[pstuart]

Oh, the irony.

Yes, it does feed a spiritual need but is's absolutely about control. The current US administration is guided by Project 2025 which wants God to govern (so to speak).

I spend a lot of time thinking about religion, and most of that is anger/fear over the religious zealots who want to control everybody else.

[aerodexis]

There is a control dimension, because humans require some degree of limitations in order to thrive. Ultra-individualism breaks down entirely the moment you think about actual society (like actually considering children) rather than utopian fantasies about how some people want society to work.

That being said, the way anti-religion ppl talk about "control" is so profoundly sloppy and underdefined that it's entirely meaningless. If I try to stop someone from shooting me, am I trying to control them? If I change the the youtube algorithm, did I control them? If I spread a bunch of malaria-resistent mosquitos around, did I control them?

Christianity is evangelical because it believes what it's doing is good and should be shared. If you can only conceptualize this as "control", then I feel sorry that you've internalized the worst and most misery-inducing parts of the last 100 years of western philosophy.

This evangelical quality is a feature of many world religions, including the ones that don't normally get called religion, like the New Atheism movement.

[pstuart]

> the New Atheism movement

Not a religion, not a faith. It's simply well-publicized challenging of religion.

I think that you only see it as such because of how you see the world, but Dawkins, Harris, et al are not my leaders and I strongly disagree with several of their positions.

[aerodexis]

If you abstract away the specific claims made by new New Atheists (either the leaders or the footsoldiers) and analyze it from a purely sociological point of view - it behaves identically to any other religion or faith - especially when you consider that strong, top-down leadership is not a universal property of religion.

Also relevant here is that the concept of "religion" itself was introduced very recently in the 16th and 17th centuries, and seems to have been created so that specific groups of people could consider their own activities as being non-religious. See Before Religion by Nongbri.

[pstuart]

I had a lovely conversation with Claude where I tried to input the relevant conversation contexts for its analysis: https://claude.ai/share/49c55947-219c-4381-99fe-8aebbec3592c

While it's nice to be vindicated, I'd much rather we live in the same universe and this is why I try to engage. I saw dang's warning about this is a flamebait topic, but I need to stress a couple points:

  * I'm in no way trying to attack *anyones* spiritual beliefs
  * I'm not trying to denigrate their religion of choice
  * I *am* trying to point out the nature of their religion in regards to outsiders

The best analogy I can offer up here is drugs. I believe in bodily autonomy, which means that people should be able to do the drugs they choose to do. A lot of drugs can be done with minimal danger (even pure heroin when properly administered is less harmful to the body than alcohol).

That said, drug abuse can happen and it can spread in society in a very unhealthy way. My point analogy is: let people do what they want but let's not have a public health crisis with people overdosing in the streets.

It's a crude analogy, but it's the best I've got for the moment.

I think you see my comments as an attack and that I am "the enemy", but I'm not. I just want to be able to live my life the way I choose to, rather than by somebody claiming to speak for God.

[Curosinono]

Accepting, that we do just not believe in something someone else said, is not a different kind of religion. It is acceptance and growth and mental freedom

[pstuart]

> analyze it from a purely sociological point of view - it behaves identically to any other religion or faith

What is the analysis? What is the behavior? I'm genuinely curious. Help me see what I am apparently blind to seeing.

[_DeadFred_]

Does western music lack value because it was forced to settle on 440 Hz? Is punk un-redeemable because there is a nazi punk offshoot?

[pstuart]

There's a lot tangled up in there but I fail to see the point you are trying to make.