Yeah,
it's hard to not get cynical about religion once one sees how it's
harnessed by the temporal powers to their own ends. Emperor Constantine
learned his lesson: if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, i.e make the
Roman Empire officially Christian and you'll have the tools to keep
growing.
Mass produce Christian baubles for the gift shops, and the faithful will follow you blindly, as their "blind faith" (so very similar to blind loyalty to one's King) is built right in as a virtue, at least in the more decadent brands of pyramid scheme hierarchy.
Obedience, not defiance, is what to cultivate in the masses. Any religion able to do that is worth more than gold.
Religion is used to create that state of reverence and solemnity, gravitas. The Cross gets planted on some South American beachhead, and voila, miracle of miracles, this is now Papal Property. Amazing. It's downright Biblical!
Unfortunately for emperors and dictators, crime bosses of all kinds, Christianity is not quite tame enough to support a Borg Cube forever. Whereas most humans seem eager to the point of desperate to surrender their free will to experts, professionals, pundits of all stripes, a tiny minority seems hell bent on doing its own thinking. Irreverent Quakers pop up, questioning authority, refusing oaths of loyalty. WTF!? Where does the operator's manual say how to deal with Quakers?
As a result of such obstreperousness, micro-fractures emerge, and every so often, we get a meltdown, like the 100 years war twixt Catholics and Protestants [exemplary of a "meltdown" not saying Quaker caused -- KTU ]. Or the Civil War in the US. Or maybe even something good happens. A shakeup in world religions might be just what the doctor ordered.
For whatever reason our species refuses to settle into any one Kingdom or Reich. I consider this hopeful and positive. The Tower of Babel is maybe my favorite Bible story. Silly humans, thinking they could create One System to Rule Them All. Ain't gonna happen.
Thanks to some divine spark within common humanity, the peasants, handed a gun and a picture of their God, sometimes disobey their "superiors" and refuse to kill the enemy, seeing through the manipulation. They see The Man behind the curtain, and, like Smedley "Fighting Quaker" Butler say out loud that War is a Racket.
However, to see religion as a tool of social control is not to see the falsity of all religion. Cynicism of that variety is simply too easy.
Rather, the many religions and psychologies, not to mention philosophies, do indeed give us insights into something both collective and transcendent about the individual human mind.
One could simply say "religion is the power of God's mind combined with the human being's endless ability to distort it". The idea that humanity is simply a distorted image of what true angels must be like is an old one and I think I'll land it there for now -- a friendly / familiar airport.
[original context: comment re So What's So Terrifying About Christianity? ]
Mass produce Christian baubles for the gift shops, and the faithful will follow you blindly, as their "blind faith" (so very similar to blind loyalty to one's King) is built right in as a virtue, at least in the more decadent brands of pyramid scheme hierarchy.
Obedience, not defiance, is what to cultivate in the masses. Any religion able to do that is worth more than gold.
Religion is used to create that state of reverence and solemnity, gravitas. The Cross gets planted on some South American beachhead, and voila, miracle of miracles, this is now Papal Property. Amazing. It's downright Biblical!
Unfortunately for emperors and dictators, crime bosses of all kinds, Christianity is not quite tame enough to support a Borg Cube forever. Whereas most humans seem eager to the point of desperate to surrender their free will to experts, professionals, pundits of all stripes, a tiny minority seems hell bent on doing its own thinking. Irreverent Quakers pop up, questioning authority, refusing oaths of loyalty. WTF!? Where does the operator's manual say how to deal with Quakers?
As a result of such obstreperousness, micro-fractures emerge, and every so often, we get a meltdown, like the 100 years war twixt Catholics and Protestants [exemplary of a "meltdown" not saying Quaker caused -- KTU ]. Or the Civil War in the US. Or maybe even something good happens. A shakeup in world religions might be just what the doctor ordered.
For whatever reason our species refuses to settle into any one Kingdom or Reich. I consider this hopeful and positive. The Tower of Babel is maybe my favorite Bible story. Silly humans, thinking they could create One System to Rule Them All. Ain't gonna happen.
Thanks to some divine spark within common humanity, the peasants, handed a gun and a picture of their God, sometimes disobey their "superiors" and refuse to kill the enemy, seeing through the manipulation. They see The Man behind the curtain, and, like Smedley "Fighting Quaker" Butler say out loud that War is a Racket.
However, to see religion as a tool of social control is not to see the falsity of all religion. Cynicism of that variety is simply too easy.
Rather, the many religions and psychologies, not to mention philosophies, do indeed give us insights into something both collective and transcendent about the individual human mind.
One could simply say "religion is the power of God's mind combined with the human being's endless ability to distort it". The idea that humanity is simply a distorted image of what true angels must be like is an old one and I think I'll land it there for now -- a friendly / familiar airport.
[original context: comment re So What's So Terrifying About Christianity? ]
