The purpose of religion is to prevent the exercise of a genuine morality by too many people - one based on empathy and the mutual respect for the absolute autonomy of the individual - by supplanting it with a manufactured morality that is “intelligently designed” by the architects of a given society.
Those architects are always the rich and powerful, who keep and increase their wealth and power by always exempting themselves from having to obey the rules they ensure are imposed on everyone else, and always in stricter terms as one moves down the economic ladder. This is why St Augustine mentioned the difference between Kings and pirates is that one does with an armada what the other does with but a single ship.
Modern societies are structured around the ownership of property, for example, but there is never any serious consideration of the legitimacy of the distribution of that ownership, let alone whether property ownership itself is by its very nature immoral. So, people just accept such a system as legitimate, which is how and why slavery was accepted by so many people for so many centuries before there was any serious question of it by the majority of people in those societies.
But when you consider the fact that much of accumulated wealth is the result of the accumulation of stolen property, along with the various forms of slavery that were subsequently used to amass fortunes by exploiting those the law refused to protect or even recognize as equals, and when you further consider that laws were created to protect property rights far more than human rights, it becomes clear that for our form of society to exist at all there must be an inequitable distribution of wealth and power.
In a Ponzi scheme, as such, there must be more losers than winners, more suckers than sharks, or else the system wouldn’t work. If more people won in Las Vegas than lost, there would be no Las Vegas. So to, this is the case with America in general. But people go to Vegas nevertheless for the fun of it, and because they occasionally win more than they loose, and most importantly of all, because they want to believe in the game itself.
Religion works to sell the game, and to convince people that it is perfectly fair and even moral. And when it is ever unfair and immoral, religion teaches people to accept it anyway, because Jesus forgives and so must they, if they hope to have any chance of reaching heaven. And most of all, religion conditions people to accept their chains by convincing them that God will eventually even the score in the end.
Those architects are always the rich and powerful, who keep and increase their wealth and power by always exempting themselves from having to obey the rules they ensure are imposed on everyone else, and always in stricter terms as one moves down the economic ladder. This is why St Augustine mentioned the difference between Kings and pirates is that one does with an armada what the other does with but a single ship.
Modern societies are structured around the ownership of property, for example, but there is never any serious consideration of the legitimacy of the distribution of that ownership, let alone whether property ownership itself is by its very nature immoral. So, people just accept such a system as legitimate, which is how and why slavery was accepted by so many people for so many centuries before there was any serious question of it by the majority of people in those societies.
But when you consider the fact that much of accumulated wealth is the result of the accumulation of stolen property, along with the various forms of slavery that were subsequently used to amass fortunes by exploiting those the law refused to protect or even recognize as equals, and when you further consider that laws were created to protect property rights far more than human rights, it becomes clear that for our form of society to exist at all there must be an inequitable distribution of wealth and power.
In a Ponzi scheme, as such, there must be more losers than winners, more suckers than sharks, or else the system wouldn’t work. If more people won in Las Vegas than lost, there would be no Las Vegas. So to, this is the case with America in general. But people go to Vegas nevertheless for the fun of it, and because they occasionally win more than they loose, and most importantly of all, because they want to believe in the game itself.
Religion works to sell the game, and to convince people that it is perfectly fair and even moral. And when it is ever unfair and immoral, religion teaches people to accept it anyway, because Jesus forgives and so must they, if they hope to have any chance of reaching heaven. And most of all, religion conditions people to accept their chains by convincing them that God will eventually even the score in the end.
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