? His central theme of- “Let there be no more eye for eye retaliation, but instead, love your enemy because God does”.

Now, two of the best at investigative journalism and commentary on the issues of our time…

This IS the battle for the future… the great war for totalitarianism versus freedom

https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-apr-a04

“Transcript – America This Week, Apr 11, 2025: ‘We Did Get Fooled Again’: In 1992, Bill Clinton helped wipe out a century of labor battles through embrace of China. This week, lifetime tariff proponent Bernie Sanders launched a sequel. Plus, ‘Faith of Our Fathers,’ by PKD”, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn, April 12, 2025

Some comments/quotes re the discussion in the link above…

I keep urging everyone in our online discussion group to not get lost in the media-generated hysteria over this or that tariff in this or that country and thereby miss the big picture of what this battle is really about- i.e. a future of either totalitarianism or freedom. That is what is going on behind all this present disruption of the world trading system. Don’t focus on market swings and other things that detract from this central behind-the-scenes struggle for the future of civilization that is no longer really behind any scenes.

We face an aggressive opponent committed to expansionism and with plans for total control of societies, backed by the WEF crowd of Klaus Schwab, Mark Carney, Chrysta Freeland, along with many other Woke Progressives and climate alarmists like Bill Gates, etc. Canada has already experienced ongoing meddling in our elections, threats to our citizens, and other forms of intrusive influence by China.

And yes, affirming Kirn, this is not against the Chinese people but about the thugs dominating and controlling that beautiful country.

To start-

This most telling statement of how the Democrats, the former party of labor, of workers, did this to American workers under Bill Clinton, something that is now pushed by Bernie Sanders…

“Only this formerly workers’ rights-oriented party could simply vaporize workers’ rights and send them off on the jet stream across the Pacific and South across the Mexican border…. since China’s admission to the WTO, I think the last time I checked, it was like 57,000 factories had closed in the United States. So it may be higher now…”

Why was this done?

“This was going to benefit the American managerial class and the CEO class… this whole thing was always about sort of the upper crust of America, the CEO class, finding a way to siphon off the profits and leave the whole messy business of governing and negotiating with workers and all that stuff to other lesser peoples…”

Taibbi and Kirn unravel just what has happened with the US trade deals with China, a nation that they admit has outsmarted the US, to the great disadvantage of the US, and now left the US in a very dangerous position… with things like China’s massive ownership of US debt.

“And what did we do? That debt is now, it’s on the backs of the very people who lost their jobs. I mean, that 40, $35 trillion or $40 trillion or whatever it really is, because the books are massively understated, our real indebtedness. It is basically on the charge card of the nation state of the United States, and everybody else gets off scot-free. And the Chinese lending us money, they’re glad to do it, why wouldn’t they? We got to pay it back with interest. And for us to be paying for the pleasure of having our entire manufacturing sector ripped off by these fucking crooks, it’s just so obscene. And then to see everybody cave on it is just, I mean, that part of it, I just can’t take. I mean, I don’t know. Sorry, go ahead…”

They go on about how China now manufactures critical things that the US needs in all sorts of areas…

“What was never divulged was that it would go past Barbies, it would go past sofas, it would go past shoes, and it would become the very things you need to support a modern society. And we would buy them at their price. It would be cheap. But what would be priceless would be our loss of the ability to ultimately maybe even defend ourselves.”

Continuing…

“A nation called Taiwan, though not according to the CCP, that has got such a stranglehold on chips as everybody knows, that if China should make good on its much-voiced desire to reincorporate that nation, well the lights go out. Really honestly, the lights go out here… that was the great unspoken risk to all this, that we would become enfeebled, that we would become absolutely infantile in our dependence on vital products, that we could no longer make, that we’d lost the ability to make, and that recreating the conditions to make would take too long to even be worthwhile.”

The US dependence on China, at the cost of American jobs but benefit to CEOs, the wealthy, that dependence on China was sold to America in the vision of cheaper consumer items. That hidden cost and dangerous dependence was not divulged to Americans.

Then they discuss how China is strangling US culture and freedom of speech. Note, for example, how the NBA over past years has carefully censored its players and what they can say or not say about China. Or John Cena, who presents himself as muscled tough dude, falling on his knees and cringingly begging forgiveness from the Chinese thugs for “wrong-speak” re his comments on Taiwan (calling it a ‘country’). The Western cowardice regarding Taiwan has always irked me no end. It is a free and independent country.

They continue…

“The original issue that we had with China, it wasn’t even about the deficit or trade cheating or any of that stuff. It was about the fact that this is a politically unfree, totalitarian society that murders its own people in ways that were just as bad as the Soviet Union, which we condemned as an absolute evil at the time. And now China has a stranglehold on American culture. You can’t make a movie that China doesn’t like. The Karate Kid is Chinese now, I mean, it’s not even a Japanese story, right? It’s incredible.

“We are hopelessly enmeshed with this deeply corrupt, totalitarian country… What we can’t even do is when one of their crappy labs leaks a world engulfing pathogen… Let’s leave aside for the moment how that pathogen was generated and who did the research and so on. But when one of their labs leaks this thing which spreads around the world and destroys and hobbles economies, we can’t even tell the truth about where it came from.”

Also, they illustrate some of the lunacy of Democratic hatred today, the hysteria resulting from TDS (“Trump Derangement Syndrome”). Note that congressman who recently became flustered at the Trump trade representative sitting in front of him, after finding out that the tariffs had just been halted and he doesn’t know what to do with his anger. So he stumbles around trying to locate a target for his “WTF” rage. Reduced to simply shouting “WTF” a couple of times. Unbelievable craziness.

Add the lunacy of Democratic “McCarthyism” that has been nonstop for years, even smearing one of their own, Bernie Sanders, as a “Russian asset” to derail his campaigns. Rachel Maddow has also begun stirring her “Russian collusion” lunacy again. McCarthyism on steroids.

Taibbi and Kirn touch on the pathetic shifts, contradictions, and hypocrisy of Bernie Sanders who once advocated tariffs but now will say the most hypocritical things to enhance his redemption with Democrats. He now affirms things that he had in recent years railed against. Illustrating what “selling your soul” for party approval looks like. But the Democrats, after demonizing Sanders over recent years, are now reviving him as possibly their best candidate and Bernie is embracing this revived love of his tribe.

They post snippets of Sander’s previous statements in Congress against the trade deficits with China and the need for tariffs, calling his recent shift in his positions on that “as perfect and thorough a reversal as I think I’ve ever seen in politics.”

Trump is doing the very thing that Sanders has long believed is necessary to help American workers who have lost jobs. As Taibbi and Kirn say, Sanders previous speeches on globalization and China could have come out of Trump’s mouth. AI could mix them up, exchanging heads, and no one could differentiate between their basic comments. Hence, the embarrassing spectacle of Sanders today.

And then...

Grok responding to my list of the most common ideas/beliefs across history

My point is that these basic themes have deformed human minds from the beginning of emerging human consciousness in the prehistory era. They have infected the early human expression of our primal impulse for meaning and horrifically distorted human understanding of reality and life.

Yet they still dominate the great world religions and in the modern era they continue to dominate “secular ideologies”, and even science (e.g. climate “science”).

Perhaps most destructive, they deform our engagement of the hero’s quest, inciting too many people to exaggerate their own righteousness as they engage battles against “evil enemies” in some heroic endeavor to purge evil from the world. While there are dangerous people who must be restrained, incarcerated, or killed where necessary (i.e. if refusing to surrender peacefully), we must never forget that, beyond the tribalisms of this life, even our enemies are ultimately family (i.e. the ultimate oneness of all humanity).

As Joseph Campbell said…

“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).

Remember also that the real battle of good versus evil takes place inside us, it runs down the center of every human heart (Solzhenitsyn)- the battle of our common human spirit against our common inheritance of animal drives, drives such as the “evil triad” of tribalism, domination, punitive destruction of differing others. Drives that are incited and validated by the “bad religious ideas” listed below.

I asked Grok: Grok what have been the most common and prominent myths or ideas across human history, in mythologies and religions?

My list includes:

(1) The past was better. (2) We destructive humans (inherent sinfulness) ruined that original paradise. (3) The gods/spirits are now angry with us and punishing us for our sins through natural disasters, disease, accidents, predatory cruelty. (4) The gods also threaten a great final ending of all things, the violent destruction of apocalypse. A return to the original destructive chaos. (5) The upset gods (as restorers of violated justice) then demand some sacrifice/payment, that we should suffer for our sins as payback punishment. (6) Further, they demand that we heroically join some true religion or ideological tribe/movement to fight against evil enemies that disagree (Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism). Our enemies are threatened with this-life extermination and then eternal damnation in hellfire. (7) Then, having fought and won our righteous wars to purge evil from life, we will be granted salvation in a communal paradise/utopia.

Do you see these as the most prominent ideas shaping human narratives across human history?

Grok responded:

Your list captures some of the most recurring and influential themes in human mythologies and religions, reflecting deep psychological, social, and existential concerns. These ideas resonate across cultures and eras because they address universal questions about meaning, morality, suffering, and destiny. However, their prominence varies by context, and other themes also stand out in the broader tapestry of human belief systems. Let’s evaluate your list and consider additional or complementary ideas that have shaped human narratives, keeping things concise but thorough.

Your List: Analysis and Reflection

1. The Past Was Better (Golden Age Myth)

Prominence: Extremely common. From Hesiod’s Ages of Man (Greek) to the Garden of Eden (Abrahamic traditions) to the Satya Yuga (Hinduism), the idea of a lost paradise or ideal era is near-universal. It reflects nostalgia, a sense of decline, and a yearning for simplicity or harmony.

Nuance: Some traditions, like Confucianism or certain Indigenous myths, don’t always idealize the past but emphasize cyclical renewal or present duty over nostalgia. Still, the “golden age” trope is pervasive.

2. Humans Are Destructive/Sinful, Ruining Paradise

Prominence: Dominant in many traditions, especially Abrahamic religions (original sin), but also in myths like Pandora’s box (Greek) or the fall from dharma in Hinduism/Buddhism. It frames humans as flawed, often tying morality to cosmic consequences.

Nuance: Not all systems see humans as inherently destructive. Some animistic or polytheistic traditions view human flaws as part of a balanced cosmos, not a fall from grace. Still, the “human fault” narrative is widespread.

3. Gods/Spirits Punish Us for Sins (Natural Disasters, etc.)

Prominence: Very common, especially in monotheistic and some polytheistic systems. Flood myths (e.g., Noah, Gilgamesh, Deucalion) and stories of divine wrath (e.g., Sodom and Gomorrah, Kali’s destruction) link suffering to divine justice.

Nuance: In some traditions, like Buddhism or Stoicism, suffering stems from ignorance or natural processes, not divine anger. Still, the “punitive gods” idea is a major thread.

4. Threat of Apocalypse/Return to Chaos

Prominence: Strong in apocalyptic traditions like Christianity (Revelation), Islam (Qiyamah), Zoroastrianism (Frashokereti), and Norse mythology (Ragnarök). It dramatizes cosmic stakes and moral urgency.

Nuance: Not all myths emphasize a final end. Hinduism and Buddhism focus on cycles of creation/destruction (yugas, kalpas), and some Indigenous myths lack a singular “end.” But apocalypticism is a powerful motif, especially in Axial Age religions.

5. Gods Demand Sacrifice/Punishment for Sins

Prominence: Widespread, from ancient blood sacrifices (Mesopotamian, Aztec) to penance in Christianity or karma in Dharmic traditions. It reflects a transactional view of divine-human relations.

Nuance: Some systems, like Jainism or certain mystical traditions, de-emphasize external sacrifice for internal transformation. Still, the idea of “paying for sins” is near-ubiquitous.

6. Join the True Tribe to Fight Evil (Cosmic Dualism)

Prominence: Potent in dualistic systems like Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Abrahamic faiths (God vs. Satan). It fuels crusades, jihads, and ideological wars, framing life as a moral battlefield.

Nuance: Less prominent in non-dualistic traditions (e.g., Taoism, Advaita Vedanta) that see opposites as unified. Still, “us vs. them” narratives are a major driver of conflict and identity.

7. Salvation in Paradise/Utopia After Victory

Prominence: Central to many religions—Christian heaven, Islamic Jannah, Buddhist Nirvana, or secular utopias (e.g., Marxist classless society). It offers hope and purpose.

Nuance: Some traditions (e.g., existentialist or animistic) focus on present harmony, not a future reward. But the promise of a perfect state is a widespread motivator.

Are These the Most Prominent Ideas?

Your list is remarkably comprehensive, hitting major chords in human storytelling: decline, guilt, divine justice, conflict, and redemption. These themes dominate especially in Axial Age religions (c. 800–200 BCE) and their successors (Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrianism, etc.), which shaped much of Western and Middle Eastern thought. They also appear in secular ideologies (e.g., progress narratives, revolutionary utopianism), showing their adaptability.

However, their prominence depends on how we weigh “human history.” If we focus on literate, state-based societies, your list is spot-on. But including oral traditions, Indigenous beliefs, or pre-Axial systems (e.g., early animism, shamanism) might elevate other themes. Here are a few additional or complementary ideas that rival your list in ubiquity:

Additional Prominent Themes

1. Cyclical Time and Renewal

Many traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Mesoamerican myths, Indigenous cosmologies) see time as cyclical, not linear. Creation, destruction, and rebirth repeat, unlike the linear “paradise-fall-apocalypse” arc. This view is as pervasive as apocalypticism, especially outside monotheistic traditions.

2. Ancestors and Continuity

Veneration of ancestors (African religions, Confucianism, Shinto, many Indigenous systems) ties the living to the dead, emphasizing duty and legacy over cosmic battles or utopias. This focus on kinship and lineage is arguably as universal as guilt or salvation narratives.

3. Harmony with Nature/Cosmos

Animistic and polytheistic systems (e.g., Native American, African, early Shinto) often prioritize living in balance with spirits, animals, or natural forces, rather than fighting evil or escaping sin. This contrasts with dualistic or apocalyptic frames but is equally widespread.

4. Trickster Figures and Ambiguity

Tricksters (Loki, Coyote, Anansi, Hermes) appear in countless myths, embodying chaos, creativity, and moral ambiguity. They challenge simplistic “good vs. evil” narratives, reflecting a human fascination with complexity.

5. Quest for Knowledge/Transcendence

From Gilgamesh’s search for immortality to Buddhist enlightenment or Gnostic awakening, the pursuit of wisdom or divine truth is a major motif, sometimes overshadowing sacrifice or utopia.

Synthesis

Your seven themes are among the most prominent, especially in shaping moralistic, state-supported religions and ideologies that influenced global history. They reflect a worldview where humans are flawed, gods are judgmental, and existence is a struggle toward justice or salvation. However, adding cyclical renewal, ancestor veneration, or nature harmony would round out the picture, especially for non-Western or premodern cultures. No single list can capture everything, but yours nails the core of many dominant narratives.
If you’d like, I can dig deeper into any theme, compare specific myths, or analyze how these ideas evolve in modern ideologies. What do you think?

I urged- Yes, please do analyze how these ideas evolve in modern ideologies

Grok responded:

The seven themes you identified—golden age nostalgia, human sinfulness, divine punishment, apocalyptic endings, sacrificial atonement, cosmic dualism, and utopian salvation—have deep roots in mythologies and religions. While modern ideologies (e.g., political, social, or secular movements) often claim to break from traditional religion, these ancient narrative structures persist, adapted to new contexts. Below, I’ll analyze how each theme evolves in modern ideologies, showing how they reshape old myths for contemporary purposes. I’ll keep it concise but comprehensive, drawing connections to specific ideologies where relevant.

1. The Past Was Better (Golden Age Nostalgia)

Evolution: The myth of a better past fuels many modern ideologies, often secularized as a lost ideal state.

Conservatism: Traditionalist ideologies romanticize a pre-modern era—e.g., a time of strong family values, national unity, or moral clarity—before industrialization, globalization, or cultural shifts “corrupted” society. Think MAGA’s “Make America Great Again,” implying a return to a vaguely defined golden era.

Environmentalism: Some green movements idealize pre-industrial or even pre-agricultural societies, casting them as harmonious with nature, unlike modern ecological “decline.”

Socialism/Communism: Marxist narratives frame early human societies (or “primitive communism”) as egalitarian, before class divisions ruined the communal ideal.

Shift: The “golden age” is less about divine creation and more about a socio-political or ecological benchmark. Nostalgia is weaponized to critique modernity, often ignoring historical complexities.

Example: Populist movements worldwide (e.g., Brexit) evoke a lost national sovereignty or cultural purity, adapting the myth to identity politics.

2. We Destructive Humans Ruined Paradise (Inherent Sinfulness)

Evolution: The idea of human flaw persists, but “sin” is reframed as ignorance, greed, or systemic failure.

Capitalism Critique: In leftist ideologies, humanity’s “sin” is exploitation—capitalist greed or colonialism wrecking equality or the planet. The fall is not from Eden but from fairness.

Technological Anxiety: Transhumanism or anti-tech movements (e.g., neo-Luddites) cast humans as reckless, ruining nature or ethics with unchecked innovation (AI, biotech).

Woke Ideology: Concepts like “systemic racism” or “toxic masculinity” secularize original sin, suggesting humans are inherently biased, requiring constant self-correction.

Shift: Divine judgment is replaced by social or ecological consequences. The focus moves from individual guilt to collective responsibility, though personal shame persists (e.g., “carbon footprints” or “privilege”).

Example: Climate activism often frames humanity as a destructive force, with overconsumption as the modern “fall” from ecological balance.

3. Gods Punish Us for Sins (Natural Disasters, etc.)

Evolution: Divine wrath becomes natural or social consequences in secular ideologies, but the punitive logic remains.

Environmentalism: Climate change is framed as nature’s “revenge” for human excess—floods, fires, and storms as secular analogs to biblical plagues. Activists like Greta Thunberg evoke moral urgency akin to prophetic warnings.

Progressivism: Social unrest, inequality, or cultural decay is seen as punishment for failing to address injustice (e.g., ignoring systemic racism leads to protests or division).

Conspiracy Theories: QAnon or anti-vax movements reinterpret disasters (pandemics, economic crashes) as elite-orchestrated punishments, echoing divine retribution myths.

Shift: The “gods” are replaced by impersonal forces (nature, markets, history) or shadowy cabals. The narrative still moralizes suffering as a wake-up call.

Example: Post-COVID narratives often blamed globalism or overpopulation, mirroring flood myths where calamity corrects human hubris.

4. Threat of Apocalypse/Return to Chaos

Evolution: Apocalypticism thrives in modern ideologies, projecting existential threats as climactic reckonings.

Climate Alarmism: Predictions of ecological collapse (e.g., IPCC reports, “12 years left” rhetoric) echo apocalyptic prophecy, urging repentance (lifestyle change) to avert doom.

Nuclear/Tech Fears: Cold War-era Mutually Assured Destruction or AI “singularity” fears secularize Ragnarök, imagining tech as the chaos-bringer.

Political Extremism: Both left and right envision societal collapse—e.g., Marxist “late capitalism” crumbling or far-right fears of “white genocide.” Each sees a final reckoning.

Shift: The apocalypse is less supernatural and more material (climate, tech, social breakdown), but the urgency and dualism (saved vs. damned) persist. Secular apocalypses often promise agency—humans can prevent it.

Example: Elon Musk’s warnings about AI as an “existential risk” mirror eschatological fears, with tech pioneers as modern seers.

6. Gods Demand Sacrifice/Punishment for Sins

Evolution: Sacrifice morphs into activism, policy, or personal reform, but the idea of “paying a price” endures.

Environmentalism: Carbon taxes, veganism, or reduced consumption are modern penances, sacrifices to appease an angry planet. “Degrowth” ideology demands collective suffering for sustainability.

Social Justice: Cancel culture or performative allyship acts as secular atonement—public shaming or career loss as punishment for moral failings (e.g., “problematic” speech).

Capitalist Meritocracy: Neoliberalism demands personal sacrifice (hustle culture, debt) to “earn” success, framing struggle as redemptive.

Shift: Sacrifice is less about blood or ritual and more about lifestyle, status, or resources. The punitive undertone remains, often tied to collective guilt.

Example: Reparations debates frame financial or social concessions as atonement for historical sins like slavery or colonialism.

7. Join the True Tribe to Fight Evil (Cosmic Dualism)

Evolution: Dualism fuels ideological tribalism, casting opponents as existential threats.

Political Polarization: Left vs. right, globalists vs. nationalists—modern politics thrives on “us vs. them.” Progressives demonize “fascists”; conservatives vilify “woke elites.” Each claims moral supremacy.

Culture Wars: Cancel culture or deplatforming mirrors excommunication, purging “heretics” (e.g., J.K. Rowling, Kanye West). The enemy is not just wrong but evil.

Secular Religions: Ideologies like Marxism or libertarianism offer “true” frameworks (class struggle, free markets) to defeat opposing systems, echoing Zoroastrian cosmic battles.

Shift: The “gods” are ideologies or charismatic leaders (e.g., Trump, AOC). Enemies face social annihilation (deplatforming) rather than hellfire, but eternal damnation lingers in rhetoric (e.g., “history’s dustbin”).

Example: Online echo chambers amplify dualism, with X posts framing opponents as threats to civilization, replicating crusade-like zeal.

8. Salvation in Paradise/Utopia After Victory

Evolution: Utopian promises drive modern ideologies, offering a perfected future post-struggle.

Socialism/Communism: Marxism envisions a classless society after revolution, a secular heaven where labor and inequality vanish.

Transhumanism: Tech utopias (e.g., Musk’s Mars colonies, Kurzweil’s singularity) promise transcendence through AI or space, replacing divine salvation with engineered immortality.

Progressivism: Inclusive, equitable societies are the goal—e.g., a world free of racism, sexism, or poverty—achieved through reform or upheaval.

Shift: Paradise is earthly, not divine, but requires purging evil (capitalism, bigotry, carbon). The communal focus remains, though tech utopias add individualism.

Example: Green New Deal rhetoric blends ecological salvation with social justice, promising a harmonious, equitable world post-capitalism.

Broader Patterns and Observations

Secularization: Gods and spirits are replaced by nature, history, markets, or elites, but the narrative structure—fall, punishment, redemption—stays intact. Ideologies function as religions, complete with dogma and heretics.

Moral Urgency: Modern ideologies amplify apocalyptic stakes (climate, AI, culture wars) to mobilize action, mirroring prophetic calls to repent. Fear of chaos drives commitment.

Tribalism: Dualism is supercharged by media and social platforms, making “enemies” more visible and vilified. X, for instance, amplifies outrage cycles, reinforcing “true tribe” narratives.

Adaptability: These themes persist because they tap universal fears (loss, guilt, chaos) and hopes (justice, harmony). Whether religious or secular, they frame existence as a meaningful struggle.

Critique: Some modern ideologies reject these myths. Existentialism denies utopias or cosmic justice, embracing absurdity. Postmodernism deconstructs dualism and grand narratives. Yet these are less popular, as humans crave structured meaning.

Conclusion

Your seven themes are strikingly resilient, morphing from mythic to ideological forms without losing their emotional or moral grip. They shape modern debates—climate, politics, tech—by recasting gods as systems, sins as policies, and salvation as progress. Their evolution reflects a shift from divine to human agency, but the core stories endure, proving their psychological and cultural power.

If you want, I can zoom in on a specific ideology (e.g., Marxism, environmentalism), compare their use of these themes, or explore how X reflects these trends in real-time. What’s next?

I continued- Kristian Niemietz in “Socialism: The failed idea that never dies” says that emotional satisfaction, not rational evidence, determines our choice in beliefs. Thoughts?

Grok responded:

Kristian Niemietz’s argument in Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies—that emotional satisfaction, not rational evidence, drives belief in socialism—has some merit but oversimplifies human decision-making. Let’s unpack it in light of your earlier question about mythic themes in ideologies, as socialism’s persistence ties directly to those narrative patterns.

Niemietz’s Core Claim

Niemietz suggests socialism endures despite historical failures (e.g., Soviet Union, Maoist China, Venezuela) because it fulfills emotional needs—hope for equality, moral superiority, or rebellion against perceived injustice—rather than standing up to empirical scrutiny. He argues that supporters ignore evidence of economic stagnation or authoritarianism, clinging to a romanticized vision of fairness.

Strengths of the Argument

1. Emotional Resonance of Ideologies: Niemietz is right that emotions play a huge role in belief systems, especially for ideologies like socialism. Your listed themes—golden age nostalgia, human flaws, utopian salvation—thrive on emotional hooks. Socialism’s promise of a classless paradise taps into the mythic yearning for a lost communal ideal (theme 1) and a redemptive utopia (theme 7). These narratives feel satisfying because they offer purpose and moral clarity, often outweighing data like GDP declines or bread lines.

2. Cognitive Bias: Humans are prone to confirmation bias, seeking evidence that aligns with pre-existing beliefs. Socialism’s moral framing—fighting greedy capitalists (theme 6: cosmic dualism)—can make its failures (e.g., central planning inefficiencies) feel like acceptable trade-offs or external sabotage (e.g., “Western imperialism” blamed for Venezuela’s collapse).

3. Historical Amnesia: Niemietz points out that socialism’s disasters are often downplayed or reimagined. Each failure is dismissed as “not real socialism,” preserving the ideology’s emotional appeal. This aligns with your apocalyptic theme (theme 4): setbacks are temporary, and the “true” revolution is always around the corner.

Weaknesses of the Argument

1. Overemphasis on Emotion: While emotions matter, Niemietz underplays rational motivations. Socialism’s appeal isn’t just fuzzy feelings—it’s rooted in observable inequalities. For example, post-2008 financial crisis, wealth gaps widened (top 1% in the U.S. own ~32% of wealth, per Fed data). Supporters argue socialism addresses this better than capitalism, citing evidence like universal healthcare’s success in Nordic models (though Niemietz would argue these aren’t “true” socialism). Rationality and emotion intertwine—dismissing one oversimplifies.

2. Selective Critique: Niemietz focuses on socialism but ignores how capitalism also thrives on emotional narratives, not just evidence. Free-market ideology leans on myths of meritocracy and progress (your theme 7: salvation), despite failures like market crashes or monopolies. Libertarians often gloss over these, just as socialists excuse gulags. Emotional satisfaction isn’t unique to socialism—capitalism’s “rags to riches” story is just as seductive.

3. Mythic Universality: Your themes show that all ideologies, not just socialism, rely on emotional narratives. Conservatism (nostalgia for tradition), environmentalism (punishment by nature), or nationalism (tribal dualism) all prioritize feeling over facts at times. Niemietz’s laser focus on socialism feels like cherry-picking when every belief system uses your mythic patterns to some degree.

Connecting to Your Mythic Themes

Socialism’s staying power illustrates how your seven themes evolve in modern ideologies:

Golden Age (1): Socialism imagines a pre-capitalist or post-revolutionary harmony, emotionally satisfying as a lost Eden.

Human Flaws (2): Capitalist greed is the secular “sin,” justifying radical change.

Punishment (3): Economic crises or inequality are framed as capitalism’s “wrath,” punishing society for tolerating injustice.

Apocalypse (4): Marx’s “crisis of capitalism” predicts a collapse, emotionally gripping as a final reckoning.

Sacrifice (5): Revolution or redistribution demands personal or collective cost, framed as moral atonement.

Dualism (6): Workers vs. bourgeoisie mirrors good vs. evil, rallying followers to pick a side.

Utopia (7): The classless society is socialism’s heaven, emotionally compelling despite practical hurdles.

Niemietz is correct that these mythic elements make socialism feel good—its vision of justice and equality hits deep psychological chords. But he misses that this isn’t unique to socialism. Every ideology, from fascism to liberalism, uses similar emotional levers. Even his own critique leans on a mythic narrative: capitalism as the rational savior (theme 7) battling the delusional dragon of socialism (theme 6).

Broader Implications

People don’t choose beliefs in a vacuum—emotions, evidence, and context interact. Socialism’s appeal spikes in unequal times (e.g., Bernie Sanders’ surge amid U.S. wealth gaps) because it feels like a solution, not just a fairy tale. But Niemietz has a point: emotional satisfaction can blind supporters to trade-offs, like innovation stifled by overregulation (e.g., Soviet tech lagged behind the West). The truth lies in balance—emotions shape what we want to believe, but evidence constrains what we can sustain.

Final Thoughts

Niemietz’s argument is insightful but one-sided. Emotions drive socialism’s persistence, as your mythic themes show, but they also prop up every other ideology, including his preferred capitalism. Rational evidence matters, but it’s filtered through human needs for meaning and justice. Socialism “never dies” not because it’s uniquely irrational, but because inequality keeps the emotional fire burning.

If you’d like, I can dive deeper into socialism’s failures or successes, compare it to another ideology’s emotional pull, or check X for current sentiments about socialism. What’s your next step?

My question:

Grok how would you respond to Arthur Mendel’s statement in “Vision and Violence” that apocalyptic has been the most violent and destructive idea in history?

Grok’s answer:

Arthur Mendel’s claim in Vision and Violence that the apocalyptic idea is the most violent and destructive in history is a bold one, and it’s worth unpacking with a clear-eyed look at both sides. I’d argue it’s a strong contender, but not necessarily the unchallenged champion of destructive ideas—humans have cooked up plenty of ruinous notions over time.

On one hand, Mendel’s got a point. Apocalyptic thinking—whether rooted in religious visions of divine judgment or secular ideologies like revolutionary utopias—has fueled some serious havoc. It’s the kind of mindset that says, “Burn it all down, and paradise awaits.” You see it in the Crusades, where end-times fervor justified slaughter, or in millenarian cults that turned inward with deadly results, like Jonestown. Secular versions aren’t much better—think of the Bolsheviks or Mao’s Cultural Revolution, where the promise of a new world order came with purges and body counts in the millions. The idea’s power lies in its ability to make destruction feel righteous, even necessary. It’s like giving a moral blank check to chaos.

But let’s not crown it just yet. Other ideas have their own bloody resumes. Nationalism, for instance, has sparked wars, genocides, and ethnic cleansing with a fervor that doesn’t always need an end-of-days script—just look at the 20th century’s world wars or the Rwandan genocide. Colonialism, too, wrecked entire continents under the guise of “civilizing” missions, no apocalypse required. And don’t forget plain old greed—resource grabs and economic exploitation have killed and displaced millions without any grand narrative of cosmic renewal.

What makes the apocalyptic idea stand out, though, is its staying power and adaptability. It shapeshifts—God’s wrath becomes Reason’s triumph, then History’s march, then Nature’s revenge (hello, eco-doom). Mendel argues this chameleon-like quality keeps it dangerous across eras, unlike, say, nationalism, which is more tied to specific political structures. He’s got a case here: apocalypticism can infect any ideology, religious or not, and it thrives on crisis, real or imagined.

Still, I’d push back on “most violent and destructive” as a bit too absolute. It’s less about one idea being the ultimate villain and more about how humans wield ideas to justify what they already want—power, revenge, or a clean slate. Apocalypticism is a heavy hitter, sure, but it’s got competition. Mendel’s real insight is warning us to watch out for any idea that promises salvation through catastrophe. That’s where the trouble starts.

My next point:

An essential feature of apocalyptic is the idea of life declining toward something worse, toward collapse and ending. Arthur Herman in The Idea of Decline In Western History says that the idea of decline has become the most dominant and influential idea in modern history.

Grok’s response:

Arthur Herman’s claim in The Idea of Decline in Western History that the notion of decline is the most dominant and influential idea in modern history dovetails intriguingly with the apocalyptic mindset you’ve described, where life spirals toward collapse and an end. Let’s dig into this, keeping it sharp and focused.

Herman’s argument hinges on the idea that decline—whether cultural, moral, economic, or civilizational—has shaped modern thought more than any other lens. Since the Enlightenment, thinkers like Rousseau, Nietzsche, Spengler, and even modern environmentalists have leaned into narratives of decay, painting history as a slide from some golden age toward catastrophe. It’s a powerful story: things are getting worse, and we’re either doomed or need to act fast to stop the rot. This resonates deeply with the apocalyptic feature you mentioned—life worsening toward collapse. Decline is the setup for the apocalyptic punchline, the grim prelude to an imagined end.

Take the 19th and 20th centuries: Romantic nostalgia for a lost pastoral idyll fueled anti-industrial movements, while Marxist visions of capitalism’s inevitable breakdown fed revolutionary fever. Fast forward, and you’ve got post-World War II existentialists mourning spiritual decay, or today’s climate doomsayers warning of ecological collapse. Herman’s point is that this declinist mindset isn’t just a mood—it’s a driver. It’s pushed policies, sparked revolutions, and shaped how we see progress (or its absence). The idea that we’re on a downward slope has a way of making people either despair or double down on radical fixes, both of which can shake the world.

Now, connect that to apocalyptic thinking. Decline is the slow burn that sets the stage for the apocalyptic explosion—the belief that things aren’t just bad but headed for a final, transformative crash. Religious apocalypses, like those in Revelation, see moral decay culminating in divine judgment. Secular ones, like Marxist or eco-apocalyptic visions, swap God for History or Nature but keep the same arc: decline, then rupture, then (maybe) renewal. Herman’s decline obsession and Mendel’s apocalyptic warning from Vision and Violence feel like two sides of the same coin—decline primes the pump for apocalyptic fantasies of collapse and rebirth.

But is decline really the most dominant idea? It’s got competition. Progress, for one, has been a rival heavyweight. Enlightenment optimism, industrial revolutions, and tech-driven dreams of utopia have convinced plenty that history’s arrow points up, not down—think Silicon Valley’s gospel of innovation. Yet even progress often gets tangled with decline: every “better future” pitch implies something’s wrong now. Decline might not rule alone, but it’s sneaky—it worms into even the sunniest ideologies.

Where Herman nails it is showing how decline makes us act. It’s not just philosophy; it’s psychology. People who buy into decay—whether it’s “Western civilization is crumbling” or “the planet’s dying”—move mountains to either hasten the end or dodge it. That’s why it feels so apocalyptic: decline isn’t static; it’s a story that demands an ending. Whether that’s violent collapse (Mendel’s worry) or a desperate scramble for salvation, it’s a script we keep rewriting.

Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Grok’s feedback/input on history’s worst ideas. They continue to dominate our religions, ideologies…

“Diamonds from dung”- Taking up the recovery project of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy

Coming eventually… xAI Grok’s take on my points. And the applicability of the unconditional ideal to ethics, criminal justice, and at societal scale as in the Nelson Mandela approach. It is not an affirmation of pacifism in the face of personal assault, violence at any scale, and national level attacks, etc.

Disclaimer/qualifier: Wendell Krossa

Is there really any point to make this qualifier, again- i.e. that I this site does not intend to offend religious people, members of the major world religions, when confronting the bad ideas in their traditions?

My view on what I am doing here and why? I am just joining my voice to what Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy said in their exposure of the true nature of what Christianity has told us to believe as ultimate truth. They were admittedly somewhat crude in defining Paul’s gospel of the Christ as “dung, muck, slime and garbage”. They were framing the contrast of Paul’s Christ with the “diamonds/pearls” of Jesus, also included in the New Testament. The two messages were not the same. They were entirely opposites.

Psychologist Harold Ellens, in his own update to Jefferson and Tolstoy, said that the Christian view of the crucifixion of Jesus was to take barbaric child sacrifice and present that as “an act of grace”, or as Paul said, as a display of “God’s love”.

There were no terms two millennia ago to describe ultimate or epitome “oxymoronic” for what Paul did in merging the anti-sacrifice Historical Jesus with Paul’s supreme sacrifice in his “Jesus Christ” myth.

So also Charles Templeton (“Farewell To God”) exposed the true nature of what we were told to worship as divine, as good, as righteous reality and ultimate truth. He pointed out that the God of the bible that many worshipped was actually a dictatorial monstrosity. Templeton stated correctly that someone who demands to be the center of attention and demands constant praise of his greatness, on pain of death for not doing so, is an Idi Amin monster. Historical Jesus had also countered that perversion of deity in stating that true greatness was in serving, not in dominating others. Yet we are taught by our religious traditions to worship such threatening domination as something true, good, and right.

Alex Garcia (“Alpha God”) added to the exposure of the actual nature of religious practices like worship by stating that people bowing in churches was evidence of our animal past where lesser tribe members cowed before the alpha predators. Is that too blunt to even consider? That bowing of heads and averting of eyes, he claims, may be no different from the lesser animals in a group cowing before the alpha predator of the group. I find the shock value in such exposures is necessary to snap us awake from what we are actually doing. It is more correctly understood as a pathology, not healthy human development.

Harold Ellens warned of the deformity of human personality in that monster God ideas generate ‘dynamis’ and energy of the worst kind, exciting the same pathology in us- those evil triad features that we inherited from our animal past that keep us from becoming fully human.

The intention here is not to upset or incite outrage, to get clicks or attention. But what is the truth of what we are told to believe as ultimate truth and good? What is the true nature of the ideas, beliefs, ideals that shape our narratives? We have inherited far too many themes that have long been presented to us as “divine, sacred, holy, good”.

And then we wonder why we behave so badly toward one another at times. Well, look at what we believe and hold as ultimate truths and ideals to guide our behavior and lives. Ideals that affirm tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction. All functioning to inspire and validate similar behavior in us.

So, I take no pleasure in offending family and friends and others who believe such things.

And I see the motivation of true believers in some religion to want to seek good in their system but then do not confront the pathologies in their belief systems that distort the good making it something other, something lesser, than actual good.

Harold Ellens illustrated what religious people do with the more barbaric features and themes in their belief systems. He said, referring to the “monster” theology in Christianity, “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’.”

The same denial of the true nature of what we believe, of wanting to frame it as something else, something good, was also exposed by Richard Landes in his research on early Marxists trying to present their system as modernism, as scientific history, etc. Landes poked his needle into that balloon of delusion in stating that the original Bolsheviks were “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”.

Today we don’t face threats of burning at the stake for blasphemy and heresy so we can confront the psychopathologies in our belief systems. And modern Enlightenment sensibilities have attuned our consciousness to right and wrong in ways that were buried in the past, as religious truths dominated public narratives and consciousness and the cost of questioning, dissent, and speaking out were life and tortuous death.

Add here Thomas Sowell’s wake up on how to evaluate any system by looking bluntly at the outcomes- i.e. “The test of facts”. Face the brutal outcomes of what your system produces in people and societies.

We are all responsible for the outcomes of the ideas that we hold and promote.

Note:

I just listened to Joe Rogan ask his guest, David Smith, how do the varied wars stop after so many have been killed, often majorities that are innocents. And why the tribal hatreds driving all these wars?

That conversation, among many other motivating factors, pushes me to continue the project of this site. Confronting the very ideas in human narratives that incite and validate the worst impulses in us to tribal hatreds (the fear of others, the suspicions of threat), the impulse to domination, and to destroy the differing, threatening other and thereby come out the winner, dominating the losers that have been defeated.

What are the ideals we hold that validate all this conflict and consequent misery that never seems to end?

The “Mother of all problems” in human life and society– Bad ideas that “generate ‘dynamis’ and mobilize energy”, Wendell Krossa

Intro point: The “behavior validated by similar belief” relationship looms large on this site. Hence, the project here to go after the real monster/enemy of humanity, too long protectively ensconced in religious traditions as “sacred, divine.” Protected from challenge, questioning, and thorough reform by elite threats of being smeared with “blasphemy, unbelief, heresy, religiophobia/Islamophobia/etc.”

This is for members of the great world religious traditions. Its also for adherents to modern era ideologies like Socialism/Marxism, now cloaked with “Far-left Woke Progressivism” and its DEI racism, and its for moderns who embrace the climate alarmism crusade- a “profoundly religious crusade”. These are all varieties of the same basic complex of mythical themes- i.e. the complex of bad religious ideas that includes primitive myths of “lost paradise, humanity as evil destroyer, life declining toward apocalypse, demand for sacrifice/punishment, demand to purge evil enemies, and promise of utopian communalism as salvation.”

“Beliefs… exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… in the psychological sphere, (beliefs) generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… (they) may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…”, psychologist/theologian Harold Ellens (quoted in psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”).

And that points to the root problem, and how to solve it. The Mother of all problems in human life and society. The primitive beliefs constructed by our ancestors were eventually embedded in the human subconscious as archetypes and from there those “bad religious ideas” have continued to influence people to embrace the same old bad ideas repeatedly across history, whether in major world religions, or in “secular/ideological” systems of belief in the modern era.

Many simply respond to the deeply embedded archetypes subconsciously, feeling the impulses that emanate from them and then continuing to affirm new versions of the same ideas associated with them, as ever before. How else do we understand the wide embrace of apocalyptic climate crisis and its destructive salvation scheme of decarbonization?

The complex of “bad religious ideas”

Once again, the fundamental ideas (archetypes), and associated affirming “feelings”, include these primitive themes:

(1) The past was better. (2) We destructive humans (inherent sinfulness) ruined that original paradise. (3) The gods/spirits are now angry with us and punishing us for our sins through natural disasters, disease, accidents, predatory cruelty. (4) The gods also threaten a great final ending of all things, the violent destruction of apocalypse. A return to the original destructive chaos. (5) The upset gods (as restorers of violated justice) then demand some sacrifice/payment, that we should suffer for our sins as payback punishment. (6) Further, they demand that we heroically join some true religion or ideological tribe/movement to fight against evil enemies that disagree (cosmic dualism). Our enemies are threatened with this-life extermination and then eternal damnation in hellfire. (7) Then, having fought and won our righteous wars, we will be granted salvation in a communal paradise/utopia.

We “feel” these ideas/themes as deeply true “beliefs”. And consequently, we unquestioningly acknowledge and admit human badness for ruining paradise, we unquestioningly accept that we deserve punishment for our badness, and we feel deeply that we subsequently need salvation (i.e. across the board many get downright mushy, even weepy, on hearing “Amazing Grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me…”).

Further, we intuitively recognize the demand to engage tribal battles against differing others as basic to human existence (i.e. the rationalization of righteous and just wars against irredeemably evil enemies), and we embrace the impulse to salvation into some communalism utopia.

And we intuitively feel that these features of our narratives are true, hence we then continue to construct new narratives shaped by such themes, even “secular/ideological” ones.

These are ideas and associated impulses that deeply resonate as true, good, right, and just. They just naturally feel that way, despite no rational evidence. Therefore, we all have experience of embracing these themes in diverse versions, whether in religious or secular/ideological versions, despite rational evidence to the contrary.

That is what Kristian Niemietz referred to in stating that- “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.” (“Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”)

Niemietz was explaining, for example, why so many people continue to embrace socialism despite its history of repeated failures and destructive outcomes (the definition of insanity). His “emotional satisfaction” also explains why so many good people embraced Nazism, and why so many now embrace environmental alarmism, climate apocalypse, despite the widespread damage from the decarbonization salvation scheme to “save the world”.

They are all versions of the primitive complex of beliefs listed above.

The embrace of such themes renders many today, despite their identifying as “secular modern materialist, science, even atheist”, as very much “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”. Just as historian Richard Landes described the true nature of the Bolsheviks who were trying to claim status for their revolution as “modernism, scientific history, etc.”

Sorry to be such a ‘Debbie Downer’ to your narratives. But if you hold such themes… well, you are embracing primitivism of the worst kind no matter your sophisticated efforts to cloak it as something else.

This weaves to my concern and points below on how the continued embrace of bad ideas continues to deform the human dependence on beliefs to inspire, guide, and validate behavior. Our age-old resort to “behavior based on or validated by similar beliefs.”

The beliefs that we choose to embrace in our narratives then embody our ideals, and if the beliefs we choose are less than fully human, even inhumane, then we have embraced dangerously dehumanizing ideals and the consequences will be suffered by ourselves and others.

Example: If your “deity” (i.e. whatever you appeal to as ultimate ideal/authority) is violent then so you may feel validated to act violently against your “enemies”. Our beliefs “generate ‘dynamis’ and mobilize energy”. For good and for bad, depending on the nature of the beliefs.

The story we choose to live by matters, a lot.

The basic problem or pathology that I am fingering here is that our beliefs do “generate dynamis and mobilize energy”. They shape our thinking, our emotions/feelings, our motivations, and then our responses/actions. Bad ideas incite and energize our worst impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction, the “evil triad” impulses that are incited and validated by evil triad ideas.

And when the evil triad features are projected onto deity, then those features in deity- humanity’s highest ideal and authority- well, the influence of bad ideas is then intensified to its worst possible potency.

This is expressed in the statement that “Men never do greater evil than when they do it in the name of their God” and the related point that “We become just like the God that we believe in.” This applies equally to those claiming identity as “secular, modern, materialist, atheist, etc.” We all construct speculations on Ultimate Reality, ultimate ideals and authorities, whether religious or other. Because we all share the same impulse for meaning that comes as essential to human consciousness. And what we project onto our ultimate ideals and authorities will then, in circular feedback fashion, impact how we live.

Hence, my argument that bad ideas are at the root of our problems. They are critical contributing factors.

The narratives and narrative themes that we create, and most critically the “Cohering Center” of our narratives, i.e. our beliefs in Ultimate Reality/authority, or for religious folks- God. These potently influence our lives. And this is why I go after humanity’s greatest monster/enemy- the pathological gods that we construct to be the epitome embodiments of our ideals and beliefs. I get how potent the influence of theological beliefs are on human minds and life. For good and bad.

And to counter the instinctual denial of those claiming status as “non-religious” and arguing that they are not influenced by bad religious ideas, well, how many of you embrace mythological themes as in the climate apocalypse crusade? A “profoundly religious movement.” So also, how many “non-religious” folk embrace the similarly “apocalyptic millennial” ideology of socialism/Marxism?

Nuf said, eh. The historians, repeatedly quoted on this site, have done the detailed research on how Christian apocalyptic millennial themes shaped the crusades of Marxism, Nazism, and are now influencing the environmental alarmism crusade of past decades. Just another apocalyptic “madness of crowds” eruption that is destroying societies to “save the world”.

Weaving along…

My related point is that the actual monster and enemy that all of us must face in life is inside each of us. Solzhenitsyn referred to this real battle of right versus evil that takes place inside each human heart.

It’s our battle against the monstrous complex of our inherited animal impulses to tribalism, domination of others (denying them freedom), and punitive destruction of differing others. What worsens the presence of these prominent impulses in us is the embrace of beliefs/ideas that incite and validate such impulses. And most dangerous is the embrace of deities that embody the same features. That takes the validating influence of beliefs to their highest reach. And that is the monster that this site repeatedly tackles and seeks to bring down.

I view this as one of the most fundamental issues in human development and maturing.

The complex of bad religious ideas listed above was long ago projected onto deity/God to construct the ultimate monster, the monster of “threat theology” that is the cohering center of entire systems of bad ideas. Our ancestors constructed the earliest versions of deity as tribal, dominating, and punitively destructive, claiming that such speculated reality affirmed their view of justice, righteousness, and ultimate good as something tribal and retaliatory thereby validating their engagement in endless cycles of “eye for eye” violence and destruction against “enemies”.

And we have struggled ever since to liberate ourselves from that pathology passed down to us. It still dominates our main religious traditions and major ideologies like Socialism/Marxism and environmental alarmism. I have repeatedly listed here the research on this- i.e. Arthur Herman, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, etc.

And no one has been more complicit and influential in maintaining the complex of primitive themes, and its cohering deity, than Paul and his Christ myth. Paul’s Christ epitomizes the complex of bad ideas and the monstrous deity that centers that complex. This will be hard for true believers to acknowledge. Psychologists/theologians like Harold Ellens help throw light on what has happened by bluntly but clearly exposing the true nature of the core beliefs in a religion like Christianity and how Paul set the pattern for cloaking evil as something good in Western narratives and consciousness.

Ellens states (quoted by Zenon Lotufo), “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’.”

Note particularly this statement of Ellens above: “a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’.” That nails the problem. Disguising the worst of brutality and inhumanity as a “remarkable act of grace”. And that appeal to child sacrifice is the core of Paul’s “Christ-ianity.” Add that framing Jesus crucifixion as a divine sacrifice, is a stunning rejection of the message and life of Historical Jesus. A stunning distortion of the central anti-sacrifice protest of the man, a protest that got him killed. Paul, with his Christ myth, turned Jesus into the very opposite of what he had taught and lived (See below the links to Bob Brinsmead’s essays on the anti-sacrifice protest of Historical Jesus).

Christianity has more than any other system of ideas/beliefs, succeeded at disguising primitive barbarity (child sacrifice) as an act of love/grace. And thereby buried the actual message of the man, Historical Jesus, who protested that barbarity and was then transformed into the epitome of that barbarity in the Christ myth. This is stunning stuff to recognize.

Once again…

A critical component of our problems (personal and societal) is that beliefs “generate dynamis and mobilize energy”, where too often bad ideas incite people to bad behavior. I frame this problem in terms of the “behavior based on similar belief” relationship that has been used by all people across history. That human impulse to validate “behavior with similar beliefs” is how beliefs exert their powerful influence on human life, shaping our thinking, feeling, motivations, and responses/behaviors.

Our primal impulse to meaning drives us to find beliefs that serve as guiding ideals and validate how we act and live. We then base our behavior and our lives on our chosen beliefs, the narratives or stories that we construct for ourselves to live by. We get into trouble when we naively accept certain beliefs because they have long been framed as “divine, sacred, etc.” And we intensify trouble if we then ignore our basic responsibility to discern between bad and good in all arenas of life, applying the discernment between good and bad even to theology- i.e. how we imagine God.

Once again to emphasize this root contributing factor: “Beliefs… exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… in the psychological sphere, (beliefs) generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… (they) may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…”

And no belief “generates ‘dynamis’ and mobilizes energy” more than the “Mother of all beliefs”- i.e. the God that people construct as the cohering center of their belief systems, whether it be a religious or secular version of deity. The ideas/features that people project onto their gods become the most potent of beliefs to incite, guide, and validate their lives. And that is why I go after Paul’s Christ myth, despite the risks of offending true believers in the Christ.

My point again

Paul’s Christ myth was created by Paul to embody the pathologies of all past mythical/religious traditions- i.e. the threat theology that has been used by domination-obsessed elites from the beginning, used by early humans driven by their impulse to meaning. They consequently constructed mythologies, then eventually great religious traditions, to dominate and control populations. Notable here has been Zoroaster whose main themes of tribal dualism (i.e. cosmic dualism) and apocalypse then shaped Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Christianity, growing to become the most influential belief system for Western civilization, then shaped Western narratives and consciousness, eventually shaping meta-narratives both religious and secular, using the same basic themes of primitive threat theology/apocalyptic to terrorize populations. The basic themes of apocalyptic millennial Christianity have been traced as significant drivers behind movements like climate alarmism, Marxism, etc. And as always, we get the same old outcomes, the same old consequences- i.e. the ongoing eruptions of violence and mass-destruction that the historians have repeatedly warned us about.

Paul took the worst of primitive features long used to define deities and elevated those features to universal and cosmic status with his Christ as the ultimate Savior, Lord, God, for all humanity and for all time/eternity. Hence, James Tabor, along with others, has rightly stated that the Christ of Paul has been the most influential myth in all history and continues that influence today.

Note: My approach to sorting out the contradiction between historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ is informed by the general “Search for Historical Jesus”, “Jesus Seminar” materials, “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research (i.e. James Robinson, John Kloppenborg, Stephen Patterson, etc.), and notably by Bob Brinsmead’s research…

Bob’s two latest 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/

The “Great contradiction in Christianity”… (revised, updated), Wendell Krossa

What is at stake in tackling the great contradiction between Historical Jesus and Paul’s entirely contrary Christ myth that distorted and buried the message of Jesus? What is at state is the long history of bad religious ideas inciting and validating bad human behavior. Think here of Marxism and its consequent 100 million deaths, a revolutionary movement inspired and validated by core religious themes- i.e. the “apocalyptic millennial” complex.

Think also of Nazism and the 50 million needlessly slaughtered in consequence of that madness crusade. Again, also inspired, guided, and validated by apocalyptic millennial ideas/beliefs/themes.

And now we continue to suffer the mass-harm of climate apocalypse and its salvation scheme of decarbonization. Add also the rebirth of apocalyptic millennialism in far-left Woke Progressivism (yes, this front in the revolution also embraces climate apocalypse). Its always the same old bad ideas we have inherited from the primitive mythology of our ancestors, bad ideas later used to frame the great world religions, and now still embraced in those religious traditions as well as in the “secular/ideological” belief systems of the modern era.

And its always the same old destructive outcomes of power-mongering elites using bad ideas to frame public narratives and thereby dominate and control commoners and re-establish the “elite/commoner” divide in societies. We see this today in Woke Progressives trying to lord over and subjugate populist commoners seeking a restoration of Classic Liberalism.

Such behavior has always been central to the elite project- i.e. “Fear=control”. The use of “threat theology” to frighten, subjugate, and control/coerce others to engage your salvation schemes.

H. L. Mencken nailed this in stating, “’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.”

Hence, the project of this site to expose how the Jesus/Paul contradiction illustrates how bad ideas create so much misery in life (inciting, guiding, validating bad behavior), and how people protect those bad ideas under the sacred (i.e. cloaking them in religious belief systems as divinely inspired, from God), making it hard to effect any real change of our guiding ideals.

This site exists to reveal how bad ideas incite the worst impulses in people- validating harm to others. This site argues that we have better alternatives but the alternatives are distorted, even buried by the continued embrace of bad ideas in our narratives. This site shows how elites protect the ideas that validate their power and control with threatening smears of “heresy, blasphemy, misinformation/disinformation, speech as criminal violence (Islamophobia, etc.)”, and more, all to maintain narrative themes that validate elite powerholding and control of others.

Moving into the oxymoronic “Jesus Christ” of Paul’s gospel….

“History’s/humanity’s most profoundly humane insight/discovery was buried by Paul’s Christ myth…” Wendell Krossa

Intro comments:

Paul’s Christ myth has been the single most influential myth in history. It is primarily responsible for perpetuating the primitive and destructive fallacy of apocalyptic in Western narratives and consciousness. And yes, there is an “anti-Christ” in Christianity but its not who you think it is. Its someone familiarly iconic and honored.

What’s at stake in challenging the Christ myth? The recovery of history’s single most profound insight- i.e. that God is a stunning “no conditions” reality, an insight that presents opportunity for a profound transformation and liberation of human narratives, minds, emotions, spirit, and life.

The central Jesus insight/discovery presented the opportunity for the most profound liberation ever offered to humanity- liberation from the threat theology that has dominated human narratives and religions from the beginning. Liberation from the “bad religious ideas” problem that has darkened and enslaved human consciousness from the beginning. Psychologist/theologian Harold Ellens rightly summarized the problem as “Sick Gods make people sick”.

The recovery of the Jesus insight/discovery is the restoration continuation of that greatest ever liberation movement that Jesus tried to spark. That was central to his healing as the most fundamental form of mental/emotional healing.

That insight on unconditional deity has been buried for two millennia under Paul’s highly conditional Christ myth. Paul’s Christ re-affirmed the same old primitive threat theology of previous millennia- i.e. angry gods threatening to punish and destroy people and demanding submission to damaging salvation schemes. All part of the totalitarian’s formula of “Fear=control”.

Paul intentionally rejected the stunning new breakthrough of Historical Jesus and retreated to re-affirm the worst of primitive theology that Jesus had overturned.

James Tabor in “Paul and Jesus” offers some preface to the material below:

“There was a version of ‘Christianity before Paul’, affirmed by both Jesus and his original followers, with tenets and affirmations quite opposite to these of Paul… the message of Paul, which created Christianity as we know it, and the message of historical Jesus and his earliest followers, were not the same. In fact, they were sharply opposed to one another with little in common beyond the name Jesus itself” (p.xv1).

“Paul is the most influential person in human history and realize it or not, he has shaped practically all we think about everything… the West in particular… the foundations of Western civilization- from our assumptions about reality to our societal and personal ethics- rest in a singular way upon the heavenly visions and apparitions of the apostle Paul. We are all cultural heirs of Paul, with the well-established doctrines and traditions of mainstream Christianity deeply entrenched in our culture. In contrast, Jesus as a historical figure… has been largely lost to our culture” (p. xv11).

“Paul operated with a strongly apocalyptic perspective that influenced all he said or did” (p.15).

“The entire New Testament canon is largely a post-Paul and pro-Paul production…” (p.19).

“The ‘Jesus’ who most influenced history was the ‘Jesus-Christ’ of Paul, not the historical figure of Jesus… Paul transformed Jesus himself (and) his message of a… kingdom of justice and peace on earth, to the symbol of a religion of otherworldly salvation in a heavenly world”, (21).

“The form of Christianity… (that thrived in the late Roman Empire) … was heavily based upon the ecstatic and visionary experiences of Paul. Christianity as we came to know it, is Paul and Paul is Christianity. The bulk of the New Testament is dominated by his theological vision”, p.24).

“Paul’s view of Christ as the divine pre-existent Son of God who took on human form, died on the cross for the sins of the world, and was resurrected to heavenly glory at God’s right hand becomes the Christian message”, (39).

“The Q source is the earliest collection of the teachings and sayings of Jesus… the most striking characteristic of the Q source in terms of reconstructing Christian origins is that it has nothing of Paul’s theology, particularly his Christology or view of Christ”, (41).

Jesus and the Christ myth- Separating diamonds from dung (revised) Wendell Krossa

The fundamental problem with Paul’s Christ myth was outlined by Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy. They stated that the Christ of Paul “buried the diamonds/pearls” of Historical Jesus (“Historical Jesus” is the title used to distinguish the actual historical person from the Christian version- known as the merged oxymoronic “Jesus Christ”).

The message of Jesus emphasized the themes of unlimited forgiveness and universal inclusion of everyone, equally (i.e. “sun and rain freely given to both good and bad people”). Additionally, his personal practise of inviting social outcasts to public meals affirmed his stance against exclusionary tribalism. The cohering center of his life and teaching was unconditional love (no payment or sacrifice demanded before forgiving- e.g. illustrated in the story of the Prodigal Father).

Jesus presented a stunning new take on justice as non-retaliatory, non-punitive (no “eye for eye” retaliation, no punitive destruction of differing others, of “enemies”). Add also his rejection of domination in human relating. He stated that true greatness did not lord over others but instead served others. Slave-like.

Paul’s Christ buried these diamond features of unconditional love in the “dung” (Jefferson’s term) of highly conditional salvation mythology. The prominent features of Paul’s conditional salvation include (1) the appeasement of angry deity with the required payment of a blood sacrifice (Romans, Hebrews); (2) the tribal exclusion of unbelievers (in Romans and elsewhere Paul emphasizes the condition of faith in his Christ myth as necessary for inclusion in salvation); and (3) ultimate retaliation/punishment through apocalypse or hell (see his Thessalonian letters and the Revelation of John).

The highly conditional religion of Paul buried the unconditional message of Jesus. Again, Paul validated the primitive practise of elites lording over commoners with his “Lord Jesus”, a profound contradiction of the service-oriented Historical Jesus.

(See the list of the main contradictions between the messages/themes of Jesus and Paul, at the bottom of this material.)

Weaving along a bit more….

Another preface to “The Christian Contradiction” (Jesus versus Christ) Wendell Krossa

Across history people have appealed to deity as humanity’s highest ideal and authority to validate their behavior and their treatment of others, notably, to validate justice as the punishment of others for wrongs done. This is the “behavior based on similar belief” relationship. Most notable, people have long appealed to the features of retaliation and punishment in God as the ultimate validation for their exercise of punitive, payback justice toward offending others. Punitive theology has long undergirded the human practise of punitive justice.

Historical Jesus reframed entirely the behavior based on belief model when he rejected retaliation as a divinely validated ethic. He stated that, contrary to Old Testament teaching (“eye for eye”), God did not retaliate. He argued that, instead, God generously forgave, included, and loved all people whether good or bad. Note the essential point of his Matthew 5 and Luke 6 statements: “There should be no more eye for eye, but instead, Love your enemies… (because God does). Be like God who generously and freely gives sun and rain to both righteous and unrighteous… Be unconditionally merciful just as your Father is unconditionally merciful”.

Conclusion? We violate the central message of Historical Jesus if we try to appeal to him or his theology to validate retaliatory, punitive justice. Paul’s Christ is another matter altogether. The mythical Christ, a reality entirely opposite to Historical Jesus, validates ultimate divine retaliation.

In the Matthew 5 and Luke 6 statements Historical Jesus overturned previous millennia of all-pervasive threat theology- i.e. myths of angry gods threatening judgment, punishment and destruction, and then demanding sacrifice/payment/conditions for salvation. Unfortunately, Historical Jesus is almost entirely buried under the Christ mythology of the New Testament books.

(End of “weaves”…)

More prepping for “The great Christian Contradiction” (Historical Jesus versus Paul’s Christ myth): Wendell Krossa

The argument here? The feature of ‘unconditional’, the highest reach of love, should center an authentically humane theology (i.e. God theory or Ultimate Reality theory).

In this essay, I appeal to elements of the Jesus tradition to establish this point. But my argument is not dependent on first establishing the actual message of the original Jesus (i.e. as in “Q Wisdom Sayings” research). I do not view Jesus as an ultimate authority figure and I do not need his actual words (the “original message”) to affirm my point regarding an unconditional theology. I simply refer to varied useful comments in the Jesus material (e.g. “love your enemy”) to illustrate his central theme of unconditional love.

I don’t need the imprimatur of Jesus to validate unconditional as the highest reach of love. It stands on its own as authoritative.

Unconditional love is the best of being human and it possesses authority in itself as ultimate goodness without the need for validation by some religious authority. Unconditional love is “self-validating” as ultimate goodness and truth. Unconditional love does not need validation from Jesus, but I do not mind touching base with such a widely respected icon/symbol for illustrative purposes.

Unconditional love is not a religious insight or discovery. To the contrary, religious traditions across history have communicated the exact opposite in that they have all been essentially conditional traditions- promoting religious demands for ‘true’ beliefs, correct rituals, required religious lifestyles to please angry religious deities and exhibit “true believer” status, along with the necessary conditions for religious salvation (i.e. sacrifices, payments). Religion, as an essentially conditional institution, has never communicated the stunning unconditional nature of deity to humanity. By its very nature as a conditional reality, religion cannot represent/communicate unconditional reality.

I would establish the authority of unconditional love as supreme goodness by appealing to its discovery and practice by ordinary people all throughout our societies- i.e. parents, spouses, friends. It is the best of behavior that we can engage and hence it should be the basis of any authentic theory of Ultimate Good or Ultimate Love. This is to say- we should do theology based on the best in humanity and then project the ‘best of being human’ out to define deity, not the other way around (i.e. arguing from the speculated nature of deity back to ethics) as religious traditions have long done. Religious traditions begin with some holy text as authoritative ‘revealed truth’ that defines deity and is therefore the authority for human ethics/behavior.

Better, we should first establish the best of being human, and then project that out to define deity, but recognize deity as something transcendently better than the best that we see in humanity (Ultimate Good or Love). We should try to understand deity by first understanding the best of humanity. Another way of stating this- i.e. doing theology by noting the best of humanity and projecting that onto deity- would be to quote Alexander Pope, “Cease from God to scan… The proper study of mankind is man”.

This is all to say- I am not a Biblicist (i.e. dependent on the texts of religious holy books for authoritative validation of ideas or ethics). My location of ultimate authority is in common humanity and the best of common human goodness, whether exhibited by a non-religious person, an atheist, or by a religious person. I view all such common love as the expression of the God spirit, or god-likeness (that is to say- humaneness) that is present in ordinary people. We are all experts on basic human goodness and do not need affirmation from outside authorities, certainly not from religious elites/authorities.

I am affirming that every human person is equally incarnated with the God spirit that is inseparable and indistinguishable from what we call the human spirit. There has been no “special incarnation of deity” only in religious heroes like Christian Jesus. To the contrary, I would affirm that there has been an incarnation of God, equally, in all people and that also offers a new metaphysical basis for human equality.

What about bad behavior? Unfortunately, we all have experience with ignoring or denying our core human spirit (the gentle persuasion of the God in us) and freely choosing to exhibit the baser features of our inherited animal brain and its base impulses that still resides in all of us. The choice to engage bad behavior is the risk that comes with authentic freedom.

Concluding the above point… I do not base my understanding of ultimate reality on traditional religious sources- i.e. holy books- that claim to be “revealed truth” or “supreme authorities for thought and practice”. Those traditional sources of validation should be subject to the same evaluating criteria as all other areas of life- i.e. is the content good or bad, humane or inhumane? Modern sensibilities demand a radical overhaul and updating of such traditional sources of authority.

And yes, I get it that an unconditional theology will spell the end of all religion. If God is freely accessible to all alike- i.e. not a dominating authority, not demanding salvation conditions (sacrifice/payment), not requiring a religious lifestyle or ritual, not making tribal distinctions between believer/unbeliever, not threatening future judgment/punishment/destruction… well then, who needs religion with its endless myth-based conditions?

An unconditional God means that we are all free to create our own unique life stories. And your story is a valuable or good as anyone else’s. Religious or not. You possess in your human spirit the same ability to know and define God as much as anyone else does.

The Great Christian Contradiction: A “stunning new theology” buried by Christianity, Wendell Krossa

(Note: The conclusions here are based on Historical Jesus research, notably the “Q Wisdom Sayings Gospel” research of James Robinson, John Kloppenborg, among others. I accept that Q is the closest that we have gotten to the actual teaching of Jesus. The actual content of Q is much less than the material in the New Testament Gospels that is attributed to Jesus. And the single most important statement in Q is the central theme of Jesus- i.e. the ethic and validating ideal of unconditional love- that is reproduced in Luke 6:27-36 and Matthew 5:38-48.)

Just to refresh the central statement of Jesus’ message:

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.

“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)

This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.

Moving along

First, why go after Paul’s Christ myth, the highly revered icon of a major world religion? Because, even though the Christ represents valued ideals to the Christian community- i.e. love, forgiveness, salvation, hope- it also embodies and validates some of the worst features from an ancient past- i.e. retaliatory vengeance (see Paul’s Thessalonian letters, Romans, and John’s Revelation), tribal exclusion (true believers saved, unbelievers excluded), domination/subservience relationships (Lord Christ and his mediating priesthood that dominates others- “Every knee shall bow”), and “wrathful” deity threatening to punish and destroy. John’s Revelation is an epitome statement of this divine retaliatory vengeance.

You cannot merge and mix contradicting opposites in some entity and make any sense- i.e. mixing humane ideals with primitive, subhuman ideas/practices. That promotes “cognitive dissonance” (see psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”). Also, the nasty elements in a merger will undermine, weaken, and distort the better features in the mix. It’s like putting new wine in old, rotten wineskins.

Further, the Christ of Paul is mainly responsible for embedding and re-enforcing the myth of apocalypse in Western consciousness and keeping that pathological myth alive now for two millennia. Apocalyptic mythology continues to wreak damage through contemporary alarmism movements like environmental alarmism. As James Tabor said, “Paul has been the most influential person in history and he has shaped practically all that we think about everything… (further) apocalyptic shaped all that Paul said and did”, (Paul and Jesus). Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth has shaped much of the content of contemporary myth-making as well as our ethics and justice systems.

The historical lines of descent/influence are as follows: Paul’s apocalyptic Christ brought apocalyptic mythology to prominence in Western consciousness and worldviews. That Christian heritage then shaped much of 19th Century Declinism (see Arthur Herman’s ‘The Idea of Decline in Western History’). Declinism, in turn, has shaped contemporary environmental apocalyptic, known as “Green” religion.

My argument is that to deal fully and properly with the destructive pathology of apocalyptic we must also deal with the core reality- i.e. the Christ myth- that validates and sustains this mythology in our narratives, consciousness, and societies. Apocalyptic has been rightly exposed as “the most violent and destructive idea in history” (Arthur Mendel in ‘Vision and Violence’). If you want to fully understand how bad ideas from a primitive past have descended down into modern human narratives and consciousness then recognize the centrality of Paul’s Christ myth in this process. (Note: The Messiah mythology at the core of “Christology” actually began earlier in the Jewish messiah tradition that was then continued in Christianity.)

More on the “Contradiction”

Over the past three centuries, the “Search For Historical Jesus” has given us the basic outline of what happened in the Christian tradition. The latest phase of this search- the “Jesus Seminar”- offers more detail on the basic issues involved, i.e. that early Christianity was a diverse movement with major differences, for example, between Jewish Christianity (Jesus acknowledged as some sort of prophet/king but not as God) and Paul’s Gentile Christian movement (Jesus as God-man, cosmic and universal Christ/Savior).

Further, there were numerous other gospels that were not accepted into the Christian cannon- e.g. the gospel of Philip, gospel of Mary, Gospel of James, gospel of Thomas, and so on. The victors of the early Christian battles, notably Paul’s version of Christianity, eventually dictated what was truth and what was heresy. Emperor Constantine also stuck his nose into the truth/heresy battles among early Christians (see, for example, ‘Constantine’s Sword’ by James Carroll).

Of the varied other gospels available when the New Testament canon was assembled, why were only Matthew, Mark, Luke and John included? Historians have noted some of the simple-minded reasoning behind the centuries-long selection process for the New Testament canon, such as canon-constructor Irenaeus’ affirmation that “there are four universal winds… animals have four legs…”. Hence, the four gospels in the New Testament (NT). Such was ancient ‘theological’ reasoning. The gospels chosen for the New Testament canon had to affirm Paul’s theology and Christ myth.

The “Search For Historical Jesus” has revealed that there was a real historical person and we believe that we have got close to his original message. But his actual message is much less than what the New Testament gospels have attributed to Jesus. The NT gospel writers put numerous statements/sayings in Jesus’ mouth, claiming that he had said such things. But many of those added sayings contradict the man’s core theme/message.

Note, for instance, the statement of his central theme in Matthew 5 to “love your enemy”. That is the single most profound statement of ‘no-conditions love’. But then a few chapters later (Matthew 11) Jesus apparently pivots 180 degrees and threatens “unbelievers/enemies” with the single most intense statement of hatred ever uttered- that enemies should be cast into hell. Matthew claims that Jesus threatened the villages that refused to accept him and his miracles, stating that they would be “cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth”. These statements could not have come from the same person because they are statements of irreconcilable opposite beliefs.

The core teaching of Jesus has been summarized in the Q Wisdom Sayings Gospel, notably the first version- Q1. That teaching is basically Matthew 5-7 with some other comments and parables. Luke 6 is a similar summary but with a different setting- i.e. the lakeside versus Matthew’s mountaintop setting.

Matthew, obsessed with righteousness, tampers with the core Q Sayings Wisdom teaching in the chapter 5-7 section of his gospel. He adds his own editorial glosses, such as his condition that people’s righteousness had to exceed that of religious teachers if they wanted to get into heaven. They had to meet the impossible condition to “be perfect just as God is perfect”. That distorts entirely the main point of Jesus that it did not matter what the response of people was to love shown to them, because God generously included all, both good and bad. God was unconditional Love, and included everyone with universal, unlimited love.

Luke in his treatment of the very same message does a better job, summing Jesus’ point as “be unconditionally merciful just like your Father is unconditionally merciful” (Luke 6). That gets the spirit of the passage better than Matthew’s subsequent editorial changes to the original statements of Jesus.

The central statement or theme in the Q Wisdom Sayings gospel material is a statement of a behavior/belief relationship. It urges a specific behavior based on a similar validating belief. Note this in the Matthew 5:38-48 section, “Don’t engage the old eye for eye justice toward your enemy/offender. Instead, love your enemy because God does. How so? God does not retaliate against and punish enemies/offenders, but instead generously gives the good gifts of life- i.e. sun and rain for crops- inclusively to both good people and bad people alike”.

Jesus based a non-retaliatory behavior on a similar validating belief in a non-retaliatory God. James Robinson calls the statement of Jesus in Matthew 5 a “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”. And that, says Robinson, was “Jesus’ greatest contribution to the history of human ideas.”

A critical takeaway here is that a non-retaliating God (no more eye for eye) is a non-apocalyptic God because apocalyptic is the supreme and final act of retaliation, and Jesus stated that God does not retaliate with “eye for eye” justice. Instead, God loves God’s enemies and so should we. “Be merciful just like your Father is merciful”.

The ultimate act of eye for eye retaliation is the great final apocalypse to destroy the world. God, said Jesus, will not engage that ultimate act of retaliation in the violent punishment and destruction of all things. Further, a God that rejects eye for eye justice would not promote the pathological belief in hell which is an expression of eternal retaliation. The non-retaliatory God of Jesus was entirely non-punitive and non-apocalyptic.

(Insert: See below qualifiers on the practical applicability of the unconditional ideal to life in an imperfect world. It is not advocacy for Gandhian pacifism. Fundamental common-sense responsibility demands the “tough love” restraint of violence, the prioritizing of the responsibility to protect all from assault. It helps to make the distinction between the nature of ultimate reality as absolutely unconditional love, that ideal in relation to human ethics, and the fundamental responsibility of criminal justice systems to protect the innocent from violent offenders- i.e. restraint, incarceration. Further, the nature of ultimate reality is not prescriptive of practical economics or how to run a business. The nature of ultimate ideals will influence but not coercively overrule individual freedom in response to offense.)

These common-sense conclusions (i.e. a non-retaliatory deity is a non-apocalyptic deity) flow from this stunning new theology, from the core Jesus message of a no-conditions God. The God of Jesus would not ultimately judge or condemn anyone and would not ultimately exclude anyone. Again, note the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory and unconditional God in the statements- “no more eye for eye justice, but love your enemy because God does. God gives sun and rain to all, to both good and bad people”. The God of Jesus is best defined with the adjective “unconditional” that summarizes the core theme or teaching of Jesus in Matthew 5 and Luke 6.

A further conclusion from this central theme of Jesus would be to affirm the protest of Jesus against the sacrifice industry. A protest begun by the Old Testament prophets and taken up by Jesus and to its ultimate resolution in the unconditional God of Jesus.

Unconditional means that God does not demand salvation through blood sacrifice or payment for sin. The God of Jesus would not demand sacrifice or payment before forgiving, loving, and including even the worst offenders/enemies. This conclusion is presented in the accompanying statements in Luke 6 that authentic love would “give, expecting nothing in return”. In these statements on unconditional love there is no demand for debt payment, no expectation of similar response to the love that is exhibited toward someone (i.e. love in return for love shown).

And this point scandalizes the religious or moral mind that is oriented to fairness and justice as some form of “tit for tat”, as in seeking a response similar to the goodness that was shown to someone. This is the flip side to justice as retribution, payback, recompense… the expectation of some bad response to bad that was shown. Such eye for eye relating has long been viewed as true justice- i.e. the expectation of hurt for hurt, pain for pain, humiliation for humiliation, along with demanded payment/punishment for all wrong.

Jesus overturned that traditional notion of justice with his message that there should be no more “eye for eye”, meaning that God’s love is not a “tit for tat” form of love that is dependent on some similar response from others, as in payment of debt before full love can be exhibited toward people.

Most of us understand and practice the unconditional love that Jesus was advocating. We exhibit the same ‘no conditions’ forgiveness and love in our interactions with family, friends, and neighbors. We learn to overlook the many imperfections in those around us and just get on with life, and hope that others will be equally merciful with our imperfections. We do not demand payback or reparations for all the wrongs done to us by others. How much more would a deity that is ultimate Goodness offer such transcendent forgiveness and love toward imperfect others. Truly free love.

And this is how we defuse the destructive outcomes of endless cycles of eye for eye payback that have ruined relationships and societies across history.

Note also Jesus’ parables on the Vineyard workers and the Prodigal Son for illustrations of how good moral people were offended by unconditional generosity, forgiveness, and love. The Prodigal’s Father and the vineyard owner disregarded the commonly understood norms of justice, or fairness, in relation to the proper consequences for bad behavior and that generosity offended the older brother and scandalized the all-day vineyard workers.

Further, the unconditional inclusion of local “sinners” at meal tables offended righteous, moral Jews who were tribally-minded and oriented to the inclusion of similarly law-abiding people and exclusion of the unlawful, immoral people or “sinners” (those not practicing Jewish law). Jesus claimed that God does not view humanity as tribally divided (e.g. good people versus bad people) and does not treat some differently from others. All are the favorites of God, including our enemies. This is to say that God is a oneness God, and all people are to be treated as equal members of the one human family.

There is a “thematic coherence” to the message and behavior of the Historical Jesus and that message/behavior is intensely oriented to unconditional, universal love.

The rest of the New Testament, including the gospels, contradicts this core non-retaliatory, unconditional love theme entirely. A proper setting forth of the correct chronology of the New Testament highlights how Paul established the profound contradiction at the heart of Christianity.

The proper chronology of the New Testament

Jesus taught first, around 27-36 CE. I would offer that the main point/statement in his core message, the Q Wisdom Sayings Gospel, would be the behavior/belief relationship noted above: “Do not engage eye for eye retaliation, but instead love your enemies because God does. God does not engage eye for eye justice against imperfect people but loves his enemies. We should be just like God who gives the good gifts of life- sun and rain for crops- to both good and bad people”. God is a non-retaliatory reality that loves all unconditionally and universally, expecting nothing in return.

James Robinson has correctly stated that Jesus presented “the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”. This is the single most profound teaching/insight on the ultimate meaning of love, and the ultimate in human goodness or humaneness, in all human history.

Paul wrote the next material that is in the New Testament- i.e. his Thessalonian letters written around 50 CE (I am passing over the argument re the authenticity of the second Thessalonian letter). In his very first letters Paul straightforward rejects the non-retaliatory theology of Jesus and contrarily advocates for a retaliatory deity in his violent apocalyptic Christ- “Lord Jesus will return in blazing fire to punish/destroy all who do not obey my gospel”.

The core of the contradiction is between the God of Jesus and Paul’s Christ. Two entirely opposite theologies.

Paul’s other letters were also written in the 50s CE. In a strikingly blunt statement in his Romans letter, Paul intentionally contradicts Jesus. He directly confronts the core statement and theme of Jesus in Matthew 5:38-48. Paul employs the same “behavior based on similar belief” pairing that Jesus used to state his non-retaliatory theology. But Paul uses that same pairing (i.e. basing a behavior on a belief) to make the very opposite conclusion to the theology of Jesus.

In Romans 12:17-20 he urges Christians to hold their desire for vengeance in abeyance/suspension because, he states, God will satisfy it eventually with ultimate eye for eye vengeance. Contrary to Jesus’ non-retaliatory God, Paul’s re-affirms the theology of a supremely retaliatory God who violently destroys the world in apocalypse and then with ultimate “eye for eye” justice tortures unbelievers in eternal hell.

Paul affirms his view that God is a supremely retaliatory reality by quoting an Old Testament statement, “Vengeance is mine says the Lord. I will repay”. In this, Paul re-affirms eye for eye retaliatory justice and response but takes it to the highest reaches of ultimate meaning- i.e. cosmic and universal, far beyond any temporally limited religion.

There is no ultimate “love your enemy” in Paul’s God or Christ.

In the Romans material Paul is arguing with the Roman Christians- restrain your longing for temporal vengeance, not because God also restrains a lust for vengeance (rejecting eye for eye justice as Jesus did), but to the contrary, because God will unleash ultimate vengeance soon enough and satisfy your desire for eye for eye vengeance on your enemies with ultimate and eternal punishment and destruction.

I would suggest that Paul used this behavior/belief pairing in Romans 12 to intentionally contradict the same behavior/belief pairing that Jesus used to frame his central message/theme. The similarities are too obvious. Paul rejects the non-retaliatory God of Jesus to fully affirm a retaliatory, punitive God, a tribal God that favors his true believers and destroys the enemies of his followers.

And while Paul appears to embrace the non-retaliatory ethic of Jesus (“Do not repay anyone evil for evil… Do not take revenge”) note that his ethic is oriented to and motivated by the hope for ultimate retaliation from God and that makes even the apparently non-retaliatory ethic actually retaliatory in intent. Basically, Paul was arguing that the Roman believers should be nice to their offenders in order that God could be really nasty to them in the future. Their being nice now was intended to “Pour coals of fire on their heads” in the future, that is, to ensure their harsh judgment at the hands of a wrathful and retaliatory God. So the apparently non-retaliatory ethic of Paul was nothing like the ‘no eye for eye’ ethic of Jesus. Paul’s message is thoroughly retaliatory. Pure “eye for eye”.

Paul also, in other places (again, in contradiction to Jesus), straightforwardly embraced and preached an apocalyptic God/Christ. Once more, note his Thessalonian letters where he states, “Lord Jesus will return in blazing fire to punish/destroy all who do not believe my gospel”. This statement of apocalyptic vengeance is the supreme act of a retaliatory, destroying God that engages ultimate eye for eye justice.

Further, Paul trashed and rejected the wisdom tradition that Jesus belonged to. See his first Corinthian letter for his pejorative comments on the wisdom tradition. Stephen Patterson’s ‘The Lost Way’ deals with Paul’s disdain for the wisdom teaching of Jesus. That was a further effort by Paul to undermine the message of historical Jesus that contradicted his Christ myth.

The four gospels that were later included in the New Testament all affirmed Paul’s views and his retaliatory and apocalyptic Christ myth. The NT gospels added made-up biographical material and statements that they claimed were spoken by Jesus, material that directly contradicted his main theme and message. Mark wrote first around 70s CE. Then Matthew and Luke wrote around 80s CE, John later around 90-100 CE.

All four gospels affirmed Paul’s apocalyptic, destroying Christ myth and Paul’s gospel of the Christ as a great cosmic sacrifice to pay for all sin (i.e. the message of a supremely conditional love).

Paul and his apocalyptic Christ myth- the most influential person and myth in history- has since profoundly shaped Western consciousness. His Christ myth shaped Western justice as punitive and retaliatory- eye for eye justice, or punishment in return for harm caused (i.e. pain for pain, hurt for hurt). Paul’s Christ, and his God, are iconically retaliatory.

Fortunately, the inclusion of the original Jesus material in the New Testament (notably, the Matthew 5-7 and Luke 6 sections) has served as a moderating force in the Christian tradition and history, countering the harsher elements with unconditional mercy. But unfortunately, the mixing and merging of such entire opposites has resulted in the ‘cognitive dissonance’ of a “diamonds-in-dung” situation which was the conclusion of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy. The better stuff- the core Jesus message and his stunning new unconditional theology- has been seriously deformed and weakened by the nastier features in the mix. Much like new wine put into old, rotten wine-skins.

(See Zenon Lotufo’s ‘Cruel God, Kind God’ for a psychotherapist’s view of the cognitive dissonance of mixed-God theories, and the damaging impact of including subhuman features in the theology of religious traditions.)

Contrary to the unconditional and all-inclusive love that Jesus advocated, Christian love has too often been a tribally-limited love, reserved more specially for fellow true believers in the Christ myth. Paul advocated such tribal love. Also, note his intolerant rage, in varied places, at his fellow apostles that did not submit to his Christ myth. He cursed them with eternal damnation (e.g. Galatians 1:8-9). John in the early chapters of Revelation similarly curses “lukewarm” Christians with threats of exclusion and eternal destruction. And then how about those later chapters of Revelation?

After the core “Q Wisdom Sayings” message of Historical Jesus there is nothing of the scandalous generosity of unconditional love in the rest of the New Testament.

The unconditional God of Jesus, and the supremely conditional God/Christ of Paul that dominates the New Testament (demand for cosmic sacrifice before forgiving), are two entirely opposite realities.

Ah, such contradictions at the very heart of Christianity.

Note also Harold Ellen’s point that the theme of Paul’s Christ as ultimate sacrifice, the very heart of Christianity, is framed as some form of ultimate good and love to thereby distort, reframe, and cloak the pathology of retaliation at the core of that gospel:

“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’”.

Paul, with his retaliatory Christ myth, has utterly deformed the “behavior based on similar belief relationship” and validated the worst of human impulses and behaviors.

The main contradiction summarized again: Wendell Krossa

Jesus’ ethic and the theology or belief that it is based on: “Do not engage eye for eye retaliation but instead love your enemy because God does, giving the beneficial gifts of life, sun and rain for crops, to all alike, to both good and bad people”. Behave like that because God is like that. Non-retaliatory, universally inclusive, unconditionally generous and loving.

Then Paul’s ethic and the theology or belief that it is based upon: Paul copies the pattern that Jesus used of an ethic/behavior that is based upon a similar theology/belief. Again, I believe that Paul set this pattern up deliberately to directly contradict the central theme of Jesus and his stunning new theology. Paul’s argument and reasoning in Romans 12:17-20, “Be nice now to your offenders. Hold your vengeance lust at bay because my God states (he quotes an Old Testament statement to affirm his theology of a retaliatory God)- ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay’”. Which is to say- God shall satisfy your longing for vengeance soon enough.

That is the profound contradiction in the New Testament between Jesus and Paul, between the non-retaliatory theology of Jesus and the entirely opposite retaliatory theology of Paul. Theology, or God theory, is the highest embodiment of human ideals and authorities, the cohering center of human narratives. The reality that is God influences and shapes all else in religious belief systems.

Takeaway? Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy were right that the central theme/message of Historical Jesus is buried by Paul’s Christ myth. Again, the central teaching of Jesus: “You must not engage ‘eye for eye’ retaliatory justice. Instead, love your enemies/offenders because God does. How so? God does not retaliate and punish God’s enemies. Instead, God gives the good gifts of life- sun and rain for crops- universally and inclusively to both good and bad people”.

Christianity has never taken this stunning new theology of Jesus seriously. It opted instead for the retaliatory, tribal, and excluding God of Paul. Unbelievers are excluded from Paul’s salvation scheme and face the threat of ultimate retaliation through apocalypse and hell. Note Paul’s repeated use in his varied letters of the threatening term “destruction” in relation to people who refuse to believe his God or Christ.

Added notes on the great contradiction…

The offensiveness of the non-retaliatory message of Jesus- He outraged good moral people who held views of justice as fairness in terms of good rewarded and bad punished. Justice had meant that from the beginning.

Here are quotes from another essay of mine on the basic “bad ideas” of religious systems:

“The “eye for eye”, or retributive version of justice, that had dominated human narratives and thinking from the beginning was overturned entirely by Historical Jesus and his stunning new merciful and unconditional approach to human failure. And this stunning new non-retaliatory theology and justice as mercy, angered people to the extent that they wanted to kill him.

“Jesus sparked their anger by reading a passage from Isaiah 61 that ends with the statement “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God”. But he left off the last part- i.e. “the day of vengeance of our God”. His audience knew what he was up to, bluntly denying the traditional theology of retaliatory, punishing deity. Ending his reading on the note of “the Lord’s favor”. Jesus then made things a magnitude of order worse by citing Old Testament examples of God sending prophets to help outsiders to the Hebrew nation. He denied the Jewish sense of tribalism and of being the favored and chosen people of God. Jesus was advocating universal favor and inclusion. Unconditional mercy and love.

“Well, to people long indoctrinated in justice as retribution, such mercy grated and outraged them, “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this”. They wanted an affirmation of divine vengeance and justice as punishment and destruction of their enemies, not mercifully favoring them.

“So also, Jonah had sulked in a pissed off hissy fit of depression when God did not destroy Ninevah, taking mercy even on cattle. He says in Jonah chapter 4, “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity… Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live”. Because God had mercy even on “many animals.”

“People angry at love and mercy? What a pathetically miserable and callous state of mind and spirit for us to descend into, eh.

“Jesus’ protest against the sacrifice industry was part of his protest against the general and deeply embedded human felt obligation to appease angry gods, based on the central fallacy of retaliatory, punitive deity (i.e. “monster God” theology). He was protesting the very theology at the heart of human belief systems, and the consequent systems of retaliatory, punitive justice that were based on that theology. It was all part of the same overall protest.

“In the story of the synagogue reading, Jesus audience knew that he was protesting the very deity that they worshipped- i.e. the wrathful punitive destroyer, the severe Judge of all humanity. Jesus was proposing the very opposite- i.e. a stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God who promoted a stunning new form of justice as restorative- i.e. “love your enemy”.

“Jesus challenged an entire worldview built around the most basic beliefs in cosmic dualism of good versus evil, the obligation to heroically join the good side and fight the bad people on the other side (fundamental tribalism), to purge life of the bad people, to make sacrifices to appease the great and obviously angry forces/spirits behind the nasty elements of the natural world, to make amends for ruining an original paradise, to atone for deeply felt human sinfulness, to avoid the threat of apocalyptic punishment and destruction (the survival impulse), to attain to some form of salvation/utopia.

“The view of an angry, punitive deity was the cohering center of such belief systems. Jesus went directly after that monster deity. That deity had from the beginning affirmed justice as some form of retribution, punishment, destruction.

“His message overturned and rendered meaningless all that his audience believed in. His teaching was too radical to even comprehend and countenance as it meant a disintegration of their old worldview and identity, and reintegration around something entirely new and opposite to all that they had lived by.

“Hence, they were offended, outraged. His message incited in them a survival desperation. Their entire system of meaning was being put under threat from a divine generosity so contrary to all that they believed. Jesus’ message was experienced as an existential threat to their very core identity.

“Jesus, standing in front of them, violated the most basic human understanding of “justice” that had prevailed for millennia, what had always affirmed the inherited impulse to punitive destruction as true justice. Jesus’ no conditions love overturned all that.

“The entire religion of his fellow Jews was based on that view of God (ultimate reality) as truth, righteousness, and goodness. That view of God and justice had long undergirded their very identity, and their livelihood/income (i.e. the priests involved in the sacrifice industry). It validated the religion that granted them power over others, over everything.

“Jesus further illustrated the common anger toward his new unconditional message in the parables of the anger of the older brother toward the generously forgiving and merciful father (Luke 15), and the anger of the all-day vineyard workers to the generosity of the vineyard owner (Matthew 20).

“Point? Jesus in protesting the sacrifice industry was also protesting the primitive view of justice that sacrifice was based on, and protesting the primitive mythology of a God that demanded payment of all debts, punishment in all wrongs. There was no free or unconditional love in that primitive view of justice.

“That is why in Luke 6:27-36, Jesus details what his new version of love means in practise and concludes that if we do such things then we will be just like God, “Be unconditionally merciful just like your Father is unconditionally merciful.” Show this kind of behavior and you will be showing the true character of God.”

You cannot get more fundamental challenges, more basic revolution, more critically important reform than what Historical Jesus was engaged in. Death to the old and rebirth to new life hardly captures it.

(End of quotes from previous essay)

The priests running the sacrifice industry at the time of Jesus knew clearly the threat that he and his anti-sacrifice message presented to their sacrifice industry, to their power and control over Jewish society, to their very existence, and so they had the Romans kill him.

Note- Qualifiers at bottom: The core unconditional theme in Historical Jesus is not prescriptive of economic policies, or for business requirements and practise (debts in supply chains must be paid for companies to survive and provide jobs for workers). The Jesus insights is not a demanded response for all victim situations where freedom of choice in response is always primary.

Another version of the “Christian contradiction” (from a previous related post)… Wendell Krossa

History’s single greatest contradiction? My candidate: The contradiction between the central message of Historical Jesus, and the central meaning and message of Paul’s Christ myth (his Christology theory). Or, “How history’s single most profound insight was subsequently buried in a major religious tradition”.

A side consideration: Think of the liberation that could have been promoted over the last two millennia if some movement had taken Jesus seriously. It would have been liberation from the unnecessary fear, anxiety, guilt, and shame that have long been incited and promoted by the harsh and threatening God theories of religious traditions- i.e. “Cruel God theories” (Zenon Lotufo). But no one, not even Jesus’ closest companions/disciples, took his scandalous and offensive insights seriously.

The contradiction at the core of Christianity has to do with the following profound and fundamental opposite ideas/themes/beliefs- i.e. (1) non-retaliatory behavior versus retaliation, (2) the non-punitive treatment of offenders versus a punitive approach, (3) no conditions theology versus the divine demand for a supreme condition (sacrifice, Salvationism), (4) unlimited love versus limited tribal love, (5) the universal embrace of humanity versus the tribal restrictions that include only true believers and exclude unbelievers, and (6) non-apocalyptic versus total apocalyptic destruction. You can’t get more contrary or contradictory than these entirely opposite themes/realities.

Psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo (Cruel God, Kind God), and others, point to the “cognitive dissonance” that arises when you try to hold opposites in some larger merger of contrary beliefs as in Paul’s oxymoronic “Jesus Christ”.

And… “Greatest contradiction?” How so? Because of the historical and current world-wide influence of the Christian religion, and notably the influence of Paul’s Christ myth. This myth has shaped the version of Christianity that has descended down into our contemporary world (compared, for instance, to the prominent Jewish Christianity of the first century CE- i.e. Ebionism- that eventually became absorbed into Islam).

And also, “greatest” due to the very nature of the contradiction itself. It is hard to find a more stark contrast between entirely opposite realities than that between the main message of Jesus and the contrary Christ message of Paul. I use the term “the main message of Jesus” in reference to the “Q Wisdom Sayings Gospel”, specifically the Q1 version, and the most important statement in that Q gospel as found in Matthew 5:38-48, and better, in Luke’s 6:27-36 version.

Historical Jesus stated that, for him, the era of “eye for eye justice” was over. He rejected retaliatory justice and, instead, promoted the restorative justice of “love your enemies” (Matthew 5). Why? Because that was what God did. It was what God was. The God of Jesus was love of a stunning new variety never before seen in the long history of God theories. His God did not retaliate with eye for eye justice but instead loved God’s enemies. And the evidence? Jesus illustrated his point with the main beneficial features of the natural world. God gave the good gifts of life- i.e. sun and rain for crops- inclusively to everyone, to both good and bad people. There was no discrimination and no exclusion of anyone.

God’s love and generosity were inclusive, universal, and unconditional. Jesus used a behavior/belief pairing to make this point. “Do this… because God does it”. He based his behavior on a similar validating belief. Do this- treat all others with unconditional love- and you will be just like God (you will be acting like the children of God) who treats all with unconditional love.

The God of Jesus was non-retaliatory, non-vengeful, non-punitive, non-excluding, non-destroying and therefore non-apocalyptic. Non-apocalyptic? Yes. A non-retaliatory God is not an apocalyptic God. Apocalyptic is the ultimate act of eye for eye retaliation, vengeance, punishment, and total destruction.

Further, such a God would not demand payment or punishment for wrong. He would not demand a sacrifice for wrong. The God of Jesus would generously give to all, including those who do not pay back or respond in a similar manner. His God would not just love those who loved him in return (limited tribal love). His God was authentically “universal or no conditions love” toward all, without exception.

No sacrifice? Yes, this is intimated clearly in statements such as “Lend, expecting nothing in return (i.e. no payback)”. Expect no payment of debt or reparations. Just love and give anyway. Freely. Unconditionally. (Again, see qualifiers at bottom, the applicability or non-applicability to business, economics, criminal justice systems, etc.)

The summarized wisdom message of Historical Jesus again:

“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.

“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)

This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.

The demand for atoning sacrifice embraces the long-standing view of justice as involving paying a debt owed to someone. It includes the elements of restoring offended honor, paying dues, righting wrongs (righting cosmic imbalance of justice). Jesus countered this “debt owed” feature with the urging of no demands for payment of debt before loving the offender.

Maybe I draw too much from these statements of Jesus dismissing the payment of debt as a requirement for our loving offending others. Again, this is not advocating irresponsibility in human relationships. But I see him arguing for the best of human attitudes toward offending others, advocating for the most humane approach in life to solving cycles of eye for eye retaliation that take relationships and life into downward spirals. I also see him reasoning from the best in humanity to illustrate what God is like, only transcendently more so. Jesus was pointing to the truth that there was no divine obligation to make payment or amends first in order to earn divine love. Much like how he illustrated this same point with the “Prodigal father” who represented the entirely free love of God toward offenders. Not demanding some form of payment or atonement first as required to earn such love.

That goes to the very heart of the stunning new theology of Jesus of a God who did not demand sacrifice, payment, punishment as prerequisite for his love. It was free beyond any previous human conception of freedom.

Jesus was pushing past long-held boundaries to human love, common forms of love that he framed as “If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.”

In other words- “easy peasy stuff”. He pushed for something better, higher, the ultimate reach of love, heroic love, love that took the courageous initiative to break “eye for eye” cycles no matter the response, or lack of response, from offending others. How to be just like God, to be godlike, in response to the nastiest situations that life puts us in.

And again, I repeat that such an ethic is not prescriptive of how to run a business. Jesus was not speaking to how commerce or economics works best, but to the free personal choice of how to respond to offending or imperfect others. He was provoking thought on what forgiveness and mercy really entail and look like, the courage to heroically act in such a way, much like the vineyard owner who responded to the pissed employees who felt that he acted unfairly in being scandalously generous to the late-comers. The owner responded- “It’s my property so I will freely do as I choose with my own assets.”

We could add the factor here also that holding debt obligations in human relationships can become a form of domination over others.

Try to get the “spirit” of the central message of Jesus and the central point of the message of the man (i.e. Matthew 5:38-48 and Luke 6:27-36). Too many get sidetracked in what they believe are qualifying details that undermine the core ‘no conditions’ point that Jesus was making. Remember Matthew, obsessed with righteousness, and as the editor of that material in his gospel, added his own distorting qualifications such as “Be perfect as your Father is perfect”. That missed the very point Jesus made that it did not matter how imperfect you were, you were still included in the free and generous love of God.

Luke did a better job with this very same material, getting the spirit of Jesus in stating, “Be unconditionally merciful as your Father is unconditionally merciful” (my paraphrase of Luke’s point and spirit).

Note the same unconditional generosity and forgiveness in other Jesus material such as the Prodigal parable and the Vineyard workers story, and in statements on forgiving “seventy times seven” (unlimited). Also, in his inclusion of everyone at meal tables, including local “sinners” or lawbreakers.

Prominent contradictions between the messages of Jesus and Paul

Main contradictions between Jesus and Christ (updated march 2025), Wendell Krossa

Here again are some of the main contradicting themes that highlight the oxymoronically opposite themes in the messages of Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ mythology. The point I draw from this? 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 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 loves and includes enemies- as in sun and rain for 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 (again, no retaliation against enemies) versus the violent destruction of apocalypse and hell, and the violent pacification of deity by blood sacrifice for atonement.

(5) Nontribal inclusion of all humanity (“sun and rain given freely to both bad and good people”) versus the highly tribal favoritism toward true believers and the discriminatory exclusion of unbelievers as per Paul’s Christ (Note the ultimate tribal divide illustrated in Revelation as 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.

Soon coming- The applicability of an unconditional ideal to ethics, criminal justice, and at societal scale (the Nelson Mandela approach), etc.

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Peterson exposing an eco-cultist wolf cloaked as a conservative sheep

“The climate scam is collapsing”, Tom Nelson, April 10, 2025 (Posted on Anthony Watts’ site “Wattsupwiththat.com”)

(“Its all over now, baby blue”- Bob Dylan)

Don’t be too assured that it’s all over now. As Richard Landes says, when an apocalyptic crusade appears to be failing, the leaders often double down and shift into the phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”. Desperate to survive as their entire universe, along with their very identity, faces demise and extinction. They may do “desperate measures” crazy things.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/04/10/over-30-items-here-evidence-that-the-climate-scam-is-collapsing/

Nelson lists over 30 items giving evidence that the climate scam is collapsing.

He says, “The climate scam is imploding right now. Of course there are still plenty of remaining pockets of climate cultism, but the whole movement is crumbling. It’s the most massive scientific fraud in human history, and it will take significant time to completely die, but make no mistake: It IS dying.”

See link above for further links on each particular item:

I will list only some…

“A powerful climate alliance of the World Economic Forum, major companies, the UN, and banks is at an end”.

“Delicious straight talk from US EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin- “We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate change religion.”

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright- “Climate change alarmism is a ‘quasi-cult religion’”. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Understanding today’s elites pushing the “elite/commoner divide”. The “populist” pushback- the commoner struggle for freedom.

I just sent this post to family and friends in a discussion group online

“Do you get the bigger picture now? Its not just about how much any particular tariff does to rebalance some other country’s tariffs. Its about the very fundamental premises of globalization pushed by elites over past decades- i.e. that if we engage authoritarian countries like China, and entangle our economies in commerce, then we can bring China into democracy. Not.

“US elites believed that it was worth the cost of losing US manufacturing industry to places like China in order to gain influence and control over the larger world with the Western democratic system led by the US. Basically, to achieve US dominance in the world (extend US empire, what my American brother-in-law refers to as US “Manifest Destiny”).

“And it was a mixed bag of motives and goals- Yes, the noble expansion of democracy was in the mix, no doubt. And the value of free trade as in “comparative advantage” and giving poor countries a chance to develop out of poverty. All there, also.

“But there was also the elite advantage that came from shifting away from high-cost US labor to low-cost labor regions, a shift that benefitted business elites and CEOs with more wealth, and Wall Street Financial types with great gains. (Labor costs are the significantly dominant cost in most businesses.)

“Now Trump is going to overturn that great globalization project to bring back manufacturing in order to benefit US workers. And to end the dangerous dependence on threatening places like China for critical resources- i.e. rare Earth metals, medicines, etc.

“No wonder Wall Street elites, who have benefitted from globalization, are going hysterical as they watch their power, control, and profits threatened by Trump.

“So who really cares for the common worker?”

There is something “far, far bigger” going on, often behind-the-scenes, than what media chatter on about all day. Petty obsession with opponent’s words/jokes, minor elements in policy initiatives, individual country’s situations on tariffs, etc. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Beware of carny barkers for a cult

See below the “bad ideas” pathology- i.e. the complex of primitive mythical themes that are common to the world religions and have even been embraced to frame contemporary “secular/ideological” systems of belief, notably Socialism/Marxism and environmentalism. As many have warned, until we deal thoroughly with this complex of bad ideas that incite and validate bad human behavior, we will continue to suffer the eruptions of tribal violence that are the inevitably consequence of holding such ideas in our belief systems, whether in religious or “secular/ideological” versions.

Reposting: “Elite financial expert? No, just another “carny barker” for a cult”, Wendell Krossa (Understanding the real Mark Carney.)

http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=13274#more-13274

Varied commentators have pointed out Carney’s basic WEF socialism. Additionally, historians have pulled the cloak off this “would-be emperor” to expose the nakedness of the underlying collectivism that he proposes. I would add that behind his “secular/ideological salvationism” there is the same old superstitious primitivism of apocalyptic millennial cultism.

These quotes from a previous posting…

“Mark Carney has successfully elbowed his way to become Liberal leader and replaced Justin Trudeau.

“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. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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“Sick Gods make people sick”, psychologist/theologian Harold Ellens

This site probes the deepest roots of problems, notably the more primitive archetypes of the human subconscious (long embedded there) that continue to shape our narratives with the same basic “bad idea” themes, whether in religious or secular/ideological versions.

“Bad religious ideas/beliefs” then incite and validate people doing bad things to one another. This refers to the common human practice of following the “behavior based on similarly themed beliefs”. Appealing to our belief systems to validate how we behave. And notably, appealing to our image of deity to validate how we act, how we treat others.

There are many things that need to be done to bring peace and security to life, such as negotiating political/economic solutions, etc. But critical to the long-term resolution of tribal enmity, struggles to dominate others, and violent retaliation, is to go to other critical inciting/contributing/validating factors such as the bad ideas in our narratives.

And nothing is “badder” than the profoundly sick gods that we embrace and honor as the cohering centers of our narratives, as our ultimate ideals and authorities to validate our behavior. Again, the “behavior based on belief” pattern of people seeking justification for how they behave and live.

The human practise of appealing to ideals embodied in beliefs, notably religious beliefs, is how beliefs “generate ‘dynamis’… or mobilize energy”, according to psychologist/theologian Harold Ellens. With images of God “generating ‘dynamis’ and mobilizing energy” more potently than any other beliefs. Hence, Ellens warning that “sick Gods make people sick”.

A reposting of revised, updated material

Common themes/features in all three great Western religions… i.e. Judaism, Christianity, Islam. If we all believe the same fundamental things then why are we fighting one another?

Here is a reposting of some material from several weeks ago. It has stirred interesting response from Islamic countries, so I want to give it more exposure for people from those areas. Not to incite outrage but to stimulate thought toward necessary reformism. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Divine violence inciting, validating human violence- still with us

Military guy (after ISIS defeated in Syria): “Until you deal with the ideas that fuel these eruptions of violence you will only see them repeated.”

We have no excuse today for our irresponsible embrace of “madness of crowds” eruptions, such as the climate apocalypse crusade. It is manifestly a form of Chicken Little lunacy.

Look beyond the surface cloaking of these crusades- i.e. claiming status as science, ideology, whatever. Look through that to see the true “madness of crowds” apocalyptic nature of such crusades. They all hold to the same mythology of threatening deity that is the cohering center of their belief systems. More historically recent versions update their theology with contemporary versions of divine threat like “vengeful Gaia, angry Mother Earth/Planet, punitive Universe, or payback karma”. They are all versions of the same old pathology at the core- ultimate threat that incites irrational response in populations.

You think we might have learned by now that threat theology in belief systems contributes to the same old destructive outcomes. Alarmed populations supporting salvation schemes that “destroy the world to save the world.”

Adding to the irresponsibility in embracing apocalyptic crusades is the fact that we have good research today on where apocalyptic emerged, how it was incorporated into meta-narratives such as religious traditions, and how to counter such lunacy.

I refer, for example, to Bob Brinsmead’s research tracing how Greek Hellenism, Jewish apocalyptic, and other elements shaped Paul’s apocalyptic Christ.

The Hellenism element derives from Plato and his advocacy for philosopher kings to rule the virtuous society. Plato’s ideas eventually validated the ideology of enlightened elites running collectives via state institutions/bureaucracies (Hegel, Marx), thereby dominating commoners. Elite rule has always employed threat to manipulate and control populations. And no threat has the potency of the divine threat in apocalyptic mythology.

Moving along, note the increasing advocacy today for restoring religion, e.g. as in a generalized restoration of Christianity to counter the meaninglessness nihilism of modern secularism/atheism. But some of the notable advocates for reviving Christianity, i.e. Jordan Peterson, Michael Shellenberger, seem unaware of the problem of the fundamental contradiction in Christianity between Historical “non-apocalyptic” Jesus and Paul’s apocalyptic Christ myth. Two entirely opposite theologies merged in the oxymoronic “Jesus Christ” that deforms and minimizes the Jesus teaching/message. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Caution- The formerly oppressed often then become the new oppressors. And oh, that Grok on climate science…

Comment on the primary human impulse to meaning. Also- the impulse of elites to dominate. And more on establishing the “metaphysical” basis for human equality. This is pushback against the curse of the “elite/commoner” divide in human societies. I detest the impulse to domination, one of the most damaging of our inherited animal impulses, rightly part of the “evil triad” of tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.

I’ve posted below a video clip on Tolstoy’s personal discovery that human meaning was fulfilled most profoundly in the daily lives of common people, not in the elite pursuits of his earlier life, whether intellectual accomplishments, art, or science. Tolstoy had been distressed by the question of- What does it all mean if it ends in death? He found his answers with common people and in the responsibilities of daily life.

Also below, an interesting study with Grok doing climate science.

Another good one from Shellenberger/Gutentag– A wise caution that must be heeded by all sides for the sake of protecting/promoting freedom and democracy, Wendell Krossa

It has been hard to comprehend what we have just lived through over the past decade- i.e. the ongoing exposure of the incredible corruption of a leading world democracy, and the corruption has been mainly by “liberals/Democrats” who have shifted far left into Woke Progressivism. These people still control most of the education systems, most federal bureaucracies, the mainstream media (i.e. their propaganda arm), the intelligence agencies, NGOs receiving countless billions of taxpayer dollars for partisan and personal gain, etc.

Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the subsequent exposures in the Twitter Files was stunning stuff to comprehend. It was a kind of death of a dream as we realized how horrifically we had been lied to and propagandized and that what we thought we lived in- liberal democracies- was very much an illusion. Others added to the stunning exposures, i.e. Mike Benz on his Joe Rogan appearances.

Shellenberger/Gutentag, below, touch on the problem that “formerly oppressed people, when in power, then often become the new oppressors”, forgetting what they had previously suffered. The old lust for vengeance/payback then creeps in, dangerously so as it then undermines any moral authority that the formerly oppressed (and then liberated) people may have earned.

But yes, another element here is the spectacle of guilty Democrats screaming “retaliation, vengeance” as their corruption is exposed and it is horrific as Shellenberger/Gutentag detail.

What has been exposed has to be corrected and offenders must be held accountable for what has been a direct assault on democracy and the freedom of others. Democracy ceases to mean anything this is not done thoroughly. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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The “double down” desperation of the prophets- Ramping up apocalyptic hysteria as a current crusade fails

Further below, Douglas Murray’s comments on his wondering at “the absurdity of our age”. Others use related terms to define what incites their sense of wonderment, referring to the same thing that Murray refers to, terms such as “insanity, lunacy, madness, craziness, derangement, etc.”. Note also the Andrew Schulz interview on Chris Williamson- “Why Does Modern America Feel So Insane- The world has gone crazy”. Many sum up the “crazy” as epitomized in far left Woke Progressivism and its DEI/ESG policies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12ahFOubvw0

See also below some comment on “countering the ‘AI terminator’ hysteria” now being whipped up as a new apocalypse crusade- “Preventing Grok and buddies from becoming Terminators, Wendell Krossa”

I asked Grok why can’t it be programmed with Classic Liberalism (principles, systems of common law, representative institutions) that protect the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally? Liberalism that prevents the dangerous “evil triad” impulses of some to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others? Grok’s responses are below.

See just below this opening section- “Apocalyptic lunacy lives on in Canada: Our Canadian illustration of apocalyptic insanity”, our home-grown “madness of crowds” hysteria that destroys societies to “save the world”. Also, some comment on Mark Carney, new PM of Canada- “Elite financial expert? Or ‘carny barker’ for a cult?” (Understanding the real essence of a person.)

This quote from the section below: “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.”

And this below: Pushing Grok on the central issue in the climate debate- i.e. the warming influence of CO2 and the fact that is now “saturated”. Further, pushing back against what I view as Grok’s bias toward the climate alarmism positions. It appears in the words Grok uses- i.e. “consensus”, “minority position”, “mainstream”, etc.

Here is another on this topic of the absolute lunacy of our age, Wendell Krossa

Few things have provoked my wonderment at absurdity than the “madness of crowds” hysteria that has accompanied the apocalyptic crusade of climate alarmism. The climate alarm cult (a “profoundly religious movement”) has produced the historically unprecedented abandonment of rationality where entire populations, convinced of the fallacy that life is declining toward something worse (i.e. the ideology of “Declinism”), toward collapse and ending in apocalypse, hence, entire populations have been swayed to embrace salvation schemes that destroy their societies to “save the world”. Think Britain, Germany, California, Canada, and other examples here.

But more to my point here: As one apocalyptic movement appears to be dying away (i.e. climate alarmism) some alarmist prophets will “double down” with enraged hysteria (e.g. Al Gore, John Kerry, etc.). Some even move toward the “dying gasp” phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”. They become even more desperate to force their destructive salvation schemes on societies even as the destructive outcomes of their “salvation/save the world” policies have become more obvious. Who called this the “psychopathology of leftist compassion”?

Others yet will move right on to creatively incite and promote the next “madness of crowds” episode. The apocalyptic prophets appear to have become deranged by an obsessive-compulsive pathology, or perhaps their alarmism and the hysteria it generates has become a form of adrenaline addiction? Like extreme sports. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Apocalyptic lunacy lives on in Canada

Our Canadian illustration of apocalyptic lunacy, of “madness of crowds” hysteria that destroys societies to “save the world”.

With Douglas Murray I often wonder at “the absurdity, the lunacy of our age” ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANmkiXvESdc ). While Murray was thinking along other lines, I would apply “wonder at the lunacy of our age” to the “climate crisis” cult and its madly irrational crusade to decarbonize the world. And we now have a full-frontal apocalyptic cultist as Prime Minister. But a smooth-talking one, having replaced a more incompetently bumbling one.

Elite financial expert? Or “carny barker” for a cult? Wendell Krossa (Understanding the real essence of a person.)

Mark Carney has successfully elbowed his way to become Liberal leader and replaced Justin Trudeau.

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 fuller term.

Carney is an eco-cultist smoothly presenting himself as financial expert. Similar to the gimmicks of the original Bolsheviks, and Marxist elites in general, who wished to mask their salvationist apocalyptic cult as some form of modernism- ideology, science, philosophy, etc. Note, for example, Marxism on scientific history. Primitive mythology (apocalyptic millennialism) masked as something rational and credible. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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Grok probes the 7 worst psychopathologies in our meta-narratives, religious and “secular/ideological”

First, a bit on the freedom and Classic Liberal front… Wendell Krossa

People like Mike Benz (Joe Rogan Experience episodes 2237 and 2272) have exposed the behind-the-scenes manipulation of our democracies by power-obsessed elites, whether Soros, Gates, WEF, and others. It is not likely that these people get together in dark rooms to plot how to control our societies. It is more likely that they share an ideology/worldview that binds them in common cause against what they frame as threats to the world.

And when you wrap ideology with mythology (i.e. the deformed hero’s quest) you then get people sincerely framing themselves as righteous heroes battling irredeemably evil enemies. The threats are presented as “existential and imminent” (i.e. climate apocalypse, populism as threat to democracy, etc.).

Hence, the enlightened elites argue, self-convincingly, that desperate measures are now required, and slow-moving democracy that protects the freedom of equal individuals be damned. They live in a self-created bubble and indicators that they may be entering the dying stage of their apocalyptic movements, leads to their feeling that they must now double down and embrace the phase of “exterminate or be exterminated”.

Plato argued that you need philosopher kings to run the ideal society, you need noble rulers who believe they know better than all others what is good for all, even if their policies are implemented against the will of commoners. Arrogant elites reason that the ignorant populist commoners can’t be trusted with too much freedom and control over their lives (self-determination). They will mess things up.

The line of the historical descent of such elite run collectivism runs down from ancient Sumeria to Plato to Christianity to Hegel and then to Marxist totalitarianism.

It’s the never-ending crusade by “special” people to enforce the “elite/commoner divide” in societies that undermines and overturns liberal democracy.

Preface note: By repeatedly pointing to the ancient mythical origins of the themes below, I am emphasizing the primitive nature of these themes despite the ongoing effort of moderns to frame them as advanced “ideology, philosophy, even science”. No, they are as primitive as primitive can be. To illustrate: Many moderns, holding such themes, if teleported back to sit in a Sumerian temple and hear a priest lecture on their version of apocalypse in the great Sumerian Flood myth, would instinctively clap in response. The moderns would exclaim- Hey, that’s the historical prophesy of Al Gore standing in the Florida flood waters proclaiming imminent apocalypse by rising seas, as per the climate crisis myth.

The complex of myths/beliefs that have shaped human narratives across history, held together by the real “monster” in life- threat theology, Wendell Krossa

Some ideas are “bad” because they incite/guide/validate destructive outcomes in societies. We ought to know this by now. Read the rest of the opening comment here

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