Replacement of Religion's Cultural Uses
Christ Crucified (Velázquez) by Diego Velázquez, 1632, depicts the sacrifice of Jesus to suffering for the sake of others, the process by which a prophet re-enters the system in the sacrifice of oneself to the greater good so that the system might change and be rejuvenated.
Criticism is, well, critical to religion. My goal here is to examine what happens when religion is replaced with other systems, such as politics, mysticism, or work.
Track with me here. Cultural order tends to decay towards rigid authoritarianism and power dynamics, while freedom requires some tolerance of chaos. Civilization requires the specialization of roles, built on trade, built on mutual understanding and trust. Maintaining these systems is essential. Religion has acted as the balancing force between chaos and order for many millennia, standing against both tyrants and anarchists, while identifying what aspects of cognition and behavior are special.
Prophets are the balancing force of religion itself. They maintain systems by updating religion through insights that correct or rebuke authorities and dissidents, shaking the status quo when it has become corrupted by the aggression of nihilism or the indolence of decadence. This refinement and rejuvenation is a critical and necessary part of cultural systems functioning properly from generation to generation. Sometimes the fail however, and religion becomes allied with either dissidents or rulers. Religion itself then fails to uphold its purpose, turns stagnant, and disintegrates (or is torn down).
We are currently experiencing something like this at present, with science and bipolar political alignments fracturing and coopting religious belief systems. This is happening with both liberal democrats and conservative republicans undercutting science and education to support political power agendas. For example, conservatives try to corrupt science and data to justify conspiracy narratives or previously banned religious practices such as circumcision, just to maintain a sense of the sacred and special knowledge. Liberals have likewise attacked educational institutions and biological research with critical race theory, third-wave feminism, and gender politics, holding these values in religious esteem. Meanwhile, with false prophets fighting over platforms controlled by pundits, religion has failed to adapt and is set to collapse.
Of course, it is impossible to get rid of religion. It is an ontological form of the pattern, which we have merely named. Cut off one head, and two take its place, more chaotic than before until the coalesce into new sacred rules. Without faith, we collapse into psychosis and fantastical delusions, systemic trauma, and dogma void of heuristics. Without community support, we rise in anger or cling viciously to ideological extremism in our search for acceptance.
I find this troubling but want to understand, so I have compiled an examination of various religious degenerations. These are not defenses, but a dialectical exercise, an impartial recognition of the function these ancient traditions have played in our society.
The Course of Empire Destruction by Thomas Cole, 1836. Cole understood the gravity of this work strove to relate to the American mind of what happened when heuristics of the past went ignored.
Social Justice as Religious Import
Destroy Christianity/Judaism, and we get social justice and Marxism. Christianity places is a big import on social generosity and service. At the same time, the older Judaism allocated 6.6% of GDP to the poor and set up systems to ensure all citizens were landowners. Without these precepts, our systems are built for the few. We have class warfare built on victim narratives, vengeance, and entitlement. Individuals now fight on behalf of their interests to take something rather than to give it. The rich fail to understand the need for a stable, educated, intelligent workforce or the riotous collapse that may increase the wealth gap.
Orthodoxy as Identity Humility
Destroy Orthodoxy, and we become slaves of graceless, rank-ordering powers through intersectionality and hollow virtue-signaling. Religious rules and guidelines for behavior once managed our focus on helping others when possible but carrying our personal load. Grace (Christianity), various forms of penance or worship (Judaism, Catholicism, Hinduism), and mindfulness (Buddhism, Daoism, etc.) balanced the equation. Now we are blindly obsessed over the sufferings experienced by a select few and experience overwhelming guilt over things we can do little about, so we signal our virtue like Pharisees seeking special status…
Sainthood as Victimhood Virtue Signals
Destroy Catholic Saints, and we create victimhood competitions for special-interest martyr worship. Saints were given the title based on their service of higher moral ethics, often through the support of the suffering poor. Now we are rewarded when we compete using identity as a right to speak or receive support or align ourselves in voice alone while presuming oppression based on skin color. Our heroes are not those who serve but those who attack and vilify majority-status individuals using superficial cues and blanket objectification. As a result, majority status individuals leverage their suffering, identity, or sexuality to find safety in intersectionality. We move further away from a society of competence that pragmatically builds and towards one of infighting. The bipolar beliefs of intersectionality recognition and victim-signaling result in a borderline social consciousness, where identity dysphoria reigns supreme and sociopathic beneficence enacted for self-promotion reigns supreme. But a house divided cannot stand, so…
Factions and Outgroups, Tribalism
Destroy religious denominations to empower tribal politics. This one is a little more tricky. Denominations were ideologically based groups that welcomed all identities. As Marxism and Feminism focused on work as the primary definition of privilege (although there are many forms), social constructionism made identity the primary defining narrative. People separated from idea-based groups to predominantly identity-based groups. The two-party system exploited this division, with academics even arguing that conservative African Americans "are not black” and using “whiteness” to describe indifference to the suffering of others or preference of white people for their own race. This is, of course, hypocritical and tribal, as this term itself demonstrates racial warfare on behalf of one’s own racial group or self-promotion by privileged academics exploiting the victim narratives previously described.
Worship has its Results
Cease worship, and we empower shamanism, influencers, and experience culture. This is especially well seen in Los Angeles, where few churches correlate to a spike in faux Buddhist offshoots, ayahuasca, pop-up museums, burners, etc. While there's nothing inherently wrong with these things, art embedded in tradition reflects the deeper meaning of the world and its connection with past ages. While still leveraging such practices, separation from these traditions is movement without intention, consultation without purpose, or endgame. Our subconscious is made up of what we put into it. In terms of depth psychology, this is the Ouroboros, the self-contained creature feeding off of itself, a contraction of self rather than a true expansion. While this can be experienced as wholeness, as it is currently pursued, it is pantheism and vapid experimentalism.
Hierarchies of Labor and Service
Undermine religious hierarchies, and we find ourselves groveling in a corporate office, fearful of termination, begging for promotion, desperate for meaning. Perhaps felt more acutely in the world's large cities, exploitation of power in religious hierarchies has pushed ever more individuals out of the group. This is especially noteworthy of men, who are always lamented as an absence yet continually seen as a threat by the establishment. Practically, the church functions more like a harem exclusive of men who are not subordinate to the power system. Yet men who eventually settle into the business world separate from religion make work their church and altar. People who are not dominant need a structure to be successful and to feel safe. We need pathways with predictable ends – heuristics. If one doesn’t have that in a family or community, it will be exploited for profit. America has become a cult of slavery to work.
The Sacrifice of Religion to Science
Finally, sacrifice religion to science, and our research will be decried by the new religion of cancel-culture. Without religion, science is under full attack by the liberal collegiate system. While already facing many problems, the rise of science to justify agendas and identity narratives under the new religious fundamentalism of social constructionism uses the aforementioned victimhood competitions to destroy dissidents using ideological authoritarianism. Whereas universities used to be built on argumentation, argumentation is now seen as “violence” unless it occurs on behalf of the victim subset. This is cult behavior.
Job and His Friends by Ilya Repin, 1869
Closure
Religious behavior is a biological and phenomenological pattern pivoting on the renewal of dying systems for the good of the suffering. Destroy one manifestation, and the ensuing chaos will demand the creation of a replacement. This substitute will carry equivalent psychological weight, but without time-tested heuristics, it will lack awareness of outcomes and create a wake of true victims, psychological suffering, and equivalent backlash.
