“Religions are in the death business: preparing people for death, pretending to send them off after they’ve died, making believe they know what happens afterward, and explaining to the dead person’s relatives where they think their loved one might be now. Without death most religions don’t have a whole lot to live for.”
— Sit Down and Shut Up (Brad Warner)
This post is more about YouTube than Bertrand Russell, or Christianity for that matter. The lecture above was first delivered on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall.
I’ve heard of Bertrand Russell most of my adult life but don’t think I knew more than he was a philosopher and mathematician. The Wikipedia entry above probably has as much information as I would have gotten in an undergraduate course. And the lecture above (36 minutes) was fascinating.
I’ve been posting videos to YouTube almost since the beginning (February 2005. I uploaded my first video in February of 2006). And, like most people, I’ve spent a fair amount of time watching videos there. More and more, it’s the first place I look for how to do something. And learn something. Yes, there’s no shortage of junk but the more YouTube (and Google) learn about my interests, the more interesting and useful videos fill my stream.
While network and cable news gives us endless talking heads and pundits in 3 to 5 minutes “packages,” YouTube has few constraints. For better or worse, it has become my primary source for news.
New York Times: “P.R.R.I.’s 2020 Census of American Religion, based on a survey of nearly half a million people, shows a precipitous decline in the share of the population identifying as white evangelical, from 23 percent in 2006 to 14.5 percent last year. […] In 2020, as in every year since 2013, the largest religious group in the United States was the religiously unaffiliated.” […] “In addition to shrinking as a share of the population, white evangelicals were also the oldest religious group in the United States, with a median age of 56.” […] “This sense of ownership of America just runs so deep in white evangelical circles. The feeling that it’s slipping away has created an atmosphere of rage, resentment and paranoia.” […] “If they can’t own the country, they’re ready to defile it.”
It’s a little surprising how many cults I’ve seen come and go over the years. Heaven’s Gate, Branch Davidians, Peoples Temple, Aleph (formerly Aum Shinrikyo), Moonies. And let’s not forget Scientology. Yes, most of the members considered these religious sects. But who you gonna believe, me or some guy in a cult?
A fascinating essay in The New Yorker Magazine (What Makes A Cult A Cult?) got me thinking about cults. A few of my favorite bits from the piece:
“One stratagem favored by Keith Raniere, the leader of the New York-based self-help cult NXIVM, was to tell the female disciples in his inner circle that they had been high-ranking Nazis in their former lives, and that having yogic sex with him was a way to shift the residual bad energy lurking in their systems.”
“A great many people were, after all, able to resist his spiral-eyed ministrations: they met him, saw a sinister little twerp with a center part who insisted on being addressed as “Vanguard,” and, sooner or later, walked away.”
“Few of us believe in our heart of hearts that Amy Carlson, the recently deceased leader of the Colorado-based Love Has Won cult, who claimed to have birthed the whole of creation and to have been, in a previous life, a daughter of Donald Trump, could put us under her spell.”
Easy to laugh at these folks but they were never funny (and getting less so). Down in Jonestown, old Jim sometimes conducted “White Nights.”
During such events, Jones would sometimes give the Jonestown members four options: attempt to flee to the Soviet Union, commit “revolutionary suicide”, stay in Jonestown and fight the purported attackers, or flee into the jungle.
The Soviet Union is no more so I’m thinking I might flee into the jungle.
Recommended reading: Frat House for Jesus. The Entity Behind C Street.
