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When You Lose Your Religion, Politics Fill the Void

I have noticed since COVID19 descended upon us this spring that those most virulent about what we should do or not do, say or not say, and believe or not believe, have adopted an almost religiously maniacal demeanor.  Cult-like, in fact.

  1. evidence doesn’t matter
  2. persecution of heresy (Cancel culture. Think AOC’s hit list. Actual jailing.)
  3. declaratory judgments and dogmas
  4. confirmation bias
  5. impervious to facts
  6. Oft repeated mantras, like “Listen to the Science,” “deaths,” “hospitalizations,” and now “cases.”

Bill and the guys talked about this, without really talking about it, in the Right Angle Backstage today. Blue Landslide counties in America have become centers of Branch COVIDianism, because most of the people here have lost their religion. In its place, their politics have filled the void.

And these same folks also want single payer Health Care, socialism, the Green New Deal, confiscatory taxation, and adopting the socialist Left platform in Canada, Europe, and AUS/NZ.

Globalists and socialists and climate change folks – almost all no doubt Blue Landslide human beings – love all this secular religious social coercion.  It’s all related.

Tom Woods points out the whole hodgepodge of pseudo-religious illogical mania. Check it all of the crazy, gory details in one short speech:

15 replies on “When You Lose Your Religion, Politics Fill the Void”

I guess I’m going to counter-point both Michael and Jack instead of replying to either.

To Michael first, I would not take accusations of cult hood personally. There are non-religious people who do follow science, and a lot of people who think they themselves are non-religious, but by their behavior reveal themselves to be part of the cult.

Taking climate change as one example, people will follow various celebrities and claim “we all need to do something” but then do not hold their prophet to any standards of behavior. Christians, Muslims, Jews or Hindus, to my knowledge, do not say their pastor/priest/rabbi/holy man/imam/Buddha person can violate their holy tenants because of their holy status, more often the opposite. The climate preachers should be in smaller houses, not larger, and taking fewer plane flights, not less. The whole thing strikes me more like the Catholic indulgences (carbon credits, buying a tree) where those with means can trade those means for exceptions to the rules that the rest of the religious populace must follow.

Jack: I would agree with you that both left and right are guilty of cult behavior but since the right is far more decentralized in its thoughts and actions we do not have the ground swell typically found on the left and this breaks the behavior into smaller, less dangerous and faster dissolved bits.

I just ran out of time so I might have to revisit this later, but the most formed idea I have that I can type out quick is the “party of science” is the same one claiming bacteria on the moon is life while humans aren’t until they start breathing. There are twenty plus genders, but a patriarchy holding down the women that have periods. They hold beliefs but then change them as they become inconvenient. Their behavior is religious but without the eternal structure and nature of a true religion, which is why most consider them more cults than a true faith. They are led by someone charismatic but can be swayed and stolen by someone moreso. Their behavior is that of people with a dogma but they have no greater ideal…. except the desire for personal, temporal power and not the entry into a desired afterlife.

Not to worry, I’m not taking anything personally, or as insulting.* I’m only asking that the idea of a non-religious person not being on the political left be acknowledged and given consideration, because it almost never is.

_____
*I’ve long since reached a point in life where I give no more fvcks for what other people think of me. It takes a lot to anger me and it’s almost impossible to insult me. (My usual response is a snarky “Gee whiz, that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me!”) I even have a theme song. 😉

I suppose it is a little like “the gays” or the Jews where the majority of a type is left or leftist and they spoil it for the rest of them. Probably one of the also hidden strengths of the right is when we lump people on the left together we (or at least I) exclude anyone that might share some part of that who is on the right because being on the right is your prime characteristic and the rest is the individual, while those with that particular characteristic on the left are often on the left because they define themselves by that and think that defines them.

I dont disagree with your formed idea. I just don’t see that the ‘cult of science or politics’ relates to actual religions very accurately. As you said, perhaps Medieval Catholicism is the closest with indulgences, and as I stated, the Inquisition. Likewise perhaps the Crusades. I’d hazard that most of that was political with a thin veneer of pretended religion. Certainly it didn’t meet the Christian tenets.

I am not sure if it is a form over function, or function over form or something similar… or completely different.

What I see as similar are the unquestioned dogmas, the refusal to admit error, the lack of questioning of methods and methodologies, and an utter lack of attention to the scientific method, instead treating Science! as some thing, object or person and not a process, ironically similar to quest for enlightenment in which the journey might be more important than reaching the goal.

People take as gospel that the climate is getting warmer, a mere 40 or so years after we thought the Ice Ages were returning (and that is a minicule amount of time from the last, thinking of the Medieval Warming and Little Ice Age periods that were in actual recorded history). People also take as gospel that humans are the only, not even primary, reason for this and volcanoes, sun activity and other natural, uncontrolled energy inputs into the non-closed system could be partial or primary causes. People also see green, renewable energy sources as the only source of salvation and ignore the high energy costs, economic costs to create and low recycle/reuse options. They also ignore and seek to hide nuclear options. ( I am speaking of the larger part of the movement, the very vocal groups and policy proponents in governments, not the engineers and inventors and business types working on real, workable solutions for energy storage, battery technology, generation and such).

As Glenn Reynolds says “I’ll believe it is a crisis when people start acting like it is”. The charges leveled against Christians (I think primarily because they are the largest and most visible and vocal group on moral issues in the US) are that they are not living up to their own faith rules, as if that invalidates what they are saying. Yet the people most strident in their denunciation of greenhouse producing energy seem to be those using the most and the general populace seem unwilling to move into population dense skyscrapers, as the growth and expansion of subdivisions seems to indicate. I am not sure of the political makeup of people moving from California to Texas but if the trend is at all similar to the migrations to Oregon, Washington and Steve Green’s much lamented Colorado, people have mostly been voting Democrat (and while that isn’t a guarantee) they also seem to be moving into the same sorts of living situations and expanding the bedroom communities not the urban centers.

That’s probably getting a little off topic and approaching blog length, but I guess TL;DR I see the behavior of the people similar and make the comparisons that way. If we really wanted to stretch things, Greta can stand in for Joan of Arc or some anointed prophet, Al Gore could be a Cardinal or greater Imam, Leonardo diCaprio is an apostle or something.

I was tempted to write an exact counterpoint to your post Michael, since as a strong believer in my denomination of Christianity I also would not want to tarred with the same brush as this sort of pseudo-religion or likened to cult-like dogmas….

But I think the OP has a valid point to make that much of the political subscriptionism of late is almost fundamentalist in its beliefs, even if those beliefs (and they are beliefs, not facts) are political and not religious.

I’m not sure how much of this is down to the reduction in relgious belief being replaced due to some innate human need to believe in some type of strong cause; but it certainly exists and is growing stronger and stronger each day.

I don’t think that this effect is restricted solely to the left though. As an outside observer overseas it certainly appears that many of the right’s supporters also have this type of mindset, which has gone way beyond the usual red/blue team football analogy.

The point does stand however, that one should be careful in attributing to other people a set of characteristics. To take the 6 points from a religious point of view:

  1. evidence doesn’t matter — religion is about personal evidence that is difficult to share, much like trying to describe how salt tastes without using the word salty, it’s something that can be gained by another but only from their own efforts. It cannot be proven to someone else, only to yourself
  2. persecution of heresy (Cancel culture. Think AOC’s hit list. Actual jailing.) — I’d be loathe to compare what the Spanish Inquisition did to anything approaching real Christian doctrine. That period was mostly about political power and very little to do with the religion it proclaimed to hold dear
  3. declaratory judgments and dogmas – Most religions with a deity or deities reserve judgment to that deity. Likeiwse tenets are generally based, at least in the main religions, on an unchangeable being, and thus, like the laws of physics, that God’s commandments and laws are also unchangeable in the face of modern interpretations, and paradigms. The people only judge according to the unchangeable laws. As for dogma, I would certainly argue that my beliefs are held far from ‘unquestioningly and with undefended certainty’. I have spent a long time questioning my own beliefs and am comfortable defending them due to years of cumulative experiences.
  4. confirmation bias – While some religions or denominations can be insular, I have found that on the whole, most believers are very open to the concepts of other religions, even if they don’t agree with them. Also the fact that many religions are global tends to mean that those people have very broad experience of other nationalities and cultures.
  5. impervious to facts – I’m going to list this one very much in with point one. Religion is about beliefs based on either cumulative or powerful experiences. One does not just randomly apply one’s life to a mass conversion of outlook, behaviours and culture based on flimsy whims. Your definition of what you see as factual may be different, but there is a type of evidence.
  6. Oft repeated mantras, like “Listen to the Science,” “deaths,” “hospitalizations,” and now “cases.” – While some religions may have set prayers or catechisms, I wouldn’t liken them to what you imply by the term ‘mantras’ here. Nor would I insinuate that the vast majority of believers simply don’t understand their own religion to any great depth and therefore would resort to blithe pre-prepared statements without any thought for or belief in the fundamental aspects of those statements. My own religion has a set of fundamental tenets but they are simply an easy way to summarise a deep and complex set of beliefs.

While the 6 points are not without merit to your argument of the non-scientifical method in the behaviours of these political groups ; making them analogous to ‘religion’ could be seen as rather insulting, or at the very least incorrect.

Just commenting to point out that I didn’t write the post, Todd did. Just a name reference error. No big deal.

Sorry if it was unclear. My point to you at the start was that my argument is the same as yours: ‘don’t lump me in with your pseudo-political fundamentalists’ despite coming from the opposite viewpoint (of religion) to yourself. The rest of my piece was aimed at the author (denoted as Original Poster).

I would just like to point out that I don’t do religion. Not of any kind, not to any degree. I have spent my life, from as far back as I can remember, studying in minute degree every different religion and philosophy, in order to discover the best way, the way most in accord with reality, to live correctly as a human being. I have concluded that there is nothing whatsoever about any religion whatsoever that serves that purpose.

Yet I am in no way a leftist nor anything like what you describe here. Also, there are thousands, if not millions, like me. Please keep that in mind as you consider what you’re gong to say about things like this.

I am also someone who will not worship any one or anything. You don’t need religion to be a moral person. NON SERVIAM.

Your comment replied to Bob’s but I’ll throw in my thoughts here since this began with my comment. I’ll be as brief as I can for an introduction to my thinking:

My moral standard is based on life. Here is the best basic explanation I’ve found:

There is only one fundamental alternative in the universe: existence or non-existence – and it pertains to a single class of entities: to living organisms. The existence of inanimate matter is unconditional, the existence of life is not: it depends on a specific course of action. Matter is indestructible, it changes its forms, but it cannot cease to exist. It is only a living organism that faces a constant alternative: the issue of life or death. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action. If an organism fails in that action, it dies; its chemical elements remain, but its life goes out of existence. It is only the concept of “Life” that makes the concept of “Value” possible. It is only to a living entity that things can be good or evil.

– Ayn Rand [emphasis added]

Note that living or not, and living well or not, is a completely objective standard – you are or you aren’t, period. Evaluation of individual situations depends on the individual context (e.g. murder vs self-defense) but there is nothing relative or subjective about this morality.

The context of moral evaluations is the most important part – it is there where what most would call “gray areas” exist, not in the moral conclusions. But there are no actual gray areas because reality is what it is and nothing else. Discovering and understanding the context can be difficult, often extremely so, but facts are facts whether or not they come to light. Mistakes are not moral failings; deliberate non-life-supporting choices are. (You can see why, just as in any other moral system, things can easily get complicated.)

Examining living entities, we see that some things aid in continuing their lives and some things do not. The right is that which contributes to successful living and the wrong is that which does not. What things exactly are right or wrong depends on the nature of the being in question, although “good” and “evil” (vs “right” or “wrong”) only apply to entities capable of choice. For man, there are many, many alternative choices that are good (different careers, taste in food, various lifestyle elements – millions of choices). The same is true for the evil (theft, murder, fraud, lying – again, millions of choices). For man, the sole criterion for whether or not something is good or evil is, does it help or hinder the life of a human being?

The life if a human being is the standard of value for mankind in general. For an individual, as I said, there are nearly infinite choices to be made. He must use the general standard to decide what is good or evil in principle but, for his own, unique life, what he chooses to do to meet that general standard ought to be measured against his unique, chosen purpose. He applies the general principle to his unique thinking, circumstances, and choices, then chooses the specific course of action that he decides best advances his life. What advances his life is good, what harms it is evil.

In summary: The life of “A Human Being” is the standard of morality, an individual’s own life is his specific purpose, to be measured against that standard.

Again, this is quite a complex subject, so I’ll stop here. I am happy, though, to discuss it further if you or anyone else would like to.

To me, it all boils down to this, treat other people the way in which you’d want to be treated. I can get along with any body based on 2 criteria, are they an asshole or an idiot? If not, then no problem, if however they are 1 or both of those, then I won’t even bother. If they feel compelled to preach their beliefs at me and super-impose their “morals” as being the one true way to live your life, then don’t waste my time. There isn’t a single thing that any theist can say to me that I haven’t already heard. Life experiences can teach you right from wrong, that’s good enough for me.

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