First off, I would like to call into question the 'atheist' tendency to target the religion most familiar to them as the cause of many of society's problems, and, secondly, I would like to propose an examination of the human behaviour tendencies which permits religion (and many other of society's 'ruling' elements) to do all it does.
But even going there, as we will be reasoning from a critical thought perspective, I think it would be useful to dispel with the notion of 'atheism' altogether, at least for this essay: 'atheism' is a religious concept, from a religious language and a religious point of view, a concept designed by religion to bring attention to itself more than anything. But in spite of its insistent claims, religion is not the centre of everything: it is but a phenomenon allowed through the exploitation of what seems to be a core human trait, or weakness if you will.
As I have repeated several times through my last essays, society is comprised of two types of human: those who have learned to measure the world around them through their own experiences, thoughts and conclusions, and those who rely on the example of others to make life decisions for them. I'm sure that in reality, things are not so black and white (aka the 'compartmentalisation' of survive-by-imitation to certain subjects), but, for the sake of clarity in this discussion, it would be useful to maintain a distinct line between the two.
A term that comes up often in circles questioning religion is "suspension of disbelief": the term describing a blind acceptance of another human's claims (and an obeisance of their commands based thereon) is spot-on as far as religion is concerned, but I would like to propose that the phenomenon, at least in many humans, goes far beyond that: some suspend all thought altogether in favour of the comforting certitude expressed by many types of authority figure; it is not a phenomenon reserved to religion alone.
Critical thought is not the only cognitive process separating the behaviour of these two states: emotion is just as, if not more, important in dictating the reaction of a human in any given situation, but between the two states, emotion becomes a tool used in very different ways. At its base, emotion is a reaction that attributes a 'value' to a given situation or thought process: fear and anger, namely, are reactions to elements that pose a potential threat to one's existence.
It is this notion of 'threat' that creates the sharpest divide between those who think for themselves, and those who survive by imitation: if one has no capacity (or willingness) to judge a given situation for themselves, how can they determine whether it poses a threat or not? Such a decision would be limited to the scope of what they 'know' (have experienced thus far), which is why their initial knee-jerk reaction to anything outside of that is often a mix of condescendence, fear, anger or hate.
Just as important, to one limited to the same 'reaction' thought processes, is the positive emotions attributed to all that they deem 'safe' and 'sure': affection and acceptance are reserved for those 'like-minded, meaning those who share the same 'knowledge', or those would-be 'leaders' (introduced, or even imposed, as 'safe leaders' by parents, kin, etc.) who dictate the same.
It still amazes me that most humans seem to operate in that mode, but in an economy where actual work was rewarded, this seems to operate just fine: as many of our parents taught us, if we but obey the dictates of our leaders, teachers, bosses, etc., we will be thrown scraps enough from the table above to lead comfortable lives. Unfortunately, especially since the decades following the second world war, this promise has become an increasingly empty one.
Yet our economy still depends on a larger suspension of autonomous thought: our would-be 'leaders' who tell us what to buy and what to think (how to react), have, instead of using their critical-thinking and technological advances to better educate all of humanity, have (ab)used their advantage to increase profits (technology means lower production costs, and even an elimination of the need for human labour altogether), and when protest to that arose, their answer was to make education increasingly inaccessible. The result: a dumbed-down, but disgruntled, driven-to-consume (to imitate the status quo) population unable to understand the simple 'complexities' of their own plight.
Emotion in a critical thinker is another, often subdued (through neuroplasticity), other animal: it only takes a nanosecond of thought to realise that one sexually
'different' from another poses no threat to either existence...
especially in this world suffering from overpopulation. It only takes a
second of questioning thought to determine the veracity of the 'threats'
our leaders would like us to die for: gone, too, would be the 'blind
believer' armies indoctrinated (most often with falsehoods) into fulfilling the often undisclosed real goals of an 'elite' few. The irony in those armies, past and
present, is that the goal of those leaders was most often not riches or
resources directly, but the control of, and a cut of, an even larger
economy of complacent, labouring, non-critically thinking 'believers'. And in creating this sort of mental climate, religion has, indeed, to those would-be leaders, always been 'useful'.
In times before, especially in western Europe, religion was the ultimate pyramid scheme, with 10% of every income going into the pockets of a few, but today the means are myriad for an 'elite' few to draw a profit from each and every one of us: the petrol industry we are, by design, still locked into, health care, insurance, computer technology... religious manipulations pale to the actions by the corporate, often faceless (as far as the news and the public is concerned), shareholders who dictate the 'rules' of modern economies.
Yet I underline again the fact that, no matter the form of the autonomous-thought-inhibiting machination, its existence depends on a general lack of will or ability to think critically, to take the responsibility (thus accountability) of their own life decisions upon oneself. We are all capable of critical thought, and tend naturally towards it towards adolescence: it is the practice of 'breaking' this transition that must end, as it is the cause of most all that ails modern, and past, societies.
