9 ms·

Religion gets spread the same way. Some people benefit.

by hux_ 9y ago

simonh 9y ago
That’s a very specific, very broad claim. Can you explain how (apparently all) religions structure and market their pyramidal incentive schemes? I’m not currently active in any organised religion, but I have been for long periods of time and didn’t really notice any pyramidal incentives. In fact there didn’t seem to be much in the way of proselytising at all and I was certainly not involved in doing so. What was I missing?
- andy_ppp 9y ago
  Hmmm... https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/us-religion-worth-1-trillion-study-economy-apple-google https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/201... NB I hate Google for breaking the above URL but I’m tired of fixing them...
  - poizan42 9y ago
    Here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/us-religion-worth-1-trillion-study-economy-apple-google https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/us-religion-wo...
  - simonh 9y ago
    Some religions are wealthy and maybe you don't like that, fine. How is religion in general a form of pyramid selling though? I'm sure some religions are organised like that, or are used to run such schemes, but the claim seemed to be about religion in general. One particular religion, or groups of religions wasn't specified.
    - andy_ppp 9y ago
      The reward for the Ponzi scheme is the ultimate prize isn’t it; who wouldn’t want to live in paradise forever. All religions run this scheme, as far as I’m aware?
- willvarfar 9y ago
  Well, those who spread the religion gain ego boosting status as preachers or such and, often, financial reward too. Lots of vicars with posh cars and TV drives to buy the bishop a private jet etc.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Bishops don't have private planes. The catholic church has its own set of faults, and it is very rich. But they also have smart PR people, and a pope who doesn't like luxury, and they keep their bishops on a short leash. Edit: I thought "bishop" was a specifically catholic title. It appears that some televangelists may have misappropriated not just the faith, but also the title.
    - willvarfar 9y ago
      Just a quick googling for private plane bishops http://dustoffthebible.com/Blog-archive/2015/10/28/15-religious-leaders-that-make-more-money-getting-out-of-bed-than-youll-make-all-year/ http://dustoffthebible.com/Blog-archive/2015/10/28/15-religi... - not Catholic, but still..
    - tialaramex 9y ago
      Most people think "Pope" is a Catholic title too, but Discordians believe all people (not even just Discordians) are Popes, and the crossover means that members of the Church of the SubGenius often acknowledge such Popes too. Anyway, Catholicism is a lot bigger than the Roman Catholic Church. You have other very explicitly Catholic churches such as the Eastern Orthodox Church, and you also have faiths like Anglicanism, which are a weird hybrid where most (Roman) Catholics would consider them protestant, but they refer to themselves internally as a "Holy Catholic church", they have Bishops too (but no Pope, their spiritual head is for historical reasons the Queen of England) and so on.
  - simonh 9y ago
    You are completely missing the point. I could say that of politics, academia, capitalism, country music. What has any of this got to do with pyramid selling?
- fpig 9y ago
  You're right, relatively few adults these days convert because someone "sold" them on the religion and in my majority-catholic country the church doesn't even make any serious attempt to do this or tell their followers to do this. But christianity and islam are still the biggest MLM schemes in the world, however they work slightly differently. Instead of being incentivized to recruit people around you, you are incentivized to create your own recruits by having as many children as possible and it's absolutely expected that you will "recruit" them. Also they love proselytizing (religious education etc) in schools, even though they don't care about doing it to adults. They know children are softer targets, and if they don't convert them before they reach adulthood, they're way less likely to succeed. Basically it's all about proselytizing to children instead of adults. Get them while they're young!
  - simonh 9y ago
    I get that you don't like religion, but how is it a pyramid scheme where e.g. Humanism, political beliefs, a love of Country Music, or any one of a million other beliefs or preferences aren't? It seems to me to be an extraordinarily specific and weak claim.
    - fpig 9y ago
      Because the followers are supposed to make kids and recruit them into the church at the earliest possible age. They don't want it to be about preference, they want to "lock them in" before they start thinking for themselves. This is literally a part of the catholic religion, you're expected to try to have children and expected to recruit them. It is not a part of any of your examples.
      - simonh 9y ago
        Teaching children your culture is a pyramid selling scheme? Got it.
        AstralStorm 9y ago
        Religion is not the same as culture, and definitely is not the entirety of it. Nor should be. Anabaptist out of Christian sects had the right idea in my opinion.
ainiriand 9y ago
I was tempted to downvote you because of the apparent forced comparison. Care to explain a bit more? I find that comparison a bit offensive even if I am not a christian myself.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- hux_ 9y ago
  Didn't mean to offend your faith. I am talking about the way faith spreads and not about faith itself. People who need faith are very similar to people who need a job or an income. They are all suffering. That is the commonality. One way faith spreads, if you are a student of history, is to claim faith is a "shortcut" fix to suffering. But if you know your faith, you know faith is hard work/just like keeping a job or earning a living honestly. That doesn't stop people from selling a "shortcut". Because selling a shortcut is easy. Neither does it stop people from buying into it.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    Although the reasons people join a religion may be similar, there is a qualitative difference between the spread of religions and pyramid schemes. In a pyramid scheme, the participants are mostly busy recruiting new members, and the tangible benefits of membership are tied to the stream of recruits. Once that stream stops growing, people start dropping out and the same pyramid structure that accelerated the growth also leads to accelerated collapse. Religions that have endured over generations have a very different balance of promises and recruitments. Instead of large immediate rewards that can't be kept up over the long term, they rely on hopes about the indefinite future (e.g. paradise) or benefits that are proportional to the size of the community, not it's growth over time (e.g. caring for their sick). Religions do rely on missionarizing to grow, but they can remain stable even without growth, and mostly propagate themselves by parents converting their children.
    - viraptor 9y ago
      > Instead of large immediate rewards that can't be kept up over the long term, they rely on hopes about the indefinite future (e.g. paradise) I think that's ignoring many immediate things people get from religion. Immediate sense of belonging, getting to listen to someone who's "got life figured out", getting some motivation, and many other reasons. Whether that's provided by a megachurch, a local friendly priest, an MLM convention with a charismatic speaker, or another way doesn't matter. I met a masonic priest who joined the group because his wife died and he needed people who would take him out for dinner once a week. I come from a country that's virtually 100% Catholic (or at least was) and don't believe that many people really cared about the final paradise. Or at least that wasn't really the reason they turned up to the church every week.

Religion gets spread the same way. Some people benefit.

by hux_ 9y ago

Religion gets spread the same way. Some people benefit.

That’s a very specific, very broad claim. Can you explain how (apparently all) religions structure and market their pyramidal incentive schemes? I’m not currently active in any organised religion, but I have been for long periods of time and didn’t really notice any pyramidal incentives. In fact there didn’t seem to be much in the way of proselytising at all and I was certainly not involved in doing so. What was I missing?

andy_ppp 9y ago
Hmmm... https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/us-religion-worth-1-trillion-study-economy-apple-google https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/201... NB I hate Google for breaking the above URL but I’m tired of fixing them...
- poizan42 9y ago
  Here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/us-religion-worth-1-trillion-study-economy-apple-google https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/15/us-religion-wo...
- simonh 9y ago
  Some religions are wealthy and maybe you don't like that, fine. How is religion in general a form of pyramid selling though? I'm sure some religions are organised like that, or are used to run such schemes, but the claim seemed to be about religion in general. One particular religion, or groups of religions wasn't specified.
  - andy_ppp 9y ago
    The reward for the Ponzi scheme is the ultimate prize isn’t it; who wouldn’t want to live in paradise forever. All religions run this scheme, as far as I’m aware?
willvarfar 9y ago
Well, those who spread the religion gain ego boosting status as preachers or such and, often, financial reward too. Lots of vicars with posh cars and TV drives to buy the bishop a private jet etc.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Bishops don't have private planes. The catholic church has its own set of faults, and it is very rich. But they also have smart PR people, and a pope who doesn't like luxury, and they keep their bishops on a short leash. Edit: I thought "bishop" was a specifically catholic title. It appears that some televangelists may have misappropriated not just the faith, but also the title.
  - willvarfar 9y ago
    Just a quick googling for private plane bishops http://dustoffthebible.com/Blog-archive/2015/10/28/15-religious-leaders-that-make-more-money-getting-out-of-bed-than-youll-make-all-year/ http://dustoffthebible.com/Blog-archive/2015/10/28/15-religi... - not Catholic, but still..
  - tialaramex 9y ago
    Most people think "Pope" is a Catholic title too, but Discordians believe all people (not even just Discordians) are Popes, and the crossover means that members of the Church of the SubGenius often acknowledge such Popes too. Anyway, Catholicism is a lot bigger than the Roman Catholic Church. You have other very explicitly Catholic churches such as the Eastern Orthodox Church, and you also have faiths like Anglicanism, which are a weird hybrid where most (Roman) Catholics would consider them protestant, but they refer to themselves internally as a "Holy Catholic church", they have Bishops too (but no Pope, their spiritual head is for historical reasons the Queen of England) and so on.
- simonh 9y ago
  You are completely missing the point. I could say that of politics, academia, capitalism, country music. What has any of this got to do with pyramid selling?
fpig 9y ago
You're right, relatively few adults these days convert because someone "sold" them on the religion and in my majority-catholic country the church doesn't even make any serious attempt to do this or tell their followers to do this. But christianity and islam are still the biggest MLM schemes in the world, however they work slightly differently. Instead of being incentivized to recruit people around you, you are incentivized to create your own recruits by having as many children as possible and it's absolutely expected that you will "recruit" them. Also they love proselytizing (religious education etc) in schools, even though they don't care about doing it to adults. They know children are softer targets, and if they don't convert them before they reach adulthood, they're way less likely to succeed. Basically it's all about proselytizing to children instead of adults. Get them while they're young!
- simonh 9y ago
  I get that you don't like religion, but how is it a pyramid scheme where e.g. Humanism, political beliefs, a love of Country Music, or any one of a million other beliefs or preferences aren't? It seems to me to be an extraordinarily specific and weak claim.
  - fpig 9y ago
    Because the followers are supposed to make kids and recruit them into the church at the earliest possible age. They don't want it to be about preference, they want to "lock them in" before they start thinking for themselves. This is literally a part of the catholic religion, you're expected to try to have children and expected to recruit them. It is not a part of any of your examples.
    - simonh 9y ago
      Teaching children your culture is a pyramid selling scheme? Got it.
      - AstralStorm 9y ago
        Religion is not the same as culture, and definitely is not the entirety of it. Nor should be. Anabaptist out of Christian sects had the right idea in my opinion.

ainiriand 9y ago

I was tempted to downvote you because of the apparent forced comparison. Care to explain a bit more? I find that comparison a bit offensive even if I am not a christian myself.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
hux_ 9y ago
Didn't mean to offend your faith. I am talking about the way faith spreads and not about faith itself. People who need faith are very similar to people who need a job or an income. They are all suffering. That is the commonality. One way faith spreads, if you are a student of history, is to claim faith is a "shortcut" fix to suffering. But if you know your faith, you know faith is hard work/just like keeping a job or earning a living honestly. That doesn't stop people from selling a "shortcut". Because selling a shortcut is easy. Neither does it stop people from buying into it.
- yorwba 9y ago
  Although the reasons people join a religion may be similar, there is a qualitative difference between the spread of religions and pyramid schemes. In a pyramid scheme, the participants are mostly busy recruiting new members, and the tangible benefits of membership are tied to the stream of recruits. Once that stream stops growing, people start dropping out and the same pyramid structure that accelerated the growth also leads to accelerated collapse. Religions that have endured over generations have a very different balance of promises and recruitments. Instead of large immediate rewards that can't be kept up over the long term, they rely on hopes about the indefinite future (e.g. paradise) or benefits that are proportional to the size of the community, not it's growth over time (e.g. caring for their sick). Religions do rely on missionarizing to grow, but they can remain stable even without growth, and mostly propagate themselves by parents converting their children.
  - viraptor 9y ago
    > Instead of large immediate rewards that can't be kept up over the long term, they rely on hopes about the indefinite future (e.g. paradise) I think that's ignoring many immediate things people get from religion. Immediate sense of belonging, getting to listen to someone who's "got life figured out", getting some motivation, and many other reasons. Whether that's provided by a megachurch, a local friendly priest, an MLM convention with a charismatic speaker, or another way doesn't matter. I met a masonic priest who joined the group because his wife died and he needed people who would take him out for dinner once a week. I come from a country that's virtually 100% Catholic (or at least was) and don't believe that many people really cared about the final paradise. Or at least that wasn't really the reason they turned up to the church every week.