Widespread brother-sister incest in Roman Egypt and Zoroastrianism

The incest taboo is strong among humans, but in two cases, it has been overcome, or so it seems. The first case is in Roman Egypt, where for over 250 years, there was a tradition of full brother-sister marriages. The second case is in Zoroastrianism, where brother-sister (and other close-relative) marriages are considered a sacred duty called Xwedodah.

Roman Egypt needs no introduction, though Zoroastrianism might need some, so here's my summary:

1. There are two cosmic principles: good and evil, light and dark. They are equally powerful.
2. Ahura Mazda is the one true God that is all good. There are smaller gods, some working for Mazda and some against him.
3. Originally, the world was all good, as Mazda intended. But then evil appeared and since then has been a battle of good and evil.
4. Ahuras are good gods, and Daevas are evil gods.
5. Humans should choose to side with the good and reject the evil.
6. The Avesta are the sacred texts of Zoroastrianism.
7. Eventually evil will be eliminated and the world will be as good as Ahura Mazda intended. Evil creatures will either be destroyed or be purified (depending on who you ask).

Dark side of Buddhism

Overview of Buddhism

Let's analyze Buddhism, in the style of Stephen Prothero in his God is not One (2011)! According to Prothero, every religion has a problem, a solution, a list of techniques for solution, and a list of role models.

1. Problem: life is full of suffering (dukkha). There are four great life events, and every one creates great suffering: birth, old age, sickness, and death. Further, the suffering doesn't stop at just one life, because souls are reincarnated endlessly.
2. Solution: achieve nirvana, which is freedom from life, time, and the cycle of rebirth, by becoming absolutely nonexistent. The word "nirvana" literally means "blown out", and a person achieving nirvana is like an oil lamp blown out. They aren't gone to a heaven, but completely nonexistent. No thought, no nature, no self, absolutely nothing.
3. Techniques: varied, but the most famous ones are in the The Noble Eightfold Path, a list of eight practices that allows one to see through the illusion of existence, realize that everything is fundamentally empty, and achieve nirvana.
4. Role models: all the famous Buddhists and their stories. One example is, of course, Gautama Buddha himself. Another is a certain god called the Medicine King, which would be a role model for many Buddhist self-immolators, as discussed later.

If Buddhism is a video game, there would be many, many levels. Every time you die, you are respawn at a certain location with a certain level. Where and how you get respawn depends on your karma-meter, and you gain or lose karma depending on your actions and experiences. You gain karma by doing moral things or suffering. You lose karma by doing immoral things or enjoying nice things.

You can play six kinds of character, each having a different play-area.

1. Gods: the world of gods is full of pleasures and powers.
2. Humans: the world we know, full of pleasures and pain.
3. Titans: titans are kind of like gods, but they are angrier and often fight with gods. They are too occupied with war-making to think about nirvana. This level is controversial and many Buddhists think they don't exist.
4. Animals: the world we know, but as a non-human animal!
5. Hungry ghosts: they live in our world, but we can't see them. They are constantly hungry and thirsty.
6. Hell-beings: hell, basically. There are many sub-levels of hell, too [click for a post all about them]! From painful to extremely painful.

Forcing the hand of God(s)

There are many ways to deal with God(s). You can pray to Them, make friends with them, ignore them, or perhaps... threaten them. It can get quite brutal, really.

Make it rain

Humans, ever since they started farming, became terribly dependent on rain. Whereas hunter-gatherers could follow the rain, and generally have a wide selection of backup foods to eat during extended droughts. Farmers cannot follow the rain, and farming communities are so populous as to make it impossible to have backup foods for everyone.

As such, ever since farming started, rainmaking rituals also started.

Let's start by a curious article from Weather Making, Ancient and Modern (MW Harrington, 1894), published in April 25, 1894, volume VI, page 42 of National Geographics:

I present a clipping from the New York Tribune to which my attention was called by Dr T. C. Mendenhall. Se non e vero e hen trovato [Even if it's not true, it's a good story.]. The extract runs as follows:

In the department of Castañas there had been no rain for nearly a year, and the people were brought to such a pass that they were actually dying of thirst, to say nothing of the total destruction of all crops and other agricultural industries. 

"El Pueblo Católico [The Catholic People]," of New San Salvador, prints a number of resolutions promulgated by the principal alcalde of the town and department of Castañas. They are as follows:

"Considering that the Supreme Creator has not behaved well in this province, as in the whole of last year only one shower of rain fell ; that in this summer, notwithstanding all the processions, prayers and praises, it has not rained at all, and consequently the crops of Castañas, on which depend the prosperity of the whole department, are entirely ruined, it is decreed:

"Article 1. If within the peremptory period of eight days from the date of this decree rain does not fall abundantly, no one will go to mass or say prayers.

"Article 2. If the drought continues eight days more, the churches and chapels shall be burned, and missals, rosaries, and other objects of devotion will be destroyed.

"Article 3. If, finally, in a third period of eight days it shall not rain, all the priests, friars, nuns, and saints, male and female, will be beheaded. And for the present permission is given for the commission of all sorts of sin, in order that the Supreme Creator may understand with whom he has to deal."

The most remarkable feature of this affair is the fact that four days after these resolutions were passed the heaviest rainfall known for years was precipitated on the burning community.

Side note: blowing up a tornado

I just noticed this funny tidbit in the same article. Turns out that nuking a tornado isn't a new idea. Back in 1887, someone applied for a patent for it!

I will consider the first, that of Mr J. B. Atwater, of Chicago (number 370,845, 1887). A strong box with a double bottom is firmly supported on a pole erected at a suitable point, probably a mile or so southwest of the village to be protected. The upper bottom is fixed and the space above it is filled with an explosive and firmly closed. In holes in the upper bottom are inserted fulminating caps and these project below its lower surface. The lower bottom slides up and down. Then, if a high wind drives the lower bottom against the upper with such force as to flash the caps, the explosion follows, and the tornado (if present) suffers the effects which a tornado will suffer when a powerful explosion occurs in its immediate vicinity.

Would it work?

Perhaps it will be effective ; we can be more positive when it has been tried.  

Well, modern science concludes that it will not work.

What should work, though, is setting fire to a grassfield when the day is already humid. This imitates the natural rainmaking process.

Rainmaking in China

There are many rituals for rainmaking in China, from the tamest to the most violent. This section is sourced on two papers:

• Cohen, Alvin P., ‘Coercing the Rain Deities in Ancient China’, History of Religions, 17.3/4 (1978), 244–65 <https://doi.org/10/bstb39>
• Schafer, Edward H., ‘Ritual Exposure in Ancient China’, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 14.1/2 (1951), 130–184 <https://doi.org/10/b573kw>

Method one: put someone out there in the sun, optionally naked, as a symbol of all people that suffers in the drought. If the rain gods are sympathetic, they would bring rain.

Method two: put someone that the rain gods would care about. Perhaps find someone that is a child of raingod, perhaps some witch who is familiar with the rain gods, or perhaps an earthen model of the rain gods (often in the shape of a dragon), and make them suffer great heat. They might stay in the sun, or be put into rings of fire and dance to make them sweat profusely.

Method three: if all else fails, someone can be burnt on a pyre. This someone could be a witch, an official, a Buddhist, or an earthen model of the rain gods. Less harshly,, the model of the rain gods could be whipped, or seriously criticize for their abandonment of duty.

The ritual abuse of the rain gods is basically threatening the gods, which is what this post is about.

One interesting illustration is this oracle script for "暴" ("to expose")

It depicts a person lying under the sun, with two more person looking over a pyre. An explicit depiction of a rainmaking ritual.

Notes on Falun Gong

What is Falun Gong, and why do they believe "Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the communist party."?

This post collects a list of facts about Falun Gong, a new religious movement from 1992, China. Since 1999, the Chinese government has heavily suppressed it, and it has since then engaged in a fierce propaganda war with the Chinese government.

The Chinese government calls it an evil cult that caused many deaths of its members, and the Falun Gong (FG) members claim the government, as well as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is evil and will be destroyed in a coming apocalypse (more on the theology of FG later).

Disclaimer: This would read a lot like anti-Falun Gong propaganda that the Chinese government spins. That's a bit unfortunate, but I only quote from primary sources, academic secondary sources, and a few reputable news journals, like The Guardian and The New York Times. This post also overlaps with the RationalWiki's page on Falun Gong, which is more entertaining to read, but I think my post is better, because I keep my sources authoritative.

My attitude is that the nice, boring bits of Falun Gong (truth, kindness, tolerance) are good, the Chinese suppression is bad, and the religious doctrines and propaganda tactics of Falun Gong are bad. This post is purely on its bad religious doctrines and propaganda tactics.

China Uncensored - Disillusioned

Recently I had a great disillusionment with China Uncensored, a YouTube Channel that gives consistent criticism of the Chinese government. Since February 2020, it had started talking about some coronavirus conspiracy theories (Coronavirus Began in Chinese Lab? US Investigates), in a way that strongly suggests they are true without actually claiming they are true. It is a very devious technique, the one-sided reporting of third-party sources without directly supporting it.

More troublingly, it calls the coronavirus the "CCP Virus",

because it's the CCP's coverup that is what allowed it to spread back in December and January.

That is utter nonsense. Even if the Chinese government was fully transparent about the virus, it would still spread throughout the world, because of how infectious it is. A much more reasonable argument could be made, that the coverup delayed in understanding the virus's infectiousness by about 2 weeks, which contributed to slower responses by some foreign governments. However, America also has itself to blame, considering how its institutions managed to do precious little throughout February, despite being fully warned about this global health emergency by the WHO on January 31.

Susan Blackmore's Theory of the Self

Susan Blackmore is a scientist who is most famous for studying memes, with the book The Meme Machine (2000). It's a bit outdated at this point though. She's also a skeptic in debunking some pseudoscience.

I'll start with two videos:

Memes and Tremes

Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive

Living Without Free Will

When I say that consciousness is an illusion, I do not mean that consciousness does not exist. I mean that consciousness is not what it appears to be. If it seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed experiences, happening one after the other to a conscious person, this is the illusion.

Let's Read: Sapiens (2011) by Yuval Noah Harari, Part 3

Part 3: The Unification of Humankind

Chap 9: The Arrow of History

Cultures are giant memeplexes, but since the memeplex could have memes that don't play well together, they could compete and struggle, and this causes a culture to change.

For example, in medieval Europe, Christianity advocated humility and meekness, but the nobles also valued glory and honour and fame and stuff. To reconcile these contradictions, they went on crusades and stuff trying to make a compromise, and culture changed as a result.

Western politics after the French Revolution is based on equality and freedom, but they don't play well together. To be equal, the better-off are forced to help the worse-off, that is, to infringe on the freedom of the better-off.

discord in our thoughts, ideas and values compel us to think, reevaluate and criticise. Consistency is the playground of dull minds.

The tendency of history is that cultures merge and memeplexes get more universal. There are three ways:

1. Economically, by universal use of money.
2. Politically, by imperialism.
3. Religiously, by universal religions.