Enjoy!
(Of course, I would add that their creation came based upon need and it wasn’t just social control of everyday behavior. I would argue that religion was the big hammer used to coerce the labor of ordinary people to do the work that supported the idle elites.)
Uncommon Sense 
Good article. Thanks for posting.
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Comment by inspiredbythedivine1 — March 22, 2019 @ 9:12 am |
Interesting. And makes sense. But try to convince “certain people” of the true reasons their “supernatural eye in the sky” came about.
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Comment by Nan — March 22, 2019 @ 11:25 am |
The overseer aspect of gods reeks of having to oversee workers who are doing work under coercion. Many such people in the early days of civilization skipped out because they still had the skills to live as a hunter-gatherer. So, of course, armed guards became part of the elite the coerced labor of the masses supported and, again of course, having a supernatural overseer to add to the efforts of human guards was well worth the effort. And, you will note than note of these “morality religions” condemned the use of slaves, no that would have been bad for business.
On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 11:25 AM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — March 22, 2019 @ 12:13 pm |
Just read this over at Club’s blog. Interesting, and makes perfect sense.
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Comment by john zande — March 22, 2019 @ 4:41 pm |
Yep and possibly for the reasons I laid out in my postscript.
On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 4:41 PM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — March 22, 2019 @ 9:18 pm |
A learned device/method.
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Comment by john zande — March 23, 2019 @ 4:57 am |
I am totally certain that humans, mostly the men of various tribes/clans invented these doGs because of kids like I was and still am. See, little me asked questions, numerous questions they had zero answers to. Even when they made up some trhow away reply, I’d just keep asking for more. I am certain that all the men in said clan went to the oldest men looking for a way to get little me to keep quiet. They thought and thought, many meetings, many ideas, so very many that got tossed out an not being good enough. After very much thinking and discussing (much real cussing also) they had THE idea). Yeah, they had invented doG. Now this doG made everything as it is and nobody can argue about the whys or wherefores about why grass is green, water wet, etc., etc..
Now they could just reply when I asked why the sky is blue, it isn’t when it is raining, yeah, even I knew that way back then, big deal. The thing is, some people are born asking why, how come, and some of us never out grow that way of being. Oh sure, they tried like hell to beat it out of me in grade school, even high school. Never worked out so well for them. The crapola they tried to force me to buy- organized religion and their doG–well, all I can tell folks today is that I gave up on that fairy tale at about age 13/14 and never looked back.
Oh, I have read some books about the other various religions, I’m curious, probably why I enjoy the company of cats so much more than other critters. Just FYI, I have had dogs as pets/friends, I just like cats better.
I also agree that organized religion was invented by those with zero rel job skills to live off the fat of the land. 10% off the top and all that. As a generalization (I know, many are incorrect, still…) the priest class has no real, useful job skills and they live tax free while doing not much that is truly useful to the working class/poor folks.
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Comment by Walter Kronkat — March 23, 2019 @ 2:38 am |
I hadn’t considered “god by committee” as you so eloquently describe. I have always though that the original concept was “god by bullshit artist.” Once the concept is introduced by either of those then the questions become more focused: will doG save us from the flood? will doG bring the reindeer back in the fall? Will doG … Then the bullshit really starts to flow with a great many more people participating because being knowledgeable about doG conveys a certain status. Once the idea becomes embedded in the culture, then the elites start using the concept to control the rest and, voila!, civilization is born! Everything from that point onward has been to benefit the elites, up until now (including all of the glowing descriptions of capitalism which is a fatally flawed concept, except for the elites who can protect themselves … mostly).
On Sat, Mar 23, 2019 at 2:38 AM Class Warfare Blog wrote:
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Comment by Steve Ruis — March 23, 2019 @ 8:40 am |
… because being knowledgeable about doG conveys a certain status. Ho-boy! Does it ever!! Along with a few bucks in the pocket.
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Comment by Nan — March 23, 2019 @ 11:37 am |
The questions at the end of the article are worth considering. OR we could just ignore them because they’re difficult.
“If the original function of moralising gods in world history was to hold together fragile, ethnically diverse coalitions, what might declining belief in such deities mean for the future of societies today? Could modern secularisation, for example, contribute to the unravelling of efforts to cooperate regionally – such as the European Union? If beliefs in big gods decline, what will that mean for cooperation across ethnic groups in the face of migration, warfare, or the spread of xenophobia? Can the functions of moralising gods simply be replaced by other forms of surveillance?”
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Comment by John Branyan — March 23, 2019 @ 11:01 pm |
I think a lot can be seen in the histories of early civilizations (Re ““If the original function of moralising gods in world history was to hold together fragile, ethnically diverse coalitions …”) There was some diversity at the time of the creation of those gods, but not a whole lot. Even by the middle ages, people still lived, worked and died withing a few miles of where they were born. The expansion of “gods” from ordinary human culture into a form of surveillance apparatus clearly was an invention of the elites/ To what end? To ensure that a diverse population got along well and didn’t squabble? Hardly. This was part of an forced labor effort on the part of the elites. All over the globe immense structures were erected that had little use other than to oppress the masses. The labor to do this wasn’t volunteered. The Egyptian pyramids and their like are testaments to the immense egos of the elites, who saw themselves as gods or proto-gods. Civilization was built on forced labor, slavery mostly, until just a few hundred years ago. Now the controls are more subtle, but they were never designed to just “hold together” fragile groups of humans. Ask yourself, if they were so fragile, what was the motivation that they stick together? Hint: it wasn’t theris, it was their masters’.
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Comment by Steve Ruis — March 24, 2019 @ 8:43 am |