This site starts the new year continuing to expose the real meta-monster behind many of the eruptions of violence in human societies, behind the varied crusades for totalitarianism, whether religious or secular. They are driven by the same complex of mythical themes that have always been the main monster of humanity, our real enemy, from the very beginning of early humans creating myths to respond to their primal impulse for meaning and purpose. Wendell Krossa
This is about probing what it is that deforms human narratives, consciousness, personality, and at scale, entire societies. That same complex of mythical themes that drove Marxism, Nazism, and now environmental alarmism (and also drives neo-collectivism as in the Neo-Marxism of far left Woke Progressivism and DEI).
More on the quest of this site to understand the ideas/themes that shape and drive human behavior, especially to understand the ideas that validate the behaviors that are destructive to human well-being, and at-scale, destructive to entire societies.
I have a bent, like many others, to join endeavors to “save the world”. I want to look at problems and try to understand what is behind them, what are the root contributing factors. I do this with varied public issues and problems, like the climate alarmism panic of the past three decades and its destructive decarbonization plan. What the hell is this really about? What drives this “madness of crowds” episode?
My interest in root contributing factors to public crusades like climate alarmism arises from long-ago experience in my family religion- Evangelical Christianity. That experience provided me the insight of feeling firsthand the impact of “threat theology” religious beliefs, to feel, with the immediacy of personal experience, how such “cruel God” theology deforms human personality with fear, anxiety, shame, guilt, despair, nihilism, and violence. Yes, violence.
I get how religious ideas of an angry God who threatens to punish us with apocalypse and hell, how such themes incite the survival impulse. And that survival desperation renders many susceptible to salvation schemes. It disables people to the cowering state of not even questioning the destruction of their society that is required to “save the world”, because they are promised utopia just beyond the destruction of the world. Think of average good Germans during the Weimar years as they were primed with the apocalyptic millennial vision of the Nazis. And think, similarly, of how we have been primed with the apocalyptic millennial vision of climate alarmists over the last three decades.
My personal experience of the harmful influence from the more destruction oriented religious themes helped me to appreciate how primitive apocalyptic millennial ideas carry good people along till they will embrace policies and crusades that harm themselves and others. It’s the religious-incited desperation for salvation. It’s the “fear=control” formula of totalitarians. Scare people and then you can manipulate them to embrace your salvation schemata.
H. L. Mencken understood this when he said, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary”. There is no greater hobgoblin than the religious monstrosity of threatening deity, entirely imaginary but so potent in controlling billions across the millennia, whether through religious traditions or politics, often both entwined.
It was no leap of imagination for me to understand how these same beliefs impact entire societies as revealed by historians like Richard Landes, and his colleagues, who have researched the influence of the threat theology myths driving apocalyptic millennial movements. They have revealed with careful and detailed historical research how apocalyptic millennial themes have impelled entire populations to embrace destructive salvation schemes that have led to mass-death outcomes in societies.
Apocalyptic millennialism has come down to us over the history of Western civilization through its iconic embodiment in Paul’s Christ myth. This has to be stated repetitively till it gets past the initial sense of shock that many feel from the “heresy” reaction that has been built into Western consciousness from 2 millennia of programming by Paul’s “Christ-ianity”. The Hellenistic religion that buried original “Jesus-ianity”. And no, Paul did not initiate the “heresy” threat to block thinking, questioning, and challenging religious ideas. Religious elites had used that warning long before.
Summary point here: The apocalyptic millennial myth of Paul has been the notably prominent influence that has incited and validated contemporary apocalyptic millennial movements like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.
Nothing is more critical than to recognize the fact that apocalyptic millennial themes have repeatedly carried societies of good people into mass death destruction. Look carefully again at the three great apocalyptic millennial crusades that emerged across the last century- Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism. They have all embraced the same basic complex of root contributing factors- get this again- of Paul’s apocalyptic millennial Christ myth.
Not having learned the lessons of history, the “same old” is now “ever-new” again, coming through renewed crusades of nihilistic destruction, cloaked in new robes (new terms, categories, definitions) but at core the same primitive ideas/themes as ever before.
Who’s your monster now?
The complex of mythical themes in apocalyptic millennialism, and the consequent eruptions of public madness and destruction, is the great monster/enemy that humanity has faced across history, the monster that towers above all other monsters and must be conquered and defeated. Or it will continue to erupt in destructive movements in our societies, as it did through ISIS (2014 in Syria, and then more recently on Oct.7), and in climate alarmism, also in the revived collectivism of Woke Progressivism.
And yes, to alleviate the concerns of religious folk, there are the bigger questions involved in all this, i.e. questions of- What was the earliest emergence of religion originally responding to?
The emergence and development to religion in human societies was, among varied things, a response to the human impulse for meaning/purpose, to understand what/who created this physical reality and for what purpose. What did religion get right? From the beginning it involved human probing of the mystery of what/who created all and for what purpose, and the theodicy impulse to believe in ultimate Good behind all. Religion was responding to the human impulse to know how to live as genuinely human, how to live according to humanity’s ultimate ideal in Ultimate Reality, and thereby fulfil our purpose for existing on this planet. The “behavior based on similar belief in the divine”.
But religious folks then must also confront where religion went wrong- i.e. emerging elites inciting fear in fellow humans with metaphysical threat. Early elites thereby manipulating and controlling commoners with psychopathologies of bad religious ideas and the related obligations to make sacrifices, submit to religious conditions, etc. Elites, from the beginning have pushed onerous and enslaving burdens of conditions on populations, not communicating the authentic love of deity as unconditional reality. Elites have long promoted the fallacy of ultimate threat behind all reality and life, and thereby denied people the liberating insights of an unconditional reality.
And then, the obvious question for religious folks- What are the alternatives that embrace the same original human concerns for meaning/purpose but avoid the horrendous mistakes of apocalyptic millennial religious traditions?
What about “heresy”?
Many of us, having been formerly indoctrinated in some religious tradition, have to push past the instinctual response of defensive resistance as voices in our heads scream “heresy” and we sense the coming threats from outraged religious folks, their demonization (i.e. “unbeliever, deceived by the devil”, etc.), followed by group shunning and banning for embracing thoughtfulness that leads to questioning and challenging the beliefs of their hallowed traditions.
And the threats are serious for anyone who has ever located their identity, their family and community in a major religious tradition. Separation from that identity and community can be similar to the traumatic death and rebirth of the shamanic experience. Not easy to countenance.
Continuing with the use of divine threat to control others…
Paul, for example, made clear in Galatians 1:8-9, that anyone who doubted his Christ myth was damned to hell. And he was talking to fellow apostles Peter and James. So also, Calvin had fellow Christian theologian Servetus burned at the stake for challenging the Christ myth. True believers, themselves caught in the vengeful grip of a retaliatory God, lust for doubt and dissent among their fellow believers to be severely punished. (See varied articles on “The Benefits of blasphemy”)
The primitive ideas in the belief systems of religious traditions (e.g. apocalyptic millennialism) are still as powerful as any human-constructed idea or threat has ever been. This has to be recognized to appreciate the influence of these contributing causal factors behind destructive apocalyptic millennial crusades.
These religious themes remain dominant today in human meta-narratives, both religious and secular, because they have long been deeply embedded in inhuman subconscious as archetypes. Most people respond to these themes emotionally and subconsciously, not rationally thinking them over. Many just embrace the core themes as feeling right, true, good, and then frame their own narratives with same themes. Hence, entire societies keep falling for these apocalyptic crusades that destroy societies to save some world the apocalyptic prophets claim is under existential threat of apocalypse.
Remember Kristian Niemietz’s insightful comment that “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs,” (Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies).
Understanding the real nature of “salvation” of our lives and societies. This site rejects ideas of salvation that is based on the myth of lost paradise, with consequent divine threat of punishment, threat of apocalyptic destruction of world, followed by demand for sacrifice and obligation to engage righteous war to violently purge evil enemies, before promising salvation in communalist utopia.
No. Human salvation is better understood in terms of the gradual improvement of life and civilization that arises from essential human goodness, compassion, and creativity. To achieve that salvation we ought be intensely aware of the deforming power of apocalyptic millennial ideas, and their destructive outcomes on societies, how they prevent the gradual improvement of life with demands for instantaneous revolutionary violence.
We ought to know all this because we are living through one of history’s most insane eruptions of apocalyptic madness and hysteria today in the climate crisis crusade and it’s demand for urgent and immediate revolutionary overturning of human societies with decarbonization (urged on by repeated setting dates for the immanent apocalypse). This apocalyptic millennial crusade is blockading and derailing human progress like few other crusades before.
Understand the real monster behind such madness that is the real threat to life, to the world, to democracy, to full liberation, a monster that endlessly incites and validates crusades to destroy societies to “save the world”.
The full complex of apocalyptic alarmism mythology (a reposting)… Wendell Krossa
“This apocalyptic millennial complex is better understood when fleshed out in the larger complex of primitive myths that includes-
“(1) The baseline myth of a lost original paradise- i.e. a better past that “corrupt, evil humans” have ruined (the original anti-humanism of original “sinfulness”). The ruin of original paradise undergirds the sense of the loss of something good and, hence, now unbalanced justice demands that that the lost good must be restored in order to rebalance justice and righteousness in the cosmos and life. The impulse to make things right again.
(Note: Original paradise mythology distorts the true state of life that began imperfectly but has improved across history, and is now especially improving with the input of essentially good, compassionate, and creative humanity.)
“Consequent to the myth of a better past that has been ruined, primitive mythology pivoted to (2) blame people, to blame humanity as the evil enemy that must be punished and even exterminated in order to restore the lost paradise and to save life. In contemporary terms- today the evil enemy of innocent and pure nature is greedy, consuming humans in industrial civilization. And even more specifically, greedy humans using natural resources like fossil fuels that enables them to enjoy the good life.
“Then to further re-enforce the narrative that evil humans had ruined divine nature (i.e. Earth as goddess), the ancients added the threat that (3) life was declining toward apocalyptic ending. And to even further incite alarm, apocalyptic prophets repeatedly set “always imminent” dates to raise hysteria levels and validate the use of desperate measures to “save” the world that was always threatened by the looming apocalypse.
“The apocalyptic alarmists also introduced “hope” into the mix, a perverse version of hope that was built on the violent destruction and extermination of enemies. And they constructed salvation schemes where specially enlightened elites lecture the ignorant and unenlightened commoners on what they must do to be saved from imminent destruction and death- i.e. (4) demand a sacrifice/payment. Today’s sacrifice- “de-growth, de-development”, as a return to primitivism as in a return to the more pure, virtuous, and powerful existence of “noble savage” life as hunter-gathers with no ecological footprint. Add to this sacrifice/payment element, the collectivist redistribution programs pushed in the endless annual climate COPs.
(Note: See Arthur Herman’s excellent research on “human degeneration” theory, that humans were once noble savages but have degenerated in civilization, in his “The Idea of Decline in Western History”.)
“Couch the madness of apocalyptic hysteria in a deformed version of the hero’s quest where those identifying as true heroes (true believers in the tribal dualism of Zoroaster’s true religion versus false religion) will engage a righteous tribal battle to conquer and (5) violently purge a purported monster/enemy identified as demonized fellow humans (the element of tribal dualism between good and evil).
Insert: The apocalyptic complex of themes plays upon our inherited animal impulses and with the apocalyptic complex framed by Zoroaster’s tribal dualism the complex powerfully incites tribalism and tribal hatred of differing others. Differing others within the framework of the “righteous battle of good against evil” are viewed as more than normal threats, as “existentially” threatening enemies, hence, normal survival fear then intensifies to express as rage.
Add the factor that the tribal God intensely hates “unbelievers” and as ultimate human ideal is furiously enraged at his enemies and wants them destroyed utterly, even eternally tortured. Hell is hatred taken to its utmost extreme.
Revel 19 speaks of “the fury of the wrath of God” that viciously and vengefully throws the unbelievers into the lake of fire. There is your divine ideal.
This divine attitude to differing others incites the same hatred of differing others in tribally-minded true believers who worship such a deity, the impulse to be like God. Add further the element of over-the-top demonization of the other as irredeemably evil, even demonic, and well, all such elements feed the intensification of hatred of differing others.
The element of necessary cosmic “justice” also feeds the flames of hatred to punish and destroy differing others, to inflict pain for pain, hurt for hurt, eye for eye… but taken to eternal extremism. Hence, we try to understand the hysterical rage displayed in the horrific violence of ISIS/Hamas attackers and their savage bent to destroy others in gruesomely violent ways that defy understanding.
Summary point- A tribal deity, exhibiting furious rage and hatred of enemies and promising eternal torture in hellish fire, well, there is your ultimate ideal to model in your own behavior and life. And we wonder why we keep seeing eruptions in our societies of hate-fueled violence against “enemies”. And please, stop the defensive apologetics that this is not in your system of belief. These pathological themes dominate the world religions and have infected “secular/ideological” versions of the same. Whether “vengeful Gaia, punitive Universe, angry Planet/Mother Earth, or payback karma”. Its all the same sick threat theology that defines the cohering center of human meta-narratives.
“And when the threatening enemy is fully purged/exterminated, then (6) salvation is attained in a renewed communal paradise where all share a much-reduced use of natural resources (“sustainable” living). All reduced to primitivism levels.
“Most critical to understand in this set of primitive themes is- What is the driving Force behind this complex? What is the “cohering center” of this complex that has wreaked so much destruction across history? What validates the rest of the primitive and distorting ideas in the complex?
The cohering center is none other than the “wrathful” deity of all primitive mythologies, the deity royally pissed at humans for ruining his original perfect paradise. Hence, the subsequent threats of divine retaliation toward humanity by violently destroying the entire world in an apocalypse. The mother of all spoilt brat hissy fits. Followed by divine demands for sacrifice/payment/suffering as required conditions to achieve redemption.
“The cohering center of the apocalyptic millennial complex of myths is the violent, destroying God who threatens people in this life through natural disasters, disease, accidents, and predatory cruelty, and also threatens people with after-life harm that adds sting to death. This “monster God” is the central issue to deal with in apocalyptic millennial complexes of myths.
This psycho-pathological version of deity has dominated mythologies and religions across history and has now been transformed into the cohering center of secular/ideological systems of belief to also dominate those- i.e. “Vengeful Gaia, punitive Universe, angry Planet/Mother Earth, payback karma”, etc.
“These deeply embedded themes, long entrenched in human psyches as subconscious archetypes, help explain why emotional satisfaction, not rational evidence is behind our choice in beliefs. Hence, many people simply respond to contemporary apocalyptic millennial narratives, whether Marxist collectivism or climate apocalyptic, because they feel right, good, just, and true. They resonate with deeply embedded archetypes.”
Continuing with added Notes:
Religious elites across the millennia have creatively ensured that commoners do not dare question what they are told by the priestly authorities. How so? “Fear=control”. The totalitarian formula.
Example: Note Paul in Thessalonians stating that “Lord Jesus will return in blazing fire to punish all who do not believe his Christ myth. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and eternal exclusion”.
He is re-enforcing divine threat against the “sin of unbelief”, not believing what priestly elites proclaim. According to religious leaders like Paul, any who did not submissively embrace the religious system of belief that he created, they were not embracing what we today understand as healthy evaluation and dissent, but Paul stated that they were falling under the deceiving spell of Satan. Most religious leadership beats the same threat into their adherents, just as political leadership does. Do not think outside our tribal narrative boundaries.
Both Old Testament and New Testament present threatening warnings against not believing what the priests and apostles are telling you and the severe consequences that will be meted out- i.e. eternal exclusion and destruction. Unbelievers in biblical narratives will face “the fury of the wrath of God”. That shuts down questioning in most people, many content to just slip away without protest, too fearful to pick that mountain of thoughtful questioning and dissent to die upon.
Contemporary examples: People dissenting from, for example, the Wokeism cult then face Wokeism fury, public humiliation and vilification (“transphobe, racist” etc.), calls for censorship, firing, even threats of criminalization. Fear of committing heresy and suffering its consequences remains alive and potent today.
More on the elitist use of threat theology to control the commoners…
The key theme of threat theology is that deity punishes bad people through the natural world, through natural disasters, disease, accidents, etc. And that angry punitive deity demands a sacrifice to appease his wrath at sinful people. Nancy Pelosi epitomized this primitive mythology in 2020 in reference to the California wildfires as exhibiting the wrath of Mother Nature and the obvious implication that the enraged deity demanded the sacrifice of abandoning fossil fuels.
And few if any pushed back against her narrative. It resonates with most people’s personal narratives.
Here is a New Year’s project–
It is way past time to bring down the monster that has incited hundreds of millions of deaths, notably over recent history- i.e. the threat theology at the heart of the apocalyptic millennial complex of myths. It’s done too much damage for far too long. This is Richard Landes’ point that if we do not learn to confront the ideas inciting mass-death movements then we have learned nothing and will only see such eruptions repeating. Lets end that monstrosity of threat theology operating through apocalyptic millennialism and replace it with the Jesus insight that overturned the entire mess of history’s previous bad mythologies/religions. He offered the insights to fatally wound the real monster of humanity- i.e. the threatening God at the heart of the apocalyptic millennial complex of myths. The Jesus breakthrough insight brought that monster to the brink of its death spiral, but Paul then immediately stepped into short-circuit the Jesus liberation movement and restore the old monster, cloaking it with features of “divine grace, love, compassion” etc. A profound distortion of what was underneath.
Psychologist Harold Ellens stated this distortion of Paul well,
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years.”
My point: Get the profound contradiction between Jesus and Paul clear as they have been the two most influential people in history, presenting us with two entirely different narratives to shape life, two entirely opposite messages to shape profoundly different trajectories toward very different outcomes and futures. Jesus and Paul summarize and embody the struggle of humanity across history with the realities of good and evil.
What is the actual nature of the “good and evil” realities? Why are people so often led to embrace such profoundly differing explanations of these realities?
The issue here is that our narrative themes and ideals shape our behavior. We do become just like the God (i.e. the ultimate ideals) that we believe in. Paul and Jesus offer entirely different versions of such things.
With the Jesus breakthrough insight that God was no conditions love, we have had the singularly profound insight to liberate human consciousness and spirits as never before, to finally complete human liberation at the deepest levels of subconscious archetypes. The point is that its time to embrace the Jesus truth that there is only love behind all reality and life, no threat theology. There never has been any such reality as punitive divine threat behind life.
Embrace the background sense of security that the Jesus insight grants as you go out and struggle in life with personal monsters/problems/issues, the common struggle with the hellishness that life presents at times.
A whole lotta more coming…
Another note:
We don’t need Historical Jesus as some higher authority for the arguments made here on theology or on humanity’s highest ideal- i.e. love and the true nature of love as unconditional. Wendell Krossa
Someone else, some secular humanist perhaps, would have eventually made the same discoveries and insights because they are self-validating as true, good, and right insights. The “theodicy” types have sort of pointed in this direction on the true nature of love and deity, though they have confused issues by locking themselves within that triad thing of “God is good. God is omnipotent. There is evil.” That limits options for exploring alternatives. C’mon, to paraphrase Mao, let 8 billion flowers bloom.
They have missed the insightful points, for example, made by Bob Brinsmead that without authentic freedom there is no authentic love. And “God is love”. Meaning, a God of authentic love cannot intervene in, overrule, or disregard human freedom. Love and freedom are inseparable realities. Hence, evil in this world. The genuinely “free choice” element, especially if influence by our inherited animal drives to tribalism, domination, and punitive, destructive treatment of differing others.
My point? There is no need for some divine revelation from God as to the true nature of love or theology. You can get insights on the unconditional nature of deity from common NDEs, as the main discovery of those experiences. Or from being a parent dealing with imperfect young humans, trying to raise “spoiled brats” (that’s all of us when young), or being a friend to other imperfect friends that test your understanding and practice of love. You then reason from your response to those “offenders”, your response to and treatment of them with unconditional love, and project that love out to define what God, as ultimate love and good, is like.
Such is the beginning of good theology. “The proper study of mankind is man”. Then project that onto deity.
Note:
On my “We don’t need Jesus” statement above- I am not “a believer in Jesus”. But I honor him for his central message, his good “wisdom sage” insights on the best of human behavior as “non-retaliatory” (no “eye for eye”) and for basing that ethic on the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God, a God who loves all unconditionally, both good and bad people. He was the first in history to get the “behavior based on similar belief” relationship right on both elements, behavior and validating ideal.
Note:
Many will respond that because they identify as contemporary “secular humanist, philosophically materialist, even atheist” the above apocalyptic millennial narrative has nothing to do with them. I would argue that they are denying the influence of deeply embedded archetypes of the human subconscious, what Jung termed the collective unconscious.
These archetypes have long been shaped by primitive mythological themes, hence the subconscious embrace by most people of these archetypes, the intuitive sense that the archetypal apocalyptic millennial themes are “right, true, good, just, etc.”
Again, note how many moderns simply accept climate alarmism as true. The past was better when nature was dominated by a wilderness world with few humans, but then greedy, selfish humans began to change and use nature for their survival and improvement. Hence, people have ruined the former natural paradise world. Now life is on a declining trajectory toward collapse and even ending.
To “save the world” we must embrace the “sacrifice” of a return to primitivism as in de-development, de-growth, a retreat to the simple life of low consumption sustainability as lived by our “noble savage” ancestors in their hunter gatherer societies. Moderns falsely imagine they were stronger and more pure humans before degeneration in spreading human civilization. Further to saving the world, we must purge life of the threat from too many people consuming too much of Earth’s resources, notably a threat located today in CO2 as the key marker of excessive human consumption of natural resources.
Once that threat is purged, then paradise will be restored in a new collectivist utopia.
These themes, this complex, is widely embraced today by those identifying as entirely non-religious secularists, atheists, etc. This complex of primitive themes differs not a whit from the most primitive of human beliefs across history.
Yes Joseph Campbell, people have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world. The ancient Sumerian priests, devotees of the Sumerian version of apocalypse in the Sumerian Flood myth with its elements of “population bomb” (too many people) and humans enjoying the good life too much (making too much noise), those priests if teleported to our world, would stand and applaud the climate alarmism myth heartily. Yes, right on guys. You are also true believers in our primitive apocalyptic mythology.
More good analysis by Jordan Peterson, beginning with how the compassion of US Democrats has been corrupted by the far-left and deformed with destructive policies that, far from helping victims, actually harm the victims that they claim to advocate for, like the mutilation of children’s bodies today in the social contagion of the transgender crusade.
Also, there has been the creation of more innocent victims in the general population from the Woke Progressive treatment of violent criminals as all “victims” of white oppression, hence the de-carceration of those violent criminals (setting free) that has resulted in the rise of violent crime in US Progressive-run cities, and consequent increase of real victims in the regular population.
Peterson goes on to note the confusion now reigning among US Democrats. They have now hit the “pinnacle of confusion, maximal confusion”, in their belief that men can become women.
He adds that Canada has been run for 9 years by a juvenile narcissist with nothing to offer but his name. He has no wisdom, no experience or judgment, and has learned nothing. He has ruined Canada just as UK has been ruined, so also Germany by similar eco-zealots of the apocalyptic cult of climate alarmism. The richest province in Canada is now poorer than the poorest US state. Additionally, thanks to Trudeau we have racial riots in Canada now, something we never had before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-kERakXh1k
The Catholic priest who wrote “God’s Chosen Peoples” made the statement that seemed excessive and exaggerated- i.e. that Christianity has shed more blood than any other movement in history. Historians have done quantitative analyses of numbers slaughtered as resulted from the early Christian Councils, the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the murder of heretics, witches, etc., and all that does not quite add up to “shed more blood” till you recognize what the historians/scholars of apocalyptic millennial movements have discovered- i.e. that fundamental Christian themes drove Marxism, Nazism, and are now driving environmental alarmism.
Now the statement “shed more blood” appears accurate. Christian themes have driven (shaped, influenced, incited, validated) these mass death movements, generating more violence than anything else across history.
So psychologist Harold Ellens was right that if your God solves problems with violence then so may you. We all become just like the God or ultimate ideals that we believe in.
Once again, Ellens’ good summary comments on this factor of divine influence on human behavior, the “behavior based on similar belief in deity as validating”.
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
This answers the military guy’s argument that these eruptions of violence (e.g. ISIS in Syria, 2014) will continue until you deal with the ideas that incite and validate them. So also Richard Landes point that until you recognize how apocalyptic millennial ideas can carry a society into mass-death movements, then you have not learned the lesson of, for example, the Nazis and will just repeat such outbreaks.