Wow! How do you have time to read everything and compile the highlights into these digests?! Great stuff, and God bless you for this act of beneficence to the reading public!
About that syrian moslem rapeugee who stabbed french children:
He holds swedish citizenship. He's tallied in our census as a resident of a small deindustrialised town on the West side of Sweden, and is convicted of multiple cases of welfare-fraud.
He is - this will stick in the craw of americans of all nationalities - typical of moslems from the Middle East. A thief, a fraudster, violent, moslem, no respect or consideration for occidentals (or crusaders, infidels and jew-slaves which are very common nicknames of theirs for us european natives), no empathy as we define the term, and absolute sadism towards anyone and anything perceived weak and defenceless.
It doesn't matter that Hassim at work or Mohammed who runs the falafel-kiosk near the school may be nice guys, or that Fatima in your knitting circle always brings baklava: they are not typical. They are not representative.
The violent, criminal, syrian moslem (in this case) is.
I know americans won't believe that. More fool you, then. Look at Sweden, Germany, France, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece. Look at us 1970, and now. That's all you need to do.
Or just ask an actual american - a "redskin" - how that whole mass-migration thing worked out.
I saw the media saying he's akshually a Christian. No idea if it's true. Not that it matters.
One way or another they will have to be removed. Horrific as this crime was, it is not even the worst of what has already happened. The grooming gangs, not only in Rotherham though these are the best known, are in my opinion the nadir - offenses that cry out to heaven.
But not only the newcomers are at fault. Their enablers in government and media will also need to be held to account. Their hands are just as bloody. Perhaps more.
Many EU-nations put into practice around 2010-2015 that people coming from moslem nations but claiming to be christians (and therefore persecuted) or homosexual should be given special consideration and immediate asylum on their say-so alone.
Since percentages of actual christians are below 3% of the population in (from memory, mind) in any moslem nation in MENA, and that these christians are almost exclusively of other ethnicity than the majority, it stands to reason virtually all such claims are fraudulent.
As for enablers... it is my fervent hope they will share the fate of Vidkun Quisling.
Ah yes, that sounds quite familiar. Just as they lied shamelessly about their age, resulting in thirty-year-old bearded men being placed in high schools because they were "unaccompanied minors", the poor dears.
Honestly, this is best explained by selection bias. Consider: just as when Europeans colonized Americas it wasn't the meek but violent and oportunistic that went to Americas, so now that MEs colonize Europe it isn't the meek but violent and oportunistic that go. After all, if you're a kind well natured person that gets along well, seems to find his place and is a respected member of the community... WHY IN THE ACTUAL FUCK would you leave? OTOH, if you're an antisocial misfit that keeps getting into trouble and blames everybody but yourself for your troubles, you might end up dreaming that "those whities have it too easy man" and then you decide to go there and take advantage of them - like you've been taking advantage of your community before. And for some weird reason your community never sends you letters once you leave. Huh. It's almost as if they don't want you. Almost... as if they persecute you. Yeah. That's right. You were psychologically persecuted by your community since birth because you're just different. And then you go and seek asylum. :)
Our traditional analog passports of freedom are being replaced with the new traditional shiny object decoy of slavery called the prison cell phone. Don't stare too long into the abyss, or you'll find those pickpockets staring right back. You're a beast of a writer John! Hope you didn't stay up too late drinking coffee? If you did, I hope you at least had some cigarettes too.
Yesterday I was working on this more or less continuously from about 9 am to 8 pm, then again this morning from 9 am to noon-ish. That's what I get for not breaking the work up through the week....
I must know. How many people do have reading and summarizing for you? Seriously! This is an incredibly huge piece of work to be done by one person weekly. Weekly!!
hey John (and Daniel, i second that question, and btw you're both rather brilliant if i may point that out) what i most appreciate is the novel and supremely expressive language. From the first paragraph onward (although my reticular system may have missed some of the floods of words...) i found myself laughing, grunting, and trying to pronounce our new vocab. THIS therefore feels like the simmering birth of re-new-ed consciousness through loudly imaginal language. Whew! This will require a re-visit
In terms of "American religion", one thing I always think about is the extreme fascination among certain circles of "Judeo-Christian" boomers and Gen Xers with the ancient Hebrew language and script (as seen here: https://ancient-hebrew.org/ and https://www.abarim-publications.com/), and the proper name of the Hebrew God, YHWH (Yahweh/Yehowah/etc). These "independent Hebraists", as I would call them, pore over ancient Hebrew in the same way that a white nationalist neo-pagan pores over ancient Germanic runes, except fundamentally more serious.
Their almost mystical veneration of ancient Hebrew and its script, and their clear emphasis on using the proper name of the "Judeo-Christian" God, interests me due to the fact that they're doing so not out of some glib sense of that ancient Hebrew is "exotic", or that the name "Yahweh" sounds cool, but out of clear, genuine faith in that language's power, and often out of a sense that the institutional religious authorities are failing in some foundational manner, such as "hiding" the all-important name of God for some nefarious reason.
I believe that this kind of organic development of these "Hebraist" sub-traditions within the larger American religious milieu is indicative of just how intellectually sterile and spiritually/culturally impotent institutional religion (particularly Christianity) has become in America, to the point where certain people are taking it upon themselves to revive some kind of "authentic" faith by promoting the proper name of God and venerating the original language of the first half of the Bible.
All this is to say that independent religious scholarship and metaphysical philosophy is definitely going to have some sort of effect on whatever religious revival happens in America, said revival is definitely going to be very sympathetic to the Old Testament and the harshness Yahweh often has in it (backlash to LGBTQ+ nonsense, and all that), and you shouldn't be surprised if Hebrew starts becoming just as much a part of the "cultured American multilingual" starter pack as Spanish, Japanese, Hindi (growth of India blah blah), and possibly even Kievan-Lvovian Ruthenian (sometimes known as "Ukrainian").
I've always wondered about that, how modern american christians can miss that Baal, so often villified and besmirched in jewish sources, was a saviour: Baal sacrifices himself for humanity when he voluntarily wanders into the maw of Mot (death, drought, suffering) and the ugarit tablets and pillars as well as babylonian and egyptian sources contradict virtually all claims made by the jews.
It's just that their version is the one that got repeated down the centuries as part of catholic dogma and apocrypha. Perhaps the Ur-example (pardon the pun) of "controlling the narrative".
Why anyone would need to pour over runic script I don't get. The runes and the sagas et c are kennings; they are not of the semitic-latin or other levantine tradition, nor are they fatalist in the oriental sense. Read them, yes - but endless studying of minutiae is onlyforthe historian tabulating data. The one seeking wisdom need look no further than Gylfaginning, Voluspa and Havamal.
And then simply let the knowledge ferment, like the blood of Kvaser.
The American Christian, when he thinks about Ba'al, considers him a Canaanite false god, if not simply another name for the Devil, and that all his exploits in Canaanite/Ugaritic mythology are just that, mythology (which, in Ba'al's case, likely has something to do with seasonal changes). Ba'al has about as much weight as Zeus or Odin, all little more than names of high gods whose worship is long dead, more useful for modern fantasy fiction than any attempt at serious religion.
The average American, in any case, would find no particular reason to have any sort of deep spiritual attachment to Canaanite or Norse religion and mythology, which are both contextually and culturally largely alien to America even in its roots. What does Thor or Melqart have to do with a landmass an entire ocean away from either the Levant or Scandinavia, which the people composing the stories tied to them scarcely so much as imagined?
By the way, what do you mean by "the ugarit tablets and pillars as well as babylonian and egyptian sources contradict virtually all claims made by the jews"? What specific claims are being contradicted by them?
Wrong. Dead wrong you might say, partly because people still honour the All-Father and partly because "worship" is the wrong term entirely.
Honour and respect, yes - worship and make obeisance and grovel before like all the Abrahamites be they jew, christian or moslem does? Never.
Your second paragraph is kind of weird. You say the average american lacks spiritual attachment to the Levant and neigbouring areas? Exactly where do you think Jesus came from, and from what multitude of faiths was his ideas inspired and combined, and later codified? If the origin of Jesus and his teachings and their roots are not a "spiritual tie", then what is?
The ugarit sources completely contradict the later claims made that Baal was a evil or evil spirit. Read them if you like, there are annotated translations available. You can also read the egyptian Book of the Dead (annotated and with explanatory notes of course, unless you're an egyptologist - I'm not so I always opt for the in-depth versions) and compare what is actually known about egyptian civilisation around the time of Moses and what egyptian sources of that time say.
Also, given that the vast majority of americans are of european heritage, racially and culturally, and that the entirety of american thought is built and based on the same greco-roman, celtic, teutonic, slavic, et cetera traditions, you certainly do have a spiritual connection.
I know some like to think that some kind of unique Tabula Rasa-like immaculate inception of nation-formation occured when the US was founded: that's no more true than Kleopatra being a negro is, nor is it unique to the US. (It was not un-common practice up until the Enlightenment for royal houses to try and trace their bloodline to Noah/Utnapishtim and "prove" it too; making a claim to uniqueness validateslegitmacy isthe idea - feel free tocompareto contemporary cults.)
The USA is simply put a continutation and (initially) a concrete version of ideas that had been circulating in Europe's courts and intellectual circles for several centuries beforehand.
You are, or rather you were the stewards of that millennia old and proud tradition of thought that started in Ancient Greece. Now, you're in the same sorry situation we are: history killed, daily, and replaced with the Führerprinzip: what those in power decree is true right now.
As for serious religion, consider this: there is no more proof for Superman being real, than any god. It's a matter of faith, and by implying that other faiths are not serious or not real, what is that you are doing?
You delegitimise the spirituality, tradition, moral system and culture of others as not real. I'm sure you know what political -isms are famous for doing that.
1 (putting this first, despite it being out of order, because I believe it's the most important to address).
"As for serious religion, consider this: there is no more proof for Superman being real, than any god. It's a matter of faith, and by implying that other faiths are not serious or not real, what is that you are doing?
You delegitimise the spirituality, tradition, moral system and culture of others as not real. I'm sure you know what political -isms are famous for doing that."
If you believe that religion is purely a matter of faith, and that there is no more evidence for the existence of any deity than there is for any fictional character (implicitly comparing religious belief to fictional worldbuilding), then why not just make up your own religion?
Why deal with Odin, Thor, and Tyr when you can deal with Gravitus, Electromagneto, and Nucleon (the god of the strong and weak nuclear forces)? Why deal with Norse religious cosmology when you can talk about the Network of Universes and the High Flying Summerland beyond them? Why not just take some Chinese or sub-Saharan African gods, "whiten" them (haha), and present them as a new pantheon for a new faith? After all, all deities and faiths are equally real (or equally unreal), especially in the sense that they are equally able to represent a certain moral system or cultural/spiritual tradition.
As for "delegitimizing" cultural, religious, moral, and spiritual traditions, isn't that exactly what you're doing right now to the Abrahamic complex of religions, which you describe as having their adherents act in slave-like fashion towards the Abrahamic God, and as being contradicted by other religious texts that you've (arbitrarily*) decided to place as higher authorities than Abrahamic ones? You certainly do not have a positive view on the Abrahamic religions overall, nor do you take them seriously, nor see them as part of your tradition. But many other people certainly would not agree with you, and would see at least one Abrahamic religion to be as essential to their lives, and to the proper function of a state/nation, as food and water.
Aside from all that, the idea that "there is no more proof for Superman being real, than any god" is an atheistic notion if there ever was one, and something I would never have expected to be written by anyone who (sincerely) practices any religion.
*And I do mean arbitrarily, considering that, in your view, no faith (and, one must assume, no claims of any given faith) is more valid/real/serious or invalid/unreal/serious than any other.
2. "Wrong. Dead wrong you might say, partly because people still honour the All-Father and partly because "worship" is the wrong term entirely."
If you're talking about Germanic neo-pagans ("Odinists"?), then you're technically right. Then again, Germanic neo-pagans are culturally and politically irrelevant, owing to their vanishingly small percentage of the population in any country they might live in.
3. "Honour and respect, yes - worship and make obeisance and grovel before like all the Abrahamites be they jew, christian or moslem does? Never."
I think this is a very simplistic idea of how veneration of the various conceptions of the Abrahamic God is done, and in any case, one could just flip the value judgements around so that it's the "Odinists" who make obeisance and grovel to their gods, and the "Abrahamists" who simply honor and respect their God.
4. "Your second paragraph is kind of weird. You say the average american lacks spiritual attachment to the Levant and neigbouring areas? Exactly where do you think Jesus came from, and from what multitude of faiths was his ideas inspired and combined, and later codified? If the origin of Jesus and his teachings and their roots are not a "spiritual tie", then what is?"
I was talking more in terms of "local"/"ethnic" and "universal" religions. Christianity is a universal religion, therefore retaining "currency" across ethnicities and myriad cultural contexts. Canaanite religion, in contrast, only retained meaning in particularly Canaanite milieus. One certainly never hears of any explicit attempt to convert people to the worship of Ba'al by the Canaanites. Any time any non-Canaanite worshiped Ba'al, it just came about as a result of general cultural interactions between them and any local Canaanites in the area.
5. "The ugarit sources completely contradict the later claims made that Baal was a evil or evil spirit. Read them if you like, there are annotated translations available. You can also read the egyptian Book of the Dead (annotated and with explanatory notes of course, unless you're an egyptologist - I'm not so I always opt for the in-depth versions) and compare what is actually known about egyptian civilisation around the time of Moses and what egyptian sources of that time say."
An "Abrahamist" could just rejoinder that the Ba'al Cycle is mere mythology, point to (real or perceived) practices of Ba'al-worship that make it bad, and that the Book of the Dead, while interesting in understanding how ancient Egyptians thought about the afterlife, is just demonic occult nonsense.
6. "Also, given that the vast majority of americans are of european heritage, racially and culturally, and that the entirety of american thought is built and based on the same greco-roman, celtic, teutonic, slavic, et cetera traditions, you certainly do have a spiritual connection."
The United States of America were founded on a political tradition of "classical liberalism" set in England (which was a Christian nation for centuries at that point), and a political-philosophical tradition of republicanism set in Rome, with earlier democratic antecedents in ancient Greece. The first American settlers were of British decent, a few taking West and Central African slaves, some others comporting and mixing with the Native Americans. The Celtic, Teutonic/Germanic, Slavic, or whatever other European traditions are, by and large, completely irrelevant to the founding of America, and Americans have certainly never been particular to any sort of broad "(pan-)Europeanist" sentiment.
7. "I know some like to think that some kind of unique Tabula Rasa-like immaculate inception of nation-formation occured when the US was founded: that's no more true than Kleopatra being a negro is, nor is it unique to the US. (It was not un-common practice up until the Enlightenment for royal houses to try and trace their bloodline to Noah/Utnapishtim and "prove" it too; making a claim to uniqueness validateslegitmacy isthe idea - feel free tocompareto contemporary cults.)"
Well, you should be glad, because I don't have this "Tabula Rasa/immaculate inception thesis" of how the US formed, as my response in (5) should have showed you already.
8. "The USA is simply put a continutation and (initially) a concrete version of ideas that had been circulating in Europe's courts and intellectual circles for several centuries beforehand."
Most of Europe was ran by monarchies (some constitutional, others absolute) when the US was established, and the US specifically bucked that trend by instituting a republican government system. Which only makes sense, since the US was born, in part, by a revolution against a monarchy. Whatever ideas were floating around the European courts and coffee shops, they were clearly not very political relevant in Europe itself before the American Revolution.
9. "You are, or rather you were the stewards of that millennia old and proud tradition of thought that started in Ancient Greece. Now, you're in the same sorry situation we are: history killed, daily, and replaced with the Führerprinzip: what those in power decree is true right now."
Sorry, but America isn't Sweden. America isn't practically irrelevant like Sweden. America hasn't bought into the sham that is "social democracy" like Sweden. America, on a fundamental level, isn't *sorry* like Sweden. Unlike Sweden (and much of Europe, really), America hasn't given up its guns. And the pushback against left-wing ideological bullshit in America is ever-growing.
Wow! How do you have time to read everything and compile the highlights into these digests?! Great stuff, and God bless you for this act of beneficence to the reading public!
It's called unemployment 😅
dry. starkly funny. all too true. BUT they couldn't break your immensely enormous IQ. So there, deep state!!!!!!!!!
As i once said in a healing session: "the cosmic idea machine lives inside my head!" - huge relief to know i'm not alone!
About that syrian moslem rapeugee who stabbed french children:
He holds swedish citizenship. He's tallied in our census as a resident of a small deindustrialised town on the West side of Sweden, and is convicted of multiple cases of welfare-fraud.
He is - this will stick in the craw of americans of all nationalities - typical of moslems from the Middle East. A thief, a fraudster, violent, moslem, no respect or consideration for occidentals (or crusaders, infidels and jew-slaves which are very common nicknames of theirs for us european natives), no empathy as we define the term, and absolute sadism towards anyone and anything perceived weak and defenceless.
It doesn't matter that Hassim at work or Mohammed who runs the falafel-kiosk near the school may be nice guys, or that Fatima in your knitting circle always brings baklava: they are not typical. They are not representative.
The violent, criminal, syrian moslem (in this case) is.
I know americans won't believe that. More fool you, then. Look at Sweden, Germany, France, Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece. Look at us 1970, and now. That's all you need to do.
Or just ask an actual american - a "redskin" - how that whole mass-migration thing worked out.
I saw the media saying he's akshually a Christian. No idea if it's true. Not that it matters.
One way or another they will have to be removed. Horrific as this crime was, it is not even the worst of what has already happened. The grooming gangs, not only in Rotherham though these are the best known, are in my opinion the nadir - offenses that cry out to heaven.
But not only the newcomers are at fault. Their enablers in government and media will also need to be held to account. Their hands are just as bloody. Perhaps more.
Many EU-nations put into practice around 2010-2015 that people coming from moslem nations but claiming to be christians (and therefore persecuted) or homosexual should be given special consideration and immediate asylum on their say-so alone.
Since percentages of actual christians are below 3% of the population in (from memory, mind) in any moslem nation in MENA, and that these christians are almost exclusively of other ethnicity than the majority, it stands to reason virtually all such claims are fraudulent.
As for enablers... it is my fervent hope they will share the fate of Vidkun Quisling.
Ah yes, that sounds quite familiar. Just as they lied shamelessly about their age, resulting in thirty-year-old bearded men being placed in high schools because they were "unaccompanied minors", the poor dears.
Honestly, this is best explained by selection bias. Consider: just as when Europeans colonized Americas it wasn't the meek but violent and oportunistic that went to Americas, so now that MEs colonize Europe it isn't the meek but violent and oportunistic that go. After all, if you're a kind well natured person that gets along well, seems to find his place and is a respected member of the community... WHY IN THE ACTUAL FUCK would you leave? OTOH, if you're an antisocial misfit that keeps getting into trouble and blames everybody but yourself for your troubles, you might end up dreaming that "those whities have it too easy man" and then you decide to go there and take advantage of them - like you've been taking advantage of your community before. And for some weird reason your community never sends you letters once you leave. Huh. It's almost as if they don't want you. Almost... as if they persecute you. Yeah. That's right. You were psychologically persecuted by your community since birth because you're just different. And then you go and seek asylum. :)
Our traditional analog passports of freedom are being replaced with the new traditional shiny object decoy of slavery called the prison cell phone. Don't stare too long into the abyss, or you'll find those pickpockets staring right back. You're a beast of a writer John! Hope you didn't stay up too late drinking coffee? If you did, I hope you at least had some cigarettes too.
Yesterday I was working on this more or less continuously from about 9 am to 8 pm, then again this morning from 9 am to noon-ish. That's what I get for not breaking the work up through the week....
I must know. How many people do have reading and summarizing for you? Seriously! This is an incredibly huge piece of work to be done by one person weekly. Weekly!!
No staff, just me.
Many thanks for the shout out! It's nice to be mentioned among so many thinkers I admire.
My pleasure!
Wow! What an incredible round up for the week!! It would take me the good part of the month to get though all that content!
Fantastic that you have the time to point us to all these brilliant writers/articles.
Thanks for the shout out! Feeling rather under-qualified among such a company of greats.
It's nice to have you back, my friend.
hey John (and Daniel, i second that question, and btw you're both rather brilliant if i may point that out) what i most appreciate is the novel and supremely expressive language. From the first paragraph onward (although my reticular system may have missed some of the floods of words...) i found myself laughing, grunting, and trying to pronounce our new vocab. THIS therefore feels like the simmering birth of re-new-ed consciousness through loudly imaginal language. Whew! This will require a re-visit
There was a site called social matter that used to do something like this and I've missed it since they stopped doing it.
Social Matter's This Week In Reaction feature was a direct inspiration for this, as I described in the first roundup of this style about a month ago.
Great stuff as usual, John!
Insane stamina to consume this much output from our sphere every week. Much respect John.
Great as always. I especially appreciate the dive into Lee Kuan Yew’s bio.
In terms of "American religion", one thing I always think about is the extreme fascination among certain circles of "Judeo-Christian" boomers and Gen Xers with the ancient Hebrew language and script (as seen here: https://ancient-hebrew.org/ and https://www.abarim-publications.com/), and the proper name of the Hebrew God, YHWH (Yahweh/Yehowah/etc). These "independent Hebraists", as I would call them, pore over ancient Hebrew in the same way that a white nationalist neo-pagan pores over ancient Germanic runes, except fundamentally more serious.
Their almost mystical veneration of ancient Hebrew and its script, and their clear emphasis on using the proper name of the "Judeo-Christian" God, interests me due to the fact that they're doing so not out of some glib sense of that ancient Hebrew is "exotic", or that the name "Yahweh" sounds cool, but out of clear, genuine faith in that language's power, and often out of a sense that the institutional religious authorities are failing in some foundational manner, such as "hiding" the all-important name of God for some nefarious reason.
I believe that this kind of organic development of these "Hebraist" sub-traditions within the larger American religious milieu is indicative of just how intellectually sterile and spiritually/culturally impotent institutional religion (particularly Christianity) has become in America, to the point where certain people are taking it upon themselves to revive some kind of "authentic" faith by promoting the proper name of God and venerating the original language of the first half of the Bible.
All this is to say that independent religious scholarship and metaphysical philosophy is definitely going to have some sort of effect on whatever religious revival happens in America, said revival is definitely going to be very sympathetic to the Old Testament and the harshness Yahweh often has in it (backlash to LGBTQ+ nonsense, and all that), and you shouldn't be surprised if Hebrew starts becoming just as much a part of the "cultured American multilingual" starter pack as Spanish, Japanese, Hindi (growth of India blah blah), and possibly even Kievan-Lvovian Ruthenian (sometimes known as "Ukrainian").
I've always wondered about that, how modern american christians can miss that Baal, so often villified and besmirched in jewish sources, was a saviour: Baal sacrifices himself for humanity when he voluntarily wanders into the maw of Mot (death, drought, suffering) and the ugarit tablets and pillars as well as babylonian and egyptian sources contradict virtually all claims made by the jews.
It's just that their version is the one that got repeated down the centuries as part of catholic dogma and apocrypha. Perhaps the Ur-example (pardon the pun) of "controlling the narrative".
Why anyone would need to pour over runic script I don't get. The runes and the sagas et c are kennings; they are not of the semitic-latin or other levantine tradition, nor are they fatalist in the oriental sense. Read them, yes - but endless studying of minutiae is onlyforthe historian tabulating data. The one seeking wisdom need look no further than Gylfaginning, Voluspa and Havamal.
And then simply let the knowledge ferment, like the blood of Kvaser.
The American Christian, when he thinks about Ba'al, considers him a Canaanite false god, if not simply another name for the Devil, and that all his exploits in Canaanite/Ugaritic mythology are just that, mythology (which, in Ba'al's case, likely has something to do with seasonal changes). Ba'al has about as much weight as Zeus or Odin, all little more than names of high gods whose worship is long dead, more useful for modern fantasy fiction than any attempt at serious religion.
The average American, in any case, would find no particular reason to have any sort of deep spiritual attachment to Canaanite or Norse religion and mythology, which are both contextually and culturally largely alien to America even in its roots. What does Thor or Melqart have to do with a landmass an entire ocean away from either the Levant or Scandinavia, which the people composing the stories tied to them scarcely so much as imagined?
By the way, what do you mean by "the ugarit tablets and pillars as well as babylonian and egyptian sources contradict virtually all claims made by the jews"? What specific claims are being contradicted by them?
"...worship is long dead..."
Wrong. Dead wrong you might say, partly because people still honour the All-Father and partly because "worship" is the wrong term entirely.
Honour and respect, yes - worship and make obeisance and grovel before like all the Abrahamites be they jew, christian or moslem does? Never.
Your second paragraph is kind of weird. You say the average american lacks spiritual attachment to the Levant and neigbouring areas? Exactly where do you think Jesus came from, and from what multitude of faiths was his ideas inspired and combined, and later codified? If the origin of Jesus and his teachings and their roots are not a "spiritual tie", then what is?
The ugarit sources completely contradict the later claims made that Baal was a evil or evil spirit. Read them if you like, there are annotated translations available. You can also read the egyptian Book of the Dead (annotated and with explanatory notes of course, unless you're an egyptologist - I'm not so I always opt for the in-depth versions) and compare what is actually known about egyptian civilisation around the time of Moses and what egyptian sources of that time say.
Also, given that the vast majority of americans are of european heritage, racially and culturally, and that the entirety of american thought is built and based on the same greco-roman, celtic, teutonic, slavic, et cetera traditions, you certainly do have a spiritual connection.
I know some like to think that some kind of unique Tabula Rasa-like immaculate inception of nation-formation occured when the US was founded: that's no more true than Kleopatra being a negro is, nor is it unique to the US. (It was not un-common practice up until the Enlightenment for royal houses to try and trace their bloodline to Noah/Utnapishtim and "prove" it too; making a claim to uniqueness validateslegitmacy isthe idea - feel free tocompareto contemporary cults.)
The USA is simply put a continutation and (initially) a concrete version of ideas that had been circulating in Europe's courts and intellectual circles for several centuries beforehand.
You are, or rather you were the stewards of that millennia old and proud tradition of thought that started in Ancient Greece. Now, you're in the same sorry situation we are: history killed, daily, and replaced with the Führerprinzip: what those in power decree is true right now.
As for serious religion, consider this: there is no more proof for Superman being real, than any god. It's a matter of faith, and by implying that other faiths are not serious or not real, what is that you are doing?
You delegitimise the spirituality, tradition, moral system and culture of others as not real. I'm sure you know what political -isms are famous for doing that.
1 (putting this first, despite it being out of order, because I believe it's the most important to address).
"As for serious religion, consider this: there is no more proof for Superman being real, than any god. It's a matter of faith, and by implying that other faiths are not serious or not real, what is that you are doing?
You delegitimise the spirituality, tradition, moral system and culture of others as not real. I'm sure you know what political -isms are famous for doing that."
If you believe that religion is purely a matter of faith, and that there is no more evidence for the existence of any deity than there is for any fictional character (implicitly comparing religious belief to fictional worldbuilding), then why not just make up your own religion?
Why deal with Odin, Thor, and Tyr when you can deal with Gravitus, Electromagneto, and Nucleon (the god of the strong and weak nuclear forces)? Why deal with Norse religious cosmology when you can talk about the Network of Universes and the High Flying Summerland beyond them? Why not just take some Chinese or sub-Saharan African gods, "whiten" them (haha), and present them as a new pantheon for a new faith? After all, all deities and faiths are equally real (or equally unreal), especially in the sense that they are equally able to represent a certain moral system or cultural/spiritual tradition.
As for "delegitimizing" cultural, religious, moral, and spiritual traditions, isn't that exactly what you're doing right now to the Abrahamic complex of religions, which you describe as having their adherents act in slave-like fashion towards the Abrahamic God, and as being contradicted by other religious texts that you've (arbitrarily*) decided to place as higher authorities than Abrahamic ones? You certainly do not have a positive view on the Abrahamic religions overall, nor do you take them seriously, nor see them as part of your tradition. But many other people certainly would not agree with you, and would see at least one Abrahamic religion to be as essential to their lives, and to the proper function of a state/nation, as food and water.
Aside from all that, the idea that "there is no more proof for Superman being real, than any god" is an atheistic notion if there ever was one, and something I would never have expected to be written by anyone who (sincerely) practices any religion.
*And I do mean arbitrarily, considering that, in your view, no faith (and, one must assume, no claims of any given faith) is more valid/real/serious or invalid/unreal/serious than any other.
2. "Wrong. Dead wrong you might say, partly because people still honour the All-Father and partly because "worship" is the wrong term entirely."
If you're talking about Germanic neo-pagans ("Odinists"?), then you're technically right. Then again, Germanic neo-pagans are culturally and politically irrelevant, owing to their vanishingly small percentage of the population in any country they might live in.
3. "Honour and respect, yes - worship and make obeisance and grovel before like all the Abrahamites be they jew, christian or moslem does? Never."
I think this is a very simplistic idea of how veneration of the various conceptions of the Abrahamic God is done, and in any case, one could just flip the value judgements around so that it's the "Odinists" who make obeisance and grovel to their gods, and the "Abrahamists" who simply honor and respect their God.
4. "Your second paragraph is kind of weird. You say the average american lacks spiritual attachment to the Levant and neigbouring areas? Exactly where do you think Jesus came from, and from what multitude of faiths was his ideas inspired and combined, and later codified? If the origin of Jesus and his teachings and their roots are not a "spiritual tie", then what is?"
I was talking more in terms of "local"/"ethnic" and "universal" religions. Christianity is a universal religion, therefore retaining "currency" across ethnicities and myriad cultural contexts. Canaanite religion, in contrast, only retained meaning in particularly Canaanite milieus. One certainly never hears of any explicit attempt to convert people to the worship of Ba'al by the Canaanites. Any time any non-Canaanite worshiped Ba'al, it just came about as a result of general cultural interactions between them and any local Canaanites in the area.
5. "The ugarit sources completely contradict the later claims made that Baal was a evil or evil spirit. Read them if you like, there are annotated translations available. You can also read the egyptian Book of the Dead (annotated and with explanatory notes of course, unless you're an egyptologist - I'm not so I always opt for the in-depth versions) and compare what is actually known about egyptian civilisation around the time of Moses and what egyptian sources of that time say."
An "Abrahamist" could just rejoinder that the Ba'al Cycle is mere mythology, point to (real or perceived) practices of Ba'al-worship that make it bad, and that the Book of the Dead, while interesting in understanding how ancient Egyptians thought about the afterlife, is just demonic occult nonsense.
6. "Also, given that the vast majority of americans are of european heritage, racially and culturally, and that the entirety of american thought is built and based on the same greco-roman, celtic, teutonic, slavic, et cetera traditions, you certainly do have a spiritual connection."
The United States of America were founded on a political tradition of "classical liberalism" set in England (which was a Christian nation for centuries at that point), and a political-philosophical tradition of republicanism set in Rome, with earlier democratic antecedents in ancient Greece. The first American settlers were of British decent, a few taking West and Central African slaves, some others comporting and mixing with the Native Americans. The Celtic, Teutonic/Germanic, Slavic, or whatever other European traditions are, by and large, completely irrelevant to the founding of America, and Americans have certainly never been particular to any sort of broad "(pan-)Europeanist" sentiment.
7. "I know some like to think that some kind of unique Tabula Rasa-like immaculate inception of nation-formation occured when the US was founded: that's no more true than Kleopatra being a negro is, nor is it unique to the US. (It was not un-common practice up until the Enlightenment for royal houses to try and trace their bloodline to Noah/Utnapishtim and "prove" it too; making a claim to uniqueness validateslegitmacy isthe idea - feel free tocompareto contemporary cults.)"
Well, you should be glad, because I don't have this "Tabula Rasa/immaculate inception thesis" of how the US formed, as my response in (5) should have showed you already.
8. "The USA is simply put a continutation and (initially) a concrete version of ideas that had been circulating in Europe's courts and intellectual circles for several centuries beforehand."
Most of Europe was ran by monarchies (some constitutional, others absolute) when the US was established, and the US specifically bucked that trend by instituting a republican government system. Which only makes sense, since the US was born, in part, by a revolution against a monarchy. Whatever ideas were floating around the European courts and coffee shops, they were clearly not very political relevant in Europe itself before the American Revolution.
9. "You are, or rather you were the stewards of that millennia old and proud tradition of thought that started in Ancient Greece. Now, you're in the same sorry situation we are: history killed, daily, and replaced with the Führerprinzip: what those in power decree is true right now."
Sorry, but America isn't Sweden. America isn't practically irrelevant like Sweden. America hasn't bought into the sham that is "social democracy" like Sweden. America, on a fundamental level, isn't *sorry* like Sweden. Unlike Sweden (and much of Europe, really), America hasn't given up its guns. And the pushback against left-wing ideological bullshit in America is ever-growing.
Another challenge...and quit calling me "sanpaku."
mild-mannered-polite-and-patient? maybe it's true: if you wanna look thin, hang around with people that are fat..
"..40,000 Canadian troops were deployed in Afghanistan over 13 years..": https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/canada-to-send-special-forces-to-afghanistan-to-close-kabul-embassy.html
"..reputation as a good guy on the world stage ..forced indigenous children into residential schools where up to 75 per cent were abused..": https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/canada’s-stolen-generations/6598518
"..representation of Canada as a progressive antipode to the rapacious dollar republic to the south ..important part of the ideological arsenal of the ruling class..": http://www.greanvillepost.com/2017/07/01/150-years-of-canadian-confederation-myth-and-reality/
💯🤍 Love your posts!!!