DrokkIt wrote:gurugeorge wrote:
I think in the future people will realize that it was actually an immense act of cruelty to strip away peoples' deep beliefs the way modernity did. There were definitely huge benefits in terms of technological progress that came from looking at existence as mere mechanism (the power of quantitative analysis), but also some profound costs.
This is pretty much Solzhenitsyn's views on the moral crimes of communism.
I think Neitzsche was speaking to the same thing when he said
he who has a why can endure any how.
I don't think it's much of a cruelty if the superstitious wank they believed in caused demonstrable harm in the real world. Plebby white supremacists probably take great comfort in being part of a 'master' race;
yeah, I might be a dribbling fool but at least I ain't no nigger. Personally, I'd say it was for the betterment of mankind as a whole if a whole lot more people had those kinds of beliefs stripped away.
Religion, of course, doesn't have to be supremacist in nature - and if one is content to follow such beliefs, then fill yer boots. Unfortunately, certain prominent religions - and one in particular, it has to be said - are as supremacist as hell, and the more people who lose those beliefs, the better.
And no, I'm not suggesting the world would be some kind of paradise without these more strident religions. It'd very probably be a better one, though. And what's so bad about losing a belief anyway, no matter how heartfelt it is? Get the fuck over it -and if one finds reality to be so untenable without some superstitious drivel to make one feel better about things, then find something better, kinder, to believe in. I'll guarantee that there'll be just as much evidence to support it as there was with the last batch of nonsense you wasted so much time over.