See material below on free speech as illustrated by comedian Leonarda Jonie, and the comments of Gad Saad, Ira Glasser, and others on this critical element in freedom and liberal democracy.
Also, a recap of the historical descent of Islam from Ebionite Jewish Christianity (Islam shares the same basic themes of its mother religion). My point is in response to Bill Maher’s arguments that Christianity is superior to Islam in terms of moderating impulses to intolerance and violence.
Yes, that is true in the modern era (notably last few centuries), but was not true across the past two millennia when Paul’s “Christ-ianity” (as distinguished from Jesus’ “Q Wisdom Sayings” message) was significantly responsible for inciting and validating repeated eruptions of mass-death (i.e. the Crusades, Inquisitions and persecution of heretics and witches, etc.). And where was the moderation of intolerance and violence in the past century when the “apocalyptic millennial” themes of Paul’s Christ myth drove Marxist and Nazi mass-death outbreaks, and continue to drive the climate apocalypse crusade and its Net Zero decarbonization madness.
This site has repeatedly posted the good historical research on these things (i.e. Richard Landes’ “Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience”, Arthur Herman’s “The Idea of Decline in Western History”, Arthur Mendel’s “Vision and Violence”, David Redles’ “Hitler’s Millennial Reich”, etc.).
See also below the vindication and celebration of violence today as the means to a better future (the Mangione and Kirk incidents)- i.e. “Suffering through contemporary ‘madness of crowds’ eruptions”. And other stuff.
Themes to unite Sapiens around (the best of a “force” propelling us toward a humane future), Wendell Krossa
Yuval Harari in “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” notes that from 70,000 to 30,000 years ago our species Homo sapiens went through the Cognitive Revolution where we discovered new ways of thinking and communicating. We created language that enabled us to communicate meaning. The humans of that period learned to communicate more than just information about the physical world around them. They also learned to imagine and communicate fictitious things that do not exist at all and to do so “collectively”.
During this era of the Cognitive Revolution, legends, myths, gods and religions appeared for the first time. And “This ability to speak about fictions is the most unique feature of Sapiens language” (p.27). This ability has continued into the modern era as along with religious fictions we have learned to create “fictious” ideologies, scientific theories, and visions of the future. It should be noted however, that the core themes of our “fictions” often consistently remain the same.
Harari is setting the stage for understanding how early humans were able to move beyond small groups of essentially extended families to live cooperatively in much larger groups, eventually in empires and states of millions of people. He suggests the secret to this “urbanization” transition was “the appearance of fiction. Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths… Any large-scale human cooperation- whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city, or an archaic tribe- is rooted in common myths that exist only in people’s collective imaginations”, (p.30).
He includes such “fictions” as limited liability companies (“legal fictions”), religious systems, systems of laws, nation states, etc.
He continues, “Much of history revolves around this question: how does one convince millions of people to believe particular stories about gods, or nations, or limited liability companies? Yet when it succeeds, it gives Sapiens immense power, because it enables millions of strangers to cooperate and work towards common goals… An imagined reality is something that everyone believes in, and as long as this communal belief persists, the imagined reality exerts force in the world”, (p.35).
This leads to the question of what story would function as a truly “humane force” to carry/propel us cooperatively toward a more humane future? What features/myths/beliefs would operate best to do so?
My proposal for a set of alternative features to what we have inherited from the past:
“Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives” (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
The identification and rejection of inherited bad ideas, now long embedded as archetypes of the collective unconscious, is a first necessary step to undergo, the “death” side of the “death/rebirth” process, the “disintegration” side of the “disintegration/re-integration” process. We emerge from these experiences/processes, hopefully, with new insights and narrative themes that affirm the better impulses of our natures, that affirm our human spirit and self.
I would choose themes that arouse deeply and intuitively felt impulses from the common human spirit in us, what many of us felt, for example, when Erika Kirk stated in regard to her husband’s murderer, “I forgive you”. She was struggling with the precept of Jesus to “love your enemy”. I would have counseled her to wait a while before struggling with that, till some of the pain had subsided, if it ever does (i.e. the conclusion of the dentist whose wife and daughters were brutally murdered that “Whoever created the idea of ‘closure’ was a fool”). But nonetheless, Erika’s statement reduced many of us to tears. We get it Erika, what you were trying to say and do. That precept of Jesus pushes us all to think of what love really means, what it really means to try to be truly and fully human.
Narratives/stories that hold our societies together…
The current meta-narratives holding our liberal democracy states together constitute a hodge podge of the principles, systems of law, and representative institutions of Classic Liberalism. But these generally successful experiments in cooperative liberal democracy are under constant assault by residual bad ideas in the religious traditions and ideologies held by many in these same nation states.
The forces at work to undermine liberal democracy come from both sides of our population divides- i.e. a complex of “bad religious ideas” are held and promoted on the right or conservative side, inciting many toward advocacy for theocracy-type narratives and policies applied to whole societies, and thereby crossing the boundary between state and religion. Similarly bad ideas are held on the left or “liberal” side, but in “secularized” versions, with the left/liberal side having now become highly “illiberal” and pushing more for revived collectivism approaches.
We need constant re-affirmation of the basic principles of liberal democracy to keep us all oriented to the fundamental things that we can all agree on. Principles, systems of common law, and representative institutions that serve the people and protect the rights and freedoms of all individuals, equally.
Carr’s wisdom sayings– Carr showing Malice on the Platinum rule
Comedian Jimmy Carr was interviewed by podcaster/comedian Michael Malice and Carr mentioned the ‘golden rule’ but then added his “Platinum rule” that urges to “treat yourself just like you treat others”. He said, “I bet a lot of people don’t do that.”
I post this in response to someone’s question about the pop-psychology maxim that “we need to love ourselves before we can properly love others”.
Another ‘Carr-ism’ is that “disposition is more important than position”. He said, “You carry your disposition with you everywhere”. Meaning, your temperament/character is more important than your job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3FwqPkPSHE
“Bot farms” inflaming issues from outside
Good point by Joe Rogan on overseas bot farms, whether Russian, Chinese, Iranian, or others. Rogan says they jump on any issue in liberal democracies with false accounts that are not real people and seek to inflame both sides on any given issue. They stir hatred and outrage to divide people.
And these bots can be an unlimited number of false persons that are posing as citizens of the liberal democracies on either side. But they are not real voices, not real people, says Rogan. This is all part of the “long-game” goal of outside regimes to manipulate and indoctrinate citizens of liberal democracies, the stated long-game approach of regimes such as China’s to bring down liberal democracy in order to replace it with the totalitarian approach favored by people like former WEF leader Claus Schwab.
As Rogan notes, they push people into a “fever pitch of culture war that they have to win”, with their righteous side conquering and destroying the evil other side. How little we are aware of this foreign interference, of how insidious it is. AI enables it to be all the more insidious now.
It’s helpful to keep this info from Rogan in the back of our minds as another possible contributing factor to the hysterical outrage that we are all observing in public over varied issues that divide our societies. Part of what Jimmy Dore noted long ago, that- “We are the most propagandized people and we don’t know it”.
“Joe Rogan Experience #2382 – Andrew Santino”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6djZKYdz5ig
The Kirk assassination…
Note the Jimmy Dore clip below. Another “conspiracy theory” nut thing? After JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, two attempts on Trump, well, what are we to think anymore?
This crazy stuff… I think of Mike Benz (two appearances on Joe Rogan this past year or so) and the behind-the-scenes complex infrastructure to propagandize publics and control narratives in order to control the minds of citizens. Good researchers like Benz continue to uncover this stuff.
“Weird Details About the Charlie Kirk Assassination”, JRE clips
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY-FREo1JMM
And this from Jimmy Dore… Not affirming anything, just presenting some alternative information. What is going on?
“CLEAR EVIDENCE Charlie Kirk Was Shot From The Back!”, The Jimmy Dore Show, Sept. 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rqLG0j12lE
Back to meta-narrative issues, Wendell Krossa
This central Jesus message below from “Q Wisdom Sayings” (“the closest that we get to what the man actually taught”) offers one of the best sets of ideals/principles/precepts to undergird liberal democracy. The core Jesus themes counter, for example, the horrifically destructive apocalyptic myth because (1) a non-retaliatory God (“no more eye for eye but love enemies because God does not retaliate but loves enemies”), such a God will not destroy the world with the ultimate act of retaliation in apocalyptic destruction of all. That teaching gets the Ultimate Ideal of deity right, presenting the singularly most humane Cohering Center for human narratives- a God who does not engage “eye for eye” justice.
Just an insert to say- Donald Trump should (as he jokingly suggested at the Charlie Kirk memorial service) listen to Erika Kirk and others on “love your enemy”. Hating others is just too exhausting an emotion to indulge over any length of time. It deforms consciousness and life. And it leads to bad responses in life. “Petty vindictiveness” has been a consistent stain on Trump’s otherwise successful and impressive life.
The Jesus message below also counters (2) the impulse to domination with advocacy for the inclusion of all equally, evident in his comment that God treats all equally the same, with “sun and rain given to all without discrimination”. All, both good and bad, get the same generosity and love. Add here the comment of Jesus that we should not lord over others but instead serve others.
And the core Jesus message counters (3) the idea of justice as some version of punitive destruction. Again, rejecting “eye for eye” justice with unlimited forgiveness in the precept to “love your enemies”. Common sense qualifies that precept with the responsibility to hold everyone accountable for their behavior, including imprisoning violent people. But they must still be treated humanely when incarcerated. As Leo Tolstoy said, there is never any situation where we don’t treat everyone with love. That is the basic obligation of being fundamentally human.
This Jesus message is best expressed in Classic Liberal or liberal democracy systems that protect the equal rights and freedoms of all, with government elites/bureaucrats clear that “they serve the people who are sovereign”.
This Western approach to organizing society stands explicitly and unequivocally against all forms of collectivism, whether Marxist communism, Robert Owen communalism, or the varied iterations of social democracy/Democratic socialism, all the “same continuum” versions of collectivist organizing of societies where self-deluded ”enlightened elites” (i.e. those who believe that they know how best to run other’s lives) undermine the freedoms of individuals by subjecting them to such collectivism, claiming that they do it “for the people, or on behalf of the people… For the greater or common good”. With these self-deceiving validations, they endlessly centralize power, notably in Western societies through taxation and regulation schemes that render people less free, less self-determining, less in control of their own lives.
There is no better body of ideals than the Jesus summary below. If the Jesus material is kept clean from the deforming Christ mythology of Paul- i.e. the features of tribalism (true believers saved, unbelievers damned), domination (Lord Jesus ruling with a rod of iron), and punitive destruction (apocalypse, Hell), then there is no comparable body of sayings that gets us to the essence of being human, to the supreme reach of love, and to the best of theology. The Jesus insights overturn all religious traditions with their primitive theologies of conditional deity and related religious conditions.
The Jesus message summarized below, points to living on the highest plane of being human, pointing us toward the realm of heroes who conquer their dark triad impulses to live as truly human. That is conquering evil in the real battle of life, being successful in the authentic hero’s quest that is the inner battle against the real enemy and monster inside all of us- i.e. our inherited animal impulses that, when indulged, render us inhuman/subhuman/nonhuman.
(A reposting) Summary of Historical Jesus’ core message: Wendell Krossa
Subtitle: How to end cycles of retaliatory violence, how to courageously initiate peace in societies….
Again, this is not prescriptive for criminal justice systems to adopt some form of a dogmatic pacifist approach that does not work in the face of evil. States and their criminal justice systems are obligated, first and foremost, to restrain violent people in order to protect all citizens from assaults, whether foreign or domestic. De-criminalization and de-carceration policies, especially as applied to violent people, do not work. Add also, that the Jesus precepts are not prescriptive for operating a business or running a national economy.
Take this advice of Historical Jesus as more about how we maintain our own humanity as we go about the dirty work of dealing with the nasty offenders.
These statements have more to do with how victims may freely choose to respond to offenders in the multi-varied incidents and relationships of life. Its very much an individual freedom of choice issue. People who have suffered horrific abuse from offenders should never be pushed to engage the issues of forgiveness or “love the enemy”, until perhaps they feel more able to engage such issues later, and if presented as fundamentally helpful in some way to resolving their personal traumas.
As the father of a brutally murdered girl said years later- I chose to forgive, not for the sake of the offender but for the sake of my murdered daughter, now in a better place, who would have wanted me to do so. She would not have wanted me to spend the rest of my life darkened by hatred and bitterness. And that would have ruined the lives of my other children.
Just a mental gimmick? No, such “intention” to forgive (while not feeling mushy or fuzzy toward offenders) effects profound outcomes on the mental/emotional state of the one doing it.
Or consider the mother who argued in court against the death penalty for her son’s murderer so as to spare the murderer’s mom the same pain of loss that she suffered. That expresses an unbelievable ability to empathize beyond one’s personal pain to try to alleviate the potential suffering of another person. She had nothing to do with the killer of her son.
Other points:
These principles/precepts below shape how we think, perceive, how we then feel and are motivated. They impact our intentions, our thinking and responding to offenders, our motivations and intentions to reject inhumane responses and choose more humane responses.
Forgiveness, and an unconditional approach to offenders, works at the individual level and at-scale in societies. Note, for example, Nelson Mandela employing his unconditional love approach toward former enemies and thereby defusing a potential civil war in South Africa (Richard Stengel in “Mandela’s Way”). Compare that with the descent into brutal tribal justice in Rwanda and Serbia around the same time. Mandela also affirmed, at a personal level, that unconditional treatment of enemies “brought out the best in others and turned enemies into friends”. Not all, but most.
But it takes exceptional courage to be the initiator in breaking natural eye for eye retaliatory cycles to start things moving in better directions, especially when prevailing views of “justice” validate eye for eye. The breakers of such cycles may even be vilified as “weak, gutless, spineless, cowardly, pussies, etc.”
Again, these are not primarily precepts about how we should feel toward offenders but how we should act, how we should respond and treat them.
The guiding ideals/precepts of Historical Jesus:
Note how this message below is framed. It presents a list of behavioral responses, actions. Then concludes that if you do this you will be just like God. Meaning, these human responses/behaviors show what God is like. Its very much a statement of ethics and theology- insight on the actual nature/character of God. Behavior based on similar belief.
The statements:
“Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you? Everyone finds it easy to love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Everyone can do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Most will lend to others, expecting to be repaid in full.
“But do something more heroic, more humane. (Live on a higher plane of human experience, push into the realm of heroism). Do not retaliate against your offenders/enemies with ‘eye for eye’ justice. Instead, love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then you will be just like God because God does not retaliate against God’s enemies. God does not mete out eye for eye justice. Instead, God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Be unconditionally loving, just as your God is unconditionally loving”. (My paraphrase of Luke 6:32-36 or Matthew 5:38-48.)
This can be summarized in this single statement: “Love your enemy because God does”.
Example of non-retaliatory, unconditional love: The Prodigal Father story in Luke 15:11-31.
The Father (representing God) did not demand a sacrifice, restitution, payment, apology, or anything else before forgiving, fully accepting, and loving the wasteful son.
The above statement and illustration by Jesus overturn the highly conditional Christian religion and Paul’s Christ mythology. Paul, along with the rest of the New Testament, preached a retaliatory God who demanded full payment and punishment of all sin in a blood sacrifice of atonement before he would forgive, accept, and ultimately love anyone.
Added Notes:
What it means to be human, Wendell Krossa
The Jesus message provides some of the best insights and themes on what it means to be fully human, authentically human, and nothing more potently so than his central ideal of unconditional love. And this takes us to the foundational meaning of the cosmos, life, human civilization, and personal human story.
When we don’t get the core theme in Historical Jesus’ message clear- i.e. the lodestar central ideal of unconditional love (the supreme guiding ideal for thought, emotions, motivations, and responses/behavior)- then we face the tendency to succumb to the tribalism pathology of viewing ourselves as unquestioningly, unchallengeable righteous heroes battling irredeemably evil enemies. Yes, there are issues in life that are clearly “right versus wrong” and we do engage battles for the side that we view as right. But we should do so with caution that we do not engage such issues to the extent of hating and destroying differing others as actual “enemies”. It is always critical to remember that the “enemy” is still and always our family.
As Joseph Campbell and Leo Tolstoy reminded us, we are always under the fundamental obligation to “love our enemies”.
Joseph Campbell:
“For love is exactly as strong as life. And when life produces what the intellect names evil, we may enter into righteous battle, contending ‘from loyalty of heart’: however, if the principle of love (Christ’s “Love your enemies”) is lost thereby, our humanity too will be lost. ‘Man’, in the words of the American novelist Hawthorne, ‘must not disclaim his brotherhood even with the guiltiest’” (Myths To Live By).
Leo Tolstoy:
“The whole trouble lies in that people think that there are conditions excluding the necessity of love in their intercourse with man, but such conditions do not exist. Things may be treated without love; one may chop wood, make bricks, forge iron without love, but one can no more deal with people without love than one can handle bees without care” (Resurrection).
Note: It’s all about ultimate freedom, Wendell Krossa
Once we get clear the profound difference between Jesus and Paul’s Christ then we open ourselves to the greatest potential liberation movement in history, i.e. liberation from the “threat theology” that has been a fundamental curse on humanity across history- darkening and enslaving human consciousness and life with the great lie that God was behind the natural world, punishing people for their imperfection, with the added threat of future destruction (i.e. return to chaos with life ending in apocalypse, the great fear of the ancients) and afterlife harm in hell.
This mythology (better psychopathology) has cursed billions with added fear, anxiety, shame and guilt, despair, depression, nihilism, and violence. (See research of psychologist Harold Ellens and psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo in “Cruel God, Kind God”, among other sources.)
I am talking about liberation in the depths of human subconscious from the long deeply-embedded archetypes constructed by our ancestors to embody and validate their primitive thinking, archetypes that continue to influence many moderns to embrace the same old set of core themes today in our religious traditions and in the “secularized” versions of contemporary ideologies like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism.
(Insert: Kristian Niemietz’s conclusion in “Socialism: The Failed Idea That Never Dies”, that “Emotional satisfaction, not rational thinking, and despite contrary evidence, dominates our choice in beliefs.” That is how many respond to the archetypes of our collective unconscious. Just unconsciously embracing new versions of the same old bad ideas, like the many today who unquestioningly accept the climate apocalypse narrative, against evidence to the contrary.)
Threat theology has been best termed the “monster God” theology that has incited and validated humanity’s worst impulses to retaliate and harm others. Threat theology is behind the fundamental belief in “salvation through destruction” (as in Marxist violent revolution, or environmental alarmist calls to purge civilization of industrial societies based on fossil fuels).
The core threat of monster deity is still the cohering center of the religious narratives of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam… all tightly related religions that have shared a historically descending trajectory of the same set of core themes. Add of course, the Hellenism influence on Judaism and Christianity (see Bob Brinsmead essays below) and the recognition that all three Western religions share the same fundamental themes, pushes us to end the defensive tribalism of “my religion is better than yours”.
And yes, Christianity gets a pat on the back for including the “Q Wisdom Sayings” message of Historical Jesus, something Islam did not include that would have helped to moderate the impulse to violent retaliation against unbelievers. But Christianity also needs the slap on the wrist for “burying that diamond” message of Jesus under Paul’s Christ myth- the conclusion of Thomas Jefferson and Leo Tolstoy that Paul’s Christ distorts and deforms the core themes and message of Jesus.
Historical Jesus broke completely free of threat theology with his “stunning new theology of a non-retaliatory God” (James Robinson’s conclusion from “Q Wisdom Sayings” gospel research- a subgenre of the “Search for Historical Jesus”). I would state that “stunning new theology” is better understood in his statement that God was unconditional love. Period. Jesus went to the core issue in human narratives and thought, the Cohering Center that is deity- the ultimate reality, ideal, and authority- and transformed that entirely.
He overturned entirely all threat theology and offered humanity a stunning new way to think of Ultimate Reality, a new Ultimate Ideal to transform consciousness, narratives, emotions, motivations, responses/behavior- all of reality and life.
And that unconditional God pushes all of us to rethink justice as some form of eye for eye retaliation. It pushes us to “love our enemies” as the fundamental precept to guide ethics, emotion, motivation, and response/behavior in our lives.
My point? Open yourself to ultimate liberation, the final great liberation offered to humanity, profound liberation at the depths of human consciousness/subconscious, liberation of the human spirit, mind, emotions, and all life. Liberation that only the truth of an unconditionally loving God can give. It affirms a sense of ultimate safety for all, no matter our failure to live as heroically human in this life (i.e. ultimate “heroism” evident/expressed in those loving their enemies).
A preface note to the “recap” below:
Just to add to this above comment- “all tightly related religions that have shared a historically descending trajectory of the same set of core themes.”
A note for emphasis: While there are obviously the common features in Christianity and Islam that are listed below, the core commonality between religions like Christianity and Islam is the belief in a wrathful God who promises violent destruction through apocalypse and hell. That “Cohering Center” of these religions undergirds and validates all else in their narratives- i.e. the demanded conditions for unquestioning belief, submission to religious authorities, and faithful religious practise (fulfill rituals, payments, religious lifestyle, and promotion of the religion- i.e. seek converts, etc.).
And as I noted just above when people make comparisons between Christianity and Islam- “Christianity gets a pat on the back for including the “Q Wisdom Sayings” message of Historical Jesus, something Islam did not include that would have helped to moderate the tribal impulse to violent retaliation against unbelievers.”
This is a critically important point- The “diamond” insights of Historical Jesus (Thomas Jefferson’s term) embody the potent counter to the prominent features of Paul’s Christ myth, features that have long functioned to incite, guide, and validate people’s worst impulses to harm others- i.e. features such as angry deity judging (see Paul’s letter to Romans, Thessalonians), God/Christ tribally excluding unbelievers (again, affirmed throughout Paul’s New Testament letters), God/Christ demanding submission (Lord Christ ruling with a rod of iron), and God/Christ promising violent destruction (Romans, Revelation), etc.
The “stunning new theology” of Jesus (his new image of God) rejected judgment, tribal exclusion (sun and rain given to all alike), submission (do not lord over others), and violent destruction (no “eye for eye” retaliation), etc.
Muhammad missed the powerful benefits of Jesus’ “Q Wisdom Sayings” when he did not include that material in his new religion. He certainly would have heard about it as he listened to his spiritual mentor, the Ebionite priest Waraqa (a Jewish Christian), as he expounded from the Gospel to the Hebrews (the early version of Matthew’s gospel). And most certainly Waraqa would have taught Muhammad the similar content of Matthew’s gospel.
It helps to inform ourselves of the good research of the Jesus Seminar and especially the research on “Q Wisdom Sayings” in order to clearly grasp the profound differences between the messages of Historical Jesus and Paul’s contrary Christology, an embodiment of Hellenism. Most helpful are the essays of Bob Brinsmead on this:
“The Historical Jesus: What the Scholars are Saying”
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/
“The Doctrine of Christ and the Triumph of Hellenism”
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-doctrine-of-christ-and-the-triump-of-hellenism/
Here’s a little recap of something posted earlier on this site… Wendell Krossa
I saw a video clip of Bill Maher arguing that Islam was worse than Christianity for issues like intolerance and violence. He seems unaware of the actual history of these religions and that Islam is the direct offspring of Jewish Christianity or the early “Jewish Jesus” movement that was contrary to Paul’s Hellenist Christ-ianity. Another name for the Jewish Jesus movement was Ebionism (Ebionites). These- the Jewish Jesus movement and Paul’s Christ-ianity- were two dominant and entirely contrary movements in early Christianity.
The Jewish Jesus people, or Ebionites, believed that Jesus was a prophet blessed of God but not God himself. And their movement held that Jesus said nothing about being a sacrifice for sin. That was the distortion of Jesus (a sacrifice for sin) that Paul introduced in his new Christ-ianity religion (not really “new” in that it embraced the themes of ancient Hellenism- see Helmut Koester’s “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”).
We see intimations of the conflict between Paul and the Jesus movement in the New Testament. The Jewish Jesus movement was oriented to Jesus’ actual Q Wisdom Sayings message, hence also called the Q Wisdom movement. Paul’s Christ-ianity was a Hellenist movement set in direct conflict with that actual movement of Jesus.
The Jewish movement was led by Jesus’ brother James, and Jesus’ friend/follower Peter. Note how intensely Paul hated the Jesus Q Wisdom movement. He goes after its leaders, James and Peter, in statements such as Galatians 1:8-9, where he curses them with damnation. Paul also intolerantly condemned and vilified the Q Wisdom movement of Jesus in 1 Corinthians, mocking and dismissing it as “worldly wisdom”.
The Jewish followers of Jesus viewed Paul’s Christ-ianity as heretical, just as the Old Testament prophets protested the sacrifice industry and its priesthood as heretical. They stated things like, “What makes you think I want all your sacrifices?” says the LORD. “I am sick of your burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle. I get no pleasure from the blood of bulls and lambs and goats…. For in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I did not speak to your fathers or command them concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices”, and other similar statements in Amos, Jeremiah, Isaiah, etc.
But the victors in battles get to state who is about truth and who is about error, so Paul’s Christ-ianity ended demonizing the Jewish Jesus movement as heresy and persecuting them till they were scattered. Some of those Ebionites fled to the Arabian Peninsula where they established congregations/synagogues that persisted over subsequent centuries, even up to around 600 CE when Muhammad emerges in Mecca.
How Islam was created as a version of Jewish Christianity/Ebionism (one source- Joseph Azzi’s “The Priest and the Prophet”):
Muhammad’s first wife was Khadija. Her cousin in Mecca was Waraqa, the priest of a local Ebionite congregation. Waraqa then become the spiritual mentor of Muhammad and taught him all that he knew about God and religion.
The Ebionites, again, viewed Jesus as just a prophet of God, not divine himself. And they did not believe that he was a sacrifice for sin. Ebionites also embraced water purification rites and practices, and did not eat pork.
Scholars say that Waraqa taught using the gospel to the Hebrews, an early version of Matthew’s gospel, which he also had translated. He used those books, among others, to instruct Muhammad.
Note in Matthew the pattern of stating that those who rejected Jesus’ miracles were then damned to hell, to being cast out into outer darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth (a favorite statement of Matthew’s). Then note in the Quran that very same pattern of claiming that those who reject the message and the messenger (i.e. Muhammad) will be cast into hell, into the fire from which there is no escape. Such warnings are on almost every page of the Quran. Exact replicas of Matthew’s archetypal statements.
So also in Islam we find the practices of water purification and not eating pork.
Interesting that as Muhammad copies and borrows what Waraqa is teaching him from the gospel of the Hebrews and Matthew’s gospel, Muhammad claims that he is getting this teaching as visions in a cave, so as to frame his ideas as revelations directly from God. No, he was actually just embracing the core themes of Waraqa’s Jewish Christianity. And that enrages Islamic theologians today to admit that.
So c’mon Bill Maher, enough of the “Islam is worse than Christianity” stuff. Both share the same core themes, just as all the other historical descendants of such ideas do today, both religious and “secular/ideological”. Just as you do Bill, with your climate apocalypse nonsense. No different from the core themes of Islam and Christianity, though you claim to be “non-religious”. Ya right. Read Richard Landes, Arthur Herman, Arthur Mendel, David Redles and others, who have done good homework revealing that all these religions, along with contemporary secular variants like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism, always replicate the very same apocalyptic millennial themes and the larger complex of related bad ideas that that this site posts regularly.
There is nothing new under the sun. And why are we all fighting and killing one another when so many of us believe exactly the same core narrative themes?
How many, view themselves today as “secular, humanist, materialist/atheist even”, yet go about mouthing the very same primitive themes of all past religious traditions, just framed in what they believe to be new “secular/ideological” versions, with new terminology, definitions, etc.
Getting a clear grip on the profound difference between the core themes of Historical Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth will help to expose such confusion.
Note:
I guess the point in this is how we succumb even in the modern age to the most primitive and barbaric ideas and then wonder why we continue to suffer through endless eruptions of the “madness of crowds”, as in repeated Marxist revolutions (the same old collectivism now framed in “Far-left Woke Progressivism”), Nazi horrors, and now environmental alarmism crusades (climate apocalypse hysteria) that propose to ruin our societies with salvation schemes like Net Zero, banning the fossil fuels that provide the very energy driving our civilization and providing the 6000 “fossil fuel derivatives” that grant us the many benefits of our much improved human condition.
AI Overview presents this on Ebionism (I am not affirming all this. See Bob Brinsmead’s essays on this)
“Ebionism was an early Jewish Christian movement in the first few centuries CE that viewed Jesus as a human Messiah and prophet, not God, insisting on strict adherence to Jewish law, such as circumcision and dietary rules. They rejected Jesus’ divine nature and virgin birth, believed he was adopted as God’s son due to his perfect righteousness, and revered James the Just, the brother of Jesus, as his true successor. Ebionites also rejected Paul the Apostle as an apostate and used a version of the Gospel of Matthew that excluded the virgin birth narrative.”
Key Characteristics of Ebionism
• Messianic Jesus:
They affirmed Jesus as the promised Jewish Messiah and prophet but rejected the common Christian belief in his divinity.
• Human Messiah:
They believed Jesus was a human being, the natural son of Joseph and Mary, who became God’s son at his baptism through his perfect obedience to the Law of Moses.
• Adherence to Jewish Law:
The Ebionites, meaning “the poor ones” in Hebrew, placed great importance on following the Jewish law, which included circumcision, keeping a kosher diet, and observing the Sabbath.
• Rejection of Pauline Theology:
They saw Paul as a false apostle who had abandoned Jewish tradition and law.
• Veneration of James the Just:
They revered James, the brother of Jesus, as the true successor to Jesus’ ministry, not Peter.
• Gospel of the Ebionites:
They utilized a specific version of the Gospel of Matthew that did not include the virgin birth or genealogy of Jesus.
Relationship to Early Jewish Christianity
• Continuation of Jewish Roots:
Ebionism represents a form of Jewish Christianity that emphasized keeping Jewish identity and traditions central to Christian belief.
• A Reaction to the Gentile Mission:
Some scholars suggest their theology was a response to the law-free Gentile mission of early Christianity, emphasizing the continuing relevance of the Law for believers.
Decline
• Orthodox Pressure:
The Ebionites eventually declined as Christian orthodoxy was established, with some choosing to return to Judaism and others integrating into more mainstream forms of Christianity.
(End of AI Overview statements)
Doing what comedians should do, Wendell Krossa
I’ve come across this comedian Leonarda Jonie, who is a striking example of what comedy should do in society to keep the door of free speech open for all. Comedians can effectively fulfill this function by purposefully saying offensive things. They are not seriously proposing such things but just stating them in ways that make us all laugh at those things. And in so doing, they may upset many people, even outrage them (people not understanding what is going on will often angrily stomp out). But that is what freedom of speech must be about. All of us have to tolerate what we may feel is the offensive speech of others or we all lose freedom by permitting some to censor speech that offends, that upsets them.
This is happening broadly today across our liberal democracies where under the guise of “online harm” bills, and related laws (Internet “content moderation” legislation), some are trying to censor, ban, silence, even criminalize the “offensive” speech of others as “harmful, dangerous disinformation”, etc. This is done with virtue-signaling claims that they are protecting children or minorities from “hate speech” or “speech as violence”.
But the problem is that with “concept creep” and ill-defined boundaries, these proposals are abused in allowing some to go after the speech of their political opponents or even after comedians for making jokes. That is a dangerous opening to totalitarianism that is now occurring in Britain, Germany, Canada, Australia, Brazil, and elsewhere.
So listen to Leonarda Jonie and feel uncomfortable if you will, but get what she is doing, along with others, in keeping her foot in the door of free speech that others are trying to shut. And I am not affirming all her positions on varied issues, but just pointing to her for illustrating the critical role of comedians in keeping speech free, even offensive speech. Here’s a sample…
“Leonarda Jonie: Uncensored, LIVE in Houston, TX”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7U6j7Crg1k
A good summary of the basic issues around free speech is presented by Ira Glasser (former ACLU director) on Joe Rogan, especially in the first hour of this interview:
“Joe Rogan Experience #1595 – Ira Glasser”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=1rM8mWhgIl0
And this Saad truth:
“The Untold Angle of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination (THE SAAD TRUTH_1907)”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgnFir7SKvM
I’ve added some illustrative points to what Saad is saying in this link…
Good points in this from Gad Saad, a sort of social psychologist, that the battle for freedom never ends because in every generation there are those wanting to take it away. I would add that alarmists assaulting free speech use claims of “emergencies” that render the normal protocols of democracy too slow, hence they demand emergency measures to save whatever they claim is under dire, existential threat (i.e. “threats to democracy”, “harmful hate speech”, “imminent apocalypse”, etc.).
Saad illustrates the nature of the threat to speech with the time that he went to Los Angeles as a Jew to speak to some group on the issue of free speech. The threats to his life from those wanting to deny him that freedom were so serious that he needed a phalanx of body-guards for protection from being assaulted or killed. That is the craziness of the era that we are living through where it has become dangerous just to talk about a basic human right and freedom. And this threat to freedom comes from within our liberal democracies.
Suffering through contemporary “madness of crowds” eruptions, Wendell Krossa
We have the insane trend today, unleashed among too many of our fellow citizens, of glorifying violence as the valid response or solution when upset about some issue, violence as justified for settling disagreements over ideas/policies, etc. How much do certain ideas/beliefs in our public meta-narratives (religious and secular/ideological) contribute to feeding and validating violent responses to disagreements?
I think, for example, of the Luigi Mangione incident, and how some have tried to reframe his horrific act of violence against an innocent person as heroic protest. Add here the many celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk.
I would suggest that such glorification of violence derives ultimately from primitive beliefs in “salvation by destruction”, as for example in apocalyptic millennial mythology. Human sacrifice is a similar ancient belief, that “the murder of the right people can make the future better”. That belief was epitomized in the myth of innocent Jesus sent to be a sacrifice for sin. The “sacrifice of Christ” mythology derives from the same fundamental idea of “salvation through destruction”.
We saw the historical outcomes of this thinking in the apocalyptic millennialism that has been identified and exposed as a driving influence behind Marxist revolutionary violence over the past century, also behind the Nazi commitment to purge “evil, corrupting people” (their demonization and dehumanization of the Jews) as necessary to clear the way to their millennial paradise in the Third Reich. This pathological mythology is illustrated in the New Testament book of Revelation.
These beliefs have long dominated human narratives providing incitement, guidance, and validation for human emotions, motivations, and responses/behaviors. Note psychologist Harold Ellens comments on this just below.
We are seeing this primitive belief in salvation through destruction again now in the contemporary ideology that we must purge the corrupt industrial civilization of the West in order to restore the lost paradise of a more wilderness world, as in environmental apocalyptic alarmism lunacy.
The validation and celebration of violence as salvific in some way blinds many to the barbarity and horror of what they are actually doing. We saw this in the wake of the murder of the health CEO by Mangione. Even comedian Bill Burr, during an interview, celebrated that barbarity with his shout “Free Luigi”, just as many others have exhibited the same thoughtless insanity in celebrating the murder of Charlie Kirk.
We can trace such beliefs back to other fundamental core religious themes such the mythology of an angry God who solves problems with violence. As Harold Ellens warns, that view of deity- the ultimate human Ideal and Authority- then validates our use of violence to solve problems.
You can’t read this from Ellens and Lotufo often enough:
Zenon Lotufo (in “Cruel God, Kind God”) notes “the pathological nature of mainstream orthodox theology and popular religious ideation”.
He says, “One type of religiosity is entirely built around the assumption or basic belief, and correspondent fear, that God is cruel or even sadistic… The associated metaphors to this image are ‘monarch’ and ‘judge’. Its distinctive doctrine is ‘penal satisfaction’. I call it ‘Cruel God Christianity’… Its consequences are fear, guilt, shame, and impoverished personalities. All these things are fully coherent with and dependent on a cruel and vengeful God image… (He is referring to the basic features of Paul’s Christ myth)
“(This image results) in the inhibition of the full development of personality… The doctrine of penal satisfaction implies an image of God as wrathful and vengeful, resulting in exposing God’s followers to guilt, shame, and resentment… These ideas permeate Western culture and inevitably influence those who live in this culture…
“Beliefs do exert much more influence over our lives than simple ideas… ideas can also, in the psychological sphere, generate ‘dynamis’, or mobilize energy… (they) may result, for instance, in fanaticism and violence, or… may also produce anxiety and inhibitions that hinder the full manifestation of the capacities of a person…
“The image of God can be seen as a basic belief or scheme, and as such it is never questioned…
“Basic cultural beliefs are so important, especially in a dominant widespread culture, because they have the same properties as individual basic beliefs, that is, they are not perceived as questionable. The reader may object that “God”, considered a basic belief in our culture, is rejected or questioned by a large number of people today. Yet the fact is that the idea of God that those people reject is almost never questioned. In other words, their critique assumes there is no alternative way of conceiving God except the one that they perceive through the lens of their culture. So, taking into account the kind of image of God that prevails in Western culture- a ‘monster God’… such rejection is understandable…
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
As Harold Ellens says, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
Myths of angry Deity demanding violent blood sacrifice for salvation belongs to a complex of archetypal themes still dominant in our world religions and now also embraced in our main ideological narratives (secularized mythology), archetypal themes that have to be rejected and replaced because we know better now the harmful influence that they exert on human minds and lives.
The Jesus message does this with an unconditional theology, a stunning new image of a God who is non-tribal, non-dominating, nonviolent, nonretaliatory. Love in the truest sense. With a God who is unconditional love, the God of Jesus who rejected eye for eye retaliation and urged us to “love your enemies”, you cannot validate retaliatory violence for solving problems.
The Jesus message is basically advocating for how we can grow the fuck up and act as mature people, settling our differences nonviolently, democratically, like mature adults.
Again, I would emphasize that all of our major Western religious traditions embrace these fundamental ideas/beliefs above, of a deity who affirms violence as the means for achieving salvation. This is true of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Thankfully, many affiliated with these religions have learned to moderate themselves by focusing on the good material in their traditions and ignoring and downplaying the nastier stuff. However, enough zealously devoted true believers remain in these traditions, along with other fringe types in our societies, that take such ideas/beliefs seriously and that makes it critical that we challenge and expose such themes in our meta-narratives and offer better alternatives to replace them, more humane themes to frame the archetypes of our shared meta-stories.
See “Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives” (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
Another note on checking the impulse to deify fellow humans, even the best among us: Wendell Krossa
(Is this why God included “ego-centricity, petty vindictiveness, exaggerated boasting of personal successes, etc.” in Donald Trump’s personality, just to keep us from divinizing the man? And yes, that is my weak attempt at being “facetious”- i.e. “treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humor; flippant.”)
I find myself cringing a bit at some of the post-assassination commentary re Charlie Kirk. Even the term used to describe his brutal murder- i.e. “assassination”, appears to be an attempt at denoting something higher, more elevated, based perhaps on the claims of some that “He would have been a future president”.
The lauding and celebration of Charlie Kirk, while understood as sincerely felt praise of an especially decent man, at times reaches toward elevating him almost to immediate sainthood.
That reminds me of how they took Historical Jesus and over a century or so, elevated him to God status, even as a full member of the Trinity myth of Christianity. A man who himself had protested, “Why do you call me good when there is no one good but God?” An imperfect man who revealed human pettiness when he refused to greet his family waiting outside a dwelling because, as he stated, he was dedicated to God, busy doing the work of God, too busy to be bothered with the common decency of greeting his mother and siblings. That was a shameful exhibition of neglectful pettiness. It was not love.
So also, past journalist/commentator at the National Post, Christie Blatchford, once protested how we often celebrate the dead with cliché descriptions/exaggerations such as– Whenever so and so entered a room she lit it up, as if possessing some form of radiating aura or halo effect. Huh?
Blatchford asked, was that person never upset, never impatient or selfish, like the rest of us imperfect mortals? Were they not really human?
This tendency to divinize or deify fellow mortals was detailed by Helmut Koester in his book “History, Culture, and Religion of the Hellenistic Age”, where he revealed how “special” people, people who accomplished something special in art, sports, literature/poetry, military accomplishments, etc., were considered divine in some manner. We saw this divinizing with Kings, Caesars, and Pharaohs considered as gods, with miracles attributed to them over the following centuries of the deifying process (when factual reality evaporates in the mists of passing time). As Koester noted, Christianity followed that pattern with its Christ myth and its later saints who had miracles attributed to them.
Now Charlie was obviously a decent person, and he should be honored for standing for free speech, for limited government, for free markets, and other common-sense things. But beware the excessive deifying, divinizing. Would he really want that?
I get that the tribal thing intrudes here- i.e. the urge to use him as a “martyr” (an especially noble sacrifice) to validate the tribal impulse to frame “our side as more righteous contrasted with the other side (our enemies/opponents) as something less human, less righteous”, along with the current generalization that they on the left all support violence.
This is how we too often distort the hero’s quest with excessive exaggeration of our righteousness in comparison with our enemy’s “evil”, the old Zoroastrian tribal dualism of viewing our side as righteous Good (and us as the true believers in the true religion or ideology) versus the evil Force that is the disagreeing others, the unbelievers in regard to our narrative and movement.