See below, “Nonprofits Cruelly Normalize Poverty for Climate Virtue”, by Vijay Jayaraj. Vijay illustrates the destructive outcomes from history’s latest “salvation through destruction” crusade, the “climate crisis” crusade. Driven by the same basic themes that drove Marxist revolutions and Nazi horrors. The historians/scholars have done the good homework exposing these “profoundly religious” crusades.
President Trump made the “cute” comment recently on Air Force One that he did not think he would get into heaven, despite the good things that he has done for many others.
“‘I’m being a little cute.’ Trump considers if Gaza ceasefire will get him into heaven”, Kinsey Crowly, Oct. 13, 2025
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/13/donald-trump-heaven/86668964007/
Unbelievable to hear in 2025 this kind of talk from someone who self-identifies as exceptionally bright/intelligent, and on varied things, yes. He is notably bright on business/economic policies (reduce taxation, regulation), immigration (control and ensure immigrants assimilate to liberal democracy values and practices), foreign policy (fair trade, ending wars), etc. But even jokingly, this reveals a mind that holds to some of the most primitive mythology to have ever darkened and enslaved human minds- i.e. the felt need to do good works in order to gain salvation, divine favor, find inclusion among the “saved righteous ones”.
I guess this is all to be expected from a person who holds to a retaliatory, punitive “eye for eye” view of justice (apparently his dominant “guiding ethic”), and also, obviously, to a similarly retaliatory, punitive God who validates that conditional salvation mythology.
It’s always interesting how we can hold such contrary and mutually exclusive elements in our heads- i.e. great advanced insights in some areas and then total blind “stupidity” (a common Trump term) in other areas. “Cognitive dissonance” helps us to understand this a bit.
I would think that stories in the Christian holy book, like the prodigal father unconditionally welcoming the wretched homeless, hooker-adjacent son back, ought to lay the mythology of conditional salvation to rest. And how about “the stunning new theology of Jesus” expressed in his drawing the critical lesson from nature, i.e. that God gives sun and rain to all alike, to both good and bad people. Meaning, there is universal inclusion, no discrimination, full equality, and no punitive, retaliatory treatment of anyone. Yes, that is more about ultimate reality, how God treats everyone, and ultimate outcomes, and not so much about how we deal with evil in this world. Even though still true in many areas- i.e. the equality in divine treatment of everyone as evident through the natural world.
And yes, there are problems with that ultimate unconditional theology and the practice of humane ethics in this world. An unconditional God is not automatic validation of pacifism that does not work, as Pete Hegseth rightly stated in regard to the need for a strong military force to back down the bullies of life (i.e. his statement that “pacifism is destructive”).
Moving along…
So, yes, there is no doubt, Donald, that you will get into heaven along with every other human that has ever existed. No one will be excluded. How do I reason to this conclusion? I base it on the “stunning new theology” of Historical Jesus who rejected outright the primitive ideas of (1) vengeful deity (judging according to “eye for eye” justice), (2) tribal deity (i.e. favoring true believers, damning unbelievers), and punitive deity (i.e. destroying unbelievers through apocalypse or hell).
To frame from another angle- No one has to be “saved”, because no one is lost. No one has ever been separated from the fundamental oneness of all humanity with deity. There has never been any ruptured relationship with God that has to be resolved via human blood sacrifice to appease mythical “wrath”. Anyway, more on this below…
Jesus stated his reasoning for his stunning new theology based on some of the most basic elements of the natural world, as noted above, i.e. that “God gives sun and rain to all without discrimination, to both good and bad people”. Nature itself exhibits the unconditional love of God. No one will be excluded from the obviously unconditional love of God as expressed through nature itself. There are no conditions to be met, absolutely none. No one will be excluded, ultimately. No one, period. That is the meaning of unconditional- no conditions, none.
Settle this existential issue of the true nature of God and it lessens our natural fear of death that has been exacerbated by mythical and religious systems with, for example, their threats of future destruction in apocalypses. We see this in the earliest human writing, the Sumerian Flood myth, an early version of the apocalyptic fallacy. That element has continued as a dominant theme battering public consciousness endlessly across our history. Today we get it in the hysterical madness of climate alarmism, or the tribalism hatred vented against political opponents (disagreeing others) who are presented as evil threats endangering all good (i.e. purportedly posing the threat of “the end of democracy, the end of the world”).
Worst of all are the religious threats of afterlife harm in some hell, the single worst mental pathology ever concocted by overheated religious minds to terrorize unbelievers into cowering submission.
Threat theologies began with the earliest shaman down in those caves at, for example, Lascaux, France, where the shaman, jockeying for elite status over fellow tribals, disoriented their fellow tribals with the intense darkness in the deepest reaches of the caves and anamorphic art (appeared to move in flickering candlelight). Threat theology continued to be used by later priesthoods who propagandized others with myths of wrathful God threatening condemnation, exclusion, and then horrific torture in eternal fires.
Yes, along with the element of human wonder at the “numinous”, creating fear of angry, threatening deities in order to manipulate and control others, was essential to the creation of early mythology/religion. See for example, prehistorian John Pfeiffer’s “Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion”.
We see this threat theology on almost every page of the Quran, and iconically in the New Testament book of Revelation in the Christian bible.
A few quotes from the Quran:
“God is severe in retribution… Those who have rejected God’s signs will have a severe punishment… Those who disbelieve, I will punish them with a severe punishment… They opposed God and his messenger… Whoever seeks other than Islam as a religion… in the Hereafter he will be among the losers… will have a painful punishment… their lodging is the fire… for the disbelievers there is the suffering of the Fire… they will roast in the blaze… We will scorch them in a Fire… they are the inmates of the Fire, where they will remain forever…the torment of eternity…”, and so much more. These statements are often scattered multiple times across each page. Mixed with many calls to “fight the unbelievers”.
A few sample quotes from Revelation:
“I saw heaven standing open and there was (Lord Christ)… he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire… He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood… Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. “He will rule them with an iron scepter.” He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty….
“Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth— Gog and Magog —and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounded the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them. And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever…
“The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.” Etc.
These ideas/beliefs promote mental/emotional pathology in that they deform minds, emotions, motivations, and behaviors. We see the outcomes in endless tribal hatred and violence across history, continuing today. Thinking of the impact on human minds, I am reminded of the church members clinging to the pillars at the side of the church to keep from slipping into hell as Jonathan Edwards detailed those horrors during his sermon “Sinners in the hands of an angry God”.
Harold Ellens (in Zenon Lotufo’s “Cruel God, Kind God”) speaks to how the barbaric imagery of deity as wrathful, punitive destroyer deforms human minds and life:
“One type of religiosity is entirely built around the assumption or basic belief, and correspondent fear, that God is cruel or even sadistic… The associated metaphors to this image are ‘monarch’ and ‘judge’. Its distinctive doctrine is ‘penal satisfaction’. I call it ‘Cruel God Christianity’… Its consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities. All these things are fully coherent with and dependent on a cruel and vengeful God image…
“(This image results) in the inhibition of the full development of personality… The doctrine of penal satisfaction implies an image of God as wrathful and vengeful, resulting in exposing God’s followers to guilt, shame, and resentment… These ideas permeate Western culture and inevitably influence those who live in this culture…
“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…”
(End of Ellens quotes)
When we settle the existential stuff, it becomes easier to handle the crises and sometimes hellishness of life, knowing that we are all ultimately safe after fulfilling our stories and purpose here. Life here can be tolerated better when the big background issues are settled as far as human speculation on the metaphysical can settle such things. I argue, for instance, that people will never stop speculating anyway due to our primal impulse to meaning that pushes us to understand all things, including our impulse to speculate on what is behind the physical realm.
Consequent to this impulse and curiosity, the ancients speculated but unfortunately came up with some really bad ideas and projected them onto their deities thereby lodging them in their religious systems as unchallengeable reality. My point? Their bad ideas are already present everywhere in religions and ideologies, and those ideas have caused too much misery to far too many people across subsequent history.
Rather than just ignore or dismiss the entire enterprise of human speculation, as some materialist/atheist types do, why not at least offer better alternatives, more humane alternatives, recognizing that yes, it is speculation. But the often cold, callous explanations of materialism/atheism are no help in regard to the primal human impulse to meaning and purpose. Materialism/atheism conclusions are too absurd, meaningless, and useless as alternative views. The meaningless randomness of many of their conclusions violates our primal impulse to meaning and purpose.
And just an insert: I don’t believe in religious heavens as the ultimate reality that anyone is headed to. No. The NDE accounts do better in revealing an inexpressible reality beyond this life that is non-religious, and dominated by wondrous unconditional love, a reality of love in divine Oneness that is beyond the best that can be imagined. Check out some of those better NDE accounts.
The unconditional God presented in NDE accounts affirms exactly the central theme of the message of Historical Jesus. Unconditional deity frames Jesus’ ethical precepts (i.e. do this because this is what God is like). And in his precepts of unconditional love toward others, he is orienting our consciousness to living here and now, and not orienting us to prepare to seek salvation in realms beyond this life, as Paul’s Christ message does. Jesus’ message is about loving others in this world, most critically “loving enemies” as the key to overcoming hatred and violence.
Jesus lists a variety of situations, urging people to respond without conditions, to just love others and then summarizes his list of precepts with the conclusion- “If you do these unconditional things then you will be just like God”. He states it thus, “Be unconditionally merciful (like the precepts in the preceding list) just as your Father is unconditionally merciful”.
He frames his stunning new theology in terms of the ancient “behavior based on similar validating theology” coupling. This has long been used by people to frame our impulse to meaning and purpose by appeal to deity as the ultimate guiding Ideal or Authority that validates our behavior, that illustrates how we should live as human.
The Jesus message in its better version of Luke 6:
The guiding ideals/precepts of Historical 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, also Matthew 5:38-48.)
Moving on…
How did we get our monster Gods, the religious deformities of deity?
Still central to our continuing problems with ultimate ideals and authorities, has been the features that we have projected onto our images of deity. This was the great error of our ancestors, to project the worst of being human onto original versions of deity. Their existence was dominated by features such as tribal exclusion and fear of outsiders, the felt requirement to defensively assault other tribal groups as pre-emptive protection from threats to their own survival (Stephen Pinker’s point on pro-active attacks on neighboring tribal groups), and the feature of punitive destruction of competing others. The “evil triad” of inherited animal impulses.
Our primitive ancestors took the dominant features of how they lived at that time, and projected those features of their primitive existence onto their deities, features that then became archetypal, eventually lodged deeply in human subconscious to continue influencing the human framing of all subsequent theologies across history.
We inherited archetypal themes of tribal gods favoring us and protecting us against our enemies. Gods who demanded submission to their authority and totalitarian control of human life, a submission and control to be mediated via priesthoods- i.e. the elites who claim to be the authoritative representatives of deity and thereby validated in unchallengeable governing of some “true religion”. Also archetypal, Gods who are angry, who threaten and demand blood- i.e. human sacrifice, child sacrifice- to appease their wrath and through such bloody brutality shaman/priests claim that we can achieve survival and protection from the imagined gods/spirits who are threatening us with harm through natural disaster, accident, or disease. Blood sacrifices, the religious authorities claim, would grant survival from death, and attain ultimate survival in some paradisal realm.
Unbelievable primitiveness still dominating human images of deity.
These archetypes work today to incessantly impel people to embrace ever new versions of the same old themes, whether in religious or secular/ideological versions. They are archetypes that provide emotional satisfaction in how we choose our beliefs, even against rational evidence to the contrary.
Illustrations of how archetypes function: We accept ever-emerging new threats of looming apocalypse unquestioningly and intuitively feel that because it is widely believed that we are inherently sinful beings (i.e. based on fallacies like “fall of man and loss of paradise” myths) we deserve punishment/destruction (the fallacy of God as retaliatory). We have been indoctrinated over past millennia that salvation comes through destruction (i.e. the murder of innocents in sacrifices, or the destruction of enemy others, our “evil” opponents as necessary to purge evil from the world). And so we continue to embrace the same old systems of belief maintained in our world religions and in secular variants like Marxism, Nazism, or climate alarmism, all framed by the same basic complex of themes as in “apocalyptic millennialism” (epitomized in Paul’s Christ myth).
Our ancestors projected inhumane features like tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction onto deity and those monster gods still rule our great world religions with the same features that have been mindlessly embraced by billions across subsequent history. Those primitive deities, with their related complexes of beliefs/themes (the list of bad ideas), are today expressed in secular ideological versions- i.e. vengeful Gaia, angry Planet/Mother Earth, punitive Universe, payback karma, etc.
Harold Ellens on the fact many continue to embrace common cultural images of deity without question…
“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs, that is, they are not perceived as questionable. The reader may object that “God”, considered a basic belief in our culture, is rejected or questioned by a large number of people today. Yet the fact is that the idea of God that those people reject is almost never questioned. In other words, their critique assumes there is no alternative way of conceiving God except the one that they perceive through the lens of their culture. So, taking into account the kind of image of God that prevails in Western culture- a ‘monster God’… such rejection is understandable…”
(End of Ellens quotes).
And with the continuing dominance of these ultimate archetypal themes in deity (ultimate ideals/authorities) we wonder why extremists in every sector of our populations (i.e. religious traditions, political groups, etc.), why extremists take these archetypal themes to validate tribal violence, hatred of the differing other, demand for submission after violent assaults, or even full-on destruction/extermination.
Fortunately, creative, independent minds across the millennia have challenged the theologies inherited from the past and even paid with their lives for their independent thought and challenge to dominating belief systems. I think of the Old Testament prophets who boldly stated that there was no angry God demanding blood for appeasement. They were among the Jews who rejected the sacrifice industry as a heretical infliction on their religious tradition.
For example, this from Jeremiah 7:
“For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices.”
And these examples from https://wtctheology.org.uk/theomisc/prophetic-critique-sacrifice/
“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings” (Hos. 6:6)…
“‘The multitude of your sacrifices— what are they to me?’ says the LORD. ‘I have more than enough of burnt offerings, of rams and the fat of fattened animals; I have no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats’” (Isa 1:11)…
“Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them” (Amos 5:22)…
“With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? [Implied NO!] He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6:6, 8)…
“Even the psalmist piles on:
“Sacrifice and offering you did not desire—but my ears you have opened—burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not require” (Ps 40:6)…
“You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.” (Ps 51:16)”
(End of quotes)
But those prophets never went to the core theology to overturn that primitive fallacy as Jesus later did. Nonetheless, Jesus honored them for their groundbreaking efforts.
He said (Matthew 23:37) regarding those courageous spirits, whose protest he took up and took further in his stunning new theology of an unconditional God:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
His protest against sacrifice, and the God who demands such barbarity, is why Jesus was put to death immediately following his expressed outrage at the Temple in Jerusalem (Matthew 21). And that makes Paul’s distortion of him, in the Christ myth as the ultimate divine sacrifice, a stunningly egregious thing. Paul’s Christ contradicts Jesus’ central message and life purpose/protest entirely.
That stunning new theology of an unconditional God is what Historical Jesus used to heal a lot of broken-hearted people during his brief time on the planet. Again, as he read in his very first public speech from Isaiah 61:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor”.
Take these claims of “liberty… recovery” as referring to mental/emotional liberation at the depths of human minds and spirits- i.e. liberation from fear-generating archetypes in the subconscious, from mental and emotional enslavement to the monster God images that have long dominated public meta-narratives, religious or secular/ideological.
I am continuing here with my opening challenge to Trump’s voicing his concern, even though posed as “cute”, that reveals a commonly shared concern of many others regarding their own security- i.e. that fundamental issue of long-term survival, survival into ultimate eternal reality.
I had an atheist friend, formerly Catholic, who used to joke about keeping his prayer beads close and fiddling with them every once in a while, especially when he got sick, just to “hedge his bets” in case there was an actual hell. That ancient mental pathology of a threatening God still activated his deeply embedded concerns and fears. Even as he joked about such things.
Jesus used his stunning new theology to liberate people from psychopathologies like “demon possession” that is more the expression of traumatized human minds and spirits, deformed by threatening ultimate monsters.
Worst of all is how fear can work its way into hatred and rage taken out on others. Fear expressed in rage. We see this in intensified tribalism, the impulse to defeat and dominate others who are framed as posing some form of threat to one’s own survival, fear that even leads to activism to destroy competing others. Beliefs based on threat theology work to deform human personality and then incite and validate our worst inherited impulses.
Psychologists/psychotherapists Harold Ellens and Zenon Lotufo have spoken well to such things:
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
(End of Ellens quotes)
I hold Paul most responsible for varied eruptions of significant violence across Western civilization over the past two millennia.
Paul committed the “crime of the millennia”, a narrative crime, if you will, the mental/emotional crime that has enslaved billions to continued terrorizing/traumatizing under threat theology. He straightforwardly rejected the stunning new theology of Jesus, and thereby short-circuited the potential greatest liberation movement in history, the liberation of humanity from the age-old curse of threat theology with its horrifically deforming outcomes that have continued across history, notably in inciting and validating mass-death crusades, both religious and secular.
You have seen my repeated posting of the evidence for nailing Paul as most responsible because of his Christ myth. The evidence- i.e. the long history of Christian violence through early Councils, Crusades, Inquisitions, persecution and slaughter of heretics and witches, etc. That history of violence reached a crescendo in the Twentieth Century as apocalyptic millennial themes validated the violence of Marxist revolutions, Nazi horrors, and now continues to work through environmental alarmism and its salvation schemes like Net Zero decarbonization ruining societies. (Again, sources: Arthur Herman’s work, also Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, Dave Redles, and others)
Paul committed the “crime of the millennia” in constructing his Christ myth as a direct contradiction to all that Historical Jesus had taught, notably as a rejection of Jesus’ singularly brilliant insight/discovery that God was non-retaliatory, unconditional love. That new theology would have liberated humanity from ultimate fears as nothing else in history, and freed people from the outcomes of such fear in the deformation of human personality, as Ellens, Lotufo, and others have presented.
Again, Trump voiced a common concern of many- Have I done enough good to be ultimately safe? To earn favor with the Christian God and Christ? This concern/fear arises from the influence of Paul’s Christ myth with its conditions of belief in the myth of ultimate bloody human sacrifice (Romans), faithful affiliation with one of the 30,000-plus Christian denominations (all claiming to be the only “true church”), embrace of Christian belief systems (no “sinful doubt” permitted or salvation will be lost, forfeited), loyal fulfilment of Christian rituals, ethical systems, and engagement in the Christian lifestyle as the identity marker of true believer status. Conditions, conditions, and more damn conditions. All in contradiction to the unconditional theology of Jesus.
There is no need to let that fear continue nagging from the background of your mind. As it did to my atheist friend.
Added notes on the condition of belief in Paul’s Christ myth. These quotes from Paul’s letter to the Romans:
“The gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes…”
“The righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe…”
Note the contradiction in this passage:
“Those who are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood— to be received by faith. He did this… to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus….
“For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law… there is only one God, who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith.”
Paul continues with dense arguments that salvation comes through faith in his Christ myth, not through the law or good works. But he seems to miss the fundamental point, in all his blah, blah about “faith” that he is setting forth a condition to gain the salvation that his gospel promises. And he is clear that without the condition of faith in his Christ there is no access to salvation, as he repeatedly threatens throughout his letters. There is only ultimate destruction for those who refuse the condition of belief in his Christ (see, for example, Thessalonians).
Paul summarizes his condition of belief/faith in Romans chapter 5, stating again that we are only saved from the wrath of God through faith in his Christ myth.
Unconditional theology
Site intention/purpose- Alleviating unnecessary fears. Telling all- Its going to be alright, in the ultimate sense. Providing a background (meta-narrative background) sense of security, ultimate security.
Notes:
The emphasis here on “unconditional”, especially as applied to ultimate ideals like deity, is not about undermining or weakening human development and the obligation on every person to progress toward something better over the human life-span, to embrace the responsibility to grow and mature as a good person. This is basic to who we are and why we are here.
Unconditional is not advocacy for any form of pacifist approach to dealing with offenses, wrongs, injustices, and the bullies of life.
Unconditional does challenge the fundamental belief in “eye for eye” justice, the belief that threat of punishment is necessary to keep people in line and promote orderly existence in societies.
I come down, in regard to such issues, on the side that “positive affirmation”-type approaches work better to motivate people toward better behavior than threat of punishment. I see this in research on how children and criminal offenders respond to either affirmation or threat approaches.
Some Google responses:
“Punishment can lead to resentment or revenge. Second, positive reinforcement is more motivating. Everyone likes to be rewarded for something they’re struggling with, and positive reinforcement lets them know they’re doing well, encouraging them to keep trying.”
And:
“Research indicates that positive reinforcement produces better long-term behavioral changes compared to punishment, which may only achieve short-term compliance. Punishment can evoke feelings of fear or resentment, hampering motivation and the overall relationship between the individual and authority figures.” And so on.
There is the tendency to swing between extremes in applying these ideas/principles to public policy, as in some of the Woke Progressive approaches that let violent criminals free to reoffend. The “too soft on crime” policies appear to deny the primary responsibility of government to protect citizens from harm. Nothing is more fundamental to the purpose of any government than providing safety and security to its citizens.
We have varied examples in Western criminal justice systems of treatment of offenders based on DEI assumptions, e.g. by skin color. In some areas, if an offender is black or brown then they are believed to be in the “victim” category/class, as in collectivist ideology (i.e. all people classified according to simple good versus evil categorizations). Hence, if some offenders belong to a racial minority, their status demands that they must be “liberated”, no matter their individual history. In Canada, we have areas where if an offender is of minority color or status, or an immigrant, then, according to current laws, they must receive less severe sentencing terms. This has resulted in dangerously freeing repeat violent criminals, as in the city of Kelowna (see article below).
We never abandon the common-sense restraint and incarceration of violent offenders as required to protect innocent others, without discriminatory favor based on other categories than simple obligation to treat all equally, according to character and behavioral history.
But overall, my point is that positive affirmation approaches work with most people. Appealing to the better angels of most people will motivate them to continue improving. And providing an overall sense of security, a sense of safety, contributes to such approaches. Most of us respond better to affirmation, less so to threat of punishment.
Example:
I used this positive affirmation approach once with a special needs lady, seriously depressed, angry, and given to threatening others. It worked across time, with many repeated expressions. I affirmed to her that she was “a good person”. Initially, she responded angrily- “No, I am a bad person”.
Eventually, she remained quiet when I spoke to her, pondering the point being made. Gradually, it lifted her serious depression and helped dissipate the negativity that she held toward herself.
That positive affirmation did not work all the time in all situations, as that person also had to learn “natural consequences” to bad behavior as fundamental to all human development. Much like any one of us- We go to work and we are consequently paid. If we don’t work, we don’t get paid. That is not “punitive consequences”, as too many people in the field of “special needs” have concluded and now irrationally prohibit any natural consequences to be applied to special needs people (based on the “suicidal empathy” all too common in illiberal circles?).
Consequences are fundamental and critical to the commonsense development that every person who has ever lived has had to undergo and experience.
The ancestors understood this on a most basic level. If you didn’t go out and do your hunter/gatherer thing, you wouldn’t eat and survive. That’s not “punitive”. It’s just reality.
Moving back from my sideline “weave”…
An unconditional theology located at the top of our belief systems in images of Ultimate Reality/deity functions to inspire the best in us. Notably, it resonates with our essential nature as the same love, the unconditional love that is at the core of the real us, the authentic human spirit.
The theme or ideal of unconditional, activates the innate desire to be like the God who is that same love (i.e. similar to children wanting to please parents, humans wanting to fulfill the purpose for which they have been created). Hence, unconditional fully humanizes, as no other ideal can, our historical use of the “behavior based on similar theological beliefs” coupling. And this site repeatedly points to the Jesus embrace of this ideal in his central message, contrary to Paul who rejected it in his Christ myth.
The summarizing conclusion of the Jesus message- “Be unconditionally merciful just as you Father is unconditionally merciful. Love your enemy because God does.”
Added note– Peace and order in human society is not so much a top-down imposed reality, imposed by threat of state punishment. It is more a bottom-up reality, arising intuitively from the majority of decent people in societies who have learned to exercise maturity in working out their own freedom and self-determination.
Yes, it’s just another “salvation through destruction” crusade, Wendell Krossa
To any visitors,
You don’t believe the climate crisis crusade is another apocalyptic millennial crusade, another “salvation through destruction” movement? “Salvation” as in “save the world from climate apocalypse”, the dominant alarm raised by the zealots of this same old rehash of primitive mythological themes in another anti-human death-cult.
Here is some evidence from Vijay Jayaraj. And yes, Richard Landes, Arthur Mendel, David Redles- i.e. the apocalyptic millennial scholars/historians- included the environmental alarmism movement as driven by the ideas in “apocalyptic millennialism” mythology, just as Marxism and Nazism were similarly driven by these myths, with destructive outcomes.
And who ensured that Western civilization would not enjoy the liberation presented by Historical Jesus with his stunning new theology of a “non-retaliatory” God? Meaning, non-apocalyptic, God? Non-retaliatory means that you won’t enact the ultimate historical “eye for eye retaliatory” event- i.e. the apocalyptic destruction of the world. The epitome act of retaliation.
My repeated point here- Paul and his apocalyptic Christ myth are most responsible for embedding the theme of apocalyptic destruction in Western consciousness to become central to Western narratives, both religious and “secular/ideological”. Paul’s obsession with apocalypse still curses our minds today, hence the ongoing embrace by many of whatever latest apocalyptic alarm is foisted on the public.
Paul “buried” the liberating message of Historical Jesus with his Christology that then dominated the early Christian movement and eventually dominated subsequent Western narratives.
Note the damage that Vijay lists below. Others like Richard Lindzen and his colleagues have warned of the threat to billions of people from blocked development (blocked, hindered access to cheap fossil fuels) due to the hysterical panic-mongering of the climate crisis crusade and its “salvation” scheme of Net Zero decarbonization to “save the world” from the grand lie of looming climate apocalypse.
If you propose and support policies that keep people in poverty, you are then responsible for the outcomes in the lives of people who then cannot afford the life-enhancing, life-saving benefits of increased wealth creation from what should be plentiful and cheap fossil fuels.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/10/16/nonprofits-cruelly-normalize-poverty-for-climate-virtue/
“Nonprofits Cruelly Normalize Poverty for Climate Virtue”, Vijay Jayaraj, Oct. 16, 2025
A few quotes:
“The last two decades should have been a period of accelerating economic development for Africa, South America and much of Asia. Discoveries of abundant oil and gas supplies offered a rescue from poverty, industrial stagnation and poor access to electricity and other basic services.
“Instead, they got a man-made disaster, a deliberate slowdown of growth driven not by geographical disadvantage or domestic inefficiency but by a global campaign to divert affordable fossil fuels from poor nations.
“Examples abound. At the United Nations’ COP26 of 2021, more than 30 governments and a number of public financial institutions committed to the so-called Glasgow Statement, or the Clean Energy Transition Partnership. The objective was to end new public finance for fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022 and instead prioritize “green” energy.
“The European Investment Bank stopped financing all fossil fuel projects by the end of 2021, affecting billions in planned natural gas infrastructure. Major European pension funds and commercial institutions – BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole, Société Générale – reduced or eliminated support for development projects for oil, natural gas and coal, citing targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
“The coercion was unequivocal: Pursue fossil fuels and lose access to Western capital. The opposition to hydrocarbons was embraced by Western nonprofit organizations and even by people who had made money from oil….
“Africa’s per capita energy consumption remains among the lowest globally…
“This is deception by opacity of process. Taxpayers and donors believe they are funding solutions, but the effect is to derail initiatives that would vastly improve living standards of developing nations…
“If blocking an energy project means a village remains dark or a factory can’t open, such costs must be taken into account….
“The truth: Climate policy that ignores needs of people and contributes to generational poverty is cruel, even when presented with the gloss of environmental virtue.”
“Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.”
Can a leopard change its spots? Wendell Krossa
Hamas will not surrender. It will not change. Because of “Its religious ideology”? No Avi. Because of its “religious theology”. Its God. (See Avi Benlolo article below)
Again, “It’s the theology, stupid” (As Canadian, I cringe using this Clinton/Carville phrasing- i.e. “stupid”- as impolite and borderline “ad hominem”. But it’s accurate and that’s the point.).
What prevents our stating clearly what the fundamental problem is? And critically, pointing to the deformities in the fundamental theology that is the Cohering Center of religious systems, the Ultimate Ideal and Authority behind it all?
It’s the basic religious belief system that provides incitement and validation to the murderous crusades of groups like Hamas. These groups are not just “perversions of the religious systems” that they draw validation from. They are simply “extremist” in that they take their beliefs seriously while many others in the same religions have learned to moderate themselves by not taking those same fundamental beliefs seriously. Moderates have found ways to dismiss or downplay the core ideas of their religions, like the fad of “metaphorizing” their beliefs. A kind of reformism project.
(This refers to the Muslim author posted years ago on HuffPost who noted the fad of Islamic theologians stating that all the verses in the Quran that speak of a wrathful God threatening to cast unbelievers into hell were just “metaphor”. As he responded, that doesn’t change the awful content of such statements. They still express the same awful content, whether literal or metaphorical.)
But hey, if the metaphor thing works to help some people validate and explain their moderation, congrats to them.
But such reformism at the periphery of religious systems doesn’t solve the long-term problem of violence that will continue erupting until you deal with the most basic religious themes, none more critical than the theology- i.e. the God at the center of these religions. Images of God as wrathful, vengeful, and threatening harm and destruction if you don’t believe, submit, and loyally fulfill all the religions conditions and commands, like a good true believer, such images will continue to incite some to bad behavior.
Our fear of facing the core of the problem with religion leaves us living with the result of cognitive dissonance based on the oxymoronic nature of our belief systems. Bad mixed with good. Bad protected “under the canopy of the sacred”. Many still defend and protect ideas/ideals that today most people understand in any other area as “bad”. And to neglect or ignore bad in the sacred is to neglect our fundamental responsibility to understand the nature of all bad, especially to confront bad protected in images of deity and to remove it from our lives as critical to human development and maturing.
The “bad merged with good” is most profoundly evident in Paul’s “Jesus Christ”, the merger and mixing of two profoundly opposite persons and messages, a merger that results in the distortion of the Jesus part, the burying of his “diamonds in dung”, as Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy rightly concluded about the Christian New Testament that gives Paul’s Christ dominance.
And what was the result for much of Christian history? This site has repeatedly listed the outcomes in the violence of early Councils, later Crusades, Inquisitions, persecution and murder of heretics and witches, and more. Violence that has only become moderated over the past few centuries.
Bob Brinsmead has rightly noted regarding the history of Christian violence that if the message of Jesus- i.e. “to forgive, to not retaliate with eye for eye punishment, and to love enemies”- if this message had dominated Christianity, then we would not have seen such violence over the past two millennia. Instead, Paul’s Christology dominated and there has been endless warring over what that Christology means and then defending differing interpretations with violence.
Note the episode of John Calvin having his fellow Christian theologian Michael Servetus burned at the stake just over a difference about the Christ (i.e. the refusal of Servetus to move an adjective over three words in a sentence). That illustrates the lunacy of many fighting and killing over differences in varied religions. And this lunacy is all the more egregious when you remember that the basic themes of primitive mythology are shared by all these great religious traditions.
(See reposting of the bad religious ideas list just below.)
I repeat what Richard Landes and the military guy warned- Until you deal with the danger posed by bad ideas, i.e. none more potentially destructive than “apocalyptic millennial” themes, then you have learned nothing and will only see repeated eruptions of violence.
Apocalyptic millennialism is the heart of Paul’s Christ myth- i.e. apocalyptic millennialism based on the theology of retaliatory, punitive, destroying God. Entirely opposite to the stunning new theology of Historical Jesus who taught a non-retaliatory, unconditionally loving God.
So again, “It’s the theology, stupid”. And the egregious shame in all this is that we were given the great alternative two thousand years ago. It’s there in the central message of Historical Jesus. A God who is non-retaliatory, unconditional love to center entirely new meta-narratives.
“The Israel-Hamas war is far from over: With the terrorists still in control of nearly half the Strip, the prospect of a lasting peace is as distant as ever”, Avi Benlolo, Oct. 17, 2025
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-israel-hamas-war-is-far-from-over?itm_source=index
Quotes from Benlolo:
“This war is far from over… A zebra cannot change its stripes and Hamas cannot stop killing…
“Hamas will not disarm. It will not dissolve or fade away. It will almost certainly try to use this opportunity to reconstitute, despite its severe battlefield losses. Throughout the week, Hamas has been systematically eliminating its rivals. In the coming days and weeks, it will likely seek to establish absolute dominance over the 47 per cent of Gaza that it now controls.
“Hamas will not surrender because it’s not in its nature. Its religious ideology and its founding charter clearly reject the State of Israel…”
Benlolo goes on to note that Hamas is quickly establishing its presence on the streets of Gaza. It is likely replenishing its ranks, rearming and resupplying its terrorist cells. Its capacity for persistent insurgency will increase with each passing day…”
As Benlolo concludes: “Terrorists do not disarm unilaterally.”
Avi Benlolo is the chairman and CEO of the Abraham Global Peace Initiative.
The reposting promised above:
Notable contradictions between Jesus and Paul’s Christ (updated 2025), Wendell Krossa
Some of the main contradictions that highlight the oxymoronically opposite themes between the messages of Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ mythology. The point I draw from this? The themes of Paul have significantly shaped Western consciousness, narratives, and overall societies for the past two millennia (the conclusion of historians/scholars like James Tabor). The Jesus themes have influenced us to a lesser extent, mainly moderating the harsher features and destructive influence of Paul’s Christ:
The main contradictions: (Sources: “Search for Historical Jesus”, “Jesus Seminar” books, and notably, “Q Wisdom Sayings” research, etc.)
(1) Jesus taught an unconditional love (i.e. there is no sacrifice demanded in Jesus’ original message- i.e. the “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel). In his teaching on love there were no required conditions from his God to be met for forgiveness, inclusion, and salvation. Versus the highly conditional atonement religion of Paul, i.e. the supreme condition of the sacrifice of a cosmic godman- the Christ. Additionally, the condition of belief/faith in his myth (see his letter to the Romans), along with other related religious conditions.
(2) Nonretaliation in Jesus (no more ‘eye for eye’ justice but ‘love the enemy’ because God does not retaliate but loves enemies- “Be merciful just as God is merciful”). Versus supreme divine acts of retaliation in apocalypse and hell myths. Note Paul’s statement of his theology affirming a retaliatory deity in his quote of an Old Testament verse- “’Vengeance is mine, I will repay’, says the Lord” (Romans 12), along with his “Lord Jesus returning in fire to destroy all who don’t believe my Christ myth” (Thessalonians, etc.).
(3) Restorative justice (again- no eye for eye, but love the offender/enemy) versus punitive, destroying justice (“Unbelievers will be punished with everlasting destruction”, Thessalonians).
(4) Nonviolent resolution of problems (again, no violent retaliation against enemies) versus the violent destruction of apocalypse and fiery hell, and the violence in the demanded appeasement of deity by blood sacrifice for atonement- i.e. the dangerously inciting theme in the belief that if you murder the right people- sacrifice them- then you can make the future better (evil thinking that it is heroically doing good by using violence and murder).
(5) Nontribal inclusion of all humanity (“sun and rain given freely to both bad and good people”) versus the highly tribal favoritism toward true believers and the discriminatory exclusion of unbelievers for not believing Paul’s Christ. Note the ultimate tribal divide illustrated in Revelation in the eternal division of humanity- i.e. people assigned either to heaven or to hell, as per the cosmic dualism of Zoroaster.
(6) Nondomination in relationships (“If you want to be great then serve others”) versus ultimate eternal domination by “Lord Christ” under his “rod of iron” totalitarianism (“every knee shall bow… He will rule them with an iron scepter”).
There is no love in threat, coercion, domination of others.
(7) Non-dualism (God as the Oneness of Ultimate Reality that is love) versus eternal dualism (i.e. again, the cosmic tribal dualism of “God and Satan”, “heaven and hell”).
Further, ultimate Oneness leads to the logical conclusion that there is no separation of humanity from deity, what some describe as all humanity being indwelt by God, the divine reality that is inseparable from the common human spirit. God as the Life-giving spirit inside each of us, and God’s nature as unconditional love then defining our true self/person.
(8) Another- Jesus referred to himself as a “son of man”- i.e. as just another ordinary imperfect human in common with all other humans. Not as a divine person or god sent from heaven. Paul rejected the humanness of Jesus in claiming that he was some form of Hellenist godman sent from heaven on a special mission from God. Paul reconstructed the human Jesus after the pattern of the godmen myths of the Pharaohs and Caesars- i.e. born of virgins so as to avoid the “inherited sinfulness” stain.
Eventually, succeeding generations of Hellenist Christianity would further the Christology of Paul in claiming their “Jesus Christ” was sinlessly perfect, something the Historical Jesus had denied, for example, when he corrected someone with- “Why do you call me ‘good’. There is none good but God.”
The heretical Hellenist Christianity of Paul eventually reconstructed the fully and truly human Jesus into a full-fledged God and member of the Trinity.
And so on…
You cannot mix and merge such extreme opposites in the one and same person- i.e. in the merger of “Jesus Christ”- as that supremely oxymoronic combination creates such profound cognitive dissonance that you are left with a mental state akin to insanity or madness. And the egregious thing in such mixture is that the good elements (i.e. the Jesus insights) are distorted and buried by the primitive and darkening elements in the Christology of Paul.
Applying Christology to Jesus (i.e. the divinizing of a common man over the first few centuries of Christianity) has effectively buried the potency of his liberating insights, notably his stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, non-apocalyptic God. That truth expressed in his entirely new view of deity, though still present there in summaries of his statements (see Matthew 5, Luke 6), that “stunning new theology” is not presented clearly in its liberating potency because the larger New Testament context emphasizes Paul’s retaliatory, apocalyptic Christ and that dominating narrative overwhelms the central themes and message of Jesus.
Paul was intent on overturning and replacing Jesus’ wisdom sayings with his “secret wisdom of the Christ”, correcting what he termed the “foolish worldly wisdom” of Jesus and his followers, like Apollos (see 1 Corinthians for Paul’s vilifying rant against the wisdom tradition of Jesus).
Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy both nailed the contradiction between Jesus and Paul in the bluntest of terms and few have been as clear and direct since, perhaps because their comments are highly offensive to true believer’s sensibilities.
Few since have embraced their clarification of the stark contrast between Jesus and Paul, preferring instead the religious reformism that tinkers around the edges and corrects nothing essential. Religious reformism avoids the central issue of theology- how Paul’s Christology utterly deformed the actual historical Jesus and his message.
Here again is the complex of basic themes that have shaped all the great world religions and in the modern era have also shaped major ideological systems of belief– i.e. Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism- with the very same themes in “secularized versions”. Wendell Krossa
These are among the worst of the bad ideas that incite and validate bad behaviors, again, notably exposed by historians in the mass-death crusades of Marxism, Nazism, and now in the society-destroying crusade of climate alarmism/apocalyptic.
Here is a brief version (longer version further below) of the 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 corrupter of life that must be punished and even exterminated in order to restore the lost paradise and to save life. In contemporary terms- today the corrupter 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 enable 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 was always threatened by the looming apocalypse.
“However, the apocalyptic alarmists introduced “hope” into the mix, the perverse version of hope that was built on the violent destruction of enemies (“salvation/utopia through destruction”). And they created salvation schemes where specially enlightened elites (priesthoods, religious authorities) lecture the ignorant and unenlightened commoners on what they must do to be saved from imminent destruction and death- i.e. (4) the demand for a sacrifice/payment. Examples of today’s sacrifice- “de-growth, de-development”, that argues for a return to primitivism as in return to the more “pure and strong” existence of “noble savage” life as hunter-gathers with no ecological footprint (more “connected” to nature). Add to this sacrifice/payment element, the redistribution programs pushed in the neo-collectivist crusades of today.
“Couch this madness in a deformed version of the hero’s quest where those identifying as “true believer” 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.
“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 deformed minds and wreaked so much destruction across history? What validates the other ideas in the complex?
The cohering center is the “wrathful” deity of all primitive mythologies, the deity 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 then further threatens people with after-life harm that adds sting to death. This “monster God” is the central issue to deal with in apocalyptic millennial complexes of myths. This psycho-pathological 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.”