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Atheism and anti-theism is not the other end of the bell curve. Low IQ people need religion imposed upon them for the fabric of society to remain stable. Most atheists are just lashing out in rejection of that and tend to become religious adherents of things that are less strictly theistic, but still religions - like the cults of communism or media's pop "science" (not to be confused with an actual understanding of the scientific method).
The other end of the bell curve is understanding and making peace with the existence of a higher power without the need for societal compulsion. Lashing out against the concept of God is not beneficial. Accepting God is beneficial even to people that can understand morality without God.
I'm sorry but I just don't agree with it. Low IQ people need structure not necessarily religion. Tradition, community, and family should be plenty for their needs.
I wouldn't say most, but there's clearly far too many that haven't undergone what we call "Deconversion". This is the process of actually taking the mantel of responsibility onto yourself. At that point, you just don't need God. It's an irrelevancy. You don't fight it at all. You don't need god for morality, tradition, community, beauty, or really anything.
An atheist who is raging or waring against God, is still a theist, because otherwise he's a madman tilting at windmills.
And I would say most, because the psychology of leftist dogma parallels religions. Their "trust the science" and their political ideologies all emulate religious fervor. They replace faith in god with faith in the state or some other false god.
The structure provided by religion is part of what societies need, but they also need the enforcement of religion. They need to believe in a power beyond what is human to keep them in line even when they aren't being watched - to make them believe that being good is GOOD, not just necessary.
I disagree again. I think it says something terrible of the moral framework of a theist to say that he is only good out of fear. What I respect about the Protestants is that they feel inspired to be good, not too afraid to be bad. The latter as a moral frame work inevitably creates a hyper-fragile moral system where the population will riot wildly out of control at the first sign of disharmony among the enforcement mechanisms.
Societies need enforcement mechanisms, but typically, every society's enforcement mechanism is typically women acting as social enforcers. You still don't need god to sit in the back of your head. The "little voice inside your head" telling you to do the right thing, or what would other people think about what you're doing, or what your mother would say, are all part of the development of a moral consciousness created by socialization, not by an in-built God created mechanism.
It's not only fear that pushes people towards good through religion. But some people are animals that need that fear. It is also the promise of reward for being good, and the social pressure of a shared moral framework. It is not a mark against the existence of god that religion is necessary. You're conflating theism and organized religion again.
The group that needs religion to function in society the most would not be religious without cultural pressure. The same people today become self-obsessed hedonists. Look at the leftist goons that exemplify your point of "rioting wildly out of control". They have adopted the progressive dogma as a replacement for an actually valuable religion.
You should know by this point that the human experience isn't universal, and there are plenty of people out there operating on lower levels of consciousness, that wouldn't even be recognizable to you. Like the people that lack an internal monologue - that literally move through life operating on instinct, not thought.
Good people don't need God to make them have a conscience - but good religion helps develop morals at a fundamental level before the level of logical thought, where someone can rationalize that altruistic behavior is better than acting purely for self-interest. And many people never reach that level.
To rise above the need for religion as a society is impossible. The human condition prevents it, even if you had a eugenics program and an education program of extremely high quality and uniformity, bad people would still exist. And those things would require a powerful and uncorrupt (impossible) state. The nature of power attracts evil to it, so in attempting to kill religion you produce the results you already see - a society of rot, with a bunch of malformed replacements for God in the state and the television.
Back to the point of calling religion theism - it is not. You are making a mistake to reject the possibility of a higher power just because organized religion is an unfortunate requirement of society. Like all institutions of men it is imperfect and corruptible - but you are right in identifying protestantism as a more palatable one because of it's decentralized nature. But the structures of religion and the existence of God are not the same topic at all.