Author Archives: Raizen

Is Chris Chan’s Diet Killing Him?

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A couple days ago, Chris Chan complained of feeling “a bit woozy at times” on X, with his friends attributing this to his diet.

Here’s what he had to say:

#TF2AnalysisAnarchy reminded me of the 6-2-1 (Convention) Rule years ago. That was a common practice with me, in general, which aided me in weight loss.

But in recent days, my Body has been feeling a bit woozy at times. My friends made me realize that I could be eating more, especially considering how tall I am. So, I’m readjusting my meal plan for filling breakfast/brunch and dinner, while enjoying Fruits and/or Salad at lunch or snackage throughout the day.

Okay then, let’s see how Chris Chan has been eating fruits, by looking at a fruit salad that he shared weeks ago. And let me know whether this could contribute to his woozy feeling:

Okay, this looks like the beginning of a fruit salad. There’s a diversity of fruit there, with diced apple, strawberries, banana, and what looks like a peeled tangerine. As long as he doesn’t somehow ruin it, there’s nothing to object to, at all.

But he’s not done yet. To him, nature’s candy is not sweet enough, he has to add additional candy to taste:

He ruined it. First, with a mound of whipped cream and a literal chocolate bar. Sure, it’s just a small square, but it’s even more sugar.

But then, he adds maraschino cherries. They may be cherries, but they’re swimming in sweeteners such as sugar or high fructose corn syrup! No wonder the guy is woozy, he thinks that this is the kind of meal that’s so healthy, that he can snap pictures of it to show off as an example of his better judgment to the world!

Chris Chan handles his diet the same way he handles Biblical law keeping: lackadaisically. Here’s what he has to say about that:

I am thankful for the 6-2-1 Rule, but as a guideline like the Bible, we are meant to keep it as a guideline in our minds, souls and hearts and think outside of that in common sense for ourselves, respectively.

If you’re wondering what the “6-2-1 Rule” is, so was I. I looked it up, and apparently, it’s a furry convention guideline that recommends 6 hours of sleep, 2 meals a day, and one shower a day. But like many rules, Chris Chan regards it as a “guideline”, similar to how he regards other rules, including the ones found in the Bible.

Apparently, to him the Ten Commandments are more like the Ten Suggestions, in that he follows them when it’s nice and convenient, but considers them something to ignore in favor of his own personal dictates of common sense.

This person is claiming to be the Messiah?

The situational ethics crowd is about as scary as those who insist that Biblical law keeping has been done away with, but they have no idea. Biblical law includes the Ten Commandments, and they say that you’re not to murder, steal, or bear false witness. Which of these things would they object to happening to them?

Chris Chan has a problem that many Americans do: he has received almost nothing in the way of dietary education, and only has vague notions of what is healthy to go on. That’s a problem when the rules of diet and nutrition are such that, if you break them and are ignorant of it, the consequences of breaking those rules still apply to you.

No, I don’t claim to be perfect in this regard. When I was in my twenties, I usually had a big ol’ heaping plate of pasta for dinner, reasoning that that was healthy enough. While it’s true that there was some nutritional benefit to be had, I was consuming a monster pile of calories nearly every evening, which was only offset by the fact that I was highly physically active, walking miles on most days.

After college, I returned to that for a short while. But as my means improved, I decided to figure a few things out about my diet.

Because we have technology that can help us with our diets, why not use it? I use an app to track my caloric intake. What’s more, I got a kitchen scale to help measure out my portions. I also did a lot of research on what foods can have what benefits for me.

Here’s an example of what breakfast can look like for me:

The Grapenuts and milk are consumed together as a cereal. As for the fruit, they are blended together with water, a scoop of protein shake, a couple scoops of powdered collagen, and the “Daily Fiber” is a psyllium husk supplement like Metamucil. The result is a super-tasty and super-healthy breakfast smoothie. The fruit volume can vary, but this is what reasonably fits in my blender.

In addition to this, I’ll often have some black coffee (zero calories), as well as supplements such as vitamin D, creatine, and perhaps even some fish oil, and maybe some other supplements.

Thanks to a diet like this, I actually feel better now than when I was in my twenties, and perhaps ever have. And if you wish to copy me, now you have an idea of what I’ve been having for breakfast, lately.

If you still have doubts as to Chris Chan’s state of mind, he closes out his statement with the following:

Every religion and scripture is a piece of the Bigger Truth; they combine in all to form that, in a way. But Meditation and Connection with the Cosmos, Akashic Records and Alpha/Omega Point well beyond our Universe’s and Timeline’s Core and Matrix puts further insights and revelations into all of us to really understand ourselves and the truths and to put them to Good use with Light Power and Righteous Paths. ⚡️💙⚡️

Though he claims to have access to the comprehensive compendium of events and thoughts in all the history of the universe, Chris Chan still doesn’t know how to eat right.

Let’s end this with a quote from a far more sensible man:

The production of artificial food as a means for causing an increase of the human mass naturally suggests itself, but a direct attempt of this kind to provide nourishment does not appear to me rational, at least not for the present. Whether we could thrive on such food is very doubtful. We are the result of ages of continuous adaptation, and we cannot radically change without unforeseen and, in all probability, disastrous consequences. So uncertain an experiment should not be tried.

Nikola Tesla

The GODCULT Complex of MamaMax

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Is this the face of fighting child abuse?

I was a legacy subscriber of MamaMax on YouTube, from back when his channel was funny, but then I dropped off when he started commentating on bad hentai. Since then, the algorithm itself seldom floated any of his stuff to me.

However, that changed today, after happening upon a new offering, which was when I discovered that he now goes by a new handle, GODCULT. And not only that, he reiterated his cause, which is to encourage vigilante activity, outing child predators.

While the cause of stopping child predators is something I don’t object to, there are problems with having someone like GODCULT being the one to champion the cause. And I don’t just mean because of his hentai commentary.

For those who are interested, the video is embedded below. Watching it is helpful for establishing the context of my critique, but is not completely necessary. It’s about 25 minutes long.

GODCULT spends much of the video answering critics who have left him comments. Many of them are legacy subscribers who would agree that his new super-serious content is not what they subscribed to, and GODCULT takes them to task for not being on board with the change of his channel’s focus.

Reminiscent of the days of Maddox, to cherry pick comments that you can easily answer is highly expedient to expressing your intellectual superiority. Also of note is that he altered his voice in an obvious effort to be taken seriously, which is a nice throwback to “We are Anonymous, we are legion!”

But what’s especially disturbing is that GODCULT presumes to psychoanalyze these critics, as if to suggest that criticism of his channel’s new direction indicates a sort of permissiveness of child abuse. Whether he’s explicit in this implication, it’s easy to hear in his tone.

If one were to turn the psychoanalytic eye back on GODCULT, it would be plain to see that he derives pleasure from expressing superiority over other people. Of course, this would be difficult to reconcile with a culture that has a distaste for abusive relationships. Except, when that same appetite for domination is expressed against those who are abusive, it becomes easier to justify. When answering his critics, it’s plain to see that his deep, booming voice disguise is intended to intimidate. Whether his intention to protect children is sincere or not, it’s evidently a convenient outlet with which he could play the intellectual tyrant, fulfilling his own appetite for domination.

As explained by GODCULT, he has spun a dystopian fictional narrative of a future time in which child abuse is normalized. Because GODCULT is of the opinion that fictitious depictions indicate the sensibilities of the authors, GODCULT shouldn’t consider it scandalous to say that this indicates a sincere belief that humanity, if left on its current course, would normalize pedophilia within years.

I have my doubts. As of this typing, child abuse is highly illegal. It tends to carry a harsh prison sentence. What’s more, anyone in prison for child abuse is usually singled out for abuse by other prisoners, because even ordinary criminals can’t stand their presence. What’s more, child molesters tend to be harassed anywhere that their reputation follows them, which is usually everywhere, considering that they’re usually required to submit to a registry that would indicate where they live. Most people can’t stand the company of child molesters.

Considering all this, I think it should be understandable why I would be skeptical of the idea that child abuse would be normalized anytime soon. Having said that, I’m aware that QAnon would differ on the matter, why they would differ, and the kind of information that they habitually limit themselves to and how it informs their worldview.

While it was a throwaway line near the start of his video, we can bring attention to his calling out of Japanese media for sometimes sexualizing minors. Which would make Japanese media like most media one can find anywhere in the world. While it’s true that Japanese media has a relatively high occurrence rate of humor that would be considered insensitive to victims of sexual abuse, it’s also true that a person doesn’t have to consume media that they don’t want to. And, in any case, Japan enjoys low crime rates in spite of how racy some its media can be. It’s almost as though media is not strongly indicative of cultural norms, right MamaMax, reviewer of bad hentai?

Because we’re sensible adults, we should know that any fictitious depictions of crime does not equate to a desire on the part of the authors to commit such crimes, nor does the consumption of such media indicate such desires from consumers. Otherwise, we could assume some pretty nasty things about the people who play games from the Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto series’.

Having been through all that, as much of a problem as child abuse is, there are better things we can do about it than using our positions as influencers to recruit your viewers as vigilantes. Vigilantism is counterproductive. There has been many a case where a predator has actually gotten off because some vigilante bozo disrupted an investigation in progress.

If child abuse is occurring, you notify law enforcement. Unless the crime is in progress in your physical presence, that is the extent of what you can do to be helpful. Even if you want to do more, in informing law enforcement you’ve accomplished everything you could do to be helpful. Let the police do their jobs, they actually do want to stop these guys.

Having said this, I have a suspicion that in the event that GODCULT discovers this page, he might distort my criticisms of his approach as being adversarial towards efforts to stop child abuse, similar to how he answered his critics.

Still, GODCULT has a freedom to further whatever cause that he may wish to, so long as he can do so lawfully. And if he can rescue at least one person in so doing, then this would make it easier for him to avoid confronting his own methods for how counterproductive they may be.

I know I may be laboring the point by bringing this up again, but vigilantism is usually counterproductive, as it has the potential to disrupt investigations that are the job of law enforcement, resulting in people who commit crimes getting off scot free. Don’t want child molesters to get away with it? Then don’t be dumb.

Made In Abyss Theory: Riko, the Song of Hariyomari, and the Time Trap

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(This theory may contain spoilers for the Made In Abyss manga up to chapter 66.)

The next story arc for Made In Abyss is developing, and I wanted to go ahead and share an idea of what I think might be about to happen next, based on the hints that we’ve been given so far. This fan theory concerns Riko, the Song of Hariyomari, and the identity of the so-called Priestess that has been mentioned by characters such as Tepaste and Nishagora.

First, about the Song of Hariyomari. According to the narrative, the Song of Hariyomari is a song passed along by the children of Orth, and is said to contain a message relevant to White Whistles, the legends among cave raiders, and may even contain a hint on how to advance to the 7th layer.

Earlier in the story, Nanachi is seen reading a book to her friend, Mitty. It would later be known to the reader that the verse that was read came from the Song of Hariyomari. This would happen when Riko’s party happens upon an emperorshell in the 6th layer, and the party recalls Nanachi having read the verse.

We also see at the Tumble Tavern that Habolg overhears a conversation between Cravagli and Tepaste, and then asks Jiruo whether he’s familiar with the song. Later, while on a joint expedition, Habolg happens upon a discovery which causes him to question whether Cravagli intended to somehow bring a fable to life.

The song is also known to the White Whistle, Srajo the Obscure, who is on the trail of the Priestess. Srajo teaches much of the song to Riko after determining that Riko is someone she could trust.

Next, the Priestess. We’re not given much information about this mysterious personage, aside from that it’s a person who interprets omens from the abyss, and it is said that she’s the one to have authored the Song of Hariyomari. Tepaste and Cravagli are somehow connected to the Priestess, but it’s not clear how. When Nishagora discovers Riko’s party, she sets eyes on Riko’s white whistle, and exclaims that she’s found the Priestess’s clan. However, Tepaste says that she never met the group.

According to Srajo, her party, Hail Hex, is in pursuit of the Priestess, who she says is trapped between the 6th and 7th layers, unable to advance. Because the strains of ascension in those layers are deadly, that’s a bad place to be stuck.

Where we left off, Riko’s party was on the verge of a joint expedition into the 7th layer alongside Hail Hex. While Riko is concerned with reaching the bottom, readers are suspicious of the motives of Srajo, who probably hasn’t given up her pursuit of the Priestess.

Having established all that, I think we’re about ready to get into some speculation. So here’s what I think might be going on: I suspect that the Priestess may be Riko herself, who also wrote the Song of Hariyomari.

On the surface, this seems impossible. After all, at the outset of the arc, Hail Hex is already in pursuit of the Priestess, whose cadre already includes Cravagli and Tepaste. So, how can it be that someone who just entered the 6th layer can be the same person who’s already being pursued between the 6th and 7th layers?

Much earlier in the story, Ozen the Immovable explained the time dilation, which causes time to move differently in the deeper layers, to the point that a person can spend weeks in the abyss while months pass on the surface.

It could be that the time dilation is more like a time warp which becomes more evident in the deeper layers. One could ask how Ozen would be unaware of this, but remember that most cave raiders cannot ascend from the 6th layer, due to the strains at that level. Thus, it’s reasonable to expect that if there was a time warp, it might go unreported, even if the people caught within were to notice it, at all.

Notice how, shortly after Riko’s party meets her, Nishagora comments on how time behaves around Riko’s party. Depending on translation, she could say that time “flies”, or “stabilizes”, or something to the latter effect. I have my doubts that Nishagora was merely commenting on how Riko and friends are “fun to be around”, as the party responded with confused expressions, to which she replies that it’s okay that they don’t know, and that she’s bad at explaining things, anyhow.

What I suspect is about to happen is that Riko will be presented with the opportunity to become the new Priestess, to replace the previous one, with the ability to interpret omens facilitated by her connection to the abyss (remember her dream about Mitty?). Perhaps the whole reason why Bondrewd crafted Prushka into Riko’s white whistle was because he believed that Riko could facilitate the “dawn” of the next thousand years. Perhaps when Bondrewd went to Iruburu, he gave instructions on how to embellish Riko’s white whistle, which Nishagora would then recognize.

But, if we know Riko, she doesn’t care about any of that, she just wants to adventure to the bottom, where she expects to meet her mother, or whoever might be waiting for her. Thus, Riko would decline, and insist on continuing her adventure.

Of course, this would be greatly upsetting to the cadre of cave raiders who carefully conspired over the course of years to groom Riko to be the next Priestess, which might include the likes of Bondrewd the Novel! And the one closest to Riko to give pursuit would be Srajo the Obscure!

But, there would be a problem. During the pursuit, Riko would be caught in a time loop, with Srajo’s party continually on her trail, and by the time she realizes it, it’s too late!

So, Riko needs to come up with a plan. Otherwise, she and her friends will be pursued by Hail Hex forever! Obviously, fighting them would be out of the question, as Nishagora alone would be too much to handle, and there’s no telling what Yataramaru and the twins are capable of.

However, Riko gets an idea: she could send a warning to herself in the past, one that could be passed along over the course of centuries and make it back to herself. It’s said that the Song of Hariyomari contains a clue on how to advance to the 7th layer, which is supposedly about the point where the Priestess is stuck.

Therefore, Riko completes the cycle by composing the Song of Hariyomari, and passing it along in the hopes that it would be heard by her younger self!

When a message must be passed along verbally with minimal distortion, music is an excellent way of doing this. If you’re familiar with the game of Telephone, you know that the phrase whispered into the ear of the first kid in line is usually way different from what the last child hears, then announces. Riko, being a child herself, is likely familiar with this game, and likely also realizes that people tend to be much better at remembering messages that are in the form of music.

And the message was transmitted so effectively, that it became known to orphans in Orth, and was even known to adults like Cravagli. Even Nanachi was seen reading the song to Mitty. These hint to Riko’s plan (if it is her plan) so far being a resounding success!

So, would this plan be enough to save Riko, and allow her to escape? Will this even be anywhere close to how events might play out?

I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to seeing what happens in the next chapter!

The Left and Dialectical Thinking

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A normal, healthy mind supposes that if there are two mutually-exclusive viewpoints, then they cannot both be correct.

For example, if a normal thinker were to be presented with the two statements, “racism is wrong” and “discrimination against whites is okay”, they would perceive an irreconcilable contradiction, and understand that both statements cannot be true.

The use of “if-therefore” statements to determine what follows with axioms as the basis is logical thinking.

You might have noticed that many leftists hold the statements “racism is wrong” and “discrimination against whites is okay” to be simultaneously true. In the mind of a logical thinker, this is vexing, because to them, both statements cannot simultaneously be true.

So, why? Why do so many leftists hold to such a blatant and irreconcilable ideological contradiction? How can such a thing possibly make sense?

And the answer is, it doesn’t. Yet, leftists still hold such contradictory viewpoints due to what’s called dialectical thinking.

So, what is dialectical thinking? As relates to leftism and the related Marxist philosophies surrounding it, dialectical thinking involves the synthesis of conflicting ideas to form a new idea.

Consider how the typical leftist handles the two contradictory statements in the example above. They are told that “racism is wrong”, and “discrimination against whites is okay”, and they are told that, in order to be a good leftist, they need to hold both statements as simultaneously true.

A healthy mind would consider such a political ideology to be complete mushuganah, reject it out of hand, and perhaps even treat it to the sound ridicule it richly merits. However, people who are in cults are seldom of sound mind. They want to fit in, and they’re determined to do so, no matter how hard they have to force the square peg through the round hole.

So, to the end of winning headpats from their ideological superiors, leftists must somehow reconcile the statements, “racism is wrong”, and “discrimination against whites is okay”. But how?

As most of us know, to exercise discrimination on the basis of one’s race, such as in cases where a person is white, is racism per se. Considering this, to the end of reconciling the two contradictory statements, it’s plain to see that the leftist’s main obstacle would be the definition of racism.

So, what is the intellectually-confused leftist to do? That’s easy: just change the definition of racism to exclude discrimination against whites.

Obviously, a sound mind would not make such an exception. But, again, we’re talking about cultists. So, not only will they make the exception, they’ll attempt to justify it in an attempt to silence their conscience, which is probably screaming in agony. Knowing this, it’s easy to see why they continually point to the past crime of slavery as justification for their own Halal form of discrimination, while ignoring the fact that slavery was also practiced by nearly every culture to ever exist.

When you understand dialectical thinking, you understand why leftists are as prone as they are to simultaneously holding contradictory viewpoints.

The example above was not arbitrary, by the way. It was selected to help you understand why the word “racism” has gone from a word with a definition to a leftist snarl word that is used to describe people that disagree with them. Leftists use the word “fascist” in the same sense, while simultaneously engaging in collective action to the end of furthering Marxist economics. Unironically.

As I’ve pointed out before, if language is being used that evokes an emotional reaction, while bypassing your better judgement, you might be in a cult.

Dialectical thinking itself is a memetic holdover of Gnosticism, which had a particular influence on Marxism (remember that many Marxist cults were at one point religious in nature). Early in its history, Christianity recognized Gnosticism as a heresy, and dealt with it accordingly, before Christianity went on to become the world’s most popular religion. When you understand this, it’s easy to see why many Gnostics have a problem with Christianity, and that the dialectical thinkers on the left are fighting someone else’s battles for them.

As much as I’d like to ask whether I helped you to make sense of leftist thinking, we must admit that it still doesn’t make sense. Even so, it can be said that when you know about dialectical thinking, you’re in a better position to comprehend the senselessness of leftist thinking, including why they are in a constant state of redefining themselves, and why they embrace contradictions that more reasonable people would not.

The Trannifesto Has Leaked. Here’s What It Says.

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The Trannifesto, the final writings of Audrey Hale, the Covenant school shooter, has just been leaked through Steven Crowder’s website, louderwithcrowder.com. The guy is a true patriot, please pay his site a visit.

The shooting, committed by a transgender person (who was in reality a woman), occurred over 8 months ago. Though law enforcement had obtained the shooter’s final writings, its release to the public has been repeatedly delayed, with perhaps no plans to release it, at all.

As has been stated previously, the Trannifesto is not so much a manifesto as it is a set of journal entries.

If you’re as skeptical as me, you might wonder whether the pages were a scam made by someone abusing AI. I ran the images through an AI detector, and the likelihood of the images being AI generated was 2.1%, 3.8%, and 34.2%, according to Illuminarty.ai. So by the looks of it, these are legit.

Now, let’s give these a look, and I’ll give my opinion.

I’ll say first of all that Audrey Hale sucked fuck at handwriting. Also, nothing conveys a psycho middle-school mindset quite like doodles of guns shooting at targets in a margin of a page. And then there’s scrawling out “DARK ABYSS DEATH DAY” as the title of the entry, as if to drive home the teen angst that she was way too old for.

I’m absolutely not surprised that Audrey’s broken, defective mind could not perceive that there is such a thing as an innocent person, which was evidenced by her choice of targets. What does surprise me is how far back that Audrey contemplated the crimes that she ended up committing, which goes at least as far back as the summer of 2021, when her plotting was nearly discovered.

Audrey Hale’s crimes were not a crime of passion, they were deliberate.

Audrey planned out her final crimes meticulously, planning out her last day alive down to the minute. One might wonder what was covered by the sticky note, and based on the marks that are showing, it looks like part of the sentence, “Spend time w/ stuffed animals and possessions” was obscured. So yeah, in her last day alive, right before committing mass murder, a psychopath prioritized spending time with her toys.

This entry, dated the previous month, gives a window into the mind of the killer, and tells us what motivated her. It was basically a racist and classist tirade packed with expletives and ranting about what she perceived as indications of wealth and status.

It pretty much comes down to Hale hating a bunch of children whose parents worked hard to ensure that their children had a brighter future, and hating their parents for having things that they either worked or taken on debt for. Like many of Hale’s ilk, hers was a highly superficial perspective that assumed that disparity in outcome must necessarily be a product of factors that she felt she could rightly resent another for.

It’s obvious why there was such hesitation to release this to the public, because it’s an indictment against the political ideology which, when taken to its extreme, would motivate a sick individual to lash out in the way that Audrey did.

I’ve often heard it asked what it is that motivates mass killers. After all, the targets are seldom someone that the killers knew personally. The reason why mass killers try to end as many lives as possible is because their target is society. They want to cause as much damage to society as possible. Oftentimes, it’s because the killer supposed that society has failed them.

By reason of Hale’s transgender identity, it’s reasonable to infer that she wasn’t in touch with reality. Such a person would certainly be considered a vulnerable individual, prone to manipulation. Thus, when Hale was presented with the idea that a difference in outcome is intrinsically related one’s immutable characteristics, combined with Hale’s lack of empathy, and her belief that children are valid targets, together with the ease with which Hale could be manipulated, it becomes easier to see why she could be influenced to commit murder.

As disturbing as all this is, what’s particularly disturbing is that much of her hatred was directed towards children. She hated them for their race, and she hated them because the decisions that their parents made were to the end of ensuring that those children would have a bright future ahead of them. This is no reason to hate anyone, for one thing, because a person’s race is something that they cannot control, but also because to ensure a brighter future for one’s own children is one of the strongest driving motivations for one to work hard in today’s world. That Hale could bring herself to hate someone for these reasons goes to show just how damaged her mind was.

Because Audrey Hale was once a student at the same school where she would eventually die a murderer, it’s hard to say that she was motivated by envy of what other children had. But it seems apparent that she was motivated by racism, and I think it would be interesting to find out from whom her racist ideas came from.

As disturbing as all this is, it gets worse in context. While Audrey Hale’s thinking is aberrant, it’s far more common than it should be, to the point that it’s all but guaranteed that the tragedy that it resulted in will happen again.

And with her thinking being fed into by academia, the pharmaceutical industry, banking cartels, the Biden administration, and more, it’s not so much a question of whether it will happen again, but when and where.

The Enemy Is Ideologically Motivated. How Do You Fight Back?

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I’ve said before that if you don’t address the real problem, don’t expect a real solution.

When you have an enemy, you could fight them. But if you don’t address the problem right at the heart of what motivates them, then it’s a conflict that might never end. Therefore, to the end of securing a lasting victory, it’s best to know what motivates your enemy, so you can strike their motivations, and eliminate them as a threat.

When it comes to Islamists such as Hamas, they made it easy by straight up telling us what their motives are. They are doing what they’re doing because of their religion, and what they believe their prophet wanted them to do.

Thus, to the end of eliminating them as a threat, the most productive course of action would be learn about their religion from a critical perspective, with the intention of learning how to convince them that their religion is not worth killing anyone over. And not just them, but make it widely known the fallacies of their ideology.

If a person has come to the point that they believe that paradise awaits them for jihad, they are probably lost, and therefore would only be fit to meet the end that an enemy combatant would. It’s hard to think of what else to do with them.

However, if the general public were to become aware of how ridiculous their brand of mysticism is, the less likely that they’ll be able to replenish their numbers from among the more ignorant among us, and the violent bands of miscreants will diminish.

As suggestions for reading to this end, I can recommend the following:
WikiIslam: http://wikiislam.github.io/wiki/Main_Page.html
The Religion of Peace: https://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
Prophet of Doom: http://prophetofdoom.net/

Of these, I can suggest WikiIslam, as it has lots of information that can be searched by topic (such as slavery, jihad, or women). The Religion of Peace focuses on current events. If you’re up for a deep dive, Prophet of Doom provides a chronological account of the life of Mohammad, Islam’s only prophet. Even if you disagree with the author’s religious perspectives, when it comes to Islam, he has a high amount of insight.

Remember: When you tell the truth, you take power away from those who profit off of lies.

The Takiyya Factor

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The recent bombing of a Christian hospital in the West Bank has resulted in a controversy, as Hamas has blamed Israel for the bombing.

Watching the controversy unfold has been fascinating, as details came out that show that matters may be far different from what Hamas has claimed.

For one thing, the hospital has not been bombed. It wasn’t even damaged. The bomb went off in a parking lot. The death toll of about 500 may have been exaggerated. What’s more, it’s looking likely that Israel is not responsible for the bombing, but it’s becoming increasingly evident that the bomb was an attempt on the part of Hamas to launch a rocket, which backfired.

In spite of all the evidence that’s adding up that goes against the Hamas narrative, their sympathizers have flown into a frenzy, storming embassies, and Hamas leadership has called for yet another “day of rage” to be observed around the world, with a clear implication of blind idiocy that’s on brand for that particular faction.

How Hamas handles truth is yet another illustration for why the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas is yet another manifestation of an ongoing clash of cultures and civilizations that are totally incompatible with one another.

As a disclaimer, I’ll point out now that the purpose of this post is to inform and increase understanding. Sometimes, achieving this requires pointing to matters that may be uncomfortable to consider. This can sometimes be necessary to get to the truth of a matter.

To get started, let’s consider how Christianity views lying. It’s impermissible. The Bible tells us that liars will have no place in the kingdom of Heaven. God Himself is incapable of lying, doing so would be against His nature. Lies are considered by Christians to be beneath the dignity of God. Christians are so firmly against lying that, if given the option to tell a lie that could save someone’s life, they’d still worry about whether it was the right thing to do.

The Islamic religion, which is the religion of Hamas, handles lying differently.

In the Islamic religion, there is a concept called taqiyya. The word itself literally means “prudence” or “fear”, but has come to refer to “feigning unbelief”, or more broadly, it’s considered to be “divine lying”.

Basically, in the Islamic religion, it is considered permissible to tell a lie if that lie were to further the cause of the Islamic religion, such as it’s expansion.

In practice, Muslims have used taqiyya to appear to be Christian, even going as far as undergoing the Christian practice of baptism, while concealing their sincere belief as a Muslim. Others have used the concept to deny that certain practices are Islamic if those practices are against the sensibilities of their host society.

There’s an enormous and fatal problem with the concept of taqiyya. That being, the concept of a god that considers it acceptable to lie should be horrifying to you. After all, if that god tells you that it’s permissible to lie, how do you know that that god isn’t lying to you?

Such a god may tell you that doing something would guarantee your entry into heaven, when the act might be so immoral that the person who does so might instead go straight to hell!

Like with the concept of the “suicide bomb”, where a Muslim attempts to ensure that they’ll die in battle, because they want those 72 virgins. They’d be little aware that the Islamic prophet Mohammad was so opposed to suicide that he wrote a passage ridiculing a Muslim man who committed suicide, but that’s beside the point. We all know that murder is immoral. Of course, even murder can be forgiven. But suppose that murder is a person’s final act, and they didn’t seek or want forgiveness. A suicide bomb would ensure that, for the killer, this would be the case.

Returning to my point, if a god tells you how to stay out of hell, but they say that lying is permitted, how do you know that you can trust anything that that god says? After all, they said that lying is okay, so they might be lying to you!

Knowing what Hamas believes about taqiyya, or lying, consider the choice that Hamas is faced with. On the one hand, they could admit that one of their rockets misfired, destroying a parking lot, and in so doing they inspire less confidence on the global stage. On the other hand, they could say that a nearby hospital was destroyed, killing hundreds, blame Israel, and call for Islamic militants the world over to lash out in furtherance of their cause.

It looks like they’ve already made their choice. And with the Islamic practice of taqiyya, most of what they say can be counted on to be self-serving.

Now, here’s where it gets really uncomfortable. Once you know about Islamic taqiyya, when you’re speaking with a Muslim about their religion, it’s possible that they may be lying to you. It’s possible that they believe what they’re telling you, but they themselves may have been lied to. In any case, it’s likely that you can’t take their word for it, as much of what Muslims say about their religion is curated to serve the religion’s interests.

As sobering as that may be in consideration of your interactions with Muslims, the implications are much worse for Muslims themselves. After all, in line with the point I made above, you can never trust a god who tells you that lying is permissible. What’s more, in their religion, they’re not so much concerned with what they say, but with the sincerity with which they say it.

For example, one can convert to Islam at the drop of a hat by reciting the shahada with sincerity, the shahada being a specific phrase that expresses monotheism and Mohammad’s prophethood. But the problem is, how does anyone but the speaker have an awareness of a person’s sincerity?

What’s more, in the Islamic religion, it’s considered an unpardonable sin to ascribe companions to the Islamic god, Allah, whom Muslims suppose is the same as the Christian God. If someone says that they are a Christian, they are saying that Jesus is the Son of God. How are Muslims sure that their god would forgive them for saying something that he said he would not pardon them for saying? Does the doctrine of taqiyya extend to some phrases and not others? And if sincerity is taken into consideration, how is another Muslim within earshot to know whether someone is being sincere?

These are questions that become all the more sobering when you consider that the religion that practices taqiyya wishes to bring about a worldwide theocratic empire. If the foundation of a society is a lie, the expectation is that society cannot thrive in the long term, which most of the Islamic world certainly hasn’t, where only a few people have prospered, while most people live in abject destitution. What’s more, the world would be a dark place if everyone practiced a religion whose priesthood simply cannot be trusted.

As much as one might like to think that the Israel/Hamas conflict is something that doesn’t affect them, and they can simply ignore, the fact is, it’s another manifestation of a clash of cultures and civilizations that are incompatible, and is already being fought in the U.S. and Europe, whether you realize it or not. Hamas is just one arm of a continuing struggle to bring about a change in society and a change in virtues, right down to every society’s very foundations. As flawed as western civilization may be, humanity is still yet to come up with anything better with its own thinking, and is certainly worth defending.

But if it’s just the truth of any matter that interests you, then your interests certainly don’t align with Hamas.

Chris Chan is back.

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It’s hard to imagine this ending well. But then again, there’s a lot about this that turned out different from what I had imagined.

Chris Chan is back online.

This is just what he shouldn’t be doing. Much of his troubles got started when he first appeared online, attracting the curiosity of people around the world, including those who would mess with him.

Okay, he had problems even before he became e-famous. But if all he did was stalk women at shopping centers before security told him to leave, and act like an asshole at Pokémon TCG Leagues, that would have been better for him.

But nope, he got a web presence. And after people criticized him, he attempted damage control, and in so doing, made things far worse for himself. After a while, it became hard to tell how much of his antics were a result of people messing with him, and how much of it would have been him, anyway.

When it comes to this kind of person, it’s better to look on rather than become involved in some way. People who try trolling or otherwise get close to Chris usually end up regretting it, as they get attention that they ended up not wanting.

As messed up as Chris Chan is, just about everyone was surprised when he was arrested, accused of committing incest with his own mother. That was about the point that your boomer daddy might have heard about him from an old-fashioned news outlet. After that, anyone who held out hope for Chris Chan changing for the better were collectively disappointed, and dropped him like a hot rock.

After that came a mostly obscure legal battle, which was largely kept from public view, and after two years, Chris’s lawyer somehow succeeded in getting the case dismissed. I don’t go breaking laws, but if I were to get in legal trouble, I’d want that lawyer on my side.

After all that, what do you imagine would be the smartest thing Chris could do? Easy: Keep a reduced online presence, and mind his own business.

And the thing was, things were starting to look great for him. He somehow actually managed to find a girlfriend. As hard as it is to imagine a woman so desperate that she’d be willing to mash pissers with Chris Chan, it seems it happened. Incels, what’s your excuse?

Chris Chan might actually have Crystal Chandler’s little pitter-pattering footsteps in his near future, and all he has to do is avoid fucking things up for himself. Again.

But rather than stay offline, he instead gets on his old YouTube channel, and posts this mess:

(DISCLAIMER: Chris Chan is horrendous at singing.)

I was hoping that his whole messiah complex was just malingering, a sad attempt at an insanity defense, to be dropped like a sack of sadness as soon as it was no longer of any use to him. To continue in a charade that would result in most Abrahamic religions calling for one’s death would seem kind of counterproductive. But no, not only does he keep going with that, he speaks in the same tone as his deranged prison letters.

One thing that one might notice about this video is that Chris discovered green screens. He also learned some of the basics of video editing, and used it to edit in clips of his ponderous form gyrating as he sings bastardized Pokémon music. The video eventually degrades into multiple copies of himself onscreen, dancing in nightmarish unison.

If you’re familiar with tabletop RPGs, you’ll probably know what I mean when I say that Chris is like a character that the player gave a bunch of drawbacks during the character creation process in an effort to get some bonus points, but then the player forgot to spend the bonus points before the campaign began, and the player decided to play the character, anyway.

And now the collection of natural threes is back online.

Now, if you haven’t been following along, you might be thinking like Otaku King, and getting the idea that you can help Chris, if you could properly coach him. First, you’d be far from the only person who has had that idea. Second, pay attention to what Chris does near the end of the video, when he points to the puncture wounds in his hands.

Didn’t see them? That’s because they weren’t there.

Now, imagine how delusional that a person has to be that, when they hold their hands in front of their own face, they see a couple of huge wounds that aren’t actually there. Would you really think you can help someone like that?

You might wonder what I think is going to happen with Chris Chan, next. I really don’t know. Him getting off scot free after committing incest, him somehow finding a girl who wouldn’t mind having a boyfriend who committed incest and overlook the fact that he’s Chris Chan, and now he’s apparently returned to the home his mother was living in, so much of it is stuff I wouldn’t have expected.

Who knows, maybe Crystal Chandler will actually happen.

“You told me you’d take responsibility.”

But I’d feel so bad for the kid. Especially if it was a boy, because then Chris might attempt to change his gender. And he might attempt to change it the same way he attempted to change his own.

Some direct sunshine would be nice about now.

UPDATE: If you’re wearing headphones and are up for some more nasal screeching in your left ear ASMR, Chris made another video addressing the claims that he had sex with his mother, and he brought up the girl he was seen with.

If you’re not up for hearing more of him, I don’t blame you. But in summary, he steadfastly denies being in a sexual relationship with anyone in the year 2021, when he was arrested, and specifically denied being intimate with Barbara Chandler.

This is in spite of the fact that, in the very same year, he claimed to be in a relationship with an older woman, and would later admit that it was his own mother in a recorded call with Janke, when he made a completely unprompted confession to someone he thought he could confide in.

His defense is that the recording was spliced by Janke herself, which would have required tools and expertise that would have been unavailable to most college students at the time. Granted, we do live in the age of deepfakes now, and she had a computer professional in her family. And it’s also hard to completely discount the possibility that Chris confessed to a crime he may not have committed.

Also related to Janke, Chris brought up that he is aware that her ambition was to try to convince Chris to end his own life. I find it easy to believe that he came to that realization in hindsight, thanks to the help of people who documented the interactions between the two, which he does have access to. He does have the internet, after all. There’s nothing stopping him from seeing what people are saying about him.

As for the girl Chris has been seen with, we now have a moniker for her: Flutter. Chris called her that because she likes the MLP character, Fluttershy. Chris didn’t go as far as saying that she’s his girlfriend, but considering how close he was with her in photos, it seems likely the case.

Right now, it’s pretty obvious that Chris believes that at least one aspect of his “dimensional merge” has come to pass, and he believes that he’s Thanos-snapped the worst of the people away, leaving the people who are better or at least possess a capacity for changing for the better. That’s one heck of a cope, but there’s some crazy stuff believed by some crazy people.

He still seems to believe that he’s Jesus, but like many people today with similar delusions, he gets some details wrong. He says that Jesus was crucified in Nazareth, apparently thinking Jesus was crucified in the place where Jesus was born. He also believes that Jesus was pierced in the palms of his hands, which is a popular misconception that we can expect from someone whose ideas about Jesus came from popular media. The fact is, the nails would have gone through Jesus’s wrists.

Another false prophet, like so many of his kind, getting things wrong while expecting everyone to take him seriously.

Chris Chan is back, and he’s in damage-control mode. I doubt that things are going to turn out well for him.

The AI Age Is Here. What’s Next?

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With the advent of AI, there exists great potential to use it to accomplish good, but there’s also a lot of potential to misuse it. One scenario that we’ve been warned about is that the artificial generation of photorealistic images would become so advanced that most people would not be able to suspect that something was up.

We were warned about it, and now here we are.

Just a generation ago, if you wanted to find an image, and it already existed, you could use a search engine to find it. And if you couldn’t find it, a skillful use of software such as Photoshop could be used to manufacture it.

As the saying goes, “Seeing was believing, until Adobe made Photoshop.”

The problem with Photoshop is that, even after hours of skilled use, the result may still not be convincing, as most people would know the signs to look for of a shopped image.

Within the last few years, the public has gained access to the generation of “deepfakes”, which use samples of people’s voices to create audio of public figures which sound real, some of which can be off the wall. All that would need to be done is to enter a sufficiently large sample of audio of that person’s voice, as well as what you want to hear the voice saying, and the computer would generate it.

Alternatively, in some cases, a person would enter a prompt, and allow an AI to fulfill the request, such as, “Have Jordan Peterson explain which Bionicle is his favorite, and explain why”.

Someone who listens closely might hear a subtle clue in things like the voice’s inflection which would indicate that something is off, but the problem is, many people might be convinced that what they hear is legit, and it doesn’t take much imagination to determine how something like that can be misused.

It hasn’t been for long that the public has had access to the use of AI to generate images, rather than search for them. And on the user’s end, it’s as easy as entering in a description of what you want to see. Such as this image I requested, of what Made In Abyss would look like if done by Disney in the infamous Calarts beanmouth style:

The algorithm sampled a bunch of images, and gave me a piccie of what is intended to be Riko, dressed up for adventure (note the madokajack above the surface). All I had to do was ask.

Afterwards, I requested an image that captured the tone of this very blog:

I liked it so much that I edited it and re-entered the credit, and used the result as this blog’s header.

For a while, the AIs have struggled with realistic depictions of things like hands and facial expressions. But as the months went on, the AIs have grown so sophisticated that they can now produce photorealistic images with the right prompts. It’s gotten to the point that, when facing legitimate photographic evidence, a person can simply claim that the image was AI generated, and that might work as a defense!

A recent example came in the wake of the Oct 7 Hamas terror attack, wherein Hamas brazenly attacked Jewish civilians in Israel, including a concert held for peace. Among the claims made about Hamas is that they deliberately attacked babies, killing as many as 40 of them.

If you know a few things about Hamas, you’d know that activities such as targeting civilians is well within their MO. In fact, they’re such a nasty group that if you knew everything else about them, and then were told that they kill babies, you’d probably take their word for it. “Oh, so Hamas kills babies? That’s horrendous, but if that’s all they did, they wouldn’t be as bad.”

And yet, some people did. “Hamas killed 40 babies as they rampaged about, killing civilians? Prove it!” That was a sentiment expressed by people who, for some reason, weren’t anywhere close to as skeptical when it came to any claim made by Hamas. So, an image was shared on X showing the charred remains of an infant on a stretcher.

Don’t worry, I’m not sharing the example here. But if you were to go looking for it, you might not have much trouble finding it.

What came next was a battle over whether the image was legit or AI generated. Some claimed to run the image through software that could determine whether images were AI generated, and last I checked, there was a community note on the post indicating that even AI generated image detectors could give false positives.

There is s popular expression which goes, “the first casualty of war is truth”. While truth can never really be a casualty, it remains that with war comes propaganda that is designed to sway public opinion, and now, even ordinary people can make an image that fools the world!

One thing that generates traffic in social media is video of fast food brawls. If someone wanted to, they might be able to make a convincing video deepfake of an early-morning brawl at a Waffle House, and it might not occur to thousands of viewers that the brawl didn’t happen. Or, if a person is an accelerationist, a faked instance of police brutality could be all it takes to get things to pop off.

So, what can we do about it? That’s about the point where we’re at, and as the AI becomes more sophisticated, bad people might become more effective at exploiting it.

For one thing, I expect that there will be a back-and-forth race between deepfakes and deepfake detectors. Currently, deepfake detectors are apparently not perfect. What I fear is that we may be reaching a point of “deepfake singularity”, where any reasonable measure to detect deepfakes could not distinguish real from fake.

Another thing we can do is learn to be skeptical of anything that we see on social media, even if it’s photographic or video. The dynamic of evidence for crimes may change, as it used to be that capturing an act on video was the gold standard for proving to the world that it happened. We’re nearly at the point that video would have to clear some specific hurdles to be considered proof.

Another point I can suggest is that AI programs be coded to defeat attempts to use them to produce inflammatory content, or include a digital watermark to indicate a deepfake, which would be hidden from the user.

I don’t know what the future of AI holds. But it stands to reason that any government that makes a significant advancement in AI will have a distinct advantage over those that don’t, in a similar way to the development of atomic weapons. It’s easy to imagine any government, including the most influential on a global scale, using AI to propagandize their own people, and maybe even people all over the world.

Of course, far more uses have been found for AI, or uses that we might have to look forward to in the near future.

With recent implementation of drone surveillance, the age of getting away with stuff has just about drawn to a close. But AI is already proving to be a boon to law enforcement, as they could use it to determine where crimes are more likely to happen and when, and they can have officers patrol accordingly. While that might not sound bad, imagine if AI were used to profile people based on their likelihood of committing a crime, and when and where!

Or a program could be used to determine a person’s psychological profile based on their social media usage, making it easy to hack their mind to manipulate them into doing things, or even psychologically destroy them with just a few words. Keep it nice in the comment section, by the way.

Oh, and no prize for guessing that AI is being used to create realistic pornography.

Also, I dread the day that game companies create a formula for games to goad players into spending a lot more money on micro-transactions.

Of course, it wouldn’t surprise me if companies stopped using Indian call centers to social engineer the market, and switched to using AI to help them lowball candidates with wages.

Considering what all AI can be used for, it would seem foolish to not implement it for ourselves. While we may still be a while away from holographic assistants like SARA from Toonami, we can at least use AI programs to help us with some day to day tasks. Like coming up with meal plans. Or coming up with an effective studying schedule. Or finding a more ideal workout routine. Or finding what you can do to increase your likelihood of getting into a lasting relationship.

Or, if you have a blog like this one, you could ask one to write up a new entry for you. Have I done this, yet? Can you tell?

Of course, not everyone is as enthusiastic about AI, as it may make certain professions obsolete. Artists are worried that AI may put them out of their jobs. Hollywood script writers are concerned that AI may replace them. Coders can take days to come up with something that could be generated with a prompt in a matter of minutes, perhaps even seconds. The age of teams of engineers sitting at their desks with AutoCAD open, occasionally rotating 3D models to make it look like they’re doing something, may be almost over.

Society might not be ready for the changes that AI would bring.

In the meantime, people are using fake stuff in an effort to manipulate you. If you’re aware that it’s happening, and you’re the right amounts of skeptical and knowledgeable, it’s not likely to have as much of an effect on you.

A Difference In Values

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A symbolic Hamas building is destroyed in retaliation for a brazen attack against Israel. As you can see, Hamas was dealt an “L”.

When our perspective is formed solely by our own culture, we tend to assume that certain values are universal. If you live in western civilization or the various cultures around the world that have been heavily influenced by it, you may have heard of the golden rule.

How it goes is pretty simple: treat others as you wish to be treated. There are other expressions that have a similar meaning, such as, what goes around, comes around.

It’s because of this that, even if a person has trouble remembering each of the Ten Commandments, which are considered the principal points of a Christian society, they’ll still function generally well. In fact, even in secular societies, some of the Ten Commandments might still seem to be upheld, because even the golden rule or a variant thereof seems to be respected.

After all, the Ten Commandments teach not to steal, kill, or bear false witness. Out of each of these, which would you be okay with happening to you?

One might think that these values are universal, upheld by people the world over. That seems reasonable to expect in an advanced and peaceful society that has heavily benefited from these virtues.

But that’s not the reality of the matter. The fact is, there are no universal ethics that are observed by all cultures all over the world.

In the western world, it’s taken for granted that you should not kill a person you disagree with, no matter how much you may disagree with them, as a virtue of freedom of expression.

However, freedom of expression is not a virtue of every society. There are societies today where it’s deemed okay to kill someone who is in “the outgroup”, and the way that you can tell that someone is in the outgroup is if they either say something that someone in the outgroup would say, or if you say something that would put you at odds with the ingroup.

Then there’s the topic of slavery. The British people did great in spearheading the abolishment of ownership of humans by other humans. They were so insistent that there be no slaves in Britain, that if any slaves set foot on British soil, they’d immediately become free. The Americans were not far behind with the Emancipation Proclamation.

As much as we like to think that slavery is a thing of the past, it remains in much of the world, including civilizations that are relatively modernized, such as China and India. In much of the Islamic world, slavery permeates their society. The reason being, according to their religion, it is impermissible to forbid what their prophet Mohammad allowed. And because Mohammad had slaves, slavery has been hard-wired into their religion and society.

While we might like to think that in terms of science, literature, and the arts, it’s the tendency of humanity to tend ever forward, there are cultures on this earth where all scientific and literary achievement has come to a grinding halt, because the prevailing ideology discourages the pursuit of anything outside of itself, and encourages its followers to fanaticism.

As much as certain skeptics may make light of the idea that the civilized world could become subverted by the same brand of ignorance and mysticism, efforts to bring it about have long been underway, and it’s something that they would do well to take seriously, because no society that has been ensnared by that same mystical ignorance has ever freed itself from it without external intervention.

Then there’s the topics of polygamy and pederasty. Most of the civilized world have criminalized these practices, and those who would attempt to engage in them are singled out for the worst treatment, even in the company of other criminals. Knowing this, it can be quite jarring to learn that there are still cultures, even an entire civilization, that refuses to outlaw these practices, simply because a person who they consider a prophet practiced them both.

As optimistic as people today may be about humanity’s first contact with extraterrestrials, it should be known that there is an X-factor involved. We have no guarantee that the first extraterrestrials we meet will even have the same values that we do.

Imagine for a moment that you live on an island community that has never made contact with other islands, or with the outside world. Imagine that you’ve been taught by your elders that a certain way to live is moral and right, and that’s how you’ve lived for your whole life. Then, one day, the people of your island makes contact with people on another island. Then, to the horror of your entire community, everyone on that island lives in a way that your community considers bafflingly immoral, and neither community speaks the same language.

It’s easy to see how, in this scenario, the people of your island might decide that it would be better to go to war with the other island in an effort to put an end to their immorality, and the other island might have already decided to do the same to yours. While most of the world today is hesitant to use force to resolve differences, there are people today who consider the use of force as always justified when confronting another culture with different values!

While the mask has slipped somewhat when touching on the topic of slavery above, it’s time to drop the hypotheticals and start being more specific. A couple days ago, during a holy day that the Jews observe, Hamas initiated a brazen attack on the land of Israel with thousands of rockets, some getting by Israel’s Iron Dome defense. This was concurrent with a ground invasion, in which Hamas militants attacked primarily civilian targets, killing some and taking others hostage. It is believed that foreign nationals are among the hostages.

While Saturday’s attack was brazen, it was an escalation of what has been ongoing for decades. For Hamas to fire rockets into Israeli cities, such as Sderot, has been an ongoing occurrence.

Not everyone understands the nature of the conflict between Israel and its neighbors. Contrary to a popular perception, most wars throughout history were not over religion, they were over resources. Superpowers have set up rule over vassal states to ensure their own prosperity. It’s been said that in order to achieve true peace, people need to come to a true understanding. While that helps, it also helps to understand that there is a ruling class that is complicit in fanning the flames of hatred.

Hamas is not motivated by resources. To them, resources are merely a means to an end. Rather, Hamas is motivated by ideology. They have a legendary hatred for Jewish people, and this is because this hatred is hardwired into their religion. In fact, just about everything about their ideology is hardwired into it.

I understand that religion is a sensitive topic, and quite nuanced. I also know that not everyone who professes a religion is the same as its extremists. Still, there are times when it’s more productive to deal in generalities, especially considering the fact that the state of peace in the world is increasingly at stake. What’s more, from what I’ve studied about Islam’s foundational materials and their history, there is ample cause for concern.

While I know that most Muslims want the same things out of life as most anyone else, it still remains that, out of them, the extremists are the primary difference-makers on the world stage, and they are becoming harder to ignore. And the fact is, it’s their ideology that’s making men into killers.

When you understand their ideology, you’ll understand why it’s often Jews who are targeted. In the Islamic theology, there’s a veritable tier list of people who are to be targeted. It goes as follows:

  • Muslims: At the top, whom Muslims are not to kill.
  • Christians: Merely tolerated, made to pay a backbreaking jizya tax, but might be killed anyway.
  • Jews: Tolerated even less, same tax, but are often killed outright.
  • Infidels: Not tolerated, usually killed right away. Consists of atheists and any religion not mentioned above.
  • Ex-Muslims: Any Muslim who declares that he’s leaving his religion. These guys can often count the seconds they have left on their fingers.

You might wonder how Jews came to be so disrespected by Muslims. This had to do with the Islamic prophet, Mohammad. At some point in his life, Muhammad was exiled by his own people, the Quraysh (they found his teaching a little intolerant). After that, Mohammad joined a settlement of Jews. At one point, he hired someone to read their Scriptures to him (Mohammad was illiterate). After learning about the Jewish Messiah, Mohammad claimed to be the Jewish Messiah.

They took it as well as you might have expected.

Only this time, instead of trying to have him executed as they might have attempted centuries earlier, they instead ridiculed him. For one thing, because the Messiah is supposed to be a descendant of David, not Ishmael. But also, because Mohammad didn’t know a word of the Scriptures until they were read to him.

Mohammad then told them that they’d know that he was the Messiah, if only they’d read their Scriptures. Mohammad then forbade Muslims from reading the Jewish Scriptures, saying that they doctored them. Putting aside, of course, that Mohammad wouldn’t have even had the idea to call himself the Messiah if the Jewish Scriptures weren’t read to him.

Mohammad handled the laughter the same way that most tyrants would. Once he had an army, he came back and seized the town, imprisoned the women and children, and any man who refused to accept his religion was executed.

Understandably, Jewish comedians today are more cautious.

Most political ideologies today are like EEPROMs: sophisticated, intricate, and with the capability to be updated.

But imagine a circuit board that is little more than a cluster of jumpers and transistors. Horribly inefficient, primitive by today’s standards, with a high potential for failure, and no potential for updates. That’s a great allegory for Sharia, the law of Islamic states.

The Islamic world is different from the rest of the world, because it’s a completely different society built on a completely different foundation. They don’t have the golden rule. They don’t have the same Ten Commandments, but instead a different code with a twist of fatalistic indifference. While they’ve got their own code of righteousness, they’ve elevated ritualism to the point that it becomes suffocating.

It’s a fact that the primary function of government for most of human history has been to mediate disputes between people. The Islamic religion is so dysfunctional in how disputes are to be handled, and how forgiveness is to be administered, that anywhere that Islam becomes the dominant ideology, brutal dictatorships tend to be what surfaces, because that’s the kind of thing it would take to maintain order.

When you understand that there’s a hardwired hatred for Jewish people in the Islamic religion, it’s easy to see their obsession with destroying Israel for what it is. But there’s more to it than that. There’s a difference in values, and it’s a difference that matters.

While western civilization does have its problems, including from those who would undermine it from within, the fact is, it’s a civilization that’s worth defending from those who would threaten it.

A man’s hatred is always concentrated on the thing that makes him conscious of his bad qualities.

Carl Jung