RE: Maximizing Moral Virtue
September 2, 2022 at 8:51 am
(This post was last modified: September 2, 2022 at 9:10 am by The Grand Nudger.)
When we imagine that religion must be bad, we let bad religions off the hook, as though it were something other than completely voluntary.
Bad religions aren't the only kind, it's just that they possess extreme competitive advantages in a completely unregulated zero-sum market where there's a gargantuan monetary incentive to operating in bad faith. It's not exactly a great foundation from which to maximize moral virtue, which is what makes the question in the op so laughable on it's own grounds. The question posed assumed that there were no gods and we would be doing this without religion - but in a world in which those bad faith actors of bad faiths are not operative..we've -already- moved the needle closer to maximizing moral virtue by default and need do nothing in particular to accomplish that improvement.
Notice, for comparison, how little shit wicca gets (unless, ofc, you're a competing witchdoctor). About the worst wicca does as a movement is exploit the dispensable income of middle class teenage girls. I suppose that's something, but it's not as if that market wouldn't spend money on fantasy otherwise. The whole pitch is "we're not assholes like the other fantasists" - a contrarian social identity with respect to the traditionalist beliefs that same cohort grew up with......based on being nice and whatnot.
Bad religions aren't the only kind, it's just that they possess extreme competitive advantages in a completely unregulated zero-sum market where there's a gargantuan monetary incentive to operating in bad faith. It's not exactly a great foundation from which to maximize moral virtue, which is what makes the question in the op so laughable on it's own grounds. The question posed assumed that there were no gods and we would be doing this without religion - but in a world in which those bad faith actors of bad faiths are not operative..we've -already- moved the needle closer to maximizing moral virtue by default and need do nothing in particular to accomplish that improvement.
Notice, for comparison, how little shit wicca gets (unless, ofc, you're a competing witchdoctor). About the worst wicca does as a movement is exploit the dispensable income of middle class teenage girls. I suppose that's something, but it's not as if that market wouldn't spend money on fantasy otherwise. The whole pitch is "we're not assholes like the other fantasists" - a contrarian social identity with respect to the traditionalist beliefs that same cohort grew up with......based on being nice and whatnot.
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