Progressivism is a christian heresey already. Original sin is white guilt. Indulgences can be paid to charity to forgive sins. Climate change is the apocalypse, and the earth spirits send hurricanes as punishment for driving SUVs.
I like to call it "Libstianity" and save Liberalism to mean what it used to, before all the madness. (Free speech, content of your character, Locke and Hume stuff, etc...)
Most humans are hard wired to need some kind of overarching belief system, some more than others. That includes most atheists. Religion has filled that need for the vast majority of human history, but these days there are plenty of alternatives to fill the void if religion has been cast aside. The whole woke thing is a perfect example of this, and the Covid cult is really just a variation of the woke bullshit. I'm on the agnostic/atheist side myself, but most people who get rid of religion replace it with something else, and it's usually worse. So the answer to your question is most likely yes.
Science is the new religion and like pretty much any other it's been taken hostage by those seeking power to manipulate the masses. Funny enough is they don't even have to use a good/bad eternal afterlife as the carrot on the stick anymore. Do as we say, then you die and that's it.
Science isn't their new religion, "scientific consensus" (with the quotes) is their new religion.
We need to stop using "science" as they use it. Science is not whatever the media says is correct. Science is not whatever the leftist politicians say. Science is a process to learn more about the natural word, it makes no claims in and of itself and, most importantly, the shit the left pushes is not science.
Shutting down one side of the discussion and banning people who disagree is anti-science.
Claiming there is an illness, but only a select group of people know anything about it, and therefore we must do everything they say, is anti-science. That's more akin to religions of the past where a religious leader claims that God only speaks through him and therefore everyone must do what he says.
This won't stop them from using it, and in fact grants them more credibility and power when we continue to use it properly as people assume they are also doing the same.
We are literally watching this happen in triple speed with the word "anti-vaxx" as literally any usage they have for it is now equal to any and all prior valid usage. That's why their word games are so effective, and conceding it to them is very dangerous territory.
The least we could do is put "science" in quotes whenever we're using it in their twisted way. The same goes for any other word, like "anti-vax" or "racist."
I feel that using the word "science" in their way without qualifying it with at least quotes gives them more credibility as any onlooker would view us as admission that we don't trust science, which they may still view as a process, not a bizarre consensus.
I can agree to that, but that's far more effective in text than in speech where doing so constantly will make you look far worse than them often unless the person already agrees with you.
It's even easier in speech because you can just change your inflection. You can also throw in longer explanations in lieu of just the word ("their idea of science") very quickly whereas in text it might look unwieldy.
It seems to be a factor of things driving the non-religious to embrace the Covid cult
Sense of community: A big thing that drives people to religion is the community building, as we are social creatures. And with social media and technology giving us more online connections and less physical connections, the non-religious can find bonds through the Covid cult (What vaccine did you get? Did you hear about the current stats on Delta? etc.).
Sense of purpose: With Covid, people can now "do their part" in getting vaccinated, masked up, social distancing, and all these other retarded rituals to lower and restrict Covid (even though this does jack shit and definitely makes Covid and the effects associated with it even worse)
Us vs. Them: Basically the boogeyman to all the problems from lockdown/Covid can now be put onto the non-vaxxed (We can't fully open up because of these damn republican, right-wing anit-vaxxers! They are the root of all evil! etc.) People in power just love abusing that power (the religious right on videogames back in the day) and now the non-religious can do it to the anti-vaxxers and the religious.
And for people who are religious and why they don't fall for the Covid cult (as easily)
The banning of congregations: I'm pretty sure banning phyiscal religious congregations pissed off a lot of religious folks so they are more likely to see pass the bullshit.
Mark of the beast: This is specifically a Christian reason. If a Christian can't see the parallels between that section in the bible and the mRNA shots, then he/she is not a true Christian
Their "hell" would be total ostracization from the progressive social order for any reason. These people will champion masks on Monday and denounce them on Tuesday. The contradictions don't matter. All that matters is the safety and comfort of the tribe's consensus. And that consensus is handed down by the leftist elites who control media, academia, and big tech. They decide what the progressive mob believes, and the greatest fear for any member of that mob is to fall from member to target.
If there is a correlation between the non-religious and COVID cultism, I would guess it's probably because those are part of the tenets of their "tribe," i.e. "We are the party of The Science™, not superstition! We're not like those anti-vaxxing, Bible-thumping, flyover-state deplorables!"
Having preexisting religious beliefs absolutely does not protect you from being swept up in other cult-like beliefs. For example, QAnon believers seem to be overwhelmingly Christian, despite the fact QAnon asks you to put your faith in "The Plan," and not God.
Also, Churches all over the US (particularly the Southern Baptist) have been infected by the Woke Cult, with clergy trying to purge all the heretics. Not for heresy against Christianity, heresy against "anti-racism."
Nobody is immune to being swept up into cult-like behavior. If you think you are, you're probably even more susceptible, because you don't have your guard up.
The X-Files nailed it 25 years ago. There's a scene where CSM is interrogating one of the "good" aliens and CSM mutters something along the lines of: "Science is their (the people's) religion now".
I've said it before: It's the Atheists that never Deconverted.
In Atheism, if you didn't know, there's a thing called "Deconversion" where you actually fully deconvert from theism entirely. Religion literally ends up meaning nothing to you. It has no impact on your social, psychological, cultural, or moral aspects of your life because you are fully separated from theism as a concept.
One YouTuber who documented this well was TheraminTrees, and another who really basically walked through the whole process from start to finish was PrplFox.
Basically, this is not a change of opinions, policies, or principles; but a complete change in your entire perspective and narrative of how you see the world from theism to atheism. The process is genuinely grueling and takes years. It's like going from Blue Pill to Clear or White Pill, but way more than that because it's a change of your whole psyche and not just your principles.
In this process, you will basically lose your entire support system, maybe even your family, because many faiths will hold that as a weapon to maintain control over it's subjects. All of your principles will have to fundamentally change because you will no longer operate in the world the same way. This is not a reactionary attitude towards God or religion, or even a rejection of it. It is a total dismissal of the concept. As if God and religion was nothing different from a TV show you used to be a fan of: some parts were nice, and some parts were not so nice, but you've well and truly moved on.
I genuinely do not think most religious people really understand what it is like to actually live as a deconverted atheist, because I think the shift in perspective would be so dramatic that you would have to resort back to faith and theism after a while.
Maybe the best way is to put the way Nietzsche put it: "God is dead and it is we who have killed him." Deconversion is like killing God. What do you do, now that you have killed God? You can't go back: God is dead. Instead, as Nietzsche kind of emphasized, you must take responsibility of this killing, and of yourself, and of your community, because you must now realize that faith means nothing; and your actions are now everything.
There is no forgiveness. There is no afterlife. There is no 2nd chance. Everything you will ever do is permanent, and unapologetic. If you fuck up, you fuck up forever. You can never take it back. Your scars and regrets are permanent, they become you in exactly the same way your triumphs do. So the ultimate responsibility of life is no longer on God, luck, faith, or the supernatural. It's on your shoulders... and only your shoulders. No one is coming to save you, no one even can.
The true horror of the deconverted atheist is the realization that this was always true, even when you didn't know it, and that the faithful may be blindly stumbling their way into catastrophe because they are deluding themselves from taking the extreme responsibility that they already have and are ignoring. Every moment of your life that you lived before you realized your responsibility was a moment that you simply lost to take that responsibility, never to be regained. The horror is that you didn't kill God. You just killed God for you, but God was already dead.
You didn't lose anything. This weight was always on your shoulders to begin with and you didn't know it. Yea, though you walk through the valley in the shadow of death you must temper your fear of evil, because no one is with you, and no one will save you from it. Thus, I must confront evil and death alone. I dare not be afraid, because panicked people die.
Once you deconvert, there is no "God shaped hole". There's nothing to fill.
These atheists never fully deconverted. They just took up a new ideology and a new zealotry. Worse, some of them who joined the Woke Cult simply adopted a new full blown religion that is as disastrous as Islamism.
If an atheist is still standing there telling you that they believe Dr. Fauci, they know nothing of the science, and they are of the "I Fucking Love Science" crowd that everyone in Science fucking hates.
Very interesting thread. I've found that generally people skeptical of covid are also on the right because the mainstream is lefties now. That contains a lot of religious people but at the same time many religious people are also older folks that are heavily invested in the mainstream narrative.
Basically it's counter culture versus those that still believe in the system.
I'm a non believer living in a major US city. I started studying this COVID thing as soon as it made the news. By the time March 2020 rolled around I was already seeing that it was not what it was claimed to be. By April I was warning anyone (friends, colleagues and sometimes strangers) who would listen that it was a scam and how they could protect themselves.
I find that both the left and the right can have their useful idiots but obviously this dynamic is much more prevalent on the left.
Examples of the right getting taken are people who still have problems seeing through the neocons. Evangelicals are a literal Armageddon death cult who put a certain country in the Middle East ahead of actual US interests. The Qanon people who unfortunately were badly taken in because they failed to use rudimentary common sense about listening to unknown forces who could not be questioned or verified.
I find a lot of people both on the left and on the right still do not understand the political spectrum of which they are a part. These people still routinely align themselves around personalities, parties and associations instead of merit tested ideas.
I'm not anti religious which is precisely why I don't call myself an atheist, I call myself a non-believer, that is because over the course of my life I've noticed that the most vocal (and annoying) atheists are leftists (example Bill Maher). However if you are astute you will have realized that there is a lot of room for people who are not vocal and also not religious. We don't go around telling people what to think and instead find ways to talk to people to create dialogue through questions and honesty.
Last year, I have argued with this certain person who had a title of Bioware community manager on twitter where I made a notion that people will replace with something in place of religion and he dismissed it calling it ridiculous but I'm certain this person probably is overdose in coolaid and unironically a cult member of I fucking love science crowd. I didn't check his twitter feed but his tweets made during the arguments gave me the vibe that he's one of those types.
Yes, humans are created by God to serve and glorify him. Remove God from the equation and all you're left with is a broken servant looking desperately for a master.
Progressivism is a christian heresey already. Original sin is white guilt. Indulgences can be paid to charity to forgive sins. Climate change is the apocalypse, and the earth spirits send hurricanes as punishment for driving SUVs.
I like to call it "Libstianity" and save Liberalism to mean what it used to, before all the madness. (Free speech, content of your character, Locke and Hume stuff, etc...)
Most humans are hard wired to need some kind of overarching belief system, some more than others. That includes most atheists. Religion has filled that need for the vast majority of human history, but these days there are plenty of alternatives to fill the void if religion has been cast aside. The whole woke thing is a perfect example of this, and the Covid cult is really just a variation of the woke bullshit. I'm on the agnostic/atheist side myself, but most people who get rid of religion replace it with something else, and it's usually worse. So the answer to your question is most likely yes.
Science is the new religion and like pretty much any other it's been taken hostage by those seeking power to manipulate the masses. Funny enough is they don't even have to use a good/bad eternal afterlife as the carrot on the stick anymore. Do as we say, then you die and that's it.
When you see the fundamental beliefs they hold—beliefs like this—the high rates of mental illness and substance abuse start to make a lot more sense.
Science isn't their new religion, "scientific consensus" (with the quotes) is their new religion.
We need to stop using "science" as they use it. Science is not whatever the media says is correct. Science is not whatever the leftist politicians say. Science is a process to learn more about the natural word, it makes no claims in and of itself and, most importantly, the shit the left pushes is not science.
Shutting down one side of the discussion and banning people who disagree is anti-science.
Claiming there is an illness, but only a select group of people know anything about it, and therefore we must do everything they say, is anti-science. That's more akin to religions of the past where a religious leader claims that God only speaks through him and therefore everyone must do what he says.
I usually tend to refer to it as The Science™ but I was on my phone and too lazy to find the TM earlier.
It's like a mystery cult, only the "mystery" in the middle is nothing but a bag of human poo.
This won't stop them from using it, and in fact grants them more credibility and power when we continue to use it properly as people assume they are also doing the same.
We are literally watching this happen in triple speed with the word "anti-vaxx" as literally any usage they have for it is now equal to any and all prior valid usage. That's why their word games are so effective, and conceding it to them is very dangerous territory.
"The vax" now refers to an injection that is literally not a vaccine. That's the power of manipulative language.
I'm beginning to wonder if maybe the printing press was a mistake.
The least we could do is put "science" in quotes whenever we're using it in their twisted way. The same goes for any other word, like "anti-vax" or "racist."
I feel that using the word "science" in their way without qualifying it with at least quotes gives them more credibility as any onlooker would view us as admission that we don't trust science, which they may still view as a process, not a bizarre consensus.
I can agree to that, but that's far more effective in text than in speech where doing so constantly will make you look far worse than them often unless the person already agrees with you.
It's even easier in speech because you can just change your inflection. You can also throw in longer explanations in lieu of just the word ("their idea of science") very quickly whereas in text it might look unwieldy.
albeit remember make difference between church of The Science and science
It seems to be a factor of things driving the non-religious to embrace the Covid cult
And for people who are religious and why they don't fall for the Covid cult (as easily)
Their "hell" would be total ostracization from the progressive social order for any reason. These people will champion masks on Monday and denounce them on Tuesday. The contradictions don't matter. All that matters is the safety and comfort of the tribe's consensus. And that consensus is handed down by the leftist elites who control media, academia, and big tech. They decide what the progressive mob believes, and the greatest fear for any member of that mob is to fall from member to target.
Those that don't believe in God are much more susceptible to be a part of the cult of "science" or what is better called "scientism".
Everyone is religious.
Its hardwired into our DNA.
Some just worship at the alter of secular humanism (Satanism) and claim they have no religion.
Unironically, everything i don't like is satanic.
This is a form of cope.
Hahahahahaa keep stalking me. I love it. I’m 100% sure you’re this well adjusted irl!
If there is a correlation between the non-religious and COVID cultism, I would guess it's probably because those are part of the tenets of their "tribe," i.e. "We are the party of The Science™, not superstition! We're not like those anti-vaxxing, Bible-thumping, flyover-state deplorables!"
Having preexisting religious beliefs absolutely does not protect you from being swept up in other cult-like beliefs. For example, QAnon believers seem to be overwhelmingly Christian, despite the fact QAnon asks you to put your faith in "The Plan," and not God.
Also, Churches all over the US (particularly the Southern Baptist) have been infected by the Woke Cult, with clergy trying to purge all the heretics. Not for heresy against Christianity, heresy against "anti-racism."
Nobody is immune to being swept up into cult-like behavior. If you think you are, you're probably even more susceptible, because you don't have your guard up.
The X-Files nailed it 25 years ago. There's a scene where CSM is interrogating one of the "good" aliens and CSM mutters something along the lines of: "Science is their (the people's) religion now".
I've said it before: It's the Atheists that never Deconverted.
In Atheism, if you didn't know, there's a thing called "Deconversion" where you actually fully deconvert from theism entirely. Religion literally ends up meaning nothing to you. It has no impact on your social, psychological, cultural, or moral aspects of your life because you are fully separated from theism as a concept.
One YouTuber who documented this well was TheraminTrees, and another who really basically walked through the whole process from start to finish was PrplFox.
Basically, this is not a change of opinions, policies, or principles; but a complete change in your entire perspective and narrative of how you see the world from theism to atheism. The process is genuinely grueling and takes years. It's like going from Blue Pill to Clear or White Pill, but way more than that because it's a change of your whole psyche and not just your principles.
In this process, you will basically lose your entire support system, maybe even your family, because many faiths will hold that as a weapon to maintain control over it's subjects. All of your principles will have to fundamentally change because you will no longer operate in the world the same way. This is not a reactionary attitude towards God or religion, or even a rejection of it. It is a total dismissal of the concept. As if God and religion was nothing different from a TV show you used to be a fan of: some parts were nice, and some parts were not so nice, but you've well and truly moved on.
I genuinely do not think most religious people really understand what it is like to actually live as a deconverted atheist, because I think the shift in perspective would be so dramatic that you would have to resort back to faith and theism after a while.
Maybe the best way is to put the way Nietzsche put it: "God is dead and it is we who have killed him." Deconversion is like killing God. What do you do, now that you have killed God? You can't go back: God is dead. Instead, as Nietzsche kind of emphasized, you must take responsibility of this killing, and of yourself, and of your community, because you must now realize that faith means nothing; and your actions are now everything.
There is no forgiveness. There is no afterlife. There is no 2nd chance. Everything you will ever do is permanent, and unapologetic. If you fuck up, you fuck up forever. You can never take it back. Your scars and regrets are permanent, they become you in exactly the same way your triumphs do. So the ultimate responsibility of life is no longer on God, luck, faith, or the supernatural. It's on your shoulders... and only your shoulders. No one is coming to save you, no one even can.
The true horror of the deconverted atheist is the realization that this was always true, even when you didn't know it, and that the faithful may be blindly stumbling their way into catastrophe because they are deluding themselves from taking the extreme responsibility that they already have and are ignoring. Every moment of your life that you lived before you realized your responsibility was a moment that you simply lost to take that responsibility, never to be regained. The horror is that you didn't kill God. You just killed God for you, but God was already dead.
You didn't lose anything. This weight was always on your shoulders to begin with and you didn't know it. Yea, though you walk through the valley in the shadow of death you must temper your fear of evil, because no one is with you, and no one will save you from it. Thus, I must confront evil and death alone. I dare not be afraid, because panicked people die.
Once you deconvert, there is no "God shaped hole". There's nothing to fill.
These atheists never fully deconverted. They just took up a new ideology and a new zealotry. Worse, some of them who joined the Woke Cult simply adopted a new full blown religion that is as disastrous as Islamism.
If an atheist is still standing there telling you that they believe Dr. Fauci, they know nothing of the science, and they are of the "I Fucking Love Science" crowd that everyone in Science fucking hates.
Factually, yes.
Yes
Very interesting thread. I've found that generally people skeptical of covid are also on the right because the mainstream is lefties now. That contains a lot of religious people but at the same time many religious people are also older folks that are heavily invested in the mainstream narrative.
Basically it's counter culture versus those that still believe in the system.
The reasonable, covid skeptical people i know are from every spectrum of belief and values.
I'm a non believer living in a major US city. I started studying this COVID thing as soon as it made the news. By the time March 2020 rolled around I was already seeing that it was not what it was claimed to be. By April I was warning anyone (friends, colleagues and sometimes strangers) who would listen that it was a scam and how they could protect themselves.
I find that both the left and the right can have their useful idiots but obviously this dynamic is much more prevalent on the left.
Examples of the right getting taken are people who still have problems seeing through the neocons. Evangelicals are a literal Armageddon death cult who put a certain country in the Middle East ahead of actual US interests. The Qanon people who unfortunately were badly taken in because they failed to use rudimentary common sense about listening to unknown forces who could not be questioned or verified.
I find a lot of people both on the left and on the right still do not understand the political spectrum of which they are a part. These people still routinely align themselves around personalities, parties and associations instead of merit tested ideas.
I'm not anti religious which is precisely why I don't call myself an atheist, I call myself a non-believer, that is because over the course of my life I've noticed that the most vocal (and annoying) atheists are leftists (example Bill Maher). However if you are astute you will have realized that there is a lot of room for people who are not vocal and also not religious. We don't go around telling people what to think and instead find ways to talk to people to create dialogue through questions and honesty.
Anyway, sorry to bust up the party.
There's no such thing as non-religious people. You either worship gods or you worship cow statues, actors and merchants.
Last year, I have argued with this certain person who had a title of Bioware community manager on twitter where I made a notion that people will replace with something in place of religion and he dismissed it calling it ridiculous but I'm certain this person probably is overdose in coolaid and unironically a cult member of I fucking love science crowd. I didn't check his twitter feed but his tweets made during the arguments gave me the vibe that he's one of those types.
I am hardcore atheist and I am not part of the cult.
Yes, because they worship themselves instead of God
Yes, humans are created by God to serve and glorify him. Remove God from the equation and all you're left with is a broken servant looking desperately for a master.
Not for me personally or a good friend of mine, but I do see your point
Yes I've noticed that people who are religious are generally much less afraid of covid.