It used to be cool to be the anti-establishment fact-checker, rationalist, skeptic, etc. in the late 2000s, early 2010s. Today if you do that somehow you're considered narrow-minded and missing the wider, cosmic significance of otherwise earthly, relatively mundane transgressions. It makes me think we're regressing...young people aren't reading books as much as earlier gens, there are fewer stable relationships, more anxiety about the future. They cling to podcasts and online communities as a coping mechanism.
You broke off Part One because it was getting too long, and we have to pay if we want to read the end of it? Wouldn't it make sense to give us the full Part One before trying to shake our pockets?
Maybe Jeffrey would come back as the messiah and save us from the conspiracy Armageddon! I hear he's still alive, out there somewhere, watching over all of us, as Mossads usually do.
Romantic values are ascendant for a variety of reasons, but also because we are living in an age where secular atheism is doomed. This tack couldn't be less timely.
Well, they were prime examples of very smart dolts doing the same sort of navel-gazing that philosophers, those tiresome people, have been doing since we learned to make scratchy thingies with which to preserve our deathless words for the ages.
In this plane of existence--and who knows how many others there might be?--there are no answers to the ultimate questions. Where did the building blocks of the universe come from? How can you get something out of nothing? Where does space end? How can anything go on for infinity? Who made God? How can any entity come from nowhere? How is it possible to always have existed? Who invented natural law?
Why do "people of faith" keep making God in their own images? Why do they shrink God to fit?
And everyone gets so cute about that mythological thing, secularism. There's no such thing. Politics is religion. Atheism is a dogma.
We poor things, yet another species designed to live in packs and hardwired to sort ourselves into hierarchies and always searching for the alpha to lead us to salvation of one sort or another and getting led over cliffs more often than not--who hardwired us that way?
Me, I don't need to know. I was never without my own comfortable certainty that the Big Something exists--or maybe, as my Former Friend From Fifth Grade said scornfully, I was just brainwashed too early to remember the process.
Anyway have fun. You ain't gonna get nowhere with it, but at least we don't get lost going on circular journeys. We end up where we started.
The train has already left the tracks, Michael: this is nearly a century of a particular brand of protestant evangelicalism reaching apotheosis. You should also be aware that plenty of powerful people have an opposite religion, one dominated by the iconography of Satan and his supposed powers. The are just quieter about it and let the imagery and rituals they engage in speak for themselves. Remember the Balenciaga fiasco? They don't explain or advocate, they let the images speak for themselves.
So the Evangelical Zionists that bay daily for the Blood of Arabs to fulfill their particular heretical worldview where they hurry along prophecy to experience Rapture and the 2nd Coming. They are much more obvious and loud. Their spiritual opposites operate with almost pure deception, describing their ghoulish policies in the anodyne language of academia and 'policy' analysis. There is practically nothing that can be done about this: The American People are passive and subservient; materialist and emotional. It would require an entirely different people to accomplish this and they - to the degree they exist - are too small to matter. Factor in the natural isolation, and no history of taking or wielding political power, and all you have is a train falling into a ravine, where the only thing you can do is watch and pray.
Thank you for sharing a thought provoking and much needed contrast to the hyper-religiosity taking over the right, left and extremists on both sides of the " war".
Both parties have shredded the Constitution, ignoring the fact that the framers had a very unique and pragmatic vision , painstakingly forging a document that granted both religious freedom AND freedom from the church /state symbiotic enterprise that plague Europe, turning neighbor against neighbor, nation against nation, scapegoated, coerced,persecuted, tortured, massacred ,conquered and ultimately, kept Europe at war for hundreds of years.
Truth be told, Islam is incompatible with any other faith, lack thereof or with itself. Then there were the Catholics and Anglicans( Protestants). The Papacy was already a corrupt entity, the Monarchy was forever corrupt and neither was about the betterment of a nation or humanity , but subjugation and power-top down. Tyranny.The Jews invariably suffered, few though they were. The Protestant Enlightenment was to be the game changer for civilized humanity, which of course was poorly received by the ruling class, the Pope and much of the establishment, used to the constant conflict that was a way of life.It should have been one of the greatest historical achievements. The British and French Revolution were fought to free themselves from the oppression of Monarchism/Theocracy. And the Founding Fathers/Framers were all of the Enlightenment.
Franklin, Washington, Madison, Jefferson,Paine,Montesquieu , Rousseau,Ethan Allen,Locke and Voltaire were among the Enlightenment Rationalist DeistsA few of the aforementioned were agnostic/atheistic.
and others were Enlightenment Protestant, a few were more traditional, but the foundation of Constitution, specifically the Declaration, First Amendment Establishment Clause was carefully worded in deistic rationalist verbiage.
"the unalienable rights endowed by THEIR Creator" ( life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) vs God, Christ, Moses,Abraham,Allah,Mohamed-whatever.
There was to be, as Jefferson wrote," a wall of separation between Church and State". The doctrine is very succinct. It included the prohibition of any religious influence or intrusion in any Federal office, employ, court, legislation or taxation. That fell under " coercion". Force funding what was outside the realm of one's personal beliefs- or lack thereof.
Religious freedom allowed for freedom to worship a chosen faith in a chosen house of worship, but excluded practices that were antithetical to the legal tenets based upon American civil morality as a functional, rational rules based society. Polygamy, violence, physical abuse, subjugation , sacrifice, honor killing, rape, incest were forbidden by law and banned as religious practice. When the Church of the Latter Day Saints came to be as a recognized sect and was discovered to include polygamy, the court ruled it illegal. The practice was to be banned or the church would be .
There was no school prayer. No religious taxation. No bibles in the schools or public offices. Unless a parochial school funded by the private citizen/sector, it was a solid no. The only exception was a church that was used as a dual government entity-which was very rare and only when with permission of all parties, ie as a public forum.
I love the vision of the Framers. They were civil libertarians, fiscally conservative and believed personal property rights, the right to bear arms, protection from invasion, national sovereignty, assimilation, free speech, privacy, freedom from large, overreaching government were imperative.
That ship sailed. The religious liberty and Separation of Church and State, most notably under Reagan. He needed the Evangelical vote to cross the finish line. They were a large faction. Thirty percent of American Christians. They didn't vote. Neither party was eager to have what came with them. The zealous ideology , demands and at the time , the extremist bigotry.They were ignored. Reagan got in bed with( no pun intended) Jerry Falwell. It paid off in getting elected, but the pay back was the"Moral Majority" and Reagan's inability to appoint Judges, Cabinet members, even military, medical- Reagan went from very liberal Dem California Governor/President of the Screen Actor's Guild to ideologically far right on social issues and integrating theocratic Christian factionalism into the Federal Government.And with the Evangelicals came the Catholic Church.
It's ironic, given JFK, the first Catholic President's Religious Freedom speech before the Greater Houston Protestant Ministers Commission . Vowing there would be no allegiance to the Vatican or the Protestant Ministry or any favoritism given to a religious sect. Regardless of his religious faith, he believed in the ABSOLUTE Separation of Church and State.So ironic that the public skepticism was based upon anti-Catholic sentiment. The encroachment and corruption that had plagued the Catholic Church for so long. In 1960, memories of the Vatican's collusion with the Nazis was well known and very unwelcome. Since the globalist puppet fake Pope Francis, also said to have supported the Nazis, Marx, Castro and the Red/Green marxist/Islamist Alliance and a New World Order enthusiast, only to be replaced with a younger, more outspoken and appealing to youth- the fraud, Leo.
Dhimmi Carter ,Reagan and Bush opened the door..the floodgates to the worst of humanity from nations and regions that hate us.And granted them mass amnesty.
Globalism 101. Reagan campaigned on being the antiglobalist. Vowing to block any Trilaterals from his admin. He made it a major part of his campaign platform, calling out Carter's Trilat ties and his entire admin of Trilat globalists. And the Reagan filled his cabinet and admin with them. Including Bush, Weinberger, Kissinger, Fauci,Collins,Gergen,Baker,Kagan,Cheney ,North+the whole lot of them -worse, his stupidity , lavishing praise on the Mujahideen(Taliban). fucking up w/Iran-Contra,the Hezbollah bombing in Lebanon, killing more than 220 Americans(he imposed some sanctions, but left Iran and its terror proxy, Hezbollah, unaddressed. So they took over then majorityChristian, but secular Lebanon.
I'm half Catholic, 1/4 Jewish, 1/4 Episcopal and now, Deist Rationalist . I am done with organized religion. With the pissing contests, hatred, zealotry, antisemitism, demands..ditto allegiance to a political party. I despise whatever one might call the no longer recognizable Dhimmi Death Cult and the Conservative Church of the Clueless.I don't despise them, but nor do I want JD Vance, Fucker Carlson , Hegseth or no offense, Turning Point in my business. I want a Party of " We The People". I wish Pat Moynihan and Barry Goldwater, who differed on several issues, but were in lockstep agreement on others had shared a ticket and taken office after Carter had gotten the hell out( permanently). They were both anti-UN, Trilat, Progressivism, Communism, fascism, CIA, corruption, Dept of Ed, Church/State symbiosis, the horrible rollout of the Civil Rights Act, Islam, Kissinger, globalism,unchecked migration and regardless of differences were Constitutionalists.. and very dear friends who were not corrupt. They paid dearly. Smeared, backstabbed, threatened. And Independent.
Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris were atheist Jews, but not the vile antisemitic, pro-Islam, mass migration,globalist progressive version. Though Sam Harris is a pain in the ass who is wrong on 75% of the issues. Hitchens was fabulous. Awesome.
One needn't be atheist or anti-atheist to not find comfort or spirituality in organized religion, but believe in a Creator, in whatever image or not visible as an entity. We didn't get here by accident, nor are we the only anything in the vast universe. When things happen that cannot be explained, but you know aren't " random" or coincidence. They connect to something else.. always.One needn't be a religious zealot to be godly nor does being a religious zealot equate with godliness. It's what you do that makes you worthy. There is no such thing as a " bad dog". They are proof of the Divine.
Great article and I am also troubled by the demon rhetoric proliferating on media. I’m a practicing Catholic and I am alarmed by this. Bang on Michael. Thanks. Kathryn from Brooklyn.
What is true and what is not true and the concept of truth itself, is this a religious or secular topic? If it's something we all strive for, it might be the best antidote for all the quackery, irrationality and "loopy" ideas that maybe circulating on the internet or in the halls of power. The veracity of any spurious claims or beliefs should always be challenged. Humans have been gifted with the skills to reason and tell the difference between what is true and what is not true and surely it would be sacrilegious not to use them.
There is a problem with fantasy 'campaign to disastrously impair the critical faculties of millions. No one in their right mind should welcome the mass-adoption of hallucinatory short-cuts for reasoning about consequential public affairs.' It should be combated and Michael and others are.
However atheism, agnosticism, many secular isms and anti religion are similar to each other and tantamount to liberal democratic neutrality toward ethics, that has recently descended into woke, governance, victimology, censorship and Munchausen social agencies. This is another problem that wont diminish because it is much closer to the heart of operation of western establishment complexes than exorcism is to the heart of operation of major religions.
an alternative to arranging a battle between religion and anti religion, is arranging a battle between senior ethic systems on the one hand, that in one corpus of ideas or another hold bias in favor of the procreation and journey of humans, and on the other hand trends of liberal neutrality toward ethics, a soft nihilism tangential or opposed to the human journey and to any ethics that raise children and bolster adults toward journey.
depending on taxonomy as you say there are a handful of senior ethic systems today that aside from their role in politics and Podcastistan help form country cultures with principles, practices and art, and bolster the procreative capacity of families. one of these is materialism, dating at least to the Carvaka of 1st millennium India, through the Atomists of Greece and Rome, the Dahriyya of Abbassid Khurasan and Hobbes and european materialists. the new atheists were so cavalier toward the role of ethics that they weren't even bothered to study the history and development of materialism. they were mostly polemicists against religion with no clue of what they needed to stand for, the ethic systems that sustain procreation and human journey. which is why as western liberalism turned inward and the fork widened and they couldn't be critics and pro western at the same time, they mostly chose regressing west.
materialism works in Russia and China but is atrophied in the global west and south, and it may be worth effort to rehabilitate it as a muscular response to excessive fantasy. the materialist sacred mission of human journey derived from biology and neurology may be needed to capture wayward souls falling into slack neutrality as organized religion recedes, but where families remain religious, they are mostly fine in terms of ability to procreate and bolster effort to journey, they dont need to convert.
quite possibly liberal neutrality toward ethics will be incapable of adjustment to automation and other changes of modernization, incapable of actively cultivating children and students with stable psychic structure able to focus and automate society and operate it. its a very big problem if the trend of inequality continues into a permanent underclass incapable of modern learning and modern labor, pacified with phony praise, identities and trinkets. this risk implies the need for revolution in agencies and that the pro human journey trends can ill afford infighting based on rival catechisms. in comparison the problem of fantasy chatter in Podcastistan may be more benign, to some degree a form of entertainment like wrestling, as well as sparing that teaches masses to distinguish fantasy charisma from analytical tools. to automate we are going to have to walk and chew gum at the same time, enter pragmatic alliances while criticizing each other's goofy talismans.
It used to be cool to be the anti-establishment fact-checker, rationalist, skeptic, etc. in the late 2000s, early 2010s. Today if you do that somehow you're considered narrow-minded and missing the wider, cosmic significance of otherwise earthly, relatively mundane transgressions. It makes me think we're regressing...young people aren't reading books as much as earlier gens, there are fewer stable relationships, more anxiety about the future. They cling to podcasts and online communities as a coping mechanism.
You broke off Part One because it was getting too long, and we have to pay if we want to read the end of it? Wouldn't it make sense to give us the full Part One before trying to shake our pockets?
Maybe Jeffrey would come back as the messiah and save us from the conspiracy Armageddon! I hear he's still alive, out there somewhere, watching over all of us, as Mossads usually do.
Romantic values are ascendant for a variety of reasons, but also because we are living in an age where secular atheism is doomed. This tack couldn't be less timely.
Well, they were prime examples of very smart dolts doing the same sort of navel-gazing that philosophers, those tiresome people, have been doing since we learned to make scratchy thingies with which to preserve our deathless words for the ages.
In this plane of existence--and who knows how many others there might be?--there are no answers to the ultimate questions. Where did the building blocks of the universe come from? How can you get something out of nothing? Where does space end? How can anything go on for infinity? Who made God? How can any entity come from nowhere? How is it possible to always have existed? Who invented natural law?
Why do "people of faith" keep making God in their own images? Why do they shrink God to fit?
And everyone gets so cute about that mythological thing, secularism. There's no such thing. Politics is religion. Atheism is a dogma.
We poor things, yet another species designed to live in packs and hardwired to sort ourselves into hierarchies and always searching for the alpha to lead us to salvation of one sort or another and getting led over cliffs more often than not--who hardwired us that way?
Me, I don't need to know. I was never without my own comfortable certainty that the Big Something exists--or maybe, as my Former Friend From Fifth Grade said scornfully, I was just brainwashed too early to remember the process.
Anyway have fun. You ain't gonna get nowhere with it, but at least we don't get lost going on circular journeys. We end up where we started.
The train has already left the tracks, Michael: this is nearly a century of a particular brand of protestant evangelicalism reaching apotheosis. You should also be aware that plenty of powerful people have an opposite religion, one dominated by the iconography of Satan and his supposed powers. The are just quieter about it and let the imagery and rituals they engage in speak for themselves. Remember the Balenciaga fiasco? They don't explain or advocate, they let the images speak for themselves.
So the Evangelical Zionists that bay daily for the Blood of Arabs to fulfill their particular heretical worldview where they hurry along prophecy to experience Rapture and the 2nd Coming. They are much more obvious and loud. Their spiritual opposites operate with almost pure deception, describing their ghoulish policies in the anodyne language of academia and 'policy' analysis. There is practically nothing that can be done about this: The American People are passive and subservient; materialist and emotional. It would require an entirely different people to accomplish this and they - to the degree they exist - are too small to matter. Factor in the natural isolation, and no history of taking or wielding political power, and all you have is a train falling into a ravine, where the only thing you can do is watch and pray.
Thank you for sharing a thought provoking and much needed contrast to the hyper-religiosity taking over the right, left and extremists on both sides of the " war".
Both parties have shredded the Constitution, ignoring the fact that the framers had a very unique and pragmatic vision , painstakingly forging a document that granted both religious freedom AND freedom from the church /state symbiotic enterprise that plague Europe, turning neighbor against neighbor, nation against nation, scapegoated, coerced,persecuted, tortured, massacred ,conquered and ultimately, kept Europe at war for hundreds of years.
Truth be told, Islam is incompatible with any other faith, lack thereof or with itself. Then there were the Catholics and Anglicans( Protestants). The Papacy was already a corrupt entity, the Monarchy was forever corrupt and neither was about the betterment of a nation or humanity , but subjugation and power-top down. Tyranny.The Jews invariably suffered, few though they were. The Protestant Enlightenment was to be the game changer for civilized humanity, which of course was poorly received by the ruling class, the Pope and much of the establishment, used to the constant conflict that was a way of life.It should have been one of the greatest historical achievements. The British and French Revolution were fought to free themselves from the oppression of Monarchism/Theocracy. And the Founding Fathers/Framers were all of the Enlightenment.
Franklin, Washington, Madison, Jefferson,Paine,Montesquieu , Rousseau,Ethan Allen,Locke and Voltaire were among the Enlightenment Rationalist DeistsA few of the aforementioned were agnostic/atheistic.
and others were Enlightenment Protestant, a few were more traditional, but the foundation of Constitution, specifically the Declaration, First Amendment Establishment Clause was carefully worded in deistic rationalist verbiage.
"the unalienable rights endowed by THEIR Creator" ( life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) vs God, Christ, Moses,Abraham,Allah,Mohamed-whatever.
There was to be, as Jefferson wrote," a wall of separation between Church and State". The doctrine is very succinct. It included the prohibition of any religious influence or intrusion in any Federal office, employ, court, legislation or taxation. That fell under " coercion". Force funding what was outside the realm of one's personal beliefs- or lack thereof.
Religious freedom allowed for freedom to worship a chosen faith in a chosen house of worship, but excluded practices that were antithetical to the legal tenets based upon American civil morality as a functional, rational rules based society. Polygamy, violence, physical abuse, subjugation , sacrifice, honor killing, rape, incest were forbidden by law and banned as religious practice. When the Church of the Latter Day Saints came to be as a recognized sect and was discovered to include polygamy, the court ruled it illegal. The practice was to be banned or the church would be .
There was no school prayer. No religious taxation. No bibles in the schools or public offices. Unless a parochial school funded by the private citizen/sector, it was a solid no. The only exception was a church that was used as a dual government entity-which was very rare and only when with permission of all parties, ie as a public forum.
I love the vision of the Framers. They were civil libertarians, fiscally conservative and believed personal property rights, the right to bear arms, protection from invasion, national sovereignty, assimilation, free speech, privacy, freedom from large, overreaching government were imperative.
That ship sailed. The religious liberty and Separation of Church and State, most notably under Reagan. He needed the Evangelical vote to cross the finish line. They were a large faction. Thirty percent of American Christians. They didn't vote. Neither party was eager to have what came with them. The zealous ideology , demands and at the time , the extremist bigotry.They were ignored. Reagan got in bed with( no pun intended) Jerry Falwell. It paid off in getting elected, but the pay back was the"Moral Majority" and Reagan's inability to appoint Judges, Cabinet members, even military, medical- Reagan went from very liberal Dem California Governor/President of the Screen Actor's Guild to ideologically far right on social issues and integrating theocratic Christian factionalism into the Federal Government.And with the Evangelicals came the Catholic Church.
It's ironic, given JFK, the first Catholic President's Religious Freedom speech before the Greater Houston Protestant Ministers Commission . Vowing there would be no allegiance to the Vatican or the Protestant Ministry or any favoritism given to a religious sect. Regardless of his religious faith, he believed in the ABSOLUTE Separation of Church and State.So ironic that the public skepticism was based upon anti-Catholic sentiment. The encroachment and corruption that had plagued the Catholic Church for so long. In 1960, memories of the Vatican's collusion with the Nazis was well known and very unwelcome. Since the globalist puppet fake Pope Francis, also said to have supported the Nazis, Marx, Castro and the Red/Green marxist/Islamist Alliance and a New World Order enthusiast, only to be replaced with a younger, more outspoken and appealing to youth- the fraud, Leo.
Dhimmi Carter ,Reagan and Bush opened the door..the floodgates to the worst of humanity from nations and regions that hate us.And granted them mass amnesty.
Globalism 101. Reagan campaigned on being the antiglobalist. Vowing to block any Trilaterals from his admin. He made it a major part of his campaign platform, calling out Carter's Trilat ties and his entire admin of Trilat globalists. And the Reagan filled his cabinet and admin with them. Including Bush, Weinberger, Kissinger, Fauci,Collins,Gergen,Baker,Kagan,Cheney ,North+the whole lot of them -worse, his stupidity , lavishing praise on the Mujahideen(Taliban). fucking up w/Iran-Contra,the Hezbollah bombing in Lebanon, killing more than 220 Americans(he imposed some sanctions, but left Iran and its terror proxy, Hezbollah, unaddressed. So they took over then majorityChristian, but secular Lebanon.
I'm half Catholic, 1/4 Jewish, 1/4 Episcopal and now, Deist Rationalist . I am done with organized religion. With the pissing contests, hatred, zealotry, antisemitism, demands..ditto allegiance to a political party. I despise whatever one might call the no longer recognizable Dhimmi Death Cult and the Conservative Church of the Clueless.I don't despise them, but nor do I want JD Vance, Fucker Carlson , Hegseth or no offense, Turning Point in my business. I want a Party of " We The People". I wish Pat Moynihan and Barry Goldwater, who differed on several issues, but were in lockstep agreement on others had shared a ticket and taken office after Carter had gotten the hell out( permanently). They were both anti-UN, Trilat, Progressivism, Communism, fascism, CIA, corruption, Dept of Ed, Church/State symbiosis, the horrible rollout of the Civil Rights Act, Islam, Kissinger, globalism,unchecked migration and regardless of differences were Constitutionalists.. and very dear friends who were not corrupt. They paid dearly. Smeared, backstabbed, threatened. And Independent.
Dawkins, Hitchens and Harris were atheist Jews, but not the vile antisemitic, pro-Islam, mass migration,globalist progressive version. Though Sam Harris is a pain in the ass who is wrong on 75% of the issues. Hitchens was fabulous. Awesome.
One needn't be atheist or anti-atheist to not find comfort or spirituality in organized religion, but believe in a Creator, in whatever image or not visible as an entity. We didn't get here by accident, nor are we the only anything in the vast universe. When things happen that cannot be explained, but you know aren't " random" or coincidence. They connect to something else.. always.One needn't be a religious zealot to be godly nor does being a religious zealot equate with godliness. It's what you do that makes you worthy. There is no such thing as a " bad dog". They are proof of the Divine.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Founding-Fathers-Deism-and-Christianity-1272214
Great article and I am also troubled by the demon rhetoric proliferating on media. I’m a practicing Catholic and I am alarmed by this. Bang on Michael. Thanks. Kathryn from Brooklyn.
What is true and what is not true and the concept of truth itself, is this a religious or secular topic? If it's something we all strive for, it might be the best antidote for all the quackery, irrationality and "loopy" ideas that maybe circulating on the internet or in the halls of power. The veracity of any spurious claims or beliefs should always be challenged. Humans have been gifted with the skills to reason and tell the difference between what is true and what is not true and surely it would be sacrilegious not to use them.
There is a problem with fantasy 'campaign to disastrously impair the critical faculties of millions. No one in their right mind should welcome the mass-adoption of hallucinatory short-cuts for reasoning about consequential public affairs.' It should be combated and Michael and others are.
However atheism, agnosticism, many secular isms and anti religion are similar to each other and tantamount to liberal democratic neutrality toward ethics, that has recently descended into woke, governance, victimology, censorship and Munchausen social agencies. This is another problem that wont diminish because it is much closer to the heart of operation of western establishment complexes than exorcism is to the heart of operation of major religions.
an alternative to arranging a battle between religion and anti religion, is arranging a battle between senior ethic systems on the one hand, that in one corpus of ideas or another hold bias in favor of the procreation and journey of humans, and on the other hand trends of liberal neutrality toward ethics, a soft nihilism tangential or opposed to the human journey and to any ethics that raise children and bolster adults toward journey.
depending on taxonomy as you say there are a handful of senior ethic systems today that aside from their role in politics and Podcastistan help form country cultures with principles, practices and art, and bolster the procreative capacity of families. one of these is materialism, dating at least to the Carvaka of 1st millennium India, through the Atomists of Greece and Rome, the Dahriyya of Abbassid Khurasan and Hobbes and european materialists. the new atheists were so cavalier toward the role of ethics that they weren't even bothered to study the history and development of materialism. they were mostly polemicists against religion with no clue of what they needed to stand for, the ethic systems that sustain procreation and human journey. which is why as western liberalism turned inward and the fork widened and they couldn't be critics and pro western at the same time, they mostly chose regressing west.
materialism works in Russia and China but is atrophied in the global west and south, and it may be worth effort to rehabilitate it as a muscular response to excessive fantasy. the materialist sacred mission of human journey derived from biology and neurology may be needed to capture wayward souls falling into slack neutrality as organized religion recedes, but where families remain religious, they are mostly fine in terms of ability to procreate and bolster effort to journey, they dont need to convert.
quite possibly liberal neutrality toward ethics will be incapable of adjustment to automation and other changes of modernization, incapable of actively cultivating children and students with stable psychic structure able to focus and automate society and operate it. its a very big problem if the trend of inequality continues into a permanent underclass incapable of modern learning and modern labor, pacified with phony praise, identities and trinkets. this risk implies the need for revolution in agencies and that the pro human journey trends can ill afford infighting based on rival catechisms. in comparison the problem of fantasy chatter in Podcastistan may be more benign, to some degree a form of entertainment like wrestling, as well as sparing that teaches masses to distinguish fantasy charisma from analytical tools. to automate we are going to have to walk and chew gum at the same time, enter pragmatic alliances while criticizing each other's goofy talismans.
My ancestor, John MacGowan, a Scottish Baptist preacher, wrote a book called "Dialogues of Devils" in the Eighteenth Century. It's still in print.
That came to an end when a man tried to rape a woman in an elevator at 4am at an atheist convention and Sam Harris defended the rapist.
Good riddance to it and their stupid fedoras.