Some human social mechanisms are black boxes filled with chaotic nonsense gears,

Some human social mechanisms are black boxes filled with chaotic nonsense gears, which even under analysis are absurd. In fact, they work, in part, because they are absurd, chaotic, nonsensical black boxes impervious to rational scrutiny.

Rationalism is overrated. You cannot teach a child to be fully rational in real time. You cannot teach all human beings to be fully rational – because the grasp of some of the greater abstractions upon which our complex world is based is simply beyond all but perhaps ten percent of the population. (Nothing is so irrational as the idiocy of smart people.) You can however, teach parables, myths, and legends: narratives and history, and from that teach children how to use the black box.

Protestant christianity is a mashup of the objective and technical nature of germanic language, ancient germanic social sentiments and legal customs, pagan river and forest mythology, the demands of being a poor minority on the world stage, an attempt to keep the ‘decadent’ east at bay, the christian ethic restated in germanic terms, a history under the church and a rebellion against it in favor of germanic customs, and a rapid assimilation and embracing of classical aristotelian ideas.

No sane person would devise such a mechanism. It is a personal philosophy with political ends, and enormously beneficial economic consequences. (And plenty of other religions achieve just the opposite ends – perpetual ignorance and poverty.)

It works. That’s the problem. Christianity produces ‘goods’. Even in the developing world, the market and political reforms are driven by christians.

That’s why I support it. Not because it’s rational. But because supporting it is rational.

I don’t care that it’s nuts. I care that it’s a goose that lays golden eggs.