Religious Folly

Church attendance may have radically and progressively reduced since the end of the first world war but a common error lots of lapsed churchgoers make is encapsulated and articulated in the following ratiocination: I do not need to worship in a church but I still believe in God. Such people like to present themselves as free thinkers but this a nothing but a conceit. Imagine if someone said I don not like going to Nazi rallies and going through all the rituals of saluting Hitler and dressing up in all that Nazi regalia but I do beleive in Nazism and its core principles. Would anybody think well of them?  The  non church goers are unctuous to the extreme in wearing their faux non conformity on their sleeves but in any objective analysis they are all in the same faith boat and share the same irrational creed as the church going fraternity.

If we add all the faith based non church attenders to the those who observe their faith in outward forms we would see that far more people are faith oriented than the church attendance figures would suggest. Add to that all those who adhere to New Age mystical mumbo jumbo and other religious and quasi religious sects from paganism to Jehova Witness Church of scientology Mormonism and God knows what else and throw in the equally irrational conspiracy theorists, believers in astrology, UFOers and junk science Environmentalists and we are dealing with probably a majority of the population that are irrational to a fault,unhinged and quasi insane to boot. Not to mention all the irrational philosphies people adhere to which practically means all of modern philsophy with hardly any exceptions.

Against this culture of unreason it is hardly surprising that modern politics is so bad and completely dominated by collectivistic ideology as this flows directly from the core beliefs  people hold and the general culture. As all the abovementioned faith systems Without exception adhere to the notion of self sacrifice and altruism any attempt  to challenge the altruism implcit and explicit within collectivist statism is to challenge people's deeply held philosophy and belief structure and this explains the awesome Herculean labour that will be required to turn the culture around and why the question what is to be done is so vexing and challenging and resistant to any easy solution or programme.