TRUTH JIHAD: Kevin Barrett explains God to Gordon Duff, but keeps getting interrupted

This show from January 2016 features Robert David Steele as first hour guest; then in the second hour Gordon Duff joins me to argue – if that is the word – about religion.

I love God and Gordon Duff, definitely in that order. (Actually my wife should be somewhere on the list too, as she’ll undoubtedly remind me.)

Since it’s Ramadan, a good time to think theological thoughts, I thought I’d post this interview from a few months ago and use it as a springboard to complete some of the thoughts I was trying to express.

Gordon, like much of so-called Western civilization (which would indeed be a good idea, Mr. Gandhi) has a problem with God. Our “civilization” has this problem for several reasons. Here is the short version:

Judaism is basically the mythologized historical record of a really, REALLY obstinate, pugnacious, egotistical tribe who keep falling back into the worship of their own egos – mythologized as their tribal god “Yahweh” – rather than surrendering to God with a capital G, the All-Merciful, All-Compassionate Creator and Sustainer of All the Worlds. (Which is a traditional way of expressing something far beyond ordinary language, since God is Greater, Incomparable, meaning greater than and incomparable to any possible human conception.)

To the extent that Judaism and/or Judaistic heresies stemming from such people as Shabtai Zvi and Jacob Frank have influenced the West, which is a rather great extent, the result can only be an apotheosis of the human/tribal ego in its struggle against God. That anti-God ego, the nafs al-ammara bis-su’, follows the models of Pharoah, the prototypical human tyrant; and Satan, the arrogant rebel and arch-deceiver and arch-enemy of humanity. The real religion of the West today, handed down from Zvi and Frank through the Freemasons and their Rothschild sponsors, is satanism.

Christianity, for its part, is a mythologized historical record of the deeds and teachings of the prophet Jesus, peace upon him, and some of his early followers. Though it incorporates serious mistakes introduced by fallible human transmitters – such as the Trinity, the Son-of-God metaphor, Original Sin, and the bloody emphasis on the crucifixion rather than the teachings of the man who was crucified – it is a genuinely universal monotheism that is definitely barking up the right tree.

As God says:

The West has turned against God during the past few centuries largely due to the influence of heretical Jews of the Sabbatean and Frankist schools, who used Freemasonry to destroy Christianity as the Western civilizational fulcrum. Childish arrogance, exaltation of the ego, gross materialism, and hostility rather than surrender to God are now part of the cultural air we breathe.

So it isn’t surprising that Gordon Duff, like so many people these days, has a problem with God. He doesn’t even realize that he is waging jihad fi sabil illah, “struggle on the path of God.”

While denying God, Gordon is fully aware of the existence of Satan. He recently wrote “of talks I had with Fr. Malachi Martin some years before.  Martin, now deceased but a former high ranking Vatican official and exorcist, had his own crises of faith but was drawn back to belief by what he said was overwhelming evidence of manifestations of evil that he saw while performing exorcisms.”

Gordon knows that Satan and his demonic helpers are very real:

Anyway, my other friend, who must remain unnamed, began his story by telling me of a strange invitation he received.  My friend, and again I apologize for not naming him, was invited to the Island of Corfu for an “infestiture” ceremony.  Yes, I say “infestiture” and not “investiture.”

As the story went, the Rothschild family had somehow established contact with a “non-corporeal” race of beings that had been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years.  These “beings,” and I was reminded that calling them “demons” was “wrong thinking” on my part, entered a human host and advised him, protected him and eventually, upon physical death, saw to it that the surviving spirit or soul or whatever lived the kind of afterlife chosen, no matter how sick or disgusting such a thing might be, me of course assuming bad things about the Rothschild family, people I know nothing about.

The payback for the entity was through how the host lived his or her life.  My friend told me that these entities fed on “negative vibrations” brought about by grief, pain and human suffering.  Thus, the host was simply tasked with using their power, brought about by belonging to a family partnered with these entities for generations, to influence the human condition for “maximum feeding.”

This would mean that, let’s say with the Rothschild Family, it was their job to bring about world wars, famine, hold back human progress, promote disease and ignorance, things like that.

Gordon, bless him, has chosen to oppose and expose these parasitical demonic entities and their human hosts. That definitely puts him on the right side of the cosmic jihad.

But still he rejects and denies God. Why?

As far as I can tell, there are three main reasons.

The first reason, of which he is relatively unaware, is that Gordon, like everyone else, is a product of his culture. Godlessness is in the air we breathe these days. Like the fish who doesn’t notice water, Gordon doesn’t notice the Godless culture around him that has programmed him. (That culture was historically produced, as I mentioned, by the same demonic entities we were speaking of, who dethroned Christianity through the offices of their Sabbataen, Frankist, and freemasonic hosts.)

Secondly, Gordon says he doesn’t see any evidence for God, though he certainly sees plenty of evidence of satanic evil.

And third, what kind of all-knowing, all-powerful God would let such evil exist?! That, of course, is the age-old problem of evil – and I can hardly blame Gordon, or anyone else including Vincent Bugliosi, for having issues with it.

We have already dealt briefly with Reason #1.

As for Reason #2: Seeing evidence for God seems to be a matter of temperament, not entirely reducible to empiricism or theological proof. Plenty of people who are not “religious” see evidence for God all over the place. An example is one of my favorite contemporary American writers, Jim Harrison, who sadly passed away a few months ago. Though he doesn’t use the word “God” much, Harrison’s observations are steeped in wonder at the endless succession of miracles that parade every moment before our jaded and blinded eyes.

Those minor miracles are ayat, signs of God. As signs and miracles, they point to something beyond themselves, an infinitely greater Mind that could conceive of such a thing, and “say Be and it Is.”

Only a truly jaded and blinded mind, like Michael Parenti’s (listen to me debate with him) could claim something along the lines of: This world isn’t that great! I could create a much better one if given the opportunity!

Oh really, Mr. Parenti? Could you really shut your eyes this minute and summon up, out of nothingness (not just memory  – that’s cheating, because you’re using the world God already gave you as a template) EVERYTHING – including even something as relatively puny, in comparison with the all, as the fully-detailed textures of the sights, sounds and smells of a single moment of your life?

You arrogance is hilarious! God must be rolling on the floor laughing (and crying at the same time) at the presumptuousness of His creatures.

For people without rust on their hearts, who are not summun bukmun umyun (deaf, dumb and blind) the evidence for God is everywhere.

Those who use the full measure of their intellect (aql) easily grasp this evidence; while those whose hearts have rusted, and whose eyes and ears have grown jaded, are reduced to arguing about God using only a pale shadow of the intellect in the original sense of the term. This results in “merely intellectual” arguments.

And speaking of mere intellectuals: One strong argument for God that is emerging out of the certified-God-free scientific community is the Anthropic Cosmological Principle. For the long version, read the amazing book by Barrow and Tippler (which is not overtly pro-religion by any means). The short version: Many non-religious hard-nosed scientists have been forced to admit that there are really only two ways to explain the astounding fine-tuning of a very long list of universal constants and other parameters of creation, seemingly tweaked just perfectly for you and me to exist.

One explanation is that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is correct. That would mean that there are zillions of different universes, almost all of them without life or consciousness. We just happen to be in the one-in-a-zillion where all the parameters just happened to come out right for life and consciousness to emerge.

The other explanation: God created our universe(s) and tweaked the parameters.

Occam’s razor favors the second explanation. So does the fact, attested to by quantum physics, that “reality” is an epiphenomenon of consciousness…meaning that all those zillions of universes without consciousness posited by the quantum multi-worldists could not possibly exist in the first place.

The Qur’an anticipated the anthropic argument by almost 1500 years. In it we are told that God “made the moon a (reflected) light and the sun a burning lamp” (71:16) and “made the night for you to rest in, and the day in which to see” (40:61).  God “created the heavens and the earth and sent down rain from the sky and produced thereby some fruits as provision for you, and subjected for you ships to sail through the sea by His command, and subjected for you the rivers” (14:32). And yet man is arrogant and ungrateful. “It is He Who gave you life, will cause you to die, and will again give you life: Truly man is ungrateful.” (22:66). (Remember that part about Him giving you life again; we will return to it shortly.)

The Qur’an tells us that, as suggested by the Anthropic Cosmological Principle, the universe was created for us, by a mind infinitely greater than ours. It adds that the correct human response is ecstatic awe, humility, gratitude, generosity and submission to the divine plan and its ineffable author.

Many, perhaps most non-Western cultures seem to do that better than we do. Native Americans, for instance, seem to accept their place in the scheme of things, surrounded by sacred signs of God-given nature. We arrogant Westerners must be the most wrongheaded people who have ever lived: instead of awe-filled and ecstatic, we are jaded and affectless; instead of humble, we are arrogant and egocentric; instead of grateful, we are whiny and entitled; instead of  being generous, we pinch our pennies and possessions as if we could take them with us; and instead of submitting to God and the divine plan, we ludicrously strut around as if we were in control of our lives and destinies…while our psychopathic leaders, even worse than us, plot their dreams of world conquest, which can only end not in the triumphant one-world tyranny they dream of, but a planetary catastrophe, a malhamma.

“Travel around the world and see the ruins of former civilizations destroyed by their own arrogance,” the Qur’an repeatedly tells us. Ours is obviously next in line.

But why does all this evil exist, whines Michael Parenti. What a terrible universe! I could have done so much better if only they had let me be God!

The Qur’an answers that one, too.

God allowed Satan to tempt and afflict human beings as a test. We have been given free will, and we are supposed to use it by struggling to be good people, filled with awe and gratitude for the life we have been given, humble, generous, and in submission to God and His will. But it wouldn’t be free will if everyone had to choose wisely. Evil is there to tempt and try us; it is the obverse of good, the second half of the binary opposition without which “good” would be meaningless.

But what about those “evils” that are just really unpleasant experiences, like sickness, suffering and death? Why did God have to make those?

So again, these are tests. When we die and return to God, the eternal reality we inhabit depends on the choices we made in this life. The Qur’an describes Paradise as “gardens of perpetual bliss” looking down on flowing rivers, complete with fruits of every description, beautiful companions, and loved ones from worldly life:  “Gardens of perpetual bliss: They shall enter there, as well as the righteous among their fathers, their spouses, and their offspring. Angels shall enter to them from every gate (with the salutation): ‘Peace be with you because you persevered in patience! Now how excellent is the final home!'” (13:23-24)

Those who do not pass the test find themselves in a place of burning torments. Dante stole most of those described in the Inferno, like most of his images of Purgatory and Paradise, from Muslim sources – legendary embellishments of the Qur’anic descriptions. For details, read Miguel Asin’s Islam and the Divine Comedy.

Are we to take these descriptions of the afterlife literally? Here I would argue that the Qur’an tells humanity what it needs to know, in such a way as to be understandable by virtually anyone. So these descriptions, at the literal level, may be addressing the lowest common denominator of reader, providing a sort of heuristic device pointing us in the direction of goodness, beauty and truth by providing an easily-graspable warning-and-promise. The actuality of paradise/hell cannot be very well described in language of ordinary experience, so the Qur’an offers images that capture the gist of the blissfulness of the one and the horror of the other.

But surely these are just legends spun by storytellers to keep people in line, object the irreligious.

Sorry, but that’s just not the case. The afterlife is very real, as you will find out soon enough.

There is plenty of empirical evidence that consciousness continues after death. For an introduction, check out David Ray Griffin’s Parapsychology, Philosophy and Spirituality.

This fact – that as the Qur’an says, the afterlife is more lasting and important than the life in this world – casts a revealing light on the problems of evil, suffering and death. For example: Might people who suffer in this life, especially the righteous, be repaid with a better afterlife? You can take the Qur’an’s word for it. Or you can use your reason, and think about the respective situations of two people at the moment of death:

Person 1 has led a hedonistic, egotistical life and had a lot of physical comfort and enjoyment. But the last years of his life were therefore pretty terrible, because all of that good stuff – the ability to enjoy physical comfort, pleasure, and the self-aggrandizing ego – inevitably slipped away. Now there’s just suffering, pain, and impending oblivion. The kind of consciousness that is immortalized into eternity when this guy shuffles off the proverbial mortal coil is, shall we say, most unpleasant. His spirit inhabits hell. Or, as the Buddhists would say, he spends a long time being a hungry ghost, tormented by phantasms of the egotistical desires that ruled his life.

Person 2 followed the Qur’an’s advice (or her own inner wisdom) and surrendered most of her ego while still alive. She was a good person – but bad things happened to her. People mistreated her, she experienced physical suffering and social humiliation, while still always trying to do the right thing for its own sake (or as we say in Islam, for God’s sake, fi sabilillah). As death approaches, it appears as not just blessed relief, but sheer ecstasy. She could live with herself while alive, and now can die with herself in peace. The kind of consciousness immortalized at her moment of passing bears some resemblance to the Qur’anic description of Paradise.

(To the righteous soul will be said:) “O soul at perfect peace, return to thy Lord, well-pleased with Him and pleasing Him, so enter among My servants, and enter into my Garden.” (89:27-30)

So we are living in a perfectly just universe created by a perfectly just God, though it isn’t always apparent in the short run.

In a more recent interview on Truth Jihad Radio, Gordon Duff said that if he were to run into Jesus, Muhammad or the Buddha (presumably in the next world) he would see and treat them as comrades in the struggle for good, not godlike idols to worship.

Right on, Gordon! Now you’re starting to get it. You’re still struggling to get over that arrogance issue…but the same God who made you much smarter, in certain respects, than almost everyone around you, might very well forgive you for the natural arrogance that grew out of that. To the extent that you’re waging a genuine struggle for the good, giving Shaitan and his minions the hell they deserve, you may be a lot closer to the right path than you – or hidebound orthodox religious thinkers for that matter – are likely to understand.

In Candide, Voltaire sees the universe as so unjust that anyone who thinks otherwise is not just foolish, but hilarious. William Blake responded:

Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau;
Mock on, mock on; ’tis all in vain!
You throw the sand against the wind,
And the wind blows it back again.
And every sand becomes a gem
Reflected in the beams divine;
Blown back they blind the mocking eye,
But still in Israel’s* paths they shine.

The Atoms of Democritus
And Newton’s Particles of Light
Are sands upon the Red Sea shore,
Where Israel’s* tents do shine so bright.

 

 

*The people of God, not the satanic Franko-Sabbatean Zionist entity.