God As A Conspiracy Of Plutocracy:
You want guidance, oh souls who are lost? Then it’s best to stay away from stupidity.
It’s rather daft to believe that not believing in gods, which are human inventions, somehow misses upon some of the human condition by not taking fairy tales as real. Make no mistakes: fairy tales are useful. It’s good to believe a little bit in them.
To act, to proceed into any action, we have, somehow to believe, that engaging in it will make a difference. Beliefs are good, indispensable. It’s not just those who believe in superstition(s), who believe in something. We all do.
But when potentates try to sell a particular brand of belief as the end-all, be-all, they are deluded. Or, worse, they want us to be deluded. What for? Once we are made stupid, we can be exploited. (A live example of incredible exploitation is the situation in Greece, where an enormous conspiracy makes an entire people pay for financial plots they did not engage in.)
That Son, Crispus, Was Really Killed By His Christian Father, Constantine
[Solidus representing Caesar Crispus, Constantine’s first son, assassinated by his father in 326 CE. Constantine is a “Saint” of Orthodox Christianity: if you believe in Constantine’s sainthood, you are ready to die for banksters, and, or, monks.]
Most of the 10,000 or so religions we know of had, each, many “gods”. However not so the religion of Abraham. Who imposed that? Generals. Constantine was a general, he took over the Roman empire in his twenties. Later he steamed his wife alive, killed his nephew, and his gifted son (who did not like his father’s “Catholicism”).
The other great general was Muhammad himself (and his successors, aka Caliphs).
The one and only god was imposed, because he was an excellent role model for the one and only fascist in power: fascist on the throne, fascist in the sky. It just fit. The religion founded by one general is naturally one with a general on the top.
That does not mean one should not look positively to the present pope: he makes a nice Father Christmas. (And has many excellent ideas, such as cap and trade of carbon perm its being a sin… As I long believed.)
India has a million gods. But the fascist military structure implicit in Christianism helped Europeans to conquer the world. With Biblical efficiency.
How? India, under polytheism, had zero religious wars (as Partha a commenter to this site, pointed out). Why? Polytheism accommodates many feelings, ideas, dispositions, characters, and divinize them all. This insures tolerance where it is the most important to have it, in the heart.
However, under the fascist god, any slip of interpretation of proper worship may result in divine annihilation, thus it’s of the essence to kill unbelievers. That’s why religious wars and holocausts (as happened to the Samaritans) started in the Roman empire after Constantine imposed Christianism. Before that there had been none since the Romans had done away with human sacrifice religions (Gaul, Carthage), four centuries prior.
The essence of monotheistic theology is, if you will forgive the neologism, fascitology. It’s military pathology in disguise, and how to make intolerance divine. Killing god is a must for those who want to be free.
And that’s exactly why the SS adopted in 1933 “Gott Mit Uns!” (God With US) and the Congress of the USA goose-stepped behind in 1954 with “In God We Trust”.
Making We The People stupid with god enables masters to manipulate it down into complete impotence and destitution. As observed.
And this is precisely while the malignant cult of god grew in the USA, as plutocracy came to rule ever more (the initial establishment of the American Republic, was all about “Nature’s God”, not about the Christian fascist superstition).
To goose step behind banksters, all you need is god.
Patrice Ayme’
Tags: Atheism, Christianism, Christianity, Constantine, Crispus, fascism, Intellectual fascism, Polytheism
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
June 25, 2015 at 12:19 am |
The new way of the party of God is to complain about atheists. Massimo at Scientia Salon is an example… BTW, you don’t show up there anymore. Tired of the theist clique there?
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June 25, 2015 at 1:39 am |
Seems to me that God is but one of the many ways to manipulate people.
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June 25, 2015 at 1:42 am |
Patrice,
While it certainly facilitates top down rule, to have a top down theology, besides polytheism and monotheism, there is also pantheism; That while all the forms are distinct, they are still networked into that larger ecosystem. Rather than a spiritual absolute as an ideal from which we fell, a sort of theological platonism, it would be the essence from which we rise.
Remember the Greeks, at their height, were pantheists. No one form ruled, but the spirit runs through all. That provides a theological basis for democracy.
Also the actual figure of Jesus is lost in history. I wonder if he may have been a Samaritan and it had been a political conflict deliberately obscured.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,827144,00.html
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June 25, 2015 at 5:27 pm |
Which may be why no political system based on pantheism ever survived, let alone existed. (Some forms of polytheism are close enough, with bits of divinity being shared among all animals, things and even humans: think of the Hurons or the West Africans. Hardly dominant cultures!)
This being said, bloodthirsty generals and deities existed way before Abrahamism took root and adopted their war-winning ways. They were well documented because a people’s gory rituals provided a handy rationale for invading it: think of Gaul, Carthage, Tenochtitlan…
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June 26, 2015 at 5:00 pm |
Hi Dominique, nice to see you!
Good point about polytheism often not really undistinguishable from pantheism. I make no difference, at least in the case of the Greeks… Or the (somewhat related) Germans.
The Aztecs were a late apparition (12C CE?). They did not have much friends. They human diet (pun intended) was pretty much tied to life around that large high altitude lake, so they had a protein problem. The white fish people to the West, and others at lower elevation did not have such an acute problem, thus resented the Aztecs.
So Cortez’s army became near to 100,000, instead of 1,500… Napoleon had a similar plan in the Orient… But he failed to take Saint Jean d’Acre with his 13,000 men army, facing the Turks and the Brits… BTW, I was surprised you did not react to my “Whose Waterloo?” which could be, and was, interpreted as pro-Napoleon by some out there…
Abrahamism came out of Egyptian monotheism. Egypt itself was managed cautiously (too cautiously in the end, it fell asleep…)
Rome developed absolutism based around the law, instead of the (Jewish) god; When god arrived, 10 centuries later, Justinian separated him from the absolutism of the secular. About his best decision aside from building Saint Sophia…
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June 26, 2015 at 6:05 pm |
Leaving aside all the non-quantifiable spiritual (and supernatural, if one’s a believer) aspects, religions are but an identity marker, not much else, really, and a circular one, too.
One is what one believes – and those belief(s) that define you, truly held or not, that’s not the point, are tied to what one is to begin with, IE you believe what the tribe, community, family line,… believe. Your “religion” is part of your group ID card.
Less true in today’s developed world, with its à la carte pretend spirituality and overall materialism, but in full swing and for all to see in Syria, for example (including the “Westerners” who go there to fight, and for all purpose very clearly affirm to which “group” they belong to).
I’m not sure if I’m being confuse or just spouting self-evident crap, but IMHO, it all boils down to religion = part of the “US (very beautiful) and THEM (very ugly)” equation.
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June 26, 2015 at 6:05 pm |
dominique,
I would argue democracy is implicit in pantheism. A multitude of deities as a community, rather than isolated, as in polytheism, or absolute, as in monotheism.
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June 26, 2015 at 11:07 pm |
Polytheism, pantheism: democracy, tolerance of passions, emotions and interests. Balanced society starts with balanced minds.
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June 27, 2015 at 1:45 pm
Patrice,
Probably as much or more important is connected minds. There will always be activity and instability, but if the parts remain connected and communicating, they are resilient.
Stability alone leads to stagnation.
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June 27, 2015 at 4:09 pm
We even have a name for it: culture… 😉
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June 27, 2015 at 4:50 pm
Patrice,
I see it as the dichotomy of society and culture.
This goes back to the dichotomy of energy pushing out and form pushing in. Society is the energy and culture is the form.
There are plenty of cultures around the world that are dried husks of their former vitality. It is that organic society which gives them life.
So what is necessary is a culture which incorporates balance, as a way to channel the social dynamic, without quelling its vitality.
Possibly one with a more flexible concept of time and not always in a rush.
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June 27, 2015 at 8:46 pm
We, thinkers, are the slows… But we quickly go to the jugular.
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June 27, 2015 at 8:51 pm
Attention spans are measurably going down, thanks to all the electronics rings and bells… Some countries (Finland) are even forgetting to teach writing… Too slow…
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June 27, 2015 at 11:55 pm
Knowledge is information. Wisdom is editing.
Give them enough rope……..
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June 25, 2015 at 4:07 am |
Jeffrey Craig
Principal Research Fellow at Murdoch Childrens Research Institute
Genius Patrice. I love the other side of theology.
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June 25, 2015 at 4:09 am |
Adrian Campbell
Senior Lecturer in International Development at University of Birmingham
‘Gott mit uns’ was not originated by the SS but dates from Imperial Germany and was used as a slogan in the First World War. ‘In God We Trust; appeared on US coins in 1864 – at a time when the Union was at war with the pro-slavery confederacy.
Your whole comment is an extreme example or Godwin’s Law or Reductio ad Hitlerum, taking the Third Reich not as an aberration but somehow as the essence of Western civililzation, which you imply has been fascist ever since Constantine, its monotheism becoming an instrument to conquer the world.
Let’s just take the two most obvious objections:
1) Europeans did not conquer the world as a homogenous civilization hut as competing states and this conquering did not begin for well over a thousand years after Constantine. In the meantime others – notably the Buddhist Mongols far more effective at rapid, brutal conquest than the Europeans.
2) The Roman empire did not expand under Constantine, on the contrary it began to collapse from that point onwards. The Roman Empire had conquered the known (to Rome) world over the course of the previous five hundred years during which it was not a polytheistic Republic. At the same time China expanded to conquer the whole of its ‘known world’ with similar efficiency, but no monotheistic religion. Your post therefore does not have a shred of justification.
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June 25, 2015 at 4:21 am |
Lili-Ann Berg
Adrian, please enlighten me – what is that you lecture in? I have never heard of a degree in International Development.
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June 26, 2015 at 6:38 pm |
Good points. Interesting that until your reply, none had similarly fact checked. Evidence that the non-religious are driven by the same biases and tendencies as the religious.
Seems to me the problem is “belief systems” of which religion is but one. As religion has become less important, we have replaced it with others, such as belief in economic and psychological systems that do not exist outside of the human imagination.
And people will be brutal to each other, and kill, for those new belief systems, just as they did for religion.
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June 26, 2015 at 9:18 pm |
With all due respects, Hazxan, the entire comment of Adrian Campbell is pretty much hog wash. (He changed his tune since, but those comments were not reproduced here, for technical reasons).
I have published somewhere else extensive answers, but had no time to publish them here. Some of his arguments: oh, “In God We Trust”, oh, “Gott Mit Uns” were suggested before, is silly. Similarly the idiotic “reduction ad Hitlerium”. That’s one of the five ideas geeks have, so they repeat them, ad Hitlerium. Christianism has been terroristic, mass murdering and fascist in nature, since its inception by emperor Constantine…
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June 25, 2015 at 4:12 am |
Adrian Campbell
Senior Lecturer in International Development at University of Birmingham
I should add one more point: as I pointed out above, the slogan ‘Gott mit uns’ was not invented by the SS but adopted to link back to the officer traditions of Imperial Germany. This invocation of God was, however, opportunistic and superficial – the ideology of the SS leadership was consciously anti-Christian and harked back instead to the polytheism of the pre-Christian German tribes. The Nazi leadership, following Nietzsche, believed that Christianity was a religion for weaklings – the Hitler salute itself was consciously derived from the legend that the Germans tribal warriors had held their sword arms above the water during baptism so as to be free to fight and kill – so any attempt to portray the Nazis as the culmination of Christian civilizations is likely to run into obstacles. The Nazis only played the ‘God card’ when they began to lose to the atheist Soviet Union and wanted to present themselves as defending Christian Europe – but that is clearly not what they were about.
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June 25, 2015 at 4:14 am |
Adrian Campbell
Senior Lecturer in International Development at University of Birmingham
error: I meant to say that the Roman Empire had conquered the world during the previous five hundred when it WAS a polytheistic republic.
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June 25, 2015 at 4:50 am |
Ray Andrews
retired socialist
No religious wars under polytheism in India? You should do a bit of reading.
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June 25, 2015 at 4:52 am |
In reply to Ray Andrews:
Excluding the war with Islam, of course. And the recently appeared Sikhs…So please enlighten me… Show me wars between polytheists killing 30% of the population, as the Thirty Year War did in Germany…
France had seven religious wars in quick succession in the 16C. More than one million Cathars got exterminated in the 13C. England was at religious war for roughly a century. And so on.
However, to quote Wikipedia:
“Ancient India has no history of large scale religious violence.[11] However, the Buddhist king Ashoka (304-232 BCE) is said to have ordered killings of 18,000 Jains after someone drew a picture of Buddha bowing at the feet of Mahavira.[12][13]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_violence_in_India
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June 25, 2015 at 10:39 am |
The wiki also says
On complaint from a Buddhist devotee, Ashoka issued an order to arrest him, and subsequently, another order to kill all the Ajivikas in Pundravardhana. Around 18,000 followers of the Ajivika sect were executed as a result of this order.[6][26] Sometime later, another Nirgrantha follower in Pataliputra drew a similar picture. Ashoka burnt him and his entire family alive in their house.[26] He also announced an award of one dinara (silver coin) to anyone who brought him the head of a Nirgrantha heretic. According to Ashokavadana, as a result of this order, his own brother was mistaken for a heretic and killed by a cowherd.[6] These stories of persecutions of rival sects by Ashoka appear to be a clear fabrication arising out of sectarian propaganda.[27][28]
Partha
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June 25, 2015 at 4:37 pm |
Buddhists try to play pacifist and detached, and all that, but history shows different.
There has been too much Buddhist involved bad stuff recently. Mnyamar against Muslims latest case in point, presently greatest refugee crisis in Asia. No passion brings depression?
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June 26, 2015 at 9:37 pm |
Gods everywhere, all respectable enough to be respected, is a way to peace. Morality? Respect human emotions, they are us.
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June 25, 2015 at 7:15 am |
It’s rather daft to believe that not believing in gods, which are human inventions, somehow misses upon some of the human condition by not taking fairy tales as real.
Well Put!
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June 26, 2015 at 9:07 pm |
Thanks, Ken!
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June 25, 2015 at 9:45 am |
The Jerusalem Temple was extremely wealth, the Colosseum was build with spoils after the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
Its true that jewish monotheism is all about money, only the Yahu Temple is worth of money, this way the killed the prophets of Baal Hadad (the other Canaanite God) and Ashera (the wife of God).
The Vulcan Demon Yahu commander the jews to destroy the other Gods and Goddess, and the jews did with Christianity, Islam, Marxism, Trotskym, Neconservatism, Neoliberalism.
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June 26, 2015 at 6:25 pm |
“It’s rather daft to believe that not believing in gods, which are human inventions, somehow misses upon some of the human condition by not taking fairy tales as real.”
Humanism also being a human-invented fairy tale, too.
Whatever happened in the distant past, religion seems largely irrelevant as a root cause of human cruelty these days. People still spite, fight, kill and are frequently nasty to each other in secular nations.
Religion is now just one of the excuses used by the power hungry to whip up a frenzy and go on yet another land and resource grab. So-called “religious” wars always seemed to involve a land grab at some point, merely converting or elimating the other religion was never enough.
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June 26, 2015 at 9:12 pm |
Just in the last 24 hours, there were Islamist terrorist attacks in five countries, including France and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, at least involving as victims what one can call “First World” people. The attack by a lonely student in Tunisia killed 28 tourists (mostly German and British).
That does not take into account the mass activities of Boko Haram (= Book Forbidden), killing at least hundreds, every week. Then there is the general terror ambiance…
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June 27, 2015 at 6:58 pm |
No doubt terrorism is increasing. I’ve seen graphs where global attacks soar upwards from the early 2,000’s.
Correlation is not causation, of course… But the global inequality graph follows much the same curve.
With ISIS and Boko Haram, I think I agree with your basic line Patrice, that they are now far too serious to tolerate in the slightest. Military intervention will become inevitable, as they are not going to go away. Surely the people of a powerful nation like France will not tolerate such attacks on their people, albeit that is the minority of global terror?
Where perhaps we disagree is that I do not thing it wise to embark on a crusade to eliminate all Muslims. I don’t think there is any essential difference between all of the worlds peoples. A surgeon does not have a different manual for a Muslim or a secular humanist! There are as many willfully ignorant in a secular society as in a religious society. Free market extremists etc…
Get rid of the regimes of extreme terror…then start working on our own regimes, which operate on a rather more subtle, nebulous forms of fear.
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June 27, 2015 at 8:33 pm |
I have never propose a crusade to eliminate all Muslims. I have a neighbor I dumped my 5 year daughter on anytime, just did it last night with one minute warning. She is Muslim. Does not eat pork (hahahaha…) She knows very well I harbor evil thoughts about the Qur’an. Hey, the Qur’an also amuses me.
My point is theoretical. I have met Muslims, and even Christians, of very high morality. I personally live like a perfect Muslim in some ways. My objections are theoretical. If somebody comes and tells me all that’s in the Bible or Qur’an is the “sacred” word of dog, and dog shall be obeyed in all ways, I go berserk (like the Vikings!). That’s all.
I spent babyhood and childhood among perfect, perfectly enlightened Muslims, so it can be done. “Muslims” don’t have to obey what dog supposedly said. Where I was from, in Africa at the time, I got a Catholic (!!!!!!!!!!!!) education, but there was absolutely no difference perceived from getting a Muslim one. I thought Protestants a bit more abnormal than Muslims, actually (stiffer upper lips with Protestants!).
Africa, at the time, was dominated by SECULARISM. Saudi/USA oil money perverted deliberately all this.
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June 27, 2015 at 5:07 pm |
“Religion is now just one of the excuses used by the power hungry to whip up a frenzy”
Religion does tend to encapsulate the emotions of the group, usually in a way they can be steered, but still in deference to the deep culture. Any culture is going to have a form of religion at its core. Just as we have those elemental brain structures.
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June 27, 2015 at 8:46 pm |
Any social group has, by definition, a basic culture holding it together, and this is religion, in its generalized form.
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June 28, 2015 at 12:01 am |
So when the group gets really, really irritated…….
It gets religious.
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June 30, 2015 at 12:42 pm |
This article is ridiculous and sheer stupidity.
There was and is lots of religious violence in India throughout history, most of it is unrecorded since Indians in general didn’t record history well.
But in modern times we have real statistics.
There were conflicts between Buddhists, Hindus, and Jains.
The Buddhists were against the Vedas, many rituals, and Caste System which clashed with Hinduism.
The Buddhists believed the Jainist leader was false which clashed with Jainism.
A Jainist is recorded to have killed a chief Buddhist monk in the Buddhist Pali canons.
The Buddhists in many aspects were more similar to the Abrahamic religions.
In modern day India Hindus burn down Christian Churches and prosecute Christians, they hate Christianity, they also prosecute Muslims.
Your idea of being tolerant means being tolerant of:
– Rituals and magic, like drinking animal urine
– Incest
– Female Infanticide
– Animal sex
– Marry animals
– Viewing women as slaves and servants rather than as humans
– The Caste System, keeping the lower castes down and higher castes up
That’s what the Abrahamic religions are against which is what you support.
Brahminical supremacy is still popular in modern day India, they don’t want the Dalits to come up or achieve anything.
India still has one of the highest hunger rates in the world, due mostly because of the Caste System.
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April 30, 2020 at 9:08 am |
I grew up in a non-religious family. When I was 40-something I decided to read the Bible, just to see what the fuss was all about.
The most enlightening thing about it was to discover that God is the bad guy. For example, Pharaoh was perfectly willing to let Moses and his people go. But then, repeatedly, God “hardened his [Pharaoh’s] heart” and caused Pharaoh to oppress the Jews. God did this to his own people. Why? For “sport.” No kidding. It’s in the Bible. God went though this evil game of manipulation to “have made sport of the Egyptians.” (Exodus 10:2)
Anyone who has read a few novels, seen a few TV shows or a few movies can pretty quickly realize that God is the bad guy.
But we live in a world where the evil in Trump is not seen by millions of followers, where people make excuses for the most despicable acts. As though the world is in the grips of a death cult. We live in scary times.
Much of this was anticipated in Kurt Anderson’s book, Fantasyland.
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April 30, 2020 at 6:51 pm |
Well Trump was so bad, he opposed Reagan, and his young ally, Senator Biden, back in the 1980s… Obama (friend of mine) adulated Reagan. I despise Reagan… And the invasion of Iraq, and the causes behind that (fracking, financed by Wall Street banks)
Now your observations about Bible God are astute and cogent. Bible God, like his most recent version, Bible Allah God, is a bad guy. So it made bad-guyness… HOLY! Hence Roman emperors and later Califes were abilitated to kill at will, that made them… holy.
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