{"id":1317,"date":"2009-10-07T12:02:59","date_gmt":"2009-10-07T16:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=1317"},"modified":"2020-07-06T10:52:19","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T14:52:19","slug":"qotd-the-essence-of-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2009\/10\/07\/qotd-the-essence-of-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The essence of religion"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>The fuel of every religion, one way or another, is guilt. Properly indoctrinated &mdash; generally from birth &mdash; a religious individual cannot eat, sleep, work, make love, or do much of anything else, either as a living organism in general, or a human being in particular, without automatically accumulating a burden of guilt that has to be discharged somehow from time to time, preferably (that is, preferably to those in the guilt-discharging industry) through the heavenly apparatus, sacred plumbing, and holy mechanics of whatever religion controls the territory.<\/p>\n<p>Throw a nickel on the drum, save another drunken bum.<\/p>\n<p>Churches are generally in the business of peddling forgiveness &mdash; for having done things nobody can avoid doing if they&#8217;re a living, physical creature. They&#8217;re middlemen between God and sinner (this means you). They may only want you to come to church on a regular basis, sing the songs, say the prayers, drop a quarter in the plate. Or they may want something else, your witness, your testimony, your speaking in &#8220;tongues&#8221;. In this hemisphere, once upon a time, climbing to the top of a pyramid and having your heart chopped out was highly encouraged. <\/p>\n<p>L. Neil Smith, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncc-1776.org\/tle2009\/tle539-20091004-03.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">&#8220;Time for Another Another Reformation&#8221;, <em>Libertarian Enterprise<\/em><\/a>, 2009-10-04<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fuel of every religion, one way or another, is guilt. Properly indoctrinated &mdash; generally from birth &mdash; a religious individual cannot eat, sleep, work, make love, or do much of anything else, either as a living organism in general, or a human being in particular, without automatically accumulating a burden of guilt that has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,11],"tags":[52,1382],"class_list":["post-1317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-absurd","tag-lneilsmith"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-lf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1317"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58511,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1317\/revisions\/58511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}