this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2025
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Organized Religon is a control mechanism that humanity no longer needs.
Never ever need
We never really needed it, it arose naturally when people began to question the nature of their reality and other people realized they can gain political power by giving them "answers".
Religon was kind of a law enforcement system before governments could properly setup formal law enforcement.
It's a way to make communities self police.
These days, organized religion is a dangerous tool sitting around for random con men to pick up and weild.
Monotheistic Religion is a step along the ladder of class struggle. 2 ish steps ago.
✅ Shouldn't need.
I agree with you however it sadly is a self perpetuating cycle fueled by those who look to gain and those who accept exploitation of the working class regardless of whether it is knowingly or unknowingly.
If you just take a tiny look at what is happening right now, I'd say humanity definitely needs it. Religion merely became powerless to help with it, but the need to make people behave properly definitely is there.
A) religion is behind what's happening right now. Evangelicals own the country and Project 2025'd it. The religious are genociding Gaza. Religion can suck a whole mess of dicks.
B) If people need an external daddy figure to make them be good, they aren't good to begin with. And typically the religious are much worse people than agnostics or atheists, who seem to find it possible to find and rely on intrinsic understandings of good and bad.
C) Religion is not necessary for faith or belief. It's just the human corruption and power consolidation of it.
We need action... no more words. We need self and human respect no more than that. I love a song by Metallica... Kil Em all Sorry for that but its what i am feeling
What humanity needs, IMO, is to realize collectively and also teach our children that happiness, fulfillment, and yes morality are things that come from within. And they are of course strongly influenced by the people & relationships closest to us.
Religion teaches people look for an external source of morality and happiness just as much as capitalism does. Being religious or living under capitalism don't necessarily prevent individuals from achieving self-actualization, but I certainly don't think they make it easier for most. I say "most" because there's a lot of variety in people, and there are undoubtedly some people who are wired to love just about anything you can think of, including running a business or leading a worship service.
You behave properly by not being into religion. That's kinda the point. Few cults aren't too radical to be sensible (~all of Island, ~all of Christianity) in a modern world, or intentionally undermine societal structures around them to further their own goals (Mormons et all).
It was once a needed concept. Nowadays non-ecclesical structures exist to do this, and they get actively hampered/undermined by religious ones (see the christofascists in the US).
Theres a tiny handful of religions that dont seem too terrible. But all the Abrahamic religions, which encompasses most religious people, have some pretty huge and unhandled philosophical problems. If you try to dig into any issue in them you are labeled a bad, intolerant person.
Genuinely I don't know what structures those might be. What are you referring to?
Mostly science, media, governments. We no longer need to talk about Gods to explain lightning or ask a priest instead of a doctor to help us with our cancer.
Of course, in days past that scientific alternative did not exist and we also had few ways to inform people about any such alternatives. So religions offered an explanation and while not a solution at least done hope and were really available.
We also have made huge laps in therapy and psychology so we no longer require a supposed higher being to pray to to manage our own fears and depressions.
Of course, everyone handles this differently. For some, it's a useful tool, even if it is core is Santa Claus for adults, in a way. But it's not required any more. We found alternatives, and in most cases with actual explanations and actual effects.
The issue is the people in charge have a different definition of "behave properly" to the rest of us.
Então porque não tomar o poder? why not take the power from them?
Yeah, democracy doesn't tend to optimize for honesty or other virtues.
I see how suffrage within a constrained context like in the USA leads to awful results.
However, if democracy is stuffed into the small box of suffrage, its potential is limited. If, instead, it's spread so that it grows everyone's capabilities, then you see something very different. You see hundreds of thousands or millions of people in the street, demanding change against authoritarianism, against unnecessary cruelty, against egotism ("me me me my nation my family my religion my clan my precious me me me").
So democracy tends to optimize for capacity building, democratic value orientations, and institutional capacity construction. In other words, it makes people more capable, it makes people care more about freedom for themselves and others, and it makes institutions guarantee that people can build their capacities to be free.
In fact, you can quote me on this, but the USA right now is way more anti-democratic than its people are and therefore there will be massive protests. Those protests will not be against democracy; they are democracy in action.
You can check out Christian Welzel and the World Value Survey literature to see why I say what I say.
Are you sure América USA ever were a democracy? Camon...
It sounds as if you think the USA is not a democracy, and I can agree with that sentiment to an extent. For example, I see how neo-conservatism and neoliberalism are whacking their axes at the forest of democracy in the USA. I also see how elites everywhere try to avoid investing in humanity, avoid paying back to the societies that made them rich in the first place, including in the USA. In fact, I'd argue that the elites in the USA are shackling people's hands and covering their mouths so that they work for their corporate overlords without questioning anything.
If I agree with that then how could I possibly believe anything else? Do I not believe the narrow narrative that America is anything but a democracy? Well, do you believe that the millions of Americans who have striked or protested for their rights are shackled and mouth-covered? Do you believe that democracy is defined narrowly as suffrage? Or do you believe that democracy is defined as making people more capable so that they value freedom and therefore strike or protest to transform their institutions to build the capacities of everyone?
Religion seems to me to be a preprocessed bundle of ideas. Where I think humanity goes wrong is our taboo around challenging those ideas one by one to try to improve humanity.
Yeah, religion is obsolete, I'm tellin' yeah.. for real this time. We have ~~Fortran~~ Rust* now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sVc8lkTfrk
Also, right-wing parties will lose all future elections because they are dying out of old age.. for real this time.
And Gazans were living the best time of their life when the other side of the uniparty was in control.. for real!
* I'm actually a Rust user 😄
Ah yes, we have finally discovered the only human being that is immune from politics™ . If only we could all achieve the level of enlightenment that you have.