I found this kinda hard to grok but gonna throw in my two cents anyway. Seems like priests (sensu stricto) obtain power by creating a body of ‘consensually true’ ‘expertise’ and hijacking human prestige bias adaptations, not really corresponding to reality because all theistic hypotheses are false, but not totally arbitrary because the ‘knowledge’ is culturally inherited. When someone tries to establish a new consensus, we call it a schism. This seems like one meta level up from what kings do and I’m not sure is faithfully captured by the obscure vs. arcane distinction. This also doesn’t directly contradict my vague impression that wars of succession are way more common than schisms historically, each of these being special cases of the parade going somewhere else than where kings and priests tried to lead them, respectively. I think this fits pretty well with lawyers as modern warrior-priests too (priests sensu lato of course). Law isn’t quite the same as theology I think, in that it’s a little less contingent than theology but more than science/CS/math.
I meant D&D style priests, whose prayers actually cause divine interventions (e.g. healing allies, smiting undead). Arcane knowledge that works because of granted power, in this case from god(s). Real-life priests may or may not fall into the priest archetype; probably somewhere between priest and king archetype.
I found this kinda hard to grok but gonna throw in my two cents anyway. Seems like priests (sensu stricto) obtain power by creating a body of ‘consensually true’ ‘expertise’ and hijacking human prestige bias adaptations, not really corresponding to reality because all theistic hypotheses are false, but not totally arbitrary because the ‘knowledge’ is culturally inherited. When someone tries to establish a new consensus, we call it a schism. This seems like one meta level up from what kings do and I’m not sure is faithfully captured by the obscure vs. arcane distinction. This also doesn’t directly contradict my vague impression that wars of succession are way more common than schisms historically, each of these being special cases of the parade going somewhere else than where kings and priests tried to lead them, respectively. I think this fits pretty well with lawyers as modern warrior-priests too (priests sensu lato of course). Law isn’t quite the same as theology I think, in that it’s a little less contingent than theology but more than science/CS/math.
I meant D&D style priests, whose prayers actually cause divine interventions (e.g. healing allies, smiting undead). Arcane knowledge that works because of granted power, in this case from god(s). Real-life priests may or may not fall into the priest archetype; probably somewhere between priest and king archetype.