God Ruined Everything: How Make-Believe Accelerated Collapse

Monster or Moron?

When we look unflinchingly at the gathering storm of climate catastrophe and societal breakdown, we must ask ourselves how we arrived at this precipice. The answer lies not just in the physical systems we've disrupted, but in the thinking patterns that allowed us to ignore reality until it was too late. Chief among these is religious thinking—not merely organized religion itself, but the cognitive templates it established that now manifest far beyond church walls.

The Seeds of Our Undoing

Long before the first coal-fired plants and SUVs, religious institutions were busy installing cognitive software that would prove fatal to our collective survival. This software included several key subroutines: faith over evidence, authority over autonomy, future salvation over present reality, and magical thinking over material causation.

These patterns spread virally through our cultures, infecting even secular institutions with their logic. The result? A civilization fundamentally incapable of responding to existential threats.

Religious thinking trains us from childhood to accept contradictions, to believe without evidence, and to trust authority figures who claim special knowledge. These aren't merely spiritual habits—they're cognitive frameworks that shape how we process all information, including scientific data about planetary boundaries and climate systems.

The Mechanisms of Collapse

The Authority Trap

Religious conditioning established a pattern of deferring to authority figures rather than engaging with evidence directly. This manifests across society:

In politics, we seek messiah-like figures promising simple solutions to complex problems. Strongmen (yes, men) to protect us and punish those who trespass against us. Our political discourse increasingly resembles religious devotion, complete with unquestionable dogmas and heresy hunts.

In economics, we trust in market forces with the same blind faith once reserved for divine providence. The "invisible hand" has become a secular god, assumed to be benevolent and wise despite mounting evidence to the contrary.

In ecology, we assume some higher power—be it divine intervention or human ingenuity—will save us from consequences, just as religion promises salvation from death. Or that, sure things suck, but god has a plan—so don't worry about it.

The Comfort of Denial

Religion offers comfort in the face of death through promises of afterlife. This template for denial replicates itself in our response to collapse:

"Technology will save us" mirrors religious salvation narratives, positioning human ingenuity as a god-like force that will rescue us at the last moment.

"The market will solve everything" functions as a prosperity gospel, promising that our faith in economic systems will be rewarded with material salvation.

"God wouldn't let this happen" directly imports religious thinking into climate denial, assuming cosmic protection from physical consequences.

"It's all part of the plan" reframes disaster as design, much as religious thinking reframes suffering as purposeful.

These comfort narratives, rooted in religious thought patterns, have delayed meaningful action until collapse became inevitable.

The Paralysis of Providence

Religious thinking created a template for abdicating responsibility to higher powers. This manifests in:

Waiting for intervention rather than taking action. Just as prayer replaces action in religious contexts (thoughts and prayers, anyone?), waiting for technological or political salvation replaces immediate behavioral change.

Assuming someone else (leaders, experts, gods) will fix things. The specialization of modern society combines with religious deference to authority to create a dangerous passivity.

Believing in salvation rather than adaptation. The religious emphasis on rescue rather than resilience has left us unprepared for challenges that cannot be overcome, only endured.

The Acceleration of Collapse

These religious thought patterns didn't merely fail to prevent collapse—they actively accelerated it through multiple feedback loops:

Rejection of Science: Religious thinking provided the template for climate denial by establishing that faith trumps evidence, that uncomfortable truths can be rejected, and that expertise is suspect when it challenges belief.

Tribal Division: Religious us-vs-them thinking prevented collective action by training us to see ideological differences as moral failings rather than good-faith disagreements.

Future Focus: The emphasis on afterlife/salvation reduced concern for earthly systems, creating a cognitive disconnect from ecological realities.

Authority Dependence: Religious thinking reduced our capacity for independent critical thinking, making us vulnerable to manipulation by political and economic interests.

Reality Denial: Perhaps most devastatingly, religious thinking trained us in the ability to deny uncomfortable truths, seeing such denial as virtuous rather than dangerous.

Living in the Aftermath

As we face the reality of collapse, these religious thinking patterns continue to harm us:

They prevent acceptance of our situation, keeping us trapped in denial and bargaining rather than adapting to new realities.

They hamper adaptation efforts by focusing energy on hopeless prevention rather than necessary preparation.

They increase conflict over remaining resources by enhancing tribal divisions and moral certitude.

They block collective response capabilities by undermining trust in expertise and evidence-based decision making.

Finding Grace in Truth

Yet understanding these patterns offers a path forward, even in collapse:

Radical Acceptance: Seeing reality clearly without religious comfort (i.e. start being honest) allows us to respond appropriately to what is, rather than what we wish would be.

Authentic Response: Acting from evidence rather than belief allows us to direct limited resources efficiently.

Present Focus: Engaging with immediate realities rather than fantasies of future salvation allows us to reduce suffering where possible.

Compassionate Witness: Maintaining our humanity while witnessing collapse becomes possible when we free ourselves from religious narratives of punishment or reward.

The Final Lesson

The greatest irony may be that religious thinking, which promised to save us from death, instead accelerated our collective journey toward it. By training us to prioritize belief over evidence, authority over autonomy, and comfort over truth, it created the perfect conditions for civilizational suicide.

However, by understanding these patterns, we can still:

Face our situation with clear eyes, freed from the comforting delusions of religious thinking.

Maintain our capacity for kindness, not because it will save us, but because it's what humans at their best can do.

Reduce suffering where possible, not for divine reward, but because empathy remains meaningful even in collapse.

Bear witness with dignity to what unfolds, not as punishment or plan, but as the consequence of choices made and systems built.

In the end, the most truly spiritual act may be to abandon religious thinking entirely—to face reality without the comfort of make-believe, to take responsibility without the crutch of providence, and to find meaning in our connections to each other rather than to imagined deities.

Not for salvation, but because it's what we can do in the time we have left.