In above video Yaron Brook, director of the Ayn Rand Institute is exploding an important misconception about ideas and religion. Let's start from the beginning (scroll down for the chart).
The universe is divided in to two realms:
The universe is divided in to two realms:
- the realm of form, made up of concretes
- the world of ideas, made up of abstractions
The world of concretes can be divided as follows:
- the natural realm and
- the realm of the man-made.
The natural world is what is, we have to accept that.
That which is man-made, is makeable and breakable: these are the things that can be changed.
Eventually all things humans think trickles down into the man-made world. Stands to reason.. right?
Religion belongs to the realm of ideas. Faith is an idea, like any other idea.
An idea is morally neutral: if we want to know if an idea is inherently good or bad, you have to investigate the basic tenets of the idea: its fundamentals.
Some people think religion is good by definition. This is nonsense. Cannibalism is a religion, but it is objectively bad. The same goes for any other religion or idea that demands human sacrifice.
But that's just concrete human sacrifice. The ideological sacrifice of the individual is a fundamental of all collectivist ideas, be they religious or secular. Secular, pseudo religions are all forms of totalitarianism.
- Examples of religious totalitarianism are: Christianity in the Middle Ages and Islam.
- In the realm of secular, totalitarian pseudo religions God is replaced by some other collective abstraction (listen to Yaron Brook). For example:
- by the tribe, in tribalism
- by (the proletarian) class, in communism
- by society, in Socialism and in democracy
- the nation, in nationalism
- the state/government, in statism
More on secular pseudo religion in part 2