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This one isn't worth it's own blog post, but for those with an interest in Ammon Hillman, it makes a good complement to this article. 

Ammon Hillman's Pharmakon

Ammon Hillman, the classicist (philologist and specialist in ancient texts), has caused quite the controversy in his claims about Jesus having been a child-trafficking pirate and occult drug addict. While I will touch on what I think of the claims themselves, I am more interested in the effect those claims have, and I believe that Hillman is as well.

But before I start, I thought I would provide some context for the reader with regard to my own beliefs going into this. I was raised by a very religious mother who was a bit of a seeker and explored a wide array of religions, from her own Millerite foundations (Church of God, 7th Day and 7th-Day Adventism) to Mormonism and later Freemasonry and Rosicrucianism. I, myself, rejected religion s a teenager, and became an anti-theistic atheist, some elements of which have stuck with me to today. But, rather than remaining an anti-theistic atheist, I became a mythologically-agnostic pantheist, which describes me still to this day. As an agnostic pantheist (not unlike Robert G. Ingersoll, by the way, who also claimed pantheism for his own view), I am generally disinterested in myth for myth’s sake, though I maintain an anthropological interest in religious beliefs, and am still open to particular perennial interpretations of mythology more than others. As such, I do have an interest in Christianity, and in particular its philosophical dimensions as inherited from neo-Platonism and Aristotleanism, that is to say from traditional theology as derived from the Book of Nature as opposed to the Book of Man, the Bible, as is revered by Abrahamics.

I similarly have an interest in a particular conception of metaphorical (as opposed to literal) Luciferianism, though I contrast this harshly against Satanism and Rabbinical Judaism (which I tend to conflate to some limited extent, similar to a Gnostic) and see it as having more in common with Greek and Christian Logos theology and return to the neo-Platonic Source. By certain stretches, and many caveats, I am comfortable with being affiliated with either Christianity or Lucifierianism, and in fact believe them to represent one and the same thing, Logos. You can read more on my views on this in my article, “Luciferianism Through the Ages: A Secular Agnostic Pantheist Consideration of the Luciferian Christian Motif.”

This is all to say that I approach Hillman’s work with a religious background, but as a free thinker and truth seeker who has been willing to explore the full range of human religious and anti-religious thought, canonical and heretical. I have my moral foundations, as anyone else does, but I am not a sensibilist. The fact that Hillman’s views are insensible and hurt my feelings, though they do, however true they may be, is not the issue for me. I readily accept harsh realities, as compose my social Darwinistic (more appropriately, Spencerian) outlook on life. But I have a healthy conscience.

With regard to Hillman’s claim, I find it fascinating. My anti-theist side finds great excitement in being able to leverage this against the Abrahamic faiths. At the same time, I feel a great injury (Satanic abuse?) in accepting that such debauchery could plausibly be attached to someone upheld so highly for so long by Christian society at-large. This gives me existential dread and a bit of anxiety, because of how inescapable the ignorance and inadequacy of the multitude-- that which enables such reverence of a pirate-- appears to be. This is not something that I want to believe, but that I must accept if true. When considered against the fondness of the culture for other pirates, Vikings, ninjas and other never-do-goods, it is overwhelming. Perhaps what draws me to write this most, however, is the cult following that has surrounded Hillman.

Followers of Hillman (and Hillman himself perhaps) engage regularly in mental gymnastics. The most instinctual reaction from anyone with a healthy conscience who accepts Hillman’s view is to feel disgust (one of the moral foundations) for the sorts of things Hillman claims Jesus to have done...

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