New topics below:
“Historical Jesus was “anti-Christ” as in “against the Christology” that Paul used to radically redefine Jesus, Wendell Krossa”
“Some inserts before moving on to Bob Brinsmead’s great points on Paul replicating Greek thinking and theology in his Christ.”
“The Daddy thing driving me (i.e. there are no monsters), Wendell Krossa”
“My own experience of holding the “secular/ideological” version of apocalyptic millennialism, Wendell Krossa”
“Bob Brinsmead explains how Greek thought and practice shaped Christianity into another Hellenistic religion.”
“This on climate- “Media confirms the Earth is not abnormally warm. Rather, it is in its coldest period in 485 million years”, Anthony Watts, Sept. 25, 2024”
See data graphs at the link included in above report that show the much higher temperatures and much higher CO2 levels over the Phanerozoic history of life (i.e. the last roughly 500 million years of life). Both the much higher temperatures and the much higher CO2 levels were net beneficial to all life.
And for 80% of this 500-million year era there was no ice at the poles, benefitting life with extended habitats for more diverse life forms (the highest diversity of plant and animal life is in the warmer tropical regions). Backing this up- Fossils of both tropical plants and animals have been discovered in both polar regions. And you ask- Why then the contemporary hysteria over melting ice?
Our current “coldest ever world”, with ice at the poles, is responsible for 10 times more people dying every year from cold than die from warming (Lancet study). With the mild warming of the past century, the increase in lives being saved from cold deaths is more than any increase in lives being lost to warming deaths. Again, net beneficial.
Much more warming would continue to save life, not destroy it.
And our “CO2 starvation era” (Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore) is now benefiting from more basic plant food. Our world has greened to amazing extent with the addition of 15% more vegetation just since 1980. There is now more food for animals and increased crop production for humanity. All good.
Everyone concerned for the environment, and especially eco-zealot Greens should celebrate the recent warming and increased CO2 but they won’t because these two immense benefits to all life undermine their apocalyptic narrative that validates their terrorizing and thereby controlling populations to keep the money flowing into their pockets. The trillions being wasted on Big Green. With the poorest people suffering the most through increased taxation to cover green subsidies, increased energy costs from blocked fossil fuel development, overall inflation related to the preceding, etc. Add the burdensome regulations consequent to cultic eco-zealotry and lust to meddle in and control the lives of others.
Yes, the climate alarmism crusade is, just like Marxism and Nazism before it, a “profoundly religious crusade”. Nuff said.
Also, see below- “Disarming the alarming” on Bjorn Lomborg’s recent presentation of evidence that major climate alarms continue to be proven false. And then some good advice from Jordan Peterson on facing our fears.
Michael Shellenberger, formerly a radical leftist and progressive, on his bewilderment over fellow liberals/Democrats advocating now for a new totalitarianism…
“These Four Things Are Behind The Totalitarianism We Are Witnessing: It’s taken us a year and half to understand what’s happening. But we think we finally get it now”, Michael Shellenberger, Sept. 18, 2024
https://www.public.news/p/these-four-things-are-behind-the
Michael says that as a former “radical leftist and progressive” he was bewildered at fellow leftist Democrats demanding censorship (some 70% of US Democrats now approve of censorship). He says that after documenting things like the weaponization of the FBI and CIA and lawfare aimed at Trump, he now understands the drivers behind the elite totalitarianism of today.
His suggestions:
(1) His first driver is the elite’s fear at the populist revolutions that threaten their power and the elite belief that a free internet and independents challenged their narratives and power, hence over past years they “took extraordinary measures to regain control over social media.”
(2) Shellenberger’s second driver is “the narcissism and psychopathy of these elites” that is characterized by “entitlement, grandiosity, relative fearlessness, and lack of compassion”. These, he says, are displayed by people working for governments that demand censorship and weaponize government agencies.
(3) The Third driver of totalitarians is “the hunt for heretics”, and I would add to Shellenberger’s points that this expresses the totalitarian’s intolerance of dissent, diversity, and the equality of individual freedom.
Tyrants of today mouth the mantra “DEI” but in their actions they deny that utterly. They permit no inclusion of differing opinion or speech, no diversity from their extreme-left Woke Progressive narrative, and no equality of individual opportunity and merit due to the distortions of collectivist equity.
(4) Fourthly, Shellenberger notes (what others have warned) the danger that totalitarianism in our democracies would emerge from government bureaucracies through “the professional managerial class that controls the government, the media, and the NGO sector”.
Shellenberger ends on a note of optimism that the extremism of totalitarians is generating a backlash from populations in general (i.e. populism) and even from moderate liberals. Some have even pushed back against California governor Newsom’s recent signing a law that criminalizes free speech, i.e. criminalizes spoofs, parodies, comedy. Who said that totalitarians/leftists hate being laughed at. They cannot tolerate humor that mocks their drive for power and control.
Madness leading to mass-destruction. A warning of looming energy disaster from zealous over-dependence on renewables.
Don’t you love common sense, rationality, and facts/evidence. Especially in the midst of the “madness of crowds” insanity that dominates our world today.
“Looming European energy crisis: A lesson in averages that won’t soon be forgotten”, Terry Etam, BOE Report, Sept. 23, 2024
Quotes:
Etam begins noting the problem of relying on averages.
“A whole world of trouble will come your way if your plans are built on averages but you cannot live with the extremes.”
He notes that in the race to decarbonize the energy systems of Western societies, “wind and solar have taken a dominant lead. Nuclear is widely despised.”
He says that renewables zealots claim that the US is installing record amounts of wind and solar capacity and that capacity contributes, on average, a significant amount of power to the electrical grid. “On average”.
“But what happens when that load factor is…zero? Because it happens.”
His point is that it is not the averages but the extremes that matter. He then refers to Great Britain where “over the past few weeks wind dropped almost to zero, and output from that 24 GW of installed capacity fell to about 1 or 2 GW.”
“More pertinently, what happens when the likelihood of near-zero output happens to coincide with the times when that power is needed most – in heat waves, or cold spells?”
Add the fact that backup power is not available. Renewables zealots have blocked and dismantled the natural gas system, “taking energy policy advice from Swedish teenagers – and (now) stand there shivering in dim-witted stupor when the wind stops blowing, and the world’s energy producers are not in any position to bring forth more natural gas.”
The harsh reality of this is now causing renewables zealots to experience what becoming “woke” really means.
“The world has been sold a faulty bill of goods, based on a pathetically simplistic vision of how renewable energy works.”
“A lot of the global energy-transition-now madness stems from such a basic inability to grasp certain fundamentals… You can install all the wind and solar you want, but if their output can go to zero, and more importantly if their output is more likely to go to zero when most needed during extreme heat (low wind, inefficient solar panels) or extreme cold (low wind, obvious solar shortcomings)), then you don’t have an energy system at all.”
He ends, “There will be consequences. Serious ones.
“Hundreds of millions of people without adequate heating fuel in the dead of winter is not particularly funny. If a cold winter strikes, all the yappiest energy-transition-now dogs will fade into the woodwork, distancing themselves from the disinformation they’ve propagated and the disaster they’ve engineered.”
“Tone down the rhetoric, eh”, Wendell Krossa
Which rhetoric is really the most dangerous, and incites the worst forms of violence against others?
After the second assassination attempt on President Trump, there have been blame-accusations thrown from both sides about rhetoric claiming that the other side poses such a threat that they have to be stopped. That rhetoric incites some to take desperate action to “save democracy” from the threat of the person who has been demonized by their side to extreme characterization- i.e. as “Hitler, Nazi, dictator, fascist, racist, criminal”, etc., or from the other side, “Marxist, Communist”, etc. People are then exhorted repeatedly that they must act to make sure that the threat is stopped and whatever is threatened can thereby be saved.
But this contemporary episode of political exaggeration of threat, and the calls for urgent response to stop the threat, pales beside another form of threatening rhetoric and demand for saving something that is far worse and at much larger scale.
What about the larger background context of hysteria over the claimed threat from CO2 and consequent incitement to action to save something that the alarmist prophets claim to be under threat? What about the most egregious example of exaggerated and hysterical rhetoric coming from the climate alarmism crusade where the thing claimed to be under “existential threat” is not just one nation’s democracy but all life itself, the entire world? And the threat is not just from one demonized person but from humanity itself enjoying the good life as provided by fossil fuels.
Talk about inciting rhetoric and dangerously violent outcomes. As Arthur Mendel said, apocalyptic is the most violent and destructive rhetoric in history. And as historians Richard Landes and others have shown, such inflamatory rhetoric has incited mass-death scale violence over the past century in Marxism, Nazism, as it is now doing in environmental alarmism.
And the outcome is not just a few deranged people willing to take action to save the threatened thing, but entire populations incited by their survival impulse to embrace salvation schemes (“save the world”) that are not just threatening one person but that are destroying economies, entire societies.
Many people, incited by fear of threat, are embracing and supporting policies of coercive state action to end the freedoms and rights of others through totalitarian censorship of dissent to the alarmist narrative, even supporting calls to criminalize challenges to the climate alarmism narrative as “dangerous disinformation”. Many citizens across Western societies have now been convinced that they are embracing something heroically righteous by affirming the totalitarian endeavor to eliminate a purported threat and save the world.
So who is your real “threat to democracy”?
A recent bulletin from “co2coalition.org” scientists, among the best of climate experts on Earth (e.g. atmospheric physicists Richard Lindzen and William Happer, and the 2022 Nobel laureate in physics- John Clauser, among others).
“485 million years of non-correlation: CO2 vs temperature”
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/science.adk3705
Quotes:
“How in the world did this new temperature reconstruction get past the Climate Industrial Complex’s censor machine?
“The recent publication by Judd et al looked at nearly half-a-billion years of global surface temperatures and found that, rather living in a time of extraordinarily high temperature, we are in a period of near-historic lows. In fact, the global temperature peaked 100 million years ago at about 96.8oF (36oC) which was 37.8oF (21oC) higher than the temperature for 2023 (59oF and (15oC)! The inconvenient fact for the climate alarmists is that Earth’s temperature has been in a 50-million-year decline.
“We then compared this data to long-term CO2 data (see below) and found that CO2 and temperature don’t correlate very well at all.
“The scientists at the CO2 Coalition have been educating thought leaders and the public in this fact for many years.” (end of quotes)
They reference the paper in the link above that has revealed paleoclimate temperatures were much hotter than today by far, by up to 25 degrees C warmer than today, and more. And during those much warmer past eras, CO2 levels were low. And during eras when atmospheric CO2 was in the multiple thousands of ppm, temperatures were ice-age lows. The lack of correlation between climate and CO2 is the point. Meaning, this evidence undermines the “climate alarmism” narrative quite entirely.
Historical Jesus was “anti-Christ” as in “against the Christology” that Paul used to radically redefine Jesus, Wendell Krossa
Jesus would have had nothing to do with Paul’s Christ myth that was projected onto him two decades after his death, turning “Jesus-ianity” (the Jewish movement led by James) into its entire opposite- “Christ-ianity” (the Gentile movement led by Paul). Point? Honor the man Jesus for who he was and what he actually taught.
Another point here? Just as Plato and Aristotle had an oversized influence on Western civilization, both for good and bad, so Jesus and the Christ of Paul have both had an immense influence on Western narratives, consciousness, and societies, for both good and bad. Bad, as in the influence of apocalyptic millennial ideas on the subsequent apocalyptic crusades of Marxism and Nazism, and their horrific mass-death outcomes (both embracing the “exterminate or be exterminated” phase of failing apocalyptic millennial crusades).
The apocalyptic millennialism of Paul’s Christ myth is now having the same destructive influence through environmental alarmism and its salvation scheme (“save the world”) of Net Zero decarbonization. James Tabor is right that Paul, and his Christ, has influenced us more than anyone or anything else.
The real issue here is that the good stuff in the mix (i.e. the actual message of Jesus as stated in the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel) is distorted at the least, and at worst buried entirely by the bad stuff in the larger context of New Testament Christ mythology. That was Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s point about “diamonds buried in dung”.
Take love, for example. Love in Paul is tribally limited and exclusionary love. Unbelievers are not included in Paul’s version of love, contrary to the inclusive love that was taught by Jesus as per Matthew 5 (“sun and rain are given freely to both good and bad people”). See also Revelation’s later chapters (i.e. ch.19-20) for illustration of the ultimately exclusive love of Paul’s Christ.
The tribal discrimination and exclusion of Paul’s Christ love deforms the true nature of love as taught by Jesus (universal, unconditional). As Bob Brinsmead says- If love is not unconditional then it’s not true love. Just as we could add- Where there is no authentic freedom of equals then there is no authentic love.
This pushes me to challenge the common practice of leaving things just as they are in the New Testament, with its profound “cognitive dissonance” consequence from the merged and mixed opposites of two entirely different realities- i.e. living with the profound contradiction between the persons and messages of Jesus and Christ.
The mixing and merging of Historical Jesus with Paul’s Christ has, for two millennia, distorted and buried the stunning new theological insight at the heart of Jesus’ gospel, that God was a “non-retaliatory” deity.
And note further how Paul dishonors the wisdom tradition and message of Jesus in 1 Corinthians. Paul outright mocks that wisdom tradition that Jesus belonged to.
Paul, in his varied letters, further re-enforces the mythology of retaliatory deity that Jesus had rejected. Paul tells the Corinthians that God is punishing them through elements of the natural world- i.e. their sickness and deaths were divine punishment for their sins.
Jesus had straightforwardly rejected that fallacy in stating that God, to the contrary, manifests his character of non-retaliatory, no conditions love through the elements of the natural world, i.e. giving the good gifts of life- sun and rain- to all people equally, without discrimination or exclusion, without hint of retaliatory punishment against “unbelievers”. Jesus stated that there is no threat of an angry deity punishing people through natural disasters, disease, or death.
Paul made repeated efforts to discredit and bury the message of Jesus.
For instance, in Romans 12: 17-20 he directly confronted the core theme of Jesus’ gospel that God was non-retaliatory, and he affirmed, to the contrary, his theology of divine retaliation by quoting an Old Testament statement- “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord”. Add also Paul’s proclamation of ultimate divine retaliation in his letter to the Thessalonians, stating, “Lord Jesus will return in blazing fire to punish and destroy all who did not believe my Christ myth”.
Then, as noted above, he attacked the wisdom tradition of Jesus in 1 Corinthians.
Paul also pushed the mythology of ultimate domination by his “’Lord’ Jesus Christ”, who would rule eternally with an iron rod (Revelation 19), demanding, dictator-like, the utter and total subjugation of all. That is a direct contradiction to Jesus’ statement that true greatness was not in domination but in service. Meaning, that if God is great and good then God would serve, not dominate. I would add to Jesus’ point- Where there is domination there is no love.
And remember how Jesus mocked the Jewish longing of his era for the return of a conquering and dominating King? He repeatedly repelled the desires of many of his contemporaries who wanted him to become the new delivering messiah, the true descendent of King David, who would destroy and exterminate their enemies.
Mocking such longing, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. As if to say- Here’s your conquering messiah riding an ass. He would have none of that dominating King stuff. And yes, I reject the contextual details that were added by Luke to make it appear that Jesus was trying to fulfil some promised King mythology.
Bob Brinsmead has been doing some good material recently on how Plato and others influenced the New Testament authors to view the Old Testament as offering all sorts of hidden prophecies of a coming messiah. Thereby twisting OT statements to mean something more than the plain history of the time that they were recording. That is what Luke did when trying to explain Jesus riding the donkey, trying to make it appear as though he was fulfilling the prophecy of a returning King.
Most critical to emphasize in the contradictions between Jesus and Paul’s Christ- Where Jesus had protested the sacrifice industry, and died due to his protest against that industry, Paul turned Jesus’ death into the supreme fulfilment of prophecy for blood sacrifice as the ultimate demand of God. The message of blood sacrifice was the heart and core of Paul’s Christ gospel (“I preach nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified”). That is his central theme in his letter to the Romans, the main presentation of his Christ gospel. In Romans Paul states the demand of his God for the ultimate condition of blood sacrifice as required for salvation.
Where Jesus, to the contrary, had taught that God was no conditions love. No demanded conditions of sacrifice, payment, atonement. None of it. Just unconditional love. Note Jesus’ portrayal of God in the Prodigal Son parable where the Father refuses any attempt at repentance/atonement and instead calls for a celebratory feast.
My point in all the above? If you claim to “believe in Jesus” then honor the man for who he really was and what he actually taught. Do not honor the perversion of him and his message in Paul’s Christ mythology. Be anti-Christ just as Jesus was against the Christology of his time.
The choice is between Jesus-ianity or the entirely opposite Christ-ianity of Paul.
Some inserts before moving on to Bob Brinsmead’s great points on Paul replicating Greek thinking and theology in his Christ.
Neo-Marxism adds new identity markers to the old tribal dualism of collectivism, Wendell Krossa
Neo-Marxism hasn’t abandoned its original tribal dualism- i.e. the oppressors/oppressed division of humanity as in the evil property owners (big corporations, rich people) versus the less fortunate workers/peasants, but the resurging Marxism has added new elements to the traditional identity markers of collectivism. It now also identifies its classes of victimizers/victims in terms of skin color (the new “Woke Racism”), as in whites/Jews/Asians against black and brown colored people. Two classes of people, one all evil, the other all virtuous by dint of skin color. Ah, life is so simple now. Just two types to remember.
Leading DEI theorist Robin DiAngelo said to Christiane Amanpour (recounted in Douglas Murray’s “War on the West”), that she rejects the individual for the general, the “general” meaning the collective identity that she tribally pigeonholes people within, as members of only one of two groups, with membership dogmatically assigned by skin color. Again, as in the new “Woke Racism” (i.e. title of scholar John McWhorter’s book).
Also meaning- She rejects Martin Luther King’s call for colorblind society where we view one another as unique and diverse individuals, not as members of only two collectivist identities.
The Daddy thing driving me (i.e. there are no monsters), Wendell Krossa
This site is driven by a determined impetus (impulsion, driving force), intention, or goal- To alleviate fear, to push back against unnecessary fear and anxiety, whether from natural world threats, and especially to push back against the fears and anxieties that have long been incited by bad “mythical, religious” ideas. Doing what Historical Jesus did before Paul contradicted and buried him and his message.
The project here includes the responsibility to present the evidence that we live in “the best time ever to be alive on Earth”. Contrary to dominant public narratives today, notably “climate crisis” alarmism, life is not declining toward something worse, toward disastrous ending, as a majority of humanity have been led to believe (i.e. that YouGov world survey noted in the Preface to “Ten Global Trends” by Tupy and Bailey of Humanprogress.org).
This site exists to liberate minds and spirits at the deepest levels (subconscious archetypes) from fears that we have inherited from a primitive past. This site traces the historical descent of fear-mongering ideas from ancient mythology to world religions to contemporary belief systems, both religious and “secular/ideological”, even “scientific”.
In regard to the natural world, this site takes the Julian Simon approach that we understand the true state of life, the true state of the world, by examining the best evidence from the best data sources on all the major indicators of life. What does the best evidence tell us about the true status of the four or five most fundamental indicators of life- i.e. the data on ocean fisheries, on land species, on forests, on soils, and the data on climate? Simon and many others have presented volumes of that good evidence. It shows that we are “more creators than destroyers”. That’s 1 for basic human goodness, 0 for the anti-humanism of people as corrupting “virus, cancer” on the planet.
But even more critical in regard to alleviating fear, this site goes behind the physical elements of life, and the human fears that are oriented to the dangers of the natural world, to probe the deepest levels of thought behind human fears, to tackle the foundational contributing factors to the “primal fears” that exacerbate and intensify natural fears. Now we are talking about mythically/religiously incited fear.
Primal fears are incited by bad human mythology that has always intensified natural fears, and has notably magnified the fears of natural disasters beyond all rational perspective.
Primal fears are the product of our ancestors endeavors to explain their natural fears, and intensifying those fears, with myths of deities behind the natural world that were punishing people for being bad. The Japanese woman illustrated the continuing influence of this primal fear factor in her rhetorical question that followed the horror of the 2011 Japanese tsunami- “Are we being punished for enjoying the good life too much?” She believed that God was punishing them through a natural world event.
That woman’s words exposed again the single most-enslaving belief that humans have ever created- i.e. of angry, retaliatory deity punishing us through the natural world. That has added immeasurable misery to human minds over the millennia, adding a further enslaving mental/emotional burden to already intolerable physical suffering. The myth of God punishing human sin through nature has added the incalculable psychic misery of fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, despair, depression, and more to ordinary human suffering.
Nancy Pelosi echoed the very same belief as the Japanese woman when in 2020 she stated that God was punishing humans through a natural world disaster for being bad. She spoke of deity in contemporary terms as “Ma Nature”, stating, “Mother Earth is angry with us”.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-on-wildfires-in-california-and-west-mother-earth-is-angry
The unnecessary additional psychic burden from threat theology is based on the primitive but still widespread mythology that there are greater forces or spirits/deities that threaten and punish people through natural disaster, destruction, disease, and death.
Further, to add to this mess, there are the primal fears of after-life harm, eternal rejection, tribal exclusion, horrific torture, and destruction (i.e. the psychopathology of hell myths).
Paul also pushed this pathology of God punishing human sin through natural world elements, i.e. through disasters and disease, in his warning to the Corinthians that they were sick and dying consequent to their sins. He referred to the Old Testament incident where God sent venomous snakes to poison the sinning Hebrews and told the Corinthians that a similar divine punishment was being executed on them.
Historical Jesus would have none of that egregious fallacy and said that, contrary to an angry god punishing people through the natural world, there was an unconditionally loving deity behind nature who generously gave the good gifts of life to both good and “sinful” people (those outside Jewish law). His point? There is no divine judgment, no retaliation, and no punishment.
Jesus’ statement- “Let there be no more retaliatory eye for eye response to enemies but instead love your enemies because God does. How so? God gives the critical gifts of life- i.e. sun and rain for agrarian life- to both good and bad people.”
Historical Jesus wiped out the psychopathology of punitive deity expressing anger at imperfect people through nature with one clear statement that there was no such retaliatory God behind the world. There was only the God of unconditional love.
The NDE movement, the latest phase of human spirituality, has clearly affirmed the Jesus message on “no conditions” deity. The NDE movement (at least the better experiences in that movement) states repeatedly that there is only a stunningly inexpressible unconditional love behind all reality. Meaning- There is no ultimate monster.
Again, that means… Do I have to spell out the details(?), that there is no threat of judgement, no tribal exclusion of unbelievers, no divine domination that violates human freedom, and no punitive violence or destruction. Among many other “no” elements. One can only hope, eh. But you see how that insight of Historical Jesus overturns the mythical/religious basis of primal fears?
Then also consider this- Oneness has been discovered as a fundamental feature of reality (i.e. quantum entanglement). Oneness is also a fundamental feature of humanity (i.e. “Mitochondrial Eve” as the best explanation of human origins, meaning that all humans alive on earth today are from the same ancient mother). And then the NDE movement further affirms human oneness with deity, and oneness with all things.
This discovery of oneness is among the more common general insights of the NDE movement. Many of those people state their surprise to discover that we are one with the transcendent Love that is God. They add that we are never separated from that Light and Love while we are in this world. And that ultimate Love is also our essence, our true self.
That means, and this is critical to counter the anti-human insanity of today, that we are not the “fallen, sinful” beings taught by religious traditions. And we are not the “virus, cancer” taught by secular belief systems.
Most of us struggle with our imperfect status/state in this world, and we are often misled by bad ideas to do stupid and bad things. But that does not change the underlying truth that we are inherently love, love is our true nature and self.
And our future home is to return to the Ultimate Love that birthed us. That is the hope element that pulls us forward. The tug of our human spirits toward something ever better than what is.
And based on the above insights, we can know that everything that happens to us in life, down to daily details, has a purpose and meaning that comes from ultimate love. There are no real accidents in life. All is grounded in and backed by love. So also the NDE people affirm this.
These insights are offered to counter the overwhelming anti-humanism in so many public and personal narratives that descend from religious myths of original sinfulness, fallen humanity deserving retaliatory punishment and destruction.
Note:
Why touch base with NDEs? Because no one else across the millennia has ever offered the insight into the true nature of deity as unconditional reality. No one, aside from Historical Jesus. No religion has ever communicated this true unconditional nature of God to humanity.
All religions are fundamentally highly conditional traditions- existing to present the conditions of right belief, demanded sacrifices/payments, atonement, required rituals and lifestyle as identity markers of true believers in the religion. Religious conditions, conditions, and more damn conditions.
The fundamental conditional nature of all religion distorts and buries the truth of an unconditional God. Entirely buries that truth.
To communicate God as unconditional reality would spell the death of conditional religion. To embrace such a core belief would undermine all the conditions of religious traditions. And also end the authority of mediating priesthoods who exist to communicate and burden people with the endless conditions demanded to please and placate their deities.
My own experience of holding the “secular/ideological” version of apocalyptic millennialism, Wendell Krossa
Soon after leaving UBCs School of Planning, a friend urged me to read Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”. That pushed me to recognize that, even though I assumed that I had “left my religion” over previous decades, I was still holding the core beliefs of the apocalyptic worldview, only in a secular version (i.e. environmental alarmism) that was common to the modern world.
I had abandoned the outer trimmings of a religious tradition but still held to the core mythical beliefs of that system, similar to most other moderns, many identifying as “secular materialist”, even atheist. That leaves most people in the state of believing themselves to be intellectually modern but still holding the most primitive ideas from a subhuman past.
After reading Simon and coming to my senses, because of what Simon says, things changed. Radically so.
Personally, that “awakening” (becoming truly woke) resulted in a more thorough re-evaluation of my personal narrative, a more complete “death to the old and rebirth to something entirely new”, a total revamping of my belief system that I have summarized and posted on this site in such things as “Old Story Themes, New Story Alternatives”.
Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
Point in offering my personal experience? Many moderns, similarly identifying as “secular” even materialist/atheist, continue to hold personal narratives that are shaped by profoundly mythical themes inherited from a primitive past. See the summaries below of the complex of mythical themes that have long dominated religious traditions and today shape “secular/ideological” and even scientific belief systems- i.e. the complex of “lost paradise, life ruined by corrupt people, life declining toward a worsening state, toward apocalyptic ending, demand for sacrifice/payment, demand for purging evil threat to life, and promise of restored paradise, or new utopian society”.
Note: Sitesplainin’, Wendell Krossa
I am not a “believer in Jesus”. I do not believe that people need to “accept Jesus into their hearts” or become devoted to Jesus, to “love Jesus”, to have a relationship with Lord Jesus. But I do honor the man for his brilliant insight into the true nature of God as unconditional love, an insight into the true nature of ultimate love, an insight that took us to the highest, to the transcendent reach of love.
And I believe his insight can helpfully influence people in the sense of liberating minds and spirits from millennia of personality-deforming threat theology. All religious traditions have given us the inheritance of threatening gods (i.e. the “threat theology” god theories created by our primitive ancestors).
Threat theologies, as in the mythology of angry gods punishing people through natural disasters, disease, and accidents, have intensified this-world human fears and anxieties as well as intensified the deforming influence of shame, guilt, despair, and nihilism. Threat theology has subsequently been used to coerce people to submit to the mental/emotional and physical domination of priesthoods and their religious authority backed with innumerable meddling, controlling conditions. It has all been a horrific history of unbearable mental and emotional slavery. There is no worse enslavement than mental emotional slavery. You can exist as free in body but be entirely enslaved in mind and spirit.
Threat theology has dominated humanity for millennia. The man Jesus offered the ultimate and final freedom for human minds and spirits, freedom from threat theology. But his breakthrough insight, and related liberation movement, was short-circuited and then buried by Paul in his retreat to primitive threat theology.
Honor the man Jesus for who he was and what he actually taught. That is true belief in Jesus.
He gave us the single most profoundly humane insight ever offered, in taking love to its highest, most humane reach. He offered the single best example of a “behavior based on belief”.
Grasping the reality of an unconditional God is not license to go out and do all kinds of stupid things. While a sense of ultimate safety liberates us to create a unique and new life story, we are all still under obligation to respect the natural and social consequences of our societies. We all have to find the line and balance between order and chaos in life. Note, for example, that after the 60s invention of the pill there was very little discussion of the consequences of sexual freedoms (i.e. mental, emotional as well as physical consequences). We humans tend to swing between extremes (the recent Diddy thing comes to mind). Ah, we are still learning, eh.
Preface to Bob’s comments below…
Most everything in human thought today is the offspring of things that were created before, by our primitive ancestors. Revolutionary new ideas in the “spiritual/ethical realm” emerge rarely, insights contrary to all that we have inherited. One insight alone stands out against the backdrop of the entire history of human thought as uniquely fresh and new and against all that went before, entirely against. I refer to the core insight of Historical Jesus.
To the contrary, Paul’s Christ was as old as the fundamental themes of primitive Sumerian, Egyptian, Babylonian, and Zoroastrian mythologies. Paul’s Christ was just another rehash of the very same ideas. Rehashing the same old themes of retaliation, tribal exclusion, domination, and punitive destruction. But yes, it was given the new twist of supreme cosmic Savior of all humanity, a universal status.
Below Bob Brinsmead explains how Greek thought and practice shaped Christianity into another Hellenistic religion. Paul, soundly based in Greek philosophy, created his Christ as another Greek god. Bob explains how Paul and the New Testament authors followed Greek philosophy and the Greek practice of treating this world features as allegories/types/figures of the “more real” invisible Forms or Ideals.
Bob’s posts:
“Someone has been quoted for his arresting saying, “God hates obedience.” In an important respect, this is profoundly right. Jesus told his disciples that their disposition to attain to greatness was of the same bent to domination that Gentiles seek after. It also comes through in Daniel 7, an apocalyptic book, where the son of Man comes to the Ancient of Days to receive the kingdom and the dominion from the Ancient of Days. Bound up with these notions are false ideas of a Monarchical Sky god rather the kind of greatness which Jesus said considered in being the greatest in the service of others.
“The Greek images of associations of kings who were the divine offspring of the gods and were entitled to having dominion over others is the kind of Christ that Jesus resisted and even mocked by riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. Conquering Greco-Roman emperors do not ride to dominion on donkeys! This is a parody of their notion of dominion. Jesus lampooned the popular notions of an apocalyptic messiah – like the one depicted in the book of Revelation… Patricia Williams says that the two main reasons they killed Jesus is that he mocked the kind of messianic kingdom they were expecting, and he rejected the temple sacrifices.
“Jesus was the great anti-Christ of human history.”
Another from Bob on how Greek views of history treated it as allegorical. This Hellenism shaped Paul and early Christian treatment of the Old Testament as allegory prophesying the coming Christ:
“Here is a summary of my recent studies on where Jewish Hellenism led: Treating the Hebrew scripture as not real but only as typology, allegory, symbolism. This is all classical Hellenism. It comes from Plato, and was developed by Philo of Alexandria- the greatest Jewish writer of the first century era. Philo influenced Paul. The so-called proof texts for Jesus being the Messiah/Christ all treat the Hebrew accounts as not real things but only types of the real thing. For example, the book of Hebrews and the tabernacle as a pattern of things in the heavens. This treats the OT as an allegorical. To the Hellenist, the mythical, the heavenly etc. is the real. To the Hebrews of the apostolic church the real was the historical.
“The Christ of Paul, the beyond-death-Jesus, is mythical. The real Jesus was not apocalyptic, for apocalyptic is the realm of the mythical. The real Jesus was non-violent in his ethics and theology. The mythical Christ is violent. Jesus killed no one at his coming. The Christ will kill millions at his coming. Jesus dispensed with the violent images of the OT. The mythical Christ puts the violence of the OT on steroids with a blood atonement and Hell fire. The name Jesus Christ is a total oxymoron. E.g. real versus mythical, non-violent versus violent, non-apocalyptic versus apocalyptic, love versus violence as the final solution to violence.
“Christology was constructed over a 400-year speculative romp in things supposedly happening beyond this life. It is Classic Hellenism as if crafted to suit the tastes of the Greco-Roman Empire. Crafting a Christ that looked like he had just stepped out of a Greek myth– in the image of a Greek king, a Greek virgin birth (certainly not Hebrew), Greek dying and rising divinity, Greek mystery supper of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of the godman, etc., from Greek myth to Christian myth– a creation of Hellenism with first steps taken in the cradle of Antioch.
“There is nothing more certainly believed than that which is not known.” (Montagne)
Here is another from Bob on Plato’s influence leading the early Christians to view the Old Testament as allegorical, figurative, typological (all pointing toward and prophesying a coming Christ). Bob’s larger point is how Paul’s Christ myth is shaped by the Greek mythology that Paul admired and imbibed. Paul and the New Testament writers follow the Greek practice of viewing this world as types, figures, allegories of things more “Real” in the heavenly realms (i.e. the realm of invisible Forms, Ideals). Consequently, Paul did not focus Christians on life in this world but on the world to come where Christ dominated. That was the “real”.
Paul’s Christ and Christianity are Greek through and through, hence the success of Paul’s Christianity throughout the Roman empire that was itself heavily indebted to the Greeks as the Roman elites were dominated entirely by Greek philosophers. The Roman elites were in awe of Plato and Aristotle and subjected their minds and messaging entirely to Greek philosophy. There was no independent Roman way of thinking (Arthur Herman details this in his history of the influence of Plato and Aristotle across history in “The Cave and the Light”). Point? Paul created his Christ myth in the larger context of Roman domination during his time.
Brinsmead’s comments:
“In another letter missing here, Heppenstal struggles with the way the New Testament cites Old Testament passages. These are my comments on the Platonic influence of Hellenism on the Greek-speaking Jews. For a long time we have skirted around the way the NT writers (all Hellenist Christians) used the Old Testament. Here are some of my comments…
“Hep raises the issue of how the NT and the early Christians interpreted the OT. I suggest this is an area which heretofore has been poorly understood.
“The NT methodology of using the OT is the method used by the Greek-speaking Jews known as the Hellenists. They acquired the name of Christians at Antioch.
“Hellenism had a background that goes way back to Alexander the Great and the spread of Hellenistic language, culture, philosophy and religion. Hellenism penetrated Judaism and for at least two centuries had a big impact. There were a lot of admirable things about the spread of Hellenism. It spawned all kinds of associations with buildings for libraries, gymnasiums, recitals of poetry, theatre, learning, sculpture, medicine and everything related to the cultivation and development of mind and body. Within the Jewish community, it attracted the more liberal, affluent and educated people, but always caused a lot tension with the more conservative or Aramaic speaking Jews which Acts 6 calls the Hebrews.
“The NT was written by Hellenists and that includes Paul. The entire NT, except the Pauline letters, were written post-70 CE.
“The standout Jewish thinker and writer in the time of Jesus was the Hellenist philosopher, Philo of Alexandria. He was the classical Hellenist who embraced Platonic thought about earthly things being only shadowy copies, allegories, types, figures of the Real meta-physical heavenly Forms. This worldview explains so much of the features of the Greek culture and religious thinking. Philo used Platonic thought to forge a harmony between the Jewish Torah and Greek philosophy using allegorical, figurative, typological interpretation of Hebrew scripture via the Greek Septuagint version. In this mode of interpretation, Jewish Scripture/Torah, whether it was lore or law, became a figure, an allegory or example of the Real. This effectively emptied the text of its actual history and real historical meaning.
“In this way Matthew can take passages out of his Septuagint bible, that had nothing in its context about a prophecy of a coming Messiah, to read the passage as if that was the only real purpose of the passage. If we would use our common sense, or rational thinking, we might say that that Matthew is being intellectually dishonest because there is nothing in Hosea that even remotely sounds like a prophecy of Jesus coming out of Egypt and nothing in Isaiah 7 that remotely makes a prophecy about the birth of the Messiah.
“This method of interpretation was the way of Platonic Hellenism, and Paul exhibits this method constantly. An outrageous example of this is when he cites, in his letter to the Corinthians, a passage from the Torah about not muzzling the ox that treads out the corn. Paul denies that this law shows that God is concerned about the welfare of animals. He empties the passage of any real meaning in historical context with his Greek allegorical nonsense…. But this sort of Biblical use does not happen in just one single place. It represents Paul’s overall view of OT scripture. This method takes what is earthly and meaningful and turns it into something considered real. This Platonic principle means that the real is made to be apocalyptic, heavenly, spiritual, and mythical.
“How much of the OT is “interpreted by the Holy Spirit” and how much of it is inspired by Plato?
“Hellenism is certainly not all bad, but we need to be aware that the Christian religion which was able to penetrate the Greco-Roman Empire was heavily influenced by Hellenism and hence became so compatible to that culture. But at the same time it was poorly qualified to penetrate the Semitic culture of the East that remained outside the Roman Empire.
“Here is a great quote out of Koester (“The History, Culture and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”): “Even when Greek culture encountered the Roman, the Greek element prevailed, the while the eastern part of the Roman empire remained essentially Greek, and the Greek language and culture as well as Greek religion gained considerable ground even in the Latin west… Indeed, Christianity, which had its beginnings in the early Roman imperial period, was rapidly Hellenized and appeared in the Roman world as a Hellenistic religion, specifically as the heir to an already Hellenized Jewish religion.”
“What was the birthplace and where was the cradle of the Hellenized Christian religion? Antioch.
“What group did Saul of Tarsus persecute? Not the James party who were called the Hebrews, but the Hellenists.
“To what was Saul converted to became Paul the apostle? To the Hellenists in Antioch.
“Did Paul visit the apostles at Jerusalem when he was converted? No, and only after three years did he make a brief visit to Jerusalem and another visit 17 years after his conversion. The relationship between James and Paul, Jerusalem and Antioch, was cool at best and hostile at worst.
“What about Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem? He was treated disgracefully by James who might have used his huge public influence to save Paul from arrest by the Roman authorities. Paul was left by the Jerusalem church to stew in his own juice. And what about Paul’s great collection as a gift from the Gentile Churches? It was apparently scorned by the brother of Jesus… almost as unthinkable as leaving Paul to be carted off to Rome for execution!
“What happened when James was stoned soon after at the orders of the High Priest? The public protest among the Jews was so great that the Roman authorities dismissed the High Priest just three months after his appointment. According to Josephus, it was generally believed that the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and its temple soon after the death of James was a divine punishment for putting James the Just to death.
“Did this favourable attitude toward the Jerusalem “church” of the Nazarenes or Hebrews continue after the outbreak of hostilities with Rome? No, the tide of goodwill toward the Nazarenes dissipated because, being pacifists or advocates of non-violence, they were regarded as non-patriotic or even traitors of the Jewish nation. So, they lost their previous goodwill. They were expelled from Judaism and the synagogues 20 years after the destruction of Jerusalem.
“What was so life-threatening about being expelled from the synagogue? Because the Jews were granted freedom by Rome not to be involved in military service like all other indigenous peoples of the Empire and Jews were not required to engage in Emperor worship. Refusal of either obligation could result in death. This is why most of the Jewish Jesus people, such as the Ebionites, moved East to be out of the reach of the Roman Empire and later, the reach of the Christian Empire.
“What is so deficient about this treatment of history as presented in the book of Acts? The book of Acts does not admit to the seriousness of the tension between James and Paul, Jerusalem and Antioch, or frankly acknowledge that, like Abraham had two sons so the Jesus movement had two sons, the Hebrews and the Hellenists. The Jesus movement did not develop like a seamless robe as presented in the book of Acts, but more like the two sons of Abraham who are still hostile to each other as Jew and Arab.
“How might we reflect on this kind of brotherly estrangement? Joseph said to his brothers when he sent them home to Canaan, “You will not see my face unless your brother is with you.”
Another from Bob:
“Apocalyptic is the worldview that this world is not our home, but home becomes the one beyond the apocalypse which is called Heaven. Heaven is mythical language. It forms the view that heaven is God’s home and therefore our true home, and therefore our life and our affections have to be centred where this mythical Christ is at God’s right hand. It is all mythical.
“The Hebrew thinking is very different. This world is our home. God is in this place as much as God is in any other place and God is present in this time as much as God will be present in some post-Apocalyptic time. We should cherish this world as our home and make it the best within our powers. This is a good world where we sow and reap, work, play and eat, and a place of rain and sunshine, birds and lilies, and so many things for which to give thanks, to love and to share, etc. To do what our hands find to do with all our might for we have no other time to make this world what it should be.
“Jesus never regaled people about the next life in heaven or life after death. We know nothing beyond. It is God’s surprise and we need know nothing about it. All speculation of what we will be doing hereafter is in the same category of trying to understand what happened to Jesus when he died- which was the same thing that happened to my grandmother when she died. That realm is mythical.
“Christology is myth. Paul forged the greatest myth in the history of mankind– but unlike the teachings of Jesus which are all focused on this world and how to live in it in the here and now, Paul’s Christ myth is all focussed on living in heaven, as it says, “Let your way of life be in heaven and not on this earth.”
“Some observations: You need to put Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age” alongside of your classic literature such as Herman’s “Cave and Light”.
“Don’t neglect to look at Plato’s Forms and the realm of the heavenly or meta-physical as real and this world as types, figures, allegories of the heavenly. This leads to Philosophers such as Philo of Alexandria using allegory, patterns, figures, symbolism to interpret Hebrew scripture to bring it into harmony with Greek philosophy. This is the method Paul and the rest of the Christian Hellenists used to interpret the OT as if history there was not real or to be taken at face value but only used to foreshadow Christ, and so on.
More from Bob…
“It was Persian Zoroastrianism influence that developed Judean apocalyptic that became the prevailing worldview of Judaism in the first century. Then that Judean apocalypticism was amalgamated to Judean Hellenism to create Christian Hellenism. The Fall story of Genesis 2-3 was copied straight out of Zarathustra’s vision. He was the true father of the apocalyptic worldview of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
“A worldview dominated by the Fall of man myth began with Zarathustra (Zoroaster). The OT prophets did not have a theology of the Fall. Their theology was founded in the story of the Exodus as the story or worldview of human progress, the opposite of the Fall thinking. You can’t find the Fall of man thinking until you find it as the foundation of Jewish Apocalyptic literature in the 2nd century.
“I would like to know to what extent did the Zoroastrian thinking influence the worldview in Greek culture and thinking.
“Apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology (Kaseman) and to that valid observation we must add this: And Hellenism was the father of all Christian Christology/theology.
“I have already observed that while Jesus’ existence is not a myth just as John the Baptizer is not a myth, but the Christ of the Hellenists of Antioch is a myth.
“In his ‘Honest to Jesus’, Funk points out how the NT Gospels are an amalgamation of history and myth. The authors were writing of an historical figure to which they added legendary material such as nativity stories and the account of the apocalypse, supposedly according to Jesus. They also added the great nature miracles and stories like the raising of Lazarus and some parables which are junk, such as the Ten Virgins (yuk!) and the Rich Man and the Beggar at his gate. The authors are all post-Paul and post-70 CE or post-Second Temple era. They are written by Hellenists to support the Christology of Antioch and to refute the non-Christology of Jerusalem. These authors, following Paul, tried to unite Apocalyptic Judaism with the theology of the Jewish Hellenists that soon became Gentile Hellenism. It was Kaseman who said that Apocalyptic was the mother of all Christian theology, and we may add that Hellenism was the father of it.
“I have done further research into the influence of Hellenism, beginning with Plato, on the Jewish Hellenists with whom Paul joined forces. What strikes me as having enormous significance, is how the influence of Plato on Philo of Alexandria influenced the way the Greek-speaking NT authors, including Paul, adopted the Platonic method of applying his interpretative principles to the Septuagint Version of OT. Platonic thinking and Philo’s attempts to amalgamate Judaism and Hellenism led directly to interpreting the scripture allegorically/figurately/typologically/symbolically which are all terms to identify the methodology.
“To give one supreme example, the book of Hebrews interprets the Jewish sanctuary ritual as a type of the heavenly Patterns or Forms. This is classically Platonic.
“Paul uses the Law in this Hellenist way too when he interprets the story of the two women in Abraham’s life as an allegory (see Galatians 4). Or when, in his Corinthian letter, he takes the law about not muzzling the oxen which tread out the corn as having no intrinsic value (“does God care for oxen. Of course not!”) but only as allegorical or typological is it of value. These are not isolated instances of how Paul uses (and abuses) Scripture by ignoring the historical context as having real meaning. It is this Hellenist use of Scripture that is found in the greatest Jewish writer of the first century- Philo of Alexandria– that devalues the actual history being referred to in Hebrew scripture by making room for what is the real meaning of history by turning it into an allegory about heavenly Forms.
“I refer also to Matthew’s series of so-called messianic proof texts where he uses (abuses) scripture in this way. For example, he reads how the prophet is talking about God calling Israel as his son out of Egypt. The context in Hosea is not remotely connected to a prophecy of a future Messiah, but Matthew ignores the real point of Hosea and turns it into an allegory of the coming Messiah. He does the same with Isaiah 7:14 which is an account of the prophet’s wife bearing a son who won’t make his teens before the nations of Judah and Israel will lose both their kings. The historical context does not mean a thing to Matthew anymore than the law about caring for your beast means a thing to Paul.
“People have wondered where in the Scripture Paul is citing when he says, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture.” There is no such scripture. Paul is just using a far-fetched allegory, or typology or what have you, and lifting it right out of its historical context. According to Paul you can take every OT story, devalue its history and its real meaning, and read in it a message for the present end-time- an allegory for those “upon whom the ends of the world are come.” Amazing!
“This gives way to any hair-brained expositor who is able to “find Christ” in any story or incident in the OT– in every piece of cloth or arrangement or every joint in the tabernacle– all is taken to be an allegory of Christ. Just think of all those animals sacrificed on altars for century after century, supposedly to be read off as figurative lessons about Christ– a Hellenist one, for sure! The real Jesus loathed the wretched institution of animal sacrifices which really originated in primitive people killing humans to propitiate the gods, and did such ghastly things until sacrificing animals to the gods was a humane step forward.
“Yet religious minds turned this sub-human religiosity into allegories- shadows, copies (as Plato would say) of the heavenly or meta-physical Forms. The protest of the Hebrew prophets against this appalling blood-letting institution of the temple wasn’t enough for the Jews to reform away from this barbaric human behaviour until they had killed John and Jesus for revivifying the protest of the prophets. No, no. Hellenism had to turn the teaching of Jesus around to make him the supreme sacrifice which invested all that animal slaughter with a sacred significance. That was not the work of those who like James and the apostles had listened to the teachings of Jesus, but it was the work of the Hellenists who raised the Christology of the Christian religion in the cradle of Antioch rather than Jerusalem.
“I recommend the reading of Helmet Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”. He says, “Christianity was deeply engaged in the process through which it became one with the Hellenistic world and its religious concepts”, p. 201. “Christianity, probably more than the other religions of its time, was able to adapt itself to a variety of cultural and religious currents and to appropriate a numbers of foreign elements until it was ready to succeed as a world religion, thoroughly syncretistic in every way,” p. 166-167.” (End of Brinsmead quotes)
This on climate
“Media confirms the Earth is not abnormally warm. Rather, it is in its coldest period in 485 million years”, Anthony Watts, Sept. 25, 2024
Quotes:
“Recently, many media outlets touted a new scientific study “A 485-million-year history of Earth’s surface temperature” as proof that the current modest rise in temperature over the last 150 years is going to be catastrophic. The data and the methodology used strongly suggest that such claims are false.
Watts notes that media are predicting doom and gloom for the immediate future due to climate change, but they are ignoring the bigger paleoclimate picture that falsifies their apocalyptic narrative on climate. Media are ignoring the fact that today’s climate is the “coolest Earth has been in 485 million years”. They also ignore the wide swings in temperature that all happened naturally before human and the industrial revolution.
“At its hottest, the study suggests, the Earth’s average temperature reached 96.8 degrees Fahrenheit (36 degrees Celsius) — far higher than the historic 58.96 F (14.98 C) the planet hit last year.”
Watts concludes: “It is clear that the media wanted to spin this scientific study, which makes no alarming claims at all, into a tool to bolster their erroneous viewpoint that the world presently faces a “climate crisis” caused by humans. However, the data clearly show that the Earth’s temperature and the climates of its varied regions, have shifted radically in the past, that present temperatures are much cooler than has been the norm for the majority of Earth’s geological history, and that humans have lived through both cooler and warmer temperatures than we are currently experiencing at various points in history.
“It is a shame, but not unexpected, that the mainstream media spins reports such as these into something frightening. Such behavior is not only dishonest, but reprehensible.”
Disarming the alarming
“True, New York Post, Oft-Cited Climate Catastrophes Have Not Materialized”, Linnea Lueken, Climate Realism, Sept. 26, 2024
Lueken notes that Bjorn Lomborg has recently pointed out mainstream media alarms over polar bears, Great Barrier Reef, and flooding Pacific Island nations have all proven false. Yet climate activists refuse to acknowledge the scientific evidence and move on to continue their obsession with panic-mongering the public and pushing destructive climate policies.
The climate alarmists are even trying to incite alarm over the amazing global greening that has resulted from the inconvenient fact of more basic plant food in the atmosphere- i.e. CO2. Alarmists claim that more food for animals and increased crop production for humans is “dangerous”.
Lueken quotes Lomborg on polar bears: “after years of misrepresentation, it finally became impossible for them to ignore a mountain of evidence showing that the global polar bear population has increased substantially from around 12,000 in the 1960s to around 26,000 in the present day.”
On the alarmism over the apparent disappearance of the Great Barrier Reef, she says, “Lomborg recalls that ‘scientists predicted the reef would be decimated by 2022,’ and ‘The Guardian even published an obituary.’ He points out that the GBR has more coral cover right now in 2024 than at any point in time since recordkeeping began in 1985.”
And when the evidence comes out that the alarms are false- “’The good news gets a fraction of the coverage that the scare stories did, Lomborg writes.”
She adds Lomborg’s point that almost all Pacific Islands are increasing in size and not sinking beneath the ocean. “‘While rising sea levels do erode land, additional sand from old coral is washed up on low-lying shores,’ Lomborg explains, and ‘studies have long shown this accretion is stronger than climate-caused erosion, meaning the land area of Tuvalu is increasing.'”
Her conclusion on the New York Post article publishing Lomborg’s evidence: “No doubt the Post will get some hate mail for it, but it is a sign of a good news organization dedicated to serving its reader’s interests by following the facts where-ever they lead, even on controversial topics, to publish the truth, however unalarming, rather than hyperbole and lies.”
Good advice from Jordan Peterson posted on his Mondays of Meaning newsletter: Confront Your Fears To Improve Your Life
“As a clinician, I often witnessed the curative in therapy to be truth. This is characteristic of clinical experience and described explicitly by great clinicians. Truth is, indeed, what cures in therapy, and exposure to what you are afraid of and avoiding is a form of truth. If, for example, you know there is a task you should undertake by your own set of rules but you are avoiding it, then you are enacting a lie.
“But if you can face what the task is — and confront what you should not be avoiding — then you engage in the process of attempting to act out your deepest truth. That radically improves people’s lives, the clinical evidence of which is overwhelming.
“If you were to come talk to me about some problems, first of all, you have admitted they exist. That is a good start. Second, if you explain them, we can begin discussing solutions you can then act out to assess if they work. But if you do not admit the problems exist, solutions are not possible. While it might be comfortable moment-to-moment staying encapsulated in a delusion, avoidance ultimately will not work.
“You must practice exposure carefully, cautiously, and voluntarily, but if you are exposed to what you are afraid of and have been avoiding, we know that you get better. Clinicians have established this process as credible. Furthermore, this clinical experience is redemptive because it is designed to address suffering insofar as the people who are engaged in the process tell the truth.”
What to make of the endless warnings from one side… “They are a threat to democracy”. Meaning- Every smear projected onto the differing/dissenting other is a confession (Dr. Drew Pinsky).
This from the comments section below a post from Michael Shellenberger:
“’The much hyped “threat to Democracy”? Truly, all that means is ‘threat to Democrat-Party domination.’”
https://www.public.news/p/theyre-trying-to-normalize-censorship