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Notes -
I feel like the older I get the more evidence I have that religion (and sadly, bigotry, although I'm not going to comment on the relationship between those) are a kind of zero-sum quantity in human nature. We can recognize them when we see them, and make efforts to move away from them, but those are doomed to just ooze out in other, often less well-understood places. New Atheism thought it had defeated God, but it really just built its own idols and called them something else. I don't think years of progressive anti-racism activism has managed any broader changes than merely changing the acceptable set targets of bigotry (in "proper" circles) in the modern era (in: Jews and rural white people, out: everyone on the "progress" flag).
And I say this as someone generally neutral on religion: I have my own beliefs I'm content with, and I'm happy to let-live with reasonably wide bounds on others'. And I find racism and bigotry generally to be pretty abhorrent and I'd love for there to be less of it in the world. I'm just not sure how to actually fix human tribalism and it's downstream failures. But I'm open to suggestions.
As usual, there is nothing new under the sun. Bonus amusing phrasing from wiki:
"Psst, Moses, you won't believe what those rascals are up to!"
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