Archive for the ‘Religion As Economic Tech’ Category
Kill Kids, Get Diadem
In 1096 the Rhineland Jews were attacked by the spontaneous and badly-led popular first wave of the Crusade. In several places Jewish men killed themselves, their wives and children to prevent forced conversion; for centuries this story has been cherished as an important part of the Ashkenazi heritage, although the gentile reader may be reminded […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
Tithe Me Up, Tithe Me Down!
Most fundamentalist churches teach their members that they should do something called “tithing”. This is on the authority of the Old Testament arrangements made to feed the Levites, who alone of the Israelite tribes were apportioned no land. In the Middle Ages, tithes were understood in the same way, as a tax to support the […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
Are You Being Served?
Why do we call our religious rituals “services”? Whom exactly are we serving? The normal supposition is that the answer is “God” – that we are serving him by our praise, our alms, remorse and our intentions. Well and good. But why then are these occasions still called “services” when they revolve entirely around testimonies […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
A Hundred NFL Games For The Bishop
The Heike Monogatori describes how the mother of the Regent, who had offended a god and was dying, “publicly vowed to present the shrine with a hundred lawn field music performances, a hundred procession riders, a hundred horse races, a hundred mounted archery contests, a hundred wrestling matches, a hundred expositions of the Benevolent King […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
How Did Freud Miss This One?
Life is hard to bear, wrote Sigmund Freud, we cannot do without palliative measures – such as powerful distractions, substitutive satisfactions and intoxicants. One might have expected him to include religion in this series, but he seems to assume it thoroughly explicable in terms of the individual’s needs. Civilisation and its Discontents appears innocent of […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
Ad Mortem Festinamus
The problem with an older generation of atheists is that they unconsciously shared many of the conceptual structures of what they imagined they were attacking, and thus fought on the enemy’s chosen ground. For example, if they encountered the song from the Camino de Santiago where the pilgrims sing how they are “hastening unto death”, […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
The First Money Laundry
Zeniarai Benzaiten is a shrine at Kamakura where the god is said to multiply the money that is washed in the sacred water. He does primarily coins, but notes can also be washed. As far as I know, however, he does not take credit cards. This started in the thirteenth century. It is even more […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
Nutritional Patronage Systems
Pace the vegetarians, human beings evolved as meat-eaters. It is nevertheless quite possible for us moderns to live as vegetarians, now when we can consume the fruits and vegetables of an entire world, but in earlier times it was less easy to obtain a balanced diet. Meat, the quickest source of protein, would then be […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
Prosperity Cult No Novelty
Europeans tend to sniff at the Prosperity Gospel, claiming that it is only possible in hypercapitalist, greed-is-good America. But the idea that the Elect will be rewarded, and recognisable, by their earthly prosperity is from John Calvin, who was a Swiss and followed by Dutch and Scots. Mediterranean Catholics, meanwhile, seem to conceive of the […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
Misunderstanding The Sky Man
It may be that, as humanity spread across the globe, each small band of hunter-gathers feared and hated every other small band, seeing both the intrinsically creepy Not-Us and a situational competitor for resources. We cannot know for sure, but we should note that most other animals seem to behave this way. Even so, something […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion As Economic Tech
