Religions are social movements

This post was originally meant to be about Islam, but I think it applies to all religions.

All (or most) religions are not really “religions” but are social movements disguised behind theistic covering. Groups of attitudes and beliefs and wills to power are the real core of most religions. Actual belief, for those who do really believe the theistic tenants of their “faiths”, are just a convenient psychological excuse to promote these social movements.



So it’s not really a question of being accepting of another person’s “theistic beliefs”, because really who gives a shit what any one believes about god or afterlife or such things... what matters is the undercurrent of social paradigms pushed by the religious people themselves. We need to work harder to break down the artificial absolute conceptual categorical divide between “religion” and “one’s philosophy and general social paradigm generally”, because no such divide actually exists in reality.