Why is Jesus White?

Despite being Jewish, Jesus is typically depicted as Caucasian.

Understandably this confuses people. Whilst this depiction of Jesus is popularly thought to be modelled on Cesare Borgia, this could only happen in the first place because Christianity was (and is) a missionary religion.

(Jesus had been shown as white long before Cesare Borgia was alive. Hence people using Cesare Borgia as the sole reason for white Jesus is faulty to the extreme.)

Missionary religions (including Buddhism, Islam and the Hare Krishna Movement of Hinduism) seek to spread their religious beliefs to other ethnic groups aside from their own.

Humans are social creatures that make bonds based on similarities of identity, from shared interests to shared ethnicity. People will then start to depict important religious figures as their own ethnicity to heighten the shared identity. It helps indigenise the religion to the ethnic group. It’s a process I call ‘ethnic shift’.***

For example, in regards to ethnic physiological features, fashions and hairstyles, statues of the Buddha look Chinese in China, Japanese in Japan and Greek in Gandhara, (the area in Afghanistan where Greeks settled after Alexander the Great’s failed conquest of India). This is true even though Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) was ethnically Nepalese.

Depictions of Jesus have undergone the same process.

            Aboriginal Australian and Native American Christians depict Jesus as their own ethnic groups. Jesus is considered, after all, God become Man: if Jesus looks like you then God looks like you. God is no longer ‘foreign’.

White people did the same. As Caucasian men dominated the world and most forms of Christianity, Jesus will ultimately always be depicted as white to a western audience.

This had led Christians to antagonise Jewish and Arab people as the other, to abuse them and to use them as a scapegoat. This brings up the question: should depictions of Jesus have an ethnic shift back to His true Jewish ethnicity?

***

Anthropic depictions of the Prophet Muhammad are forbidden in Islam so this process couldn’t happen.

There are photographs of the people Hare Krishnas venerate so for them to undergo an ethnic shift would be odd.

In Hinduism, there are strict rules for how a deity should be depicted and murtis are only worthy (and able to host their deity) if these requirements are met: for Krishna to become a white Caucasian instead of blue and from Mathura would be unthinkable.

Old Wives' Tale: Why jinxes appear to work

In folklore, a jinx is someone commenting on good luck and, in doing so, attracts bad luck.

You go the cloudy outside expecting rain yet it’s sunny. You comment on your good luck and say, “I can’t believe it’s sunny.” Your companion replies, “Don’t jinx it.” And what happens next? It rains.

There’s a good explanation as to why a jinx ‘works’. Drift away from the folklore explanation and instead view it as a matter of probability.

Again with the sun/rain example, the jinxed sentence is an expression of surprise that the unlikely outcome (i.e. the sunshine) has happened. Following this, the most likely outcome (i.e. rain) happens. The jinx doesn’t ‘work’ as a causal relationship (as one would expect when reading ‘jinxes are real’) but instead is simply recognition of probability.

Even with a basic understanding of probability, the fact that the most likely outcome ends up happening is hardly surprising. The more likely the outcome is, the more often it happens.

A jinx, then, is just like incorrectly calling an election before the results are finalised: there’s still plenty of time for things to change. The more opportunity for change, the more divergence there will be between the most likely and least likely outcomes happening.

The jinx itself doesn’t influence outcomes but it does influence the way humans perceive the world. Perception influences the views and opinions of a person and, as such, a jinx can very much be real.



Old Wives’ Tales: Salt makes water boil faster

https://frostgriffin.blogspot.com/2018/08/old-wives-tale-salt-makes-water-boil.html

Why Omnipotent Entities cannot do the Impossible

Omnipotence is a word of Latin descent (‘omnis’ meaning ‘all’ and ‘potent’ meaning ‘power’) to describe a being as ‘all-powerful’.

This is a feature usually ascribed to a religion’s deity. Omnipotence is one of the Classical Characteristic of God in Christian theology, for example. Yet some view omnipotence as allowing said being can do/achieve anything, even the impossible.

However, I find this is interpretation problematic. Something being impossible is so called because it isn’t possible, that is, it cannot be done. From this, if something can be done, it is possible, not impossible. Thus if an omnipotent being does something, it is (by definition) possible.

True, it may not be possible for a human to do it, but an individual’s capabilities for possible actions shouldn’t be generalised into a universal rule. The fact that one being is the only one capable of performing an action shows said action is possible. (To give an observable example, it’s not possible for a cow to do star jumps but that doesn’t make star jumps impossible.)

It doesn’t matter how much power something has because power allows for doing the possible; no amount of power can do what is not possible. If something is done, it is possible. An omnipotent entity cannot do the impossible because, by doing something, that something is possible.

Thus this interpretation of omnipotence is highly flawed: indeed, philosophers and theologians often apply limitations on what omnipotence can achieve. This flawed (and perhaps instinctual) understanding is due to incorrect and incomplete explanation by a priest of what is meant by their deity being all-powerful. A good educator doesn’t teach by simplifying a concept into falsity. 

Nationalist Contradictions: Healthcare and Immigration

Obviously this piece doesn’t cover the view of every nationalist. The Scottish Nationalist Party, for example, is both progressive in these issues whilst retaining foundational nationalist tendencies. But certainly in its more extreme forms, nationalism holds these contradictory opinions on healthcare and immigration.

Healthcare

Right-wing individuals are often against universal healthcare provided freely by the state. Yet it baffles me that nationalists on the Right of the political spectrum can be against paying for the healthcare of their fellow citizens.

            Being proud of your nation, being proud to belong to your country, surely implies that you are proud of a collective identity. How, then, is it possible that this very pride makes you fundamentally against anything that could help the collective identity and willing to let it suffer?

            This simply does not make sense. It’s not true love if you don’t do your best to eliminate unnecessary pain. People not having access to healthcare they need to survive? That is unnecessary pain.

            Also, just a side-note for the politicians of the USA: you have the largest economy in the world so you have no excuse for not providing free universal healthcare to your citizens. Humans are meant to be humane. Act like it.

Immigration

Whilst it’s common for nationalists to be anti-migration, this stance seems almost bizarre when following nationalist logic. If you are proud of and love your country, surely you’d want to share it with others? Especially if you thought the migrants’ countries were worse than your own.

I’m not calling for uncontrolled migration but equally it’s nothing to be worried about. Countries are designed to accommodate a growing population, whether that’s newborns or adult migrants. With migrants, you get someone who doesn’t need the state to support them in education yet pays taxes anyway (not to mention they’ll do jobs that the local populous usually refuse to even consider).

Responding to this saying that, “But we don’t want to support their children.” Come on, people. They’re children. Do you really want to be responsible for innocent children not getting the education and help they deserve as a human right? I’m sure this barbaric opinion is far from your mind.

If you love a particular film or book or restaurant, you’d take someone to see it/borrow it. If you’re feeling proud of a family member or friend, you share that joy with everyone. Naturally, you share these resources with those that haven’t experienced them (i.e. the less fortunate).

I applaud Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany for all she’s done for migrants. Being humane is the aim of the game: you can’t claim to be human yet dissolve humaneness from yourself.