tips for budding deities
One of those little ironies of life is that although I’m pretty much opposed to the notion of organised religion, I’ve always fancied setting my own up. For such an exercise, I think it’s important to try and learn some lessons from the mistakes of those who have gone before you. Here I present my 5 golden rules:
1. Consistency is key to credulity. Obviously I want a nice shiny book enshrining my laws for humanity but it would be a bit sloppy if I suggested one thing in one place and the opposite in another. Like it would be kind of weird to suggest jealously, violence and genocide are okay in one part of my book and then just concentrate on love and peace in another part.
2. Choose your followers carefully. I don’t want people who can’t follow the basics of what I say. It would be awful, for example, if I wanted to convey it’s cool to be poor, and then my biggest group of followers became one of the wealthiest institutions on earth.
3. Always think ahead. I’d look really foolish if I gave my minions careful rules about how to slaughter animals for food, only to discover that people finally discover eating animals is immoral a few years later. Likewise, giving advice on how to go about slave owning, only to discover it’s actually horrendously unethical must bring about a slight twinge of embarrassment.
4. Don’t say rude things about half the population. My religion will have a feminine glow to it but I don’t want to exclude men, as their inclusion will boost my minions. I guess if I tell women to look after men and be nice to them, the fact that I tell the men to just shut up when women are doing important stuff probably won’t be off-putting at all.
5. Write entertaining stories to tell people where they came from but don’t make them too silly, just in case science or logic come along to ridicule you. That seems fairly obvious. Being really brainy it hopefully won’t be an issue for me. If only I were omniscient …
There we go. I hope these are helpful for any other budding deities out there. If you can think of anything I’ve missed, please let me know!
Peace.
I actually gave up this notion at this point: “can’t follow the basics of what I say”! 🙂 p.s. – you are on a roll this week. a little more sarcasm and you just may fill the salt & pepper shakers! 🙂
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Yes, I’m feeling very ranty this week. Luckily I don’t have time to tap them all out.
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I always fantasized about creating my own religion. I think it’s a common trend in atheists. Mine would have lots of sex in it, because who in their right mind would want to join a religion where sex was frowned upon?
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That’s an interesting angle. Certainly a religion with lots of sex in it may have more mass appeal. I’m inclined to think that *some* of the guidance provided by the Bible made sense in the days before reliable birth control was available. But, again, this points out the importance of rule number 3: Always look ahead.
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And did you read about that Christian cult in Mexico?
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No, I didn’t. Is this a genuine story or a cheeky trap?
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Sorry, missed this comment. No, this is genuine. It was all over the internet a fortnight ago. Here’s ust one article.
http://www.examiner.com/article/sex-slavery-cult-14-among-defenders-of-christ-detained-new-mexico
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Yeah, I think you shamed David Yerle into silence there. Not cool to have lots of sex in your cult!
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Love the post! However, for me the problem was also allready in 2. Because no matter what you say or do, when people start to follow an idea with religious zeal, they are bound to mess it up. You can choose your followers now, but if you do not live eternally, a lot of nutjobs will join even your clever cult once you are gone, and who knows they will tell others you have told by spiritual connection. They might be as mild as claiming long hair is unnatural, even if you had a long hair, or it might get a lot worse, they might choose some stand in for you on the earth after you have gone, who would weild your authority over people. There are allways clever demagogues, who can take over a religion and if it grows big they will surely lead their sects against each other in bloody rampage unless a secular society prevents them from doing so.
As for the Mexican cult, how do we know it is not the second coming of Christ? Sex slaves are all over the Bible and such stuff is not condemned anywhere in the book. Even Jesus (who used to hang out with prostitutes) said, that he has not come to brake the old law, but to evoke it… Is this not simply a replay of the events 2000 years ago, when the society morally condemned Jesus by the common standards of their time and sentenced him to suffer a punishment?
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Thanks! That’s an excellent point about wayward followers. No matter how carefully I craft the rules, some ‘clever’ theologian will come along and extract bizarre meaning from the simplest instructions, then a few mis-translations will occur and everyone will be doing the opposite of what I suggested!
Are there really sex slaves all over the Bible? That would be worth an interesting post by someone who can bothered. Anyway, I would suggest that the original Jesus was more prone to displaying a progressive morality for the time. There’s not much progressive about the abuse of power and coercing or forcing vulnerable women to partake in sexual activities on the premise that a deity thinks it’s a good idea.
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Maybe I should write a post about sex slaves in the Bible. The moral tribalism presented in this very old book is not surprising unless one tries to reconcile it with modern morals, or natural ethics, not to speak about a universal demiurgi, wich supposedly created all the galaxies by whim of thought in a timeless existance.
However, as it is a history of a very violent conquest by one tribal nation, it incoroprates all sorts of laws of how captive women should be treated. Perhaps it is only natural that the agressive party imprisoning enemies “illegal fighters” and their civillian folk would abuse such power over other people, but it is interresting how the “moral” justification to all harm done to other people is drawn from this ultimate source for morals. A god, that supposedly demanded the conquest to take place in the first place.
The rules concerning sexual treatment of captive women, when they are not to be murdered out right in a genosidal frenzy of zealous mindset, is abhorring in several places in the Bible. So much so, I would think it is justified to speak about sex slaves. It is horrible enough not to regard a book that endorses such as “the good book”, nor should it be able to hide behind such apologetics, as “god had to tell these primitive minded people to act this way because otherwise it would have been even worse”.
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I think you should definitely do that post – sounds fascinating. It would be really interesting to have the references and historical context. Someone did a ‘God Loves Killing Children’ post or two the other day, which was just horrific. I think Christians are going to have to completely dump the Old Testament, it’s just too embarrassing to pretend their god is benevolent.
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