How to Sell a Product and Never Deliver It


Selling heaven to the vulnerable has been the bread and butter of Christianity. I wish it were possible to calculate how many people have made their living over the last 5,000 years telling people there is a heaven. In all those 5,000 years there never was a heaven and isn't one today.

There are atheists who wish what Christians sell was not fake. They wish there was actually a divine plan. They would look forward to not dying and living on in some happy place indefinitely. In a world where things of religion were not fables there would be a moral code that was considered absolute and not subject to debate. But they, like their Christian friends, must go on living without Amazon ever delivering their package. 

One has to admit selling these Christian ideas of life everlasting has been clever. Stealing a resurrection story from previous faiths was where the success began. Those who wrote the Bible did not see the resurrection nor the main character, Jesus. There was no first-hand testimony. Apparently they knew they would get caught making up first hand testimony so they used stories they were claimed were circulating at the time. It was imperative at the time to have a resurrection tale to go with the heaven- for-the-ordinary-person tale. Today we would call it "cross marketing."

The tale Jesus was supposed to have preached was the end of the world be coming very shortly. It never happened so in time it was dialed back in the faith. That believers will never die has stood up longer but it too is seeing its "best use by" date expiring. In the book, Strange Rites, we learn the resurrection and life after death do not have the appeal it had only a few decades ago. Instead people, especially the young, get excited about idealism and spiritual fulfillment in Harry Potter, physical fitness, women's rights, gender change rights, new almost mysterious technology changes, following "laws" of nature and pagan-like beliefs. 

The cornucopia of beliefs and join-up groups on the internet has replaced the no-show products of the Bible.



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