2005-07-07
Sign of the Beast
For those of you who have been waiting 2000 years for a sign from God - good news, it's happened, although with modern-day incredulity, you probably won't believe it unless the left-wing media says it is true.
But first, let me tell you my story. I was in my mother's womb when Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967. I was raised as a Christian, and forced to go to Sunday School. I went to live in Fiji when I was about 12, and was no longer forced to go to Sunday School. In addition, I was exposed to lots of Hindus. Having already found out about the tooth fairy, easter bunny and Santa Claus (in that order), I finally added God to the list, and decided I wasn't going to follow someone else's rules, I was going to clear my head and make up my own rules. This was my liberation. Also I had noticed that there were a lot of very nasty Christians, who still insisted that they were Christians, despite the fact that if things were working properly, there should have been some sort of constraints on their bad behaviour lest they end up being sent to Hell for their wickedness. But apparently they are under the impression that simply calling yourself a Christian means you are a shoe-in for Heaven while everyone else goes to Hell. Ok. This nutty religion clearly isn't working as it's meant to.
Instead of spreading Christianity, I tried spreading atheism, challenging Christians to debate all the time. But another thing I was interested in was democracy and freedom of speech. I could see Eastern Europe enslaved by the communists and wished there was a way we could get in and free them. I didn't care if they voted for communism - I just wanted them to be free to do so, and free to debate the merits. I suspected that given a free choice they would join NATO instead of the Warsaw Pact. But Eastern Europe was impenetrable because of the nuclear weapons. I really hated the anti-nuke people in the west, trying to get our side to disarm. Instead of calling our side warmongers, why weren't they speaking out about the state-slavery of Eastern Europe? I was also concerned about my own status as second-class citizen, because I was under 18. I watched my watch when I turned 18, and jumped for joy knowing that I was now free and had full human rights, legally protected. I wanted everyone to have this same freedom.
And I was glued to my TV screen when communism was collapsing. The only demonstrations I have ever been to were protesting outside the Chinese embassy after the Tianamen Square massacre. Someone there gave me a headband which at the time I didn't know what it meant, but later I found out meant "people IN CHARGE" - the Chinese way of saying "democracy". A phrase of such unique beauty that only the Chinese could come up with! But while that bid for freedom failed, in Europe it was successful. And I would finally have a chance to find out what the people REALLY wanted. And it was a mixed bag. The Eastern Europeans were eager to join the West. But the Russians were sadly not so happy about losing their ability to bully others. But just as with the Christians earlier, there remained a question - what makes people want to bully others? I was an atheist, no fear of God, and I didn't want to bully others. What was different between me and others?
But while the Russians were enigmatic, there was one group of people who stood head and shoulders above everyone. The Arab Muslims. What would make people so obsessed about the rights of Palestinians, who weren't being treated very badly at all by the Israelis, instead of being concerned about their own human rights, as they lived under regimes of such brutality that they made Soviet gulags look like a tropical paradise? And also, why was the West so obsessed with the lack of voting rights for black South Africans, when they didn't care about the voting rights of Arabs, or the Soviets before them? Enigmas.
And then finally we had a chance to solve these riddles. Someone had managed to find a pretext to liberate Iraq. Wonderful. Glorious. Best thing to happen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And then shock and horror. Many of my Australian workmates were opposed to it! This did not happen during Desert Storm where there was something like 90% support for liberating Kuwait. I had always assumed that Australians operated with a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" approach to liberating people. Basically, who cares what the pretext is - whenever the Anglophones go charging in, the world becomes a better place. But now I was faced with a whopping 50% of Australians who were violating the "unstated Anglophone ideology". Something was seriously wrong - but what? Another enigma.
It was vitally necessary to get to the bottom of these enigmas to find out why people didn't have empathy for the Iraqi people living in a holocaust. The same reason they didn't have empathy for fellow human beings is probably the same reason that some Australians are rapists. The answers were all in Iraq. We needed to be able to analyze Iraqis in an environment of freedom, to find out how many would welcome their freedom, and how many goose-stepped to Saddam's dictates. I breathed a sigh of relief when the Iraqis started looting in Basrah, and other Iraqis were calling to the coalition forces "Ali Baba". They weren't 100% anti-western psychopaths as the left-wing insisted. They were instead capitalists more interested in material wealth than killing infidels, with others looking for help against the criminals from the coalition forces. That was victory. The people weren't complete psychopaths, so we would be able to work with them.
Then we started getting poll results. And opinion was split straight down the middle. Half were happy to be liberated, half felt humiliated. Another enigma. How could anyone not be overjoyed to be freed from a holocaust? The answers were all there in Iraq. But could I solve the puzzle? Some of the information came from the media. There were long queues of people trying to join the new security forces. But also others risking their lives to try to kill coalition forces, for no obvious gain to themselves. Why would two people from the same country be on such opposite poles? The polls showed that only 5% wanted Saddam. But where did Al Sadr and his followers get their anti-American venom from? Weren't they grateful to have been freed?
Then finally the first pro-liberation blog, Healing Iraq, came online, and we were able to directly question a real live Iraqi to try to find out the difference. And it turns out that Zeyad had a furious exchange with his own uncle, the uncle being anti-American, Zeyad being pro-American. Families being split down the middle. What's happening? There was also Alaa, from the Mesopotomian, a pro-American Muslim. It's not religion. It's ideology. Somehow, I have a shared ideology with Zeyad, Alaa, Ali, Omar, Mohammed and Sarmad. What is that shared ideology, that transcends religion? I was still an atheist, after all (as was Zeyad). I spent 2 years probing via the blogs, trying to get reactions from various people, calling for genocide to try to isolate my ideological enemy. Probing and thinking. MANY hours and days spent trying to figure out who *I* was, so that I could then find out why others weren't like me - what was the crucial thing different between our educations? The stark difference between Zeyad and his uncle. What is it?
Anyway, I finally figured out the answer. The culmination of 37 years of searching for answers. I found out what caused 50% of Australians to NATURALLY, of our own FREE WILL, to join with the liberation forces of the US and UK, in a multitude of wars. The answer is that we, together with Zeyad et al, are in a tribe of anti-subjugators, that transcends religion and national borders. Also in a tribe of humanists. We were brought up to care about all people, regardless of race, nationality etc. And when did I finally figure this out? Exactly 3 years to the day after Sept 11. It was actually Sept 11 in both Australia and the US when I finally figured it out. Spooky? Nope. What was spooky was that the message with the final conclusion, the definition of who I am, was message 666. As I wrote it, proud that it was an atheist who had figured out this common ideology, I was stunned. Could this really be happening? I was the beast - the atheist.
You can see this message for yourself, and you can verify it is number 666 if you want. The message was on Alaa's blog. The topic was "War of the Zombies". It was discussing the Beslan tragedy. The post was made on my birthday, 3rd September. Alaa was dumbfounded as the rest of us as to who these people were. They call themselves Muslims, but Alaa knows he has no desire to rape children, and has no idea why others do. But I realised we were missing something fundamental. These rapists at Beslan weren't taught to rape. It was coming naturally to them. It is man's genes. It is our religion/ideology that overrides our genes, and what is missing from their education is to treat all people as equal, regardless of religion. So they have no concept of empathy for strangers. It's not part of the 5 pillars of mainstream Islam. It's not directly part of Christianity either, Christians only get taught that in an indirect manner. If it's not properly taught, then that is why people aren't "getting it". It is this ideology that needs to be exported to the Middle East in order to win the War on Terror.
Anyway, here is the "War of the Zombies" post by Alaa. And if you open the comments, then scroll down to a timestamp of "09.11.04 - 4:54 am", you can see this message, number 666. And if you look at the following message, you can see where I said "Holy cow. That last message was number 666 and it's 11th September 3 years on". I'll reproduce message 666 here. This is who I am:
I am AGAINST racism.
I am AGAINST sexism.
I am AGAINST religious discrimination.
I am AGAINST dogma.
I am AGAINST subjugation.
I RESPECT INDIVIDUALS who VOLUNTARILY donate to COMPLETE STRANGERS (ie different race, different sex, different religion) using their OWN HARD-EARNED MONEY.
I will FIGHT using my BRAIN subjugation of ANY HUMAN.
Shortly after this I decided to become a Sufi Muslim, only changing to Mu'tazilah when I confirmed via Ali that he was Mu'tazilah, not Sufi (they are different). And shortly after that (another story), I no longer "believed" (I had simply decided to choose the theory that God had created the initial universe and didn't interfere with it since then) there was a God - I KNEW there was an entity in another dimension, and everything was explainable via the models I posited in the "Grand Unifying Theory" in my Mu'tazilah document. The last model in particular doesn't even require reference to the supernatural! Oh, and what is the enemy's ideology? They are basically racist Arabs and Muslim religious bigots, who assume (and the left-wing media supports that assumption) that white Christians are as bigotted as they are. While the white Christians assume that the Arabs and Muslims are as humanist as they are. Hence the misunderstanding.
So, was the 666 supernatural? Was it the promised sign from God? I'll let you draw your own conclusions. What I find more interesting is why I was the only one hell-bent on trying to solve this riddle? So many Christians think that atheists are some sort of unconstrained psychopaths (hint - do a search on "secular humanism" and learn better). So many Christians think that atheists=communists (hint - communism is another religion itself, complete with its own holy infallible bible of Truth). What were all the Christians doing? Why weren't humanists everywhere following a similar path to spread freedom that I was? Why is it only me who thought to write to the Australian PM asking for a declaration of war on Iran? And only me who thought to write a thankyou letter to the French President? And after the riddle was solved, why didn't all the Christians quickly convert to Islam to try to protect and love their fellow human beings - as Jesus most certainly would have done? That's a riddle I'll leave to my dear readers to solve.
UPDATE: Two things I should have added to message 666 for clarification:
I am AGAINST nationalism and national bigotry.
I am AGAINST non-humanist behaviour.
UPDATE 2: Please take the time to read the main religion website Mu'tazilah.
UPDATE 3: Haloscan was removed from service, and the comments have all disappeared from the blog. However, you can see a copy of the comments here.
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But first, let me tell you my story. I was in my mother's womb when Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967. I was raised as a Christian, and forced to go to Sunday School. I went to live in Fiji when I was about 12, and was no longer forced to go to Sunday School. In addition, I was exposed to lots of Hindus. Having already found out about the tooth fairy, easter bunny and Santa Claus (in that order), I finally added God to the list, and decided I wasn't going to follow someone else's rules, I was going to clear my head and make up my own rules. This was my liberation. Also I had noticed that there were a lot of very nasty Christians, who still insisted that they were Christians, despite the fact that if things were working properly, there should have been some sort of constraints on their bad behaviour lest they end up being sent to Hell for their wickedness. But apparently they are under the impression that simply calling yourself a Christian means you are a shoe-in for Heaven while everyone else goes to Hell. Ok. This nutty religion clearly isn't working as it's meant to.
Instead of spreading Christianity, I tried spreading atheism, challenging Christians to debate all the time. But another thing I was interested in was democracy and freedom of speech. I could see Eastern Europe enslaved by the communists and wished there was a way we could get in and free them. I didn't care if they voted for communism - I just wanted them to be free to do so, and free to debate the merits. I suspected that given a free choice they would join NATO instead of the Warsaw Pact. But Eastern Europe was impenetrable because of the nuclear weapons. I really hated the anti-nuke people in the west, trying to get our side to disarm. Instead of calling our side warmongers, why weren't they speaking out about the state-slavery of Eastern Europe? I was also concerned about my own status as second-class citizen, because I was under 18. I watched my watch when I turned 18, and jumped for joy knowing that I was now free and had full human rights, legally protected. I wanted everyone to have this same freedom.
And I was glued to my TV screen when communism was collapsing. The only demonstrations I have ever been to were protesting outside the Chinese embassy after the Tianamen Square massacre. Someone there gave me a headband which at the time I didn't know what it meant, but later I found out meant "people IN CHARGE" - the Chinese way of saying "democracy". A phrase of such unique beauty that only the Chinese could come up with! But while that bid for freedom failed, in Europe it was successful. And I would finally have a chance to find out what the people REALLY wanted. And it was a mixed bag. The Eastern Europeans were eager to join the West. But the Russians were sadly not so happy about losing their ability to bully others. But just as with the Christians earlier, there remained a question - what makes people want to bully others? I was an atheist, no fear of God, and I didn't want to bully others. What was different between me and others?
But while the Russians were enigmatic, there was one group of people who stood head and shoulders above everyone. The Arab Muslims. What would make people so obsessed about the rights of Palestinians, who weren't being treated very badly at all by the Israelis, instead of being concerned about their own human rights, as they lived under regimes of such brutality that they made Soviet gulags look like a tropical paradise? And also, why was the West so obsessed with the lack of voting rights for black South Africans, when they didn't care about the voting rights of Arabs, or the Soviets before them? Enigmas.
And then finally we had a chance to solve these riddles. Someone had managed to find a pretext to liberate Iraq. Wonderful. Glorious. Best thing to happen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. And then shock and horror. Many of my Australian workmates were opposed to it! This did not happen during Desert Storm where there was something like 90% support for liberating Kuwait. I had always assumed that Australians operated with a "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" approach to liberating people. Basically, who cares what the pretext is - whenever the Anglophones go charging in, the world becomes a better place. But now I was faced with a whopping 50% of Australians who were violating the "unstated Anglophone ideology". Something was seriously wrong - but what? Another enigma.
It was vitally necessary to get to the bottom of these enigmas to find out why people didn't have empathy for the Iraqi people living in a holocaust. The same reason they didn't have empathy for fellow human beings is probably the same reason that some Australians are rapists. The answers were all in Iraq. We needed to be able to analyze Iraqis in an environment of freedom, to find out how many would welcome their freedom, and how many goose-stepped to Saddam's dictates. I breathed a sigh of relief when the Iraqis started looting in Basrah, and other Iraqis were calling to the coalition forces "Ali Baba". They weren't 100% anti-western psychopaths as the left-wing insisted. They were instead capitalists more interested in material wealth than killing infidels, with others looking for help against the criminals from the coalition forces. That was victory. The people weren't complete psychopaths, so we would be able to work with them.
Then we started getting poll results. And opinion was split straight down the middle. Half were happy to be liberated, half felt humiliated. Another enigma. How could anyone not be overjoyed to be freed from a holocaust? The answers were all there in Iraq. But could I solve the puzzle? Some of the information came from the media. There were long queues of people trying to join the new security forces. But also others risking their lives to try to kill coalition forces, for no obvious gain to themselves. Why would two people from the same country be on such opposite poles? The polls showed that only 5% wanted Saddam. But where did Al Sadr and his followers get their anti-American venom from? Weren't they grateful to have been freed?
Then finally the first pro-liberation blog, Healing Iraq, came online, and we were able to directly question a real live Iraqi to try to find out the difference. And it turns out that Zeyad had a furious exchange with his own uncle, the uncle being anti-American, Zeyad being pro-American. Families being split down the middle. What's happening? There was also Alaa, from the Mesopotomian, a pro-American Muslim. It's not religion. It's ideology. Somehow, I have a shared ideology with Zeyad, Alaa, Ali, Omar, Mohammed and Sarmad. What is that shared ideology, that transcends religion? I was still an atheist, after all (as was Zeyad). I spent 2 years probing via the blogs, trying to get reactions from various people, calling for genocide to try to isolate my ideological enemy. Probing and thinking. MANY hours and days spent trying to figure out who *I* was, so that I could then find out why others weren't like me - what was the crucial thing different between our educations? The stark difference between Zeyad and his uncle. What is it?
Anyway, I finally figured out the answer. The culmination of 37 years of searching for answers. I found out what caused 50% of Australians to NATURALLY, of our own FREE WILL, to join with the liberation forces of the US and UK, in a multitude of wars. The answer is that we, together with Zeyad et al, are in a tribe of anti-subjugators, that transcends religion and national borders. Also in a tribe of humanists. We were brought up to care about all people, regardless of race, nationality etc. And when did I finally figure this out? Exactly 3 years to the day after Sept 11. It was actually Sept 11 in both Australia and the US when I finally figured it out. Spooky? Nope. What was spooky was that the message with the final conclusion, the definition of who I am, was message 666. As I wrote it, proud that it was an atheist who had figured out this common ideology, I was stunned. Could this really be happening? I was the beast - the atheist.
You can see this message for yourself, and you can verify it is number 666 if you want. The message was on Alaa's blog. The topic was "War of the Zombies". It was discussing the Beslan tragedy. The post was made on my birthday, 3rd September. Alaa was dumbfounded as the rest of us as to who these people were. They call themselves Muslims, but Alaa knows he has no desire to rape children, and has no idea why others do. But I realised we were missing something fundamental. These rapists at Beslan weren't taught to rape. It was coming naturally to them. It is man's genes. It is our religion/ideology that overrides our genes, and what is missing from their education is to treat all people as equal, regardless of religion. So they have no concept of empathy for strangers. It's not part of the 5 pillars of mainstream Islam. It's not directly part of Christianity either, Christians only get taught that in an indirect manner. If it's not properly taught, then that is why people aren't "getting it". It is this ideology that needs to be exported to the Middle East in order to win the War on Terror.
Anyway, here is the "War of the Zombies" post by Alaa. And if you open the comments, then scroll down to a timestamp of "09.11.04 - 4:54 am", you can see this message, number 666. And if you look at the following message, you can see where I said "Holy cow. That last message was number 666 and it's 11th September 3 years on". I'll reproduce message 666 here. This is who I am:
I am AGAINST racism.
I am AGAINST sexism.
I am AGAINST religious discrimination.
I am AGAINST dogma.
I am AGAINST subjugation.
I RESPECT INDIVIDUALS who VOLUNTARILY donate to COMPLETE STRANGERS (ie different race, different sex, different religion) using their OWN HARD-EARNED MONEY.
I will FIGHT using my BRAIN subjugation of ANY HUMAN.
Shortly after this I decided to become a Sufi Muslim, only changing to Mu'tazilah when I confirmed via Ali that he was Mu'tazilah, not Sufi (they are different). And shortly after that (another story), I no longer "believed" (I had simply decided to choose the theory that God had created the initial universe and didn't interfere with it since then) there was a God - I KNEW there was an entity in another dimension, and everything was explainable via the models I posited in the "Grand Unifying Theory" in my Mu'tazilah document. The last model in particular doesn't even require reference to the supernatural! Oh, and what is the enemy's ideology? They are basically racist Arabs and Muslim religious bigots, who assume (and the left-wing media supports that assumption) that white Christians are as bigotted as they are. While the white Christians assume that the Arabs and Muslims are as humanist as they are. Hence the misunderstanding.
So, was the 666 supernatural? Was it the promised sign from God? I'll let you draw your own conclusions. What I find more interesting is why I was the only one hell-bent on trying to solve this riddle? So many Christians think that atheists are some sort of unconstrained psychopaths (hint - do a search on "secular humanism" and learn better). So many Christians think that atheists=communists (hint - communism is another religion itself, complete with its own holy infallible bible of Truth). What were all the Christians doing? Why weren't humanists everywhere following a similar path to spread freedom that I was? Why is it only me who thought to write to the Australian PM asking for a declaration of war on Iran? And only me who thought to write a thankyou letter to the French President? And after the riddle was solved, why didn't all the Christians quickly convert to Islam to try to protect and love their fellow human beings - as Jesus most certainly would have done? That's a riddle I'll leave to my dear readers to solve.
UPDATE: Two things I should have added to message 666 for clarification:
I am AGAINST nationalism and national bigotry.
I am AGAINST non-humanist behaviour.
UPDATE 2: Please take the time to read the main religion website Mu'tazilah.
UPDATE 3: Haloscan was removed from service, and the comments have all disappeared from the blog. However, you can see a copy of the comments here.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 19:36 
