More that we exhibit the same behaviors around some things that we exhibit around gods, even to the point of sacrificing life and limb to them.
Gridiron Football is quite godlike in the US. We lose only a few teen and college lives every year on the field itself (Twelve a year, according to NBC news), but the injuries and concussions are plentiful and life-defining. And it’s normal for us to erect vast stadiums for pro-ball with taxpayer dollars while children go hungry and workers are without medical care.
The immersion problem in grain silos fits right into American Gods in which small private farms don’t keep their grain silos adequately arrid (dehumidified) and so it sticks in chunks and has to be prodded down leading to twenty or so worker deaths by immersion, Sacrifices to Ceres or Demeter. The level of moisture also increases the mold growth in the grain, though I don’t know if it’s to dangerous levels.
My own favorite natural god is the sun which shines life giving energy on us every day for eons. Yet we have to avoid looking at it and without the protection of the Earth’s magnetic field would quickly be fried in its presence (at eight light seconds away). Without the sun, we’d freeze and die. And if we were to imagine the sun a human body, the rest of the solar system (mostly Jupiter) would be a blood draw, and the earth would be a drop of blood smeared on a slide.
Quite the opposite, as it suggests that human societies behave to natural things as if they were supernatural. We’re superstitious. It implies that all those things we might call god, are merely lightning in a thunderstorm behaving according to electrostatic mechanics.
I don’t fear the Almighty, but I do fear militants who are determined to insist I do.
Yeah, exactly. Capitalism and the state are also gods. This sort of thing is, I hear, explored very deeply in Terry’s friend Neil’s book American Gods.
I love discworld. I don’t get the quote though. Anything you wanna add op?
It sounds like the typical “atheism is really a religion” nonsense.
More that we exhibit the same behaviors around some things that we exhibit around gods, even to the point of sacrificing life and limb to them.
Gridiron Football is quite godlike in the US. We lose only a few teen and college lives every year on the field itself (Twelve a year, according to NBC news), but the injuries and concussions are plentiful and life-defining. And it’s normal for us to erect vast stadiums for pro-ball with taxpayer dollars while children go hungry and workers are without medical care.
The immersion problem in grain silos fits right into American Gods in which small private farms don’t keep their grain silos adequately arrid (dehumidified) and so it sticks in chunks and has to be prodded down leading to twenty or so worker deaths by immersion, Sacrifices to Ceres or Demeter. The level of moisture also increases the mold growth in the grain, though I don’t know if it’s to dangerous levels.
My own favorite natural god is the sun which shines life giving energy on us every day for eons. Yet we have to avoid looking at it and without the protection of the Earth’s magnetic field would quickly be fried in its presence (at eight light seconds away). Without the sun, we’d freeze and die. And if we were to imagine the sun a human body, the rest of the solar system (mostly Jupiter) would be a blood draw, and the earth would be a drop of blood smeared on a slide.
As I said, the typical “atheism is a religion” nonsense.
I worship nothing and I never have worshiped anything. I’ve also never believed in something with supernatural powers that can control me.
I have no gods. I don’t really care what your favorite gods are, I never asked.
Quite the opposite, as it suggests that human societies behave to natural things as if they were supernatural. We’re superstitious. It implies that all those things we might call god, are merely lightning in a thunderstorm behaving according to electrostatic mechanics.
I don’t fear the Almighty, but I do fear militants who are determined to insist I do.
I do no such thing. You do not speak for me and neither does OP.
Wow, somebody’s crabby
I take it more like that the emperor that twoflower serves is their god, they just call him emperor instead
Does he? I suppose he does. Being an economist on the counterweight continent.
Yeah, exactly. Capitalism and the state are also gods. This sort of thing is, I hear, explored very deeply in Terry’s friend Neil’s book American Gods.