Progress Policy Bite: Religion and Secularism

This is the first in a serious of very short policy updates and explainers.

It's no secret that the policies of political parties are undergirded by and founded upon beliefs and values. This is why the first thing one see on most policy platform documents is a statement of values and beliefs.

Psychologists also know that evolutionary pscychology (and a few other psychological methodologies besides) tells us that human cognition and intuition have evolved to save energy and time. Survival in a hostile, competitive, and demanding social environment means that our brains are largely pragmatic. Survival and thriving are regularly more important than that our cognition tracks the truth of matters. People commonly follow their gut, fixed beliefs, and intuitions.

By necessity, there is a lot of guessing involved inhuman affairs and human relationships. These 'policy bite' posts are formulated with these facts in mind. You don't have time to do a lot of research, and you need to know what my political motives, ideas, plans, and intentions are.

- Dr Bruce Long

Religion and Secularism

One of the most striking aspects of my policy platform is my stance on religious influence and secularism. Especially:

• Religious - or megacult - influence upon government is almost universally undesirable.

• True secularism involves the active exclusion of megacult and faith imperatives and concerns from the political sphere, even if many people have dearly held megacult doctrinal beliefs.

• Megacult delusion is a mental health crisis that affects all levels of government

Megacults

I believe that there is no practical and ideological difference (besides scale and distribution) between a small abusive cult and a cult with more than a million members: a megacult. A megacult that trammels women's rights with respect to abortion, equality, and birth control on a doctrinal and supernaturalist basis, is every bit as abusive and dangerous as a small insular cult that builds an anti-social compound.

Secularism

My stance on secularism is similar to that of the Australian Secular Party, but with the caveat that

Philosophy of Religious Megacults

Megacults like Christianity and Islam are a very archaic, and arcane, cultural technology. The question of whether such megacults have real value for a civilisation, or else are just tools for manipulation and oppression, has been pondered since at least the time of Greek philosophers Epicurus, Democtritus, and Anaxagoras.

In most British Commonwealth countries and The United States, the majority religious views are supernaturalist and theist. These megacults involve belief in the existence of a singular omniscient male deity. They're also inherently patriarchal, misogynist, and anti-intellectual. The wisdom of the putative omniscient god being is perpetually elevated above that of human beings, which is a big problem if said being is - as is the case - imaginary.

• Imaginary omniscient friends have no real authority, and nor should adults who have such imaginary friends.

• I reject the idea that no-religion is a religion. This is simply a category error, and irrational. No faith is a faith like turing off the television is a television channel. This is philosophically and epistemically sound position and disposition which involves removing delusional and inhibiting clutter from human cognition.

There are further serious concerns about epistemic rationality and social appropriateness of megacults.

There is a common metaphysical debate about proof. However, it has never been convincing. The principle of ontic and explanatory parsimony (Ockham’s Razor) – correctly understood - applies in almost every domain of human intellectual endeavour. The scientific principles of falsifiability, or disconfirmability, and public reproducibility, are imperative. Megacult beliefs are generally amenable to none of these. This IS a reason to reject them. A good one.

At this point in history, we have enough public science education in the West that doxastic (belief) commitments to supernaturalist theism should certainly be classified as clinically delusional.

• Explanations and theories that require complex ontological and metaphysical 'furniture' or mechanisms above and beyond nature, are not to be relied upon. Especially where a natural scientific explanation is available.

• Science and the scientific method, which eschews and elides supernaturalism, has proven its superiority as an episteme and means of human advancement. This is so incontrovertible and evident by now as to be beyond question except by the deluded.

• Not only is evolutionary theory coupled variously with gradualism and emergentism more than adequate to explain nature and humanity, but it avoids the problem of infinite logical and ontological regresses. Simply stated, if one posits a complex omniscient and omnipotent intellect as an explanation of human origins, then one immediately has to explain the causal origins and aetiology of said intellect. This is perhaps the most devastating, resounding, and unresolvable logical and ontological blow to theism and to theistic and fideistic (knowledge by faith) megacult doctrines.

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