I hope they did some background reading on the gods theyâre claiming to worship. Itâd be a shame if their good intentions provoked the soul-devouring wrath of Great Old Ones demanding the tribute theyâd been promised.
I would have expected the Church of the SubGenius to be well funded in Iceland.
San Diego Center for Low Level of Conscious heartily approves of this!
Disregarding the mayhem, toil, and death, wouldnât it be kinda funny if a bunch of aetheists picked the âtrueâ religion and accidentally unleased Armageddon?
I have an odd feeling that isnât going to happen.
Iâd still have chosen the Norse gods, though - the Church of Loki could argue that thumbing the nose at the authorities is in fact what its founding God would have wanted.
âNational Church of Icelandâ? Whatâs this, the middle ages? Ridiculous.
In Germany this stuff is simply called âChurch Taxâ and goes the Catholics or Protestants or what have you. Itâs a tax on top of the income tax, but you actually have to opt in as an adherent to be billed as such.
When I had my first internship and got the receipt of my first income, I was very surprised to see something like âŹ15 go to the Catholics, of all places. Having clarified this issue with HR they promptly refunded it in full. Iâd like to know how they came to their decision, since nowhere was I ever asked about my religious affiliation. Never happened with any other workplace and they didnât ask, either.
Anyway, I applaud the Zuists for their efforts. The Sumeran gods are quite fearsome! I could not have imagined a western nation forcing every citizen to pay for organized crime religion and even going as far as having a mandatory state religion for everyone until at least age 16.
I was thinking the same thing. They pick desert gods from another continent. Why werenât the local gods good enough for 'em? And then I learned that their church is also a gyro restaurant.
The Church of England is called that for a reasonâŠ
Eat local, worship local
And the Church of Scotland. In the UK you have no choice; Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu or Bathomet worshipper, your taxes go to putting Anglican bishops in the House of Lords and a whole load of other fluff - not medieval, I hasten to add, but 16th and 17th century fluff.
For us the Icelandic system would be progress.
this is why church and state are separated in the USA: taxes. the land rush capitalist founders did not want to coerce people through taxation to support a state church such as the church of england they fled from. religious freedom and separation of church and state were strategies to diminish the role of religion to favor secular rule exclusively. therefore those who believe we were founded on religious principles are exactly wrong when the truth is religion was intentionally excluded by the founders.
On a nitpick, for Armageddon to happen the true religion would have to be early apocalypic Christianity.
I wasnât acquainted with the Sumerian religion except in so far as some of its creation myths appear in the Book of Genesis (unless they antedated Sumer, of course, which is possible), but it doesnât seem to go in much for ragnaröks. Itâs all about order in agrarian societies. Rather disappointing; even the Flood doesnât last very long.
possibly there are already groups registered with more local deity flavors that would have gotten the money, and they had to stake claim in an unrepresented spot?
i believe! i believe!
My brother was in the Faroe Islands a few years ago and commented to a local about how much it rained there. Local: âWell, it keeps the Muslims out.â I think that was Trumpâs theory tooâŠ
Just long enough to fertilize the river valley? pssh, what good is that? 
There already are neopagan Norse religions, including ĂsatrĂșarfĂ©lagiĂ° in Iceland. And many of these modern Norse groups have right-wing racist views. Iâm sure the Zuists donât want to be connected to something with this baggage. The Sumerian gods are not being used by anyone, so they are free of any modern political views.
I think you have a few centuries mixed up there, but itâs interesting to note the phrase âseparation of church and stateâ was first promulgated by Baptists, who had experience as oppressed minorities at the time. Their concern wasnât protecting the state from the corrupting influence of religion, but the opposite.
You mean the Puritans? They were totally fine with establishing an official state religion in their colonies. It wasnât a secular government that executed all those people for witchcraft in Massachusetts.
The âseparation of church and stateâ thing came about 150 years after the âcolonists fleeing religious persecutionâ thing.
