New churches

^{It doesn’t matter where you are in the world; it doesn’t matter what the religion is; ask any religious leader why they are building a new church and you will get the same answer. The church is being built, “for the glorification of God” .}

^{To accept this answer as the truth we must first make a few assumptions:}

^{1. That somewhere up in the sky there is a God and it/He created our 28 billion light-year diameter universe.}

^{2. That God is not only aware of what is happening to human beings, He actually cares about us (or some of us anyway) and He wants to be glorified!}

^{3. That when people spend millions of dollars on yet one more church to add to the hundreds of thousands already glorifying Him, God is appreciative and approves of that use of money!}

^{The SMART explanation of why new churches are built is very different.}

^{Churches are necessary for the survival of all religions. Churches provide a haven, a literal 4 walls between the believers inside and a cynical and sometimes hostile unbelieving world outside. Inside the church the believers can rub shoulders, sing songs and experience that warm and fuzzy feeling of camaraderie that of course is proof that God’s holy spirit is there amongst them! While the believers are in this delusional state of mind the leaders rattle the collection plate and give a sermon designed to reinforce the fantasy that they really are God’s chosen people… and to promote next week’s service where they can repeat the whole process. This is (more or less) the business plan of all organized religions.}

^{The more people who attend a church, the more money that religion can raise, so maintaining the fantasy that they really are God’s chosen people is very important for all religions. That fantasy creates a perverse logic when applied to the building of new churches: If a religion really is the one that has God’s blessing, its membership must surely be growing. If its membership is growing then logically that religion will need more and more churches.}

^{The fact that a new church is likely to be just as empty as all the others nearby is irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that the believers continue to believe… and continue to pay (sorry, donate) their hard-earned cash to their religion.}

^{Of course this scam cannot continue indefinitely. Check out the churches in any neighbourhood, anywhere in the civilised world. 99% of them are empty 99% of the time. Sooner or later the declining number of believers will result in not enough money to maintain existing churches, let alone build new ones. This is already happening to the older established religions in much of western Europe and North America. Recently the Archbishop of Canterbury, the leader of the Anglican church, described the decline of church membership as a, “crisis”.}

^{SMART society believes that as civilisation evolves and advances this “crisis” will spread to all religions and will one day result in their total collapse. We can hardly wait!}