Preventing Caesar-Worship and the Madnesses of Crowds
A reader with the iatric yet tumultuous name of Doc Rampage asks:
It is an old observation that when people are deprived of true religion, they will construct a false one, but why would the false religion be one that is so obviously and blatantly false? Why worship a mere man? I am starting to see how emperors and pharaohs were able to take on the mantle of godhood a phenomenon that always struck me as bizarre. Surely anyone could see that the rulers were just men, and surely the private mockery of such pretensions would quickly render the pretensions impossible to maintain. But after witnessing the Obama mania, I begin to see how strongly and irrationally people do want to make gods of men. It may not be at all appealing to me, but it is clearly appealing to many, many other people. It is rather a frightening revelation.
My comment:
I should urge my atheist friends that it is prudent for the commonwealth for men to worship a jealous God, because even if god is a fiction, it will draw away the natural human tendency to worship Pharaohs and Caesars and Fuhrers into a fictional being, one capable of doing no harm.
Of course, this still leaves the danger (as far as my atheist friends are concerned) of persons claiming to speak in the name of the fictional god. To correct for this, the synthetic religion should contain repeated warnings against false prophets and false Christs.
And, unlike every pagan religion in history, should maintain a Magisterium or teaching authority to prevent the religion from being devolved or brought into line with the natural human tendency to hero-worship of charismatic leaders. The religion should be intolerant of personal interpretation or novel doctrines.
Indeed, at a most extreme wish fulfillment daydream of the atheist, this synthetic religion should be able to force emperors who commit enormities to perform public penance, such as to walk bareshod to Canossa, or to put aside his royal insignia, don a shroud, and publicly plead for God’s mercy. This would indeed prevent the rise of hero-worship of worldly leaders as nothing else in history has ever done or could do.
It would be most important, of course, for this synthetic religion to have an international rather than a national character, and not to be brought under the control of a single national ruler, such as Henry VIII.
Oddly enough, this make believe religion which would fulfill all the daydreams of an atheist devoted to preventing the adoration of charismatic Fuhrers has a real world parallel which in history fulfilled this role.
Almost as if it were designed that way….
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
