Notes: Sapiens

P191:

The first millennium BC witnessed the apprearance of three potentially unversal orders, whose devotees could for the first time imagine the entire world and the entire human race as a single unit governed by a single set of laws. Everyone was 'us', at least potentially. There was no longer 'them'. The first universal order to appear was economic: the monetary order. The second universal order was political: the imperial order. The third universal order was religious: the order of universal religions such as Buddhism, Christianity and Islam.

P254 - The worship of Man

If a religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order, then Soviet Communism was no less a religion than Islam. ...

P255

Soviet Communism was a fanatical and missionary religion. A devout Communist could not be a Christian or a Buddhist, and was expected to spread the gospel of Marx and Lenin even at the price of his or her life.

Religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order.

- the theory of relativity is not a religion, because (at least so far) there are no human norms and values that are founded on it.

- football is not a religion because nobody argues that its rules reflect superhuman edicts.

- Islam, Buddhism and Communism are all religions, because all are systems of human norms and values that are founded on belief in a superhuman order.

P258

According to socialists, inequality is the worst blasphemy against the sanctity of humanity, because it previleges peripheral quality of humans over their universal essence. For example, when the rich are privileged over the poor, it means that we value money more than the universal essence of all humans, which is the same for rich and poor alike.