I really enjoyed this article. I see UK Column have now published Elmer's first 'replacement' essay after initially turning him down from what I have inferred from his previous tweets. Would you consider approaching them to publish your series of essays? I think people need a worthy riposte in this increasingly polarising discourse.
I agree with much - perhaps most - of what you say, but in the spirit of public and peaceable debate which you advocate, I’ll pick up on what I disagree with. I can’t believe you seriously think that a religion which explicitly commands violent death to those who don’t adhere to its precepts, can be considered equal with one which calls for a complete cessation of violence, forgiveness and mercy, and a deferral of judgement to the divine power who embodied the same? The fact that so many of the professed adherents of both, blatantly disregard the teaching and example of their founders, only serves to highlight the stark difference between good and evil, darkness and light - maybe you too are being gaslighted in the way you think Henderson is?
If I may offer my understanding, based on my personal experience, as someone who had what is known as a near death experience (which i think should more accurately be called a 'death experience' - the body was clinically dead for 4 minutes in earth time, and the spirit - our true nature - left the body and returned to our essential Godly nature, where we came from before taking on this earthly body), in my experience GOD HAS NO RELIGION!!
Or to say it differently, God's only "religion" is what our essential nature actually is - Love, Unity/non-division, Understanding, Caring, Compassion, Acceptance, Non-Condemnation, Lack of Judgement, and shared Unity among all of God's children
SECTARIAN DIVISIVE (NON-UNIVERSAL) RELIGION IS THE COMPLETE AND UTTER NEGATION OF GOD.
If a religion is not universal (unity-based) but sectarian/tribalist (as unfortunately most of misguided conservative religions today are) then this type of divisive sectarian religion is a profound misunderstanding (or ignorance) of what God actually is, and this type of blasphemous religion (humanity-dividing, tribalist and ignorant of the wholistic and unified nature of God and of life) is the total negation of the very nature of God and is destructive for humanity's ability to remember who we are what God is.
Such a sectarian/tribalist divisive religion is also profoundly destructive to our ability to bring our essence as Love into manifestation on this earth, becasue sectarian conservative (anti-unity) religion is the number one cause for the division of humanity and therefore the number one cause for creating antagonism, conflict, war and INSECURITY for human beings on earth, and the number one cause for moving us away from God, from Love, from our Unity, and from the essence of life..
In my experience, sectarian, tribalistic, divisive anti-wholistic anti-unity judgemental love-less war-mongering cruel conservative religion is therefore one of the most (if not THE MOST) destructive and God-denying forces on this earth.
If you'll notice, the time when human beings act in the most cruel, murderous, hateful, unGodly ways is when we are under the influence of arrogant sectarian conservative RELIGIOUS CONVICTION, and its inevitable tribal/national divisions, victimhood stories, hatreds, conflicts and organized nationalistic murder known as war (all done in the name of conservative religion's so-called "god", no less.. TOTAL MADNESS and forgetting of what we are and what God is)
I also know this from my own own personal experience as someone who was born and grew up in israel, where the more "religious" a person claims to be, the more sectarian, tribalistically hateful, violent, cruel, murder-cheering and God-ignorant they seem to be
If there's an interest, I wrote more at depth about my life experience in israel and my perspective on the conflict in palestine-israel, on the root cause that prevents its resolution and that perpetuates it, here https://open.substack.com/pub/headandheart1/p/my-perspective-on-the-conflict-in this is intimately related to the issue of tribalism and God-ignorant sectarian religions.
Lastly, i don't know if Mr. Shoniwa replies to comments here (this isn't his personal substack account) so i will take the liberty of repeating an useful analogy that i saw he used in one of the post on his personal substack. Kindly consider this analogy - "There is a shop called 'The West' and there is a shop called 'The Other'. Both shops stock items that most people want and like. These desirable items are on the first floor. Both shops also have a basement that stocks cheap and nasty stuff that no-one in their right minds wants, but there will always be suckers and fools. You know The West shop very well, so you always visit the first floor and get nice things that please you. You’ve heard that the shop also has a basement but have never went down there and you’ve turned a blind eye to it because you really like what's on the first floor of The West shop.
You’ve never been into 'The Other' shop but all the people you hang out with in your club always scare you with stories about only the stuff that comes out of its basement. So much so that you can’t even entertain the possibility that The Other shop might have a first floor with some interesting, beautiful and useful stuff there.
In your world, The West shop consists of only first floor, and The Other shop consists of only the basement..
It is not part of 'The Other' shop that ‘infidels’ must be eradicated. It is the basement part of 'The Other shop' that you see and is pedalled by a few nasty bad salespeople who are giving the whole shop a bad name. Similarly- eugenics, transhumanism, mass-slaughter, brutal imperialism exploitation, plunder & torture, severe wealth inequality and abuse of the poor, enslavement, billionaire domination and bullying, false flag terrorism (to name but a few) are not part of the first floor of The West shop. They are in the basement. They exist. They are Western ideas and practices. They were and are practiced in the West (including massively by those who call themselves 'christians'). But you have not been taught to label them part of The West shop (or of Christianity).
Despicable acts of idiot religious fundamentalists and criminals are NOT unique to 'The Other' shop and they are not bought by the vast majority of customers who go to shop at The Other shop. They don’t like it any more than you do.
The West shop produces similar and often much worse and much mkre despicable and anti-human crimes than the ones coming from the basement of 'The Other' shop (which are the crimes that are highlighted and emphadized to you in your sectarian club/bubble)
To summarise, I want to see ALL criminals prosecuted for despicable crimes, and I utterly reject an attempt to paint one culture as all goodness and light and another as all darkness and evil. This attempt is not intellectually honest and does not correspond to reality. It comes from being hermatically enclosed within a SECTARIAN BUBBLE (echo-chamber) where the view of reality is distorted by tribalist filters".
How the wealth class introduces these sectarian filters (to ensure the religious-nationalist division of the 99%, to ensure that the non-elite are thus pitted against each other, and to ensure and our disconnection from God) and how tne oligarchy benefits from these, is a vast subject in its own right with no space to go into it here, but it is summerized really well in this profoundly important research paper (which IMHO is a must read for every han on the planet) https://www.pdrboston.org/oppressors-need-bogeyman-enemies
Thank you. Can't fault your perspective. If you've written about your death experience, I will read that with great interest. I will look at your substack post and comment there.
Thank you. Just to clarify that the post I linked isn't directly about my near death experience, but the perspective/understanding from which it is written is a result of the near death experience.
Not yet. Several people suggested that I write a book about it, and it might happen at some point, though writing isn't really my forté and the main challenge is how to convey in conceptual words that which is far far beyond human language and concepts and basic human assumptions (for example, about linear time and space and individuality/personhood and subject-object relations). So for now I limit myself to talking about more mundane human affairs.. 🙂 and occasionally the mundane seems to be "infused" (for lack of a better term) with that deeper (vaster) nature of our real (not earth-bound) nature. Though i can't really control when will these "infusions" happen.. they seem to happen when coming across blatant misrepresentations and violations of our INHERENT nature (love, unity/non-division, compassion, curiousity, caring..)
I'm not convinced that either Jesus or Mohammed ever existed, and I don't follow any of the Middle Eastern religions - we're pig people, not goat people - but we can look at the reported characters, sayings and action of Mo and J and see that, while Mo was a child-raping, slave-owning, mass-murderer J wasn't. That alone tells us that Muslims are moral retards. Islam requires the Satanic blood-sacrifice of circumcision; Christianity doesn't. In many Muslim countries women, especially young ones, can't leave the house without a male relative as escort. Definitely not the case in my village, where on the 5 or 6 days a year when it's warm and sunny the young women can wear short-sleeved tops, shorts or short skirts and sandals and let their bodies make vitamin D without having to worry about being at best sexually harassed or, at worst, gang-raped by primitive non-pales.
I'm not divided from Muslims by my government, which clearly loves them, but by their ethnic and cultural identities
I really enjoyed this article. I see UK Column have now published Elmer's first 'replacement' essay after initially turning him down from what I have inferred from his previous tweets. Would you consider approaching them to publish your series of essays? I think people need a worthy riposte in this increasingly polarising discourse.
I agree with much - perhaps most - of what you say, but in the spirit of public and peaceable debate which you advocate, I’ll pick up on what I disagree with. I can’t believe you seriously think that a religion which explicitly commands violent death to those who don’t adhere to its precepts, can be considered equal with one which calls for a complete cessation of violence, forgiveness and mercy, and a deferral of judgement to the divine power who embodied the same? The fact that so many of the professed adherents of both, blatantly disregard the teaching and example of their founders, only serves to highlight the stark difference between good and evil, darkness and light - maybe you too are being gaslighted in the way you think Henderson is?
If I may offer my understanding, based on my personal experience, as someone who had what is known as a near death experience (which i think should more accurately be called a 'death experience' - the body was clinically dead for 4 minutes in earth time, and the spirit - our true nature - left the body and returned to our essential Godly nature, where we came from before taking on this earthly body), in my experience GOD HAS NO RELIGION!!
Or to say it differently, God's only "religion" is what our essential nature actually is - Love, Unity/non-division, Understanding, Caring, Compassion, Acceptance, Non-Condemnation, Lack of Judgement, and shared Unity among all of God's children
SECTARIAN DIVISIVE (NON-UNIVERSAL) RELIGION IS THE COMPLETE AND UTTER NEGATION OF GOD.
If a religion is not universal (unity-based) but sectarian/tribalist (as unfortunately most of misguided conservative religions today are) then this type of divisive sectarian religion is a profound misunderstanding (or ignorance) of what God actually is, and this type of blasphemous religion (humanity-dividing, tribalist and ignorant of the wholistic and unified nature of God and of life) is the total negation of the very nature of God and is destructive for humanity's ability to remember who we are what God is.
Such a sectarian/tribalist divisive religion is also profoundly destructive to our ability to bring our essence as Love into manifestation on this earth, becasue sectarian conservative (anti-unity) religion is the number one cause for the division of humanity and therefore the number one cause for creating antagonism, conflict, war and INSECURITY for human beings on earth, and the number one cause for moving us away from God, from Love, from our Unity, and from the essence of life..
In my experience, sectarian, tribalistic, divisive anti-wholistic anti-unity judgemental love-less war-mongering cruel conservative religion is therefore one of the most (if not THE MOST) destructive and God-denying forces on this earth.
If you'll notice, the time when human beings act in the most cruel, murderous, hateful, unGodly ways is when we are under the influence of arrogant sectarian conservative RELIGIOUS CONVICTION, and its inevitable tribal/national divisions, victimhood stories, hatreds, conflicts and organized nationalistic murder known as war (all done in the name of conservative religion's so-called "god", no less.. TOTAL MADNESS and forgetting of what we are and what God is)
I also know this from my own own personal experience as someone who was born and grew up in israel, where the more "religious" a person claims to be, the more sectarian, tribalistically hateful, violent, cruel, murder-cheering and God-ignorant they seem to be
If there's an interest, I wrote more at depth about my life experience in israel and my perspective on the conflict in palestine-israel, on the root cause that prevents its resolution and that perpetuates it, here https://open.substack.com/pub/headandheart1/p/my-perspective-on-the-conflict-in this is intimately related to the issue of tribalism and God-ignorant sectarian religions.
Lastly, i don't know if Mr. Shoniwa replies to comments here (this isn't his personal substack account) so i will take the liberty of repeating an useful analogy that i saw he used in one of the post on his personal substack. Kindly consider this analogy - "There is a shop called 'The West' and there is a shop called 'The Other'. Both shops stock items that most people want and like. These desirable items are on the first floor. Both shops also have a basement that stocks cheap and nasty stuff that no-one in their right minds wants, but there will always be suckers and fools. You know The West shop very well, so you always visit the first floor and get nice things that please you. You’ve heard that the shop also has a basement but have never went down there and you’ve turned a blind eye to it because you really like what's on the first floor of The West shop.
You’ve never been into 'The Other' shop but all the people you hang out with in your club always scare you with stories about only the stuff that comes out of its basement. So much so that you can’t even entertain the possibility that The Other shop might have a first floor with some interesting, beautiful and useful stuff there.
In your world, The West shop consists of only first floor, and The Other shop consists of only the basement..
It is not part of 'The Other' shop that ‘infidels’ must be eradicated. It is the basement part of 'The Other shop' that you see and is pedalled by a few nasty bad salespeople who are giving the whole shop a bad name. Similarly- eugenics, transhumanism, mass-slaughter, brutal imperialism exploitation, plunder & torture, severe wealth inequality and abuse of the poor, enslavement, billionaire domination and bullying, false flag terrorism (to name but a few) are not part of the first floor of The West shop. They are in the basement. They exist. They are Western ideas and practices. They were and are practiced in the West (including massively by those who call themselves 'christians'). But you have not been taught to label them part of The West shop (or of Christianity).
Despicable acts of idiot religious fundamentalists and criminals are NOT unique to 'The Other' shop and they are not bought by the vast majority of customers who go to shop at The Other shop. They don’t like it any more than you do.
The West shop produces similar and often much worse and much mkre despicable and anti-human crimes than the ones coming from the basement of 'The Other' shop (which are the crimes that are highlighted and emphadized to you in your sectarian club/bubble)
To summarise, I want to see ALL criminals prosecuted for despicable crimes, and I utterly reject an attempt to paint one culture as all goodness and light and another as all darkness and evil. This attempt is not intellectually honest and does not correspond to reality. It comes from being hermatically enclosed within a SECTARIAN BUBBLE (echo-chamber) where the view of reality is distorted by tribalist filters".
How the wealth class introduces these sectarian filters (to ensure the religious-nationalist division of the 99%, to ensure that the non-elite are thus pitted against each other, and to ensure and our disconnection from God) and how tne oligarchy benefits from these, is a vast subject in its own right with no space to go into it here, but it is summerized really well in this profoundly important research paper (which IMHO is a must read for every han on the planet) https://www.pdrboston.org/oppressors-need-bogeyman-enemies
Thank you. Can't fault your perspective. If you've written about your death experience, I will read that with great interest. I will look at your substack post and comment there.
Thank you. Just to clarify that the post I linked isn't directly about my near death experience, but the perspective/understanding from which it is written is a result of the near death experience.
Understood. Have you written anything about the near death experience itself?
Not yet. Several people suggested that I write a book about it, and it might happen at some point, though writing isn't really my forté and the main challenge is how to convey in conceptual words that which is far far beyond human language and concepts and basic human assumptions (for example, about linear time and space and individuality/personhood and subject-object relations). So for now I limit myself to talking about more mundane human affairs.. 🙂 and occasionally the mundane seems to be "infused" (for lack of a better term) with that deeper (vaster) nature of our real (not earth-bound) nature. Though i can't really control when will these "infusions" happen.. they seem to happen when coming across blatant misrepresentations and violations of our INHERENT nature (love, unity/non-division, compassion, curiousity, caring..)
Laughable stuff, on so many levels.
To get started:
I'm not convinced that either Jesus or Mohammed ever existed, and I don't follow any of the Middle Eastern religions - we're pig people, not goat people - but we can look at the reported characters, sayings and action of Mo and J and see that, while Mo was a child-raping, slave-owning, mass-murderer J wasn't. That alone tells us that Muslims are moral retards. Islam requires the Satanic blood-sacrifice of circumcision; Christianity doesn't. In many Muslim countries women, especially young ones, can't leave the house without a male relative as escort. Definitely not the case in my village, where on the 5 or 6 days a year when it's warm and sunny the young women can wear short-sleeved tops, shorts or short skirts and sandals and let their bodies make vitamin D without having to worry about being at best sexually harassed or, at worst, gang-raped by primitive non-pales.
I'm not divided from Muslims by my government, which clearly loves them, but by their ethnic and cultural identities