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The Perfect Business
by Len Schwee
| Most business transactions involve the purchase of a product. A product is valuable if it sells for much more than its production cost, and it is even more admirable if it is bought daily or weekly. An even better product is no product at all. Take, for example, insurance. Our state government forces us to spend hundreds of dollars for six months worth of auto insurance, and all we get in return is a piece of paper that tells us the limits of our protection. But the insurance is very valuable in case we get into an accident. Insurance companies do have to pay occasionally. |
A better business than insurance is one that makes great promises, collects money, but never has to pay any out. This valued business began early in human history when enterprising salesmen conspired to sell eternal happiness to their fellow mortals. This business evolved rapidly in the early years. Finally, successful Mithraism mutated into Christianity in the western world. |
Indulgences used to be sold, but those efficient transactions revealed too clearly the perfection of the business. Now a basket is passed so the public can pay for the clergy's services. The business employs many methods to raise tax-free money including investing and bingo. |
To make sure that the clergy's services are used regularly, a double whammy is employed. In addition to the promises of eternal happiness, we are threatened with being burned for eternity -- as scary a situation as can be imagined. We are frightened into doing the clergy's bidding, paying their fees, and thanking them for their services. |
In my case, my fear of hell was greater than my desire for heaven. I considered myself better off if there were no afterlife at all. To instill more fear of hell than desire for heaven is perhaps bad business. Gloria Steinem observed, "It's an incredible con job when you think of it, to believe something now in exchange for life after death. Even corporations with all their reward systems don't try to make it posthumous." |
The beauty of this holy business is that true believers never find out that they have been duped. When they die, they don't know they were deceived because they are dead. They are too late by seconds to warn the living that they are being bamboozled. A perfect business. |
Some figure out the scam before they die; but most are content with the clergy's ad hoc explanation that, unlike animals, humans were given a soul that lives on after death. But dead humans and dead animals rot the same way. |
The evidence in the hills proves that evolution is true. We evolved naturally from soulless animals, and we therefore have no souls. Darwin liberated us from religious tyranny and the awful fear of hell. He proved that the perfect business is fraudulent. |
Belief in an afterlife made 9/11 possible. People believing in an afterlife are easily turned into dangerous martyrs who can be exploited by terrorists. |
Religion is a respected, frightening, controlling, costly, untaxed, dangerous, and fraudulent confidence game. It deserves to be illegal, but such a perfect business dies hard. |
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