Pure Brutality

[The Grand Nudger]

There is no such thing and has never been any such thing as the original teaching of all religions. This is pure revisionism and a particularly ridiculous example of cultural appropriation. Likewise, you do not have better stuff, you have the new stuff, which trades on the supposed credibility of the old stuff. Try a little thought experiment for me, a meditation..if you will. Imagine a world where your current viewpoint on the content of x is absolutely correct...and not in any way concordant or actually connected with old ideas about x. Would it seem less true to you? Would it be diminished in any way? Can these ideas stand on their own, on their own merits, in your own mind? Does the belief you currently hold require the mountain sized ego and absurd premises necessary to come to the conclusion that everyone, all along, has been trying to say whatever you're saying? Should we take big mo and magic book to be authorities on real islam™...or is that you?

Antitheism and antireligiousity are not synonyms. That's your own god beliefs getting in your way. You don't intuitively register religion absent a theistic god. An antitheist will tell you that religion and ideology isn't the problem. These things are useful and inescapable. Theistic religion isn't dogshit because it's religious or ideological, but because it's theistic. As such, theistic religion could stumble into or cynically employ any insights or truth statements it likes and this will not, and cannot, improve the quality of theistic religion - as the end goal is fundamentally valueless. Those truths or insights are discardable, and will be discarded by theists themselves, existing as mere props for other batshit assertions which form the organizing principle of all theistic belief. There is no rational or self respecting way to get to where you are, and throwing other theists under the bus in the company of atheists while proclaiming ownership of their religious articles is unlikely to get you the outcome you desire.

Let them be wrong, and, bringing it all back together, understand that you're going to have to do the work for your own religion yourself, without their borrowed ladders. I understand that this is a hard habit to break coming from abrahamic theism...but it's not like you think those silly fucks got things right, amiright? Wiccans were in a similar position by the 90's. They had imagined a revisionist history for themselves and couched the neopagan movement as a return to tradition while being in deep disagreement with the historical reality of pagan religions. What contemporary pagans organized around, due to the unsuitability of the belief systems they aped, was exactly what you've decided on today. The contents of the self help and new age aisles. Magical thinking and nonsense about "energy" - but not..you know, energy energy...ghost energy. Neopaganism was the fastest growing religion in the us for a time and ended up having a profound effect on mainstream theistic religion....but you'd be hard pressed to find them today...because once they'd removed disingenuos appeals to ancient wisdom and the market pressure of deepak chopraisms there wasn't much to it beyond humanism and environmentalism. No gods or ghosts required. Nothing to organize around that didn't have better purchase in society and less baggage as it's own cause. In the real world, this is probably best exemplified by witchvox shuttering and no replacement or attempts at a replacement ever popping up. Don't get me wrong, there are still pagans. Deeply committed pagans who do want to use their beliefs as a way to pierce the veil on truths of the type I assume you also want to comment on. Then there are people who "used to be into crystals and healing energy and stuff". Which path do you think you're on? Which path do you want to be on?