The problem as I see it is rather different. People don't have a religion-shaped hole in them, they struggle differentiating fantasy from reality.
Christian scriptures are heavily redacted and so can our screeds, consider y adaption of your opening paragraph "A religion gives its believers a few imaginary things that have nothing to do with whether any of it’s true. It tells them who they might be and who they might not be. It hands them a imaginary story where they’re on the right side, a community that’ll notice if they disappear and disappear them if they get out of line (There is no hate like Christian love.) and an imaginary reason to get up in the morning that’s bigger than their own small life."
I hear you. But think about who's doing the fighting.
The believer who treats scientists and atheists as the enemy, scanning for ammunition to prove the faithful are under attack, is running the same program as the atheist who's left that faith and then started to throw the same energy into the "cause," hunting for ammunition to pin every problem on religion, including the ones religion had nothing to do with. The common enemy just changes names.
The black-and-white worldview doesn't necessarily die with the faith but can change sides. The person who needed an enemy still needs one, and if religion isn't available, something else will do.
Christianity did more than any other force to spread homophobia worldwide. Where European powers colonized, they criminalized male homosexuality, and that legal legacy still shows. Many countries in the Middle East carry anti-homosexuality statutes with a clear colonial and Christian signature in their origins.
Even so, it's hard to say the alternative would certainly work out much better. LGBTQ+ people don't (or didn't) fit the "normalcy" that children experience growing up, which makes them easy to cast as a common enemy of society. By normalcy I mean something specific. For a white child raised in an affluent white neighborhood, normal just means being white. Whatever the dominant group already is becomes the invisible default, and anyone outside it reads as a deviation to be explained or policed.
There's also a pattern that gets weaponized. Men, gay or straight, tend toward more casual sex than women do, and among gay men that raises exposure to sexually transmitted infections. That hands a talking point to pulpits already casting LGBTQ+ people as a source of evil.
So I'm not defending Christianity, and I'm not reaching for whataboutism. My point is that social phenomena rarely trace back to a single source. That said, intense religious panic about homosexuality is relatively recent in the long history of these faiths, which tells you the sheer extent of the homophobia was a deliberate choice these institutions made. Christianity is solely responsible for that.
Things are moving in a better direction, and it's because the everyday picture has changed. Most families in the West stopped teaching their kids that gay men are evil, and stopped quietly equating them with pedophiles. As LGBTQ+ people live openly, children grow up with a gay uncle, a lesbian aunt, a bisexual cousin, a same-sex couple next door who've been together for twenty years. That's what erodes the invisible default I described earlier.
a good example, at least in america, is a popular form of blind faith in the state. People think they live by the "Rule of Law" which they define as an abstract organizing principle that applies to their community, whereas the reality is that they live by the rule of the state, which is not the same thing by a long shot.
Exactly as it was in ancient times when people believed in the "gods", which were nothing more than an abstract symbol for tribal authority.
Tribal authorities hid behind the symbol of the gods just as today they hide behind the symbol of the Rule of Law. Our blind faith in that symbol is what enables the oppression, corruption, and crime perpetrated by our institutions of authority.
This is indeed an extension of the point, and the parallel holds more than people will want to admit.
"Rule of Law" does a lot of the work "the gods" used to do, turning the will of whoever holds power into something that feels external, neutral, and beyond question. Once a population believes the principle rules them rather than the people administering it, those people can act in the principle's name and borrow its authority. That's the same trick the priest-king ran when he spoke for the gods.
yeah they definitely will not admit that Separation of church and state is, to some extent, an illusion and always has been. I believe that people in general have an innate emotional need for a transcendent symbol of authority that they can put their faith in. It's instinctive and was an important mechanism for tribal survival. Maybe it still is.
If this is an argument for theocracy, it really doesn't land for me. Who is your audience?
Religion exists to oblige social conformance and create order. In return it offers a form of community and reinforces patriarchy-- which you explicitly called out.
Given the history of my pieces, an argument for theocracy from me wouldn't land. So let me be clear about what this one is and isn't: the problem runs deeper than religion, and tearing religion out wouldn't touch it.
The problem as I see it is rather different. People don't have a religion-shaped hole in them, they struggle differentiating fantasy from reality.
Christian scriptures are heavily redacted and so can our screeds, consider y adaption of your opening paragraph "A religion gives its believers a few imaginary things that have nothing to do with whether any of it’s true. It tells them who they might be and who they might not be. It hands them a imaginary story where they’re on the right side, a community that’ll notice if they disappear and disappear them if they get out of line (There is no hate like Christian love.) and an imaginary reason to get up in the morning that’s bigger than their own small life."
I hear you. But think about who's doing the fighting.
The believer who treats scientists and atheists as the enemy, scanning for ammunition to prove the faithful are under attack, is running the same program as the atheist who's left that faith and then started to throw the same energy into the "cause," hunting for ammunition to pin every problem on religion, including the ones religion had nothing to do with. The common enemy just changes names.
The black-and-white worldview doesn't necessarily die with the faith but can change sides. The person who needed an enemy still needs one, and if religion isn't available, something else will do.
“There is no hate like Christian love.” Oh… I really like that! Did you coin it? As a Gay man, … I can really relate to this!
Christianity did more than any other force to spread homophobia worldwide. Where European powers colonized, they criminalized male homosexuality, and that legal legacy still shows. Many countries in the Middle East carry anti-homosexuality statutes with a clear colonial and Christian signature in their origins.
Even so, it's hard to say the alternative would certainly work out much better. LGBTQ+ people don't (or didn't) fit the "normalcy" that children experience growing up, which makes them easy to cast as a common enemy of society. By normalcy I mean something specific. For a white child raised in an affluent white neighborhood, normal just means being white. Whatever the dominant group already is becomes the invisible default, and anyone outside it reads as a deviation to be explained or policed.
There's also a pattern that gets weaponized. Men, gay or straight, tend toward more casual sex than women do, and among gay men that raises exposure to sexually transmitted infections. That hands a talking point to pulpits already casting LGBTQ+ people as a source of evil.
So I'm not defending Christianity, and I'm not reaching for whataboutism. My point is that social phenomena rarely trace back to a single source. That said, intense religious panic about homosexuality is relatively recent in the long history of these faiths, which tells you the sheer extent of the homophobia was a deliberate choice these institutions made. Christianity is solely responsible for that.
Things are moving in a better direction, and it's because the everyday picture has changed. Most families in the West stopped teaching their kids that gay men are evil, and stopped quietly equating them with pedophiles. As LGBTQ+ people live openly, children grow up with a gay uncle, a lesbian aunt, a bisexual cousin, a same-sex couple next door who've been together for twenty years. That's what erodes the invisible default I described earlier.
a good example, at least in america, is a popular form of blind faith in the state. People think they live by the "Rule of Law" which they define as an abstract organizing principle that applies to their community, whereas the reality is that they live by the rule of the state, which is not the same thing by a long shot.
Exactly as it was in ancient times when people believed in the "gods", which were nothing more than an abstract symbol for tribal authority.
Tribal authorities hid behind the symbol of the gods just as today they hide behind the symbol of the Rule of Law. Our blind faith in that symbol is what enables the oppression, corruption, and crime perpetrated by our institutions of authority.
This is indeed an extension of the point, and the parallel holds more than people will want to admit.
"Rule of Law" does a lot of the work "the gods" used to do, turning the will of whoever holds power into something that feels external, neutral, and beyond question. Once a population believes the principle rules them rather than the people administering it, those people can act in the principle's name and borrow its authority. That's the same trick the priest-king ran when he spoke for the gods.
yeah they definitely will not admit that Separation of church and state is, to some extent, an illusion and always has been. I believe that people in general have an innate emotional need for a transcendent symbol of authority that they can put their faith in. It's instinctive and was an important mechanism for tribal survival. Maybe it still is.
I think that you are correct.
Thank you, Robert.
If this is an argument for theocracy, it really doesn't land for me. Who is your audience?
Religion exists to oblige social conformance and create order. In return it offers a form of community and reinforces patriarchy-- which you explicitly called out.
Faith is an entirely different matter.
Given the history of my pieces, an argument for theocracy from me wouldn't land. So let me be clear about what this one is and isn't: the problem runs deeper than religion, and tearing religion out wouldn't touch it.