THREE REASONS I.C.E SHOULDN’T EXIST (The Aftermath of Renee Good's Killing)

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” ― George Orwell

She wasn’t supposed to be there. She had no right to be there. Being there was her first mistake.

Well, not exactly. The First Amendment of the United States Constitution protects the rights of its Citizens to convene, assemble, and protest in public. These are separate protections, repeatedly upheld by the Supreme Court.

So, if we’re being honest, Renee Good was free to be in public and free to protest.

Yet, here’s where the plot thickens. Because many who use this argument don’t seem to realize that the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee, Jonathan Ross, had a prior altercation with a vehicle six months earlier that left him hospitalized. At least, we get this medical insight directly from Vice President J.D. Vance.

The problem with this is that it proves via medical history that Jonathan Ross SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN THERE. Obviously, he was not psychologically healed enough to return to duty. This is evidenced by his excessive force and extreme use of vulgar language toward a woman he did not know. Legally speaking, this ruins any defense he might have in a court of law. If tried, the very fact that he was unfit due to prior incidents that may have traumatized him, any good lawyer worth this salt will use this to throw the full weight of the law onto him.

Mind you, at the state level, this also leaves him vulnerable to incarceration because such a ruling excludes presidential pardons. In effect, he could not be pardoned. The lawyers would likely talk about how he was mentally unfit to be there, how his trauma wasn’t resolved, and how it was reckless for him to be put back in the line of duty, where he was clearly not able to de-escalate a situation where other POLICE officers and legal authorities are saying the shooting could have been easily avoided.

But, I’ve heard it said, she was merely there to harass ICE, and so she F*CKED AROUND AND FOUND OUT.

Actually, no. ICE is not civil service. They are not required to pass any civil service test that would allow them to train as law enforcement, and as such, are dangerously ill-equipped to handle scenarios of engagement where there is civil unrest. Their job requirements as immigration officers do not include engaging with the citizenry, and, therefore, as Federal agents, they are ANTAGONISTIC to civil peace. They do not serve the public or the public’s best interests.

Taking this into consideration, we realize that if Renee Good was indeed harassing them (ICE), it would be a crime of a misdemeanor. 

That is the most she could be charged with before the incident. And if the ICE agent were properly trained, like LEOs are, they would not have escalated events. Public Law Enforcement is trained to de-escalate such scenarios. And even though the DOJ website says that ICE agents are trained to de-escalate things, technically speaking, this seems NOT to be the case when ICE’s engagement with the public is concerned, as evidenced by the numerous videos showing exactly the opposite.

We know that ICE is being used ANTAGONISTICALLY and poses a threat to civil society, because they are not even following their own rules or guidelines, and seem to break the law when it is convenient for them.

This is not how the police act. This is not how firefighters act. This is not how EMTs act. All these public agencies act on behalf of the public’s interest with the goal to keep us safe, to ensure laws and safety rules/regulations are being followed, and helping us when something goes wrong.

ICE agents are not beholden to civil service rules, although they must still obey Federal and State Laws. As such, ICE, not being beholden to civil safety, are agitators, since they effectively and deliberately disrupt the public’s civil safety. In fact, they challenge the very notion of civil society because of the antagonistic relationship they deliberately create between themselves and the public and the public’s safety.

If this wasn’t bad enough, I hear many people–and let’s be honest, by people I mean mainly right-wing conservatives–defending ICE’s existence to begin with. But their very existence is anti-democratic for three principal reasons.

First, the term “Illegal Alien” is a made-up concept, like ethnic race is a made-up concept. Legally speaking, there are only undocumented people. Getting documents is only a matter of knowing where to file the proper paperwork. But there are relatively few programs that help immigrants find the information they need to legally take these initial steps and legalize their status.

Yes, unfortunately, this means these things tend to frequently get overlooked. Yes, many immigrants overstay their visas and don't acquire the proper visas to remain in the country. This act isn't criminal in itself; it's a civil offense. It's sort of like how a parking ticket is a civil infraction, not a criminal one. If I accidentally park in a restricted spot and get a ticket, it doesn't make me an "illegal driver." It doesn't make me a criminal.

They ("illegal aliens") are expressly NOT criminals under the law. They are undocumented people who need compassion, understanding, and a little bit of help. And this brings me to my second point as to why ICE is wholly unnecessary. Undocumented people are a civil matter, not a criminal matter.

Remember, ICE was created to HUNT terrorists and capture, confine, and deport those who were deemed potential terrorist threats to the United States after the events of 9/11.

Remember the Homeland Security Act of 2002? Remember when Republicans and Democrats decried government overreach when the Patriot Act was passed? Why would the government need access to ALL OF OUR DATA? Do you remember Edward Snowden? Do you remember why the U.S. Government was so hellbent on ruining his life? Because he was the whistleblower who showed the American people that the U.S. Government and the NSA had a global surveillance program that was spying–not only on foreign interests, including America's allies–but on its own people as well. Something that, prior to the Patriot Act, was unconscionable.

But I’m getting off track. My point is, we already had immigration officers, we already had border patrol, we already had the U.S. Marshals Service, we already had the F.B.I.. But instead of using these agencies, this administration chose to quadruple its spending and give ICIE new paramilitary-style equipment and turn them into over glorified commando bounty hunters. Yeah, not exactly the wisest spending on the government's part.

Where was DOGE then? If you’re worried about your taxpayer dollars going to school meal programs so that school children from impoverished or low-income families can eat, but you’re not concerned about the $75 BILLION dollars spent on ICE for 2025, I don’t know what to tell you. I think DOGE could have made some better cuts other than Medicaid and school lunches. But that’s just me. $45 BILLION spent in 2024 simply to build more detention centers? Seriously?

(Side note: I’m often troubled by the notion that people aren’t more upset by the cost of these detention centers, which, by the way, are not for the secure capture of terrorists. Shouldn’t that give you pause? But, if these detention centers remain, U.S. taxpayers are the ones who are going to foot the bill for decades to come. I really don’t see how a taxpayer would be fine footing an endless bill that is basically supporting an ineffective policy vs. desiring to support policies that actually benefit their fellow mankind, such as helping sick people and helping to feed kids. I guess I’m too damn compassionate for my own good.)

Why, might we ask, weren’t the already established agencies utilized? Why were taxpayer dollars wasted to bring back and resurrect an anti-terrorist group of Federal agents instead of, say, using the F.B.I. or the U.S. Marshals? A couple of reasons. The current administration, under Trump, has been antagonistic toward these agencies. As such, Trump effectively reconstituted ICE so that he could use it for gathering up and deporting what he labeled as “Illegal Aliens.” (This terminology is highly problematic, which I’ll explain further below.) 

Secondly, Trump only hires yes men, and there are too many Constitutional loyalists in these legacy agencies who would not break the law on his behalf. Trump needed to revamp an agency and pump it full of loyalists and yes-men who would blindly follow his orders. Not let any of that civil law or patriotic constitutional business get in their way of carrying out his orders–whether they are Congressionally approved or not. Hint: they’re not. Hint: Yes, this makes it highly illegal. Yes, this means it's government overreach, regardless of if its being used on “illegals” or not.

Here’s the thing, though: Conservatives have statistically been shown to support the ideas of dictatorships and are fine with the idea of living under oppression. Numerous sociological studies have been conducted showing this exact phenomenon, and you can Google it if you don’t believe me. 

I’m not here to quote you a bunch of hard-won statistics, though; rather, I merely want to point out that the urge of Conservatives to stand up and defend the illicit activity of the President or of ICE agents is completely understandable. They’ve been conditioned to think totalitarianism is an acceptable tradeoff for security–for safety.

I personally don’t think it is. But I tend to lean Left.

And before you call me a bleeding heart liberal or libtard, I am not liberal. Some of my positions lean liberal, yes. But I also hold centrist and right-wing/conservative views. It really depends on the issues being discussed, and I try not to be overly limited in my ideological political thinking. What I mean by this is, I don’t think there’s just one political party or one effective political position to take that will always align with individual political policies. Sometimes, multiple positions from a variety of potential policies, across a wide-array of political beliefs,  is the key to finding a well-balanced political worldview. 

Which brings me to the third reason ICE shouldn’t exist in the first place. ICE is a byproduct of RACIST IDEOLOGY.

Imagine finding yourself in a foreign country where nobody speaks your language, and you’re just trying to get by. Let me ask you, without looking it up or using a translator, what is the form in Japan that you’d need to fill out to establish residency? 

Without knowing Japanese, how would you know what the form is called or where to find it? Do you pick it up at the Embassy, the Consulate, the City municipality, or the district municipality, or the post office? Who’s going to help you find the information needed to track this information down? How would you contact them? How would you gather this information?

If you can’t expect yourself to simply know the Japanese words for these technical documents, you cannot expect other people to know them for our country. That's just deductive reasoning. Expecting all immigrants to automatically know these things and simply know what to do isn’t actually fair. You're putting these people at a disadvantage and then punishing them for it because you cannot sympathize with their situation. You just see them as a burden, not as a neighbor. You see them as an illegal, not a human being. Might you, knowing this, be capable of seeing how this might be problematic?

“Illegal Alien” is a rage bait term to get you to think they are doing something illegal. Immigration is a civil matter, though, not a criminal matter. So, even if they are in breach of our laws, it’s not a criminal act. It’s a civil matter that can easily be corrected by being compassionate enough to put yourself in someone else's shoes and realize that helping them find the immigration office so they may fill out the proper paperwork isn’t the end of the world.

But, although “Illegal Alien” is a made-up term intended to demonize immigrants, just as race is a made-up concept to categorize human beings as categorically different so we can claim supremacy and inferiority when we are practically genetically identical at the level of our DNA, it doesn’t mean racism isn’t real.

Inegalitarian, baleful, xenophobic racists have frequently and consistently used the term “Illegal Alien” pejoratively to create a wedge in public policy and discourse to deliberately interfere with how we view and treat foreigners in this country. If you fell for that ruse, I’m sorry.

All right, I’ll boil it down to its simplest denominator. If you think we should treat foreigners badly, by rounding them up, capturing them, tearing them apart from family members, disrupting their home life, causing physical harm or mental anguish, and then sending them out of our country… If you think ICE is necessary even when it's outgrown its purpose... If you think any of this is in any way justifiable, I’m sorry to inform you that you ARE A RACIST.

That's not hyperbole. That's not sensationalism. That's not defamation. And it's certainly not rhetorical. It's a direct consequence of holding such beliefs. If you don't want to be considered a racist, don't hold fast to racist ideologies. It's as simple as that.

The president, his cabinet, and his personal hires are seemingly all racist. They constantly use polemical speech. They rely on hyperbole and spin to get their points across. They barter in lies on late-night television. They cry fake news when called out on them. They disrupt civil discourse by talking louder and by talking over you, they shift the goal posts when convenient, they deny facts and logic, and they predictably double down on blatantly false accusations including the spread false information, and they propagate divisiveness by constantly trying to rile up and divide the public into two ideological camps, even though America is much more intricate and nuanced than that.

I’m sad to see so many Americans be casually okay with this line of rhetoric. That, somehow, in their twisted narrative, "Illegal Aliens" are everything wrong in this country or that they're bringing this country down. That's nonsense. It's the equivalent of rhetorical bile. And it's racism at its most hateful.

The America I grew up in during the 80s seemed endlessly diverse. Racism existed, but people were about communities. Immigrants always made the strongest communities, and as long as they stayed to their little part of town, so to speak, the racists pretty much kept to themselves. The America I grew up in had Republicans and Democrats who welcomed immigrants. I watched the Ross Perot, George Bush, and Ronald Regan presidential debates on live television, where they applauded and welcomed immigrants into America.

I grew up in an America where there was still a whisper of the American Dream and where there were no Federal Agents shooting women in the streets because they looked at them the wrong way.

This current administration's style of discourse is anti-Democratic and untrustworthy. They constantly gaslight, gish gallop, rage bait, obfuscate, and duck and dodge every criticism or question that would reveal their position to be little more than a house built on sand.

At the end of the day, it saddens me when more people can’t see that they are being manipulated. If not the algorithms on the Internet, then certainly by the political grandstanding of the current administration. It saddens me when the people who support this administration's policies believe it's somehow just, good, or right to think like this. It's sad to me that the diverse America that welcomed immigrants that I grew up in has turned into a brood of tribalistic, bile-spewing, hate-mongers. I thought we were better than this.

I think people get too entrenched in this ME VS. THEM mentality. What we really need to be asking ourselves is, why am I being positioned in this way–and how am I letting them use me in a way that is beneficial to their agendas rather than my own?

Some will disagree with many of the points made here, and that’s fine. I think they’d be hard-pressed to find rational counterarguments or refutations to my argumentation, but they could certainly try. I am always willing to change my mind.

As I opened with one of my favorite lines from George Orwell, I’ll close by quoting one of his most haunting insights.

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” ― George Orwell, 1984

A Meme! I Memed!!! (Jesus Ain't Coming Back -- Sorry!)

 

What I love about this little secular "Bible Lesson" is that it shows that you don't have to be Christian to be well-versed in Christianity. 

It also shows that if the majority of the Christians who pretend Jesus is coming back had actually read their Bibles, they'd be gravely disappointed to find that the Bible itself (the very Word of God in their eyes) disproves their fantasy.

I've always held that actually, truly, honestly sitting down and reading the Bible is one of the fasted and greatest tools to get to secularism. Does that mean you'll automatically turn into an atheist or an agnostic if you sincerely and carefully read every line of the Good Book? No.

But it is a first step into becoming well-versed in Christianity. Something the majority of Christians are not. At least, in my experience.

I STILL GET MAIL!

Although I've left blogging to pursue a full-time career as an author and publisher, that doesn't mean my past work still doesn't draw attention and get noticed once in a while.

If people write me who seem genuine and not just trying to stir the pot and pick fights with atheists just to say they faced off with one, then I'm happy to answer.

Here is the conversation with one such person who left comments elsewhere on this site. I figured the questions were tame enough but still insightful enough to share here.

You asked: “First of all I understand you, your arguments are not uncommon. Out of curiosity, is your work stimulated by the desire to know the truth, existentially speaking?”

Yes, in part. It’s partially an innate desire to know the truth of things, but it’s also more about using reason pragmatically. I don’t think we can be given a gift as special as the ability to have consciousness and reason and then not use it. And when I strive toward a more logical, more consistent view of the universe, God shrinks away to nothing.

 Other people have differing opinions on the nuanced philosophical questions, but this is good. Anything that challenges the status quo gives us more things to reason through and can, in the long run, strengthen our reasoning skills.

 Secondly, you mentioned: “It seems that to question the validity of the notion of "God's" existence inevitably prerequisites the collapse of any belief of truth at all.”

 Why would the non-theistic or agnostic worldview presuppose nihilism? I don’t think that’s accurate.

 I don’t believe any metaphysical assumption is necessary regarding truth apart from perhaps our ability to decipher it. More specifically, if there is anything such as an objective, ultimate truth, I think we would more than likely come to it by logic and reason regardless of whether or not God exists.

 You went on to say that “If one doesn't believe that true or false exists, then what is existence altogether?”

Well, ultimate truths and the fact of existence are different questions. I don’t know what you’re trying to ask here. But they are unrelated, for the most part.

“I would like for you to get to yourself, slow down and honestly ask yourself, Do I really believe that I am a worthless, bastardized being and that when my body dies I will simply cease to exist?”

 Well, I’m not a bastard because I know who my father was. But, yes, when we die we join back into the cosmos just as the wave of the ocean – which has shape, form, and function – one day ceases to exist and joins the great vast ocean.

If that thought scares you, think of it like this. You will feel and sense everything as you would before you were ever conceived by your parents. That is – the nothingness of pre-existence and the nothingness of a post-existence are two sides of the same coin.

It is only that brief flash of existence that is the coin’s thinly lit edge where we experience all life and existence. And then, in a flash, it’s gone again. But we won’t know it beyond the memories we leave behind. I can only imagine it is as peaceful and calm after death as it is before life.

 “(Pardon me if I have assumed the idea that you do not believe in any afterlife).”

 No, you are correct. I don’t believe in any afterlife of the metaphysical or supernatural variety. So, that is an accurate assumption.

“I want to tell you my dear friend that you are not a worthless, bastardized being and that you have a Creator that loves you and cares enough for His creation as to not leave it wandering with no purpose or definition.”

 This is false. I’ve been presented with no evidence for the thing you speak of. How can something that doesn’t exist be capable of love? And, moreover, even if it should exist, how would you know personally that such a being loves me specifically?

I think you are falling into the trap of assuming more than you technically can given the state of the evidence and the fact that the question of such a being's existence remains entirely unanswered. The rest of your comments read as hollow preaching (no offense).

But apologetic talk is often a trained response and doesn’t show or demonstrate original thinking so much as it just parrots commonly shared views among the like-minded. It’s fine to have community and feel a part of something bigger than yourself, but please realize, not everybody wants that.

Sometimes, people just like to be lonely monks living on a mountain top meditating and living a peaceful life of nature and serenity. I hope I answered your questions adequately. Sorry, it took me so long to reply. I don’t discuss religion much anymore these days. I sort of got bored with it.

But I wish you well on your own journey for truth and the answers. I’m content that I’ve found most of the answers I’m looking for, although the pursuit of better reasoning and more logical thinking is always an ongoing endeavor. As is the pursuit of self-improvement, mindfulness, and finding inner peace. Sincerely, The Advocatus Atheist

On Dave Chappelle and "Gender Realism"

The Economist published a piece on Dave Chappelle's "gender realism." The article is behind a paywall, so, of course, I couldn't read it. But the term "gender realism" stoked my ire.

Look, if you think biological sex is purely binary -- man and woman, male and female, you're simply uninformed and, most likely, scientifically illiterate. That's on you. Not me. Not anybody else.

Look, I get it. You were raised not questioning how the world works and you never cared to learn. That's fine. But, when it comes to biological issues -- don't get up on a pedestal and pontificate ignorance. Nobody wants that. Go out--read the up-to-date research--then get back to me.

Gender is, for the most part, a social construct. There are tons of anthropology studies done on it as well as gender identity and gender representation in different cultures/countries across various time periods. Not hard to find. Lots of peer-reviewed papers are published all the time on this subject.

 
The biological sex of the species, specifically, has to do with basic genetic science, in which case we look to the number of stable chromosomal karyotypes in the genome.

 
Geneticists acknowledge that there are currently 6 cataloged biological sexes in the human species that are stable, but there could possibly be more. The number of permutations that a karyotype can have is quite vast, so not every possible combination has occurred in nature. There could be more than six -- one's we simply haven't discovered yet.

And it's not an A or B proposition. Sex isn't binary. That's not how the science works. That's not how genetics works.

It's more like molecules. You change a chemical component, add two oxygens to a hydrogen, and you have a new molecule altogether. Walla, presto...water is made!

Biological sex is like this. You're not adding more male or more female traits... you're essentially getting chromosomal variants of entirely new biological sexes.

 
It's just that people don't know their science -- and genetics is fairly a new branch of science so a lot of the older generation never learned any of it in school. Not even an overview of the advances in the field.

Neopronouns: What are they good for? Welcome to my TED talk...

 1. What are your pronouns? (If you don't mind sharing them)

He is fine for me, personally.

But personally, I don't believe in pronoun usage for gender identification as it creates a binary system where it pits the Personal Identity of the individual against imagined Other Identity of the external world by creating external boundaries that make it more difficult to traverse in one's own journey of growth and personal enlightenment.

Logically, you can't say I prefer to be called an apple and not orange, thereby place yourself in opposition to another term, and still be considered non-binary. You've basically locked yourself into a binary box by adhering to an 'either this or that' naming system (a language game that would roil even Wittgenstein -- I say somewhat facetiously).

The semantic game being: If you're not one thing -- you're something else. An 'either or' proposition which I think is setting up a false proposition -- in terms of the semantics being used (of course, the semiotics of alternate pronoun construction or neopronouns, e.g. xim, xey, xer, xiers, etc. is a bit complicated and would require a masters thesis in and of itself to understand fully from the linguistic standpoint).

I think people are more complex than this. Granted, that's not everyone's sentiment, which is why I understand the instinct to want to name and classify people as something rather than nother (or anything).

I feel, though, that in terms of identity, we're all Schrodinger's cat. We're this, that, and the other thing. We are nothing and everything all at once. So, we can be anything we wish (at least with respect to the semantic game of naming things).

We're never just one thing. And trying to affix one all-encompassing term to ourselves to help express our truer inner-natures actually has the opposite effect by limiting expression and confining it on a binary naming system of either-or terms.

If you adhere to such naming structures, you limit your options of expression (a semantic consequence of such a naming system), whether you're "non-binary" or "basic-binary". The problem being that one's Personal Identity and expression become dependent on the language of the Other in order to be processed and codified into society as a whole.

That is a side-effect of the semantic game of naming things, I'm afraid. It doesn't speak to any gender bias or phobia per se but that people may not have other ways of expressing the non-binary identities of people without, in turn, comparing and contrasting it to the binary lexicon as traditionally understood.

As such, a consequence of which is that people are defining themselves according to what they want to be called in opposition to what society wants to call them. This conflict also is a binary construct of an 'either-or" mentality. It's shaking your fist and saying "I'm not what society has defined me as -- I'm something else," all the while playing by the same outmoded rules of the semantic game.

And although I understand the urge to want to express oneself as the way they see themselves -- that's part of identity, after all -- but to do it in this way, by staking out a pronoun and affixing it to your identity, also seems to fall back into the trap of being able to define only themselves in terms of opposition to what they're trying to break away from or distinguish themselves from.

I don't think allowing others to define you or the language you use should be codified into your own identity. I don't think that's healthy. Especially if the goal is acceptance. I think acceptance can only be had by not generating expectations. If we don't expect you to be anything, in particular, you could potentially be anything. Schrodinger's cat analogy is apt for this reason (the cat is both dead and alive simultaneously but only takes its true form once you accept that form as it appears to you with no prior judgments -- because you simply don't know until it manifests itself -- I think Person Identity is likewise).

This then gets into the theory of language, semantics, linguistics, etc. and that's perhaps a discussion for another time.

I understand, though, that in terms of expression it is important for LGBTQ folks it's important for their coming out or transition periods -- to be able to restructure their identities and have something to define them by -- so I won't begrudge anyone preferring pronouns and will respectfully call people whatever they want to be called -- but, personally, I think it's at its core an antithetical practice that hurts people more than it helps.

The problem is, people haven't read their Wittgenstein and so will debate endlessly the need to properly "identify" and "classify" and "name" things. It's all just semantic games. The problem is when these semantic games are used in harmful ways or to tear people down. I understand the urge to want to expand pronoun usage to give people more options so that future laws written won't be so limiting because of their binary favoritism in the language they use -- thereby providing more avenues and spaces for trans and LGBTQ folk to exist in. I understand why people would want to promote pronoun usage for these reasons. Society, as a whole, seems to only take the time to understand something when it fits within their preferred lexicon. Learning a foreign language is too taxing.

I think both sides are wrong for this reason. We have to learn the foreign language if we're ever going to overcome the semantic problem at all.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

P.S.

I should note that these issues become doubly complex when you're talking about the written form of language vs. the spoken.

It seems that the grammar of our language relies heavily on the nominative nature of pronouns. That's something that would need to be addressed in terms of the language game since the naming of things is tied directly to our very construction of the definitions of things. Linguistic consequences ensue when you change the very nature of pronoun usage.

I was speaking more generally, however, in terms of how we use pronouns in everyday life and with respect to how we view, process, and construct our identities.

Again, this is just my opinion. It's not written in stone that I'll be right on this issue. But I think I'm righter than most because I understand how words work on a level most people never think about. Even reading all this will put some people off -- as they will say "I'm overthinking things" and they'll go back to living simple and happy, yet perhaps unthoughtful lives.

My thoughts are pretty busy so these issues bounce around my mind all the time until I properly have time to analyze and process them.

WAS JESUS CHRIST GAY? AND ON BLASPHEMY

I don't talk about religion much these days. Every once in a while, though, I'll get in the mood to look something up. After decades of religious research, I still hold a fascination for the subject matter. It just became too difficult to talk about with people of faith because -- at a certain point -- it's not about discovering new truths anymore but maintain old predispositions.

Even so, I recently had a bit of a curfuffle over on a friend's post because a Christian apologist seemed to take offense regarding a quote that cited God as a She -- yes, as female.

Although the quote was about a general theistic deity and not the Christian God, per se, he still went on a rant about using the proper pronouns when discussing God.

I found this oddly amusing. Why would someone get so bent out of shape regarding the possibility of God being a She -- or possibly Alanis Morissette?

As such, I mentioned Jesus may have used "She" when talking about himself as modern homosexual men sometimes refer to the more diva-like gays as "She" or "Girl."

I meant it as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the real scholarly research on the subject, but I sometimes forget not everyone is as well read on the arcane subject matter of Christian history as I am and the Christian became offended mistaking my comments as, I can only assume, blasphemous slanders against his faith.

Although, I'm not a Christian, so crimes of blasphemy have no meaning to me as you need to first ascribe to the belief of the sacred in order to believe that the sacred has been defamed -- is largely a made-up crime created by believers for believers.

It's also why I think that any country that has anti-blasphemy laws are barbaric and immoral.

Holding a secular person (or a person of differing faith) accountable for the made up crime of blasphemy -- intended to police the language and thought of believers -- burdens the secular mind with the preconceived notion that the believer's worldview is the only correct worldview and that their secular views are wrong and dangerous enough to penalize. In so many cases, a person lacking a belief is then jailed or punished, in some countries caned or killed, simply for not allowing tyrannical dictators to dictate what they say or believe.

Anti-blasphemy laws are utterly senseless made up laws with no rational validity. They are by and large laughable, illogical, and unnecessarily cruel. If you couldn't tell, I really...really hate anti-blasphemy laws -- but that's why I compiled and edited this collection regarding the topic:

https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Against-Blasphemy-Robert-Ingersoll-ebook/dp/B00BY6LCBK

I was recently called out as "trolling" a Christian apologist when I mentioned Jesus and the disciples may have been homosexuals.

It's not my theory, but there is a scholarly opinion that Jesus and the 12 disciples were, perhaps, gay.

Some might find it laughable, others might feel angered by such an assumption. But, it's not as wild of an assumption as you initially might think.

Granted, it's not a mainstream Christian view, as Christian scholarship has been a dead field for over a decade now and new theories to account for anomalies in the data don't often come up anymore except where secular scholarship is concerned.

R. Joseph Hoffmann, a religious scholar at Harvard Divinity, wrote a fascinating essay on the inference of homosexuality within Jesus' inner circle of male followers.

The inference is a simple deduction via omission.

It's not dissimilar from making the assumption that an island of Amazonian warrior women was a real historical place, and that this all-exclusive female island must have had sexual relationships, and by the nature of being exclusively female we can make the inference that these Amazonian women -- in all probability -- had lesbian relationships. Hence the name of the island Lesbos from which the term *lesbian is derived.

One of the interesting observations that struck me was that if you were a first-century rabbi -- you were likely to be married -- and one of the rabbi's jobs was to talk about how the husband must treat the wife as well as the wife's duties to the husband -- even with respect to their personal relationships.

You find such teachings in other rabbinical writings, but not so much with Jesus (or what little we have of him actually talking about the subject of personal relationships).

Jesus, for the more part, didn't talk about sex at all. One hypothesis proffered is that if you live in a time when talking about your sexual preferences could very likely get you killed, you just never spoke about them.

This would then open up the possibility that the disciples were indeed homosexual, or, at least, they may have practiced male companionship in the same way the women on the island of Lesbos may have practice female companionship.

It's an interesting theory to ponder.

And, if the thought of Jesus or any of his disciples being gay offends you, apologies. This isn't meant to inflame people's emotions but merely offer an interesting assumption based on a simple inference given the historical data we have.

We know, for example, that male companionship was a common practice in the 1st-century Roman empire, especially within the ranks of the Roman army. In fact, it was such a common practice that sodomy even gets mentioned in the bible -- and only in the context that sodomy is to be frowned upon (usually because it involved sodomy of a non-consensual child).

But the bible itself says nothing as to continuing to have mature same-sex relationships or whether or not these are taboo in the eyes of the Christian God. That is an assumption apologists like to make based on a single anti-sodomy passage.

Of course, Leviticus 18 was in reference to Israelites only and not gentiles, Canaanites, or Egyptians. So, it's unclear whether this is a universal law since, in context, it only refers to sodomy being wrong for Israelites specifically.

Other verses like Romans 1:26-27 have been interpreted to mean so many different things, including regular intercourse between a man and woman in a brothel, that it's usually just generally cited as Paul's opinion on the subject -- not actually a religious law.

If you look in a biblical concordance, the word *homosexuality used in passages like 1 Timothy 1:8-11 or 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 are translations from the Greek word *Arsenokotai, which means bed + man with a sexual connotation, meaning male-bed.

But because the context of *arsenokotai is unclear, since only Paul uses it, whether it means for men to sleep with men, or to enter a den of prostitution that caters to men, is entirely unclear.

This is the problem with biblical scholarship, we often times simply don't know. As such, the passage is often rendered as "sodomites" rather than homosexuals, because it's not clear as to whether it's referring to men+men or men+anybody (although some bibles disingenuously render it as *homosexuals -- even though that's unclear and the definition is entirely different than sodomite in any given context from the 1st century).

Of course, Hoffmann's paper examines key scripture that supports the idea of Jesus and his apostles of practicing male companionship to an extent, but as with most historical reconstruction where the evidence is limited -- assumptions are all that can be made.

Here's the weird part though, we have the same amount of evidence that Jesus was straight as we do that he was gay.

I mean, one can find the inference disagreeable, but you can't deny it as a real possibility because it is at least as well supported as any assumption of heterosexual norms. That just goes to show that the genuine historical evidence we can glean of Jesus's time on Earth is quite lacking.

As the scholar Richard Carrier once put it, all we actually have are stories about Jesus by Christians who came decades after him.

Stories about Christianity by Christians for Christians.

If you want a more accurate history, you have to go beyond mere Christian stories. You have to examine the passages in their historical context and make inferences based on what we know from other sources about a similar subject matter. That's the only way plausible recreations of history can be made. In the end, though, they're still mainly just assumptions--albeit assumptions backed up by better sources than mere stories.

Examinations like this fascinate me, however, because it shows really how much of religious faith, in this case: Christianity, is a collection of unproven assumptions.

Usually, the kind that requires a Kirkgardian leap of faith -- meaning that there is no direct evidence to prove it either way but you go with your preconceived feelings and accept them as the de facto truth regardless of what the evidence might suggest (or, often times, the lack thereof).

This highlights one of the reasons I left Christianity.

I just came to realize it was a system of cobbled together beliefs that couldn't demonstrate themselves in any meaningful way with respect to an unadulterated truth.

As with most historical reconstructions, the historical aspects of Christianity rely so heavily on assumption-making that if you were to get rid of every biblical-based assumption that wasn't directly supported by a plethora of historical evidence you'd practically be left with nothing. That is to say, almost nothing is supported in the way of evidence. All you have is an unbuttressed kind of faith that assumes its history fits with its preconceived theological ideas.

That's an empty sort of faith, if you ask me. I like degrees of certainty and the confidence to say one way or another, but that's just me. Then again, if one requires evidence to believe then it wouldn't be called Faith, now, would it?

But this is often the way religions operate. They don't go by critical analysis, evidential support, or logical inference -- they go by tradition, emotion, and unquestioning faith predicated on predispositions to accept unverified truths as metaphysical certainties.

And although certain theological presumptions regarding such metaphysical considerations may be logically sound, so too is the mathematics behind M-theory or Super String Theory. But having a logically sound premise is different than proving a theory a fact of reality, whether it's String Theory or religious faith.