The world has many religions in our world, each with their curious habits and props and stories. There are also philosophies that are very much like religions but don’t have a god or holy sites. It is often said the supernatural should be part of what a religion is, holy sites, reverence by the followers etc. To an atheist it always looks the same : People behaving crazy, responding to things you can’t see, honouring schedules and calenders that seem to have no or just practical purpose.
Where do you draw the line between religion and non religion? That it has priests, or prayers? I guess the best one is to look at the behavior and how it is triggered. Somewhere in the chain of cause and effect something happens that does not make any sense.
We underestimate how hard we need triggers to allow our behaviour. This is mainly because we are in sensible environments and have our thoughts to trigger behavior. But our lives would be total chaos if we unconsiously and spontaneously would start to do things we can do, it would become super dangerous. Its not due to a conscious effort that we restrict our movements etc. to what the context allows, the body doesn’t want to die as much as our mind. We are inhibited into our tried and tested routines most of the time.
It is also one of our basic functions to see if other people are normal or safe to be with. You could even say our automatic empathy and immitation of behavior is primarily to sense what other persons are up to. If they are cold and motionless and their eyes don’t seem to be freely attracted to whatever happens we quickly start to worry.
Religions have clear triggers and this seems to make sense, until you realize these triggers where made up. So to pray in front of Mary for fertility makes sense, but who made the first statue of her? Priests no doubt. If you take the behavior versus speech it also becomes quite confusing. It is most likely humans discovered the power words on minds not used to much words, minds who where not allowed to think outside the immediate practically usefull language (for fear of being accused of lying or being crazy). To me priesthoods, which descended from the village doctors and shamans, where always simply those that had more time to learn more language and meet more people, becoming able to predict and control others with words.
How would we describe a priest? Someone that knows behaviors that mesmerize people and trigger specific behaviors that ultimately serve them. A priest is like an evil psychologist. Its all self serving. The old testament is basically a how to priest manual. The main currency is fear and desperation, although it can also be love. Any emotion. Once you allow some dude or woman to tell you what the state of your world is, you live in their world.
Priests then form religions, I think that’s how it goes. Any remembered myth or habit is integrated into the religion, any new notable event is given a place in the religious bubble created. This bubble can be inclusive, exclusive etc.
We had a Apple/Microsoft religious battle in the 90’s. Now still a Microsoft/Linux battle. Both sides sort the positive and negative aspects according to the rules of their bubble, they listen to different priests. The discrimination can be totally justified objectively but then at other times not. Why the hell wear an Apple watch?
But to come back to the definition of religions, I think we should redefine it so it becomes “Any culture managed by priests”, culture being a collection of customs, habits, preferences, food choices etc. Priests being the people that weave a story from the past to the future, decide how we feel about what. You will always find the priests are doing great!
“Orthodox members are exempt from military draft and given a stipend by law”
Question then becomes with anyone you see in a visible leading role : “Is [pronoun] a priest?”. Soon you find that there are many many priests, from political leaders to celebrities. Every time they start to suggest you behave in a certain way, one that ultimately strenghtens your submission or the wallet of the priest. Kanye is a priest, Martin Luther King was a real one. Economists are priests. The reason is that in all cases there are things you can/could see, and things that you had to believe and you became different from other people. You marched to a different tune. This then can become a source of conflict, unless your priests tells you to be peacefull.
To an atheist the chaos created by priests is enough to ban all but the most basic priesthoods. Do sport, enjoy nature, share communal meals. Have feast for spring and other annual rituals. The problem is that many lives these days are more or less abstract, in the sense that people never really care for their own survival. The economy and cities makes it so people are removed from what sustains them. Its no accident. The further people are removed from what sustains them, the harder they are willing to work for money, the lifeblood of cities. The high priests of economism (a theory that is crazy because it never worries about replacing resources and only strives to increase numerical values), will tell you you have to be in cities, use every means to lock you in them, to then tell you you have to be usefull to the banks (pay a lot for your mortgage) or get thown out. You can see people in New York paying $4000 per month for an appartment and be proud of it. The city itself is the holy place sold by the real estate priests.
We love our food to be blessed by someone who cares for us. This makes 100% sense, because what if the person making the food hates you? You could be very sick. The more a person cares for your food the more important you feel. This is almost a need for many people because people who serve the economic priests well are taught to look down on people who don’t (see the pattern?). So your life sucks, your friends hate you because you are poor, then you’d love to feel a bit more important by getting special treatment. There the food priests can help you, and you want to pay for it. In the end you are squeezed or squeezing. That is what the banks want “you fight, we take a piece of the spoils. ”
To maximize wealth, which is our purpose on this Earth, where wealth does not include money, but means to realize our dreams and live a comofortable life, we need to reduce the nr. of distractions and fixations that really do not serve to increase our wealth. No religious uniformity but religious freedom and irrelevance. No territorial completeness but territorial utility. Of course wealth itself helps people get along. It is very ironic money is invested in poor countries to supply them with weapons, while the same money could possibly reduce the sources of conflict.
To come back to the definition of religion, it is a distraction in itself. The first thing the priest will do is point away from [pronoun] self, so no thought energy goes into analysing the advantages and inequalities evoked. To demystify all priests, to ask them to show real world wealth gain, not profit, as a justification of revering their truths, makes a lot of sense. Historically this has gone wrong in a system we call communism, simply because whatever system you introduce it will develop priests, and if it tries to disown everyone, some of them won’t want to, or will just work to own in other ways. Once you have a totalitarian power structure, using it to serve your own desires is the easiest thing to do. You know what you want best.
So imho the best strategy is to have local centers of authority, and a constant process of trying to make sense of decision in the context of real world resources, desires, needs. To celebrate good fortune and know the people you ‘work’ for. To have no bank religion, no state religion, no ancient text recited or dress codes. To just keep to principles without some dangerous imaginary god or far out promise or desire to conform to ancient orders. All that is is insanity.