نداء لمسيحي الشرق: اتركوا الدين

 

نصيحتي للمسيحيين الشرقيين: حرروا عقولكم من اغلال و سلاسل الدين و التدين و التزمت. يسوع الناصري لم يكن الله، الثالوث عقيدة متناقضة، و الكتاب المقدس مليئ باخطاء تاريخية و اوامر غير أخلاقية و قصص خرافية. هذا ليس رأيي فحسب، و إنما رأي معظم مؤرخي و علماء المسيحية الباكرة و اليهودية.  هذا رأي معظم أساتذة هذين الدينين في أرقى جامعات العالم. المسيحيون الشرقيون اكثر متمسكين بالدين من زملائهم الغربيين فقط لأنهم عاشوا تحت الظل و الاظتهاد الإسلامي في الشرق الأوسط. بسبب الاظتهاد ألمؤسف و الشرير الذي مروا به صار عندهم ردة فعل و تماسكوا بهويتهم كمسيحيين بشدة. هذا التمسك شيء طبيعي - الإنسان قبلي بطبيعيته. ولكن في نهاية المطاف المعتقدات بالأساطير تبقى أساطير، بغض النظر ان كيفية نشؤها.

انا لست مثالي و اعلم يقينا و ادري يقينا ان هذا التحرر لن يأتي بدون ثمن باهض و يطلب الشجاعة ممن تجرأ ان يسلك هذا المسلك المؤلم. و هذا لأن الدين يعطي امل في هذه الحياة الغدارة، امل ان "الي فات و مات" ربما يرجع يوم من الايام، امل ان الصلاة ربما تشفي احباءنا من الأمراض الخبيثة القاتلة، و أمل أن اذا لا توجد عدالة في ارضنا العشوائي، و فعلا لا توجد على الأرض، فسوف توجد بالآخرة. فالدين أفيون الشعوب في وسط دنيا تخلو من قلب اصلا. و كما يعلم كل مدمن، التحرر من الإدمان ليس سهلا. ولكن علينا فرض، يا أيها الاحباء، ان نمسك ايدي بعضنا بعضا و نواجه الحياة كما هي، و ليس كما نؤدها ان تكون. و الحياة كما هي، و ليس كما نؤدها ان تكون، هي ان تم قمع و دعس و قتل يسوع الناصري و..... خلاص - انتهت قصته. الي فات مات. يسوع الناصري لم يقم من بين الأموات. و انا و انتم، لو عشنا عمر طويل، سوف نموت خنقا من امخاطنا و خلاص. لا أحد يعلم اذا توجد آخرة فعلا او لا، لا البابا و لا شيخ الأزهر و لا الدالي لاما. فلنحرر أنفسنا من الأساطير حتى نقدم للناس حلولا حقيقية لمشاكلهم و محنم الأرضية، و ليس الصلاة ليسوع الميت التي لا تنفع بشيء و الذي بعمرها ما حررت وطنا.

تناول الافخارستيا يعني تناول كل جسد المسيح

  

عقيدة القربان المقدس او الافخارستيا في المسيحية الرسولية  يضمن اكل قضيب و مؤخرة  و خصيتي يسوع الناصري في التناول.... نعم، قراتم كلامي صحيحا. هذا الاستنباط من العقائد المسيحية الرسولية، و ساخذ الكاثوليكة هنا كمثال لان عقائدها اكثر متعّرفة و مشروحة من عقائد باقي الكنائس الرسولية التي تفضل الغموض العقدي. انا لا اذكر هذا الاستنباط حتى أثير غضب المسيحيين الذين يريدون ان يدافعا ان دينهم الذي على الأكثر ورثوا من والديهم، و إنما حتى أوضح المضمون من معتقداتهم و أوضح مدى غرابة هذه العقيدة التي هي  بناهية المطاف لازم تعتبر عقيدة مشركة بالله الواحد الأوحد الغير مادي و الذي يستيحل ان يتجزأ و ان يتم اكله. و أعوذ بالله من أمثال هذه العقائد المشركة (ان كان موجودا).

المسيحية الرسولية، مثل الكاثوليكة و الارثدكسية، تفسر كلام يسوع الناصري في ليل العشاء السري بشكل حرفي، و ليس بشكل مجازي. و معظم المسيحيين يتبعون هذه الكنائس. يعني حين كسر يسوع الخبز و قال "كلوا هذا هو جسدي" و تداول الخمر و قال "اشربوا هذا هو دمي" قصدها بالحرف. و على الارجح هذا هو التفسير الصحيح، بغض النظر عن التفاسير المجازية الرمزية التي يقدمها بعض البروستانت (مثل اتباع يوحنا كالفين الإصلاحي).

دعونا نتدبر قليلا ان عواقب هذه العقيدة لمجرد دقيقة. طيب يا مسيحي الكاثوليكي، انت تؤمن ان حين تتناول انت تاكل جسد يسوع الناصري حقا، و تشرب دمه حقا. طيب...فإما تأكل كل جسده الممجد او تاكل جزع من جسده حين تتناول. اذا تأكل جزع من جسده، اي جزع تاكل؟ اظافيره؟ خشمه؟ عيونه؟ الخ. و اذا تاكل كل جسده، هذا يعني أنك تاكل كله، اي، عيونه و خشمه و قلبه و مؤخرته و قضيبه و خصيتيه. فايهما صحيح؟ ما لازم ننتظر للرد من الكاثوليك. لحسن الحظ، الكنيسة الكاثوليكة، التي اعتادت ان تعرف بدقة الكثير من عقائدها، بعكس الكنائس الارثدكسية، توضح لنا الأمر هنا:

“The body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the WHOLE Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained.” - Council of Trent

هذا اقتباس من مجمع ترنت، الذي عقد للرد على البروستاتية في القرن السادس عشر. بيانات المجمع بخصوص العقائد تعتبر معصومة من الخطأ حسب تعليم الكنيسة الكاثوليكة، كون المجمع مجمع مسكوني و ناطق باسم كل الكنيسة. لاحظوا كلمة كليا. البيان يقول أن كل جسد الرب يسوع المسيح موجود (في القربان المقدس).  و الرثدكس، على رغم من انهم يفضلون عدم شرح عقائدهم و الوقوف عند "السر الإلهي"، على الأرجح يوافقون هذا الرأي و لا يقولون انهم يأكلون مجرد جزع من يسوع. لا - اذا مؤمن  سيأكل يسوع حرفيا او حقا، كما تزعم الارثدكسية، سيأكله ككل، كما تعلم الكنيسة الكاثوليكية بكل وضوح. فالاستنباط الحتمي هنا أن المسيحيين الكاثوليك(و على الأرجح الارثدكس، الخ) لازم يؤمنوا انهم يأكلون قضيب و خصيتي و مؤخرة يسوع الناصري. أعوذ بالله.

 

The Absurdity of Eternal Hell

The Condemned in Hell, fresco by Luca Signorelli, 1500–02; in the Chapel of San Brizio in the cathedral at Orvieto, Italy.

All religions have good teachings and wicked teachings, sublime teachings and nonsensical ones. You'd be hard pressed to find a reasonably objective contemporary scholar of religions who would deny this. But one of the unequivocally nonsensical and wicked teachings propounded by some religions - particularly predominant instantiations of Islam and Christianity - is the idea of eternal punishment. The idea is absolutely repugnant to the intellect and makes nonsense out of the idea that God is merciful or all-loving.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is no eternal hell and there's no Satan who will abide in hell forever. This absurd idea arises from the tribalistic vindictiveness of minds overcome by a deep religious stupor. So strong is this religious stupor that even a luminary mind like Thomas Aquinas debased himself and gleefully taught that the righteous in heaven would take pleasure at the eternal punishment of the dammed.

Don't be like Aquinas in this regards. Wake up. Arise from your dogmatic slumber. There are more things in heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your narrow religious philosophy.

Israeli Practice of Demolishing the Homes of Families of Murderers is Unjust Collective Punishment

 

هدم بيوت عائلات المجرمين، فعل تقوم بممارسته دولة إسرائيل ضد الفلسطينين منذ عقود، هو فعل غير عادل بالمرة. شو ذنب العائلة؟ القائدة الأخلاقية المبدئية هي أن كل نفس بما كسبت رهينة، ليس كل نفوس العائلة رهينة بما كسب احد اعضائها. حتى لو افترظنا ان هذا العقاب لديه فوئاد مردعية، زعم فيه نظر اصلا، هذا ليس تبريرا. لان من صلب العدالة ان يعطى الشخص جزائه، بغض النظر على العواقب المردعية. 

 

The Jersualem Post recently ran a piece entitled, "Israel’s home demolitions after terrorist attacks, explained." This collective punishment practiced by Israeli authorities for decades is gross and should be immediately terminated. Destroying the homes of the family of a murderer is collective punishment and flagrantly unjust. Even if one grants that there are beneficial deterrent effects, which is not clear, this abhorrent practice would still be unjust. People are responsible for their own actions, not the actions of others. By way of analogy, imagine if in the United States every time someone commits a mass shooting the authorities would go and raze the family's house to the ground. This would obviously be immoral, regardless of the possible deterrent effects.

 

The Desire for Justice, a Signpost of the Divine

The strong and seemingly innate longing for justice that people have doesn't seem to mesh well with the idea that human persons are just byproducts of a Godless and random universe. Our longing for justice seems to be a reminder, a signpost, of our divine origin. Our desire that things be made right bespeaks something mystical at work in the universe, something more sublime than the meaningless movement of atoms. My sense is that, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis' Aslan, there is deeper magic at work here, magic which goes back to before the dawn of time.

Tragedy, God's Providence and Redemption

 

Those who have suffered much from human malevolence but keep moving forward and don't allow their trauma to cause them to hurt others are some of the most beautiful and advanced souls on Earth. What I've observed in my three decades on this planet is that often people who hurt others have been hurt themselves. They lash out at the world, including their loved ones, as a way of relieving their internal angst. Wondrous and blessed are those souls who overcome the urge to perpetuate evil because evil was done unto them.

It may be the case that God's providence is working through their sufferings, trauma and tears to transform them into Christ-like heros. What humans in their malevolence mean for evil, God can use to bring about a greater good. No greater example of this is found in all of human literature than in the story of the Gospels. According to that most magnificent and awe-inspiring of stories, the crucifixion represented the greatest of all evils - deicide. The ineffable and timeless God, somehow, paradoxically, became man, giving humans a tangible looking glass into the primal source of all reality. But we walked in darkness, and darkness did not and does not like the light. So we tortured and killed our creator. What greater evil could there be, to humiliate, torture and kill the one who loved us before the dawn of time? But, the story goes, from this greatest of all evils sprang forth the greatest of all goods - the redemption of humanity (and arguably of all created intellects). The cross was defeated. Evil had its hour, but it was ultimately no match for eternal love. The tomb on the third day lay empty..the corpse was no longer a corpse. The Christ had risen, initiating the process of redemption and calling all to follow his way, the way of unconditional love. From absolute horror arose absolute hope, from absolute tragedy arose absolute triumph.

Such is the theologian's beautiful and plausible vision for how suffering can be redemptive. For my part, I hope this vision is correct. There seems to be much truth in it. But, on the other hand, sometimes ghastly suffering leads to bitterness and despair; sometimes it gives birth to devils, not angels. And not just any devils, but devils one cannot help but pity for their fortuitous past. One of my favorite movies is "The Joker", the 2019 movie with Joaquin Phoenix playing one of the central villains of the DC comic universe. It is a fabulous commentary of how a genuinely good person touched by human malevolence can become a devlish persona, as well as a narrative argument for how evil represents a corruption of original goodness, and how goodness is prior to evil. I also see in the film, or at least hope I see in it, the idea that no matter how devilish one becomes one's primordial divine light can never be fully dimmed, and that one day even the devil himself will be redeemed by the unstoppable love of God.

Leaving Academic Philosophy: One of My Best Decisions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of the best decisions I've ever made in my life was the decision to leave the academic field of Philosophy at age 23 (after I recieved my Master's at 22 and briefly taught at a California State University). I was smart enough to know the job prospects were abysmal, and humble enough to realize I wasn't some super genius or well-connected person who would beat the odds. And unlike quite a few of my Christian philosopher friends at the time, I was wise enough to know that the idea of going into Philosophy for apologetics reasons was foolish: proving Christianity is true beyond reasonable doubt was and is impossible - there will always be reasonable unbelief; few people read one's philosophy papers anyways; philosophers don't have dibs on critical thinking or truth; and conformist pressure would push one away from Philosophy of Religion into fields that were more "safe" from a career perspective, completely defeating the purpose of sacrificing a high-paying "boring" career to do what one loves (philosophizing on the most important of issues - God). I also knew at the time - even before the worst of the "woke" craze kicked in (e.g., regarding transgender ideology), that there would be conformist pressure to not speak one's mind regarding social issues. In fact, I remember the chairman of the Philosophy department advising me to not discuss abortion in class because irrational people would get emotional and because some of my students would have had abortions. And this was back in 2016!

All this to say that my decision has proven to be a truly wise one. The job market now is virtually impossible to break into, and many of my erstwhile conservative Christian philosopher friends who pursued a PhD are now scared to their boots to even publicly say something as trivially true as that a man can't become a woman and vice versa. Their misguided notions of "conquering philosophy for Christ" met a brick wall called reality, and years in the guild has rendered them dumb cowards (and I use 'dumb' in the proper old sense of the word).

Now, I hardly follow the latest news in the guild anymore, but here's a recent example of how hard it is to get a Philosophy job and why you shouldn't pursue a PhD in Philosophy (completely aside from the groupthink present in the academy): I know someone who I consider a true genius with all the right credentials: quite a few publications in great academic journals, graduated from a top 3 PhD Philosophy program, completed a prestigious postdoc, is highly technical, etc. And guess what? This individual just got hired as a visiting assistant professor - not even a tenure-track professor - at some college I have never even heard of before. That's how bad the market is.

In conclusion, stay away from academic philosophy - stay very far away. You don't need to be a professional philosopher to do great philosophical work. You don't need to be a academician to have a good philosophy of life. Indeed, these days I tend to trust the common man's view of the world and ethics over and above the view of the ivory tower philosophy professor.

How To Recover the Password for an Encrypted Veracrypt Container

Veracrypt, the successor of Truecrypt, is a free and open-source encryption software. Think of it like Microsoft's Bitlocker -- except it is free and completely open source.[1]

In this blog post, I will briefly show you how to recover the password for a (non-system) Veracrypt container if you still remember a substantial part of it. I've managed to recover my own partially forgotten passwords using the methods I detail below. Essentially, we will be conducting a hybrid attack on the PBKDF2-derived key for the Veracrypt container -- i.e., a hybrid between a dictionary attack and a brute-force attack. The tools that we will make use of are any Linux distribution (Debian, Red Hat, etc.), Python, and Hashcat, a powerful and open-source password cracker.[2]

Let us begin. The first thing to bear in mind is that the first 512 bytes of a Veracrypt container is a header which contains all the necessary ingredients to calculate the key to your container (e.g., the salt). Below is a detailed table of (at least) what is contained in the first 512 bytes.


 

Note that the header is the first 512 bytes only in standard volumes or containers, not in system volumes. In the latter, Veracrypt documentation specifies that the header is the last 512 bytes of the first logical track. This is what the documentation states:

The first 512 bytes of the volume (i.e., the standard volume header) are read into RAM, out of which the first 64 bytes are the salt (see VeraCrypt Volume Format Specification). For system encryption (see the chapter System Encryption), the last 512 bytes of the first logical drive track are read into RAM (the VeraCrypt Boot Loader is stored in the first track of the system drive and/or on the VeraCrypt Rescue Disk).

In any case, we want to extract this derived key-hash and then check to see if it matches any of our computed hashes from a word list. If we get a match, then we will know that we have recovered our password! So the first thing we want to do is to extract these initial 512 bytes. This can be easily done in the Linux command line; just type the following in your terminal:

dd if=[container name] of=[anything] bs=512 count=1

"If" stands for "input file," and "of" stands for "output file." "bs" just means bytesize, and "count" just means how many iterations of the bytes to go through. So the above terminal command will produce the same output as the following:

dd if=[container name] of=[anything] bs=1 count=512

Alternatively, you can just run the following Python code to the same effect (just be sure to change the file names accordingly):

with open("in-file", "rb") as in_file, open("out-file", "wb") as out_file: out_file.write(in_file.read(512))

 

We have now extracted the header from the Veracrypt container. As we shall soon see, Hashcat has an option that will automatically recognize a Veracrypt header and compute the derived key from the information contained therein (e.g., from the salt and key-derivation function used). But first, let's generate the wordlist we will pass to Hashcat.

Now, for the sake of the demonstration here, we'll keep it simple. So let's say that our password that we forgot was ACHILLESheel2385. Furthermore, let's say that we remember ACHILLESheel, and that there was a 1 - 5 digit number at the end. So, taking a step back, it should be clear what we need to do: produce a word list containing every character set that matches the following RegEx pattern:

/ACHILLESheel\d{1,5}/

Thankfully, there's a great Python module that will construct all the strings that match a specified RegEx pattern -- exrex. In your terminal, type the following command (but just make sure that you have the exrex module installed):

python exrex.py 'ACHILLESheel\d{1,5}' -o wordlist

 

This will generate a wordlist of ACHILLESheel{all combinations of five digits} in wordlist.txt of your current working directory. We are now ready to use Hashcat. If you type "hashchat -h" in your terminal you should see that hashcat has a lot of numerical numbers associated with different types of hashing algorithms and software, including Veracrypt. Hashcat basically has preprogrammed binaries that are used to compute the hashes made from a wide variety of algorithims and programs. The numerical value that we are looking for is 13721, as this is Hascut's reference for Veracrypt's default encryption settings. There are other non-default options that Hashcat has, but 13721 is the one we are looking for.



So all the preparation is done: we are now ready to to run hashcat and crack the password! Type in the following command:

hashcat -m 13721 --status out-file wordlist.txt

Note that if you see that the 111110 passwords are taking too long to crack on your system, you can just "cheat" and use a different regex pattern that will drastically decrease the computing time (since this is just an example). For example, you can use /ACHILLESheel23\d{2}/. This will cut the password wordlist down from 111110 to 100! After you run Your output should be something like the following:

So there you have it  -- this is the process for successfully recovering a Veracrypt password that you partially remember! It's important to underscore that the more of your password you remember, the way easier it is to crack it. If you don't have any idea of what your password is, and just remember that it is very long and complex, it's very likely that all the computers in the world wouldn't be able to crack the password for aeons!

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[1] In general, I believe that FOSS that is widely used is more secure than closed-source software counterparts. This is for the simple reason that FOSS is open-source software and so, if it is quite prominent (like Veracrypt, Signal, DD-WRT, Ansible, Ubuntu, Libre Office, Android, etc.), it should have undergone more security-expert scrutiny than its closed-source counterparts. Indeed, it should be continuously undergoing more scrutiny than its commercial closed-source counterparts. Now, one may argue that the sword cuts both ways here: the open-source nature of FOSS means that there are more malicious developers with access to the code base and actively trying to develop exploits against it. Thus, for example, there is more malware written against (closed-source) Windows operating systems than there is written against (open-source) Linux operating systems. While this is true, I still think that the sword cuts more in the way of security than insecurity here, as I doubt that critical vulnerabilities discovered by an APT open-source software will go undetected by the rest of the world's security experts for much longer than similar bvulnerabilities in closed-source software. The latter are simply lack boxes. There's no way for the world's security community to tell whether such software is safe and free of backdoors. So my view is that when it comes to security, FOSS is king. And I believe most infosec experts would agree. 

[2] We could also use Crunch, a program that generates password wordlists based on user-defined parameters. But if one knows RegEx it should be easier to use the Python module exrex to generate wordlists based on specified RegEx patterns. One can use a tool like RegExPal to check if one's desired output text(s) matches one's RegEx pattern.