At first glance it would appear that there is no contest between Football and Religion as regards the use of marketing to further their cause.
Football is quite obviously big business with marketing being displayed on the team strips, round the pitch, in the actual names of football stadiums and even in the names of the football competitions. Away from the game football stars themselves are used to market everything from hair-gel to video games.
However, this high profile and multi-million pound football marketing bonanza, is probably a fraction of what the combined religious organisations bring in through their seemingly less high profile marketing operations.
However, all may not be as it seems, religion has been the master of marketing for over 2,000 years.
The Art of Religious Marketing
1. Create a Product.
As you can see from many businesses operating today, and indeed from many of the tasks undertaken in the TV show 'The Apprentice', all you need to start your business is a product. It doesn't have to be a good product, in fact it can be complete crap, but if your selling it to the uninitiated and stupid, any old rubbish will do.
And lets not fool ourselves, religion is simply a business, and a business that has forgotten any moral or ethical foundations that it may once have had.
Is it there to help the poor, well as many religions are tax avoiding hoarders of wealth and land it would appear not. Is it there to bring people together, they can't even agree amongst themselves and nothing has so divided people as religion.
So to the product........
If we're going to start with some market share already, why not take a bit of this and a bit of that and 'Hey Presto', we have created the Frankenstein religion of Christianity, nothing original but cobble bits of other religions together into a mega-bundle of superstition and nonsense.
From the excellent Religion Poisons Blog
2. Eliminate Competition
Question: So why is most of the Western/English speaking world Christian ?
Answer: Emperor Constantine decided it would be more efficient and expedient to rule an mono-theist rather than a poly-theist empire, and as his mother had converted to Christianity (there were other mono-theist religions available) that was his choice.
So now that Christianity had a foothold through authority, it set about eliminating the competition of other religions in a fairly literal and lethal manner.
3. Consolidate Market Share
Not only
would Christians kill those who believed in other gods, but also those
who believed in no gods, and the church has managed to put a cultural
stigma on the word 'atheist' which still exists today. American's hate
atheists, but accept those who have no religion ..... what can I say,
thery are Americans - but it is an example of how the church has
poisoned our culture and language.
There
were still people being put to death for heresy as late as the 18th
century in Europe, and this behaviour is still very much alive and
accepted in the Islamic world today.
The Church propped up the Monarchy, and vice-versa. The Church controlled much of the legal process and barbaric practices such as 'trial by fire', trial by water', burning women at the stake, general nastiness and brutality that ensured that the Churches were full on a Sunday and that people were contributing to their coffers. In fact it was at one time a crime to to go to church. So frightening those who don't beliebve in to pretending they do believe is a pretty effective way to consolodate your market share.
At the heart of this 'product' is a book, a not very well written book - but that's OK because
believers hardly ever actually read the book. They just accept the sanitised versions of the good bits from their preachers.
But as King James knew, ever book needs a re-write.
So we should really ask ourselves why so many people blindly believe this book considering its checkered editorial past.
From the excellent Religion Poisons Blog
5. Target The Young
From a marketing perspective this is where the religions clean up.
The ARGUMENT from AUTHORITY. If you tell a baby that they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and then tie their life to religious festivals and customs, it takes a brake and inquiring mind to ask the real questions while still a child and come to the obvious conclusion.
From the excellent Religion Poisons Blog
When Islam is still so backward as to condone 'honour killings' for their own children as a consequence of their religion and Christianity can still persecute openly gays any normal person has to ask themselves how this can ne permitted to continue in the name of superstition.
The Future
Hopefully, religion, will as with all other marketing fads - cabbage patch dolls, rah-rah skirts, filofaxes, Tamagotchi, Sony Walkmans etc. will run its course and die out.
It is difficult to imagine why people will believe in the bible a book so full of errors that in any other publication it would be sent back for a re-write.
Why if the bible is the word of god it doesn't know the world is round or that the sun is the center of the universe. It mentions unicorns, but not kangeroos if god did create the earth would he not have known this.
Why is the bible full of unethical and immoral behaviour. Why would a righteous unbeliver be damned to hell, but a child molesting priest be welcomed in to heaven once he has repented his sin.
Why is there no practical wisdom on technological advances, medical advice or simple sanitation.
Why do miracles 'proving' god's existence consist of crying statues or 'visions', if somebody came back from a miracle vision with the cure for cancer I might take them seriously. Some people do claim to hear the word of god, but they are as likely to be serial killers as productive members of society, and there is yet to be an 'miracle' witnessed by an atheist.
So religion is simply a triumph of marketing. It is smoke and mirrors, empty rhetoric and run by people who are putting their own comfort and well being above those they should be helping. It is big business, and like all big business it stinks.
1 comment:
well at least jews & christias don't murder/execute all jews or christians who convert to another religion; and at least christian countries don't have laws guaranteeing that other family members gain custody of children if the mother is not christian or if there's a 'chance' the child 'might' even be exposed to a different religion.
i.e. ISLAM. Death for apostates is an actual capital punishment crime in most islamic states, the child custody issue is the same in all of them.
p.s. The crusades were instituted in direct response to islamic invasion & conquering of christian and christian holy land countries. As you can see they did a shitty job stopping it, because the entire middle east, turkey, and north africa were previously majority christian (or many countries/areas were fully christian), except Persia which was majority Zoroastrian, but all included indigenous people of jewish, zoroastrian and other religions & now they don't.
Although your assessment seems fairly accurate, the fact that you target Christianity in your 'rant' turns my stomach, considering Christians are the most persecuted religion (agreed by UN) on earth, the most under threat of violence, arrest, torture & death and ARE in fact being systematically murdered (or converted by force & violence) right now in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Gaza, Iran, Afghanistan, Serbia, Somalia, Sudan, Egypt, India, and many other areas - your 'rant' serves, in the minds of the perpetrators of genocide, to justify what they are doing and increase hatred against people who mostly are just trying to live their lives. Everybody loves to jump on the 'it's okay to vilify and bash christians' I mean 'look at what some christians did 1,000 years ago!'
HEY look at what SECULAR MAO TSUNG DID just a few decades ago, resulting in the deaths of 63 MILLION Chinese! Look at what muslims are doing right now!
The spanish inquisition - began the year the spaniards FINALLY succeeded in evicting the arab islamic occupiers who had invaded & occupied well over half of spain (portugal, italy & france) for almost 700 years. Upon victory an estimated 2 million arab/n african muslims were deported. During their time there the muslims beheaded, tortured & force converted hundreds of thousands, made demands in treaties such as '100 white virgins a year for use in our harems', one treaty of which lasted over 150 years - and immigrated millions of arab/moorish muslims into Southern Europe - which is why they're all dark down there. The islamic invasion of Europe is never even mentioned - arab muslims invaded all of the middle east, europe, north africa, asia, turkey & together with the turks have decimated entire cultures through purposeful genocide. At least the idiot Spaniards killed 95% of south americans by accident (disease). In the meantime Muslims were still traveling up & down the coastline of Europe in the 1800's kidnapping Christians for use as slaves & even pirated US navy vessels & sold the service men as slaves! Hell they still have slavery - Mauritania only 'illegalized' slavery like 4 years ago, Egypt just some over 40, Sudan still blatantly practices slavery & so does Saudi Arabia.
At least WE stopped owning slaves.
I am sick of all the bullshit propaganda.
YES the crusades were violent and they did so many horrible and disgusting things, not the least of which was attack & loot Christians they were supposed to protect -
HOWEVER, ISLAM IS WORSE. They are responsible for the deaths of MANY more, including 80 MILLION Hindus since the beginning of Islam. Muslims perpetrated genocide on 2 MILLION Hindus in 1974!
Or maybe you're just a coward who finds it easier to slag off groups you know won't get pissed and try to cut your head off.
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