Is there a New Secular Quasi-Religion, If So Does It Support We Are Innately "Religious" or Ideologically Tribal?
Posted: Wed Jul 12, 2023 8:29 pm
This is my response to another poster on this thread: viewtopic.php?t=157779&start=30#p2838792
I thought it deserved its own topic for discussion, for as I answered the question it led to me realizing the topic further supports my contention that we may just be homoreligious or prone to metaphysical thinking and benefit from non-toxic beliefs, which was the point of the thread linked above that began with videos by atheists and scientists supporting non-toxic beliefs. So here is my response and I welcome all to respond and give their opinion:
To answer your curiosity as to these “supernatural” beliefs among some on the secular far-left. I would say that these atheists' reasons for rejecting what they see as supernaturalism on the far-left, is not because they reject the “Social Justice” movement, as you put it. Most atheists tend to lean politically Liberal or Left, and so I don't think the liberal atheists who are opposing what they see as supernaturalism on the far-left, are doing so because they reject social justice, when I see them actually supporting most social justice issues. And these same liberal atheists mentioned below, just 5 or 10 years ago, would be considered by people on the Right to be proponents of Social Justice. These atheists and liberals I will mention below, are simply critical of the new methodology being used to enforce social justice, which they see as a religious methodology.
To begin, the agnostic scientist Neil Degrass Tyson criticized non-scientific thinking (i.e. supernatural thinking) on the far-Left about seven years ago, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kEJqMTjYtU
https://gizmodo.com/neil-degrasse-tyson ... 1780648740
I do not like to use the term woke or wokeism because it triggers people on the political left and right, but unfortunately I have to use it for ease of communication. It's a complicated term as well and it's my understanding that woke's original meaning is that of being awakened to social injustices, to be woke to social injustice, in particular racial inequalities. I don't see any liberals or atheists rejecting this origional meaning of being woke. They are instead critical of what they see as an ideology and religious ideas that they see has been added onto this simpler definition.
One could argue that even focusing on social injustice, may involve a degree of supernatural/metaphysical thinking, a belief in Right and Wrong and Good and Evil. This is the argument of the atheist Nietzche who would have opposed wokeism, as he opposed the atheistic social justice warriors of his day, basically calling them pale atheists unable to embrace raw reality for instead supernatural thinking, and pity and piety inherited from Christianity. Nietzche would have said something like an ant colony enslaving another ant colony is not evil, it's part of amoral life, the strong overpowering the weak.
Since I am not ashamed to admit I am prone to metaphysical beliefs like an actual Right and Wrong or Good and Evil, I have no problem supporting the woke cause when it opposes racism and injustice.
From this perspective, that of the emphasis on social justice and equity, then Jesus himself, as depicted in the gospels, could be to a certain degree thought of as a kind of "woke" social justice warrior, beginning with his ministry by quoting from Isaiah, see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=EXB
The Book of Mormon could be considered woke to some degree because after re-reading it recently I was actually surprised how many times it mentions equity and criticizes social injustice, class disparities and divisions, etc., and as I argued in this post, I believe the Book of Mormon is actually anti-racist. viewtopic.php?t=157731&start=10#p2837646
My talking to the missionaries recently could be interpreted as a woke activity, which I shared in this post: viewtopic.php?t=157731
So I'm personally not passing judgment on all forms of wokeism. I am merely reporting what I see as a divide in the atheist community and division among the politically Liberal, and I actually consider myself mostly a Liberal. But many atheists and liberals have recently begun to criticize wokeism because in their view, it is beginning to manifest the hallmarks of supernatural thinking and religiosity. If their criticisms have any validity, or even if five to ten percent of their criticisms has any accuracy, then this would support my view that we are innately homoreligious, see:
https://link.springer.com/referencework ... 0religious.
So, in my view, if we remove traditional religions and spirituality the vast majority of people will go seeking for an alternative, whether it's my Swedish ancestors and their elf beliefs or emperor worship in China, or the sects of wokeism.
Here are some examples of atheist and liberals who see extreme versions of wokeism (or some woke sects) as supernatural thinking and toxic forms of religiosity:
John Mcwhorter on The New Religion: https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/th ... rogressive
Who is John Mcwhorter? See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter
How Social Justice Became a New Religion: Our society is becoming less religious. Or is it? By Helen Lewis: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/671172/
The Cult Dynamics of Wokeness by James Lindsey: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/cult- ... -wokeness/
The atheist exmormon at https://thoughtsonthingsandstuff.com/ went from only criticizing Brighamite Mormonism to recently spending a lot of time criticizing what he considers something more harmful at this point than Mormonism, which is the secular far-left's "new religion," as he sees it. So his videos have gone from pointing out cultish thinking in Mormonism to cultish thinking among the some of secular far-left in his videos at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVTCFh ... Zlwl1JOoHQ
Again, even if only five or ten percent of what these authors say is true and are legitimate criticisms, then there is a "new religion" growing up among many on the secular far-left, and whether or not that is good or bad -- and one could even make the argument that it's good because the end result would be good (depending on your politics) -- in my view it proves or supports my point to a certain degree that we are by nature homoreligious.
This article https://americandreaming.substack.com/p ... e-wokeness points out that the atheism of the early 2000s created an existential vacuum.
The Atheist on this podcast explains the origins of wokeism and the resulting divide in the atheist community: https://youtu.be/Y61IPmUEfmo
Observing this clear divide among atheists and liberals is evidence to me that the atheist community was longing for a higher meaning, craving a moral purpose in life based on metaphysical beliefs like the inalienable Rights of the individual as if he is a soul, so that he should be treated fairly and justly and given a good quality of life, liberty, and the freedom to pursue happiness or well-being. And so the mechanistic deconstructionism of Dawkins and Hitchens and others, replacing religion with the Void, was just not satisfying existentially; and so there emerged atheism(+) which evolved into the various sects of wokeism. All because, again, in my view I think we are homoreligious.
Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose attempted to basically highlight what they saw as bad scholarship in several academic fields by pointing out what they saw as religious thinking, or supernatural thinking, which led them to get published absurd ideas in academia, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVk9a5Jcd1k
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/acade ... holarship/
One could argue this was the equivalent of people on this board criticizing Mormon apologetics when it lacks scientific rigor and is too often couched in supernatural thinking.
Peter Boghossian, Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinker, and many other atheists who were once revered and admired by nearly everyone in the atheist community just five years ago, are now often villainized by many or even most atheists who reject their perspectives on scientific issues. Richard Dawkins has written several massive books on evolution and biology, so it's interesting that he was once considered an authority but is now so easily vilified. I would argue that this phenomenon is because of growing religious sentiment and moralizing metaphysical thinking among some on the Left, which again can be interpreted as either good or bad depending on your political perspective.
Steven Pinker wrote The Blank Slate which was an early attempt to completely reject some views of the new-religious Left, as it's been described.
So whether you agree or disagree with these atheists, it is obvious there is division, and it's because one side sees the other side as embracing a religion.
These atheists, I have mentioned, are just a few as there is definitely a divide among atheists, which I believe comes down to those who are more mechanistic thinkers and focused on biological science and those who are more "right brain" thinkers seeking some form of meaning, spirituality and morality.
Even the atheist liberal Bill Maher, who produced the documentary Religulous, has compared the new religion on the left to Maoism, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysKhJ1U-vM which was a secular religion in many ways as Maher explains.
This is not surprising to me that there's a divide because we are I think homoreligious, and thus as Nietzche put it, we need to feed both brain chambers, the one chamber that functions via the non-rational/"spiritual" and one for rational science. Or as he put it in Human, All Too Human, “A higher culture must give man a double brain, two brain chambers, as it were, one to experience science, and one to experience non-science. Lying next to one another, without confusion, separable, self-contained: our health demands this. In the one domain lies the source of strength, in the other the regulator. Illusions, biases, passions must give heat; with the help of scientific knowledge, the pernicious and dangerous consequences of overheating must be prevented.” Is wokeism feeding the non-rational "spiritual " brain chamber? Nietzche would have said yes it is, and he would say he has a better spirituality, what scholars call Dionysian Pantheism, that rejects social justice ideals.
I actually personally support most social justice ideals, but I will readily to admit that it is completely grounded in the metaphysics of Christian ethics, which was best pointed out to me by Tom Holland in his book Dominion, and by listening to his many debates and discussions on Youtube.
When I go back and read my Swedish ancestors' Norse religious writings and learn about their culture pre Christianity, I do not see anyone concerned with social justice or stoic cosmopolitanism, but instead there was tribal justice, concern for your tribal neighbor, and the military-like valor of the strong man on the battlefield and conquering and oppressing one's enemies. The concept of "love your enemy," and being "woke" to the unfair treatment of minorities would have been absurd to my Viking ancestors, just as much as the lion would ignore one's pleas to not mangle the cute baby deer and tear into it's throat with impunity. The Vikings saw it as their natural right to take from the weak who cannot defend their property or belongings. Now look at my Viking ancestors in Sweden after converting to Christianity, so that even though they now often describe themselves as atheist or agnostic, a deeper investigation reveals that they are still culturally Christian.
You wrote:
"Any claim that nature 'designed' The human brain for spirituality is based on a misconception of evolutionary science. There is no nature that designs. The existence of a specific human trait is not evidence that is, or has ever been, beneficial to survival of the human species."
No atheist who believes religion can be beneficial, thinks that there is a teleological direction or design in evolution to make us homoreligious, that is not their argument.
This site begs to differ with your last sentence above:
"Religion can be understood as a spandrel in the same way that Stephen Jay Gould claims the surface area between two adjacent arches are spandrels. In using natural selection we have chosen for traits that allowed for a strong foundation that has promoted human survival for thousands of years. Traits similar to behavioural and cognitive characteristics like cooperation, that allow for a more communal lifestyle that may boost one own fitness or increase inclusive fitness. Survival without religion is possible so it does not make this a vital component to survival, however it continues to be a inevitable by product of the things that do continue to promote fitness to our species."
Source: https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/evpsych/chap ... spandrels/
So if religion is possibly or likely a spandrel and the atheists in the videos I linked to here viewtopic.php?t=157779#p2838436 argue non-toxic religion or spiritual practices can be beneficial, and many atheists think there is a new secular religion to fill the existential Void caused by former versions of atheism, then is it not at least possible that non-toxic spiritual beliefs and religious ideas and practices are innate to our species and good for our mental health and social cohesion?
I thought it deserved its own topic for discussion, for as I answered the question it led to me realizing the topic further supports my contention that we may just be homoreligious or prone to metaphysical thinking and benefit from non-toxic beliefs, which was the point of the thread linked above that began with videos by atheists and scientists supporting non-toxic beliefs. So here is my response and I welcome all to respond and give their opinion:
To answer your curiosity as to these “supernatural” beliefs among some on the secular far-left. I would say that these atheists' reasons for rejecting what they see as supernaturalism on the far-left, is not because they reject the “Social Justice” movement, as you put it. Most atheists tend to lean politically Liberal or Left, and so I don't think the liberal atheists who are opposing what they see as supernaturalism on the far-left, are doing so because they reject social justice, when I see them actually supporting most social justice issues. And these same liberal atheists mentioned below, just 5 or 10 years ago, would be considered by people on the Right to be proponents of Social Justice. These atheists and liberals I will mention below, are simply critical of the new methodology being used to enforce social justice, which they see as a religious methodology.
To begin, the agnostic scientist Neil Degrass Tyson criticized non-scientific thinking (i.e. supernatural thinking) on the far-Left about seven years ago, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kEJqMTjYtU
https://gizmodo.com/neil-degrasse-tyson ... 1780648740
I do not like to use the term woke or wokeism because it triggers people on the political left and right, but unfortunately I have to use it for ease of communication. It's a complicated term as well and it's my understanding that woke's original meaning is that of being awakened to social injustices, to be woke to social injustice, in particular racial inequalities. I don't see any liberals or atheists rejecting this origional meaning of being woke. They are instead critical of what they see as an ideology and religious ideas that they see has been added onto this simpler definition.
One could argue that even focusing on social injustice, may involve a degree of supernatural/metaphysical thinking, a belief in Right and Wrong and Good and Evil. This is the argument of the atheist Nietzche who would have opposed wokeism, as he opposed the atheistic social justice warriors of his day, basically calling them pale atheists unable to embrace raw reality for instead supernatural thinking, and pity and piety inherited from Christianity. Nietzche would have said something like an ant colony enslaving another ant colony is not evil, it's part of amoral life, the strong overpowering the weak.
Since I am not ashamed to admit I am prone to metaphysical beliefs like an actual Right and Wrong or Good and Evil, I have no problem supporting the woke cause when it opposes racism and injustice.
From this perspective, that of the emphasis on social justice and equity, then Jesus himself, as depicted in the gospels, could be to a certain degree thought of as a kind of "woke" social justice warrior, beginning with his ministry by quoting from Isaiah, see https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=EXB
The Book of Mormon could be considered woke to some degree because after re-reading it recently I was actually surprised how many times it mentions equity and criticizes social injustice, class disparities and divisions, etc., and as I argued in this post, I believe the Book of Mormon is actually anti-racist. viewtopic.php?t=157731&start=10#p2837646
My talking to the missionaries recently could be interpreted as a woke activity, which I shared in this post: viewtopic.php?t=157731
So I'm personally not passing judgment on all forms of wokeism. I am merely reporting what I see as a divide in the atheist community and division among the politically Liberal, and I actually consider myself mostly a Liberal. But many atheists and liberals have recently begun to criticize wokeism because in their view, it is beginning to manifest the hallmarks of supernatural thinking and religiosity. If their criticisms have any validity, or even if five to ten percent of their criticisms has any accuracy, then this would support my view that we are innately homoreligious, see:
https://link.springer.com/referencework ... 0religious.
So, in my view, if we remove traditional religions and spirituality the vast majority of people will go seeking for an alternative, whether it's my Swedish ancestors and their elf beliefs or emperor worship in China, or the sects of wokeism.
Here are some examples of atheist and liberals who see extreme versions of wokeism (or some woke sects) as supernatural thinking and toxic forms of religiosity:
John Mcwhorter on The New Religion: https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/th ... rogressive
Who is John Mcwhorter? See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McWhorter
How Social Justice Became a New Religion: Our society is becoming less religious. Or is it? By Helen Lewis: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archi ... on/671172/
The Cult Dynamics of Wokeness by James Lindsey: https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/cult- ... -wokeness/
The atheist exmormon at https://thoughtsonthingsandstuff.com/ went from only criticizing Brighamite Mormonism to recently spending a lot of time criticizing what he considers something more harmful at this point than Mormonism, which is the secular far-left's "new religion," as he sees it. So his videos have gone from pointing out cultish thinking in Mormonism to cultish thinking among the some of secular far-left in his videos at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVTCFh ... Zlwl1JOoHQ
Again, even if only five or ten percent of what these authors say is true and are legitimate criticisms, then there is a "new religion" growing up among many on the secular far-left, and whether or not that is good or bad -- and one could even make the argument that it's good because the end result would be good (depending on your politics) -- in my view it proves or supports my point to a certain degree that we are by nature homoreligious.
This article https://americandreaming.substack.com/p ... e-wokeness points out that the atheism of the early 2000s created an existential vacuum.
The Atheist on this podcast explains the origins of wokeism and the resulting divide in the atheist community: https://youtu.be/Y61IPmUEfmo
Observing this clear divide among atheists and liberals is evidence to me that the atheist community was longing for a higher meaning, craving a moral purpose in life based on metaphysical beliefs like the inalienable Rights of the individual as if he is a soul, so that he should be treated fairly and justly and given a good quality of life, liberty, and the freedom to pursue happiness or well-being. And so the mechanistic deconstructionism of Dawkins and Hitchens and others, replacing religion with the Void, was just not satisfying existentially; and so there emerged atheism(+) which evolved into the various sects of wokeism. All because, again, in my view I think we are homoreligious.
Peter Boghossian, James A. Lindsay, and Helen Pluckrose attempted to basically highlight what they saw as bad scholarship in several academic fields by pointing out what they saw as religious thinking, or supernatural thinking, which led them to get published absurd ideas in academia, see:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVk9a5Jcd1k
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/01/acade ... holarship/
One could argue this was the equivalent of people on this board criticizing Mormon apologetics when it lacks scientific rigor and is too often couched in supernatural thinking.
Peter Boghossian, Richard Dawkins, and Steven Pinker, and many other atheists who were once revered and admired by nearly everyone in the atheist community just five years ago, are now often villainized by many or even most atheists who reject their perspectives on scientific issues. Richard Dawkins has written several massive books on evolution and biology, so it's interesting that he was once considered an authority but is now so easily vilified. I would argue that this phenomenon is because of growing religious sentiment and moralizing metaphysical thinking among some on the Left, which again can be interpreted as either good or bad depending on your political perspective.
Steven Pinker wrote The Blank Slate which was an early attempt to completely reject some views of the new-religious Left, as it's been described.
So whether you agree or disagree with these atheists, it is obvious there is division, and it's because one side sees the other side as embracing a religion.
These atheists, I have mentioned, are just a few as there is definitely a divide among atheists, which I believe comes down to those who are more mechanistic thinkers and focused on biological science and those who are more "right brain" thinkers seeking some form of meaning, spirituality and morality.
Even the atheist liberal Bill Maher, who produced the documentary Religulous, has compared the new religion on the left to Maoism, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysKhJ1U-vM which was a secular religion in many ways as Maher explains.
This is not surprising to me that there's a divide because we are I think homoreligious, and thus as Nietzche put it, we need to feed both brain chambers, the one chamber that functions via the non-rational/"spiritual" and one for rational science. Or as he put it in Human, All Too Human, “A higher culture must give man a double brain, two brain chambers, as it were, one to experience science, and one to experience non-science. Lying next to one another, without confusion, separable, self-contained: our health demands this. In the one domain lies the source of strength, in the other the regulator. Illusions, biases, passions must give heat; with the help of scientific knowledge, the pernicious and dangerous consequences of overheating must be prevented.” Is wokeism feeding the non-rational "spiritual " brain chamber? Nietzche would have said yes it is, and he would say he has a better spirituality, what scholars call Dionysian Pantheism, that rejects social justice ideals.
I actually personally support most social justice ideals, but I will readily to admit that it is completely grounded in the metaphysics of Christian ethics, which was best pointed out to me by Tom Holland in his book Dominion, and by listening to his many debates and discussions on Youtube.
When I go back and read my Swedish ancestors' Norse religious writings and learn about their culture pre Christianity, I do not see anyone concerned with social justice or stoic cosmopolitanism, but instead there was tribal justice, concern for your tribal neighbor, and the military-like valor of the strong man on the battlefield and conquering and oppressing one's enemies. The concept of "love your enemy," and being "woke" to the unfair treatment of minorities would have been absurd to my Viking ancestors, just as much as the lion would ignore one's pleas to not mangle the cute baby deer and tear into it's throat with impunity. The Vikings saw it as their natural right to take from the weak who cannot defend their property or belongings. Now look at my Viking ancestors in Sweden after converting to Christianity, so that even though they now often describe themselves as atheist or agnostic, a deeper investigation reveals that they are still culturally Christian.
You wrote:
"Any claim that nature 'designed' The human brain for spirituality is based on a misconception of evolutionary science. There is no nature that designs. The existence of a specific human trait is not evidence that is, or has ever been, beneficial to survival of the human species."
No atheist who believes religion can be beneficial, thinks that there is a teleological direction or design in evolution to make us homoreligious, that is not their argument.
This site begs to differ with your last sentence above:
"Religion can be understood as a spandrel in the same way that Stephen Jay Gould claims the surface area between two adjacent arches are spandrels. In using natural selection we have chosen for traits that allowed for a strong foundation that has promoted human survival for thousands of years. Traits similar to behavioural and cognitive characteristics like cooperation, that allow for a more communal lifestyle that may boost one own fitness or increase inclusive fitness. Survival without religion is possible so it does not make this a vital component to survival, however it continues to be a inevitable by product of the things that do continue to promote fitness to our species."
Source: https://kpu.pressbooks.pub/evpsych/chap ... spandrels/
So if religion is possibly or likely a spandrel and the atheists in the videos I linked to here viewtopic.php?t=157779#p2838436 argue non-toxic religion or spiritual practices can be beneficial, and many atheists think there is a new secular religion to fill the existential Void caused by former versions of atheism, then is it not at least possible that non-toxic spiritual beliefs and religious ideas and practices are innate to our species and good for our mental health and social cohesion?