That, however, would suggest that Satan does what God programs(Isaiah 45:7), which would put a twist on the garden of Eden story and the forbidden fruit.

That’s a win-win.
[/snarky sarcasm]

I had a sign at work:

“You cannot be competent in a dysfunctional environment”

And most of religion has gone the same way today, based on the premise, “Gee, the Corporations are successful to make money, if we do the same things the same way, we’ll have the same kind of success.” The ACoGs up the ante, particularly United which is the very picture of Corporate culture (except the ministers can’t expense alcoholic drinks any more): They are based on the Weyerhaeuser Corporate Model (quite directly).

Unfortunately, if you follow the corporate model, you will have the corporate rewards: Arbitrary chaos in various stages of disarray, in an arena of competition, abusing those not in the power structure because they don’t matter.

Who wouldn’t want to have that, particularly when you consider Judgment Day?
[/more snarky sarcasm]

How did the poem by the monkeys go?

“Man descended,
That dirty cuss,
But he never,
Descended from us.”

“And even worse, the Armstrongist churches of God are the Church Corporate, adopting the worst of the Corporate Model and implementing it badly. As such, they are thoroughly drenched, soaked and wallowing in carnal corporate competition and politics, with no concept of God at all in the practices, and being the Model of “Moral Mazes” by Robert Jackall, wherein it is demonstrated that within a corporate culture, what is good, right and moral, is what the guy above you wants from you: You leave your morals and ethics at the door of your home. In short, the end justifies the means, and the corporate officers of the church become the very same corporate executives of major corporations with power over others where they become “psychopaths by day”.”

This is an important point, because it also describes what “christian” religions are doing today. Christianity has become a mirror of the corporate collective, and finds itself, even against its wioll in most cases, doing exactly wehat the corporate culture demands. This is why it is also necessary to look at economic co nditions today alongside of religion, because it is a basid philosophy of Marxism that economic change is the basis of all social change. Those who can now see through it are not only seeing trough the falsehood of the COGs, but the twin falsehood of corporate politics.

Douglas writes:

“This is all built in to “human nature” and unless there is an intervention from “God” to change the base natures of the participants of a religion, the behavior of those in charge of the ACoGs will differ not one whit from that of the lower primates, except, perhaps, somewhat more mayhem and chaos than what we see in the wild kingdom.”

Exactly! But the same is true of all religions, Not just COGs. The human animal is composed of the “base” animal instincts, but is also composed of a natural tendency to try and explain everythi ng mechanically, or as Slater writes in “EarthWalk”:

“When man invented the machine, for which there is no external model in nature, he invented it in his own image. The machine does not come from nowhere-it mirrors man’s mechanical head.”

The mistaken view of “spirit” and “flesh” is one in which we seek to replace animal instincts with logical linear processes of mechanical thought, which then result in the kind of corporate collectivist mentality we see around us today. The unconscious assumption is that mechanical rules will be made into whioch we can collectively “upload” each individual, so that colective obedience leads to a kind of social perfection, resulting in exactly the kind of corporate conditions Douglas describes above, “psychopaths by day”.