A proud citizen of Sodom and Gomorrah

Intriguing little bit in The Guardian today on, of all things, the relationship between soil chemistry and religion:

My untested hypothesis is as follows. The peculiarities of the Abrahamic religions - their astonishing success in colonising the world and their dangerous notion of progress (inherited by secular society) - result from a marriage between the universal God of the nomads and the conditions which permitted cities to develop. The dominant beliefs of the past 2,000 years are the result of an ancient migration from soils such as xerepts and xeralfs to soils such as fluvents and rendolls.

—George Monbiot, God and the Good Earth, in The Guardian

The essay focuses, of course, on a sort of syncretism—a fusion of urban and rural, pastoral and industrial (and, yes, xerept and fluvent)... but I note with interest the observation that the crazy ole' buggers in whose crania these various cultural viruses were first developed were all fire and brimstone haters of the city...

No surprise there. Not for this proud heathen urbanite.