Religion: Delusion Serves Tribalization

[The following was censored by an American philosophy site. Why? It “exacerbates things”.]

In culturally advanced countries, such as the USA, religious believers with a modicum of general culture and awareness, know very well that, when they embrace a superstition, a so-called religion, they fancy something that is not the truth.

So what is going on? Why do they outwardly believe in something, that they truly do not believe in?

(For the purpose of this essay, I will override the joke that the difference between the USA and yogurt, is that yogurt has live culture.)

Thus believers know that they do not believe in the truth, they just have “faith” that they will get away with it. In advanced countries, believers have seen enough TV, and videos, to know this.

So why do they embrace something that they do not believe in, deep down inside? If you ask them, they will say because so did their parents, or that it’s a “tradition”.

Thus the motivation of believers is essentially tribal: I believe what my tribe believes, however absurd (and the more absurd, the more well defined it is). Religion is not just tribalism, it’s in-your-face tribalism. No wonder the so-called Islamist State behaves just the same. They heed the example generously provided by the USA (or, more exactly the leading, opinion making circles, of the USA; thus: are Islamists Americanists in heavy disguise?)

This is evidenced by the situation in Israel. Weirdly dressed people, often coming from overseas, namely the USA, have decided to occupy the land of others, and, if one observes this, they brandish racism, or even dark allusions to Nazism.

Tribalists always call critiques unduly offensive, or even racist and disrespectful of their religion (it is a sin, precisely because religion is tribal, and thus, attacking religion is attacking the tribe).

This, religion being a deliberate lie masking a tribal purpose, is why the god delusion has deflated in Europe: Europeans, deep inside, know that the old religions were essentially tribal excuses to go to war manipulated by elites for their own profit (see Israel again for a live example). And Europeans have had enough of wars.

(By the way, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine killed at least 4,500 people, it was announced today.)

The rejection of religion by Europeans was helped by the SS motto: “Gott Mit Uns” (God With Us). Nazism evoked “Gott” a lot, and Biblical semantics (superior race versus “Elected People”, “Lebensraum”, the vital space to the east, as in the Bible, in parallel with “Promised Land”, without counting the many god-organized genocides of the Bible, etc…)

It dawned on Europeans that the old elites walloped in faith. With the enthusiasm of various predatory beasts, walloping in gore. This is not meant to be an insult, by the way. It’s a description: predators rub themselves in the smell of decaying flesh of their prey to disguise their true nature, and make it easier to approach the next meal.

Thus Christianism did with love. Love was rubbed all over it, but the purpose was just the opposite: Christianism killed millions…. Yet, it did not even originate European style welfare, nationalization, and socialism (the Franks did that).

If, as I asserted, believers have made a conscious decision to believe in lies, what does that tell us? That here are people whose meta-ethics is lying.

Do we want to encourage this? Do we even want to tolerate this? Should this be viewed as a deviant psychological behavior? This is what somebody such as Dawkins believe. I do not like Dawkins on genes, but I approve him on that.

One cannot have faith, a faith one knows is a lie, a faith that lies should rule the minds, and it is of no consequence.

We encourage meta-lying by not calling, at least among intellectuals, the God Delusion for what it is. Not just a delusion, but a tribalization. The delusion of tribalization.

It is not a question of telling a child dying of cancer that god does not exist, and will not take care of her. I am ready, and I certainly will lie, in such a case, as I comfort a child, and not just a child, with such lies… And maybe they are not lies, gods know…

By the way, Christians ought to stop holding the Solstice hostage. The Winter Solstice feasts, complete with cut conifers, lights, decorations and gift giving, are known to be older than Christianism by more than five centuries.

An exasperated Imperator Augustus passed a law to limit the “Saturnials”, as the Romans called the solstice feasts, to less than three weeks.

In a debate among intellectuals, the connection between gods’ delusion and tribalization ought not to be censored.

That such a connection is censored in American “philosophical” sites is telling.

Primitives go to war. Those who claim to be primitive enough to persuade themselves that they are primitive, will also go to war, because, once they have persuaded themselves that they are primitive, they are free to act like the primitives they have persuaded themselves they are. When Bush invaded Iraq, in 2003, monolithic war thinking ruled all over. USA media systematically censored all my comments (although the New York Times editorial board was reading them for themselves, as they communicated with me).

Religionism is tribalism by another name. Tribes are the primitive war units. However, war fabricates history.

Europe is anxious to forget war. But the feeling is not reciprocal. The American leadership, by making sure that the population does not forget religion, thus tribalism, makes sure that most of the military budget of the planet originates in the USA.

Thus religion is at the core of the military-industrial complex. They are both strong in the USA, because they are related.

The USA was also spectacularly in denial about the poisoning of the biosphere by CO2. That, too, is related to religion: after all, why to worry? God is omnipotent, remember? And no need to do anything about a violent society, violent police, and the might of plutocrats: God is in charge.

Religion does not just organize tribalism, it can make it conservative, that is, in a few hands. Don’t ask why American universities censor agnosticism, ask why they should censor those who want a society less defined by the few, who make them rich.

Time to “exacerbate things“?

Patrice Ayme’

Tags: delusion, Lies, Religion, Tribalism, USA