Evolutions in faith. The Bible or ACIM?

Are the secularly “high priests” of podcasting actually the agents of the “creative destruction” that will lead to the demise of traditional religious institutions?

It began with a simple question.

This morning, a Facebook friend posed the question to his Christian friends about whether Christians are supposed to judge others.

I am not a practicing Christian, though I was raised as a Roman Catholic. I found my friend’s question to be odd. I was taught as a child that the only allowable judge was God as depicted in the Last Judgement by Hieronymus Bosch,  and Michelangelo. I did not think that my friend’s question was up for debate. Then it dawned on me that almost everything in the Bible was been subjected to endless study and interpretation by thousands of religious scholars and clergy.

The Bible is an old book.

It was written centuries ago by men who were literate, are rarity in their day. It was the profession of those scholars to interpret, synthesize and transcribe the folklore of their day plus transcripts written by past scholars. Their work became the Bible which was quickly and universally accepted as the gospel of Christian churches. This book of parables and moral teachings was successfully sold to the public as “the Word of God”- a claim that was readily believed by the vast populations of people who could neither read or write.

The growth of religions as business franchises

Of course, priests were respected and even revered by the many illiterates. Their parishioners believed the sermons of priests to be ‘The Truth” that was spoken through them from a supernatural, all-wise, all-knowing Source.

Over the centuries, the “business models”, dogma, ceremonies and practices that were derived from the authority of the Bible and the priesthood (“the ordained apostles of Christ”) evolved to become very sophisticated. The churches, synagogues and mosques became increasingly wealthy and influential. In effect, these “houses of the Holy” have all evolved into successful business enterprises that specialized in selling “hope” and their version of “salvation”. I think of them as international franchise operators who established local chapters to serve frightened peoples in local communities everywhere.

Today, priests and religious scholars continue to play the ordained role of “God’s spokesperson” for millions of people. The market need for their services remains very strong especially in modern times when fear (aka the “devil”) lurks around every corner and under every bed.

The emergence of secular religions

The need for an existential message of hope in the fear-infested lives of millions of peoples has spawned new forms of secular religions. These are reaching into the lives of religious and non-religious communities alike.

The Climate Challenge Alarmism community is an example. It is very powerful form of secular “religion” that began in the 1990s and has been evolving along the same tried and true path that religions of the past (~4000 of them) took.

Look for my soon-to-be-releases ebook “What to do about Climate Change - a Libertarian proposal” for more on this topic.

ACIM as a quasi-religious, quasi-secular “faith”.

I have been profoundly influenced by a rarely considered metaphysical path that was inspired by the book: A Course In Miracles (ACIM). I consider it to be a much superior source of Life wisdom than the Bible. ACIM was written in the late 1970s and offers a sophisticated blend of spiritual and metaphysical concepts found in the Bible but it presents more profound and lucid explanations of Creation and Life. The writing is very clear and direct (no need for interpretations by scholars). It is especially accessible to our modern, highly-educated populations if they are willing to consider “the world” from a perspective that is not even remotely similar to the Bible.

To me, the Bible is just another man-made compendium of artifacts of consciousness just like every other book ever published, including ACIM. Prior to the creation of the printing press, people learned from each other through story-telling and gossip. Their attention spans were much longer than people of the post-Internet age because competition for their attention was comparatively non-existent.

The ACIM requires focussed attention to allow the student’s consciousness to absorb its lessons. From my personal experience over 30 years, I have encountered very few people who are prepared to invest the required level of attention because it takes time for the story to inform one’s consciousness to a sufficient level as to find its way into genuine understanding and the insights that arise from it.

For this reason, most people who know of ACIM possess a Twitterized understanding of it.

People have always loved stories.

The entertainment industry thrives because people can readily sit through a 2-hour movie with a great plot, or a weekly series of one hour shows that comprises many episodes which are released over several seasons, or even half hour sitcoms with satisfying content. For news items that lack an engaging storyline, however, information must be presented in snippets and sound bytes to capture the Twitterized attention span that has become so prevalent today.

One of the greatest harms to come out of Social Media has been the reduced attention spans of most people. Typically, it is only long enough to absorb a single dimension of a news topic. Politicians and media organizations, like the CBC, know this and have adapted their messaging to accommodate this limited attention span. They understand that citizens are too busy with modern life to enjoy the luxury of prolonged focussed attention on the news. This is true even if complex scientific or economic topics, which seriously affect everyone, are part of the message. This Twitterization of attention spans only allows room for “news briefs”. It’s difficult to get most people to invest the time and attention on the kinds of information content that offer multi-dimensional and multi-perspective viewpoints. Such content would genuinely help people to become truly well-informed on important topics.

Long form podcasts are educational while engaging us in stories.

The enormous popularity of podcasters like Dr. Jordan Peterson can be explained because he offers long-form episodes (typically ~ 90 minutes) in which he is both a skilled story-teller and a public intellectual capable of credibly presenting facts and thought-provoking analysis.

Jordan Peterson has emerged on the public stage as a market-ordained, secular “high priest” who delivers compelling and popular “sermons” of both a religious and non-religious nature . His podcasts reveal to a broad and growing audience a well-considered formula for living “the good and meaningful life” as informed by the latest secular god - knowledge derived from Science as well as faith.

Many other secular “high priests” have also found their niche, including Joe Rogan, Dan Bongino, Tom Woods, and too many to list. Will these entrepreneurs eventually build enterprises that will eventually cannibalize the 4200 traditional religions that were solely faith-based and that found and grew their markets in the pre-Internet Age? Are they the agents of “creative destruction” that will be in the vanguard of transformative Digital forces that will completely reshape human civilization and its “religious” institutions?

Enter the concept of “Mass Formation” hypnosis.

The reason for the Bible’s great success over the past millennium can be explained as a “mass formation” hypnosis that began over a thousand years ago. Read the Psychology of Totalitarianism by Dr. Mattias Desmet if you want a deep dive into the history and nature of the “mass formation” phenomenon which has shaped human communities for a very long time. I suspect that the new, emerging secular “religions” and “high priests” will succeed with the aid of the “mass formation” phenomenon. Desmet tells its story in a very compelling, science-informed way. He reveals its powerful influence on many civilizational shifts as well as smaller examples of social, economic and cultural metamorphosis.

As a Substack writer, even I am contributing to the evolution of ideas in this space. This Substack essay offers another theory about the nature of God and Creation.

https://open.substack.com/pub/gbalfour/p/the-big-bang-theory-is-wrong?r=16emgc&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web