If you're an anti-theist, you must believe that it would be better for everyone to stop believing in religions. You're not just ambivalent about what other people do, you have an active interest in stopping them from believing. Is this a legitimate framing of your opinion?
If so, I don't know know how you can believe that. Do you honestly think the average person (or even the above-average person) is capable or even interested in building their own moral framework and metaphysical view of reality? Strip a man of his religious foundation and you don't create a logical, self directed Übermensch, you create a scared, confused, and easily led fool desperate for a framework with which to interpret his existence. I would say look back at the 20th century for evidence of that, but we have had a stark reminder of how malleable the general public is in the past few years, so you don't even need to go back that far.
Do you honestly think the average person (or even the above-average person) is capable or even interested in building their own moral framework and metaphysical view of reality?
Yes. This is how the very first religions emerged.
It's not unreasonable to assume that religions emerged with the beginnings of culture in the stone age. Some of the earliest religions we know are of religions that each city independently had. As we would understand it, each city had it's own "national character", ideologies, culture, traditions, people, and perspectives. The gods of these cities quite literally lived in the cities on their highest building (normally in a statue).
These are not impossible efforts.
Most people already do this through simple experience and then try to rationalize a consistent belief system based on that. Most people also are already inculturated into the society they live in, regardless of whether they are atheists or not.
Moreover, the most difficult effort would be to construct one "out of pure reason". Sure, that's difficult, but mostly it requires introspection. At some point you have to make some fundamental choices on what your fundamental principles are going to be, and then you are going to construct your own narrative of the world around you as you go, living your experiences.
This is already the majority of situations for most people.
Strip a man of his religious foundation and you don't create a logical, self directed Übermensch, you create a scared, confused, and easily led fool desperate for a framework with which to interpret his existence
You're referencing Nietzsche, but you're literally missing his point. Christianity (in particular), but most religions in general, are Slave Mentalities.
If you strip a religious person of his religion, he finds another religion, to cater to his Slave Mentality. The entire point about "God is dead, and it is we whom have killed him." is a warning that you would actually need to remove that Slave Mentality in order to live without God. Otherwise, exactly what he said would happen, happens. We live in the world we do now.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to a lot of atheists from the 2000's, and why Leftists attack religion so fervently. They are attempting to replace themselves as the elites of society, because they have a Master Mentality and are seeking to use their will to impose on those with a Slave Mentality, and those with a Slave Mentality are all too happy to accept.
There is no reason to declare that humanity must be scared, confused, mislead fools without a symbol to tell them what to do. In fact, that's the point. Many sadistic people with a Master Mentality cultivate that Slave Mentality in people in order to protect their power and status. It's important to destroy that conduct, but we also have to undermine it by broadening just how many people have a Master Mentality.
People don't need gods. They just think they do, because someone is telling them that they do. It doesn't have to be this way.
You mention the origins of religion in your post, and I don't disagree with your framing of it. I think we can both agree that religion has been around pretty much since humanity gained sapience. I'm not sure how that strengthens your argument, however, as to me it simply proves that humanity will inevitably invent religion regardless of race, culture, geographic or historical circumstances. In addition, everywhere religion has emerged, it has immediately become the domain of the priest, or the medicine man, or the shaman, or whatever. I don't believe this is due to some kind of nefarious influence from power hungry people, either. I think this is simply the emergence of natural hierarchy.
I understand that Nietzsche's declaration that 'God is dead' was not a triumphalist one. He understood what would be required of humanity in order to overcome a lack of religion, and he laid it out in his Übermensch ideal. You seem to believe that humanity is capable of constructing the purely rational moral framework that is required when divorced from religion. I do not.
Even the most rational among us are driven by emotion. Look at all the corrupt scientists who have come to light in recent years; these are people who make their living on being rational. I would even argue that emotional thinking is part of what it means to be human.
I also believe that the majority of people don't have it within them to form a 'Master mentality', nor do they want to. The vast majority of people want to be told what to do, and it comforts them to know that there are people above them who have done the heavy lifting regarding philosophy and metaphysics. They like these ideas to be wrapped up in grand narratives that survive down the generations and are easily taught without having to understand the philosophy behind it. They identify with these things in the same way they identify with their national history. They give a culture a touchstone upon which everyone can base their interactions. That's what a religion is to most people, an instruction manual on how to be a good person without needing to generate these instructions from first principles.
Further, I think this arrangement is essential for societies to actually function. If everyone was a self-directed master of their own moral framework, you would end up with a situation of too many chiefs and not enough braves. People are obviously going to have different opinions on what constitutes a metaphysical framework 'of pure reason', which brings me back to my assertion that humans are primarily emotional creatures, not rational ones. It's a struggle to get two people to agree on what constitutes objective reality, let alone an entire civilisation.
If humanity was capable of forming a society of self-directed individuals who each individually come to the same rational, universal system of morality, I would expect to see at least some evidence pointing to it at some point in history. When I look at history, however, I see the vast majority of people being led in their beliefs by a much smaller number of genuine thinkers. Yes there have been plenty of thought leaders in history who abuse the trust placed in them by the general populace, but I disagree that most leaders 'cultivate a slave mentality' in their followers. Instead, I think this is just natural human hierarchy playing itself out - a few lead, most will follow. That's true from the family, to the workplace, to government, to the church.
I'm not sure how that strengthens your argument, however, as to me it simply proves that humanity will inevitably invent religion regardless of race, culture, geographic or historical circumstances. In addition, everywhere religion has emerged, it has immediately become the domain of the priest, or the medicine man, or the shaman, or whatever. I don't believe this is due to some kind of nefarious influence from power hungry people, either. I think this is simply the emergence of natural hierarchy.
Religion's utility is that it combines science, culture, morality, politics, and tradition into a single, easy-to-use institution. That's the reason why it exists in the first place. However, none of these have to be embedded in an institution lead by those shamen. Yes those "priestly" class will naturally emerge as soon as you start combining them all into a single social structure. Those social structures then, almost immediately, become impenetrable in order to protect the strict social hierarchy that the members have benefited form, which necessitate those structures either being regularly purged, or entirely burned down and re-built. This is even a problem within science. Those exact structures are precisely the problem as they hold back any forces for adaptation, change, or positive growth; since that is what their sole purpose is. That is why Gods die. The Gods don't change, they become useless, and must be replaced. That impermeability of those structures and thier extreme centralization of power is what makes them dangerous. It reminds me very much of the "Cult of Assur" which founded the Assyrian Empire. These single city-state Gods were the manifestation of the city-states influence, and the city-state lived and died with it's God, but it's leadership was effectively a cult. I'll get to our current God with our "Cult of Rationality / Progress" later.
You seem to believe that humanity is capable of constructing the purely rational moral framework that is required when divorced from religion. I do not. Even the most rational among us are driven by emotion.
I do not believe in the Cult of Pure Reason / Rationality. I value reasoning. Reasoning is not devoid of emotion. Reasoning includes emotion. "Why do I feel this way?" is a pretty important question. Reasoning doesn't give you truth, either. It just gives you validity. You can use that to help dispel magical thinking if you can establish some basic true premises, and see what follows. However, you have to be right about what is true already.
However, that is exactly my point. I did construct a rational framework that is divorced from religion. Hilariously, I found that quite a bit of it mirrored Protestantism. That's fine. The point is that based on my priorities and principles, swathes of protestant ethics are correct. I just don't need a man in a flashy garb to tell me that they were correct. This is because the man in the flashy garb doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about and can't actually explain anything. The level of blind ignorance and total uselessness among Christianity's institutions is galling.
It is because of that incompetence, ignorance, and maliciousness, that I had to develop an ethical framework and moral principles on my own because the institutions could not be trusted not to abuse or exploit me as it's victim. Instead, what I have now are moral foundations I can have confidence in, not because it's tradition, or because it's what someone in a robe said, but because it was forged in fire and is worthy of being carried on as a tradition. It's a moral framework I can have confidence in, so that when everyone else tells me I'm wrong & evil, I can stand in front of them unflinchingly and know I'm absolutely 'God damned' right.
I also believe that the majority of people don't have it within them to form a 'Master mentality', nor do they want to.
I know that most people in our society are willing slaves, but that's a bad thing. I intend to break that, certainly for my family/friends/community. People are not innately of a slave mentality. It is because of our authoritarian institutions that people are incentivizes to a slave mentality. Every cult cultivates/grooms people into slave mentalities, it makes having a master mentality horrifically painful, risky, and dangerous. It is better that 100 slaves kill themselves, then a single rival master emerge. This is what we would expect to see as master's centralize their control. However, I don't believe that people are slaves by default. Humans are far more capable than you give them credit for. They are all capable of a master mentality, they've just been told all their lives that they can't or they shouldn't.
Further, I think this arrangement is essential for societies to actually function. If everyone was a self-directed master of their own moral framework, you would end up with a situation of too many chiefs and not enough braves
Again, I see this as a lie disseminated to slaves, by cowards with a master position. A cowardly master so scared of losing position that they break society to protect themselves. A society of any value would require it's people to seize the initiatives and responsibilities in their lives.
Put it like this: why does an armed society become a polite society? Because an armed society has each member taking responsibility for their own protection. This creates a system where each person is capable of defending themselves from attack, and no one person can monopolize violence or intimidation enough to hurt another member. A master mentality, that isn't cowardly, would welcome this as every person has the ability to protect what is theirs. A cowardly master invokes his will to ban guns for the slaves so that he may protect himself. A slave may even accept this disarmament because he's afraid of being attacked by other slaves. A society worth saving isn't one made up of disarmed slaves and cowardly masters, so petrified of responsibility that death from a rampaging force is preferable.
If humanity was capable of forming a society of self-directed individuals who each individually come to the same rational, universal system of morality, I would expect to see at least some evidence pointing to it at some point in history.
You are referring to the Cult of Reason. Reason does not, and can not, provide you with a universal outcome. It can only provide you with logical validity.
Societies of self-directed individuals is, what I would consider, the best possible society. It will actually have a pretty common moral framework as it would heavily focus on liberty and personal responsibility. There are not many systems like it, because most previous societies existed to prosper elites in control, rather than the general benefit of each person.
If you're an anti-theist, you must believe that it would be better for everyone to stop believing in religions. You're not just ambivalent about what other people do, you have an active interest in stopping them from believing. Is this a legitimate framing of your opinion?
If so, I don't know know how you can believe that. Do you honestly think the average person (or even the above-average person) is capable or even interested in building their own moral framework and metaphysical view of reality? Strip a man of his religious foundation and you don't create a logical, self directed Übermensch, you create a scared, confused, and easily led fool desperate for a framework with which to interpret his existence. I would say look back at the 20th century for evidence of that, but we have had a stark reminder of how malleable the general public is in the past few years, so you don't even need to go back that far.
Yes.
Yes. This is how the very first religions emerged.
It's not unreasonable to assume that religions emerged with the beginnings of culture in the stone age. Some of the earliest religions we know are of religions that each city independently had. As we would understand it, each city had it's own "national character", ideologies, culture, traditions, people, and perspectives. The gods of these cities quite literally lived in the cities on their highest building (normally in a statue).
These are not impossible efforts.
Most people already do this through simple experience and then try to rationalize a consistent belief system based on that. Most people also are already inculturated into the society they live in, regardless of whether they are atheists or not.
Moreover, the most difficult effort would be to construct one "out of pure reason". Sure, that's difficult, but mostly it requires introspection. At some point you have to make some fundamental choices on what your fundamental principles are going to be, and then you are going to construct your own narrative of the world around you as you go, living your experiences.
This is already the majority of situations for most people.
You're referencing Nietzsche, but you're literally missing his point. Christianity (in particular), but most religions in general, are Slave Mentalities.
If you strip a religious person of his religion, he finds another religion, to cater to his Slave Mentality. The entire point about "God is dead, and it is we whom have killed him." is a warning that you would actually need to remove that Slave Mentality in order to live without God. Otherwise, exactly what he said would happen, happens. We live in the world we do now.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened to a lot of atheists from the 2000's, and why Leftists attack religion so fervently. They are attempting to replace themselves as the elites of society, because they have a Master Mentality and are seeking to use their will to impose on those with a Slave Mentality, and those with a Slave Mentality are all too happy to accept.
There is no reason to declare that humanity must be scared, confused, mislead fools without a symbol to tell them what to do. In fact, that's the point. Many sadistic people with a Master Mentality cultivate that Slave Mentality in people in order to protect their power and status. It's important to destroy that conduct, but we also have to undermine it by broadening just how many people have a Master Mentality.
People don't need gods. They just think they do, because someone is telling them that they do. It doesn't have to be this way.
Firstly, thank you for a detailed answer.
You mention the origins of religion in your post, and I don't disagree with your framing of it. I think we can both agree that religion has been around pretty much since humanity gained sapience. I'm not sure how that strengthens your argument, however, as to me it simply proves that humanity will inevitably invent religion regardless of race, culture, geographic or historical circumstances. In addition, everywhere religion has emerged, it has immediately become the domain of the priest, or the medicine man, or the shaman, or whatever. I don't believe this is due to some kind of nefarious influence from power hungry people, either. I think this is simply the emergence of natural hierarchy.
I understand that Nietzsche's declaration that 'God is dead' was not a triumphalist one. He understood what would be required of humanity in order to overcome a lack of religion, and he laid it out in his Übermensch ideal. You seem to believe that humanity is capable of constructing the purely rational moral framework that is required when divorced from religion. I do not.
Even the most rational among us are driven by emotion. Look at all the corrupt scientists who have come to light in recent years; these are people who make their living on being rational. I would even argue that emotional thinking is part of what it means to be human.
I also believe that the majority of people don't have it within them to form a 'Master mentality', nor do they want to. The vast majority of people want to be told what to do, and it comforts them to know that there are people above them who have done the heavy lifting regarding philosophy and metaphysics. They like these ideas to be wrapped up in grand narratives that survive down the generations and are easily taught without having to understand the philosophy behind it. They identify with these things in the same way they identify with their national history. They give a culture a touchstone upon which everyone can base their interactions. That's what a religion is to most people, an instruction manual on how to be a good person without needing to generate these instructions from first principles.
Further, I think this arrangement is essential for societies to actually function. If everyone was a self-directed master of their own moral framework, you would end up with a situation of too many chiefs and not enough braves. People are obviously going to have different opinions on what constitutes a metaphysical framework 'of pure reason', which brings me back to my assertion that humans are primarily emotional creatures, not rational ones. It's a struggle to get two people to agree on what constitutes objective reality, let alone an entire civilisation.
If humanity was capable of forming a society of self-directed individuals who each individually come to the same rational, universal system of morality, I would expect to see at least some evidence pointing to it at some point in history. When I look at history, however, I see the vast majority of people being led in their beliefs by a much smaller number of genuine thinkers. Yes there have been plenty of thought leaders in history who abuse the trust placed in them by the general populace, but I disagree that most leaders 'cultivate a slave mentality' in their followers. Instead, I think this is just natural human hierarchy playing itself out - a few lead, most will follow. That's true from the family, to the workplace, to government, to the church.
Religion's utility is that it combines science, culture, morality, politics, and tradition into a single, easy-to-use institution. That's the reason why it exists in the first place. However, none of these have to be embedded in an institution lead by those shamen. Yes those "priestly" class will naturally emerge as soon as you start combining them all into a single social structure. Those social structures then, almost immediately, become impenetrable in order to protect the strict social hierarchy that the members have benefited form, which necessitate those structures either being regularly purged, or entirely burned down and re-built. This is even a problem within science. Those exact structures are precisely the problem as they hold back any forces for adaptation, change, or positive growth; since that is what their sole purpose is. That is why Gods die. The Gods don't change, they become useless, and must be replaced. That impermeability of those structures and thier extreme centralization of power is what makes them dangerous. It reminds me very much of the "Cult of Assur" which founded the Assyrian Empire. These single city-state Gods were the manifestation of the city-states influence, and the city-state lived and died with it's God, but it's leadership was effectively a cult. I'll get to our current God with our "Cult of Rationality / Progress" later.
I do not believe in the Cult of Pure Reason / Rationality. I value reasoning. Reasoning is not devoid of emotion. Reasoning includes emotion. "Why do I feel this way?" is a pretty important question. Reasoning doesn't give you truth, either. It just gives you validity. You can use that to help dispel magical thinking if you can establish some basic true premises, and see what follows. However, you have to be right about what is true already.
However, that is exactly my point. I did construct a rational framework that is divorced from religion. Hilariously, I found that quite a bit of it mirrored Protestantism. That's fine. The point is that based on my priorities and principles, swathes of protestant ethics are correct. I just don't need a man in a flashy garb to tell me that they were correct. This is because the man in the flashy garb doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about and can't actually explain anything. The level of blind ignorance and total uselessness among Christianity's institutions is galling.
It is because of that incompetence, ignorance, and maliciousness, that I had to develop an ethical framework and moral principles on my own because the institutions could not be trusted not to abuse or exploit me as it's victim. Instead, what I have now are moral foundations I can have confidence in, not because it's tradition, or because it's what someone in a robe said, but because it was forged in fire and is worthy of being carried on as a tradition. It's a moral framework I can have confidence in, so that when everyone else tells me I'm wrong & evil, I can stand in front of them unflinchingly and know I'm absolutely 'God damned' right.
I know that most people in our society are willing slaves, but that's a bad thing. I intend to break that, certainly for my family/friends/community. People are not innately of a slave mentality. It is because of our authoritarian institutions that people are incentivizes to a slave mentality. Every cult cultivates/grooms people into slave mentalities, it makes having a master mentality horrifically painful, risky, and dangerous. It is better that 100 slaves kill themselves, then a single rival master emerge. This is what we would expect to see as master's centralize their control. However, I don't believe that people are slaves by default. Humans are far more capable than you give them credit for. They are all capable of a master mentality, they've just been told all their lives that they can't or they shouldn't.
Again, I see this as a lie disseminated to slaves, by cowards with a master position. A cowardly master so scared of losing position that they break society to protect themselves. A society of any value would require it's people to seize the initiatives and responsibilities in their lives.
Put it like this: why does an armed society become a polite society? Because an armed society has each member taking responsibility for their own protection. This creates a system where each person is capable of defending themselves from attack, and no one person can monopolize violence or intimidation enough to hurt another member. A master mentality, that isn't cowardly, would welcome this as every person has the ability to protect what is theirs. A cowardly master invokes his will to ban guns for the slaves so that he may protect himself. A slave may even accept this disarmament because he's afraid of being attacked by other slaves. A society worth saving isn't one made up of disarmed slaves and cowardly masters, so petrified of responsibility that death from a rampaging force is preferable.
You are referring to the Cult of Reason. Reason does not, and can not, provide you with a universal outcome. It can only provide you with logical validity.
Societies of self-directed individuals is, what I would consider, the best possible society. It will actually have a pretty common moral framework as it would heavily focus on liberty and personal responsibility. There are not many systems like it, because most previous societies existed to prosper elites in control, rather than the general benefit of each person.