Hacker News Reader

Comment by ethbr1 | Hacker News Reader

To some degree, the practice of state religion exists to ensure the stability of the state, especially in pre-mass communication times.

To that, so what if the "god" part was a lie?

A stable society built on an unfalsifiable lie is still a stable society.

View on HN

That's all well and good until a really bad drought or a plague blows through and people start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the inbred jackass on the golden throne doesn't control the weather after all.

Except, the Egyptian society was quite stable for 3,000 years. Can you imagine the USA existing for 3,000 years? Will there ever be another human civilization that lasts as long as the ancient Egyptian civilization?

My understanding of Egyptian chronology is that Egypt was far from stable for 3000 years. In fact, Ancient Egypt is broken up into the Old, Middle, and New Kingdom periods, separated by "intermediate periods" of a few centuries. Even then, it's generally reckoned around 2500 years from the beginning of the Old Kingdom to the incorporation by the Persian Empire.

This 3 hr long history documentary is well worth it.

Fall of Civilizations Episode 18. Egypt - Fall of the Pharaohs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpKej05RgsY

But, even during the intermediate periods, the invaders became the pharaohs and kept the old time religion going.

Imagine back when Europe was under the thumb of the Roman Catholic church, but then it went on pretty much the same for 3,000 years. There would be some hiccups along the way, but for the normal peasant, it would pretty much be the same old same old from millennium to millennium.

Isn't the Catholic church becoming the roman Catholic church or vice versa sort of the same thing? Even with the split into Protestant it's still essentially the same core and looking back 5000 years from now it would probably be reasonable to glue it all together as the Ancient Roman-Christian period / civilization.

Imagine today there is not all these different European governments, but just the Catholic church controlling all of the different governments, which are all really branches of the Catholic Church. Their kings are determined by the Catholic church. All of them are under the Pope. Their laws have to be approved by the Catholic Church. Everyone is Catholic. Catholic bishops are more powerful than any king. Etc. And that is the way it is and continues for 3,000 years.

Or maybe they're just not praying hard enough.

I'm a through-and-through atheist, but I recognize the civilizing effect of order.

'Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ (but epistemologically pure!) isn't a great sort of life.

Like they say "without faith there is no fear".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com