This from co2coalition.org newsletter of Nov.20, 2023- “CO2 Coalition Director and Nobel Laureate (Physics) John Clauser traveled to Baltimore this past week to speak at a press conference on climate. He began his presentation with the exclamation: “Great news! There is no climate crisis!… Much as it may upset many people, my message is the planet is not in peril.”
Section topics:
(1) An anti-religion site? Nah. Just pointing out that conditional religion cannot and will not communicate the true unconditional nature of deity to humanity. An unconditional God spells the end of all conditional religion.
(2) Comedians are the cutting-edge defenders of freedom. The comedic genius of Jeselnik and others.
(3) Eruptions of hate and violence, and the long-term solutions- Go to the root ideas in narratives that incite and validate our worst impulses (the “evil triad”).
(4) Goal of site- Slay the monster, liberate people from primal fears, promote a liberation at the depths of human consciousness/subconscious.
(5) Reposting of the list of the worst ideas that we have inherited and the 18 alternative themes for a new narrative. Transforming human consciousness at the deepest level.
(6) Some thoughts on dying and the “annoyance” of death (Australian actor Sam Neill’s term).
(7) And another excellent one from Michael Shellenberger- “Why Democrats Became The Totalitarians They Warned Us About: How did the Left go from defending the free speech rights of neo-Nazis to demanding censorship, falsely accusing their opponents of being fascists, and seeking their incarceration?”
Other comments below:
The religious validation of horror; More on comedians as cutting-edge advocates for freedom; Lying in service to a noble cause or righteous battle; Violence producing revulsion and consequent impetus to reform in fellow group members; And more on the real battle of good against evil… and much more.
It will never end, until… Wendell Krossa
This site has long argued that the problem of violence between differing groups of people will continue to erupt in societies until you go to the deepest roots behind such violence- notably the bad ideas that incite such bad behavior, the beliefs that validate the violent domination and destruction of those we consider our “enemies”.
This site advocates for a change at the core of human thought that will involve a thorough transformation of the most fundamental themes that shape human narratives and consequently influence our outlooks, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior.
The recent Hamas attack was just another festering sore that broke out on a larger body of corruption, just another in an endless historical stream of such eruptions of violence, all fueled by a fundamentally similar complex of bad ideas/themes- mental pathologies that validate tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
My summary term for the larger complex of myths that have long incited and validated so much human violence across history is the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” complex. Others have summarized these ideas as the “apocalyptic millennial” complex of themes.
ISIS was fueled by themes from the above complex. That was evident in their expressed belief that the Mahdi (Islamic Deliverer or Savior) would soon return to establish an Islamic kingdom/caliphate and that ISIS would be agents in bringing on the apocalyptic ending and subsequent establishment of Islamic rule (see research articles on “Islamic apocalyptic” or Islamic “Mahdi”).
So also Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism, specifically climate alarmism, have all embraced fundamental features from the “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex of themes, meaning they have all been shaped by the same profoundly religious ideas/myths. This site repeatedly lists the research sources that detail the influence of the above religious ideas on such “secular ideologies” making them “profoundly religious movements”.
Decarbonization is the destructive salvation scheme of the climate apocalypse movement, a salvation scheme that seeks to purge the “evil threat” that alarmists claim will bring on the apocalypse (“saving the world by destroying it”). By coercively purging the purported threat- “CO2 as pollutant/poison”- the alarmists hope to stave off the apocalypse.
(Insert: Decarbonization is part of the larger encompassing “de-development” ideology. And throw in the faddish feature of “de-colonization”, along with Woke Progressivism and environmental apocalyptic, as other elements in the mix of the resurging anti-freedom crusade of collectivism/Marxism.)
And there will be many more such outbreaks of apocalyptic hysteria and related violence to come- in all the diversity of the religious and “secular/ideological/scientific” versions that continue to erupt in the modern era. Until you go to the root archetypes/themes of the above “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” complex, you will not solve the problem of the violence and destruction that is incited by apocalyptic and related mythology. And most critical in the mix, go to the ultimate ideal and authority behind these ideas- i.e. the angry, destroying God that embodies the worst of early human projections and is the cohering center of this psychopathological complex.
This is a call to a major overhaul of the themes that humanity has always embraced to shape narratives, both public meta-narratives and personal stories/worldviews. See details in sections below.
Added note: Why do we constantly embrace religious/spiritual themes to inspire, guide, and validate our lives and stories? It stems from our primal impulse for meaning, and the necessity of informing this impulse with appeals to metaphysical speculations because the limiting conclusions based on understanding of this material world do not offer full answers to our most fundamental questions of Why this world exists? What is the purpose of conscious life? What are we supposed to be and do as authentically human?
Further note: We all naturally speculate. What is critical to our speculations is to employ the criterion of- Is it humane or not?, as evaluated by common human rights codes and constitutions that affirm commonly and widely embraced ideals such as inclusion, equality, freedom, restorative justice (treating offenders humanely), etc. Meaning, project truly humane features onto your gods or God theories.
Speculation is what all religion has always been about- trying to understand and explain why a greater Ultimate Reality created this cosmos and world, and biological life that enables conscious human spirits to inhabit material bodies for a life experience/story. And even the “non-religious” speculate about the metaphysical as unavoidable to understanding and explaining the big questions. Hence, unproven materialist theologies/theories of multi-verse, string theory, Self-Organizing Principle, and Dawkins’ “Natural Selection Is The Source Of All Enlightenment”, and so on. The many varied “secular, materialist” gods.
We all cross the science/philosophy boundary. Just recognize when you do so, point it out, and have your reasons for so doing.
The cause-effect relations in “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” narratives– A refresher post on the patterns in apocalyptic millennialism: Wendell Krossa
Critically, apocalyptic prophets embrace the myth of “lost paradise” to set the stage for the rest of their narrative. Lost paradise is the consciousness-deforming myth that the past was better but early corrupt people ruined the original paradise world. This solidifies the sense that something good has been lost or destroyed and must be recovered.
With the foundational myth of “paradise ruined by early people” you get the earliest anti-humanism where our ancestors began framing people as essentially corrupt and destroyers of all that was good.
Then after the “Fall”, life was believed to be declining to something worse, toward collapse and ending. This distorted view of the trajectory of life incites the survival impulse- the desperation to live, to be saved from disastrous ending. Declinism incites fear, dread, anxiety. And it renders people irrational, desperately hoping for salvation, any salvation. Apocalyptic prophets then present their “salvation” schemes to the suitably alarmed and susceptible population that they have traumatized with the fallacy of apocalyptic decline.
The salvation plan of apocalyptic prophets then demands a sacrifice/payment for sin. In contemporary versions of apocalyptic, “De-development” (the return to primitivism) is offered as essential to redemption- i.e. the demand to make a sacrifice, to exhibit penance by engaging self-denial, to embrace varied forms of self-punishment for being bad (suffering as redemptive). The low-consumption lifestyle is presented as the “morally superior” road to suitably repentant virtue, much like the primitive lifestyles of the “noble savage” tribal past where people consuming very little were believed to be “more in harmony with nature”.
The demand to purge some thing that threatens life is also critical to redemption schemes. Today the threat is summarized in the alarmist’s laser focus on CO2 as the proxy for industrial civilization, the proxy for capitalist excess in using to much of resources like energy. The irrational demonization of the food of all life- CO2- is also buttressed by the “limited resources” fallacy of environmental alarmism narratives.
And because the apocalypse is always imminent, always presented as just up ahead a few years or decades, the purging must be immediate, and accomplished with coercive force, as conventional democratic processes are considered too slow to deal with the “existential emergency” that is looming just up ahead. And demonize all skepticism to the apocalyptic narrative as the sin of unbelief. “They don’t believe in climate change” was the repeated whining and wailing of true believers Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton during the 2016 election.
And then play on the features of the hero’s quest- i.e. the felt need to engage a righteous battle to conquer a monster or eliminate an evil enemy. Play on the innate dualism and tribalism of good true believers versus evil unbelievers. And the more you demonize your enemies, the more you validate your felt obligation to eliminate them, or at least you validate the censorship of their “dangerous speech… speech as violence… right-wing extremism… threat to democracy… fascism/Nazism…” etc., etc. The smears today are many and varied to demonize and dehumanize the differing or dissenting other.
And once the evil enemy has been purged then the apocalyptic prophets promise salvation in a restored paradise or a new utopia. This is the offer of a perverse form of “hope” that is based on the destruction of your opponents.
And yes, this site argues that these themes are evident in both religious and “secular/ideological” versions, whether Hamas/ISIS or climate alarmism, just as they shaped the crusades of Marxism and Nazism before. Again, good historians have done detailed research on this- Arthur Herman (“The Idea of Decline in Western History”), Richard Landes (“Heaven On Earth”), Arthur Mendel (“Vision and Violence”), David Redles (“Hitler’s Millennial Reich”), and others.
Further on never-ending cycles of violence in human societies… Wendell Krossa
This site probes and sets forth the most fundamental myths, ideas, archetypes that have shaped human consciousness and life across history, and most critical this site lasers in on the most common themes that incite the same animal impulses in all of us- i.e. the destructive impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of differing others.
Across history, people have embraced and enshrined the same core themes in their narratives, notably in their gods as the highest embodiment of human ideals and authorities that validate how people should think, feel, and behave/live. Those notable common themes include Gods as tribal, dominating, and punitively destructive. The “Evil triad”.
And this site also sets forth the alternatives to counter the old themes that have incited the worst in people. This site points the way to that more human future that we all want, presenting the alternative humane themes of the universal inclusion of all, the treatment of all as equals (non-domination, protection of the freedom and self-determination of all), and the treatment of human failure with nonpunitive justice, restorative approaches (acknowledging the responsibility to restrain/incarcerate violent people, to engage “just war” as defense against assault, but then treating defeated opponents humanely in order to maintain one’s own humanity and to keep the long-term trend of life improving).
For example, this site draws on the evidence of fundamental human oneness to combat the tribal impulse and mentality. And most critical, this site draws on “metaphysical speculation” that God is an unconditional reality and this, as the ultimate human ideal, is simply the best feature that we have discovered to function as the cohering center of a new narrative.
Put an unconditional God at the very center of narratives as the ultimate ideal, as the starting point of human thought/outlook for a new narrative and let that influence and change everything else, understanding that such love is inseparable from freedom and equality.
Good one from Lex Fridman in his interview of Elon Musk: “Elon Musk on Israel-Hamas War”,
In this brief clip from a Fridman podcast, Musk advocates that Israel respond to Hamas savagery with “conspicuous acts of kindness” to disarm their hatred and propaganda campaign. Not with “turn the other cheek” as Fridman suggests, because the Israelis are responsible to stop Hamas and turning the other cheek will not disarm and eliminate this group that is possessed with an irrational hatred and is committed to the extermination of Jews. But even while dealing forcefully with Hamas, Musk advocates that the Israelis should offer the Palestinians things like portable hospitals and medical care, and “be over-the-top about such things, unequivocal and transparent”. (Note: Reports from news media like the ”Jerusalem Post” show that the IDF is getting medical supplies and other resources into Gaza.)
Conspicuous acts of kindness will help to fight the broader forces of hatred in the region, says Musk. Because, as Musk cautions, if you are not careful in how you respond to Hamas, if Palestinian children are also killed, the issue then becomes “For every member of Hamas you killed, how many did you create”. On the larger context of the Mid-East situation, Musk concludes, “Who said ‘An eye for an eye makes everyone blind’”. I believe that was Gandhi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2myO-slp7w
Here is a good book on the long history of antisemitism by David Nirenberg, “Anti-judaism: The Western Tradition”, available at Amazon.
From the Amazon blurb on this book: “This incisive history upends the complacency that confines anti-Judaism to the ideological extremes in the Western tradition. With deep learning and elegance, David Nirenberg shows how foundational anti-Judaism is to the history of the West.
“Questions of how we are Jewish and, more critically, how and why we are not, have been churning within the Western imagination throughout its history. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; Christians and Muslims of every period; even the secularists of modernity have used Judaism in constructing their visions of the world. The thrust of this tradition construes Judaism as an opposition, a danger often from within, to be criticized, attacked, and eliminated. The intersections of these ideas with the world of power—the Roman destruction of the Second Temple, the Spanish Inquisition, the German Holocaust—are well known. The ways of thought underlying these tragedies can be found at the very foundation of Western history.”
Is this an anti-religion site? Nah…. Its more a complaint about the fundamental nature of religion and its central belief- i.e. the highly conditional God theories of religion… Wendell Krossa
It may appear that this site argues for a strong anti-religion position. Not dogmatically so. It is more that I recognize the futility, ultimately, of tinkering around the periphery of religion, as in religious reform projects, when the real problem is the very core of religion- specifically, the highly conditional deity at the heart of religion, a deity that is further dehumanized by monstrous features like tribalism (favoring true believers, damning unbelievers), domination (King, Lord, Ruler), and punitive destruction (apocalypse, hell). The resulting “monster God” (psychologist Harold Ellens term) has been the cohering center of religious traditions all across history and across all the belief systems of the world. This site argues that the religious God is a profound distortion of the reality that is deity.
(Insert note: The statement above- “The resulting “monster God” has been the cohering center of religious traditions all across history and across all the belief systems of the world”. Yes, the resulting monster God has been embraced by all belief systems across the world. The features projected onto deity by our ancestors are at the core of all human belief systems. They were given archetypal status in early emerging human narratives and have been embedded at the core of human consciousness/subconscious and have largely remained unchallenged ever since.
Buried in the collective human subconscious the same old features produce a strong sense of resonance when some new “profoundly religious movement” like climate alarmism comes along spouting “lost paradise/apocalypse/redemption” themes. Such movements, often presented in “secular/ideological” framing, just seem “true” to many people because the core themes resonate with our own deeply embedded archetypes that originated as primitive mythology.
This is my own read of Joseph Campbell’s summary point that people have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world. Terms, descriptive words change with new movements, but the core themes remain the same. There is nothing new under the sun.
Affirming sources- Note Hollywood’s, a notable worldwide storytelling forum, never-ending obsession with the theme of apocalypse in its storytelling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_apocalyptic_films). And of course, the wide embrace and affirmation of climate alarmism.)
Continuing with my anti-religion defense…
God as threatening tribal Lord has always been the foundation of a larger complex of supporting bad ideas that incite and validate our own worst impulses to tribalism, domination, and destruction of others. Unfortunately for humanity- these religious versions of deity have, from the early days of emerging human consciousness, been revered as humanity’s highest embodiment of ideals and humanity’s ultimate authority. The nastier features used to define deity are extremely hard to dislodge due to the deeply inculcated human reverence for the “immutable sacred” (“deeply inculcated”- meaning, beaten into human consciousness over millennia).
But yes, handclapping here for all efforts to reform religion as in trying to make it something less harmful and more humane. Notable in the modern era are the reform “fads” in Christianity and Islam to claim that the nastier elements in their holy books (i.e. angry God sending unbelievers to hell) are just “metaphor”. Huh? But the apologetic of metaphor that tries to defang the worst of the nastier parts does not change the actual content of the nasty stuff. Whether literal or metaphorical, it’s the same ugly thematic content (again- angry God destroying opponents and sending unbelievers to hell).
When you read portions of your religious holy book to your young children at bedtime, for example- Revelation 19:11 through to 20: 15, do you really think that telling them its just “metaphor” will lessen their fears of the monstrous things that you have read them? There are some 600 passages in the bible presenting such grotesque violence and slaughter. Ah honey, sweet dreams. Its just metaphor.
But again, props to all who have learned to ignore such material and focus on the better parts in the mix. That picking and choosing is to be applauded. As a stop-gap measure to real transformation, it works somewhat. However, I would caution such reformism with the issue that was raised by Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy that the larger context distorts and buries the better stuff in the mix. Example- Love in religion is conditional, tribal and not unconditional, universal, and hence not authentic love.
Theological points- Lasering in on the core issue of unconditional versus conditional in defining ultimate reality: More on the central discovery of the Near-Death Experience movement, as the latest stage in the long history of human “spirituality”, (How unconditional deity exposes the fundamental problem with religion as an institution of conditions, conditions, and more damn conditions), Wendell Krossa
The singularly profound discovery of the NDE movement is that God is an inexpressibly wondrous no conditions love. This discovery affirms the theological insight of Historical Jesus that similarly revealed 2 millennia earlier that God was non-retaliatory, inexpressibly transcendent unconditional love.
An unconditional God consequently poses the greatest threat to highly conditional religious traditions, meaning that unconditional reality is a threat to all religion.
No religion across history has ever presented to people the profound insight of Historical Jesus, and the central discovery of the NDE movement, on the true nature of deity- i.e. that God is an astonishing unconditional love. Why not? Because an unconditional God renders all conditional religion dispensable. And even more egregious, an unconditional God exposes the essential conditional nature of religion, with its highly conditional theologies and extensive accompanying religious conditions, as an institution that prevents people from understanding the true nature of God as unconditional reality. Conditional religions cannot acknowledge the unconditional reality that is God because that would expose the entire history of religion as a great fraud that has always distorted the truth about God.
Religion is an essentially conditional social institution that exists to mediate conditions. And religious traditions have always claimed to be the representatives of God on Earth, the sole institutions that mediate the truth of God to humanity. This is a stunning contradiction because the God that religion claims to represent and present is an unconditional God, not conditional. The unconditional nature of God exposes the great fraud that is conditional religion, the social institution that instead of communicating theological truth, actually contradicts the true nature of God.
Religious traditions have all embraced the myths of deity as a highly conditional reality, demanding sacrifices/payments, requiring loyalty to the “true religion” of any given god, and threatening punishment of people for not adhering to religious conditions. Consequent to the central ideal of a conditional God, religious traditions have manufactured endless further religious conditions as identity markers of tribal loyalty, of the status of followers as “true believers” that gain all the boons of the religion and avoid all the threatened punishments for unbelievers.
Radiating out from the cohering center of a conditional God, religious traditions propagate conditions of right doctrinal beliefs, necessity of true faith in the purported religious “savior”, conditions of required rituals and traditions, and obligatory religious lifestyle as the marker of membership and insider status with the given religion, etc.
Religious traditions have always been all about endless religious conditions.
To further hone a point, religious traditions, as mediators of conditional existence, violate the truth that authentic divine love is inseparable from authentic freedom, meaning that a God who is love will grant people the freedom to love unconditionally in any unique way that they freely choose.
If God is unconditional love (the highest form of love, ultimate love), then there is no need for busybody priesthoods and other religious authorities that mediate the innumerable mind-enslaving and life-deforming conditions of religion. An authentically unconditional God will of necessity grant authentic freedom to people to express unique life stories in individual freedom and self-determination. The freedom to create one’s own life adventure according to personal interests and desires.
Again, my overall point and argument- Religion, as an inherently conditional institution (existing to mediate divine conditions to humanity), hinders and distorts our understanding of the real nature of God. Conditional religion buries the truth of God’s love as stunningly, inexpressibly unconditional. That distortion of the central ideal of humanity then subsequently distorts the consequent outcomes in human ethics- distorting perception, emotions, motivations, and responses/behaviors with a highly conditional meta-ideal. That then results in the ongoing enslavement of humanity to myriad religious conditions.
The inherent nature of religion as the mediator of divine conditions was established at the very beginning of the earliest human attempts to create religion. Prehistorian John Pfeiffer (“Explosion: An Inquiry Into The Origins of Art and Religion”) did interesting research on the cave art that was discovered in places like Lascaux France. He suggests from the evidence there that some early tribal people began to elevate themselves over fellow tribal members, declaring status above their fellow tribe members by claiming to know the secrets of the invisible realm of spirits, how to appease and gain benefits from the spirits by offerings and sacrifices. Those early “shaman” used myths of threatening spirits to create fear and thereby coerce fellow tribal members into submission and obedience. A growing complex of religious beliefs, sacrifices and rituals, and lifestyle conditions naturally followed. That was the earliest known formation of religion as a conditional social institution.
Such was the origins of religion in early human societies. The element of fear in the mix, as essential to dominate others, is evident in the shaman leading others through a difficult journey deep into the disorienting darkness of the caves, and the use of anamorphic art (i.e. art appearing to move in flickering candlelight).
And most egregiously in the main religion of our Western tradition, Paul’s highly conditional Christ myth continues to distort and bury our understanding of the central liberating breakthrough insight of Historical Jesus that God is an unconditional reality.
The insight or discovery that God is unconditional love is the single greatest, most profound insight in all history, in terms of its potency to transform human thought and overall outlook on reality and life. It liberates from threat theology and as a supremely humane ideal it humanizes all else. And today we benefit additionally from the NDE rediscovery and promotion of this profound insight.
Marinate on this a bit.
A “Fuck you” to Wokeism– Dana White as old school independent, not fearing today’s “pussies” (a tidbit only for those able to hear it)
In our era of excessive fear with too much cowardice and bending of knees to Woke Progressivism and its smearing and demonizing of all who disagree, and with too much grovelling apology for free speech that differs from the highly constrained limits set by Wokeism that is trying to control all with its dogmatism about what is right for all, it is refreshing to hear the “Fuck you” spirit of Dana White, UFC boss.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/ufcs-dana-white-told-sponsor-asked-delete-trump-post
An interlude: Music as calming lullaby for the soul- Leo Rojas on Andean flute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoNwdebBbC8
A beef with Jordan Peterson, Wendell Krossa
I repeatedly urge people to listen to Jordan Peterson on many topics. He is just that good. But it appears at times that Peterson is trying to revive interest in the Christian tradition and bible without making some critical necessary distinctions about that religious tradition. He approaches religion from a somewhat psychological and archetypal viewpoint and makes interesting points. But I do not see that he recognizes the problem at the heart of Christianity, the problem that Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy exposed- the problem of “diamonds buried in dung”. Meaning there is some good stuff there in the gospels, but it is distorted by a larger New Testament context of some real bad stuff, notably, the teaching of Historical Jesus that is distorted by Paul’s Christ myth, Paul’s Christology.
Peterson would do well to familiarize himself with Jesus Seminar and “Q Wisdom Sayings” research to get the fundamental contradictions clear between Jesus and Christ. And even those areas of research do not make clear enough some of the most fundamental of contradictions. To get those clear, I offer the material on this site, and Bob Brinsmead’s good research at “Bobbrinsmead.com”.
It’s a much bigger problem than the issue of “the abandonment of religion in society that has left many wandering confused in materialism/atheism and needing to re-connect with a traditional religion like Christianity”. That framing of the problem does not get to the root of the problem of how religions like Christianity have buried the most important insights ever offered and then presented people with a contradiction that has resulted in cognitive dissonance at personality-deforming and society-deforming scale- i.e. that the ultimate reality, humanity’s highest ideal and authority of deity, is actually a no conditions reality that has been buried in highly conditional religion and threat theology.
The burial of God in the context of religious traditions/institutions also results in a profound distortion of the meaning of our highest ideals of love, goodness, truth, and right. Instead of love clearly presented as unconditional and universal, it has long been religiously expressed as something highly conditional and limited- i.e. a conditional God demanding sacrifice/payment/punishment before forgiving, including, or loving. And God, presented as a tribal reality, ultimately favoring true believers and rejecting unbelievers (discriminatory love, not truly unconditional). This is not unconditional or universal love at all. And if it is not unconditional then it is not authentic love.
You cannot mix and merge the teaching of Historical Jesus with Paul’s Christ or you get the burying of the best insights under the worst of ideas and the outcome is a profound distortion of the best insights ever offered. Jesus buried by Christ. Christ-ianity, not Jesus-ianity.
Apocalyptic belief incites the fulfillment of its own prophesies, Wendell Krossa
Apocalyptic mythology creates the perception and accompanying expectation of things getting worse, and that belief engenders fatalism, resignation, nihilism, and even incites the expectant longing to see things worsen toward collapse and ending. Apocalypse incites the embrace of worsening situations as unavoidable, even as part of some “divine plan” that we are obligated to affirm and help fulfill.
The apocalyptic believer’s mind, with its survival impulse aroused, will then also embrace salvation schemes that are destructive and unfold to actually bring on apocalyptic-like catastrophe. Note the example of the Xhosa cattle slaughter of 1856-57, and the more recent outcomes of the climate apocalypse narrative- notably the Sri Lanka agricultural disaster, the Dutch attempt to shut down significant numbers of farms in their agricultural sector, and decarbonization as the worst of all such crusades to “save the world” but that actually destroy the world and thereby bring on a form of apocalypse. Apocalyptic belief produces a Zombie like self-fulfilling embrace of things that worsen life.
Again, note the research of the apocalyptic millennial scholars/historians who have detailed how apocalyptic incites its own fulfillment- Richard Landes (“Heaven On Earth”), Arthur Mendel (“Vision and Violence”), David Redles (“Hitler’s Millennial Reich”), and Arthur Herman (“The Idea of Decline in Western History”).
A leading NDE researcher, Wendell Krossa (the threat from NDEs)
This is a good interview in the link below with Dr. Pim Van Lommel regarding his research on NDEs. He was a young materialist cardiologist when he began to encounter cardiac arrest patients who after resuscitation would relate amazing stories of enhanced consciousness and detailed memories of out-of-body experiences. These experiences could not have been possible with flat-lined EEGs, non-functioning, clinically dead brains, as well as non-functioning “dead” hearts.
His research has been published in the Lancet and he argues with good evidence against “the never proven materialist assumption that consciousness is a by-product of the brain”. His book “Consciousness Beyond Life” is one of the best general overviews of the Near-Death Experience and the many materialist attempts to explain it away (anoxia, hallucinations, survival wish, drugs, etc.). So also religious authorities have tried to explain the NDE away, knowing that it’s main discovery of an unconditional God poses a great threat to conditional religion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVsBFOB7H44
A qualifier re Van Lommel’s point about extending science to include the “subjective” element of human life. That may not be a good option. Better, we should keep science functioning in its area of expertise where it tells us how material reality functions in terms of natural laws, cause/effect relationships and outcomes, and the processes of the natural realm. And at the same time recognize that science is a limited venture in terms of its mandate, its methodology, and what it can tell us about all reality.
We should appreciate that science has been wildly successful within the limits of its expertise and so we ought to maintain the conventional boundary between science and philosophy/religion. It is in the realms of philosophy and spirituality that we probe and speculate on answers to our greatest questions of- What is material reality? Why was it created? What is the purpose of reality and life here? What does it mean to be human in this realm?
Many materialists have erred in trying to take science beyond the science/philosophy boundary to speculate on ultimate questions and claim that the answers must be “philosophical materialism” answers. That has resulted in materialist conclusions that reality is the product of random meaninglessness- a form of nihilism. Fidelity to good science does not automatically and naturally lead us to these materialist conclusions.
Comedians as cutting-edge social warriors, defenders of freedom, Wendell Krossa (more on countering the domination impulse in the “evil triad”, the totalitarian impulse to meddle with and control differing others, the busybody moralizing thing, interfering with the freedom and self-determination of differing others)
There are some entertaining comedians out there today and among the best is Anthony Jeselnik for his understanding of how a good joke works. He presents well-structured jokes that set up a scenario that all of us are familiar with in that they orient our minds and emotions to a certain outcome. But then, instead of the commonly expected ending, Jeselnik surprises with an absurd ending, something outrageous and even offensive that evokes laughter as the release of our natural embarrassment at the “naughty, unthinkable” thing that Jeselnik ends with, the entirely contrary thing that no one would ever actually engage in real life.
Making fun of and laughing publicly at forbidden things, puts such normally prohibited things in life in their place as ultimately silly and not to be taken overly seriously, as with all of life. Jokes and laughter operate to reduce the horror of the darker elements of life and the despair/depression they engender, putting them in their place. We do not let such things defeat us, or destroy us, but with laughter we can then get a better grip on them, place them in a larger context, even eventually set them aside, and go on with life.
Sample of Jeselnik humor- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYrKZuFxHRE
Comedians play the critical role in human society in keeping the door of free speech open because too many of our fellow citizens, giving way to their totalitarian impulse, are persistently trying to shut the door on this most basic of all freedoms. Totalitarians, in general, hate being laughed at because laughter exposes the pettiness and inhumanity of their efforts to control others, their power-mongering lust, their claims to know what is right for all others and consequent attempts at coercion of others. Laughing at powerholders is akin to the child in the crowd innocently blurting out- “Mommy, the emperor has no clothes”.
https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html
Further, who said that “the Left today has become entirely humorless”. Totalitarian intolerance, and hatred of diversity, cannot enjoy, laugh with, and celebrate differing others. The totalitarian spirit refuses to tolerate difference, diversity, dissent, and disagreement. The totalitarian spirit is anti-human and anti-freedom. Watch it as it constantly demonizes and censors differing others today across social media and elsewhere (i.e. the “Censorship Industrial Complex” regularly exposed by Glen Greenwald, Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and others).
So yes, comedians have a critical role to play on the cutting edge of free speech, by presenting offensive speech, outrageous and even repugnant speech, all necessary to keep poking those hyper-sensitive and easily offended people who want to shut down such speech, intolerant people who embrace “concept creep” as the constant extending of their views of “hate speech… speech that causes violence…” to include more and more speech that upsets them because it differs from their views.
Totalitarians try to criminalize the differing, dissenting speech of others with claims that such speech is “dangerous disinformation, misinformation, mal-information, and a threat to democracy”. Venting the infantile spirit of the spoiled and busybody controller, they are trying to make their “hurt” feelings, their personal “discomfort”, the dominant criterion of what others can say or do. Think “spoiled brat” syndrome.
A notable example of offensive comedy, necessary to maintain freedom, is Gilbert Gottfried’s take on “The Aristocrats” joke- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGA0dIz9-Wk
Laughing at the forbidden is not hate speech because you are not actually advocating doing the thing that you are joking about, but you are just poking fun at it.
Other notable comedians stimulating good laughs on the social issues of the day, notably Wokeism- Mark Normand, Adam Ray, Joe Rogan, Tony Hinchcliffe, and others. And don’t forget the “King of all comedians”- Greg Gutfeld- with his excellent social commentary.
Note also the example of Jewish comedians on a Netflix special cautiously pushing boundaries by making jokes about the Holocaust (e.g. Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman). Other Jewish comedians could not do the same but affirmed the attempts of their colleagues to do so. As with jokes about 9/11, time was a factor in public reception to such humor, hence the oft-repeated comeback phrase in response to audience groans after such humor- “What? Too soon?”
Countering endless eruptions of hatred and violence with long-term solutions, Wendell Krossa
A preface qualifier: In all the comment here on the ideas/beliefs in our narratives that incite our worst impulses (or inspire our better impulses) the point is to expose and root out the bad ideas in the mix, to make foundational changes to the mental features that people appeal to that influence their perceptions, emotions, motivations, and responses/behaviors.
This site recognizes that ending violence and achieving longer-term peace among warring groups involves multi-faceted elements that deal with all areas of human concerns- i.e. property/homeland rights and issues, governance issues- i.e. independence/sovereignty or self-determination, and so much more in the areas of political ideologies, economics, and varied social issues. My point is that the ideas in our narratives- the core themes, ideals- also exert powerful influence on whether we achieve peace between ourselves and others, or not. The ideas/beliefs that we hold shape how we perceive others and influence how we relate to them, how we treat them- i.e. tribally as threatening enemies, or humanely as fellow members of one family.
Continuing with eruptions of hate and long-term solutions…
This article from Jerusalem Post admits that the real problem is not just military defense capability. The threat of violent attack will always remain because it is fueled by dogmatically held beliefs that hold powerful sway over human minds (“internal ideological and political interests”).
So yes, defend against enemy capabilities but then think long-term. Go to the root of problems to solve properly for the long-term future. Note especially the religious themes at the core of the belief systems of terrorists like Hamas.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-772754
Quote from link:
“The IDF needs to uproot the very idea of using deterrence. Terrorist organizations act against Israel for internal ideological and political interests as well as due to external pressures, like Iranian patronage. Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad do not act against Israel because they think the IDF is weak. On the contrary, the fact that the IDF is the strongest in the Middle East does not prevent them from attacking Israel. A terrorist organization operates because of internal interests, not because someone else is weak.”
My added comment: Groups like Hamas show that they are incited primarily by bad religious ideas and that is evident in that they are zealously shouting “Allahu Akbar” as they rape, shoot, and behead innocent people, including children. Think of what kind of God, along with other beliefs, would validate such monstrous behavior.
Hence, my repeated argument for going to root source of bad ideas, notably in the theologies of the world religious traditions- the dominant and most revered sources of ideas that influence human minds, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior. Yes, this is an argument to change your God theories. And radically so. Transform your theology entirely by fully humanizing your God. Purge the bad features that incite and validate the worst of human impulses- i.e. those residual animal impulses to tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of others. And then fully humanize your God (your God theory) with features like non-retaliation, non-violence, unconditional love, non-domination, universal inclusion, non-punitive justice, etc.
Also, on the fundamentally religious nature of such movements…
Quotes:
“Mosab Hassan Yousef said Hamas, while the governing force for the Palestinians, is not a political party but a religious movement waging a holy war.”
“’If Hamas was a political party, then we [could] apply pressure on them, bring them to the negotiating table where they can compromise. But Hamas as a religious organization, nobody can satisfy their religious ambition because it’s a condition in their charter,’ he said….
“When asked what Hamas’ version of radical Islam is – whether or not it is similar to ISIS’ mission to convert-or-kill so-called infidels to Islam – Yousef said it takes some of its mission from the late Egyptian Islamic imam Hassan al-Banna, who is credited as the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“’Then there is tribalism, which is 7th century mentality, where a tribe used to fight a tribe for 100 years until they get annihilated, or they annihilate the tribe… It’s the Arabian mentality that they view Israel as a tribe,’ he said.
“’They want to keep trying until they annihilate Israel or get annihilated in the process.’”
And Tasha Kheiriddin reminds us that ignorance of the holocaust must be countered with education and more…
Quotes:
“Fighting this rising tide of hate requires more than education. It requires emotional engagement. And that engagement comes from culture: the films, books and TV shows that we consume. Investing in this engagement will yield more dividends than lectures. “Never again” must be felt, heard, and seen, in order to be understood. This is why the horrors of Hamas, which were captured on film, need to be shown, just as footage of broken bodies shovelled into Nazi concentration camps needed to be shown 70 years ago. The images are unspeakably horrible, but they bear witness in a way rhetoric cannot.”
And a note on calls for ceasefire: Wendell Krossa
We all long for a new and higher, more durable stage of liberation from retaliatory eye for eye cycles of violence, for a more lasting peace, and this primal human longing has been newly intensified as we have all felt deep revulsion at the casualties in Israel and Gaza. But we also remember that past ceasefires have only allowed Hamas to regroup, re-arm, and then continue with their plans to attack and kill Jews as is their ultimate goal and commitment. Another ceasefire will not enable Israel to eliminate that threat from Hamas as they are responsible to do, in order to protect their own citizens.
In the meantime- “humanitarian pauses”? Yes, helpful to alleviate things. And continued caution in bombing with pre-notifications of civilians to evacuate? Yes, along with all measures to maintain one’s humanity when obligated to engage defensive actions, with force, to eliminate threats to one’s existence.
Further, groups like Hamas cannot be reasoned with. When irrational hatred and irrevocable commitment to exterminate others dominates people’s minds, there is no possibility of coming to peace terms with such people. They have to be stopped, restrained by arrest if possible and if that is safe for defenders, but if not then unapologetically killed as a just defensive strategy. Such is the ugly reality in our world where some people refuse to embrace ways to live peacefully and cooperatively with others who differ.
Those calling for ceasefires must take the above facts into account. And offer some explanation of exactly what you think Israel is supposed to do in order to end the madness of those who are zealously committed to destroy all Jews. Such people refuse to be reasoned with.
Goal of site- Slay the monster, liberate people from primal fears: Wendell Krossa
This page has operated for decades as a project to help bring down humanity’s greatest ever monster and enemy, and to urge the ultimate liberation movement of all historical liberation movements, to liberate people from “threat theology” and its deformation of human consciousness and life (again, see Zenon Lotufo in “Cruel God, Kind God”). Threatening gods have cursed and enslaved human consciousness across the millennia of our search for meaning.
Threat theology? Yes, primitive ideas projected by our ancestors onto deity- humanity’s highest ideal and authority that has always had a singularly prominent influence on human thought/perspective, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior.
The features of threat theology have created “monster gods” (psychologist Harold Ellens term)- gods defined as ultimate judges exercising ultimate discrimination and exclusion, ultimate separation from good and rejection/abandonment by humanity’s Creator, ultimate domination and the slavery of all by divine lords, kings, rulers, and ultimate punishment and destruction- whether through the natural world (gods punishing people through natural disasters, disease, cruelty of others and thereby adding an extra psychic burden to already unbearable physical suffering) along with end-of-life punishment via apocalypse and after-life harm in hell. These psychopathologies have long been protected “under the canopy of the sacred”, projected onto and embedded in deity as fundamental defining features of God theories.
The monster gods of primitive mythology were later embraced by world religions (yes, the same basic features) and have since loomed frighteningly large in human consciousness all across history and across all the cultures of the world. The gods of religious traditions have continued to serve as humanity’s greatest monster/enemy, producing endless fear and anxiety, psychic harm, along with the unnecessarily added psychic burden of guilt, shame, depression/despair, nihilism, fatalism/resignation, and violence. Threatening deity has darkened human consciousness and life for millennia.
True liberation is so much more than just physical freedom in a liberal democracy. Many people appear to walk around free in such societies but are still profoundly enslaved in the depths of their consciousness and emotions, enslaved to bad ideas that continue to dominate too many public meta-narratives and personal narratives/worldviews. Bad ideas like the following “evil triad” of themes that incite the worst of our impulses.
(1) The feature of tribalism (Gods favoring some people over others- true believers over unbelievers, Gods exhibiting divine discrimination and exclusion). Divine tribalism has long incited, guided, and validated human forms of tribalism, discrimination, and exclusion.
(2) The feature of domination- Gods as kings, lords, rulers, judges that thereby present a divine model and validation for human domination/submission relationships (i.e. myths of people created to serve the gods, the divine rights of kings as appointed by God to rule others, priesthoods as divinely appointed mediators between God and people to tell people how to live their lives in onerous and guilt-inducing detail).
(3) And then the feature of punitive destruction via the natural world (natural disasters, disease, predatory cruelty), or punishment through apocalypse and hell. Deity has always been the supreme embodiment and advocate for the ideal of justice as punitive vengeance, validating human forms of justice as punishment/vengeance. The threat of divine punishment touches primal fears, such as the fear of after-life harm that adds intolerable sting to the natural fear of death.
Note, in the Christian example of these monstrous features projected onto divinity, Paul’s embrace of a vengeful God in Romans 12:17-20- “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord”. He also illustrated this vengeful deity in his first letter to the Corinthians, telling them that their sickness and dying was due to God punishing them for their sins. This Christian theology of a punitive God has long shaped Western justice as punitive. Add to this the divine demand to solve problems with violence, notably the violence exhibited through bloody human sacrifice, and how this example of divine violence influences people to similarly embrace violence in their own lives as a legitimate means to solve problems (see detail on Harold Ellen’s arguments in Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”).
The above “evil triad” of cruel God features have long been idealized in the creation of monster gods that burden people with unnecessary fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, fatalism, nihilism, and violence. These features, deeply embedded in humanity’s ultimate ideal and authority, have long incited our worst impulses, shaping our thinking/perspective, our emotions, our motivations, and our responses/behaviors.
This site exists to offer hope for a better future, free of such divinely-inspired and divinely-validated hatred and violence, a future shaped by the supremely humane ideal of unconditional love.
I try to carefully, but intentionally, employ over-stated superlatives to express the profundity of the impacts and outcomes of these proposed changes in our most fundamental ideas/archetypes/ideals. Transforming our theologies, our God theories with the feature of unconditional, is to embrace the greatest force for good in life- love- and even more so, love taken to its ultimate reach as a powerfully humanizing factor when it is understood as unconditional.
There is no comparable liberation anywhere else in life- liberation at the depths of consciousness, spirit, emotion, motivation, and response. It is about liberation from the animal inside us that enslaves us to dehumanizing impulses that, upon indulgence, darken us with shame and guilt for yielding to the pettiness of base animal passions. Unconditional liberates us the animal to experience true human maturity, to tower in stature by heroically fulfilling our purpose to live as truly human. It is about freedom from the real monster and enemy inside us that has so long enslaved us at the depths of our being.
Unconditional deity reshapes our larger narratives entirely. Deity features are the cohering center of narratives and the thorough-going transformation of that center leads to overhauling entirely all other related ideas/ideals. Its more than just liberation from consciousness-darkening ideas, enslaving ideas. It is about a new foundational source for hope, knowing that with an unconditional God we are all ultimately safe, safe in the strongest sense of that concept- eternally safe, ultimately safe, no matter what horrors we experience here in this world.
When love is established as the core of reality- as defining the Creating Source of all reality, and not just love but inexpressibly wondrous unconditional love beyond imagination… that shines a light into consciousness as never before in history.
And there is no greater basis for hope than to know that we all, in the end, return home to this love. This takes the sting out of death, our worst fear.
Excellent summary of the climate issue by Marc Morano and Edward Ring of Climate Depot, Nov.13, 2023, “Climate Data Refutes Crisis Narrative: ‘If you concede the science and only challenge the policies… you’re going to lose’”.
My added point- Stop kowtowing to the alarmist narrative that “we must do something” to combat the climate crisis. Understand the physics of CO2 and recognize that there is no climate emergency, and hence, no scientific basis for taxing carbon or decarbonizing our societies. We do not need “to do something” to counter a problem that does not exist, a purported problem that has been exaggerated all out of proportion to actual observed reality. A supposed problem (natural and mild climate change) that has been incessantly and irrationally framed with apocalyptic-scale hysteria.
The authors noted the lawsuits by climate activists against fossil fuel companies, companies that are choosing to settle with the alarmists and not challenge the alarmist’s abuse of climate science. The authors argue that this response is a mistake.
Quotes from link:
“By sidestepping the question of whether CO2 is indeed a dangerous pollutant, and instead leaving that decision up to a politicized EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court in the Massachusetts v. EPA case issued a deeply flawed ruling. Without CO2, life on earth as we know it would not exist. CO2 is plant food, and without it, plants die. There is evidence that more atmospheric CO2 would have a primarily beneficial impact on planetary ecosystem health. If oil and gas companies defended themselves on this basis, they might take a case all the way to the Supreme Court and force a reversal of Massachusetts v. EPA.
“An aggressive defense against Bonta’s lawsuit by Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips,, BP, and the American Petroleum Institute would attack the core premise of the plaintiffs, the alleged evidence of global warming and extreme weather. Because what is being presented as “evidence” supporting a climate “crisis” is consistently misleading and often outright fraudulent….
Atmospheric scientists John Cristy recently presented charts to an audience showing that, contrary to hysterical media alarmism, California is not suffering a climate crisis…
“A native of California, John Christy assured the audience that he has been giving that state special attention his entire life. He then presented a series of slides that unequivocally contradict what we hear every day. California, to say nothing of the rest of the world, is not experiencing rapid warming, nor is it experiencing unusually violent weather.
“Christy’s message might be summarized as follows: There may be some warming occurring over the past century in California, but it is not extreme, nor is it accompanied by unusually severe anything: droughts, extreme wildfires, heavy rainfall, diminished snowpacks, reduced river volumes, or drier air. Readers are encouraged to scroll through Christy’s charts, which are reposted (with permission) following this text.
“The data that Dr. Christy used in his presentation did not come from hypothetical climate models, but were compiled from actual climate and weather observations gathered by weather stations and satellites and extracted from databases maintained by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration and other internationally recognized official sources.
“If you haven’t heard of John R. Christy despite him being one of the preeminent climate scientists in the world, that’s no accident. Along with Dr. Richard Lindzen, Dr. Judith Curry, and hundreds of others, his work is marginalized and his press and online coverage is either nonexistent or negative. Back in 2019, back when President Trump’s regulatory reforms had the climate industrial complex fearing for its life, Dr. Curry published an expose of what she dubbed “consensus enforcement.” In it, she described how the world’s most prestigious climate journals were yielding to pressure – mostly supported by their own editorial management – to refuse to publish anything by climate “contrarians.”
“As we know, suppression of unwanted facts and analysis regardless of credibility or intent is not restricted to climate contrarians. In March 2023, Michael Shellenberger – once honored in 2008 as a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” testified before the U.S. Congress“ on what many have joined him in calling the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” a coalition of corporate special interests, government agencies, and major online platforms that smothers honest dialog on topics of urgent national importance.
“Attempting to compile information on climate that doesn’t support a crisis narrative is demonstrably challenging, as anyone attempting to use a mainstream search engine will quickly attest. For every analysis or declaration that may exist, claiming there is not a climate crisis, search engines will offer a page full of reports debunking the analysis and discrediting the source. Often it is almost impossible to even find a link to the analysis or the declaration itself. The World Climate Declaration, a petition signed (so far) by more than 1,800 experts who assert there is no climate emergency, is an example of a suppressed and unfairly stigmatized document….
“One of the saddest examples of suppression is the reluctance of conservative editors to challenge the scientific arguments used to support the climate crisis narrative….”
Then the authors state that notable climate alarmists are not hesitant to panic-monger publicly about climate change.
“But none of these people have any reluctance to hector us with their opinions, often not even derived from those climate scientists who are part of the “consensus,” but lifted from other pundits who got their material directly from press releases that featured cherry picked “impactful” nuggets taken from abstracts and summaries which in turn were exaggerations and misrepresentations of studies that even in their totality were paid for, inherently biased exercises….
“It isn’t hard to see an agenda at work, when every time the climate so much as hiccoughs, every mainstream news source in the world is regurgitating precisely the same terrifying soundbites and images, and repeating the same phrases and admonitions over and over and over again. Confronting such obvious and coordinated propaganda should raise skepticism in anyone with common sense and a sense of history.
“If you concede the science, and only challenge the policies that a biased and politicized scientific narrative is being used to justify, you’re already playing defense in your own red zone. You’re going to lose the game.”
The charts presented by Dr. Christy on October 13 at a conference in Southern California are available at the link above.
A reposting of fundamental ideas/themes for a new narrative, Wendell Krossa
Many dismiss or downplay the influence of religious ideas in the contemporary secularized world. But primitive ideas from the ancient past remain in the background as archetypal, subconscious and continue to exert a powerful influence on human lives and societies. These “bad ideas” are even given endless new forms of expression in “secular ideological” terminology, but they remain the same old themes, always the same old. (This is not to deny the presence of good ideas also in the religious mix. However, see the qualifier above on the problem of how good ideas are deformed by a larger context of bad ideas, thus weakening the potency of the good material.)
Note, particularly in this regard, the ideas that affirm and promote the “evil triad” complex of (1) tribalism (dualism, opposition) and tribalism’s exclusion of differing others (good insiders, bad outsiders), (2) domination of weaker others, and (3) the destruction of differing/offending others (punitive forms of justice).
Changing our narratives, meaning changing the main themes/ideas that our narratives are comprised of, is about changing how we think. The transformation of our minds (a form of cognitive therapy) then changes how we feel, what motivates us, and how we respond or act. This is what Bob Brinsmead meant when he stated, “We all become just like the God that we believe in”. Or- “As I think, so I am”. This is true of all the ideals that we hold, whether they are religious beliefs or framed as “secular/materialist” beliefs. It’s the core theme behind any given expression.
Summary list of bad ideas and better alternatives to shape the narratives that inspire, guide, and validate truly human thinking and existence. The bad ideas are presented first and followed with the related better alternative idea/theme/insight.
This is not an exhaustive list of bad ideas but includes some of the more prominent and damaging ideas that we have inherited from the primitive past, ideas that are still widely embraced as true in some manner and hence they continue to exert their damaging impact in deforming human consciousness and ultimately inciting harm in human societies.
1. The idea of deity as a judging, punishing, and destroying reality.
The new theology of deity as a stunningly “no conditions” reality (no conditions love).
2. The idea of a perfect beginning (i.e. Dilmun, Eden) and a God obsessed with perfection, enraged at the loss of perfection, demanding punishment of imperfection, and atonement (sacrifice/payment) to remedy imperfection.
The world was purposefully created as originally imperfect in order to serve as an arena for human struggle, learning, and development. Deity has no problem with imperfection. It exists for a purpose.
3. Humanity began as a more perfect species (the myth of primitive people as pure, strong, and noble hunter gatherers, “Adam/Eve”).
Humanity emerged from the brutality of animal reality to gradually become more humane across history (the long-term trajectory of humanity rising/improving, not falling into a trajectory of degeneration/decline).
4. The world began as an original paradise (again, the myth that the past was better) but after the “Fall” the overall trajectory of life has been declining, degenerating toward something worse.
The long-term trajectory of life does not decline toward something worse but overall rises/improves toward something ever better.
5. The belief that natural disasters, disease, human cruelty, and death are expressions of divine punishment, and that humanity deserves punishment.
While there are natural consequences all through life, there is no punitive, destroying deity behind the imperfections of life.
6. The belief that “sinful/imperfect” humanity has been rejected by the Creator and we must be reconciled via blood sacrifice/suffering.
No one has ever been rejected by the unconditional Love at the core of reality. No one has ever been separated from God. Ultimate Love does not demand appeasement/payment/atonement, or suffering, as punishment for sin.
7. The belief that God is a tribal deity based on the myth of a cosmic dualism between Good and Evil (i.e. God versus Satan). That divine dualism has long been expressed in human dualisms (tribes of good people versus their enemies- the “evil” people). The idea of God as a tribal reality has long been appealed to as the ultimate ideal to validate discrimination, exclusion of differing others (favor true believers, exclude unbelievers).
There is a fundamental Oneness at the core of all and we all share that oneness. We all belong equally to the one human family, and we equally share the ultimate eternal Oneness that is God.
8. The belief in a looming apocalypse as the final judgment, the ultimate punishment of wrong, and the final destruction of all things.
There are problems all through the world but there is no looming threat of final divine destruction and ending of the world.
9. The always “imminent” element in apocalyptic mythology demands urgent action to save something, even the use of coercive violence to effect “instantaneous transformation”.
While unexpected catastrophes could still happen, there is no “imminent end of days” on the horizon, inciting the urgency to “save the world”. Rather, life improves through gradual democratic processes as creative humanity cooperatively solves problems.
10. The demand for a salvation plan, a required sacrifice or atonement (payment of debt, punishment of wrong).
Unconditional deity does not demand sacrifice, atonement, payment, or punishment as required for appeasement- as prerequisite for divine acceptance, forgiveness, and love.
11. The belief that retribution or payback is true “justice” (i.e. eye for eye, hurt for hurt, humiliation for humiliation, punishment for punishment).
Unconditional love keeps no record of wrongs, forgives freely and without limit. This points us toward restorative approaches to justice where offenders are held responsible for offenses (i.e. offenders must be incarcerated if they are not able or willing to control their worst impulses). Violent people must be incarcerated as our primary obligation is to protect the innocent.
The same applies at societal levels when any group is violently assaulted by some attacking group. If it is not safe for defenders to capture attackers without harm to the defenders, then the attackers must be stopped/restrained by counter force in “just war”. But then after restraining those committing assaults, whether individual offenders or entire groups of attackers, we are obligated to treat our defeated “enemies” or individual criminal offenders humanely. Such restorative justice is how we maintain our own humanity in the face of evil.
12. The belief in after-life judgment, exclusion, punishment, and destruction (i.e. hell).
Unconditional love does not threaten ultimate judgment, exclusion, punishment, or destruction.
13. The idea of a “hero” messiah who will use superior force and violence to overthrow enemies, purge the world of wrong (“coercive purification”), and install a promised utopia. The belief that superior violence is the model for solving problems (i.e. as illustrated in the New Testament book of Revelation).
A God of authentic love does not intervene with overwhelming force that overrides human freedom and choice. It is up to maturing humanity to make the world a better place through long-term gradualism processes that respect the freedom of others who differ.
14. The fallacy of biblicism- the belief that religious holy books are more special and authoritative than ordinary human literature, and the related fallacy that people are obligated to live according to the holy book as the revealed will, law, or specially-inspired word of God.
We evaluate all human writing according to basic criteria of right and wrong, good and bad, humane or inhumane. Religious holy books are not exempt from this evaluation.
15. The idea of God as King, Ruler, Lord, or Judge. This myth promotes the idea that God relates to humanity in domination/submission forms of relating (i.e. the primitive myth that people were created to serve the gods).
There is no domination/subservience relationship of humanity to God. True greatness is to relate horizontally to all as equals, not with top-down authoritarian coercion.
16. The idea that humanity is obligated to know, serve, or have a relationship with an invisible reality (deity), that we are to give primary loyalty to something separate from and above people.
Our primary loyalty is to love and serve real people around us. Their needs, here and now, take priority in life.
17. The perception that God is silent or absent during the horrors of life (i.e. Where was God during the Holocaust?).
There has never been a Sky God up above in some heaven. The reality we call “God” has always been incarnated equally in all humanity. God has always been immediately present in all human suffering and is intimately present in all human raging and struggle against evil.
18. The fallacy of “limited good” and the belief that too many people are consuming too much of Earth’s resources, and hence world resources are being exhausted. This relates to the ancient religious belief in the moral superiority of the simple, low-consumption lifestyle. The belief that denial of comfort- i.e. separation from “worldly things”, and rejection of material possessions, is a more “spiritual” and holy route to take. Add here the belief in suffering as somehow redemptive.
More people on Earth means more creative minds to solve problems. More consumption means more wealth to solve problems and enable us to make life better- i.e. enables us to improve the human condition and protect the natural world at the same time.
And one more…
One of the most common responses from religious people to the idea of God as no conditions love is that God is also holy and just and therefore must punish all wrong. God’s honor is tarnished by the wrongdoing of people so he must be just (exhibit strict eye for eye retaliation) and punish all sin. God cannot just freely forgive and love. Holiness in deity must take precedence over love. Divine love must be qualified by the obligations of “justice” as some form of demanded payback.
But this divine holiness myth is primitivism at its worst. How so? It is the very same reasoning that is behind practices like “honor killing”. People in varied cultures today still reason that, for example, that a daughter embracing modern habits has dishonored her family and their traditional culture with something impure. So the dishonored males are obligated by the demands of “purity” to punish the “evil” daughter in order to restore their tarnished honor.
Holiness theology is embracing this very same primitive reasoning that wrongs must be punished thoroughly, or justice and honor are not restored properly (rebalancing wrong). I would counter that unconditional forgiveness and love is the true glory of God, the highest reach of goodness and love. Authentic goodness and love will just forgive without demanding payment or righting of wrongs first.
The holiness feature in theology affirms the myth of a God that is obsessed with perfection and punishing imperfection, hence the creation of a supporting complex of myths- i.e. original paradise/Eden (perfect creation), Fall of humanity and ruin of paradise (loss of perfection), and the subsequent need for an atonement (sacrifice/payment/punishment) in order to restore the lost perfection.
Too much similar psychopathology has been projected onto deity from the beginning and has long been defended and validated by religious traditions that refuse to acknowledge the real nature of such pathology. And humanity continues to suffer the harmful outcomes of such themes in our meta-narratives. Again, note the arguments of psychologists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo in books like “Cruel God, Kind God”, the four-volume series “The Destructive Power of Religion” (editor Harold Ellens), or Alex Garcia in “Alpha God”.
Add the point that we fallible humans are expected to just forgive and love without demanding prior “justice” in some form as atonement/payment for wrong. See, for example, the Jesus statement on such unconditional forgiveness, love, and generosity in Luke 6: 27-36. Or the statement of Paul on authentic love as “keeping no record of wrongs”.
Now logically and reasonably, we must then ask why would God, as ultimate goodness and love, be held to a lower standard of forgiveness and love than we are held to?
Why would a “God is love” keep detailed records of all human wrongs and threaten punishment of such wrongs? That, according to Paul, is not authentic love. Why would God not just forgive and love freely as the Father in the Prodigal story does to his wasteful scoundrel of a son? Just as we are expected to do.
Another point:
Hamas illustrates the danger of placing your loyalty in something above people and their needs. When we give primary loyalty to some ideology, religion, nation state, ethnic/racial group, or other, and especially when we give our primary loyalty to God, then the result is too often neglect or harm of real people in the name of the higher loyalty. Much like Calvin putting fellow Christian theologian Servetus to a slow death by fire because Calvin gave his primary loyalty to the Christ myth that Servetus defined differently. Calvin would not tolerate such difference of views and feeling obligated to “restore the honor” of the Christ, he put a fellow Christian to death.
Our primary loyalty ought to be to the people around us, and our highest obligation is to love one another, to love our enemies.
Some thoughts on dying and the “annoyance” of death, Wendell Krossa
I posted this a while back to a discussion group, an update regarding my aggressive (7 or 8 on the Gleason scale) metastatic prostate cancer that has been quietish over the past year but now evidences a rising PSA.
“I have never been death-obsessed like Woody Allen, or as he presents himself. Death has always been more the “annoying” thing in the background (Australian Sam Neill’s comment) that only pops into the mind now and again. But with cancer, death has now been pushed up more into my consciousness as something I can no longer push off into the far future. It’s up close now and uncertainty rules. What is going on inside the old bag of bones and when will it manifest seriously? But it’s still not an overwhelming or frightful thing to me. More just annoying.
“Having read gazillions of NDE accounts, and varied spiritual beliefs, and what not across the decades, I have some fairly settled opinions on what death is and what might follow. But in the crunch, even with loved ones around, entering death will be a somewhat “all alone” experience because you have to go through it by yourself. And it’s the unknown element still in the mix- again, despite all you read of other’s experiences and the comfort from that- who really knows until you go through it yourself, by yourself. Unless, as others note, passed loved ones come to accompany one through that transition out of the body.
“And I find myself also contemplating that this world and life in this world has an element of comfort- it’s been home for so many decades, and it has its elements of profound beauty. And then the problem of friends and loved ones that will be left behind. That part hurts most to contemplate… I hate upsetting people who are close…. And it is so final a thing. Like nothing else that we experience in life.
“Also interesting is that the main concern of many is with the dying process before death. Will it be painful in any way? Will modern medicine alleviate any pain? And to think, all humans who have ever lived have died. No one has been exempted from this transition. So, suck it up buttercup, eh.
“And yes, these are only irregularly intruding thoughts, not all-day long persistent. Just annoying at times. Anyway, lots to do now, so time to get busy living.”
Friends then posted some responses:
“If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.” C.S. Lewis. Wendell – your destiny is in the hands of the God who is love. Continue to have faith and trust in the God who is love. Death cannot totally erase my existence for I see a little bit of myself in my son and grandchildren.
“All sacrifice, pain and suffering is redemptive, for nothing can separate us from the love of God. I just want to thank you for all the shared insights, and as ______ suggests stay focused on your mission, ____.”
Another person then posted this:
“For what it is worth. Malcom Muggeridge had a long and productive life and became more orientated to matters of faith near the end of life. I listened to him give this following illustration: Life is like embarking on a great voyage on a boat. At the beginning I was concerned about the quality of my room, whether is had a good porthole view of the ocean, anxious to know I was going to have good food on this journey and good company to make it all enjoyable. After being on the journey a great while, I am beginning to look forward to disembarking and I care less and less about the things that once concerned me – I am becoming more and more focussed on reaching the end of this journey and the goal of disembarking.
“Not long after listening to Muggeridge express this interesting analogy, he passed on from this life.”
My rejoinder:
“Also for what its worth, Timothy Leary, the 60s guru on psychedelics, put his final months dying of prostate cancer online. In one clip someone asked what he thought of dying. He smiled and replied, “Its going to be one hell of an adventure”. His smile continued.”
Media denial of the “cold crisis”
Quote:
“In spite of the warnings of planetary overheating from Mr. Guterres and the climate alarmists, it seems that this year record cold temperatures have been recorded on every continent. Our rulers and their obedient mainstream media hyperventilate and panic, bombarding us with their many stories of this year’s supposed ‘record hot temperatures’ and ‘Earth on fire’ apparently caused by man-made global warming. Yet there is always somewhere on Earth which has experienced its coldest ever temperature record. However, our rulers and their compliant media don’t like to mention these record cold temperatures as they don’t fit in with the ‘Earth is boiling’ narrative.
“And our rulers are desperate to convince us that our planet is overheating, so we need to accept energy insecurity, de-industrialisation, mass unemployment and national impoverishment in order to achieve the totally unnecessary and economically suicidal ‘Net Zero’. Meanwhile, countries like China, India and Indonesia hugely increase their national CO2 emissions as they take our industries and jobs while laughing at our stupidity.”
And another excellent one from Michael Shellenberger- “Why Democrats Became The Totalitarians They Warned Us About: How did the Left go from defending the free speech rights of neo-Nazis to demanding censorship, falsely accusing their opponents of being fascists, and seeking their incarceration?”
https://public.substack.com/p/why-democrats-became-the-totalitarians
Quotes (full report at link above):
“Liberal commentators have compared Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler over and over again….
“Last month, Crown published a new book by Rachel Maddow that compares Trump-supporting Republicans to fascists….
“But Friday’s release of the first tranche of January 6 tapes confirms that Trump’s actions paled in comparison to the steps Democrats have taken to defeat him and his supporters. The tapes corroborate Public’s previous reporting and show that the Democrat-driven narrative of an insurrection was highly misleading. Democrats used this narrative to demonize tens of millions of voters, to justify their censorship efforts, and to weaponize the justice system against their political enemies….
“But what the tapes do not show is a coup attempt….
“Despite the evidence that law enforcement at best permitted this “coup” to take place and at worst facilitated it, January 6 judges have handed down extremely harsh sentences….
“What’s more, the January 6 tapes show scenes that are far less violent than Black Lives Matter riots, which were investigated and prosecuted with much greater lenience, even in cases of arson and assault.
“Above all, the newly released tapes demonstrate that the Democratic party’s claims to be fighting for democracy and staving off authoritarianism are a sham and that it is the Democrats who have, in their persecution of Trump and his followers, done more to undermine democracy than Trump ever threatened to do….
“Democrats became everything they once said they feared in Trump: censorial, totalitarian, and corrupt. Their years-long clampdown on dissent and criminalization of political opposition was a systematic attack on liberal democracy. Worse, they became everything that liberals during the 20th Century warned Americans about….
“Meanwhile, Biden’s DOJ is inappropriately shielding him and his son from any accountability for their lucrative influence-peddling operation. A growing body of evidence suggests that President Biden played a major role in his son’s business and that the DOJ is protecting the president from repercussions. This is precisely the type of corruption Democrats warned Trump would bring to the office of the presidency.
“The Democratic party and the Biden administration have become precisely what liberals said Trump would be, and they have attacked the foundational principles of our democracy in the name of protecting them. How did this happen?
“Liberalism, Elitism, And Tribalism
“The obvious reason for the authoritarian and even totalitarian turn among liberals was the Internet in general and social media in particular. Elites since World War II had largely controlled the information that the masses received through TV, the big newspapers, and wire services. That all changed with the rise of the Internet….
“Social media got Trump elected, they argued. Political scientists disagreed but it didn’t matter; Democrats wanted to believe it because it justified their more primal desire to silence their enemies. We needed the government to regulate social media, argued the former intelligence community people, like Renée Diresta, who Democrats put forward in their hunt for the “Russian disinformation” that supposedly resulted in Trump’s election….
“In 2016, the profound ideological inbreeding among elite segments of the Democratic party produced what many have termed “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” This was a special combination of outrage, bewilderment, and disgust aimed at Trump and his followers, which consumed Democrats in 2016 and has warped their judgment ever since.
“Democrats conceived of themselves as resisting a great evil, and this gave them a rationale for censorship, weaponization of government, and the punishing authoritarian culture that now underpins major institutions. The great evil – Trump and the populist sentiment he represented – needed to be vanquished by any means necessary.
“As a consequence of this moral righteousness and ideological inbreeding, Democrats began categorizing inconvenient facts and different points of view as “disinformation,” “misinformation,” or “malinformation.”…
“At the same time that Democrats abandoned free speech, they also abandoned a commitment to equal justice under the law, giving Hunter Biden a free pass for federal crimes while celebrating Trump’s prosecution for alleged crimes that amount to political speech and activities.
“Under director Christopher Wray, the FBI has abused its power by inflating domestic violent extremism statistics, using entrapment tactics, and suspending whistleblowers with the full support of liberal legacy media outlets….
“For most of the left (Classic liberal) principles now only exist to be weaponized when convenient, but can otherwise be denigrated and disparaged….
“Freedom Lovers Unite
“Liberals have fallen far from their 20th-century heights. In 1977, liberals defended the rights of neo-Nazis to march through a neighborhood of Holocaust survivors; in 2023, they falsely label their political opponents Nazis and demand their incarceration. In 1969, liberals argued that speech inciting violence could only be banned if it were used to immediately harm someone; today, progressive politicians in North America, Europe, and Brazil want police to arrest people who say mean things online….
“Over the last five years, the percentage of Democrats who told Pew researchers that they wanted the government to police and censor online speech rose from 40% to a depressing 70%…
“There is a reckoning to come and it should be bipartisan and championed by liberals on the Left and Right alike….
“We need to depoliticize the DOJ, FBI, DHS and the rest of the intelligence and security community, and end the cycle of revenge….
“We hope it is clear to our readers, given the history of having watched the Left get swept up into a cult-like trance, why we at Public have been so adamant about the free speech rights for people on all sides, including people who are saying reprehensible things about Israel…. For us at Public who consider ourselves “leftugees,” it is essential that we find allies on the Left, Right, and center who support universal, not tribal, rights….
“We need them to become large-hearted liberals of the 20th-century variety, not the small-minded progressives they have become… the most sickening moment for the US commitment to liberal democracy came not in the election of Trump but in the Left’s betrayal of fundamental liberal principles.”
Again, making the point- Religious validation of horror, Wendell Krossa
As a father of a daughter, every account I read of the horror that young Jewish women endured on Oct. 7, fires me afresh to do something, anything to contribute my small part to end such barbarity and, especially, the ideas that fuel it. My response to the accounts coming out of Israel is often a pained “Fuck”- as in what a hellish existence that some people have to endure at times. The mind reels in disgust and inability to comprehend the hatred that can possess fellow human beings.
“The ideas that fuel such savagery”? Yes, those young Hamas men violently gang-raping young women, gouging out the eyes of parents in front of their children, cutting children’s fingers off in front of the parents, tying children together and setting them on fire, ah… the stomach churns. And my point- the Hamas terrorists were screaming “Allahu Akbar” as they committed such barbarism on innocent people. That exposes the profoundly pathological theology that dominates their minds. A truly “monster God”.
And yes, there are also “ideological and political” elements in the mix of motivations that fuel such barbarity. But the religious ideas are often the most powerful background influences and have much longer history of inciting and validating barbarity. This has to do with humanity’s age-old impulse to “base behavior on validating belief”. Our ancestors projected some of our worst inherited animal features onto their gods that were then revered as the highest embodiment of human ideals and authority.
And to counter the unthinking automatic response of some- “Ah, Islamophobia”- I would add that religions like Christianity have similarly ugly episodes of violence committed against “enemies” over past history. The early Christian Councils, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the burning of witches and heretics, and so on. Was it Stephen Pinker in “Better Angels of Our Nature” who noted some of the horrific machines created by Christian inquisitors to torture accused victims? Accused women were tied and hoisted above pointed stakes till, exhausted, they sank down and the stakes pierced up through their vaginas to tear their insides.
Do not defensively dismiss this evidence of the inhumanity produced by our major religions. In our Protestant tradition, our leaders would blame the Catholics for such barbarity. They did present to us the darker details in the stories of Martin Luther and John Calvin- the founding heroes of our Protestant tradition. Luther angrily proclaimed that Jewish synagogues should be burned and the Jews driven out. He turned away the Anabaptists seeking refuge in the middle of a bitterly cold winter.
Calvin put fellow Christian theologian Servetus to the stake and used green wood so the screaming Servetus took some 30 minutes to burn to death. Contemporaries of Calvin argued that he should respond to Servetus with “love your enemy” but Calvin stubbornly insisted he had to defend “the glory of God” above all other concerns. Another Christian theologian apparently paced back and forth praying and reading his bible as Servetus screamed for mercy.
What kind of religious ideas incite and validate such savagery? And why is this madness still repeatedly erupting today? What in our narratives produce such inhumanity. At least consider this root issue. Let personal revulsion push you to try to understand and seek some permanent solution to all the darker elements evoked by religious ideas- from milder forms of discriminatory exclusion of those who disagree (separating and dividing oneself from “unbelievers”), to the advocacy for harsher forms of punitive destruction of differing others.
Religious themes have been deeply buried as “archetypal” in human narratives and subconscious and still exert powerful thinking on the human impulse to base behavior on similar belief. We all hold beliefs that validate our actions, even the most inhuman of actions that we like to frame as heroically “righteous battles against evil enemies”, as just causes.
Archetypes: “model, ideal, original, pilot, prototype, pattern, standard, classic exemplar, classic, representative, forerunner, epitome, prime example, etc.”
More on comedians as cutting-edge defenders of freedom- Video clips (brief 4 mins) of John Cleese and Rob Schneider discussing how comedy went wrong under Wokeness, Wendell Krossa
Quotes from the posts to a discussion group: “Wokeism is intolerance dressed up as manners”.
“They note that in the past the people offended by comedy were on the right, but now most of the offense at humor is on the left. Hence, comedians no longer do shows on university campuses as audiences are too easily offended by anything that is not fundamentalist Wokeism.
“Rob Schneider who interviews Cleese, was one of the few who did not lose their minds from “Trump Derangement Syndrome” over past years and Schneider noted long ago how liberal comedians came out as partisan ideologues that were no longer funny but spewed vilification/hatred that while it roused their leftist audiences, it was no longer good comedy.
“Good comedy, he argued, was what both sides could laugh at together, even the one being made fun of, like Chevy Chase mocking Gerald Ford’s tripping and falling. Cleese notes, as others have said, that the left no longer has a sense of humor, except at Politically Correct stuff. It has to be a “fundamentalist righteousness no matter how lunatic it becomes”, as with Wokeness.
“Schneider has some fun with racism in questioning how his white side oppresses his Asian side (his mom is Filipina). They go on to point out that good comedy has no harmful intentions. So also in another setting, Ricky Gervais argued that his poking fun at racial issues was not the intention to harm but just some fun. A black man would not accept his point that “intentions matter” and just excoriated him as “racist”.
“I am quite impressed with Rob Schneider’s thoughtful parsing of so many social issues, as on his Bill Maher interview… and elsewhere… A thinking person’s thinking person.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf_NE9jiTgo
And another post:
“Here in another brief video clip Cleese and Schneider analyze the new puritanism of Woke. As the Shellenberger article yesterday noted- Woke Democrats/liberals have become all they formerly accused conservatives of being- i.e. totalitarian threats (https://public.substack.com/p/why-democrats-became-the-totalitarians). So Glen Greenwald and Matt Taibbi have argued that Democrats/liberals have pushed a new McCarthyism for years now- the “Russia, Russia, Russia” disinformation smear. All who disagree are smeared as right-wingers promoting Russian disinformation, being influenced by Russia. As Taibbi noted, McCarthy would not believe how today’s liberals have gone way beyond what he did.
“Cleese suggests that It’s a “purity thing”, when people think that they are more pure than others, just as the Nazis did… hmmm. Schnieder affirms yes, its an elitism thing, thinking of oneself as being better than others…
“Cleese makes Jung’s projection point- that when you can’t admit your own failures you then project those very failures onto others. That was Shellenberger’s point also in his article yesterday. Democrats/liberals have become all that they accuse the other side of. Cleese says that it’s the old mote and beam thing of Jesus- why are you focused on the speck in other’s eyes when you have a beam in your own eye? This denial and projection has been so obvious in mainstream media for years, and overall for 2000 years, as Cleese says.
“They rightly note that Wokeism is totalitarianism because it creates fear and people then self-censor, the worst form of censorship. And they are good on the fact that intention matters in comedy hence we can say “horrible things” because the intent is to poke fun at the horrible thing. Anthony Jeselnik illustrates this- I posted a clip of him on my site recently, because he understands this element of humor. He will joke about the most repugnant things because he understands the importance of free speech, of presenting humor to offended people to ensure that free speech continues. He is not being serious about the horrible thing, just encouraging laughter at it.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsAYZE-kt_4
Lying in the service to a noble cause or righteous battle (taking another poke at the collectivist versus individual freedom approaches to organizing human societies) Wendell Krossa
“In October 1989, the late Stephen Scheider, Ph.D. admitted to Discover Magazine:
“On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. To avert the risk [of potentially disastrous climate change] t we need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/10/09/correct-wbur-many-climate-scientists-dont-tell-the-truth/
Some, in Freudian-slip-like moments, such Scheider as above, have acknowledged that they will lie in the service of a righteous cause, engaging what is also termed “noble cause corruption”. They have embraced an apocalyptic narrative, and convinced that the imminent end of the world is looming just a few years or decades up ahead, they believe there is no time to waste on the discovery of scientific truth and following conventional democratic processes…
(1) There is no time to observe actual climate in the real world (empiricism) over proper long-term time frames, but instead alarmists opt to base their climate conclusions on discredited computer models that have “run too hot”, in other words- have repeatedly spewed forth exaggerated and fraudulent ‘scientific evidence’ on global warming.
(2) There is no time to waste gathering further evidence as a “consensus” has been reached and it is final and not subject to further questioning or challenge.
(3) There is no time for countering “confirmation bias” by remaining open to and considering contrary evidence to the apocalyptic climate narrative.
(4) There is no time to engage in robust debate with other highly accredited scientists who disagree with the apocalyptic myth, and…
(5) There is no time to consider the amassed evidence that human emissions are not causing an existential crisis that portends the end of the world (i.e. the numerous scientific reports at Wattsupwiththat.com, co2coalition.org, and other places that affirm “There is no climate crisis”).
And so on…
Committed ‘true believer’ alarmists reject all such cautions and opt, instead, to embrace the radical salvation scheme of Net Zero decarbonization, even if this salvation scheme will “destroy the world to ‘save’ the world”.
A committed true believer in some purported righteous cause will manipulate evidence to affirm their belief system and validate their sense of just cause. It is lying in the service of a claimed “greater good”. Belief in “righteous cause” supersedes integrity and commitment to finding evidence of the true state of things.
We see this in the wider anti-capitalism crusade of leftists, and their commitment to “De-development”, a crusade that is shared by climate alarmists. They believe their advocacy for collectivism is “morally superior”. It is a battle for the “greater or common good” as posed against the alternative that is distortedly portrayed as all about selfish and greedy individualism (Adam Smith’s “Self-interest”).
But the real issue is what system has produced the best outcomes for the most people- the greatest good for the most people? Which system has actually achieved greater or common good most successfully across past history? Good in terms of both human prospering and environmental stewardship.
The historical record of the past few centuries shows the repeated failures of collectivist approaches that have centralized power and control of economies (“Socialism: The failed idea that never dies”, Kristian Niemietz). The central planning by state bureaucrats ruined entire societies, impoverishing billions, and ruining environments with state-dictated resource distribution.
Worse, collectivist centralization of power unleashed the totalitarian impulse in state elites who believed that, as the “enlightened vanguard”, they alone knew what was best for all others and coerced populations to bend the knee to their collectivist utopian dreams and 5-year plans.
History soundly affirms that the approach of Classic Liberalism has produced far greater good for the most people by protecting individual freedoms and rights. Classic Liberalism operates with institutions that distribute, not centralize power among competing individuals, groups, and institutions.
All human-created systems are imperfect and subject to selfishness and greed but as long as the Classic Liberal freedom of speech is protected, citizens can expose the faults of a system and thereby keep it basically on track in the service of the citizenry.
Violence producing reforming revulsion in fellow group members, Wendell Krossa
Revulsion at the past inhumanity that has been committed by members of a group functions to push other group members to reject such barbarity and take action to ensure that it never happens/recurs again. Revulsion at the violence committed by their fellow group members incites groups to engage serious reform of their system that produced such violence and horror. This revulsion and consequent reform happened in Christianity over past centuries as noted by Stephen Pinker in “Better Angels of Our Nature”. And hopefully such transforming revulsion will happen also in Islam as Muslims repeatedly observe the horrific violence committed by groups like Hamas and ISIS, among others.
And hopefully the revulsion at the barbarity produced by any group pushes the members to reflect on and reevaluate the root causes of such inhumanity, as in understanding the beliefs/ideas that incite and validate such monstrosity.
Decades ago, I went through a process of re-evaluating my Christian religion, and after considering the subhuman and inhuman outcomes that it has produced across history, I eventually chose to leave Christianity, entirely. At least I thought I had left my religion over subsequent years. But in reality, I had just abandoned the more peripheral trappings of my religious tradition as in formal religious affiliation and membership, attendance at religious gatherings, and some of the more obviously pathological beliefs such as the myth of Hell for unbelievers.
I mistakenly assumed that I had moved toward a more “secular humanist” approach to thought and life. At the time I was attending a graduate program at the University of British Columbia in the school of Community and Regional Planning under the directorship of environmental apocalyptic prophet Bill Rees. Yes, an apocalyptic prophet, not a scientist. Years after leaving that program, and coming to my senses, I re-engaged Rees via email discussion and after some back and forth I told Rees that his Ecological Footprint ideas were apocalyptic. His response- “Well, apocalyptic is true, isn’t it?” Yes, directly from the horse’s mouth, eh. And he identifies as a “scientist”.
I came to my senses in realizing that I had just shed the rituals and practises of Christianity but I still held to the core beliefs in the “lost paradise/apocalyptic/redemption” mythology as embraced in the “secular/ideological” version of environmental alarmism. That realization prompted a serious rethinking of my core beliefs and then a more formal abandonment of that mythical complex for an entirely new narrative of reality and life, an entirely new complex of core themes. I started with Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” and now my worldview is presented in such material as the “Old Narrative themes, New Story alternatives” list on this site.
And more on the real battle of good against evil, Wendell Krossa
Why is it important to wrestle with the problem of ‘eye for eye’ retaliatory justice and the alternative human impulse to forgive offenders, to “love your enemy”? Nelson Mandela struggled with these conflicting ethical ideals/practises and constructed a resolution for himself. So also Holocaust survivor Simon Wiesenthal wrestled with “Justice, Not Vengeance”. He even asked others for their opinions in response to his refusal to forgive the dying young SS man who had committed an atrocity against Jews in WW2. He wondered if he had done the right thing in refusing forgiveness.
But Wiesenthal did something absolutely heroic when visiting the mother of the SS man to discuss what happened to her son. Wiesenthal lied when the mother asked him if her son had been “a good boy”. He wanted to alleviate her later life suspicion and pain over what her son might have done. That was lying out of human decency and compassion to alleviate the suffering of another.
These precepts, like “love your enemy”, are ideals that we all should take to heart and struggle with, because they point to authentic heroic humanity in a world too rife with evil. They offer us the way to maintain our own humanity in the face of evil. They show us how to tower in stature as maturely human, how to fulfill the hero’s quest to conquer a monster/enemy, notably the greatest monster/enemy that is inside each of us. That is the real battle of good against evil that we all have to win.