This from recent Joe Rogan interview: Are we alone in the universe? (Some poking around ultimate meaning/purpose issues)
“Joe Rogan Experience #2363 – David Kipping”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJNaciADLVs
Their comments sparked the following… more of the ‘Daddy’ project here to affirm that “Its going to be alright, for everyone, ultimately”. This comment, of necessity, leans into the “spiritual” (i.e. insights from sages associated with this area of human life, the ultimate meaning and purpose thing).
At one point in this interview, they talk about the possibility that we are alone in the universe and how lonely that prospect is. How much does our sense of loneliness fuel the exploration for life elsewhere- i.e. the programs of Seti, etc., along with making ever larger and more sophisticated telescopes to probe for possible signs of life elsewhere in the cosmos.
The “are we alone” element in their conversation sparked the response that one of the greatest insights ever given to answer human loneliness issues was another feature in the Historical Jesus material- i.e. that the great Creator of all, presented as “the Father” of us all, had incarnated in all humanity.
This incarnated presence of deity in every human person, associated with other features related to the stunning new theology of Jesus, makes this the most profound insight ever presented to humanity. Talk about dealing with loneliness in the most profound manner.
I will say it again for emphasis: There is nothing remotely comparable spoken anywhere else in all reality and all history, that is more profound to consider than that the Ultimate Reality of our Creator God is closer to us than our own breath, atoms, or spirit. Jesus stated this in his saying that “the kingdom of God was among or ‘in you’”. There is no need to be looking far afield for something other to respond to our loneliness.
This saying of Jesus (Luke 17) was offered in response to people asking when the kingdom of God, the presence of God, would come and where it would be. He responded, don’t go looking here or there but recognize that it is right in your midst, in you. In theology, that has long been termed the “omnipresence” of God.
And equally critical to this truth or insight (the “other related feature”) is that this ultimate “Parent”, that is termed “our heavenly Father”, is a profoundly wondrous love, an inexpressibly transcendent “unconditional love”. The NDE people, often expressing their frustration, claim that it is impossible to find words to describe the overwhelmingly liberating nature of that love (“millions/billions of times more intense than any love we know on earth”) that permeates all invisible reality around us as the single most dominant feature.
(Insert: This is what I emphasize when I suggest that the unconditional nature of God’s love is the missing element in any complete TOE. This single feature is most critical for understanding the existence of the cosmos, the purpose for which it all has been created and sustained- i.e. that it all heads toward the eventual emergence and existence of a race of humans who, among all else that they create to make a better world, they come here to engage the grand venture of civilization as a long-term and gradual humanizing program.
An essential element of embarking on this long-term trajectory of civilization, that is an exodus from our animal past to find liberation in becoming truly human, is the critical element of learning what love is, of learning how to love, and most critical in this grand journey or quest is to reach for the highest of all achievements possible, to seek the heroic state of “Love your enemies because God does”. The nature/character of the Creator goes some distance to understanding why this reality exists, the purpose for its creation, the ultimate goal of it all.) (End of insert)
Continuing…
Recognizing the insights of a sage like Historical Jesus on the character and presence of God should resolve loneliness issues at the most fundamental “archetypal” depths of human subconscious. Realizing that deep inside us all there is a love, an inexpressibly wondrous unconditional divine love, that is closer to us than any physical parent or friend.
But, as with so much profound insight from sages like Jesus, this reality has been buried by millennia of bad theology, suffocated under bad religious ideas/myths, that have long indoctrinated us with horrifying imagery of, for example, Paul’s repeated warning to the Romans about- “the wrath of God against sinful humanity”.
We have been indoctrinated over millennia that we have been rejected and abandoned by an angered God (Eden myth) who has retreated far away in some inaccessible heaven (“sky God myths”). Humanity is now separated from God and there is only a highly restricted and narrow way that only a chosen few find that leads back to God. It is a very difficult pathway to find and enter, and successful passage demands unwavering faith in the correct belief system (i.e. Paul’s Christology, atonement mythology and religion), a pledge of zealous commitment and loyalty to the “true” religion, along with commitment to certain rituals and lifestyle as identity markers of being a true believer.
To illustrate the difficulty of entrance and negotiating the “narrow way”, I once knew a pastor in Louisiana who argued that according to his interpretation of the New Testament, he sincerely believed that his very small congregation of fellow Christians (a small Southern Baptist fringe group) were the only truly “saved” people on earth. Sheesh, eh. Well, that helps explain the 30,000-plus Christian denominations across the planet, each believing that they are the one true church of God.
Such fringe beliefs bury the liberating awareness of an inexpressibly wondrous love that is closer than anything else in our physical realm, that exists right at the core of our being, or self. As the NDE people state, in that other realm they discovered that all of us are one with that divine love. And we are never separated from it in this world.
So, what really responds best to this longing for other life to answer our deeply felt loneliness? How do we most helpfully respond to that?
There never has been any such reality as a remote sky God. That is the fallacy of imaging a deity that is obsessed with human imperfection and punishing imperfection. The horrific mental deformity of wrathful God threatening punishment and demanding barbaric appeasement through violent blood sacrifice.
That psychopathology arises from the baseline myth of a deity who created original perfection that early fallen/corrupted humans then ruined. That deity, who could not tolerate imperfection, then gathered his pure robes and retreated far away into the skies/heavens. From there he began millennia of tormenting punishment of fallen humanity notably through the natural world in the form of natural disasters, diseases that killed more people than anything else, also through accidents and through cruel predation, both animal and human.
Paul re-enforced this threat theology (angry deity punishing imperfect humans through nature) in warning the Corinthians that their sickness and death was punishment from God for their sins, illustrating his point by reference to God doing the same to the ancient Israelites in sending poisonous snakes to kill them.
This mythology has burdened people already suffering excessively from physical problems with the additional psychic burden of an angry deity punishing them through their physical suffering.
It only gets worse across history with divine wrath eventually intensified to “the fury of the wrath of God” that finally erupts in the apocalyptic destruction of the entire world (Revelation 19).
So much subsequent bad mythology was built on that initial fallacy of an originally perfect creation or world.
The brilliant insight of Historical Jesus that God was a non-retaliatory, unconditional love, this singularly brilliant insight (“Jesus’ greatest contribution to the history of human ideas”) overturned entirely the image of wrathful, punitive deity that has darkened, enslaved, and tormented human minds for millennia.
Note: This insight on deity incarnated in humanity, and not known anywhere else, also counters the conventional claims that the vastness of the universe emphasizes our smallness and insignificance. Really? Or perhaps, it emphasizes our importance and greatness as the locus of consciousness in a setting of such amazing vastness. A vastness that was created to show/enhance the wonder of being human. “Being or becoming human” as something that we should all contribute to understanding and improving with our own personal inputs/contributions.
More coming on the “love your enemy because God does” as the height of human achievement in this world. The meaning of the true “Hero’s Quest”. Our essential purpose fulfilled through our unique individual contributions to the grand exodus from our animal past to the liberation of becoming human in human civilization. How we win the real battle of life against the real enemy of us all, the inner monster of the residual animal that derails us from this grand trajectory of ultimate liberation.
This from Rob Reiner is beautiful, the best of the human spirit, no matter the other differences that we all have on issues like politics, etc.
“Resurfaced Clip of Rob Reiner on Piers Morgan Reacting to Charlie Kirk’s Death Goes Viral”, The Rubin Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUTqt8lePtg
Gad Saad on how Trump could have better responded to the TDS of Reiner, more magnanimously, after his murder.
“President Trump’s Remarks Following Rob Reiner’s Murder (THE SAAD TRUTH_1963)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oWbU7u1USc
This site is, among other things, my response to the purported “crisis of meaning” that apparently plagues many today. I would urge that the proper response to this is not simply the return to historical systems of meaning in some revival of religions like traditional Christianity. At least not without considering the good research on the profound differences between the messages of Historical Jesus and Paul’s entirely opposite themes in his Christ myth. To just engage a revival of the old without proper reform is not advance in understanding and related outcomes.
The now three century-long “Search for Historical Jesus” has given us the liberating insight that Jesus presented a “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson). I take that further to argue that his central and singularly most profound insight was that God was inexpressibly wondrous “unconditional love”. This is clear from his central statements of his message in places like Luke 6: 27-36.
His use of the ancient coupling of “behavior based on similar theological belief” reveals this unconditional element as most central to his teaching. How so? He ends the Luke 6 list saying basically, “Do these things in the list and you will be exhibiting just what God is like”. That is what is meant in his “Be unconditionally merciful (as detailed in the above list) as God is unconditionally merciful”. Theological conclusions based on the best in humanity.
The liberation factor in his unconditional message is freedom from millennia of threat theology (angry God threatening punishment and destruction) that has deformed human minds, emotions, motivations, and subsequent behavior, for the worse, in endless eruptions of tribal violence and war. The ancient problem of “we become just like the God that we believe in”, or “Men never do worse evil than when they do it in the name of God”. The continuing problem of “behavior based on belief”. And bad ideas making people do bad things to one another.
The recent Bondi Beach massacre is just the latest in history’s endless such episodes of human madness incited and validated by bad religious ideas, none worse than threat theology.
A critical point this site emphasizes- We have long had better alternatives to the theologies that we have inherited in our religious traditions. Better alternatives to the mixed mergers of good ideas with bad ideas so common to our great religions. Mergers like Paul’s “Jesus Christ”, that mixes and confuses the better elements of the message of Jesus with Paul’s opposite themes in his Christ. Here is a list of some of the more dominant features in this oxymoronic merger of opposites in Paul’s myth.
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 greatly 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 unconditional God to be met for forgiveness, full 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, Paul emphasized further conditions of required belief/faith in his myth (see his letter to the Romans), along with varied other related religious conditions.
(2) Nonretaliation in Jesus- i.e. 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/retaliate’, says the Lord” (Romans 12), along with his retaliatory emphasis in “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 advocated in the divinely demanded appeasement of bloody human sacrifice for atonement- i.e. the dangerously inciting theme of the belief that if you murder the right people- sacrifice them- then you can make the future better. Such ideas have led to the deformation of the “hero’s quest” where evil finds validation in believing that it is heroically doing good through 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 authentic love in the threat, coercion, and 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/incarnated 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 essential self/person. Meaning- We are not most essentially “corrupt, evil, sinful beings”.
(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 a 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, noted by scholar/historians like Stephen Patterson of the Jesus Seminar. See, for example, his “The God of Jesus: The Historical Jesus and the Search for Meaning.”
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.
A brief overview of how destructive the apocalyptic idea has been, Wendell Krossa
Riffing off Arthur Mendel’s statement (“Vision and Violence”) that apocalyptic has been “the most violent and destructive idea in history.”
Consider: For some sense of just how destructive apocalyptic has been, note again that it played a significant role in the Marxist revolutions of last century with their mass-death totals of around 100 million people, devastating economies and societies. Add the role of apocalyptic contributing to inciting and validating the Nazi mass-death crusade of around 50-60 million people.
Then move to the environmental alarmism version that has been fueled by the very same apocalyptic millennial themes as Marxism and Nazism (sources often noted throughout this site- Landes, Mendel, Redles, Herman, etc.). The environmental version has produced a string of “successes” for the green movement- notably blocking nuclear energy development and thereby contributing to derailing what should have been the ongoing progress of industrial societies. That purposeful derailing program continued with varied schemes to block economic development as a purported assault on nature.
Green apocalyptic narratives have contributed to societies wasting trillions that have been sidetracked into unworkable renewables (plagued with fundamental intermittency issues that require conventional backups that add to excessive costs on populations). And all based on the grand lie of CO2 as a threat to life, demonizing the very food of life that has finally been recovering to more natural and healthy levels to sustain life properly. The evidence of this beneficial outcome is noted, for example, in the addition of green vegetation to the planet now computed at the scale of twice all the green vegetation in the US. Just since roughly 1980.
Providing inexpensive fossil fuels is critical to the flourishing of industrial civilization that has been the generator of immense wealth over the past century or so. This wealth creation is how we save the world, through the never-ending rise, progress, and further development of our societies. Evidence from the past century affirms this, as the wealthiest areas are the most environmentally clean and protected.
The corruption of our meta-narratives with apocalyptic has repeatedly derailed and ruined the great trajectory of rise and progress, again and again. When will we ever learn?
And do I have to draw the line of descent/inheritance from the origins of this worst of bad ideas, as it has come down to us through the history of Western civilization?
James Tabor’s summarizing statements, in “Paul and Jesus”, will assist here in making my case/argument:
“There was a version of ‘Christianity before Paul’, affirmed by both Jesus and his original followers, with tenets and affirmations quite opposite to these of Paul… the message of Paul, which created Christianity as we know it, and the message of historical Jesus and his earliest followers, were not the same. In fact, they were sharply opposed to one another with little in common beyond the name Jesus itself” (p.xv1).
“Paul is the most influential person in human history and realize it or not, he has shaped practically all we think about everything… the West in particular… the foundations of Western civilization- from our assumptions about reality to our societal and personal ethics- rest in a singular way upon the heavenly visions and apparitions of the apostle Paul. We are all cultural heirs of Paul, with the well-established doctrines and traditions of mainstream Christianity deeply entrenched in our culture. In contrast, Jesus as a historical figure… has been largely lost to our culture” (p. xv11).
“Paul operated with a strongly apocalyptic perspective that influenced all he said or did” (p.15).
“The entire New Testament canon is largely a post-Paul and pro-Paul production…” (p.19).
“The ‘Jesus’ who most influenced history was the ‘Jesus-Christ’ of Paul, not the historical figure of Jesus… Paul transformed Jesus himself (and) his message of a… kingdom of justice and peace on earth, to the symbol of a religion of otherworldly salvation in a heavenly world”, (21).
“The form of Christianity… (that thrived in the late Roman Empire)… was heavily based upon the ecstatic and visionary experiences of Paul. Christianity as we came to know it, is Paul and Paul is Christianity. The bulk of the New Testament is dominated by his theological vision”, p.24).
“Paul’s view of Christ as the divine pre-existent Son of God who took on human form, died on the cross for the sins of the world, and was resurrected to heavenly glory at God’s right hand becomes the Christian message”, (39).
“The Q source is the earliest collection of the teachings and sayings of Jesus… the most striking characteristic of the Q source in terms of reconstructing Christian origins is that it has nothing of Paul’s theology, particularly his Christology or view of Christ”, (41).
So yes, Paul’s Christ is most responsible for this horrifically destructive idea of apocalyptic that has validated so much violence across Western history by lodging the theme of “salvation through violent destruction” in deity, as a central divine ideal.
And to affirm Harold Ellens’ points on this- Its no wonder that such ideas/beliefs, elevated to ultimate status as ideals in deity, then incite the same in believers of such ideas.
This from National Post, Wendell Krossa
The article below again illustrates how natural defense of a system of ideas/beliefs, a system that grants one essential identity and meaning, can miss important distinctions that are fundamentally necessary for truly healthy development as human. Our entire history of exodus from our animal past and liberation toward a truly human future has involved learning to distinguish between good and bad. And critical here is to end the short-circuiting of our understanding of the nature of real good by “cloaking bad as good”.
The author says of the Muslim Brotherhood message and methods, that they “Do not represent true Islam”. That is a very common defensive statement by moderate Muslims regarding their religion. And he is not entirely wrong in stating that. Christians, and members of other traditions, make similar apologetic statements in defense of their religions.
To get to the critical issue here- Look at the nature/character of the God at the center of these religions. The ultimate Ideal that shapes all the rest. And keep in mind Harold Ellen’s point that such deity ideas/images have “dynamis”- they generate and energize similar emotions, motivations, and actions in adherents of any given religion, similar to the features of the deity. There are no beliefs that are more potent in energizing emotions, motivations, and behavior than the ultimate ideas/features of deity.
Ellens: “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…
“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…”
Summarizing Ellens- “We become just like the God that we believe in”. Fortunately, many in our great religious traditions have learned to moderate the influence of the nastier features of their deities by tempering such with other kinder and gentler features. But the central features of Western theology- i.e. divine wrath, tribal division (favoring true believers, damning unbelievers), domination (God as Lord, King), justice as punitive destruction, etc.- still work against full and clear unconditional inclusion (nontribal), serving others (nondomination in relationships), forgiving freely, mercy in restorative justice, etc.
Whereas, a more straightforward type of “reform”, such as the radical shift to the full embrace of the unconditional theology of Jesus, will transform deity entirely and liberate minds from those darker features that have long been embedded in God theories. The stunning new theology of Jesus offers the potential for generating “dynamis” in terms of the best of emotions, motivations, and behaviors all through one devastating blow to the old monster of “threat theology”. Jesus really did function as the wise man in the Hero’s quest who offers the potent weapon to slay the monster.
Returning from that weave…
The Western monotheistic deity (encompassing Judaism, Christianity, Islam) is most fundamentally a deity of wrath, promising punishment through apocalypse and in hell, the most extreme forms of “the punishment far exceeds the crimes”. And such divine violence is vented for sins like “unbelief”, horrific punishment for free spirits refusing to bow to such totalitarian monsters. This mental deformity of evil cloaked as good, cloaked in the ultimate ideal of God, has to be confronted, acknowledged for the deformity that it is, along with recognizing the outcomes of such beliefs in endless human abuse of differing others.
While what Fahmy says below is true of any given terrorist movement adding its own unique reframing of religious ideas, it also remains true that the core themes of his religion are the origin of the more extremist versions that spring from those core ideas, ideas that continue to validate tribalism, defeat and domination of enemies, and violent destruction of enemies/unbelievers. The God at the center is the grand Archetype that continues to dominate all else in the religion.
“I’ve seen the Muslim Brotherhood’s violent ideology first-hand. Canada must designate it a terrorist entity: Many Middle Eastern countries recognize the danger it poses, but Ottawa has not followed suit”, Mohamed Fahmy, Dec. 18, 2025
Quote:
“To understand the dangers of political Islam at the core of the Muslim Brotherhood’s mandate, one must focus on the brainwashing and malicious recruiting methods the organization uses on young moderate Muslims in mosques, its treachery in fundraising and the secrecy of its cult-like ground operations, charities and various channels of spreading its poisonous ideas that do not represent true Islam.”
(End of comment on Fahmy article re Muslim Brotherhood)
Sparks flying, Wendell Krossa
My comment below is sparked by things like the article linked further below- “The Sydney attack was about spiritual — not political — terrorism”, Barry Cooper.
A quote from Cooper’s article:
“Critics of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese linked the attack to his government’s intention, announced earlier this fall, to recognize a Palestinian state. The same logic of appeasement would explain something similar taking place here.
“Alas, common sense only takes you so far — about as far as the pieties uttered by Canadian politicians. They were appalled, and so on. In the words of the Australian Prime Minister: “the evil that was unleashed at Bondi Beach today,” he said, “is beyond comprehension.” No, sir, it is not beyond comprehension, no more than the Hamas attack that was described in similar language at the time.
“To see how comprehensible such events are, one must distinguish between political and spiritual terrorism. Both use violence and terror against civilians, but political terrorists consider their action to be instrumental, a means to effect plausible political change.”
What happened at Bondi Beach illustrates, once again, how traditional religious beliefs (i.e. the bad ones), the themes that still dominate our great world religions, continue to incite and validate some of the worst behavior today in mass violence toward differing others. This has been illustrated once again in the Bondi massacre of innocent people, mainly Jews.
The author of the article below, Barry Cooper, gets the point of how religious ideas (he used “spiritual”) are driving factors behind such acts, something that many others are still hesitant to acknowledge and confront. To help focus on exactly what ideas are among the worst, I will post again my list of some of the worst of “bad ideas”, below.
(Insert: For balance, Cooper acknowledges that most Muslims are moderates and do not approve such violence.)
Cooper again: “In this connection the Victorians spoke of “moral insanity” and political scientists today speak not of a psychopathology but of a “pneumopathology” — a spiritual disease. Psychopaths apparently cannot distinguish between right and wrong; pneumopaths can, but they overcome this awareness by the excitement of direct action and surround their actions with transparently untrue justifications, stories and myths”, Cooper (again, article below).
My more blunt and direct take on this (I prefer opening salvos with more clarity): The “spiritual” or religious ideas referred to are all basic variants on “salvation through destruction of some enemy other”, or “apocalyptic millennialism” in Richard Landes’ terms. Subsidiary here is the idea that “the murder of the right people is required to achieve a better future outcome”. That was illustrated in the Luigi Mangione murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson. So also, in the murder of Charlie Kirk.
All to illustrate Cooper’s point that these outbreaks of violence are not “incomprehensible” but have actually been the “norm” across history. And this fact is still incomprehensible to many religious people- i.e. that the complexes of core beliefs in their religious traditions have been the nurseries that keep birthing endless variants of such ideas. Again, the historians have done the homework detailing all this- i.e. Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, David Redles, etc.
The great archetype of this pathology of “salvation through murder/destruction” was the murder of Jesus that was subsequently framed by Paul and others as necessary for salvation. Again, “evil cloaked as good”. And that great mythical archetype of Paul has dominated Western narratives and consciousness for two millennia. The core themes of Islam show that tradition to be another offspring that has embraced that narrative theme.
Psychologist Harold Ellens on cloaking evil as good:
“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’.
This has to be uncovered for what it really is if we are ever to get over fiddling our Romes away by too cautious tinkering at the periphery of our traditions, held in check by fear of whatever the authorities use to keep us kowtowed- i.e. being condemned for “heresy, blasphemy, Islamophobia, racism, or whatever”. Or whatever else keeps us from courageously embracing the death/rebirth of our narratives, the full-frontal disintegration/reintegration that abandons the residual old and embraces the entirely new, as in more fully humane complexes of ideas/beliefs.
This is arguing for dealing properly and thoroughly with all the root contributing factors to the endless madness of violence and wars.
Continuing…
First, the usual qualifier that, yes, there are good ideas in the mix of religious themes but, as noted by Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy, the bad ones distort, weaken, and bury the good stuff. Mergers of oxymoronic opposites ultimately do not produce overall good outcomes because the bad stuff in the mix produces effects that are horrifically damaging to our personalities (Harold Ellens, Zenon Lotufo), and that personal deformity is then vented on societies and civilizations (Landes, Mendel, Redles, etc.). Bondi is another illustration of such impacts and outcomes.
That said….
From the traditional narratives of our great religions we have been fed ideas/beliefs that have endlessly incited our worst impulses to tribalism, to suspicion, fear, and even hatred of some dehumanized other, the differing other who is framed as our “enemy” who threatens our existence and must be fought and defeated. Bad religious ideas, that have long framed the dominant archetypes of human narratives, continue to influence many to embrace deformed versions of the hero’s quest, where people convince themselves that they are the righteous warriors battling some great evil that threatens life, with differing others framed as the evil threatening enemies (i.e. the “unbelievers” to one’s own system).
Such enemies must be punished, even destroyed/exterminated as part of a great battle for true “justice”, the necessary destruction to achieve salvation. All part of cloaking evil as good to convince ourselves that we are doing the right thing as we punish and destroy others.
This is what Cooper refers to in stating, “the Victorians spoke of “moral insanity” and political scientists today speak not of a psychopathology but of a “pneumopathology” — a spiritual disease. Psychopaths apparently cannot distinguish between right and wrong; pneumopaths can, but they overcome this awareness by the excitement of direct action and surround their actions with transparently untrue justifications, stories and myths.”
Psychologist Harold Ellens made this same point in noting how people find validation for their violence from bad religious ideas that “generate ‘dynamis’” and thereby override their better angels. He referenced “cruel God” theology to make his point, images of a deity who advocates violence to achieve salvation.
Ellens (yes, again, because so good on this): “Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives…. in the psychological sphere, (they) 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…”, etc.
These complexes of bad religious ideas blind us to our essential oneness and equality in the human family and the fact that violence toward others is also harming ourselves, more than just dehumanizing us.
The recent Bondi assault illustrates once again the outcome of, for example, the Zoroastrian myth of a cosmic dualism between a great Good God and an opposite evil Force/Spirit. That mythology, along with associated themes, has long intensified and validated the human tribalism impulse framed in terms of people engaging noble crusades or righteous battles of good against differing others framed as evil threats (i.e. righteous battles framed around divides of race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, ideology/politics, etc.).
Bad ideas like Zoroaster’s tribal dualism profoundly distort the hero’s quest that, if used properly, should focus us all on the inner battle against the real enemy of us all, the real monster in life- i.e. the inheritance of animal impulses inside us, notably, the evil triad of tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
Notable tribal dualisms that continue to impact us today- e.g. the revived collectivism of Marxism with its divide of humanity into two opposing classes of “oppressors/oppressed”. This is given new life in Woke Progressivism’s DEI programs that stir a new discrimination against entire groups, based on skin color as now defining the new “victimizers/victims” classes. White/Jewish/Asian as victimizers and black/brown as perpetual victims.
Add here the Islamic element of the true and righteous religious group that is set against all others as evil unbelievers who must be exterminated, if not amenable to coercive conversion to Islam. Such jihadic violence is necessary to establish the worldwide Caliphate and thereby save the world and install a heavenly utopia. The same old “salvation through destruction”, or “murder the right people to achieve a better future”.
All exhibiting base forms of tribal dualism, the offspring of Zoroastrian cosmic tribalism.
“The Sydney attack was about spiritual — not political — terrorism: The West — and Israel — cannot reason with utopian fanatics”, Barry Cooper, Dec. 17, 2025
See quotes further below…
So, yes to this author (Cooper) that this evil “is not beyond comprehension”. It can be viewed as just another episode in the now multiple-millennia-long history of similar eruptions of violence from people holding the very same ideas/beliefs that have endlessly incited the same ugly impulses to tribalism, defeat and domination of enemies, and punitive destruction- i.e. to purge some evil enemy on behalf of the tribal, dominating, punitive deity image (God) that centers these pathological complexes of bad religious ideas.
And until we get it through our thick skulls, as Richard Landes and others have warned, that until you recognize the complex of ideas that drive people and even entire societies to engage these mass-death outcomes, you will only see endless ongoing eruptions of the same violence.
Note, (another often repeated point here), that the very same complex of themes, while still dominant in our world religions, have also been embraced and “secularized” in the ideological versions of the modern age- notably in Marxist/socialist versions of collectivism, in the neo-collectivism of woke progressive DEI, in still lingering Nazism, and now in environmental alarmism crusades.
Be certain, as this site repeatedly emphasizes, the real monster at the core of this madness is the God that centers these religious and secularized versions of the same complex of bad ideas. That is humanity’s real enemy and monster that must be confronted, slain, and triumphed over with entirely new images of deity as presented, for example, in the “stunning new theology of Historical Jesus”.
The egregious element here is that the sages of long ago gave us the liberating alternatives. But their insights have been deformed and buried by endless re-affirmation of the same old “salvation through destruction” religious systems. That is what Paul and his Christ myth did to Historical Jesus. Thomas Jeffersona and Leo Tolstoy saw through that and framed their take on it as “the diamonds of Jesus have been buried under the dung of Paul’s Christology”.
“Dung”? Does that ring offensive to your ears? It should. Maybe that will shock many to wake up and see what is really wrong at the core of many highly honored complexes of ideas. How bad continues to be cloaked as ultimate Good. Even in religious images of God.
On the issue of “offense”…
The entirely new theology of Jesus (God as non-retaliatory, unconditional love) has always offended good, upright religious people. Jesus understood that common reaction of offense to his new theology and illustrated it in stories like the older brother in the Prodigal parable, who was pissed at the Father’s generosity and mercy toward the useless younger son. Jesus further illustrated offense at unconditional love in recounted incidents where righteous people at community meals were offended by his free generosity, his unconditional forgiveness and welcoming inclusion of the bad actors of his society. Also, in his story of the all-day vineyard workers similarly pissed at the free and merciful generosity of the vineyard owner.
Generous, merciful treatment of enemies stirs the worst in some (or many?) people.
What the historical wisdom sage Jesus presented in his “stunning new theology” (i.e. his entirely new image of God), was intended to entirely transform human understanding of Ultimate Reality- humanity’s ultimate ideal and authority. And he was also pointing to a new understanding of justice as restorative not punitive.
His was a call to radical death and rebirth of narrative and life, a challenge to embrace the complete disintegration of the old and then reintegrate around the entirely new. His insights are among the best of meta-narrative themes to enable us to accomplish the great exodus from our animal past and find real liberation in a truly human future.
That is the critical purpose of our long historical trajectory of discovery, learning, advance and progress toward something better. Essential to our exodus and ultimate liberation into truly human existence is the ongoing transformation of our narratives, the ideas/ideals/beliefs that contribute to the transformation of our thinking, our emotions, our motivations, that then shapes the outcomes in our responses and treatment of differing others who are too often considered “enemies” in terms of traditional religious narratives.
The Jesus material in particular was focused on new non-retaliatory, unconditional behaviors that would transform individuals and then societies to become “God’s kingdom” right here on earth. His ethical precepts (i.e. Luke 6: 27-36) would enable people to behave just like God, i.e. as in “love your enemies because God does”. “Be merciful just as your Father is merciful”.
As he stated, do this list of things recorded in Luke 6 and you will be just like God. That is ultimate heroism of a hero’s quest. Conquering the old monster of the animal in us to live as free humans, to act as truly humane, according to the Jesus ideal of unconditional love as the new center of narratives.
Continuing with Cooper’s article…
Cooper appears to get the point on how bad ideas incite and validate the endless madness of violence. And nothing is more madness in the mix than the theology- i.e. the deity that is the Cohering Center of complexes of bad ideas. I have more to post here on this, soon…
Quotes from Barry Cooper’s “The Sydney attack was about spiritual — not political — terrorism”: He again, along with many others, illustrates how bad religious ideas can deform human personality, human mind, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior to horrific outcomes.
Cooper begins: “From the October 7 massacre by Hamas to the slaughter at Bondi Beach in Sydney on Sunday, Islamists would have the world believe that the cause of all the mayhem is the existence of Israel. For Islamists and their apologists, the problem is simple: are you with the oppressor or the oppressed?
“The oppressor is, of course, the “Zionist entity.” The oppressed are the Palestinians. This is an updated version of Marx’s expectation of an apocalyptic final conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
“For Islamists, the events at Bondi — 16 killed and 40 more in hospital — express what ‘globalizing the intifada’ entails.”
Cooper says that commonsensical liberal-democratic people see this violence as the outcome of rising antisemitism in Australia following Oct.7. It is commonsense that tolerating antisemitism invites terrorism, but Progressive liberals see that as “prejudice”, and Islamic terrorists see such responses as weakness to be exploited.
Cooper continues, “Alas, common sense only takes you so far — about as far as the pieties uttered by Canadian politicians. They were appalled, and so on. In the words of the Australian Prime Minister: ‘the evil that was unleashed at Bondi Beach today,’ he said, ‘is beyond comprehension.’ No, sir, it is not beyond comprehension, no more than the Hamas attack that was described in similar language at the time.
“To see how comprehensible such events are, one must distinguish between political and spiritual terrorism. Both use violence and terror against civilians, but political terrorists consider their action to be instrumental, a means to effect plausible political change…
“In contrast, spiritual terrorists do not negotiate, at least not in good faith. That’s because they do not seek political change but changes to the structure of reality itself…
“Islamists’ willingness to die is sustained by promises of posthumous rewards offered by persons who are themselves unwilling to die in a terrorist act: rewards in heaven including 70 virgins and all that, and ‘martyr’ status on earth.”
He goes on to note that terrorists are motivated by “spiritual” ideas, what I would term the “bad religious ideas” that still dominate all three great Western religions- i.e. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The extremists in these traditions that manifest their beliefs in actual practise, know the difference between right and wrong, as Cooper also affirms. “But they overcome this awareness (of wrong) by the excitement of direct action and surround their actions with transparently untrue justifications, stories and myths… Those who believe them are precisely in a pneumopathic state, having deliberately altered their own consciousness so they can pretend not to know what they perfectly well know: murder is wrong. Sometimes living in this imaginary world is described as living in a second reality.”
“Barry Cooper is a professor of political science at the University of Calgary and a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy. His 2004 book, New Political Religions was later found in Osama bin Laden’s library when U.S. special forces raided and killed him in his lair in 2011.”
My worst of bad ideas lists (shorter and longer versions), Wendell Krossa
Here again is the complex of basic themes (bad religious ideas) that have shaped the great world religions (notably the three Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and in the modern era have also shaped major ideological systems of belief with the same core themes as their religious counterparts- i.e. the “secularized versions” of Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.
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.
First, a brief version of the complex of primitive myths (longer version is further below).
“(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.”
Full list- Long version
The complex of “bad religious ideas” that have darkened and enslaved human minds from the beginning (updated, revised Dec. 2025), Wendell Krossa
These ideas, and the narratives they frame, incite endless eruptions of “madness of crowds” irrationality and hysteria that lead to “salvation” schemes that destroy societies to save some imagined threatened world.
Don’t dismiss these ideas/myths/themes below out of hand as residual religious fallacies that have nothing to do with contemporary worldviews. I can guarantee that most people hold these core themes in their worldviews/narratives. These themes dominate the narratives of the major world religions that some 85% of humanity are affiliated with. They dominate the widely believed climate crisis narratives, just as they frame socialist/Marxist narratives (see Grok’s research on this below). And they also shape the worldviews of the 15% of humanity that claim “unaffiliated” status in regard to world religions, but still hold some version of “spiritual but not religious”.
The foundational plank in the narratives that we have inherited from our ancestors is (1) the myth that the past was better… it was a golden age, an original paradise world.
This most fundamental mythical fallacy promotes reminiscent longing for something that never existed. Psychology speaks to this “rosy retrospection” fallacy of recalling the past more positively than it actually was. See for example, paleo-geological histories of the origins and development of our Earth. They expose entirely this foundational fallacy in all religions that the past was better, that life started in some paradisal state like Sumerian Dilmun or Hebrew Eden, or the modern environmentalism version that the past paradise was a wilderness world with few humans to corrupt and defile pure/pristine Mother Nature.
(Insert: James Payne- “History of Force”- adds another element to understanding this myth of a better past with his comment on “Presentism”- i.e. the fallacy of our feeling that our present condition and suffering must be the worst ever because we are experiencing it firsthand. Nothing in the past could have been worse, hence the common, and wrong, conclusion that things are getting worse, life must be declining.)
Just do a search for any geological history of Earth to see the brutally uninhabitable conditions of the early Earth. There was no paradise in the past.
Prehistorian John Pfeiffer suggests that the belief in an original golden age on Earth may have emerged around 100,000 years ago. That prompted me to take a look at conditions on Earth around that time. I would suggest that perhaps the fallacy of original paradisal world probably began as our ancestors experienced the rapid ending of the Eemian interglacial (130- 115,000 years ago). Research reveals that previous interglacial was some 8 degrees C. warmer than our current Holocene interglacial. A paradisal warm period that would have enhanced human survival.
Some studies suggest the “Eemian” interglacial may have ended suddenly, over just a few centuries, or even just decades. Our ancestors, even with their much shorter lifespans (20-30ish years) would have remembered the better past as the previous warmer climate that made survival easier.
See this link: https://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html
“The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial.”
(2) The second major bad religious idea is the myth that early pure humans committed an original error and subsequently became corrupted and then ruined that original paradise world. If the past was better, then what happened? Well, blame humanity.
Thus begins the long history of anti-humanism, the mythology of essential human corruption, sinfulness. Humans are labelled the destroyers of good, destroyers of the pristine natural world.
And we are an easy target. Our developing consciousness, even in the ancient past, left us with an intense sense of our own imperfection and that we consequently deserved blame, we deserved punishment. Any basic awareness of ourselves as imperfectly human, any basic honesty about our less-than-pristine nature, will open us as the easy targets of guilt, shame, and self-blame.
(Insert: I distinguish between healthy awareness of one’s imperfections and the natural accompanying guilt/shame that pushes us to engage further self-improvement. I separate that from the excessive guilt/shame that arises from the fallacies of bad religious ideas, unhealthy guilt and shame that deforms human personality and leads people to excessively beat up on themselves.)
The myth that humans have ruined the original paradise world begins the long history of the fallacy of humanity as destroyer of nature.
Related to this, early people, feeling their own impulse to retaliate against the offenses of others, then projected that base impulse onto deity, and constructed the fallacy of God as a punitive Judge who would respond harshly to human failure. These varied lines of thought would coalesce in the myth of a God who was angry with fallen humans for the offense of ruining his originally perfect creation.
It was then believed that the pissed deity punished people through the varied harmful elements of the natural world, through the world that he had created perfect but they had ruined. Consequently, humanity then had to suffer the consequences of ruined nature with its harsh elements of natural disasters, disease, accident, and predatory cruelty, both animal and human.
People embraced the myth that they were divinely cursed and that was their justly deserved fate. Our ancestors felt that they were bad to the bone and deserved the divine retribution that was expressed throughout early mythology.
Further bad ideas were constructed, based on the myth of an original fall of humanity- i.e. that fallen people were “created to serve the gods, to do the work of the gods, to feed the gods”. Bad people deserved servitude. Hence, we see the demand for submission to authority- i.e. fallen, corrupted people, too darkened by sin to know what is good for them, must be dominated by gods and their mediating/representative priesthoods. They must be led by dominating elites appointed by deity to lord over the ignorant commoners who don’t know what is good for themselves. (Is this line of thinking behind Plato’s “philosopher kings” as the elites who, alone as the truly enlightened ones, should dominate and control societies?)
Continuing with the fallacy of divine punishment exhibited through the “ruined” world…
The Christian bible (in the first book- Genesis) presents the ancient Hebrew version of this mythology of human corruption and consequent punishment through the imperfections of a fallen world.
Note these initial themes as presented in Genesis 1-3:
First, the biblical God establishes tribal hatred, jealousy, antagonism, and conflict between groups (i.e. Zoroastrian cosmic dualism replicated in human tribal opposition)- “I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.”
The biblical emphasis on conflict between groups of people illustrates how ancient mythology deforms the hero’s quest. Conflict with other people misdirects the hero’s quest away from an inner battle against our own worst impulses as our real enemy/monster. It directs our sense of something bad to be opposed and conquered outward toward to be projected onto other imperfect humans as the enemies/monsters to be fought and defeated.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn countered the ancient perception that the human struggle of good against evil was a battle between differing groups/classes of people. Paraphrasing Solzhenitsyn, I would argue that the real battle of good against evil is a battle that must be fought inside every human heart, a battle against the evil that is inside each one of us, against our real enemy- i.e. our inheritance of animal impulses to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of differing others.
Continuing with the Genesis affirmation of primitive mythology- Deity then promised suffering and pain through the imperfections of a ruined world as punishment for original sin- “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labor you will give birth to children. Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat your food.”
Add also, the Genesis affirmation of domination in human relationships- “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” So begins the validation of patriarchal domination. Paul (or whoever wrote Ephesians) continues this validation of domination/subservience in relationships- “Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands. Slaves submit to your masters.”
Additional notes on fallen humanity mythology:
The fallacy of an original paradise ruined by early people generates the natural felt need to correct the wrong that humans have caused, to rebalance the unbalanced scales of cosmic justice. This sense of rebalancing unbalanced justice, of correcting wrongs with retributive punishment, has long undergirded human perspective on the nature of justice.
Blaming humanity for ruining the world, based on the fallacy of original perfection, adds and intensifies unnecessary guilt and shame in addition to the general sense of shame/guilt that most people already suffer due to the sense of their own imperfection and the imperfections of their world.
The mythology of humanity as corrupter of perfection, is an original element in building the case for anti-humanism in human narratives, a psychopathology that has deformed human consciousness for millennia, adding to the burden of human fear, anxiety, despair, depression, nihilism, and more.
This fallacy of an original “fall into sin” became a prominent theme in the mythology of cultures across the world- i.e. that early humans had made an original mistake, committed an error/sin that angered the gods and brought an end to a previous paradise world. We find this fallacy promoted in the Sumerian myth of Dilmun where Enki ate the 8 forbidden plants and ruined that original paradise. We see this in the Eden myth where Adam and Eve corrupted paradise and were punished by God who then cursed life with suffering through the imperfections of a subsequently ruined world.
Thus begins the mythologies of fallen, sinful humanity angering the God, who as creator of perfection and upholder of justice, must then punish bad people. This psychopathology is further affirmed with associated ideas of deity behind all the elements of the natural world- i.e. gods of storm and thunder, gods of sun and drought, gods of varied animal species, gods of trees, gods of streams, and so on.
And because the varied elements of nature are often harmful and destructive- i.e. natural disasters, disease, accidents, predatory cruelty- it was then obviously logical for primitive minds to conclude that the gods were angry with people’s sins and manifesting that punitive anger through such harmful elements of nature.
That misread of the natural world as exhibiting divine vengeance and anger, then led to affirming these features in deity- i.e. wrath/anger, retaliatory/punitive justice, vengeance, etc. These features, attributed to deity, and affirmed by primitive belief in justice as naturally retaliatory/retributive, then logically resulted in the portrayal of deity as righteously demanding appeasement/atonement. The development of that “threat theology”, based on natural world imperfections, became the basis for later development of salvation that demanded sacrifice, payment, payback.
I heard a version of the human ruin of paradise and consequent divine punishment from Manobo friends in Mindanao. They said that, in their mythologies, an original Manobo girl was pounding rice and raised her pounding stick too high, hit heaven and thereby upset the gods, who then sealed off the formerly open door of heaven. That was the original sin that ruined paradise in Manobo mythology. Every culture across the world has its own version of bad people ruining a formerly paradise world.
Concluding the “weave” above, and returning to the point…
No single book has more potently blown away the fallacy of a better past, and life subsequently declining, along with the fallacy of humans as corrupt destroyers of paradise, than Julian Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”. His data are now dated but his principles for determining the true state of life are as informative and useful as when first published. Numerous subsequent researchers have continued to affirm his ideas, principles and conclusions. See, for example, “Humanprogress.org”. Greg Easterbrook also presents some interesting comment on the human contribution to improving an originally imperfect natural world (“A Moment On The Earth”). Another good follow-up to Simon is Desrocher and Szurmak’s “Population Bombed”.
And to hone my point here, as I noted Bob Brinsmead’s comments above, the real story of humanity is not “how far we have fallen”, but how amazingly we have risen and improved across the millennia. The true story of humanity should focus on the rise of our species out of a brutal animal past to become “the wonder of being human”, the creators of an ever-improving world. Further, see the evidence of our long-term improvement as set forth in the research of James Payne’s “History of Force”, or Stephen Pinker’s follow-up to Payne’s research in “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, or similar histories. As Julian Simon concluded, the evidence of the true state of life shows that we are “more creators than destroyers”.
We have never been a fallen, corrupted species but we have always been a rising, improving, and progressing species and our inherent goodness continues to develop, grow, and express in the evidence of our improving all life on Earth. We don’t need religious versions of “salvation” as, across history, we have been learning how to save ourselves and all life on Earth.
Continuing a bit more with the fallacy of divine anger manifested through the destructive elements of nature: And then came the pathology of “sacrifice”…
It was obvious to our primitive ancestors that the divine anger they believed was coming at them through the natural world must be appeased, as critical for their survival. That fed the innovation of some early creative mind to make sacrifices, both human and animal, to appease divine anger and thereby obtain blessings/favors from the gods (i.e. offerings to the gods to obtain the benefits of sun, rain, food). The logic behind sacrifice? Some suggest that it had to do with substitution- “A life for a life, blood for blood”. Take this innocent life as payment for my guilt and thereby spare my life.
A tribal man (Manobo) explained it to me thus- “We offer the blood of the animal, and the god eats that and is then satisfied and will not eat our souls” (punishing us via sickness or accident). Something eaten in place of us, that then functions to spare us. Built on the belief that wrongs must be made right by some form of equal retribution/retaliation. Pain for pain, death for death, etc.
Or perhaps the origin of sacrifice has to do with the primitive notion that humans were created to serve the gods food? The origin of sacrifice to appease angry gods may be nothing more than gods lusting for blood as food? There is also the primitive idea that drinking the blood of defeated enemies is a further insult to those enemies, or it is a source of appropriated energy/power (absorbing the “life” of the defeated enemy).
Further, in relation to the primeval myth of humans created to feed the gods, to do the work of the gods, we find also the early sense of obligation to serve the elite representatives of gods- i.e. commoners obligated to serve the elite shaman/priests who claim the authority to represent the gods. They claim special status as those who know the secrets of the invisible realms and they alone can communicate the will/word/law of the deities to the rest. This further adds to the overall pathology of degrading, devaluing, dehumanizing, and demonizing common humanity.
From the beginning, the earliest shaman, agitating to dominate their fellow tribals, initiated the demand for domination/submission forms of relating as natural, and even as divinely authorized. And, claiming special insight into the mysteries of the invisible world of the gods, the shaman established themselves as the solely qualified representatives who would speak for the gods. That early shamanic tradition eventually became the dominating priesthoods of states who would claim to represent the will and rule of the gods.
That early unleashing of the inherited animal impulse to dominate others (alpha-ism), eventually expressed in the Hellenistic belief of “special people as divine in some manner”, elites divinely gifted and appointed to rule commoners- as in Plato’s “philosopher kings”, those in societies claiming to be the enlightened experts most qualified to lead populations of commoners.
Christianity, prominently shaped by that Greek mythology, eventually formulated the belief in such things as “the Divine right of kings”. The elite advocacy for domination/submission forms of relating was exemplified in the Christian belief in “Lord Christ” as the epitome embodiment of ruling authority, the archetype of domination. See also, for example, Romans 13 where Paul advocates for state domination, or Revelation on domination/submission as an eternal reality- i.e. Lord Jesus as eternal Ruler with a “rod of iron”.
Note: This primitive “alpha-ism” contradicts entirely the teaching of Historical Jesus that true greatness was to not lord over others but to serve others.
Insert: Other researchers suggest the human impulse to “subservience to authority” is very much attributable to the continuing presence of the primitive animal impulse to alpha domination over weaker others. See, for example, Hector Garcia’s “Alpha God: The Psychology Of Religious Violence And Oppression.”
Next theme (continuing to build on the above):
(3) The myth of “Declinism” that dominates our modern era– detailed by Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline In Western History”.
The idea of decline argues that the trajectory of life declines toward a worsening state. Surveys show that a majority of people across the world believe that “the world is becoming worse” (see, for example, the YouGov survey in “Ten Global Trends”).
Herman stated that the idea of decline is “the most dominant and influential theme in the (modern world)”. Hollywood obsessively promotes this primitive myth in its public storytelling (i.e. the decline of life toward disastrous collapse and ending as the essential element in apocalyptic mythology and narratives).
The fallacy that life and the world is becoming worse undermines the inspiring impact of hope that is essential to human wellbeing, flourishing, and creative endeavor. The myth of decline generates a sense of fatalism, resignation, giving up, and nihilism in people. Look at the prominence today of depression, anxiety disorder, fear of growing up, fear of having children (i.e. fear of bringing children into a world that is soon to end), etc. Again, Simon’s “Ultimate Resource” is the brilliant response/counter to the “Declinism” fallacy.
(4) Associated with the general declinism of all life: Humanity is becoming worse- i.e. “Declinism” in humanity, or the fallacy of “human degeneration” theory (Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline”). This anti-humanism element has been beaten into human consciousness across history in religious narratives of original sinfulness (i.e. Adam “fall of man” mythology, fallen from a previous perfect state). This mythology deforms human consciousness with the fallacy that humanity becomes worse over time.
The “noble savage” theory that apparently still dominates academia today (i.e. early humans as more pure, strong, noble, more “connected” to nature), emerged out of this myth of the fall of humanity from original perfection.
This myth also feeds into the deforming of the hero’s quest, where people view themselves in terms of Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism, as the righteous true believers on the side of the true and good religion/ideology and obligated to battle the evil enemies on the other side in some differing “false” religion/ideology, the differing others who are demonized as irredeemably corrupted, becoming ever worse, and deserving to be destroyed, exterminated, as they are framed as “existential” threats to life.
Contrary to this mythical fallacy of degenerating humanity, the actual improving trajectory of humanity has been covered by researchers like James Payne (“History of Force”) and Stephen Pinker (“Better Angels of Our Nature”).
Add Paul Seabright’s “The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life” on how the development of commerce led to the taming of human violence, as humans discovered the mutual benefits of trade/commerce, what became known as the “moralizing influence of gentle commerce”.
And further, see also “Constant Battles: The Myth of the Noble Savage and a Peaceful Past”, by Katherine E. Register, Marcia E. Register, and Steven A. LeBlanc.
The evidence shows that we have steadily, across the millennia, become something better than before (note the main indicator of human improvement- i.e. becoming less violent). Simon’s “Ultimate Resource”, with amassed evidence on all the main indicators of the true state of life, affirms the same rising trajectory for humanity, as for all life, that of gradual improvement over time. Simon concludes that the evidence on the long-term trajectory of life and humanity shows that we have become “more creators than destroyers”. Our long-term improvement and progress reveals our essential human goodness emerging and developing, and it powerfully counters the fallacy of essential human corruption and degeneration.
The declining life/declining humanity theme culminates in (5) the myth of the final collapse and ending of life, the complete and final ruination of the world in “catastrophic apocalyptic destruction”. The fallacy of the apocalyptic destruction of all life, is the final phase in the mythical narrative of “original paradise ruined by humanity with life subsequently declining toward something worse as divine punishment”. The threat of the retributive ending of all life incites the human survival impulse to hysterical heights and that renders people susceptible to irrational salvation schemes that involve the destruction of life and civilization- i.e. the demand to “violently purge evil”, salvation promised through destruction as the required way to “save the world”.
Religious salvation schemes often promise otherworldly salvation (utopia) that incentivizes people to abandon efforts to engage and improve this present world.
We have the extensive historical record of the outcomes of repeated apocalyptic millennial salvation crusades- i.e. the madness of revolutions that seek to destroy the existing world/civilization, to purge the “evil” of the present order as required to prepare the way for the restoration of a lost paradise or the installation of a new millennial perfection.
This was true of the Marxist and Nazi revolutions, and we are watching a repeat now in the environmental alarmist crusade against modern industrial society, viewed as the destroyer of nature (i.e. humans ruining paradise through technological civilization). Hence, modern civilization must itself be destroyed to make way for the new utopian order (i.e. the revolutionary phase of “exterminate some demonized ‘enemy’ or be exterminated”).
Again, we remember Arthur Mendel’s warning (“Vision And Violence”) to beware of embracing any form of salvation that is promised through death-cult destruction.
Grok’s take on Mendel: “Mendel’s real insight is warning us to watch out for any idea that promises salvation through catastrophe. That’s where the trouble starts.”
Insert: Varied horrific natural disasters of the past may have incited our ancestors to invent and construct the earliest apocalyptic myths. For example, evidence has been offered that some 7,500 years ago the Mediterranean Sea rose from melting glaciers and broke through the Bosphorus Straits to flood the Black Sea.
That great destructive flood may have been what informed the Sumerian Flood myth of apocalypse, as well as the biblical account of Noah’s flood, another early apocalypse story. Zoroaster then later introduced the myth of apocalypse by fire, which shaped Paul’s belief in apocalypse by fire (see Thessalonians, Revelation, etc.- “Lord Jesus returning in flaming fire to destroy…”).
When you add the threat of “imminent” apocalypse, with actual endless setting of dates for the soon coming end of days, you then incite the survival impulse of populations to the ultimate heights of fear, panic, and hysteria over the looming “end of the world”.
“Imminent apocalypse” fallacy clouds people’s minds with fear and renders them susceptible to irrational salvation schemes where they willingly support policies to destroy their lives and societies in order to “save the threatened world”. See Richard Landes (“Heaven On Earth”) for the example of the “Xhosa cattle slaughter”. Incited to hysteria over threatened apocalypse, they destroyed their main source of livelihood.
So also, we are living through the destructive madness of decarbonization in today’s climate apocalypse movement, where the very food of all life (i.e. CO2) has been demonized as the destroyer of life, and where the fossil fuels that have provided the immense improvements to the human condition over that past century have been demonized as a danger to life. All part of the madness of “destroy the industrial civilization to save the world.” Embracing a “promise of salvation through destruction.”
To add further fear to the threat of life ending, add the myth that it gets even worse, far worse, with after-life Judgment, condemnation, exclusion, and punitive destruction- i.e. the hell myth. Eternal suffering after temporal suffering here. Piling metaphysically-based fears on top of physical world fears. Sheesh, such lunacy, eh.
Having incited primal human fears, with threats of angry deity punishing people for their imperfection through the natural world, and further threatening eternal violence and destruction… what then?
The enlightened elites of the ancient world, the shaman and priests, convinced frightened people that the angry, retaliatory deities of their primitive mythologies demanded appeasement, payment, sacrifice.
Early humans then constructed the bad idea of (6) salvation as some form of sacrifice/payment, notably salvation through the slaughter of humans and animals. (Again, Mendel’s point to beware of salvation coming via destruction/death.)
Today we get the scold to embrace salvationism in the pressured obligation to make a payment for our sins, to suffer for atonement, in such things as the requirement to make some contemporary sacrifice as in things like “de-growth, de-development, decarbonization”- i.e. give up the good life in modern civilization and suffer accordingly. Retreat to primitivism. Versions of this come at us in “Small is beautiful. Return to ‘noble hunter-gatherer communalism’, the ‘moral superiority of the simple lifestyle’,” etc. Is this also what all that wilderness survival stuff is catering to? Sacrifice in giving up modern lifestyle, self-punishment, suffering as redemptive? What the priests in monasteries engage- i.e. the self-flagellation with whips, hair shirts, and celibacy.
The sense of obligation to make some sacrifice is based on the primitive view of justice as necessarily retaliatory, retributive, punitive. That derives from myths of gods who are viewed as threatening retaliation, retribution, and punishment, and who demand appeasement, atonement defined by “eye for eye” justice. Ah, it’s a dense and complex interconnection of bad ideas.
Consequent to such mythology, people from the beginning have felt the obligation to make a sacrifice, to pay for sin, to suffer for redemption. That is essential to the consequent felt need to rebalance the unbalanced scales of justice in some cosmic manner.
The long-ingrained retributive view of justice was overturned entirely by Historical Jesus in his stunning new merciful and unconditional approach to human failure that angered people to the extent that they wanted to kill him. He was rejecting the fundamental view of justice by which most of humanity had lived from the very beginning. He was “attacking” and overturning a critical element in human narratives and identity.
His stunning insights and new message notably angered religious Jews, to the extent of trying to kill him. That happened after his first public speech.
He sparked their anger by reading a passage from Isaiah 61 that ends with the statement “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God”. But he left off the last part- “the day of vengeance of our God”. His audience knew what he was up to, “blasphemously” denying the previously unquestioned theology of retaliatory, punishing deity backing similar justice.
Contrary to that fundamental theme in Judaism, Jesus ended on the note of “the Lord’s favor”. He then made things a magnitude of order worse by citing Old Testament examples of God sending prophets to help outsiders to the Hebrew nation. Meaning, he was giving his initial presentation of his stunning new theology of an unconditional God, a God of universal favor and inclusion. Unconditional mercy and love. He stepped across red lines of blasphemy.
To his audience of Jews long indoctrinated in justice as retribution, such mercy grated and outraged them, “All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this”. They wanted an affirmation of divine vengeance and justice as punishment and destruction of their enemies, not mercifully favoring them.
So also, Jonah had sulked in a pissed-off hissy fit of depression when God did not destroy Ninevah after he had prophesied apocalyptic destruction of the city. God took mercy even on the cattle. Jonah says in the book named after him, chapter 4, “I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity… Now, LORD, take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live”. All because God took mercy even on “many animals.”
People angry at love and mercy toward others? That’s a sad state of mind and spirit for anyone to descend into. But that’s what millennia of indoctrination with myths of angry, retaliatory Gods had done to people’s minds. Justice defined by and grounded soundly in retaliatory violence toward “enemies”.
The critical point in this is that Jesus was challenging and rejecting the very God of his audience. Their fundamental image of deity. There could be no other way of imaging deity. To think otherwise of God would be heresy, blasphemy, unbelief, satanic, sin.
Add that their identity as Jews was also tied inextricably to their views of God.
Jesus’ protest against the sacrifice industry was the activist element in his more fundamental protest against the general human felt obligation to appease angry gods, based as such felt obligation was on the fallacy of retaliatory, punitive deity (i.e. monster God theology). He was protesting the very theology that undergirded the system of justice that was based on that theology. It was all part of the same overall protest.
In the story of the synagogue reading, Jesus’ audience understood exactly what he was protesting, that he was rejecting the very God that they had always worshipped- i.e. the theology of wrathful punitive destroyer, Judge of all. Jesus was proposing an entirely opposite theology- i.e. the stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory, unconditional God who promoted a stunning new form of justice as restorative- i.e. “love your enemy”.
Jesus’ message overturned and rendered meaningless all that his audience believed in. His teaching was too radical to even comprehend and countenance, as it meant a disintegration of their old worldview and identity, and reintegration around something entirely new and opposite to all that they had lived by. He was proposing a death and rebirth of radical magnitude. How people viewed their very selves as members of a chosen people with very specific beliefs that their society had long embraced in its national identity. He was challenging the very core of their religious system of meaning and purpose.
Naturally, they were offended, outraged. His message incited in them a form of survival desperation. Their system of meaning was subjected to the “threat” from a divine generosity so contrary to all that they believed. Jesus’ message was experienced as an existential threat to their very identity.
Jesus, standing in front of them, had just rejected their most basic understanding of righteousness, goodness, truth as defined by the retributive “justice” that had prevailed over their previous history. Their hope for salvation was framed by the national desire that their God would take just vengeance on their enemies and liberate them from centuries of oppression to life in a new Jewish kingdom.
Retributive vengeance on enemies/oppressors was inseparable from national liberation, inseparable from their salvation into their dreamed-of paradise.
Jesus’ new theology of no conditions love overturned entirely that deeply ingrained sense of justice and related Jewish ideals of righteousness, truth, goodness, etc.
He had touched a painful nerve in Jewish existence- that as a long-persecuted people they had longed for deliverance from their oppressors and for the punishment and destruction of their oppressors as essential to true justice and righteousness. Now in what Jesus had just done- leaving off “the day of vengeance of our God”- he was dismissing that fundamental element of their identity as a group. And saying that the love of God was being manifest equally toward their hated enemies/oppressors.
The religion of his fellow Jews was based on their view of God (ultimate reality) as the defender of their tribe against their enemies and the upholder of their truth, their righteous causes, the defender of all goodness in the world. That view of God and justice had long undergirded their very identity, and their livelihood/income (i.e. the priests involved in the sacrifice industry). It validated the religion that granted them the status of supremacy over others, as more favored by God than all others (i.e. “chosen people” myths).
Jesus further illustrated the reaction of outrage toward his new unconditional message in the parable of the older brother angry with the generously forgiving and merciful father in the Prodigal story (Luke 15). The father representing God was upsetting and ignoring foundational principles of existence. He also illustrated Jewish anger at his new unconditional theology in the complaints of the all-day vineyard workers toward the generosity of the vineyard owner (Matthew 20).
Point? Jesus’ later public protest against the sacrifice industry was also a protest against the long-held understanding of justice that sacrifice was based on, and even more fundamental to human belief systems and worldviews, a protest against the view of a God that demanded payment of all debts, punishment of all wrongs. There was no free or unconditional love in those traditional Jewish views of divine justice. Jewish Old Testament justice was essentially “eye for eye” retaliatory justice (Google “eye for eye” in the OT).
That is why in Luke 6:27-36, Jesus details what his new version of love means in practice and concludes that if we do such things then we will be just like God, “Be unconditionally merciful just like your Father is unconditionally merciful.” Show this kind of unconditional treatment of your offenders and you will be exhibiting the true character of God.
Further to this list of core bad ideas– Add (7) the tendency of many to deform the “hero’s quest”, to believe there is a divine obligation to heroically engage a righteous battle against evil enemies that must be purged, even exterminated as irredeemably evil, because they are too corrupted, defiled, and existentially threatening to life to allow them to continue living.
This derives from the Zoroastrian cosmic dualism myth (i.e. a Good God warring eternally against an Evil Force/a Satanic entity). Based on this cosmic dualism myth, people believed that there was the follow-up divine demand to join the true religion of the true and good God and to fight the false religions of the false Spirit. The Zoroastrian fallacy has fueled endless eruptions of tribal enmity and conflict among people across history who frame their conflicts with their opponents in such oppositional terms.
This may be the most dangerously delusional element on this list. Especially when people convince themselves that God is on their side, that they are acting on behalf of God, they are God’s chosen people, special and favored by God above all others. Who said the worst and most dangerous people in society are those who believe that they know what is best for all others. That belief is scaled up, intensified to the highest reach, by adding divinity to the equation to validate people’s sense of being more special than all others, thereby affirming their impulse to domination and busybody meddling in and controlling other’s lives, validated in doing so because they believe they are favored and chosen by God to “do the will of God.”
And then, talking about the highest reaches of extremism, we further deform the hero’s quest when we frame differing others, the disagreeing “enemies”, as especially hated and despised by God, demonized as the “children of Satan”, and so beyond the pale as to be deserving of eternal hellfire. Quite naturally, that type of thinking leads to similar behaving- i.e. “Let’s help them on their way to their true destination”. Let’s help God send them along to hell.
The element of framing enemies as “demonic” intensifies the sense of obligation to exterminate such enemies who are viewed as more existentially dangerous than normal infidels and unbelievers. The view of enemies as especially evil beings, informs, for example, the Islamic hatred of the Jews as not just infidels but “demonic” infidels, more dangerous than all others and therefore deserving of more intense hatred and effort to exterminate.
And if we frame our enemies as so irredeemably terrible because they threaten all life with what we claim is existential danger, well, then it is an even more a righteous obligation for us to move into the phase of “exterminate them or be exterminated” (the final phase of apocalyptic crusades where desperate heroes must engage “extreme measures” to save their world from existential threats).
This tribalism, fueled by Zoroaster’s fallacy of cosmic dualism, is a denial of the fundamental truth of human oneness, whether affirmed by common human origins with an East African “Mitochondrial Eve”, or based on the ultimate Oneness that is affirmed by the oneness at the most fundamental level of reality as seen in “quantum entanglement”. Or ultimate oneness that is affirmed by NDE accounts of fundamental human oneness with deity.
Further points on the deforming of the hero’s quest with Zoroastrian tribal dualism, justice as punitive destruction of irredeemable enemies, and the fallacy of retaliatory deity that affirms tribalism and vengeful justice.
Once again that insightful summary: “Men never do worse evil than when they do it in the name of their God”.
Heroes (suffering under the burden of the “messiah complex, saviors of the world”), when engaging their righteous battles against evil, further intensify the nature of their struggle with the demand for “instantaneous purging of evil” through “coercive purification”. The demand for urgency and immediate radical transformation of societies is based on the belief that the threat from the enemy is so existentially “immanent” (i.e. the “always soon-coming apocalypse”) that there is no time for the normal gradualism of democratic processes.
The urgency of the immediately looming “end-of-days” demands immediate desperate measures, and legitimizes revolutionary violence against threatening enemies in order to “save the world”. See Arthur Mendel on the demand of impatient revolutionaries for “instantaneous purification” versus the gradualism of democracy, in his “Vision and Violence”. Note how repeatedly across past decades the climate alarmism prophets have claimed that evil consumers of fossil fuels were bringing on the end of life, and that the end was only a decade, or few years, up ahead.
Contrary to the panic-mongering over immanence, the end of days has been endlessly passed due to the 100% failure rate of apocalyptic lunacy.
Then a final theme on this list: (8) The carrot-stick hope stirred by the promise of fulfilled salvation in the restoration of a paradisal communalism/collectivism (Acts 2-4). Or salvation in the new utopia of a millennial kingdom (i.e. Nazi Reich, Christian millennium). The same salvation is promised in the environmental vision of a return to the falsely imagined “strong, pure” existence of hunter-gatherers more connected to nature (Arthur Herman in “The Idea of Decline”, also “Hitler’s Millennial Reich” by David Redles).
Conclusion:
These psychopathological themes have been fiercely defended and maintained across history in our great religious traditions and are now embraced in modern era “secular ideological” belief systems with varied elements even promoted by “science”. The themes above distort entirely the “true state of life” in the world, and they distort the actual long-term trajectory of life. They also distort the true nature of humanity, and consequently produce emotions, motivations, and policy responses that irrationally destroy life to save some imaginary lost world.
Julian Simon countered the “madness of crowds” thinking produced by the above themes with a detailed presentation of evidence on the true state of life, the actual improving trajectory of life over the long-term. The improving trajectory of life and civilization is fueled by essential human goodness, compassion, and creativity.
The above list is the complex of the worst of bad ideas that the ancients created, which they then affirmed with a tribal, dominating, destroying God as the cohering center of the complex, rendering the complex as the “untouchable sacred”, protected from challenge and dissent with threats of condemnation for “blasphemy, heresy, the sin of unbelief”, and resulting in the consequence of “damnation in hellfire”.
(End of ‘bad ideas’ complex)
And the mother of all lists- my 18-plus bad ideas with better alternatives for meta-narratives:
“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives),” Wendell Krossa
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