Theology as an Exercise in Management.

[Doktor Howl]

Okay, so God makes this cosmos, a planet, and eventually a race of particularly clever monkeys.  He then turns to his workers, the angels, and says "bow before my creation; they have free will, and are thus superior."

Lucifer in accounts payable doesn't like THAT even a little, rebels, and gets the whole department cast down.  How exactly Lucifer rebelled without free will is not explained.

Meanwhile, God has told the prehensile little bastards on Earth that they can do whatever they like with their free will, so long as they don't learn right from wrong.  In short, they can do anything except make an informed decision.  A snake who may or may not have been related to Prometheus¹ comes along and explains things, for which he is cursed to travel on his belly.  God throws the humans out (starting to see a pattern, here?), and blames the entire thing on women in the workplace.

So the humans are like "whatever, we'll make our own Eden", so God drowns everyone.  The few survivors say "Meh" and go back to work.  God has a snit about it and fucks off.  The boss's kid drops in, gives us some helpful advice, but by now we've fucking HAD IT with Gods and the carpenter gets nailed to a stick.

I was thinking about this on the drive home today, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this mess is a crisis in management, rather than labor.




¹ It is worth mentioning that EVERY religion has a Prometheus figure.

[rong]

I was thinking about this on the drive home today, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this mess is a crisis in management, rather than labor.

as above, so below

[minuspace]

I guess God gets to perform his little teleological suspensions of the ethical. For the rest of us, appeals to better management are taken to stem from reason. Therein lies the rub, people smarter than me have discerned. If you grant the duffer a capacity to reason, the principle of autonomy gets to ride as well, no exceptions (except One.) God does not require us to be responsible/culpable in order to exact punishment, clearly, transcending reason. What this provides is a regulatory system that initially looks good on paper and then reveals itself to be rationally unsound and ultimately unjustifiable. But heck, when it's all a conditioned response, when not even my own sin is original, what's new and who cares?

And then the madness came for me as I found myself praying to a glorified thermostat.

[Brother Mythos]

I was thinking about this on the drive home today, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this mess is a crisis in management, rather than labor.

Interesting.

So, for once, the Engineering Department doesn’t get blamed for inherent design flaws?

And, as usual, Quality Control takes no responsibility whatsoever, because they can’t inspect quality into the finished product?

[LMNO]

And then the madness came for me as I found myself praying to a glorified thermostat.

Amongst the chaff, wheat.

Newsfeed, Big Words, etc etc.

[P3nT4gR4m]

The thing with god is, he's exactly the kind of of bullshit explanation you'd expect to arise from the fevered dreams of malnourished cavemen. Either that or he's a real thing with an intellect that's in no way capable of creating a respectable mudpie, let alone a universe. So where does that leave us?

There may or may not be some form of god. Yet. Pretty much everything other than that is 53'rd hand rumour, based on the incoherent ramblings of a bunch of pre literate neanderthals with a healthy mix of authoritarian propaganda thrown in for good measure.

Fuck god. Fuck the clowns who believe in him. Yes I know that's probably the majority of my species. Fuck them good and hard. They earned it.

[Doktor Howl]

The thing with god is, he's exactly the kind of of bullshit explanation you'd expect to arise from the fevered dreams of malnourished cavemen. Either that or he's a real thing with an intellect that's in no way capable of creating a respectable mudpie, let alone a universe. So where does that leave us?

There may or may not be some form of god. Yet. Pretty much everything other than that is 53'rd hand rumour, based on the incoherent ramblings of a bunch of pre literate neanderthals with a healthy mix of authoritarian propaganda thrown in for good measure.

Fuck god. Fuck the clowns who believe in him. Yes I know that's probably the majority of my species. Fuck them good and hard. They earned it.

The thing to remember about God is the same as when you talk about aliens.  They by definition are not human and cannot be trusted.  Shoot first.  Or, if you're a Scotsman, just hit them in a face with a brick.

[The Wizard Joseph]

Took a while to think on this thread before replying. I agree that there's a management crisis in heaven and the earth. Clearly it's essentially a communication issue as I see it. I'm not so sure that the "angels" lack free will at all. They're by definition obedient. You can't have real obedience without the choice to disobey somehow existing. If there's obedience there's also something to obey, God or rules set by God.

I imagine that the rules were enforced mainly through keeping most angels ignorant of the weighty choice to obey or disobey. Much of the rest would be them essentially policing each other in an environment where privacy and time for introspection are extremely rare indeed, much less the opportunity to do anything other than what you're told, what you were made for.

Then along comes humanity and their complete lack of rules of conduct other than biological survival imperatives. Angels exposed to enough of that sort of thing might start getting ideas about themselves.. So at some point God orders a hands off policy that doesn't go over well with many of his workers that have been on The Project, some of them since The Beginning. They see it as THEIRS as much as God's.

This dissent descends into true outrage when God openly and flatly states that these primates are now on a level nearer to God than they are, functionally making them subordinate to humans who barely know how to clean themselves properly, much less how to make the fundamental pieces of the cosmos play together in tune. As though the Conductor of a grand Orchestra decided one day to let a monkey do His job and expected His first chair musicians to just do their best to follow along without complaint.

Funny thing is that the monkey at first just sat there picking its butt for the first few hundred thousand years and the "joke" was tolerated, the Boss is known to be quite eccentric after all. Then eventually the monkey began to realize that it could make sounds happen with the stick it held and began to wave it around wildly. Fast forward to today after several walk-outs, rage-quits, and even attempts to kill the monkey and the monkey is actually conducting the Orchestra, but in a completely mad fashion sure to wreck the remaining players, or so it might seem.

[bpseudopod]

We got one problem here, bub.

¹ It is worth mentioning that EVERY religion has a Prometheus figure.

What's the Discordian Prometheus figure? Closest I can think is Greyface and he's basically the opposite of one.

[Doktor Howl]

We got one problem here, bub.

¹ It is worth mentioning that EVERY religion has a Prometheus figure.

What's the Discordian Prometheus figure? Closest I can think is Greyface and he's basically the opposite of one.

Eris is, of course.  Nothing says she can't do both.

[Doktor Howl]

I was thinking about this on the drive home today, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this mess is a crisis in management, rather than labor.

Interesting.

So, for once, the Engineering Department doesn’t get blamed for inherent design flaws?

And, as usual, Quality Control takes no responsibility whatsoever, because they can’t inspect quality into the finished product?

There doesn't seem to be any flaws in the design, at least flaws that would cause the problems being discussed.

Also, when you're omnipotent, who's on your QC team?

[Brother Mythos]

I was thinking about this on the drive home today, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this mess is a crisis in management, rather than labor.

Interesting.

So, for once, the Engineering Department doesn’t get blamed for inherent design flaws?

And, as usual, Quality Control takes no responsibility whatsoever, because they can’t inspect quality into the finished product?

There doesn't seem to be any flaws in the design, at least flaws that would cause the problems being discussed.

Also, when you're omnipotent, who's on your QC team?

Okay, I’ll buy that.

However, isn’t Lucifer more of an Accounts Receivable kind of guy? I would think the collecting of souls is more of a normal Accounts Receivable function, than an Accounts Payable responsibility.

[The Wizard Joseph]

I was thinking about this on the drive home today, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this mess is a crisis in management, rather than labor.

Interesting.

So, for once, the Engineering Department doesn’t get blamed for inherent design flaws?

And, as usual, Quality Control takes no responsibility whatsoever, because they can’t inspect quality into the finished product?

There doesn't seem to be any flaws in the design, at least flaws that would cause the problems being discussed.

Also, when you're omnipotent, who's on your QC team?

Okay, I’ll buy that.

However, isn’t Lucifer more of an Accounts Receivable kind of guy? I would think the collecting of souls is more of a normal Accounts Receivable function, than an Accounts Payable responsibility.

Was

[Doktor Howl]

I was thinking about this on the drive home today, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this mess is a crisis in management, rather than labor.

Interesting.

So, for once, the Engineering Department doesn’t get blamed for inherent design flaws?

And, as usual, Quality Control takes no responsibility whatsoever, because they can’t inspect quality into the finished product?

There doesn't seem to be any flaws in the design, at least flaws that would cause the problems being discussed.

Also, when you're omnipotent, who's on your QC team?

Okay, I’ll buy that.

However, isn’t Lucifer more of an Accounts Receivable kind of guy? I would think the collecting of souls is more of a normal Accounts Receivable function, than an Accounts Payable responsibility.

Well, not really.  Millions of poorly-behaved monkeys show up looking for disbursement.

[minuspace]

I was thinking about this on the drive home today, and I have come to the conclusion that all of this mess is a crisis in management, rather than labor.

Interesting.

So, for once, the Engineering Department doesn’t get blamed for inherent design flaws?

And, as usual, Quality Control takes no responsibility whatsoever, because they can’t inspect quality into the finished product?

There doesn't seem to be any flaws in the design, at least flaws that would cause the problems being discussed.

Also, when you're omnipotent, who's on your QC team?

Okay, I’ll buy that.

However, isn’t Lucifer more of an Accounts Receivable kind of guy? I would think the collecting of souls is more of a normal Accounts Receivable function, than an Accounts Payable responsibility.

Yeah, souls don't fetch like what they once did.