True, churches are just companies.

@Matias The American constitution was if not socialist (the term did not exist at the time) then incredibly radical and egalitarian. It divorced itself from the "evolved" old world order of hierarchy and replaced it with principals of equality. (principals that seem to be lost along the way now. When was the last time a rich white US citizen did any real jail time?)
Though not all top down thinking is socialist. Socialism is most definitely "top down". I will give you two examples. When I was growing up in the 1960s, we lived in a council house. This was social housing provided by the municipality. All the front doors, gates, back and shed doors were painted either corporation red or corporation green. The same colours as the municipal buses, park benches and buss stops. No deviation was permitted, any infringement could result in eviction. A drab look but not as absurd as my friends experience. She grew up in East Germany, when the wall came down she finally got to read " Winnie the pooh" in its uncensored form. The character of Tigger had been airbrushed because he was deemed to be too subversive.
Socialism and religion do have one thing in common. They both involve some guy above you thinking they know better you how to live your life.

@Matias I am forced to agree. Top down may in fact be more natural than other forms, from an evolutionary point of view. We no doubt had our alphas leading us against all threats, there on the African plains. Later, as we organized, the concept of a divine right of royalty was promoted by religion, as both the altar and the throne were purely hierarchical. As Robert Ingersoll eloquently observed, 'In all ages hypocrites, called priests, have put crowns on the heads of thieves, called kings.'

So even in a democracy, it seemed only natural to elect a leader. And when organizations and businesses are formed, a chief executive is now second nature. But we also can be the engineers of our own future natural states, can you see this? Perhaps in the future it will seem very 'unnatural' to have a hierarchical org chart? And this is not unnatural interference, unless we accept the premise that it is unnatural for human beings to utilize their brains and ingenuity.

@pnfullifidian "A camel is a horse designed by a committee" anon.

Look up libertarian socialism, or what was just called socialism before the rise of the Soviet Union.
As far as the US Constitution being egalitarian, only about 15% of the population got to vote. Read the Constitutional Conventions minutes (publish many years after) and you will see they were not taking about creating a democracy or attempting to make things egalitarian. I'll agree that it was a step forward in the world's governments, but we shouldn't exaggerate what it was.

@JeffB True, the Framers didn't really need to have it written in the Constitution that white male property owners are the only ones allowed to vote, since voting rights were controlled at the State level. And it is in the Statehouses where the conversations throughout history on who should, and should not, vote get even more dramatic.

These "distortions" are necessary. Capitalism unchecked will wreak havoc. It is cyclical and has no morals. The depression of the 1930s was like a plague and any govt that would not wish to combat that would be akin to not wanting to combat a typhus epidemic.
Just as we (in the 1st world) have waste water systems that prevent cholera instigated and maintained by the state. So we have "socialist" systems in place to promote growth and limit the damage of a totally free market.
Best described by a joke;
A vicar is walking past an old gardener working in a most beautiful garden and says to him.
"Isnt god wonderful? Just look what he can make"
The old man smiles and replies. "Yeah but he is one hell of a messy bastard if you just leave him to it"

@273kelvin I am not telling if the distortions are wrong or right, needed or not, it is just not a pure evolutionary mechanism because there are this distortions

@Pedrohbds I agree, the last govt to be truly capitalist was Hong Kong before the hand over and even they could not operate without a subsidized public transport system. Perhaps the only true market forces area is now the illegal drug trade. Where price and quality control are all set by supply and demand.

@Pedrohbds As a systems engineer by trade, I find the implication that it is somehow 'unnatural' for human beings to use their brains and ingenuity, whether it be to build a better mousetrap, or create a more equitable (or imbalanced, if that is what is wished) economic system. We have evolved to a point where, in the words of my avatar, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again." It is within our capacity to reengineer our economies, societies and polities. But as we all know from basic physics, potential energy is merely that, and so long as we remain ignorant and uneducated, the world will continue to possess unreleased human capacity, with its minority of 'haves' and majority of 'have nots.'

@273kelvin The best post you've made!

@Matias do you know the difference between a principle and the way a natural phenomenon, with no consciousness of itself, plays out without proceeding on a principle? evolution isn't a philosophy! it happens as you say but those are not principles. you appear to give agency to something that can have no agency. i am not calling it random. i am calling it unplanned. capitalism is not a natural phenomenon but a system, devised by human beings, and can proceed according to principles devised by human beings. while we're at it, i have seen no evidence whatsoever that the principles of capitalism even remotely resemble the way evolution plays out.

g

@BeerAndWine nope, not just semantics. words have meanings. i understand metaphor and figurative speech just fine, thanks. i also know false conflations when i see them.

g

@Matias there are all sorts of schools of thought. some of them are more reasonable than others. just because someone thought of something and some other people agree, and i am not one of those who agree, you assume i am ignorant. well, you may assume now that you are blocked.

g

I think he is referring to what Charles Darwin called natural selection. Or what Herbert Spencer called "survival of the fittest."

@Flyingsaucesir I was going there, but wanted to be sure. My response would be that laissez faire capitalism, as found in Adam Smith’s writings, is headed toward extinction—we’re evolving. Just as we’ve altered plant and animal life through selective breeding and now genetic engineering, we’re continually reengineering our economic systems. And who’s to say that this is ‘not natural,’ as if applying our minds and ingenuity were somehow detached from our evolutionary development!

@pnfullifidian
I had a similar thought: just as a termite mound is an artifact of nature, so is a city, and the economy that built it. If one day we nuke ourselves to kingdom come, an extra terrestrial observer might say he had witnessed the conclusion of a wholly natural process.

For some reason I can no longer edit my remarks. I get a weird form labeled “answer” “source”& “photo”. The text appears, and I can alter that text, but when I press “submit” nothing happens.

I tried reloading the app. Can someone help?

@WilliamFleming , the same this happens when I attempt to edit a post. The work-around I use is to copy your text, delete the post, copy the text into a new post and then edit it. It's a clumbsy fix but the best I have come up with.

@BeerAndWine What’s the name of the group? How many of ‘em are there?

"... I know a lot of Christians who have no problem with evolution"

Having come out of a Christian faith that never accepted evolution, claming that it was from the Devil, I have found this phenomenon rather odd. Christians are taught that the reason for Christ and the Plan of Salvation was the sin of Adam, or first human—a permanent stain which was inherited by the entire race. But evolution teaches us that the transition from early hominids to Homo sapiens was a gradual process, millions of years in the making. When, during all of this time, could we say that Adam arrived, or the first sin was committed? If Christians admit that this story is allegorical, does not this admission impact the foundation of Christianity, as doctrinally espoused by St. Paul?

And when was the first soul evolved? Did early hominids have undeveloped souls? Were early souls only partially successful, lasting for a little while, before they evolved into ‘eternal' souls? Did Lucy have a soul, and is it still wandering the African savannah, 3.2 million years later? Or is Lucy in heaven? If a Christian accepts evolution, then he/she must admit that there is no room for God to 'monkey around' (so to speak) with our ancestors, in order to 'splice in' a 'divine spark.' Because, unless you're talking about Bishop John Shelby Spong's version of Christianity—which I would imagine most Christians view as heresy—evolution directly conflicts with the traditional narrative.

@pnfullifidian I don’t like to even think about all those silly Christian doctrines. There are some modern churches that emphasize the teachings of Jesus and foster reverence and awe for reality. Others retain the old dogmas to a degree but allow for interpretations that are consistent with science. A Pew study shows that about half of all scientists believe in God. I can’t believe that those scientists are involved in the fundamentalist churches that you and I grew up in.

@WilliamFleming Feels good to be away from all of that, doesn't it? Peace.

@hrichardson8 Do you want to run that by the Pope? or by Stalin? how about Mao?

@hrichardson8 Okay.