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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 25, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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"Scratch-made" is an excellent marketing term if you're looking for restaurant patrons, not so much if you're looking for new religious followers. Social proof is a big psychological deal, and nobody wants to leave their millions-strong religion to follow something some guy pulled out of nowhere. But if you reinterpret an existing religion then you've got a chance. People get to believe they still share the old truths of those millions of people in the old religion, and they've got new truths on top of that too!

The trouble is that those "old truths" are all still written down somewhere, and the farther your "new truths" diverge from them, the trickier everything gets to reconcile. "The first books of our religion are about how God was super focused on one coalition of tribes in the Middle East" and "The modern factor differentiating our religion is that we're super special for being from a different racial cluster centered thousands of miles away" are an especially tough combo unless you can strike out "different" ... but in any case "God handled a tiny fraction of the Iron Age personally and was hands-off with the rest" is the sort of plot hook that really calls out to be picked up, and "we're not part of 'the rest' is a satisfying-feeling resolution. Human psychology is so self-centered that you can get away with "God is super invested in our tiny group" to people for whom "God is super invested in someone else's tiny group" would be literally unbelievable.