Soon coming- More on atmospheric physicist William Happer’s excellent research on the warming influence of CO2. His conclusion from the evidence- “There is no climate crisis.” And our response? “Do nothing.”
And Javier Milei’s refreshingly blunt takedown of destructive ‘Wokeism’ at Davos recently. He presented a defense of freedom that few can match today. Amazingly, the WEF collectivists invited him back after a similar speech last year to tell them to their faces that their bad ideas are destroying Western liberal democracy.
Further, more coming on why Christianity does not represent Historical Jesus, and why Islam is not the “fulfillment” of the actual message and person of Historical Jesus. Yes, Islam does “fulfill” varied features of Jewish Christianity such as the rejection of Jesus as a sacrifice for sin (his redemptive death), the rejection of his virgin birth and divinity, the embrace of Jewish water purification, abstention from alcohol and pork, and so on. And Islam “fulfills” varied elements of Paul’s Christ mythology- i.e. judgment and severe punishment for refusing the message/messenger (i.e. hellfire), and the demand for obedience and submission to God, etc. But these features contradict the actual Jesus of history. Much like Paul’s “Christ-ianity” contradicts the message and person of Jesus.
The point of “Carney barker for a cult” below? Despite clothing himself with “highly experienced international financial expert, highly educated, etc.”, the new wannabe emperor is nakedly a cultic extremist, no different from all religious extremists across history who fell for crusades of primitive apocalyptic hysteria. As historian Richard Landes stated in his recounting of apocalyptic millennial movements like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism (“Heaven On Earth”), the leaders have all been just “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”. That applies to all today who embrace “climate alarmism”.
Mark Carney may take a scrap of comfort from the fact that Stephen Hawking also fell for Chicken Little climate alarmism over the last two years of his life. He engaged “end of days” date-setting, initially proclaiming the end in about a 1000 years (2016), then logarithmically dropping to the end in just 100 years from either AI Terminators or climate change (2017). The next year, had he lived and continued his logarithmic pattern, he would have dropped to apocalypse in 10 years. Still just enough time to exit the planet before being humiliated by reality as all apocalyptic prophets are eventually exposed. Because apocalyptic has a 100% historical failure rate. Apocalyptic consistently makes fools of the otherwise brightest people. Look at what it did to Chicken Little. Sheesh, eh.
https://www.businessinsider.com/stephen-hawking-1000-years-2016-11
https://www.wired.com/story/stephen-hawking-100-years-on-earth-prediction-starmus-festival/
Now posted below– Mercy toward opponents/enemies enrages some people. They detest efforts to “normalize” their opponents and vilify those who refuse to join them in demonizing and dehumanizing their opponents. What is this psychopathology of outrage at any mercy, kindness, generous forgiveness and inclusion being shown toward differing others?
It is deeply rooted in history as illustrated by, for example, Historical Jesus omitting the “divine vengeance” element in his reading of Isaiah 61, an omission that incited his fellow Jews with murderous rage. They then tried to try to toss him off a cliff. Moderns today similarly exhibit the same furious outrage at mercy toward opponents/enemies.
See below, Joe Rogan’s interview of Mark Zuckerberg and his pushback against Democratic Party censorship on Facebook.
Also below, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on leftist Progressivism’s decline in Western societies due to excessive authoritarianism.
“Across the West, arrogant woke leaders like Trudeau are in retreat: The poor quality, high expense, and arrogant bossiness of these governments is finally taking its toll”, J. D. Tuccille, National Post, Jan.10, 2025
And… “The societal shift back to rediscovering common sense”. Also, comment on the hesitancy of the adherents of world religions to recognize that their traditions have borrowed the main ideas of the primitive mythologies and religions that preceded them. That is true of all religions.
Also new below…
Elite finance expert? Or “carny barker” for a cult? Wendell Krossa
Mark Carney is elbowing his way to become Liberal leader and replace Justin Trudeau.
Historian Richard Landes has noted that the Bolsheviks tried to masquerade their movement as “science and modernity”, but they were still just “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”.
See the full comment below on Mark Carney, WEF “soft socialist” and climate alarmist, seeking to bring his WEF-style climate crusade to Canada to reframe the Liberal party with his smoother elitist presentation, and thereby replace, but maintain, the destructive eco-zealotry of Justin Trudeau. Just another eco-cultist presenting as smooth operator. The very gimmick of the original Bolsheviks.
And yes, contemporary “leftist Progressivism” has wedded itself to the climate cult as noted by experts like Richard Lindzen and others.
Intro note: Western civilization has three great religious traditions- i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. All three have been influenced and shaped by the Persian/Zoroastrian religion of some 3,500 years ago, Wendell Krossa
Sample source- https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2007/4/11/321915/-
First, right out of the gate- The Zoroastrian beliefs in cosmic dualism and apocalyptic are the two worst of the “bad religious ideas” that it bequeathed to the West and Western religions. These have been among the most destructive ideas ever conceived. Cosmic dualism (God fighting Satan) has validated endless human tribal dualisms, and wars of tribe against tribe. Apocalyptic (as part of a complex of bad ideas) has incited too many mass-destruction and mass-death outcomes across history.
(Insert note: There are legitimate battles of good against evil- e.g. the Nazi/Allies war. But in all battles, we maintain our humanity and avoid any tribalism deformity by remembering that our “enemies”, even though we must defeat them in war, are still our family and deserve humane treatment post-war.)
My brain raises a bit of a flag of caution about engaging this topic below of bad ideas in religious traditions. It’s a bit unsettling to tackle because so many approach such subjects with the pre-intent to misunderstand, to pull comments out of context and twist meanings, and then to revert to smears and vilification- i.e. “Islamophobia”, etc. But the issues at play are about broader concerns than any “religiophobia” smears can dismiss.
I will wade in because the outcomes have been consistently and incalculably destructive and the root contributing factors still dominate human narratives and minds with dangerously inciting and validating ideals. The warning of Richard Landes, and the military guy, were never more critical that if you don’t deal with these inciting/validating ideas behind destructive movements, then you will only repeat them.
“It’s the commonalities, stupid” (paraphrasing James Carville’s “It’s the economy, stupid”). Wendell Krossa
All of us are facing a common enemy or monster in these monstrous ideas that affirm and validate tribalism, domination of others, and punitive destruction of differing others. I am speaking to the inner battle, the real battle of life, where we face the common monster of all humanity. Our real struggle in life is not against differing others but against our own inherited impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive, destructive response to the failures of others. Our real battle is with the beliefs/ideas/themes in our narratives, especially in our religious narratives, that validate our worst impulses.
Be aware that the monster hides by covering itself with religious robes, and especially likes to hide behind deity.
Psychologist Harold Ellens exposed this element of reframing the worst of features in terms of the best of divinity (i.e. the hiding trick) and what such monstrous features do to human minds…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God… 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.
“… 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’.” (See the full context of Ellen’s comments in Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”)
Continuing…
This inner battle relates also the “commonalities” thing that I am pointing to and commenting on further below.
My point and intent below is to emphasize commonalities in terms of our meta-narratives- i.e. that we all make the same mistakes in our narratives, holding the same bad ideas that incite and validate bad impulses. Hence, we all face the same enemies, monsters, the ones inside us. The actual struggle of life (i.e. the real “righteous battle against evil”) is not about us warring against one another over our differences. Those battles sidetrack us from the war that matters most (i.e. Solzhenitsyn’s point that the real battle of good versus evil runs down the center of every human heart). Further, our battles with others tend to blur and bury the fact of fundamental human oneness, the oneness of the human family.
A key point below that qualifies the commonalities in all three Western religions- Islam borrowed from Jewish Christianity, including the most appalling features of threat theology, but did not include the “diamond” teachings of Historical Jesus. Under Christian Ebionite Waraqa’s guidance, Muhammad borrowed the more threatening features of primitive theology, features similar to those of Paul’s Christ myth (i.e. the “wrathful” God of Romans, destroying deity of Revelation 19, etc.). But without the moderating influence of Historical Jesus, the outcomes have not been good for religions like Islam. That is one notable difference between Christianity and Islam, among the many shared common themes of both religions.
Significant commonalities in all the great world religions don’t give anyone the escape clause to argue- “My religion is better than yours”. As for the Jesus material in Christianity, that message presents a potent moderating influence on the religion. But Christianity overall, in emphasizing Paul’s Christ myth, has seriously distorted the Jesus material, “buried it” according to Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy. That is as egregious an offense as anything in any other religion, and that discredits the back-patting that Christians might want to engage when comparing their tradition to other religions.
Important intro note: This site repeatedly employs the “evil triad” of “tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction” as a summarization of the most destructive impulses in people, the worst of our inherited animal impulses. Point? These impulses- the worst of the worst- have been incited and validated across history by bad ideas/ideals in human narratives, notably bad religious ideas.
The incitement and validation rises to its most harmful influence when such features are projected onto deity (i.e. God as favoring true believers, damning unbelievers, God as Lord/King validating relationships of domination/submission, God as retaliatory destroyer through apocalypse/hell). These psychopathologies, projected onto deity, have long held dominant place in defining humanity’s highest ideal and authority. Who’s to blame in that? Religious traditions.
Bad ideas inciting and validating bad human behavior operates through the “behavior based on belief” model that people have used across history. This pattern developed from the primal human impulse for meaning and purpose as related to deity. People, motivated by their impulse to live according to the purpose for which they were created, have long appealed to the divine Model for a pat on the back.
This is what Historical Jesus was referring to when he concluded his summary statement of his message (Luke 6:27-36) with “Be merciful as your Father is merciful”. Be like your Creator. Validate your behavior with an appeal to your understanding of what God is like.
This all goes haywire, and hell is unleashed on societies, when the image of deity is corrupted with inhuman features like tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others. As Bob Brinsmead has said, “Men never do greater evil than when they do it in the name of God.” And if your God validates the worst in you… well, look out people.
Most of us still feel the tensing of our guts at the nauseating horror of what young Muslim men did in Israel Oct.7, 2023, raping, burning, murdering as they screamed “Allahu Akbar” (“praise/glory to God”). But then stepping back to view the bigger picture, we remember that is exactly what Christians did in Jerusalem roughly a millennium ago as they dismembered Muslim bodies- men, women, and children- till the blood ran ankle-deep, singing hymns and praising God that they could take part in the slaughter of God’s enemies. And that followed the slaughter of Jewish communities as the Crusaders marched across Europe on the way to Israel. And we look at the Jewish Old Testament for those repetitious accounts of early Hebrews slaughtering men, women, and children. All in the name of God. Well, Mircea Eliade recounts that even early Buddhists killed one another in battles over which sect truly represented their founder.
And atheists/materialists- Wipe that smirk off your faces. Look at the bloody crusades your philosophy/ideology has taken part in. 100 million bodies just last century.
The obvious rejoinder here is to make sure that your God (your conception of deity) is fully and authentically humane. This is critical to solving the problem that the military guy pointed to after the 2014 eruption of ISIS violence in Syria- i.e. that if you want to solve eruptions of violence, then go after the ideas that incite and validate such eruptions.
For atheists/materialists, this also applies to the ultimate ideals/authorities that you hold. What features define those ideals? The cold, predatory drives of our primate ancestors as explained through the often too-dogmatic doctrines of evolutionary biology? Like the young rapper who explained the advocacy for violence in his music- “We are, after all, just animals”.
I am repeatedly flabbergasted at hearing young people state their status as “secular, materialist, atheist, etc.”, and then mouthing the themes of- “the past was better (original paradise of a wilderness world), corrupt humans ruined paradise, life is now declining toward something worse, toward apocalyptic ending (e.g. climate apocalypse), we must make a sacrifice for our sins (“de-growth, de-development, decarbonization”- return to the ”morally superior” simple lifestyles of the “noble savages” of the communalism past who were “more connected” to Mother Earth, etc.), and then we must engage a righteous battle against our enemies who threaten life on earth with their embrace of industrial, Classic Liberal civilization, and if we defeat them, then we are promised restored paradise or some new communalism utopia”. Proudly identifying as “secular materialist” but espousing the very same primitive themes of the earliest mythologies and religions from across history. Sheesh, eh.
Ah Joe Campbell, you nailed it, stating that all people across history have believed the same primitive myths, and across all the cultures of the world.
First, some background on the child rape horror in Britian. This relates to my comments in response to the Piers Morgan interview of Jordan Peterson in a link further below:
“Britain’s mass child rape horror and the price of not being called racist: Thanks to Elon Musk, the ‘grooming gangs’ scandal is finally getting the outrage it deserves”, Michael Murphy. Jan.9, 2025
The story of mass child rapes in Britain by Pakistani Muslim men has provoked outrage and contentious discussion about what is happening. Note this interview of Jordan Peterson by Piers Morgan, Wendell Krossa
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKCB-MhBP7I&t=904s
Some on the Piers Morgan panel argued that Islam has a worse proclivity than Christianity to such horrific behavior. Kind of a tribalism position- We Christians are not as bad as you Muslims. While it is true that over the past few centuries most Christians have moderated the violent behaviors of their past history, Christianity also has a history of really bad behavior and episodes of bloodshed that are unequaled, some argue, by any other religion. I won’t go into the history of the Councils, Crusades, Inquisitions, persecution of heretics and witches, etc.
Other panel members taking the Muslim side, defensively state that Islam is not an inherently violent religion.
Some on the Morgan panel noted that the rape scandal is due more to cultural influences on those Pakistani men, not so much the influences from their religion. That is worth considering in the effort to understand better what happened.
Other larger background points to consider:
Someone once stated that the Christian bible has some 600-plus passages where God advocates or approves the use of violence against others, including Moses affirming the mass rape of captive women. This link lists over 1000 biblical passages pointing to divine approval or advocacy of violence.
https://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html
The Quran presents the same angry, violent deity as Christianity, with numerous threats from the angry God against unbelievers who will be cast into the fire (Hell) where there is severe eternal torment and from which there is no escape. Such warnings are on almost every page, or other page, of the Quran. That endless repetition gives the sense of an overwhelmingly dominant theme or message being proclaimed, and not just a peripheral “metaphor”.
(Note- A trend in the theology of all major religious traditions is to dismiss the harsher features in their belief systems as just “metaphor”. But, as one Muslim writer noted, that does not alter the “content” of what is being communicated.)
The deities of all three religious traditions share the same primitive features of tribalism (true believers saved, unbelievers damned), domination (submission to the deity and to authorities appointed by the deity), and then the punitive destruction of enemies. This applies also to the third of the great Western religious traditions- Judaism.
All three religions share the same fundamental religious themes that incite and validate bad behavior in members. Defenders of all three traditions must take responsibility for those ideas in their belief systems and for the damage that has been done over past history, damage incited, guided, and validated by those very ideas. This site repeatedly posts the evidence from historians of such damage (i.e. Richard Landes on the Christian ideas that drove Marxism, Nazism, and are now driving environmental alarmism, along with the research of Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, and others.)
The defensive denial response of true believers in these religions is that- “Our religion is a religion of peace”. And yes, most members of all three traditions have learned to moderate their behavior to become less tribal, less dominating, less violent toward unbelievers. All such moderation is to be sincerely praised.
I would attribute this ‘contemporary era’ moderation more to the influence of the common human spirit in all humanity, the modern increase in human sensitivity to past barbarity, and the emergence, development, and promotion of common human rights in the modern era, etc. This moderation has occurred despite the ongoing influence of bad religious ideas in all three traditions. Stephen Pinker, in his “Better Angels of Our Nature”, comments on how the moderation of religion occurred in the modern era as religious believers experienced revulsion at the past violent history of their traditions.
But the ideas that incite and validate the worst of human impulses are still there in the belief systems, maintaining their potential to again incite and validate some members to bad behavior, as in the past. Those particular ideas in the mix, the ones that hold the most potential to incite bad behavior, need to be cleaned out entirely because of the risk of people seeking inspiration/validation from their religious beliefs, especially validation from the nature of the God at the core of religion, the ultimate ideal and authority of humanity.
Extremist violence associated with all three religions is not due to some aberrational misinterpretation of fringe features of the religious belief systems. It is based on the core beliefs/themes of all three religions. Notably, beliefs/themes that define the deities of the religions.
I would again affirm what the military guy said after the ISIS eruption of violence in Syria in 2014. If you want to prevent future eruptions of such bad behavior, then go after the core ideas in the traditions that incite and validate such violence and other pathology.
What is being advocated here is simply what we have learned to do in all areas of life- i.e. discern between the good and the bad, between the chaff and the wheat, and then toss out the bad stuff. That is what Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy urged when they argued for making a clear distinction between the “diamonds/pearls” of Jesus and the Christ mythology of Paul.
While I applaud all religious reformism, too much of it remains tinkering around the periphery and not getting to the real root of the problem… due to fear of committing “blasphemy, heresy”? Well, then its helpful to recognize the “benefits of blasphemy”.
See for example, “Blasphemy has set us free”, Robert Fulford, National Post, Feb. 18, 2006.
https://robertfulford.com/2006-02-18-blasphemy.html
Also…
https://www.cato.org/policy-report/may/june-2021/terror-tyranny-blasphemy-laws
Back to this Peterson/Morgan conversation over Islam and Christianity…
To hone my point below- Note that the nature/character of the deity is the ultimate ideal and authority of these Western religions. That reality holds the most potential to incite and validate harm if not fully humane (see the statements of Harold Ellens below).
All three Western religions share a common set of ideas/beliefs that have descended down from the Persian Zoroaster and his religion. Zoroaster has been recognized for assembling the previously scattered themes of primitive mythologies into a formal religion.
Hence, all three Western religions share the same basic views on the nature and character of deity, all embracing the same basic themes that have been passed down from Zoroaster to Judaism to Christianity and then to Islam.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20170406-this-obscure-religion-shaped-the-west
Some commentators focus on the cosmic dualism myth as the main influence on the West. The Zoroastrian myth of cosmic dualism states that there is a great battle between good and evil, with the obligation of people to join the true religion in opposition to false religions, to side with the true God against “satanic” other deities and their religions.
True believers are obligated to convert or dominate unbelievers, and also to embrace the punitive destruction of unbelievers to their particular religion, whether by temporal destruction or belief in eternal destruction.
Other scholars state that the theme of Zoroastrian apocalypse by fire was also a notable influence in shaping Western religious thought.
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803133541558
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv1b9f5v8
Joseph Azzi, and others, offer some stunning information on the influence of Jewish Christianity (i.e. Ebionism) on Islam- “The Priest and Prophet: The Christian Priest, Waraqa Ibn Nawfal’s, Profound Influence Upon Muhammad, The Prophet of Islam”.
Background:
Ebionism was an early Jewish-Christian sect, similar to the Nazarenes, that emerged within the Jewish movement between 30-80 CE. Ebionites were known as the “poor ones” who zealously followed the Jewish law (Torah). They opposed the priests in Jerusalem and the sacrifice industry, as Jesus did. They rejected the doctrine of the virgin birth of Jesus and the divinity of Jesus (i.e. rejecting Christian Trinity myths), viewing Jesus as a great teacher/prophet, but only human.
A source on this:
https://jamestabor.com/ebionites-nazarenes-tracking-the-original-followers-of-jesus/
The Ebionites were eventually persecuted by Paul’s branch of Christianity as a heretical movement and consequently their sect was scattered abroad, with some Ebionites migrating to the Arabian Peninsula and Mecca, where centuries later their Ebionite religion had a significant influence on Muhammad and his authorship of the Quran.
(Historians note that there is much diversity within all the early sects of Jewish Christianity, including within Ebionism.)
The influence of Jewish Christianity on Muhammad was mediated through the ministry of the Ebionite priest Waraqa. Islamic theologians/scholars suggest, defensively, that the influence of Waraqa was more of post-validation of Muhammad’s visions and insights. However, the evidence suggests that Waraqa’s influence was more of preceding and shaping Muhammad’s thought and writing.
Quotes from Joseph Azzi’s book:
“Waraqa… was an Ebionite Christian priest who lived in Mecca at the same time as Muhammad … and was related to Muhammad by marriage… he was the cousin of Muhammad’s first wife Khadija… Muhammad learned Jewish Christianity from Waraqa before he had his first revelations…”
While some Islamic theologians/scholars reject the influence of Waraqa on Muhammad, Azzi urges, “The preeminent contributions of Waraqa should not be rejected… the spiritual impact he had on the future Arab Prophet” was significant.
Azzi notes the development of the Ebionite religion of Waraqa and the fact that Waraqa translated the Gospel of the Hebrews into Arabic. That gospel is an earlier version of the Gospel of Matthew.
Azzi says that the Quran recognizes the Gospel to the Hebrews- “There is widespread agreement between it and the Quran in matters such as duties, prayers and resurrection… the Quran recalls parables similar to those found in the Ebionite Gospel” (p.12).
Azzi then details the increasing involvement of Waraqa with Muhammad and his visions. Waraqa provides theological and spiritual insights to Muhammad from the gospels that he had translated, notably the gospel of the Hebrews and Matthew. Azzi adds the detail that after Waraqa died, Muhammad’s visions ceased.
“Waraqa and Khadijah cooperate together to prepare Muhammad for his mission. This requires a continuous tutelage with a particular spiritual emphasis”, p.21.
Further on the influence of the gospels of the Hebrews and Matthew on Muhammad, “During the forty-four years when Muhammad and Waraqa are closely involved with each other, the book that the priest is translating from Hebrew to Arabic is faithfully studied” p.23.
He adds, “The Hebrew Gospel… will play a significant role in the transfer of… orthodox doctrines into Muslim beliefs and practices” p.43.
Azzi continues, noting that Muhammad admits that another messenger and book informed him about the “right way” and affirms “that the Quran is really an authentication of the Hebrew book”, p.47. Azzi then quotes specific verses from the Quran that state this.
The shared themes of Jewish Christianity and Islam include a strong monotheism, a rejection of the divinity of Jesus, a rejection of his redemptive death on the cross and resurrection, obedience and submission to the deity, and severe threats of hellfire for infidels. Muhammad also embraced Jewish practices such as circumcision (p.92), water purification rituals, and prohibitions on alcohol and pork.
Add to this the Islamic embrace of apocalyptic mythology and other eschatological beliefs such as an end-time judgment followed by severe punishment.
Azzi concludes, “The teachings of Waraqa… are thoroughly embedded in the Quran…”
The author of one article (i.e. “Waraqa’s Influence on Muhammad”) says that Muslims play down Waraqa’s influence because it undermines their preferred belief “that Muhammad had been taught the Quran by Allah”. But the similarities with Ebionite Christianity and its Gospel to the Hebrews are undeniable, hence, “we have a paradox of world-historical proportions… the fact that Jewish Christianity indeed disappeared within the Christian church but was preserved in Islam”.
https://counteringislamism.wordpress.com/waraka/
Moving back to Azzi again, “Waraqa’s… ministry includes his selection of… Muhammad to be his successor as the head of the (Ebionite) church, an offshoot of a Jewish-Christian sect…”, p. 135.
Some further evidence of Muhammad borrowing from Waraqa’s gospel to the Hebrews or Matthew:
“The Quran itself declares that much of its ethical standards were built on previous scriptural systems…” p.107.
Then Azzi notes the varied parables in the Quran that were borrowed from Matthew, such as the Sower and the Seeds, the parable of the Rich man and the beggar Lazarus, the parable of the wise man who builds his house on solid rock, the parable of the fruitful tree and the unfruitful tree, the parable of the mustard seed, the parable of the faithful servant and the evil servant, and the parable of the ten bridesmaids, p.107-111.
“The Quran does not hesitate to recognize that it has borrowed heavily from the earlier scriptures”.
This presents a problem for Islamic believers, to recognize that their scriptures are borrowed from previous religious systems and are not as “divinely inspired” as they have been taught. Christians face the same sobering realization that their scriptures and beliefs are descended from the primitive mythologies of ancient people. All subsequent religious traditions reshape details in what they borrow but the essential content and themes of borrowed material remains the same.
Joseph Campbell summarized this descent of narrative themes across history in stating that people have believed the same primitive myths all across history and across all the cultures of the world. Myths of original paradise, early human sin that ruins paradise, great flood myths, life being cursed and becoming worse, eventually declining toward collapse and apocalyptic ending as punishment for human sin, demand for sacrifice/payment, suffering as redemptive, demand to engage a righteous battle against evil enemies, and the promise of restored paradise for true believers.
Moving along, Wendell Krossa
I would add this to Azzi’s points that the Quran borrowed from the Gospel to the Hebrews or Matthew’s Gospel. Note that the Quran makes this distinctly similar and obviously borrowed point from Matthew’s gospel- i.e. people rejecting the messenger and message, are condemned for rejecting the God being presented, and therefore are damned to hell.
In Matthew 11 Jesus rails against the villages that rejected his miracles (i.e. rejected the messenger and his message):
“Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. ‘Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!… it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you…. You will go down to Hell (“cast into outer darkness… cast into the blazing furnace… where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth”)’”.
Then, affirming Azzi’s evidence of the Quran borrowing from the gospel to the Hebrews (Matthew’s gospel), the Quran repeatedly states that those who reject the prophet and his message, those who do not believe the message and the messenger, those who do not believe the Islamic God, are damned to hell.
The verses stating this in the Quran are too numerous and constant to list. But they are the very same statements as made in the gospels to the Hebrews and Matthew. An endless series of threats of the worst punishment imaginable- i.e. hellfire for refusing to believe the messenger, message, and God that is presented to them.
And yes, mixed among the threats in the Quran are scattered statements on divine mercy, kindness, etc. So also in the other Western religions- scattered “diamonds among d___”, to use Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy’s colorful language.
Also note that the Quran does not have the moderating influence of the “Q Wisdom Sayings” of Jesus that many Christians have learned to focus on, while they ignore the nastier stuff in their holy book. Many moderate Christians have learned to downplay the darker material in their scriptures, material that contradicts the central themes and message of Historical Jesus.
In all his borrowings from Jewish Christianity, the biggest blunder of Muhammad was to not include the powerful moderating influence of the actual message of Jesus. But Paul’s blunder was, arguably, far worse. Paul took the Palestinian wisdom sage Jesus who had protested the sacrifice industry, and died for that protest, and turned his protest against sacrifice into the Christ myth of a godman who came as the supreme sacrifice for all sin. A distortion and fraud of such scale/degree that it is hard to comprehend how it has survived to this day as truth in the minds of billions of people.
Bob Brinsmead on the anti-sacrifice message and ministry of Historical Jesus:
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/
The guiding ideals/principles of Historical Jesus (i.e. his central teaching that, even while almost buried in the larger New Testament context, has continued to exert a potent moderating influence against the worst beliefs and impulses of the Christian tradition.):
Dominant themes in the message of Jesus :
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.
“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.
(Note: The moderating or humanizing influence of the above Jesus message is evident in the very content- i.e. what is said.)
Example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31.
The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, punishment, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and loving the wasteful son.
The above statement and illustration by Jesus, overturns the highly conditional Christian religion and Paul’s Christ mythology. Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament, preached a retaliatory God who demanded full payment and punishment of all sin in a blood sacrifice of atonement before he would forgive, accept, and ultimately love anyone.
Weaving back to my larger point of these three Western religions…
The evidence from across history, on all three religions, affirms Harold Ellen’s point that the very same “cruel God” mythology in all three religions deforms human personality with fear, anxiety, shame guilt, despair and depression, nihilism, and violence (see “Cruel God, Kind God” by Zenon Lotufo).
Lotufo quoting Ellens:
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God… 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’”.
As Bob Brinsmead says, “We become just like the God that we believe in”.
Further, Jordan Peterson in his defense of Christianity as better than Islam, argues that Islam was spread by the sword. Well, balance that with the evidence that Christianity was also spread by the sword under Constantine, and in places like Latin America.
https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/interview-converting-by-the-sword
https://brooklynrail.org/2008/04/express/the-church-and-its-sins-constantines-sword/
http://www.belovedspear.org/2014/03/constantines-sword.html
All three Western religions are more similar on fundamental and dominant themes/beliefs than they are different in other areas. This raises the question of why there is such enmity and hatred between members of these religions when they share basic common beliefs?
Notably, they all share the same “core problem”, their inheritance of Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism that validates the human tribalism of a good religion set in obligatory conflict with evil enemies who differ (among the many other tribal dualisms that people construct to separate themselves from differing others in relationships of enmity, hatred, and outright war- i.e. dualisms based on race/ethnicity, nationality, ideology, etc.).
Add the Western religious theologies of the divine ideal of domination/submission relating, and justice as punitive destruction, both temporal and eternal. These core ideals/beliefs shape the very nature of the deity of Western religions, deity as the long-standing ultimate ideal and authority of humanity.
It’s not about a competition for which religion is “better or worse”. All three share the same heritage of bad ideas and all fail by embracing and promoting the same theology of a violent, vengeful God as the cohering center of their complexes of primitive myths. And all have histories of true believers finding validation for bad behavior based on the nature of their deity (using the “behavior validated by belief” relationship).
All three religions have major flaws, so stop the comparative arguments and the defense and blaming the other as worse, when all three share the same common fundamental beliefs. I am reminded here also of Dominic Crossan’s point (Jesus Seminar) that it is unethical to state that another person’s belief is “demonic” in contrast with your belief in the very same thing. He was referring to early Christians claiming that the Roman belief in virgin birth was demonic (i.e. Emperors/Caesars born of virgins) compared to the Christian belief in the very same thing.
Adherents of all three Western religions need to engage the Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy approach of discerning the “diamonds from the dung” in the mix of their beliefs and practices, harsh as that lands on true believer ears. That is the fundamental responsibility of everyone of us- i.e. to discern bad from good in all areas of life.
The project of distinguishing good from bad requires that true believers cease the blind denial of bad elements in the mix of their belief systems and cease defending their entire traditions without exercising responsible re-evaluation of the nasty features in the mix. Recognize what is valuable in your tradition, what affirms authentic humaneness, but then also acknowledge what in your belief system incites and validates the worst of human impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
And most critical to any thorough reformism project- Go to the core of belief systems, the “cohering center” that is the ultimate ideal and authority of deity. We all become just like the God that we believe in. If our God is tribal then so also we will become tribal in our thinking, feeling, motivations, and behavior. And if our God dominates others as iconic “Lord/King” then so we will find validation for the same domination of others. And if our God solves problems with punitive violence then so may we resort to the same inhumane treatment of failing others.
The same prominent themes frame the narratives in the holy books of all three Western religions.
Where to next, then?
Go directly to the “Mother of all roots of a problem, the most influential of contributing root factors.” Replace the core of religious theology- i.e. God theory- with the central Jesus insight on God as universal, unconditional love. His “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God”. A theology that rejected Zoroastrian cosmic dualism and tribal opposition between differing groups of people, meaning the rejection of favoring and only including true believers while excluding unbelievers. A God defined by the “greatness of serving others, not lording over others”. A God who did not engage the punitive destruction of “eye for eye” retaliatory justice as in apocalypse and hell myths.
Then end the struggle for your religion to dominate in society over others that you believe fundamentally differ in adverse/detrimental ways, but actually do not differ in terms of basic beliefs and practices.
Then take the “diamond features” out of religious systems (out of the deforming influence of religious context) and frame them as common features of the human spirit- i.e. the diamonds of common forgiveness, mercy, kindness, love, generosity, and other common human features that are practiced by religious people and atheists alike. The common goodness of the common human spirit.
Or if you choose to remain in a religious tradition, understand that what is good in your system is not due to some mysterious influence from your religion. It is due to the human spirit that exhibits goodness in all sorts of contexts, despite surrounding influences that may undermine or deform the common impulse to good.
Now to the most critical reform of all…
The central breakthrough insight of Historical Jesus, that God was an unconditional reality, is entirely contrary to the conditional beliefs and practices of religious traditions. Or to phrase it negatively as James Robinson did- “Jesus’ stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God… His greatest contribution to the history of human ideas”. I use “unconditional” which is a more encompassing term and includes the feature of “non-retaliatory”.
No conditional religion ever has, or can ever, communicate that liberating unconditional deity to humanity. Unconditional deity is contrary to any and all conditional religion. I don’t know how to state that any more clearly.
The no conditions love of God, as the ultimate human ideal, will remove the central validation used by people across history for bad behavior. God as no conditions love will leave people on their own if they choose to act badly in terms of exhibiting tribalism, domination, or punitive destruction of others. There is no such God of tribalism, domination, or punitive destruction. There never has been any such reality. It was always the construction of similarly structured primitive minds seeking to dominate and control their fellow tribe members with myths of such monstrous deities.
Unconditional deity will also spell the collapse of religious traditions as institutions mediating religious conditions to humanity through controlling religious authorities. Unconditional means “Absolutely no conditions. None”.
Add here, to further combat the human versions of tribalism that find validation in Zoroastrian cosmic dualism, the understanding of fundamental human oneness that is backed by the “Mitochondrial Eve” theory of human origins (i.e. all humans on Earth today are the descendants of a common African mother). Buttress this with quantum entanglement that affirms the fundamental oneness of all reality. And the insights of all-encompassing oneness as revealed in the Near-Death Experiences. In light of these insights, see through or past the divisiveness that religious traditions have long promoted among people.
The unconditional love taught by Historical Jesus is best expressed via Classic Liberalism with its protection of the rights and freedoms of all individual, equally. Rights as enumerated in the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights”, rights as stated in constitutions such as the US Constitution, rights and freedoms as protected by common law systems, and rights and freedoms as protected and promoted by representative institutions staffed with people who truly understand their agencies exist to serve citizens.
And so much more.
The Jesus message is a call to die to the old, and find rebirth in the new, much like the shaman’s experience of complete disintegration and then reintegration around something radically new (my paraphrase of that experience). I would frame the elements of rebirth and re-integration as taking place around insights like the stunning new theology of Jesus. It is a call to embrace a new life of truly human existence framed by the ideal of no conditions love for all. Something like the generosity of spirit and universalism that Nelson Mandela wrestled with and exhibited as a great example for us to follow.
And the Jesus insights function well in any human situation, because they are not religious insights and practices. He was not a religious man and did not intend to start another religion. That adds to the offensive deformity of the man in a world religion.
On the common Muslim hesitancy to recognize the actual origins of Islam in Jewish Christianity. The same hesitancy is felt among Christians, Wendell Krossa
As Christians (myself “former”, I left in late 70s) we were told that our beliefs/ideas came directly from God. They were given to special people (i.e. Paul’s heavenly visions) through divine inspiration with no mistakes. The biblical scriptures, written by the varied specially inspired people (i.e. gospel authors and others), was the authoritative “word of God” to be received, submitted to, and obeyed under threat of eternal damnation. You were never to doubt or question the holy book of our religion as that was sin of the highest order, and “deception by the devil” to boot.
It can be initially disconcerting, but later liberating, to discover that the beliefs that you had embraced are the very same as the beliefs of primitive peoples long before your religion embraced them. The beliefs of all our main world religions are adopted and adapted from the mythologies and religions of primitive people long before our religions were constructed by our founders. Our religions borrowed the same ideas created by others long before, adjusting bits here and there but keeping the main themes intact.
Hence, as Joseph Campbell has said, all people across history have believed the same primitive myths and across all the cultures of the world. Myths of creation, fall, original sin, flood, decline of life toward ending in apocalypse, demand for sacrifice/payment, demand for purging of evil in war of good against evil threat, promise of future paradise. (Sources- Books by Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, and many others on ancient mythologies.)
And note that in Christianity we have the “Christ-ianity” of Paul, not the true “Jesus-ianity” of the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel that is the closest that we get to what Jesus actually taught.
Within Christianity and its bible, there is a profound and irreconcilable contradiction between the message of Jesus and the religion of Paul. Christianity has merged two entirely opposite messages thus creating the epitome of an oxymoronic combination of things, that has resulted in cognitive dissonance unheard of anywhere before in history.
Here again is my complex of basic themes that have influenced all the great religions and still dominate both religious and secular systems of belief, Wendell Krossa
“The apocalyptic millennial complex is better understood when fleshed out as 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. That 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. To make things right again.
“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 nature is greedy, consuming humans in industrial civilization (“humanity as ‘virus, cancer’ on the Earth”). And even more specifically today, 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 and pure nature (i.e. Earth as goddess), the ancients added the ongoing threat that (3) life was declining toward apocalyptic ending. And to even further re-enforce alarm, apocalyptic prophets repeatedly set “always imminent” dates to raise hysteria levels and validate the use of desperate measures (elites using state coercion) to “save” the world that is always threatened by the looming apocalypse.
“But also, the apocalyptic alarmists introduced “hope” into the mix, the perverse version of hope that was built on the violent destruction of enemies. And they create 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 some sacrifice/payment. Today’s sacrifice- “de-growth, de-development”, as a return to primitivism as in a return to the more pure and strong existence of “noble savage” life as hunter-gathers with no ecological footprint. Add to this sacrifice/payment element, the redistribution programs pushed in the endless annual climate COPs.
“Couch this madness in a deformed version of the hero’s quest where those identifying as true heroes will engage a righteous tribal battle to conquer and (5) violently purge a purported monster/enemy framed as demonized fellow humans.
“And when the enemy is fully purged/exterminated, then (6) salvation is attained in a renewed communal paradise.
“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 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. That “monster God” is the central issue to deal with in apocalyptic millennial complexes of myths. This psycho-pathological vision of deity has dominated mythologies and religions across history and has now been transformed into 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.”
Excellent analysis of our societies and what went wrong….
Leftist elites, desperate to hold onto their power and policies even as they destroy Western societies, are framing the current populist pushback against their authoritarian domination as “far right, extremist right, etc.”. No, it is populist common sense revolting against totalitarianism lunacy. It is “Populism is democracy” as framed by Winston Marshall.
“Across the West, arrogant woke leaders like Trudeau are in retreat: The poor quality, high expense, and arrogant bossiness of these governments is finally taking its toll”, J. D. Tuccille, National Post, Jan.10, 2025
Tuccille starts commenting that “CNN’s Fareed Zakaria noted over the weekend that progressive politicians are in retreat throughout the West.” Zakaria adds that in the recent US election, Americans repudiated the “arrogance and authoritarianism of the left”.
Zakaria continues that, “The crisis of democratic government then, is actually a crisis of progressive government. People seem to feel that they have been taxed, regulated, bossed around and intimidated by left-of-center politicians for decades — but the results are bad and have been getting worse.”
The results are evident in the high tax burdens of Progressive states with worse outcomes than non-Progressive states. Tuccille notes that Zakaria emphasizes that “the arrogant bossiness of the left also alienates voters.”
Then Tuccille comments on “Jonathan Chait, a center-left writer who has been critical of cancel culture, censorship, and the general intolerance of the left” who predicts that the illiberal authoritarianism of the left is now ending with strong pushback from citizenry.
Tuccille moves on to also credit the Covid pandemic for helping to end leftist authoritarianism because it was in mostly leftist Progressive areas of the Western world where the lockdowns were most strict and elite recriminations against dissent were most severe.
Under Covid “the political left enhanced its political power through “authoritarian means: censorship, repression, and public shaming… the left — intruded into people’s lives with lockdowns and censored dissenting views in the name of suppressing “disinformation”, (Muriel Blaive).
The populist pushback against this leftist authoritarianism will be felt next in Canada, says Tuccille, where Trudeau is on his way out: “Trudeau may think of himself as a liberal, and that might even be the name of his party, but his government actually epitomizes illiberal progressivism,” (Bari Weiss of The Free Press).
The leftist regimes in Western democracies have ignored constitutional limits and denied citizens their basic rights. That has rendered democracy and liberty “an empty shell”.
Tuccille rightly concludes that it is critical that new governments restore respect for personal liberty and restrain state power.
I would add that the restoration and promotion of Classic Liberalism will do that, by protecting the freedoms and rights of all individuals, equally, through Classic Liberal principles, systems of common law, and truly representative state institutions that actually function to serve the people.
And this… As RFK has said, the party that once stood for freedom of speech is now the party of censorship.
“Zuckerberg tells Rogan that the Biden Admin would ‘scream’ and ‘curse’ at this employees, demanding censorship: Zuckerberg joked that the consequences of the political establishment pushing for censorship is that they ‘lost the election’”, Alexander Hall, Fox News, Jan. 10, 2025.
This from Hall, “Meta CEO founder Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan that members of President Biden’s administration yelled at his employees, demanding they take down content on their behalf.
“Meta announced Tuesday that it would be ending its controversial fact-checking practices and lifting restrictions on speech to “restore free expression” across Facebook, Instagram and Meta platforms, admitting its current content moderation practices have “gone too far.” Zuckerberg spoke about the platform’s struggles to maintain freedom of expression while fending off pressure from the Biden administration amid the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Hall continues, quoting Zuckerberg as saying, “During the Biden administration, when they were trying to roll out the vaccine program,” the social media CEO said, “while they were trying to push that program they also tried to censor anyone who is basically arguing against it. And they pushed us super hard to take down things that were honestly, were true.”…
He adds, “”Who is ‘they’?” Rogan asked. “Who was telling you to take down things that talk about vaccine side effects?”
“”It was people in the Biden administration,” the Meta CEO said.”
Hall says further, “He then spoke further about the “government censorship,” with Zuckerberg saying, “I mean basically these people from the Biden administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse, and it’s like… these documents are, it’s all kind of out there.”…
Hall ends, concluding: “Podcaster Joe Rogan asked Zuckerberg whether there have been any repercussions to those who demanded censorship of Americans. Zuckerberg joked that those who did lost the 2024 presidential election.”
Joe Rogan episode 2255 on YouTube or Spotify, interview of Mark Zuckerberg
In the first couple of minutes Mark Zuckerberg explains that the censorship movement began about 10 years ago when Trump was elected, and Brexit happened. And then Covid occurred and that is when “content moderation”, that had formerly dealt with actual harmful content (i.e. online bullying), then became more “ideologically driven”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k1ehaE0bdU
Zuckerberg admits that he gave too much deference to people in the media saying that Trump could not have gotten elected without help from the Russians. He initially viewed the media and others as acting in good faith. But it bothered him to be in the position of “decider of truth in the world”. They, at Facebook, had put in place a system to deal with “disinformation” and “extreme hoaxes”, but it veered off as the fact-checkers shifted to political fact-checking and the fact-checking was just too biased.
The societal shift back to rediscovering common sense, Wendell Krossa
In this link below Dave Rubin and guests comment on the shift now of many former US liberals to the right. They frame this as people coming to the “right” side, moving to the conservative side, but they note that some of these shifting liberals/Democrats are not wanting to fully embrace truly conservative positions. I find that a bit clouding/obfuscating of what is happening and what should happen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=202mI7qLY9s
The shift back to common sense after the last decade of Woke Progressive extremism is not about becoming conservative. I would clarify more that its about all of us rediscovering and re-enforcing the Classic Liberalism that was bequeathed to us from England over the last few centuries. Classic Liberalism as in the principles, systems of common law, and representative institutions that protect the freedoms and rights of all, equally. That is not something “conservative” or “liberal” as these terms have defined the differing sides of our Western societies over past decades.
Maybe somewhat “Libertarian-ish” but more its own unique reality and to be understood as such. Its own uniquely liberating approach to organizing societies.
Here is a reposting of the basic principles of a humane society, as Classic Liberal: Wendell Krossa
What do I mean when I refer to “Classic Liberalism”?
And as people talk about creating a “safe AI”, why not ensure that safety of AI by programing it with Classic Liberal principles?
Anyway…
Basic principles, systems, institutions of Classic Liberalism, liberal democracy, or Western liberalism.
Daniel Hannan in his Introduction to “Inventing Freedom” provides the following lists and descriptions of the basic features of a truly liberal society or civilization:
“A belief in property rights, personal liberty, and representative government…
“Three irreducible elements. First, the rule of law…Those rules exist on a higher plane and are interpreted by independent magistrates…
“Second, personal liberty: freedom to say what you like, to assemble in any configuration you choose with your fellow citizens, to buy and sell without hindrance, to dispose as you wish with your assets, to work for whom you please, and conversely, to hire and fire as you will…
“Third, representative government. Laws should not be passed, nor taxes levied, except by elected legislators who are answerable to the rest of us… the rule of law, democratic government, and individual liberty…
“The idea that the individual should be as free as possible from state coercion… elevate the individual over the state…
“Elected parliaments, habeas corpus (see below), free contract, equality before the law, open markets, an unrestricted press, the right to proselytize for any religion, jury trials…
“The idea that the government ought to be subject to the law, not the other way around. The rule of law created security of property and contract…
“Individualism, the rule of law, honoring contracts and covenants, and the elevation of freedom to the first rank of political and cultural values…
And this full summary:
“Lawmakers should be directly accountable through the ballot box; the executive should be controlled by the legislature; taxes should not be levied nor laws passed without popular consent; the individual should be free from arbitrary punishment or confiscation; decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the people they affected; power should be dispersed; no one, not even the head of state, should be above the law; property rights should be secure; disputes should be arbitrated by independent magistrates; freedom of speech, religion, and assembly should be guaranteed”.
Hannan’s book is invaluable for tracing the historical emergence and development of Western freedom down through the English tradition, from pre-Magna Carta to the present.
Definition of habeas corpus (varied online definitions):
“A habeas corpus application is used by persons who feel they are being wrongfully detained. Upon application, the individual is brought before a judge who will determine whether the detainment is lawful.”
“A writ requiring a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court, especially to secure the person’s release unless lawful grounds are shown for their detention.”
“The literal meaning of habeas corpus is “you should have the body”—that is, the judge or court should (and must) have any person who is being detained brought forward so that the legality of that person’s detention can be assessed. In United States law, ‘habeas corpus ad subjiciendum’ (the full name of what habeas corpus typically refers to) is also called “the Great Writ,” and it is not about a person’s guilt or innocence, but about whether custody of that person is lawful under the U.S. Constitution. Common grounds for relief under habeas corpus— “relief” in this case being a release from custody—include a conviction based on illegally obtained evidence; a denial of effective assistance of counsel; or a conviction by a jury that was improperly selected and impaneled.” (Miriam Webster)
One of the best at defining and articulating Classic Liberal ideals and principles, notably in the US version- Full interview of Vivek Ramaswamy on Lex Fridman podcast. Vivek for president. Note how Vivek frankly acknowledges and responds to deformities of Classic Liberalism on the right side of US society.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Qk_3a3lUw
Who knew that advocacy for mercy could spark such intense outrage and even violence, Wendel Krossa
Intro- How mercy, forgiveness, generously inclusive love incite rage in some people, notably in those dogmatically committed to retaliatory vengeance. The outrage intensifies when humanizing features are projected onto ultimate ideals and authorities like deity, thereby denying divine validation for those committed to retaliatory vengeance.
Moving right into my point….
The Luke 4 account of Jesus teaching in a synagogue illustrates how advocacy for mercy toward the “undeserving”, toward enemies and outsiders to one’s religion or ideology, incites murderous rage in people. That incident is where Jesus refused to affirm the theology of a retaliatory God to his audience, and instead, after reading the opening of Isaiah 61, he ended his message on the note of merciful deity- i.e. “The Lord’s favor”, neglecting the conclusion- “the day of vengeance of our God”. That omission enraged his audience, and they immediately tried to kill him by throwing him off a cliff.
He made his reading even more offensive by further illustrating it with God’s mercy toward an outsider to the Jewish religion. A “last straw” kind of poke at the zealous Jews that he was preaching to.
Note that the Luke 4 incident is where Jesus initiated his public teaching ministry. It was as though he was testing the water to evaluate audience reaction to this central theme of unconditionally merciful deity that would be further elaborated in his general message as recorded in Matthew 5-7 and Luke 6. In those collections of wisdom sayings he more fully sets forth his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson), his theory of a universal, unconditional deity.
If Jesus had not realized it before, a few pokes at the bear would have quickly awakened him to how his message angered zealous true believers in retributory justice, inciting ferocious outrage. He then further illustrated his experience of that outrage with the story of the Prodigal older brother who was pissed at his Father’s forgiveness and generous welcome of the underserving rascal brother. Also, he told the story of the all-day vineyard workers who were pissed at the owner’s generosity toward the underserving late-comers. The reactions of these other characters in the parables may be the main point of such parables.
Universal, unconditional love toward undeserving, failing fellow humans, toward offenders and enemies, incites the worst of emotions in some people.
What is this impulse in us to become enraged by mercy toward human failure, to resist and fight the inclusion of enemies, to vilify human generosity toward all, to outright reject forgiveness and the expression of other humane values and practices? We see this expressed today, for example, in media, i.e. in the screaming rage of some at others for “normalizing” enemies by simply expressing common courtesy toward them.
What is this urge to take the harshest retaliatory response toward differing and failing others? And in extreme cases to advocate and engage punitive destruction of “enemies” and even celebrate that?
Again, for balance, note the qualifiers on the commonsense responsibility of justice systems to protect the innocent from violent offenders, the responsibility to incarcerate violent people in order to protect others, as the fundamental obligation of any government. This does not lessen the concurrent responsibility, a fundamental human obligation, to treat offenders humanely, as per restorative justice approaches.
Tolstoy in “Resurrection”:
“The whole trouble lies in that people think there are conditions/circumstances in which one may deal with human beings without love, and there are no such conditions/circumstances… One may deal with things without love…. (But) you cannot deal with men without it… It cannot be otherwise, because natural love is the fundamental law of human life.”
Love, and holding one another responsible for behavior, are not in conflict.
Moving along….
Critical to note in what Jesus says in the summary below of his main teaching points, is how he framed his message as “Do this and you will be just like God”. His teaching illustrates the common pattern of a “behavior that is based on similar belief”. Meaning that if you love unconditionally according to the series of Luke and Matthew precepts, then you will be like God who similarly loves unconditionally. Luke’s version of this sermon summarizes the entire message best- “Be merciful just as your God is merciful”. Or to summarize Matthew’s version of the very same material- “Love your enemy because God does”.
The varied elements in the Jesus message all point to unconditional mercy, unconditional love. Behavior that exhibits what God is like.
In the Matthew 5 and Luke 6 summaries of the teaching of Historical Jesus we have the stunning new theology of an unconditional God, a theological revelation never before presented to humanity by any mythology or religion. This stunning new understanding of God overturns entirely the highly conditional deities of all religious systems and their associated religious conditions.
The revolution in thought here is unequaled in history. It points to a transformation of consciousness that is infinitely beyond other approaches to religious reformism, especially reformism projects of the type that tinker at the periphery of religion and do not deal with the cohering center of the religious systems- i.e. the deity that hold the entire systems together.
The earliest religious theologies were formulated by the original priestly elites in those caves some 30,000 years ago (John Pfeifer in “Explosion”), and more likely the original features of theology were formed long before as the origin of sacrifice is far more ancient than the cave art. Since that prehistory origin of theology (i.e. ultimate ideal and authority), gods have been tribal, dominating, and threatening realities. They have been deformities of true humanity/humaneness. “Monsters”, according to psychologists like Harold Ellens.
Those primitive deity beliefs of the prehistory era then initiated what became an unbroken line of descent with the main features of all subsequent theologies/gods not varying much from the original archetypes.
Then a Palestinian wisdom sage emerges two millennia ago to state- No. There is no such God. There never has been any such reality. To the contrary, God is universal, no conditions love. Even nature tells us that, he claimed. How so? Well, sun and rain are given generously to all alike, equally. To both good and bad people.
His point- The monstrous pathology that we have inherited in our great religious traditions- i.e. tribal deity favoring true believers, damning unbelievers, a “King/Lord” that dominates humanity and threatens punitive destruction- that deity has never existed. There has only and always been no conditions love at the core of reality.
Jesus was the first in history to offer a stunning alternative to the horrific deity monsters that have dominated religions across history. And his fellow villagers tried to kill him for what he taught. It was just too scandalously offensive for them to even consider. Blasphemous.
He began his teaching ministry with an omission approach, by purposefully neglecting to affirm retaliatory vengeance in God. This would prepare the way for his later more direct statements that people should love their enemies because God loved God’s enemies.
It was clear to his audience what he had done in that Luke 4 first public foray into teaching. That was highly offensive to many who heard him, and he would illustrate that offense later in his parables- i.e. how good, righteous people were outraged at the unconditional mercy that he taught.
But first, return to his initial teaching foray and note that when he initially confronted and challenged the deeply ingrained belief in justice as some form of retaliatory vengeance, and validated by a retaliatory, punishing God, his own countrymen tried to murder him.
He initiated his teaching ministry by intentionally rejecting the fundamental belief of fellow Jews that God affirmed and engaged retaliatory justice. Jesus was probing and preparing people for his eventual full complex of statements on unconditional theology in his main message as recorded in Matthew 5: 38-48, and Luke 6:27-36.
He began the preparatory teaching for his stunning new theology by reading a well-known passage in Isaiah 61 where he ended on “the year of the Lord’s favor”, purposefully excluding the next statement- “and the day of vengeance of our God.”
Here is the Isaiah 61 section that he read in the Luke 4 account:
“The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor… and…”
He left out the next completing statement of that passage- “the day of vengeance of our God.”
And then adding further insult to the already intolerable sense of offense arising in his audience, Jesus illustrated that unconditional favor of God with the incident of God healing an enemy of the Jews, a Syrian. That further affirmation of nontribal, unconditional mercy/love outraged his tribally-minded, vengeance-oriented fellow villagers beyond toleration. It enraged them to the point of murder. They hustled him out forcefully and tried to throw him off a cliff.
Apply this to ourselves- How do we feel that our offenders, the unbelievers to our religion, our enemies, should be treated by God? Would we join an angry crowd if someone in our religion, or ideological camp, challenged the deeply rooted idea of “proper justice” as punitive vengeance, and instead of retaliatory justice, they presented the stunningly opposite idea that God exhibited universally inclusive, unconditional mercy and love toward all?
Look at how Jesus further illustrated in his parables the outrage of many at mercy, forgiveness, and generous inclusion. Note the angry older son in the Prodigal parable, pissed at the unconditional mercy of his Father toward the wasteful brother (Luke 15). Look at the all-day vineyard workers pissed at the unconditional generosity of the vineyard owner (Matthew 20:1-16). Such unconditional mercy was not fair, it was not just, it was not righteous. It violated the proper order of things. It offended the deeply-rooted sense of “fairness” and “justice” as commonly understood and practised across history.
Humanity in general has been conditioned for millennia with the Zoroastrian cosmic dualism of a great Good God set in eternal warfare against an evil dark Force/Spirit and that fundamentally defines human dualisms and the human obligation to engage righteous wars against irredeemably evil “enemies” who must be violently purged from life. It undergirds human understanding of justice, in terms of the cosmic battle of good versus evil, with good understood as some form of harsh retaliatory vengeance.
The people in that first formal audience of Jesus were pissed at the mercy, inclusion, generosity, that he taught, that was exhibited toward, in their view, the undeserving. They fervently believed that their offenders/enemies deserved the very opposite- harsh punishment as proper justice.
Is that how we view proper justice? Then we most likely would join similar crowds trying to toss similar Jesuses off the cliffs.
(Insert: Again, while affirming that such merciful response is the free choice of people toward others in varied situations, I would not advocate this as a general policy for criminal justice that must, as primary responsibility, protect the innocent from violent assault. Violent offenders must be incarcerated to protect others as that is the fundamental role and obligation of any government. But certainly, the unconditional response taught by Jesus offers an ideal for a general attitude toward failing others, an attitude that tempers our application of justice toward offenders and enables us to maintain our own humanity in the face of evil by avoiding the pitfalls of retaliatory punishment that unleashes our impulses for harshly punitive response to the failures of others. An unconditional ideal orients us to more restorative approaches to justice and to more merciful treatment of our offenders.)
How do we get to this breakthrough insight of Jesus that God is an unconditional reality?
Begin with the general “Search for Historical Jesus” that recognized that he existed as a real person who taught some of the things that are recorded in the New Testament. However, the gospel writers added a lot more material that they claimed he taught but that contradicted his original teaching.
The “Jesus Seminar” is the third phase of the Search for Historical Jesus, and then, more specific to what the man taught, there is the research on the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel that is the closest that we get to what he actually taught.
In that material there is nothing of Paul’s Christ mythology, his re-affirmation of retaliatory, vengeful deity. Paul’s apocalyptic Christ re-enforced the mythology of ultimate vengeful punishment of human failure in the violent destruction of all life through apocalypse, to be followed by eternal violent destruction in hell. He epitomized justice as ultimate “eye for eye” vengeance.
Insert: Paul’s statement of his retaliatory deity- “Leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord”, Romans 12: 19.
Further, there is no claim by Jesus that he came as a Savior offering himself as a sacrifice to appease an angry God who demanded payment for sin and threatened apocalypse and hell.
The central point in the Q Wisdom Sayings gospel is that statement- “Love your enemy because God does”. Meaning that God is unconditional love. That is the sum and totality of theology that we need to know.
What the Palestinian wisdom sage actually taught was to love others, to love enemies. And that was validated by a God who loved unconditionally.
Added note: In his actual teaching there is nothing of establishing a new religion.
A reposting:
Guiding ideals/precepts of Historical Jesus (his central teaching):
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.
“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.
(Note: The moderating or humanizing influence of the above Jesus message is evident in the very content- i.e. what is said.)
Example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31.
The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, punishment, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and loving the wasteful son.
The above statement and illustration by Jesus, overturns the highly conditional Christian religion and Paul’s Christ mythology. Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament, preached a retaliatory God who demanded full payment and punishment of all sin in a blood sacrifice of atonement before he would forgive, accept, and ultimately love anyone.
Added note:
A significant feature in the theologies of all 3 Western religions is the attribute of “holiness” or purity in God. Christians then argue that God cannot be unconditionally loving because God’s holiness takes precedence over love. God as holy must punish all sin thoroughly. He cannot excuse any sin. The holiness advocates claim that sin offends God, it besmirches the honor of God and thereby enrages God, and that offense must be made right through violent retribution, retaliation toward sinners or retribution vented toward a substitute for sinners as in the Christ myth.
And early Christian theologians argued that only the sacrifice of a godman is sufficient to atone for all human sin. The violent bloody murder of an innocent to appease a wrathful holy deity. Note also that while Paul repeatedly stated the “wrath of God” in Romans, John in Revelation takes the intensity higher, declaring the Christ tramples out “the fury of the wrath of God”.
People believing such theology therefore cannot opt for unconditional mercy but must share the furious wrath of God at sinners in order to properly honor the holiness of God. Hence, that explains part of the reason for their outraged reaction to any suggestion of unconditional mercy, forgiveness, or inclusive generosity toward failing others. They nurse the felt need to uphold holiness and justice as necessary for rebalancing offended justice and making things right again, to properly honor a just and holy God.
That was Calvin’s justification for burning fellow Christian theologian, Servetus, at the stake. Other Geneva Christians had urged Calving to exercise “love your enemy”. But Calvin would have none of that mercy. He responded that he must honor and restore the glory of God, God’s holiness, by killing the “false prophet”. Over Servetus’s refusal to move an adjective three words over in a sentence.
But consider that this belief in offended divine honor, that demands harsh response and punishment, is no different than the primitive honor killings in varied societies, where, for example, young women experimenting with modern cultural trends are killed for violating the honor of their male family members. The men, feeling dishonored by the “sin” of the young women, demand that their male honor be restored by harsh punishment of the “sinners”, by violent murder.
This is all archetypal stuff long deeply embedded in human subconscious and considered “the untouchable sacred”. Stuff that many people resonate with and therefore refuse to reconsider out of fear of blasphemy and consignment to hellfire.
Elite finance expert? Or carny barker for a cult? Wendell Krossa
Mark Carney is elbowing others to become Liberal leader and replace Justin Trudeau.
Historian Richard Landes has noted that the Bolsheviks tried to masquerade their movement as “science and modernity”, but they were still just “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”.
See the full comment below on Mark Carney, WEF “soft socialist” and climate alarmist, seeking to bring his WEF-style climate crusade to Canada to reframe the Liberal party with his smoother elitist presentation, and thereby replace, but maintain, the destructive eco-zealotry of Justin Trudeau. Just another eco-cultist presenting as smooth operator. The very gimmick of the original Bolsheviks.
Yes, contemporary leftist Progressivism has wedded itself to the climate cult as noted by experts like Richard Lindzen and others.
Intro comments:
Carney is just another “carney barker” for the apocalyptic cult promoted by Trudeau, Al Gore, Joe Biden, and the host of other eco-zealots on the far-left Woke Progressive fringe. Woke Progressivism/neo-collectivism has, over past decades, developed a tight association with climate apocalypse insanity. This has to do with the modern neo-Marxist recognition that their front door approach of revolution to destroy capitalist civilization was not working because the capitalist system had improved the lives of workers. So they innovatively shifted to the back-door approach of infiltrating educational institutions to indoctrinate new generations of youth with socialism framed in the new skirts of Woke Progressivism.
They learned to smoothly wed their collectivist ideology to climate alarmism and specifically focus on CO2/fossil fuels as the great evil to purge and thereby more effectively destroy industrial civilization (CO2’s warming influence had reached public consciousness at that time).
Note that the basic tribal dualism in Woke Progressivism of victim/victimizer is just an update on the older collectivist “oppressed/oppressor” categories. And instead of private property ownership as the main identity marker of oppressors (yes, this is still in the mix), they added skin color as the identity marker for oppressed/oppressors.
Pay attention to the core themes of these leftist/climate apocalyptic crusades. Don’t be bamboozled by smooth-talking alarmists like Carney as they try to frame their positions as some form of science-backed common-sense normalcy and high-level elite economics. There is not a millimeter’s separation between Carney’s positions, despite his smooth presentation, and the “madness of crowds” lunacy that our societies have been subjected to over past decades, meaning the climate apocalypse crusade and its society-destroying decarbonization as salvation (i.e. “save the world” from the basic food of all life- CO2).
“Holy shitoli”, as my polite wife is fond of saying.
Just so as not to dillydally or lollygag around this, or mollycoddle it- There is no climate crisis. The best of atmospheric physicists (those guys at co2coalition.org, Wattsupwiththat.com, etc.) state clearly that the warming influence of CO2 is now “saturated” (i.e. the physics term) and hence any warming influence of CO2 won’t add much, if any more at all, to any possible further warming. So again, there is no “climate crisis”, as hysterically proclaimed in the primitive apocalyptic mythology that fuels the alarmist crusade to destroy Western civilization and its industrial base.
Meaning, as per my repeated conclusion stated here- There is no need to tax carbon or decarbonize our societies. None.
Note: More generally, my comment on Carney is about the cup of cold water that needs to be thrown in the face of many moderns to snap them out of the state of delusion they are in with regard to these cultic crusades driven by apocalyptic mythology. Too many moderns who identify as “secular, scientific, materialist, even atheist” still hold to the most primitive of inherited themes that have shaped mythologies/religions across history- i.e. myths of original paradise (better past, original golden age), then fallen people ruined paradise, life is now declining toward worse, toward ending in apocalypse.
Then follows the divine demand for salvation via sacrifice/payment/suffering (i.e. give up good life in civilization, embrace the “morally superior” low consumption primitivism of de-growth, de-development, decarbonization as in use less energy), and thereby appease angry Mother Earth/Planet.
The primitive Zoroastrian myth of cosmic dualism is also in the mix, where a Good God wars against an evil Force/Spirit and followers must therefore engage a righteous battle against evil enemies that must be purged from life, destroyed. And then true believers gain the promised salvation of restored paradise or utopian communalism.
These themes were first constructed by primitive minds in prehistory, then recorded in scattered form throughout early Sumerian/Akkadian/Babylonian written mythologies, and are also found in Egyptian mythology (i.e. “Return to Chaos, Destruction of Mankind”).
The basic complex of primitive themes was then embraced by Zoroaster to shape his more formal religion that subsequently influenced Western narratives and consciousness via the major Western religions. From there the basic complex of apocalyptic millennial themes was embraced by secular ideologies like Declinism and environmental alarmism. The entire mess of bad ideas is still primitive thought at its worst and moderns embracing such themes need the “cold water in the face” awakening to realize just what they actually believe- i.e. primitive religious extremism of the worst kind.
Carney included.
Mark Carney, another smooth-talking carney barker for a cult, Wendell Krossa
Carney represents his fellow Liberals all elbowing to replace Trudeau, just as he represents the larger tribe of the WEF elites and Woke Progressive decarbonization crusade worldwide. He is the latest replacement in the climate crisis crusade for far leftist Maurice Strong who helped author and originate this madness back in the late 80s/early 90s, along with James Hansen. Both taking up, whether fully aware or not, the 60s Marxist’s shift to anti-CO2 propaganda as a more effective approach to destroy Western industrial civilization. Marxists did that after failing to push their revolution through the front door of our liberal democracies.
Carney as leftist? Yes, he supports ESG, Occupy Wall Street, etc. as noted by Terence Corcoran and others in links below.
My point here? Smooth, intellectualized, elitist presentation does not change or hide the core of apocalyptic cult insanity that one is promoting.
I start with my conclusion from further below:
As posted often on this site, the finest climate scientists on the planet, the atmospheric physicists at “co2coalition.org”, have presented the clear evidence that the warming effect of CO2 is now “saturated” (a physics term) and much more atmospheric CO2 (e.g. doubling to 800 ppm) will contribute very little, if anything, to any further warming, if warming were to continue. Climate scientist Javier Vinos (“co2coalition.org”, “Wattsupwiththat.com”) says that we won’t know what will happen next with climate till the early 2030s as large-scale natural trends play out, trends influenced mainly by natural factors that overwhelm any CO2 influence on climate.
The above scientists add that there is no “climate crisis” and the mild 1.2 degree C warming over the past century has been beneficial to all life. So also, the increase in CO2, the basic food of plant life, has resulted in a massive 15% increase in green vegetation across the earth since 1980.
All to say, there is no scientific reason to tax carbon or ruinously decarbonize our societies.
Now on to the “carney barking” climate cultist Mark Carney.
Yes, I am stretching the meaning of “carnival barker” a bit to make a fit with Carney, cause nothing else out there quite rhymes the same, eh. I miss the “letter” in this but get the spirit of it.
Wikipedia: “A barker, often a carnival barker, is a person who attempts to attract patrons to entertainment events, such as a circus or funfair.”
I’ve included these comments on Carney to illustrate something larger- i.e. how cultic movements, extremist crusades, apocalyptic movements like Marxism, Climatism, etc. disguise their core nature with references to science, philosophy, modern ideology, etc. all to enhance appeal and acceptance by modern audiences. Despite the invested effort, they are primitive religious cults at core. Marx and Co were leading examples of this trick of cult cloaking, fairly successful in disguising their essential nature as extremist religious cults. Richard Landes and other historians/scholars have exposed this practice well.
Point- Don’t be bamboozled by the smooth-talking Mark Carney, an elitist who presents himself as a world financial wizard, among the world’s elite economic intellectuals, and the new savior for Canada. He comes clothed in global elitism, the highest educational status, experience at elite financial institutions, hobnobbing with the wealthy powerholders of elite institutions, and more.
But the reality he cannot deny, he is just another carny barker for an apocalyptic cult, the climate apocalypse cult. He is an eco-zealot of the very same commitment as Justin Trudeau and belongs to the very same apocalyptic cult. And indeed, he has mentored/guided Trudeau in embracing and implementing the destructive salvationism programs/policies of that crusade (i.e. decarbonization- “save the world” from CO2).
Behind the calmer exterior and measured style of expression, Carney is no different from the more ham-fisted alarmist Trudeau, just a smoother communicator than Trudeau. Carney has long been a central player in the worldwide climate apocalyptic crusade, a profoundly religious crusade no different from all apocalyptic millennial crusades preceding it. See the historians who have outlined the patterns, unfolding stages, and driving ideas/themes that identify such cultic crusades- i.e. Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline In Western History”, Richard Landes in “Heaven On Earth”, Arthur Mendel in “Vision and Violence”, David Redles in “Hitler’s Millennial Reich”, etc.
No matter that these apocalyptic prophets present themselves with the sophistication of wealthy elitism, they are, as historian Landes exposes below, “superstitious members of a salvationist apocalyptic millennial cult”. In the same category as the “barbarian theocracy cult” of the Bolsheviks who originally constructed the collectivist crusade that eventually birthed varied offspring down through history including today’s far-left Woke Progressivism and its DEI programs. The contemporary collectivist dualism of DEI “victims/victimizers” is a mildly reframed upgrade on Marxist classes of “oppressed/oppressors”. DEI adds the new twist of assignment to one or the other class by skin color. Also, add here DEI’s full-frontal embrace of collectivist “equity”.
Further, the ideology of Carney, presented with the face of the soft-socialism of Progressivism, is tightly associated with the climate crisis alarmism that has become central to the modern collectivist revolution. Climate alarmism was embraced by 60s/70s Marxists, when, recognizing their direct assault on capitalism was not working because worker’s lives had improved, they then shifted to their new approach to bringing down industrial capitalist civilization by attacking the fossil fuels that drove industrial civilization. This has been noted by atmospheric physicist and climate expert Richard Lindzen, among others.
Carney embraces the fundamentals of the same collectivist ideology that is promoted by those who more publicly identify as full-frontal socialist collectivists. Note in the links below- his embrace of the backdoor collectivist assault on business through ESG projects because it could not gain front door acceptance through normal democratic processes. Corcoran has also expressed Carney’s fanboy respect for Occupy Wall Street, etc.
Insert: Carney’s elitism reminds me of something that Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn noted in their latest “America This Week” where they commented on “oligarchy” as the concentrated power and rule by the elite few, and how George Bernard Shaw pushed back against such elitism. Carney is very much a member of the “intellectual oligarchy” that Shaw spoke of.
Transcript- America This Week, Jan. 17, 2025: “The Annotated Final Speech of Joe Biden: A historically peculiar presidency ends on an oddly half-assed note”, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn.
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-jan-6f1
Quotes on Biden’s last speech where he warned of the threat of “oligarchy”:
“Walter Kirn: They did. And I just came across a speech from a play Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw. One of the most, how could I put it, most progressive characters ever to exist in the 20th century. Both a witty and accomplished playwright, one of the early members of the Fabian Society, the British Socialist Club, a nonstop drummer for social justice and so on. And it’s interesting, he gives a speech to, I think, to Major Barbara, who’s a Salvation Army person in this play, which is a rousing speech against oligarchy. And it could have been Donald Trump who spoke these words.
“Listen to this, “I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man. I love the common people. I want to arm them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the literary man, the professor, the artist, and the politician who once in authority is the most disastrous, and tyrannical of all the fools rascals and imposters. I want a democratic power strong enough to force the intellectual oligarchy to use its genius for the general good or else perish.” For Shaw, the oligarchy even extended to what we’ve come to call the expert class or the technocracy, as it were. And so on that score too, he represented the pinnacle of oligarchic rules so far.
“Matt Taibbi: Absolutely. The whole direction of their (Biden and Co) pandemic policy was listened to the experts. And this was drummed into us repeatedly that ordinary people did not have-
“Walter Kirn: It’s the whole basis of the disinformation misinformation push is exactly what Shaw says, these disastrous, tyrannical fools and imposters do once in power, which is they leverage their so-called authority and expertise to oppress or push around common people. Who would think that Donald Trump and a Shavian heroine would be speaking the same language? And who would guess that somebody (Biden) an heir to 60 years or whatever of democratic politics would really sound like the consummate oligarch in old terms, as he decries that?”
Weaving back to my point…
Apocalyptic prophets, as good innovators, use ever-changing phrasing to update and reframe their core beliefs and policies but they never stray far from the same fundamental system of ideas, the driving themes of their alarmism crusades, and hence, they never escape the same horrific outcomes.
As with Niemietz’s point re socialism as “The Failed Idea That Never Dies”, so these apocalyptic crusades, cloaked with whatever garments of modernism and science, remain “profoundly religious”.
Richard Landes has stated in his “Heaven On Earth” that Western intellectuals have persistently resisted the recognition that their Marxist heroes, despite their appeals to science (i.e. “scientific Marxism, historical materialism, scientific progress, etc.”), and their appeals to modernity, were little more than fringe religious nut cases.
Similarly, global collectivist elites, like Carney and colleagues, employ ever-modernizing categories/phraseology, identity markers, and promoting programs/agencies, all to deny to themselves the reality of what they are promoting, to mask what is at core just another apocalyptic millennial movement as profoundly religious as all the others preceding it.
There may be an element of defensive self-denial in the mix because to admit to oneself that you are a fringe religious nut case would be too much of a blow to one’s view of oneself as a respected intellectual, a highly-educated and broadly-experienced member of the international elite class.
Landes peels away the cloaking layers, added by Western intellectuals, to reveal the true nature these movements, whether in their Marxist, Nazi, or environmentalist alarmism variants, all rooted in the same primitive themes, beliefs.
In his chapter on the Marxist variant of apocalyptic millennialism, Landes notes the fundamental religious beliefs and nature of the heroes of the original Marxist crusade that formalized collectivism for the modern era. I’ve noted before Arthur Herman’s longer-term history of collectivism descending from Plato, down through Hegel to Marx.
Speaking of Michael Bakunin, Landes says, “Few other thinkers reveal so clearly the deep connection between religious and secular apocalyptic thought, in particular the adoption of an active cataclysmic scenario in response to disappointment…
“Bakunin gave himself over to religious passions that slid easily into messianic grandeur, in which he saw himself as another Jesus…
“In this abandonment of (formal, charismatic) religion and the zealous adoption of a (new religious) revolutionary creed, we find the roots of secular apocalypse”, “Heaven On Earth”, p.322-23.
Regarding Lenin, Landes quotes Donald MacRae, “What has led Bolshevism in our time to dominate some 800 million human beings is the subtle alliance of what can be recognized as a modicum of scientific truth with a salvationist religion”, p.330.
Landes details how modern secular societies believe that they are “rejecting all forms of religious superstition… (but) rather than having abandoned millennial beliefs, ‘modern’ industrial society invented a new, secular variant”, p.339.
Then commenting more directly on the Bolsheviks, this by Landes again gives some sense of the real nature of the climate alarmism that Carney embraces. Climate alarmism is just another variant of the very same structure of apocalyptic millennial beliefs that shaped Marxism and Nazism.
Landes quotes on the Bolsheviks:
He again notes the resistance among historians and social scientists to admit that Marxism-Leninism is a religious movement. Western intellectuals prefer to think of Marxism as related to the French Revolution, viewed by leftists as a movement of reason and historical progress and hence, “any attempt to put this totalitarian system in the category of a closed and barbarian theocracy is very often vehemently refused….
“Everybody who dares take the Bolshevik world as a religious community is considered as a traitor betraying the humanitarian ideals of the modernity of the French Revolution… If you see it in this sense, say the proponents of the project of modernity, the distance between the old and the new modern world would shrink too much and the debts to the Christian tradition would become too heavy. Thus, when you treat the Bolsheviks as a millennial sect you… betray the project of modernity and treat the Bolsheviks, despite their very modern efforts to industrialize backward Russia, as a medieval sect of obscure believers”, P.347.
Drawing from the good research of these historians of apocalyptic millennialism, I emphasize the tight connection of leftism with climate alarmism to show Carney’s true nature.
Marxist apocalyptic religion aligns solidly with environmental alarmism in terms of beliefs/themes that drive such crusades. Carney is an exemplary spokesperson for this cult. In addition to embracing leftist Progressivism (the new collectivist front), he also embraces the religious cult of climate apocalyptic.
His eco-zealotry, expressed more subtly than Trudeau, ultimately commits him to faithfulness to his cult. And his poorly-concealed commitment to climate apocalypse, and decarbonization salvation, will eventually further destroy Canada despite his background and experience in elite banking circles. His larger belief system in the apocalyptic climate crusade will eventually overwhelm any practical cautions from common sense economics. We see that endlessly from otherwise intelligent people- how apocalyptic renders them “Chicken Little” hysterical and irrational, making fools of otherwise smart people. I mean, look at Stephen Hawking over the final two years of his life. Sheesh, eh.
I point these things out to expose what is really behind the public statements, arguments, and approach of elites like Carney. They may present as smooth, scientific, logical and reasonable, having common association with the “consensus” decarbonization ideology and programs of elites across the West.
And while Carney may initially soften and moderate his approach to win converts, ultimately his commitment to the apocalyptic climate narrative will emerge in his policies if he gains power.
So pay close attention to the core themes behind Carney’s public statements- i.e. his embrace and promotion of climate apocalyptic, a “madness of crowds” crusade like few before in history. Carney has been central to this crusade, one of the leading prophets of apocalyptic like Al Gore who more directly states that we are living through the book of the apocalypse of Revelation. And though Carney is a smoother talking cultist than Greta Thunberg- his “how dare you”, in essence, is every much as zealous as her less-concealed cultic fury. He is simply a more well-spoken theologian of the same cult.
Carney’s policies will have the same eventual destructive outcomes as Trudeau’s more clumsy Woke Progressive approach. These two have worked closely together, with Carney functioning as mentor to Trudeau just as Freeland has mentored and guided Trudeau with the same leftist environmentalism. The destructive outcomes are every much like the more primitive Xhosa slaughtering of their cattle slaughter in 1856-57 thereby destroying their livelihood. With Trudeau, Carney, and Freeland the damage from their cult operates at a larger scale and causes more widespread harm.
Always look past the public presentations of people to see what they hold as their core worldview, their core beliefs, and in the case of climate alarmism, the core themes of religious extremism based in apocalyptic mythology.
Comment that Carney is the same as Trudeau
Carney is now supported by climate extremist Stephen Guilbeault who would not support him if Carney did not affirm the same eco-zealotry as Trudeau…
“The curse for Carney of the ‘crazy carbon tax’ minister endorsement: There are legitimate concerns about Guilbeault’s influence on Carney’s policies on energy and growth”, John Ivison, Jan. 22, 2025
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/mark-carney-steven-guilbeault-endorsement
Quotes:
“Steven Guilbeault, the activist turned environment minister, who has made it his business to ensure Canada’s energy business is regulated to death.
“Guilbeault emerged from the cabinet retreat in Quebec this week to tell reporters that he is supporting Mark Carney in the forthcoming Liberal leadership contest.
“It was a gift to Poilievre… calling the environment minister “the biggest loon in the Liberal government.”
“Carney is seeking to pretend the Liberals have changed, he said, but he is just as radical as Justin Trudeau.
“The support of the “crazy carbon tax minister” is proof of that, Poilievre said. Guilbeault wants to ban road-building, nuclear power, shut down the forestry sector to save the caribou and is against hydro-electric dams.
“The Conservative leader suggested that Guilbeault would not support Carney unless the leadership candidate had privately committed to keeping the carbon tax.
“The two have a “carbon-tax compact,” Poilievre suggested, without evidence.
““Carney is just like Justin — don’t be fooled,” he concluded….
“Guilbeault has long opposed all fossil fuel development and endorsed the idea that Alberta’s crude should be landlocked.”
Others on Carney’s leftism and environmental apocalypse:
Here Terry Corcoran notes the twinning of Carney with Trudeau…
“Get ready Canada for ‘Justin Carney’: While he claims to be a Liberal ‘outsider,’ Mark Carney has been a backer of Justin Trudeau’s policies”, Terence Corcoran, Jan. 17, 2025
https://financialpost.com/opinion/terence-corcoran-get-ready-canada-for-justin-carney?tbref=hp
Corcoran opens with- “Mark Carney has been on the Canadian political leadership radar for more than a decade, bleeping away well before Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were elected in 2015…. Then he moved on to his guiding ideological theme, which is that if humans are allowed to pursue their own interests in a free-market economy, they will destroy life on Earth.
“Carney’s grand scheme to remake the Canadian and global economies, and impose a new moral structure on decision-making, was put forward through 570 pages of dense advocacy in his 2021 book, Value(s): Building a Better World for All. If he wins the Liberal party leadership race, Carney would certainly raise the political style and intellectual tone of Canadian politics, but in policy he’s really just another Justin.”
Corcoran adds regarding Carney’s progressivism, “His leftist sympathies were on display in 2011 when he said the anarcho Occupy Wall Street movement was “entirely constructive.””
Carney further embraced Greta Thunberg’s hysteria over climate and the “Net Zero Revolution”. Add here Carney’s embrace of ESG to achieve “divine coincidence.”
More on the real Mark Carney, the ‘carney barker’. Russ’s comment on Carney’s leftist elitism…
“It’s over for the Liberal celebrity candidate gimmick: Competent stars are chased out, and the incompetent ones aren’t of any use. What’s the point?”, Geoff Russ, Jan.17, 2025
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/geoff-russ-its-over-for-the-liberal-celebrity-candidate-gimmick
Russ opens saying, “Canada needs a break from star candidates.
“Justin Trudeau himself epitomizes the star candidate, possessing no specialized skills besides good presentation and teaching high schoolers. He was the ultimate celebrity politician who needed technocrats around him to govern well, only for him to alienate nearly all his brightest and best….
“It is difficult to escape the sense that Carney is far more comfortable literally rubbing shoulders with London’s A-listers like former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, actor Jude Law and Ghislaine Maxwell, partner of Jeffery Epstein, before she was convicted as a child sex trafficker. Carney’s campaign, it should be noted, has denied being friends with Maxwell.
“Shaking hands with one or two of Epstein’s friends and former clients is simply one of the drags of being a modern celebrity. Is anyone really going to turn down a handshake from Bill Gates?
“The real scandal is Carney’s career-long fondness for deepening western ties with China.
“China has not hesitated to kidnap our citizens and will likely be ready to invade Taiwan by the end of the decade. The Liberal leadership frontrunner’s last known meeting with Xi Jinping took place last spring, just months before he became an adviser to the Liberal Party of Canada and was floated as a replacement for Trudeau.”
Further note that Carney is solidly embedded with world elites:
“It doesn’t matter to Mark Carney if Canada survives: As a member of the global elite, he will always be free from the consequences of his political actions”, John Ivison, Jan. 16, 2025
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jamie-sarkonak-it-doesnt-matter-to-mark-carney-if-canada-survives
Also, on Carney’s ‘carney barker’ creds…
“How Carney plans to win the Liberal leadership and hold Poilievre to a minority”, John Ivison, Jan.15, 2025.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/mark-carney-liberal-leadership-2
Quotes from the article show that he positions himself on the collectivist spectrum toward soft leftism/socialism of the WEF group but is in terms of his core beliefs, the same as more hard-core varieties. He is committed to Net Zero that will destroy civilization as it is doing in Germany, Britain, and California.
“Canada Proud is running an ad portraying Carney as an out-of-touch elitist: a former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England, an adviser to Trudeau and a member of the World Economic Forum….
“Carney believes Canada has low-risk and relatively low-cost oil but needs to do more work on the emissions side through technology like the Pathways Alliance carbon capture and storage project.
“While he does not support a cap on fossil fuel production, he is committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 (as are the 50 oil and gas companies who signed the decarbonization charter at COP28 in Dubai in 2023).
“Yet, he remains a proponent of ESG (environment, social and governance) investing that has become an anathema to many people.
“And he is certainly not as enthusiastic in his support of Alberta’s oil and gas industry as is Poilievre, who is specifically proposing to build energy infrastructure like LNG plants, pipelines and refineries…
“Carney himself remains a work in progress as a politician. Apparently, he did not appreciate the irony when he accused Poilievre of “seeing opportunity in tragedy” on the Daily Show, just before invoking the California wildfires as a justification for climate action.”
Nuf said, eh.
On his associations with today’s leftist forums… note that Woke Progressivism is a front of the new collectivism pushing for domination across Western liberal democracies. Tie all such movements back to the actual origins in historical collectivism by noting prominent guiding themes.
And this from Taube…
“Carney claims to be a political outsider, but he’s very much on the inside: Carney first advised the Trudeau Liberals on their economic response to COVID-19 in 2020, and became a special adviser and chair of their economic task force last September”, Michael Taube, Jan. 16, 2025
Notes:
Conclusion (repeated from above):
As posted often on this site, the finest climate scientists on the planet, the atmospheric physicists at “co2coalition.org”, have presented the evidence that the warming effect of CO2 is now “saturated” (a physics term) and will contribute very little if anything to any further warming, if warming were to continue. Climate scientist Javier Vinos says that we won’t know what will happen with climate till the early 2030s.
The above scientists add that there is no “climate crisis” and the mild 1.2 degree C warming over the past century has been beneficial to all life. So also, the increase in CO2, the basic food of plant life, has resulted in a massive 15% increase in green vegetation across the earth since 1980.
All to say, there is no scientific reason to tax carbon or ruinously decarbonize our societies.
One more on Carney as leftist eco-cultist:
“Disaster number one or disaster number two for Liberal leader: Both Carney and Freeland were involved in the disaster that was Trudeau’s government. Who wants more disaster?”, Matthew Lau, Jan. 22, 2025
https://financialpost.com/opinion/matthew-lau-disaster-for-liberal-leader?tbref=hp
Quotes:
“Trudeau’s economic agenda was shaped and supported by both candidates… so they share responsibility for its disastrous consequences. If Trudeau’s record is a disaster, their records are, too….
“Carney was “deeply embedded in Trudeau’s circle for years,” as Calgary MP Michelle Rempel Garner writes… “Carney’s fingerprints are all over the Liberal policies that have driven up costs for ordinary Canadians,” Rempel Garner explains. “He’s long championed carbon pricing, praising Trudeau’s $170/tonne carbon tax as a ‘model for others.’” That is the same carbon tax that he and Freeland are now disowning….
“As Peter Foster wrote in these pages in 2021, “Mark Carney … claims that western society is morally rotten, and that it has been corrupted by capitalism, which has brought about a ‘climate emergency’ that threatens life on earth. This, he claims, requires rigid controls on personal freedom, industry and corporate funding.”…
“Trudeau prefers Carney, however, is nearly conclusive evidence he would be the worse disaster. Either way, the Liberal Party of Canada being led by one of these candidates is a disaster happening to a disaster.”
And another “one more”… More zealous than eco-zealot Trudeau
“Mark Carney is a climate zealot who won’t back off the Trudeau agenda: He has done more thinking and writing about climate change than the rest of the Trudeau caucus combined”, Don Braid, Jan. 24, 2025
“The former Bank of Canada governor is a climate activist of the most devoted and determined sort. He has done more thinking and writing about climate change than the rest of the Trudeau caucus combined….
“He ardently believes that the world economy, and certainly Canada’s, must be transformed as quickly as possible to avert the collapse of civilization….
““To meet the 1.5 C target, more than 80 per cent of current fossil fuel reserves (including three-quarters of coal, half of gas, one-third of oil) would need to stay in the ground, stranding these assets.”…
“More likely, we could expect an escalation of policies to phase out oil and gas and accelerate “just transition” in many areas of the economy….
“Investment dollars will take a quick look at Canada and turn south. Carney’s policies, difficult at the best of times, could further fuel economic disaster.”