The gods and technology

[Clive]

What with gods stealing fire and giving it to humans, and cargo cults, this seems obvious.

Big gods and empires.

What are the exceptions?

[Clive]

As a firm believer in the theory that music’s evolution follows the path of technological progress (the Vox distortion pedal begat Hendrix and the face-melting solo, the Linn drum begat the Human League and 80s pop and so on), I had put this down to the fact that artists at the cutting edge these days work alone, by night (music doesn’t pay much, so they all need day jobs), on a laptop or home studio. That’s not a qualitative judgement, by the way. As much new music as ever is excellent – but, I believe, the circumstances of its construction leaves an audible imprint.

Listen to the Clash and, along with other things, you will hear traces of their cultural context – an alternative scene which was collective, political and urban. The sound of the capital now (artists like Azekel, Kwes and Deptford Goth) is almost the opposite – languid and nocturnal, conjuring the hypnagogic state between waking and sleeping, occasionally becoming claustrophobic. It sounds isolated. Musically and lyrically it speaks to the modern city at night and a creative community whose members now mostly work alone – a product of financial necessity as much as an individualist culture. The days of local rehearsal rooms and recording studios are on the wane thanks to rocketing property prices and technological advances (though Kwes has a cool-sounding place in a remodelled freight container).

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle ... en-laverne

I get the impression religious studies are in a backwater, and are unaware of work that is happening in other disciplines.

Is it not obvious that what is and is not in something is real evidence of its context?

[Clive]

I am attempting to be clear about gestalt here - foreground and background issues, and how concepts have "morphed" over time. Not being clear about the assumptions people used is critical.

My argument is that "celestial Christ" is also a mistake, unless it can be shown that "Paul" was using ideas of the gods being "other". Are people using monist ideas of one universe with various gods, angels, heavens and earths being made of variations of basically the same elements of fire air water earth aether or two world ideas of the gods up there and the humans down here?

So Christianity is actually more of a geometric problem of how to fit back together the heavens and the earth. The Christian theologians truly believed their "christ' was a philosophers stone that did fix everything - death where is thy sting.

So putting christ in the heavens - which one by the way - or at Golgotha are only theatrical scene devices. The point is that christ's sacrifice - on a cross - has caused an alchemic transformation of bringing together the heavens and the earth, conquering death, forgiving sins, enabling the lion to lay down with the lamb. Pretty powerful stuff, but all an oriental cult gone world wide.

What are the technologies and ideas that specific writers are using? Are we clear we are not misinterpreting them by using concepts that did not exist then? What is the evolutionary track of religions in relation to technologies, thinking, political structures?

[Leucius Charinus]

What is the evolutionary track of religions in relation to technologies, thinking, political structures?

Codex, Printing Press, Internet. The "Church Organisation slash Industry" has followed and used the latest technology. Constantine's Bible is an example of the codex. Some people think the Christians invented the codex. The Index Librorum Prohibitorum (ILP) is an example of a printed book. The catholic church was supposed to cease renewed publication of the ILP c.1966 CE and the printed books may have stopped. But I think Ratzinger moved a version of the ILP onto a website.


Be well




LC

[Clive]

Just reading how Claudius got the Senate to worship him, and how he would dress up as various gods.

Is that not also an invention? An emperor god?

I read in anthropology a classic story of the effects of the steel axe in Australia. What were the effects of translating Jewish stories, a western emperor using eastern ideas, of Greece and Rome meeting Persia, of technological change in creating new forms of the gods?

What was going on at the time of Islam? Is part of the problem that some technologies like books survive better than others and therefore our understanding of the past is badly skewed because the preponderance of evidence is of certain types?

[Clive]

Isn't Protestantism, instead of as Weber put it, enabling the Protestant Work Ethic, better seen the other way round, as codifying and supporting wanted attitudes and beliefs that already existed because of exploring and inventing?

Shouldn't the same sorts of questions be asked about the gestalt of religions?

[Clive]

Religions as the just so stories of societies?

[Clive]

Religion as a technology itself, to enable power relationships, to control, persuade, propagandise? Priest as engineers?

[Leucius Charinus]

Just reading how Claudius got the Senate to worship him, and how he would dress up as various gods.

Is that not also an invention? An emperor god?

?


Didn't Nero call forward the Olympic Games, competed in every event and win them all?

Didn't Nero mint coins like the rest of the emperors before and after him?

Wasn't it Augustus who started putting his image on coins and wasn't it along with the idea "Son if the Divine JS"

How do you address an emperor? My Lord God Caesar?

I read in anthropology a classic story of the effects of the steel axe in Australia. What were the effects of translating Jewish stories, a western emperor using eastern ideas, of Greece and Rome meeting Persia, of technological change in creating new forms of the gods?

Canonised holy writs were useful for the Hebrews, the Sassanid Persians, the Christians and the Moslems.

It's like the Olympic Games of Books. One Book wins hands down.

What was going on at the time of Islam? Is part of the problem that some technologies like books survive better than others and therefore our understanding of the past is badly skewed because the preponderance of evidence is of certain types?

When Islam was being forged the regime had at its disposal the effect of the Bible on the Roman Empire. The codex was high technology. One Bible or one Quran was worth a legion of armed troops for most geographical areas. Our past is skewed and utterly corrupted as a direct result of working with the literary evidence which has been preserved by the "Church Industries" from antiquity. Hence the importance of archaeology, C14 and other forms of ancient historical evidence.

IMO the Bible and the Quaran need also to be closed and viewed as human manufactured codices a product of the technology of an Orwellian antiquity. Nothing inside these codices can be trusted to reconstruct their political history. Their political history must be derived from ancient historical evidence outside of these texts.

Be well,




LC

[Leucius Charinus]

Clive,

I think you missed out a reference to the church organisation/industry of <SELECT YOUR CHOICE OF CHURCH ORGANISATION/INDUSTRY HERE> in your OP.

On a statistical basis God appears to most people on planet Earth via the intercession of some specific "church organisation/industry". The church organisations are male dominated organisations of human beings, which claim an extremely authoritative precedent via historical lineage back to a specific historical "Divine Institute" named in their Holy Books and Histories. For the Christians this "Divine Institute" was the "School who wrote the Greek New Testament".

The organisation provides services and information in the tertiary sector (of industry) and is thus also a competitor in industry.

Nothing has changed. In fact the church organisation, being extremely rich, could afford to keep up with the latest technologies, such as the codex and then the printing press and then the Latin epigraphic remains and then the internet.

God and technology?

Hmmm ..... do you know the historical account of how Diocletan's pagan priests' direct comms link to the gods was hacked by the prayers of the Christians?

It's really cool. Besides being claimed by some to be the inventors of the codex technology, the Christian's prayers here proved to be a technological success over the pagan priests' control of events.






LC