The Paradox of Barbarian Civilization: Dangerous Religion

Barbarian is as Barbarian does

I did not coin the phrase "Barbarian Civilization", no, I got it from the very competent Catholic Encyclopedia, as will be shown with a quote later in this post.

"Barbarian Civilization" seems like a contradiction of terms, so that encyclopedia probably used it intentionally to describe the western division of themselves during the feudal ages.

The graphic to the left comes from a Wikipedia page "Barbarian", depicting The Huns at the Battle of Chalon.

I modified the middle section, so as to show what the religious barbarians then thought of themselves: holy lily white Crusaders (see this & this).

I modified the top and bottom so as to show the women and children being slaughtered (bottom), and the flocks of vultures and eagles (top) following the "civilized barbarians" to feast on "the carrion of the wicked."

Recently, I did the post Global Warming / Climate Change Will Generate Dangerous Religion.

The underlying premise, in that post, was based upon how the individual amygdala as well as the cultural amygdala react to stress.

Today, let's look at an historical example of how the individual amygdala and the cultural amygdala reacted to stress, in terms of generating a dangerous religion:

Religious service even became part of feudalism:

The Church, too, had her place in the feudal system. She too was granted territorial fiefs, became a vassal, possessed immunities. It was the result of her calm, wide sympathy, turning to the new nations, away from the Roman Empire, to which many Christians thought she was irrevocably bound. By the baptism of Clovis she showed the baptism of Constantine had not tied her to the political system. So she created a new world out of chaos, created the paradox of barbarian civilization. In gratitude kings and emperors endowed her with property; and ecclesiastical property has not infrequently brought evils in its train. The result was disputed elections; younger sons of nobles were intruded into bishoprics, at times even into the papacy. Secular princes claimed lay investiture of spiritual offices. The cause of this was feudalism, for a system that had its basis on land tenure was bound at last to enslave a Church that possessed great landed possessions.

(Catholic Encyclopedia, emphasis added). In that sense war and military service today, in some ways, are as they were in both Holy Roman Empire feudalism and earlier European feudalism (The Virgin MOMCOM - 6, Doing The Right Thing - Mithraism - 2).

(American Feudalism - 2). For the record, note that dangerous religions can change and sometimes do get back to sanity.

Our current dangerous religion is Deigenic Climate Change, which is firmly embedded in the Congress of the United States.

The high priest of that dangerous religion, now, is Senator Inhofe (Inhofe, Beavis, & Butthead Need Waders).

About 100 or so of the current congress members have the religious faith that God is causing weather catastrophe upon the Earth.

God the Chef, ostensibly does this to generate "the carrion of the wicked" for the flocks of vultures and eagles to feast upon.

Meanwhile, their God (Oil-Qaeda) has sold enough holy "Oilah Akbar" oil to destroy another critical cycle in the Earth's ecosystem:

At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a “safe operating space” for human beings. That is the conclusion of a new paper published Thursday in the journal Science by 18 researchers trying to gauge the breaking points in the natural world.

The paper contends that we have already crossed four “planetary boundaries.” They are the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.

“What the science has shown is that human activities — economic growth, technology, consumption — are destabilizing the global environment,” said Will Steffen, who holds appointments at the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Center and is the lead author of the paper.

(Beyond the Boundaries, cf. The Damage Cannot Be Undone?, Shadow of Time Governs The Earth - 2 ). The scientists say clearly that our days are numbered.

The high priests of Oil-Qaeda say it is because we are wicked and God is on their side.

Their dogma is that we climate change believers are going to be destroyed by catastrophe, because we are not worthy.

But they get raptured.

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With the lord Oil-Qaeda on our side ...

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