Christianity is the worlds biggest bureaucracy. Even entering the comment thread of any Christian blog or website is evidence of that little fact. Getting a comment posted through moderation is tough, let alone making an attempt to address its religious managers, can be quite futile and rarely entertaining. Controlling what is allowed to print is a big part of The Way© the truth, and the fight.
Enter Parkinson’s Law
While the law can apply to nearly every field, the gist of the law is a mathematical equation illustrating “the rate in which bureaucracies expand over time, is in opposition to its connection with the people it serves“. Eg; As the end of the British empire declined it had the greatest number of staff to manage its fewest ever number of colonies. And now as we see with Christianity providing less and less of everything it ever promised, the number of wannabes dot the landscape as churches outnumber schools 10-1.
“The demand upon a resource tends to expand to match the supply of the resource”
Simply addressing the self serving pomps who stand guard is a useless frustration. Talking to those in charge of the various schemes is the ultimate in bureaucratic stonewalling. Fully insulated, barely functioning, promises promises, while those that receive the least benefit of the empire guard the gates in hopes they’ll be chosen to rule the earth (in eventual meekness, no doubt)
Another variation of the law is this—”The amount of time that one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task”
And since Jesus is never coming, they have all the time in the world.
TheCommonAtheist 
Great post. The church is no different than any number of civilizations come and gone throughout history, eventually they collapse. Hope is a powerful elixir, not unlike stages of grief, inevitable collapse is met with denial, anger, bargaining and depression. My guess is we’re somewhere between denial and anger. Eventually a day will dawn with acceptance – the moment at which corporate religion implodes under the weight of collective hollow religious hypocrisy. Sigh.
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It took the last of the Greek myth religions 900 years to finally go totally silent, and went without a whimper. I think the only thing to shove abrahamic faith by the wayside will be similar to that, we just need a self empowering replacement and some exponents >°
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One thing that struck me when reading Procopius’ The Secret History was this. He mentions in detail about how Emperor Justinian took a lot of actions to get money. One of the things he did was go after “heretical” Christian churches, the ones that did not accept some part of “orthodoxy”. These churches were the ones that disagreed on “the nature of god” or some trifling term in “Christology”, but to anyone else they would hardly differ form each other. These churches existed under some degree of suppression and persecution, but it was usually only periodic, the state could rarely afford to really crack down on them for long. Procopius wrote about how rich these “heretical” churches were, how they owned vast estates, that their bishops practically ruled certain areas, and how they employed many people(in the bureaucracy, working on farms, running church owned businesses). They had more wealth than any one organization in the empire(including the senatorial aristocracy and the military), except maybe the official orthodox and catholic church. And keep in mind, these churches were bringing in huge amounts of money under conditions that were not ideal, the state church didn’t like them and they could expect the government to punish these churches or confiscate things from time to time.
Earlier on, there is really good evidence that Christian churches were very good at bringing in money. Bishops were fairly rich and powerful people by the 3rd century. I would say there is good evidence even before that, in Christian writings. We see a constant refrain of “obey your bishop” and “give money”. Christian leaders claimed absolute power over their flocks. Think about how “Paul” or whoever was writing reserved the authority to “hand over to Satan” anyone that had a religious disagreement with him. Or what happened to those two who did not give everything to Peter, they were struck dead. Even the writer Tertullian, fairly early, complained about the church(proto-Catholic) that he broke off from by calling it “a church of lot of bishops”. Tertullian spent the later part of his life arguing against the proto-Catholics, because he joined a new prophecy movement called the Montanists, which also became big for a while.
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That really packs some perspective there. I’ve heard recently that these types of things you mention are not from the teachings of Jesus. But Jesus offered commandments that would lead to divisive groupthinking, and by putting god as the number one adornment of your love, how we love our neighbors is up to interpretation now—of the group.
Excellent comment and perspective. Gracias.
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That comment was mine. I just messed up. I thought it was lost, so I didn’t bother trying to re-do it. Guess it ended up there after all.
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It sounded a bit like you. Not sure why you came through as anonymous. I’ve seen that happen a few times with various commentators
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Some things to note about these groups that formed around the time Christianity started. They were often organized on the basis of fictive kinship(fellow members are your “real family”). And they often demanded a flat-rate minimal contribution from members, if they were not outright collectivist. Tithing(literally paying ten percent) is a form of this. This allowed the new religions to quickly bring in money, which gave them a lot of influence.
Traditional religion in the ancient world(among the Romans and Greeks in particular) was based greatly around home worship, and after that local rituals. Your hearth and altar at home was the heart of religious life, the religious rites of each family were the rites literally closest to home. For these newer movements to start gaining a foothold, this basis of tradition first had to take some serious hits. Family and lineage mattered little to the masses of cosmopolitan cities, and even less to slaves and deportees who were stripped of their nation, their freedom, their families, their history, and their land. One thing these new movements had in common was that they modeled themselves based on fictive kinship. Fellow believers are your brothers and sisters, while seniors in the group are mothers and fathers.
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Christianity has a good framework for a powerful bureaucracy, useful for herding people. But it has some other elements that are a problem. Anyone can claim to be some new prophet or that Jesus or the holy spirit are beaming messages into their head. These can set up rival religious authorities. And there is also an apocalyptic streak observable throughout the New Testament. That is very bad, because repeated failed prophecies(as these apocalypses always are) hurt authority. Apocalyptic fanaticism leads to hostile splinter movements and people neglecting the necessities of life. Historically, Christian churches have had to suppress these tendencies.
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“Apocalyptic fanaticism leads to hostile splinter movements and people neglecting the necessities of life”
That’s a good point. The RCC has always had trouble with apocalyptic splinter groups and has tried to suppress them vigorously, with varying success rates. The problem for the RCC is that the apocalypse, i.e. the end of the world, is part of their official dogma, so they can’t simply deny it is coming. But at the same time if too many people think it is coming, oh, next Thursday, well, that would set off wide spread panic, a total breakdown of society, and complete loss of their control.
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I just received some new comments on the Headcanon post. He thinks we need to start a new religion based solely on the teachings of Jesus. It’s like dejavú all over again.
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The problem with that kind of talk is that it ignores the Bible itself. For example, that Christian who posted agreed that the Torah is full of bad laws, or things that they don’t like, anyway. I have seen this attitude or excuse in many Christians before. Do they not read it clearly in the text where it says “thus sayeth the LORD” before or after these laws? Taking it at its word, these rules were not just “made up” by some Jews, or by any human legislator. They were given by Yahweh himself in the text, and if you say Jesus is Yahweh, then Jesus gave them. That is what many early Christians believed. All the appearances of Yahweh or other figures like the angel of Yahweh, the commander of the army of Yahweh that appeared to Joshua, the burning bush, in the Old Testament were considered by them to have been Jesus. Even the title of κύριος that they gave to Jesus was taken from the word used to gloss over Yahweh’s name in Greek translations. Do they think that Yahweh is stupid, that he gave bad laws? The Bible repeatedly calls for these laws to be followed without question. When Moses had Yahweh around to consult with, Yahweh was always on the side of strict, merciless enforcement. At one point Yahweh considered just killing all of the Israelites and starting his project over with Moses. Moses had to point out how bad for his reputation as a god that would be, to get Yahweh to relent.
If Yahweh says one thing, and Jesus says the opposite? A house divided cannot stand.
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I hope you don’t mind but I used this comment and pasted it to his reply. Well said. My journey here is to remain free of contradictions and have a viable explanation of what this world is all about. That was a great recap I can stick in my folder. Thanks K.
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I think it may be best not to make such a reply to them. I never bother telling them anything like that directly, unless they are being adversarial and I want to take them down a notch. If a Christian has a “nicer” worldview, and isn’t a threat to non-Christians, that is better for me. That Christian poster was arguing against persecution of non-Christians. The last thing I would want to do is convince a Christian that they should be following the whole Bible. If they think Jesus is all about smiles and rainbows, I am happy to let them keep believing that.
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Law of diminishing returns also applies.
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Yes, that is exemplified by settling for less than raising the bar, simply to have numbers. Crowdwork will retain enough mediocrity through herdthink
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Are we to expect The discussion to happen? When the religious write or talk about other religions or denominations, atheism, or any form of doubter; the intended audience is/are those people of like mind (other believers).
That seems true for many of us. I doubt that many believers read my (our) stuff. Some, but few. As far as bureaucratic growth, I don’t know. I see the rapid growth of evangelical Protestantism as alarming, but the modest growth of outed atheism offers me little comfort. At least there are a few folks I can talk to.
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I don’t expect them to have open dialog, really. But when the post tags atheism and the writer stated “winning back millennials” to the church we’re going to have to fight! Cries the rally cry that their fighting atheism for the souls of theses young people, then the minute I say something, my comment not only disappeared, I was blocked. All I said to him was the fight would be hard because now kids have access to information. Poof! Gone. Some fight.
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The topic is so often (but not always) not open for discussion. On the other side, I have experienced some ad hominem from atheists for saying I did not regret my religious past. Blocking you must be part of the war on atheism.
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It’s not often the vast majority can cry they’re being attacked and oppressed. Religion is that exception. They literally have no faith in their faith
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Bureaucracies are fascinating things. We studied bureaucracies and how they function, expand, etc. ages ago in college and it was one of the more interesting classes I had. It was especially interesting to see how bureaucracies tend to shield the individuals who make them up from the morality of their decisions. bureaucracies seem to lose their humanity, so to speak. A bureaucracy will make decisions that are inherently immoral, decisions that the individual members of the bureaucracy would not make (most of them, anyway). Being part of the organization gives them the feeling that it absolves them of moral responsibility. It isn’t them that is making decisions that harm people, it’s the organization. They’re just following the rules so it isn’t their fault.
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Hence the break offs and startups that are regrounded in real faith. People inherently know better, but still blinded that peace will come through “doing it right” through the churches.
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“churches outnumber schools 10-1″….coincidentally, I’d just made mention of that in a recent post. Anyway, this is a brilliantly succinct synopsis of the situation. I particularly like the comment about the British Empire. And this comment hits home on a personal level: “Simply addressing the self serving pomps who stand guard is a useless frustration…” My God, I work with one! And try as I might to communicate with him in a simple, clear, easy to understand manner, I have come to the conclusion the attempt is not only pointless, but it’s bad for my health because the person frustrates me: He is a chronic liar, his responses spin off to encompass his fantasies and his logic is non sequitur. Put plainly, this Christian doesn’t make any sense!!!! So why should I try? I give up! And these people are out there breeding, voting and infesting everything!! It’s mind-boggling!!!
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George thank you. I could not remember in my ramble where I read that recently. Excellent catch.
Even the simplest points they can’t connect the dots. But, don’t give up, just quit. Haha. Great comment sir.
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It’s only mind bogglig when I attempt to comprehend. I must turn off that part of my brain because their delusions are so deep I’ll fall into the rabbit hole…
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I know the feeling. And the incessant special pleading rarely addresses the topic.
Here’s that post. I just jumped over there on your avistar. Must give you credit for that great post! https://randomwalkthroughintelligentuniverse.wordpress.com/2020/01/24/dances-with-snakes/
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Hey thanks!!!
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You’re always welcome to post relevant links here too George. My settings allow for that on purpose.
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I’m learning a lot here…and from the comments…that I can incorporate into my story moving forward!!
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I fell into a great group of free thinkers. I have really learned a lot from them—the best readers and a veritable smorgasbord of smart writers. You fit right in.
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Thanks. I’ll start following some of your commenters and trim others from my list.
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Philosophers, ex clergymen, writers, reason, shaman, polytheists, Christians, Jews, católicas, ex Muslims, and even some that go beyond the physical world into past lives and teachings of all kinds. We all have one thing in common. There may or may not be something more than atheism…but it is not god in the biblical sense.
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These are exactly the type of thinkers that will inspire my “story.” I have some delete chapters (still saved on my flash drive) with out-of-body experiences and remote viewing. I was going to exclude those concepts going forward, but now…maybe not. Could you recommend a shaman and ex-clergymen I can follow, just for starters? Particularly the Shaman.
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Loved the closing line.
The meme reminded me of The Peter Principle (which I believe was named for the disciple of Christ): In any organization (i.e. bureaucracy), an individual will rise to the level of his/her incompetency.
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Those who can’t follow, lead (in the correct and intended way, no doubt) Part of the problem is when the innovators die, the shift from leaders to managers is a fatal shift.
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Actually, it was named for a management consultant named Laurence J. Peter – but I like your definition better. 🙂
Also – Crap will expand to fill the space available. 😳
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👍😁
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Wonderfully astute observations. I love your blog. Thank you so much for all you do.
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Why thank you. It’s just a hobby really. I have this innate function where I see seemingly disparate connections in everything. Sometimes I’d like to shut it off, but that the way my mind works. Thanks again.
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considering that there seems to be an explosion in the “pastors” and not so much the sheep, I think you’ve noted a truth about religion. They all certainly want to be the leaders and want money for doing so.
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I have often been filled with deep regret that humans took it upon themselves to invent organized religion.
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Let me moderate this comment and run it through committee. I’ll have some changes for you in about 5000 years. Please take a number
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🤣 The bigotry!
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Ha ha Ha. Love you too. They all know what’s best for you just be patient. You know I have a house in Latin America, and you being from Jamaica know how thick the religion is. It’s just wow!Gullibility is a free comedy
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Religion in Jamaica is especially hilarious because clearly no one is following what it says. Our murder rates within the local population are ridiculously high.
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Panamá doesn’t really have a high murder rate, but they are dirty dogs!
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Haha, I’ve never been. Mom and grandma has. All they talk about as the shopping and the voodoo. 😅
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Quote: “And since Jesus is never coming, they have all the time in the world.” Well, now Jim, did you HAVE to attack Jesus’ sexual prowess?
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I did leave that interpretation up to the reader. It had to be you, Ark or Jeff to pick it apart. Haha
On a side note, you know where the word pussy comes form? Not the cat kind, but the other? It comes from pusillanimous, meaning cowardly or weak. And you though I meant the other one. I know I did!
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