What happens when we apply the Bible in real life?
Many Christians claim that the Bible is “God’s Word” and should be used as a guide to right and moral living. Is this true? Let’s look at an example.
What happens if we take Exodus Chapter 21, verse 20:
If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.
And combine it with Luke Chapter 12 verse 47, in which Jesus says:
That servant who knows his master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what his master wants will be beaten with many blows.
What happens when we apply these “right and moral” verses in real life? We get this:
It has started: we are witnessing the beginning of the end of public Christianity
With this article, we see that it is now acceptable in polite society to bash Christian believers and their religiosity. This is a mainstream pundit speaking in the Washington Post:
- “the evangelical, right-wing, oogedy-boogedy branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn’t soon cometh.”
- “Armband religion is killing the Republican Party.”
- “[the GOP] has become increasingly beholden to an element that used to be relegated to wooden crates on street corners.”
- “the GOP has surrendered its high ground to its lowest brows.”
Most importantly:
Given those facts, the future of the GOP looks dim and dimmer if it stays the present course. Either the Republican Party needs a new base — or the nation may need a new party.
The only reason that Christianity has such a strong public voice is because of its stranglehold on the Republican party. But now the Republican party is recognizing - and publicly stating - that these people are idiots. The author could not be clearer: Evangelicals are the “oogedy-boogedy” “low brows” of the Republican party, according to the author. And she is right.
It will be a long process, but the idiocy and hatefulness of evangelical Christianity has finally become obvious to the general public. History will note that Religiosity reached its Zenith this year in the form of Sarah Palin. She is the spokeswoman for evangelical Christianity, and everyone outside the Christian bubble can see that she is an hate-filled idiot.
It is all downhill from here for Christianity.
The reason for Christianity’s inevitable death is obvious: God is imaginary
The Big Bang was not an explosion of matter into space, rather it was an explosion of space ITSELF, and since space and time are interconnected, we really have to say it was an explosion of space AND time, or space-time.
So, the Big Bang wasn’t an explosion of stuff like atoms or molecules, it was an explosion of a place and instance, it was the creation of when and where.
Instead of seeking “religious harmony”, let’s heal the delusion
The 2008 TED prize went to Karen Armstrong. Here is her acceptance speech:
The description of the video says:
People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion — to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.
A website launched Friday with the backing of technology industry and Hollywood elite urges people worldwide to help craft a framework for harmony between all religions.
The Charter for Compassion project on the Internet at www.charterforcompassion.org springs from a “wish” granted this year to religious scholar Karen Armstrong at a premier Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in California.
Her central tenet: “The chief task of our time is to build a global society where people of all persuasions can live together in peace and harmony”
If that is the goal, then here is what we need to do: We need to heal everyone who suffers from the delusion called religion, so that we can all face the world as rational human beings. Religion is a psychological illness. In this disease, otherwise intelligent humans start to believe in imaginary “gods”. Once they believe in these imaginary friends, they begin talking to them. Then they come to believe that the “gods” are talking back to them. They begin to believe in all sorts of irrational superstitions like “prayer”, “faith healing”, “speaking in tongues”, “medical miracles”, etc.
The entire proposition of religion is ridiculous. It is a psychological illness, and the only merciful response is to cure those who suffer from it. At religion’s core is hatred of those outside each sect. The way to end the hatred is to cure the disease. The entire human species will be better off when we realize that, and begin behaving as a rational species.
If you are religious and would like to start recognizing and curing your own delusion, this free book can help:
Has anyone else noticed that Obama’s victory is driving religious republicans insane?
Do you have any deeply religious friends? If so, have you noticed that some of them have been driven close to the point of insanity by Obama’s victory? They will say things about Obama that seem far removed from the confines of rational thought. They may also be stocking up on guns.
In the public sphere, Rush Limbaugh is one person who displays this insanity. For example:
The Obama recession is in full swing, ladies and gentlemen. Stocks are dying, which is a precursor of things to come. This is an Obama recession. Might turn into a depression. He hasn’t done anything yet but his ideas are killing the economy. His ideas are killing Wall Street….
He hasn’t even passed anything yet. The truth about this is, the markets work six to nine months ahead. Everybody in the market is trying to figure out where we’re going to be six to nine months ahead. They’re selling and they’re getting out. That 4,000-point drop, that was also due to Obama.
Blaming the 4,000 point drop in the stock market on Obama is a sign of insanity. Calling it the “Obama recession” is insanity. Obama isn’t even in office yet.
Look at some of the statements made in this article:
- A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist or fascist dictatorship.
- Broun said he also believes Obama likely will move to ban gun ownership if he does build a national police force.
- “We can’t be lulled into complacency,” Broun said. “You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I’m not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I’m saying is there is the potential.”
These are prominent people. They are speaking in public. They say things that sound, well, insane.
McClain said this unease is fueled by charges — some leveled by the McCain/Palin campaign directly and others that circulated on the Internet — that Obama, who is Christian, is a Muslim, has ties to terrorists and is insufficiently patriotic.
“It makes people uneasy about the future of our free country,” he said, “myself included.”
Why does Obama cause such incredible angst for Christians? Anyone know?
When MTV asked if he deliberately decided to change direction the star got spiritual.
Kanye said: “What was in me I couldn’t stop, I think it’s a path; it’s a road, that’s been paved and given by God.
“There’s so many signs and I just have to follow the signs and the arrows of where he wants me to go and just be fearless about it.”
His new album is “808s And Heartbreak”, available on November 24.
It is remarkable that God would take the time to guide West’s music, while at the same time allowing so much disease, starvation, war and suffering around the world. Instead of eliminating cancer worldwide or eliminating starvation, here is what God has been working on:
Here is what we learn about “God” from the interview.
In the interview, Haggard blames his transgressions on a sexual encounter he had with a man (one of his father’s workers) at age 7. So this is the first thing: We have the image of God sitting in heaven, watching a 7-year-old boy get raped, and doing nothing to stop it. This of course is completely normal behavior for God (note the tens of thousands of children whole will die of starvation today), but it is still disgusting.
Haggard then talks about his Christian status at the time of his transgressions:
“There I was, 50 years old, a conservative Republican, loving the word of God, an evangelical, born-again, spirit-filled, charismatic, all those things”
So: You are filled with the Holy Spirit, you are born-again in Jesus, you are reading and “loving the word of God”, you are presumably praying constantly for God’s guidance, you have a wife and children, you are the head of a giant congregation led, presumably, by God, you are surrounded by god-filled conservative Republicans… and yet somehow you still decide it would be a good idea to do Meth and have sex with a gay prostitute. If God is real, why didn’t the spirit-filling, born-againing, praying and Christian-surrounding guide your thoughts, rather than the “sin”? Why didn’t God’s “guidance” plus the fear of Hell plus the pain you would bring to yourself, your family, your career, your church and your religion plus the advice from and association with your peers overpower the sin?
It is because God actually planned for Haggard to sin! Here is how Haggard puts it:
“I believe that he [God] gives us opportunities every couple of years to communicate the gospel worldwide through secular media and we consistently blow it,” he said. “A congressman in trouble, that’s the time. A family member gets himself in horrible trouble, that’s the time. A preacher gets himself in awful trouble, that’s the time.”
Yes, God planned to use Haggard’s sin to “communicate the gospel worldwide through secular media”. But Christians are too stupid to understand God’s plan, so they “consistently blow it.”
What a very, very strange god. If he were to exist, why would anyone worship this being?
“There is a special value in these public healings,” says Nemeh in explaining why he conducts them. Often on his feet for ten hours or more at each service, Dr. Nemeh says, “Healings and miracles that happen in front of our eyes inspire believers and persuade the skeptics to become believers because they witness physical proof of God’s work.”
Issam Nemeh, M.D., a cardiothoracic anesthesiologist.
The following video describes Dr. Nemeh this way: “Can the power of prayer heal? Can faith cure terminal disease? In this News Channel 5 special, Ted Henry reports on an unprecedented number of faith healings happening right here in Cleveland. It’s Ohio’s greatest untold story: HEALING MIRACLES”
The obvious question, Dr. Nemeh, is simple: Can you heal an amputee? If not, why not?
According to the article, here is a typical healing:
Local psychotherapist Mary Richards, M.A. has experienced that proof first-hand. Suffering from severe neurological issues and vertigo, Richards was discouraged when physicians throughout California were unable to help her. So she set search on the internet for alternative ways to treat her condition. She discovered Dr. Nemeh’s website www.pathtofaith.com, and found testimonials of people who had been healed with Dr. Nemeh’s intercessory help.
Richards telephoned the office, and after praying with Dr. Nemeh found some immediate relief. Subsequent calls led to more relief and final healing. Mary’s husband, Pastor Channing Smith, of Transfiguration Episcopal Church amazed at the change of his wife’s condition and grateful for her complete recovery, invited Dr. Nemeh to hold a three-day ecumenical event.
It is predicted that 100,000 people will come to see Dr. Nemeh when he visits San Francisco. 100,000 delusional people.
Why are they delusional? Because Dr. Nemeh can’t heal amputees, or anyone else.
But what he can do is create a facade of healing, tap into the power of coincidence, and then rake in money from desperate people. If you visit Dr. Nemeh’s web site, you find the true reason for his “ministry”:
What a surprise! Just like every other faith healer, it is all about the money. Get 1,000 people to show up, that’s $20,000. Work 10 hours, that’s $2,000 per hour. Not a bad way to make a living! Just like Benny Hinn:
If you are a Christian, and if you think Dr. Nemeh is for real, please use your intelligence. Watch the video and note that it clearly says, “not everyone is healed.” That is true - the vast majority are not. Then note that zero amputees are healed, even though it is claimed that God is providing the healing. If God is providing the healing, then God should be able to heal anyone, and everyone.
Then look at the case of Jessi Kicham, who is given two minutes at the end of the video. This is a classic case of coincidence. It is claimed that “God has healed her”, but her speech is nearly incomprehensible. If a perfect “god” had healed her, she would be healed. What you are looking at is the natural healing that would be taking place with or without Dr. Nemeh. This is the power of coincidence that Dr. Nemeh taps into to make his claims, and to then charge $20 per head. It is all about the money, and the money is made possible by the superstitious delusion of Christianity.
If you would like to heal your delusion, you can do it without spending a dime. See this free book:
One of the most amusing things about Christian mythology is that fact that Christians cannot agree unanimously on any part of their mythology. Let’s take the simplest possible question:
Is Hell real?
Many Christians believe that Hell is absolutely real. They claim that Hell is vividly described in the Bible by Jesus himself.
It is easy to see why some Christians might believe that Hell doesn’t exist. According to Jesus, Christians are supposed to love one another. They are supposed to love their enemies. So how can Christians “love their enemies” while at the same time God is sending people who happen to disagree with him to a place of eternal torture? The contradiction is profound.
Another question: If Hell is real, who goes to Hell? For example, do Christian homosexuals go to Hell or not?
The funny thing is that you can pick any part of Christian doctrine, and Christians cannot agree:
- Was Jesus a man, or was he God incarnate?
- Is the Bible literally true or not?
- Did God create man as in Genesis, or did God affect evolution, or did evolution have no input from God?
You can find Christians for and against.
You can find Christians who believe the craziest stuff. Even famous Christians like John Calvin claiming things like predestination:
And no matter who says what, ALL of them can back up whatever they believe with scripture. Calvin had very good reasons for believing in predestination. And lots of other Christians have very good reasons for not believing in it. But who is right? And how would Christians ever know?
How can this be? If God is real, then how can there be any question about what is true about God and what isn’t? Why can people make up anything they like and attach it to God?
If you are a Christian and you think about it deeply, you will discover the answer to this question. The reason why people make up anything they like about God is because God is imaginary. Click here to learn more:
Christians claim to be moral people. They claim that God acts as their perfect source of morality, and that the punishment of Hell provides the incentive to behave properly.
Yet every day we see the failure of this system. We talked last week about Sarah Palin’s failures. Over the weekend we learned that her behavior was so egregious that she incited a spike in death threats to president-elect Barack Obama:
The Republican vice presidential candidate attracted criticism for accusing Mr Obama of “palling around with terrorists”, citing his association with the sixties radical William Ayers.
The attacks provoked a near lynch mob atmosphere at her rallies, with supporters yelling “terrorist” and “kill him” until the McCain campaign ordered her to tone down the rhetoric.
But it has now emerged that her demagogic tone may have unintentionally encouraged white supremacists to go even further.
The Secret Service warned the Obama family in mid October that they had seen a dramatic increase in the number of threats against the Democratic candidate, coinciding with Mrs Palin’s attacks.
Christians often ask, “Why do you fight against Christianity? What did Christianity ever do to you?” In this case, Christianity threatened my president with death.
Surely the act of provoking “a near lynch mob atmosphere” is immoral. Yet, strangely, neither Palin’s “strong Christian morals” nor the threat of eternal damnation slowed her down.
Now we learn of this amazing event - Christian clergy in a giant fist fight, with each other, in a church. The video is astounding:
What were they fighting over? Really important stuff:
Shocked pilgrims looked on as decorations and tapestries were toppled during Sunday’s clash.
Dressed in the vestments of the Greek Orthodox and Armenian denominations, rival monks threw punches and anything they could lay their hands on.
The Greeks blamed the Armenians for not recognising their rights inside the holy site, while the Armenians said the Greeks had violated one of their traditional ceremonies.
Didn’t Jesus teach his followers to love their enemies? As a matter of fact he did: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matt 5:43-44)
Where is the love?
Note that in these two examples, it is the leaders who are behaving so immorally. If this is how the leaders behave (with the leaders presumably having the “closest connection” to God/Jesus and their “love”, and the most vivid understanding of the perils of Hell), we can only imagine what the followers are doing. One telling indicator: American prisons are overflowing with Christians.
So why is Sarah Palin inciting a lynch mob, and why are Christian clergy punching each other in the face?
It is because the whole idea of “Christian morality” is a myth. Christians, by and large, are not moral people. What we have seen over and over again throughout history is that Christianity leads to racism, homophobia, hatred and violence. See these posts for more details on the immorality of Christians:
“Christian morality” is a myth. It is an oxymoron. It is time for us to recognize this fact and act on it.
If you are a Christian who has started to understand how immoral your religion is, this free book can show you a better path to moral and ethical behavior:
The differences between liberal and conservative thinking
There is a tendency, although not an absolute one, for “conservatives” to be more “religious”, while “liberals” tend to be less “religious”. This video explores some of the reasons for that split, and may be interesting to you if you are interested in the split:
One quote from the talk: “It really is a fact that liberals are much higher than conservatives on a major personality trait called ‘openness to experience’. People who are high on openness to experience just crave novelty, variety, diversity, new ideas, travel. People low on openness to experience like things that are familiar, that are safe and dependable.”
Liberals like a society that is open and changing. Conservatives do not.
The speaker’s goal seems to be to help liberals understand what makes conservatives tick. The speaker tries to develop five foundations of morality, and then compare them between liberals and conservatives. The five foundations of morality are:
1) Harm/care - we have strong feelings about people who cause harm
2) Fairness/reciprocity
3) In-group loyalty - large groups that join together and work together. Tribal psychology.
4) Authority/respect
5) Purity/sanctity
The web site YourMorals.org allowed the speaker to get tens of thousands of data points and see how liberals and conservatives compare on these five foundations. He found:
1) Everyone cares about the first two (liberals slightly more than conservatives, but not a big difference).
2) On the other hand, liberals don’t care one bit about the last three, while conservatives think the last three are very important.
The speaker asks: Aren’t the last three just the morals of xenophobia and authoritarianism and puritanism? This appears to be the crux of disagreement between the two groups.
The problem seen by liberals: Traditional authority and morality tend to block change and tend to repress groups (women, minorities, poor, etc.)
The problem seen by conservatives: Order is really hard to achieve and therefore it is precious. It is really easy to lose.
So it is a balance between change and stability. Anarchy is bad because you end up with death and destruction. Total tribal behavior is bad because you end up with the poverty and backwardness of Afghanistan or tribal Africa. A police state is bad because everyone is locked down. In all three cases, people have no justice, therefore no fairness and lots of harm.
It is interesting that freedom/autonomy is not in the five foundations of morality. Perhaps that is the thing every liberal is seeking. Real freedom would be the ability to do whatever you want without being harmed by others, and without you having the ability to harm others. We could call it harmless freedom.
It is also interesting that the speaker does not question the last three morals, which are rejected by half of the population. Is there a reason why they are rejected? Are there other ways to achieve order besides “the morals of xenophobia and authoritarianism and puritanism?”
The problem that conservatives present with their authority/purity/loyalty mindset is that they want to control other people, and that behavior automatically blocks harmless freedom. The most obvious example today is the conservative/religious desire to block same-sex marriage, even though same-sex marriage between consenting adults is completely harmless.
The speaker closes with this thought: There are many people who are “passionately engaged in changing the world for the better.” The only way to achieve the change is to understand the psycology that drives people to do what they do.
According to USA Today and many other sources, Sarah Palin famously said that she was praying to God and “putting this in God’s hands, that the right thing for America will be done at the end of the day on Nov. 4.”
Obviously, since God is imaginary, this was a silly thing to say. Human beings determine an election, not an imaginary God.
And many human beings looked at Sarah Palin and decided that she was damaged goods. For example, Dennis Hopper, longtime Republican, voted for Obama because of Palin, and publicly admits it in this video:
What Sarah Palin seems to miss is that she represents the worst of Christianity. She is a complete hypocrite. She proclaims belief in God, Jesus and the Bible, and then completely ignores what the Bible says. For example:
1) A Christian is supposed to love her enemies. Sarah Palin did not love the enemy. She attacked the enemy - in this case Barack Obama.
2) A Christian is supposed to obey the ninth commandment (You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor). Instead, Sarah Palin dropped lies and innuendo about Barack Obama in every public appearance she made.
3) A Christian is supposed to be give money to the poor. Instead, Sarah Palin went nuts buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of clothing for herself and family when given the chance. See this article: Hackers and Spending Sprees:
NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.
4) The Bible suggests that knowledge and wisdom are good things. Ecclesiastes 7:12 says: “Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter, but the advantage of knowledge is this: that wisdom preserves the life of its possessor.” Sarah Palin is the picture of ignorance. How ignorant? Her interviews made it painfully obvious. As pointed out here, she does not even know that Africa is a continent:
5) A Christian is supposed to be humble. Matthew 18:4: “Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Sarah Palin was the opposite. She was truly arrogant. Many described her as a “diva”: McCain adviser: Palin ‘is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.’
If you are going to claim to follow Jesus, then you should follow Jesus. Imagine if Palin had come into the public spotlight as a humble, respectful, modest, loving person. What if she had admitted her weaknesses, and said, with humility, that she had a lot to learn and would do her best. Instead of tens of millions of people hating her and seeing her as an idiot, they might now respect her.
Everyone with intelligence - both religious and non-religious - sees the hypocrisy of Sarah Palin and her ilk and is repulsed by it. That may be one big reason why Sarah Palin lost.
In other words, if you are claiming to believe in an imaginary God, you should do what your imaginary God tells you to do. Otherwise, you come off as a hypocrite.
This video takes a look at religious cremation practices in India. As you watch the video, try to keep a count on the number of insane elements that religion injects into the process in just four minutes:
Transcript:
0:00 - 0:15: Varanasi, India. Stretching along the sacred Ganges, it is Hinduisms holiest city. Millions of pilgrims come to bathe in the purifying waters…
Touching the water in this river (much less immersing yourself in it) is insane because of the pollution. This page notes:
The majority of the Ganges’ pollution is organic waste—sewage, trash, food, and human and animal remains. Over the past century, city populations along the Ganges have grown at a tremendous rate, while waste-control infrastructure has remained relatively unchanged. Sewage systems designed near the turn of the 20th century today do little more than channel waste into the river. Some 300 million gallons of waste go into the Ganges each day, and the effects are stunning: recent water samples collected in Varanasi revealed fecal-coliform counts of about 50,000 bacteria per 100 milliliters of water, 10,000% higher than the government standard for safe river bathing. The result of this pollution is an array of water-borne diseases including cholera, hepatitis, typhoid and amoebic dysentery. An estimated 80% of all health problems and one-third of deaths in India are attributable to water-borne diseases.
Getting into this river sounds grotesque. Religious faith brings millions of pilgrims into this fetid water.
But sewage is not the only thing that people dump into the river. There’s also the dead bodies…
0:15 - 0:30: But others come for a far different purpose. They come here to burn the dead, out in the open, in public, out in the open.
The sacred practice of depositing human remains in the Ganges also poses health threats because of the unsustainable rate at which partially cremated cadavers are dumped. In Varanasi, some 40,000 cremations are performed each year, most on wood pyres that do not completely consume the body. Along with the remains of these traditional funerals, there are thousands more who cannot afford cremation and whose bodies are simply thrown into the Ganges. In addition, the carcasses of thousands of dead cattle, which are sacred to Hindus, go into the river each year.
Dumping dead bodies into a river that people use for bathing is insane, but the religion demands it.
Partially burning over 100 bodies a day on smokey wood fires in a city of millions is also insane.
0:30 - 1:10: Thene Thyol (sp?) has a job that many might find appalling. Thene belongs to a unique Indian caste, or community, known as the Doms. It is the traditional role of the Doms to cremate the Hindu dead. Members of Thenes family have been burning corpses for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. For devout Hindus, touching a corpse is highly taboo. It is a ritually polluting act. Those who work with the dead are considered unclean, and therefore untouchable. They are outcasts.
The Doms are one of dozens of castes in India. Castes are insane - we could devote whole books to the appalling and brutal injustices of this form of discrimination and prejudice.
The “taboo” of touching the dead and the idea of a “ritually polluting act” are superstitions, which are insane. “Taboos” like this fuel the discrimination of the caste system.
1:10 - 1:50: But the Doms also pay a pivotal role in the Hindu approach to death, which is based on the idea of reincarnation. Hindus believe that every Hindu soul passes through many lives. The ultimate goal is to unite with the supreme being. But until they are worthy, they continue to be reborn. The holy city of Varanasi provides a sort of spiritual shortcut. Hindus believe that if they die here and their ashes are scattered in the Ganges, their souls are liberated from the cycle.
The idea of “reincarnation”, along with the idea of a “supreme being” and the idea of “uniting” with it are pure fairy tales, and therefore believing in them is insane. And the “shortcut” is insane as well. In addition, the “shortcut” is a process that pumps putrid bodies into the river every day.
We aren’t even to the two-minute point and every rational person is dumbfounded. How does such insanity take root and survive? Why would hundreds of millions of people base their lives on this insanity? Why would millions immerse themselves in such a disgusting river because of the insanity? Or why, if the river is so sacred, isn’t it kept in pristine condition out of respect for the religious beliefs?
Note also that the Christians reading this description of the Hindus are laughing at the insanity. Christians don’t believe in reincarnation at all. Meanwhile the Hindus laugh at the insanity of Christian beliefs, noting that the Christian heaven (without any reincarnation) is ridiculous. Neither party can recognize their own insanity, which is brilliantly reflected in the other.