What are our beliefs if not this comfortable mental prison, whose construction and purpose we often don't understand? Religion, often perceived as merely a set of beliefs, is in reality a powerful epistemological machine that shapes our understanding of the world and our subjectivity. This article aims to deconstruct the traditional notion of religion to reveal its true essence: a complex information-processing mechanism that influences not only our metaphysical beliefs but also our perception of reality and our interaction with it.

We will explore the two aspects of religion: ritual, which reinforces our current beliefs, and prophecy, which promises a transcendence of those same beliefs. This aspect is only one facet of religion. It is religion in its normal form. But there is another form: and it is this one that I will attempt to uncover in what I call "the structure of religious revolutions." By examining the process of religious revolution, we will illuminate the role of magic and the prophet in the transformation of collective beliefs.

Let us begin by clarifying the very concept of religion, then examine its two facets: normal religion, which is ritual, and revolutionary religion, which is prophecy. Next, we will question the often-established dichotomy between science and religion, highlighting their common ground in the pursuit of knowledge and the construction of our subjectivity. Finally, we will study the process and the main actor of religious revolution: namely, magic and the scapegoat as a fundamental epistemological phenomenon that defines human experience.

Science is religion

We generally believe that science and religion occupy separate domains, but nothing could be further from the truth. They both deal with knowledge: both seek to establish the beliefs upon which our understanding of the world is possible. Indeed, even scientists themselves operate within a religious framework during so-called "scientific revolutions." For to do science requires a theoretical framework, which itself is rooted in belief. It is not wrong to say that a science is a religion, at least in its fundamental aspects. (The field of physics is, after all, awaiting its next Einstein, just as Christians await the coming of Christ… awaiting the one who is to come.)

The scientific question to ask is not to determine "which is truer than the other," but to here Each of these conceptions can be true, especially if one allows for the other. To oppose the science of physics to Christianity in the manner of a polemicist during Galileo's trial is to play into the hands of religions ("my religion is better than yours") rather than to analyze them. Indeed, science and Christianity, as conceived in this pseudo-article, occupy the same territory and grapple with the same elements of intellectual life: the architectonic beliefs. A religion is neither a sacred text, nor a way of life, nor a set of beliefs, nor a ritualistic cult… It is first and foremost an epistemological machine that is responsible for the formation, verification, and articulation of beliefs and the narratives that derive from them.

It's important to remember that a machine is simply a set of mechanisms that perform an information processing function. This is what religions do: they use "Sacred Scriptures," rituals, communities, institutions, and individuals to process information, which can be so abstract that it addresses higher beliefs, such as supernatural and metaphysical ones. We mustn't fall into the trap of believing that these beliefs can only be "hallucinations," as some do. NuAtheists who go so far as to attempt to prove the non-existence of God (which is, logically, a dubious, if not impossible, undertaking, and, ironically, very Christian of them, a point I will return to in a future article). These beliefs have effects on all sorts of spheres of human activity: language, rationality, psychology, politics, and so on. In short, the specific common domain of all religions is that of subjectivity and the beliefs that shape it: every religion seeks, through its beliefs, to form subjects; that is their ultimate goal.

What exactly does that mean? Difficult to explain in depth, but easy to summarize like this: it's what it means to be. "I think, therefore I am": It took... Metaphysical Meditations Descartes, to anchor the scientific method, to "found" it in a sound structure, would require nothing less than religious meditations accompanied by mystical experiences on the part of their author.[1].

The prophecy as a promise of ritual

What, then, are the beliefs that religion can address, and how do they constitute a mode of subjectivity? Let's begin with the question of the subject. In the subject/object distinction, the object seems to hold the lion's share of the ontological pie and proves to be a concrete thing, while the subject seems to be nothing more than an observer, or at most, a thinking thing. It is in this thinking, of a "perceiving" type, that we could summarize the mode of subjectivity of science.

The subject is not merely a passive observer; they possess beliefs that are unique to them and distinct from the objects they encounter. For example, the trust and sense of security, or the mistrust and fear of danger, that one feels toward a complete stranger encountered at night in an alley is entirely independent of the reality of the stranger as an object. If I encounter a man in an alley, it is my beliefs—either that the world is safe and friendly, or dangerous and hostile—that will dictate my response to the situation. In all cases, being a belief, it dictates the same response to the same situations: every time we encounter a man in an alley, we make the same movements, express the same emotions in the same way, and utter the same words. Beliefs prescribe what we call a ritual.

A ritual is a set of codified gestures which, in their execution, embody beliefs in a performance that both honors and transcends them. The homage paid to beliefs lies in reinforcing them through performance. Their transcendence is what we call prophecy, and within every ritual lies, or is concealed, a prophecy. Through repeated practice, rituals acquire a reinforcing effect on the same beliefs. Loops Thought processes operate within the same neural circuits throughout the body (each thought has an associated neural circuit). Belief is embodied in this ritual for two reasons: a cultic reason (to honor our beliefs) and an epistemological reason (to ensure the validity of our beliefs by allowing for their falsification). Thus, beliefs, through religion, are very much alive. The ritual serves to reinforce present beliefs (to convince ourselves that we are right, that our beliefs or our gods are the correct ones), while simultaneously allowing us to overcome them through the fulfillment of the prophecy contained within. The prophecy remains a will, a "wish," directed toward the future.

To return to the example of the stranger in an alley: if the person x who is terrified of the potential enemy she would discover in the unknown a The person doesn't flee, but agrees to engage in the ritual of "encountering a stranger." Generally, these actions are performed: 0 – remain in motion throughout the ritual; 1 – make eye contact with the stranger (to keep an eye on them and ensure they are not someone we know) and, if we feel safe, perhaps exchange a polite smile and a greeting (strategies for pacifying a potential enemy); 2 – continue along a path that communicates no intention toward the other person (confirming that the smile/greeting is not friendly warmth); and 3 – without turning around, remain alert to the stranger's position until they are no longer within our field of vision (being ready to respond to an attack from the enemy). All the steps of this ritual, however, can be subverted, and perhaps even require it. This is the hidden prophecy: it would be more logical, if we truly believe in the world as danger and the unknown as enemy, to simply run in the other direction and find another path than this alley. However, this ritual allows for a hope of a better world where a stranger could be a potential friend: it allows enough closeness or contact for an extraordinary stranger to defy all expectations and turn every part of the ritual on its head, and against all odds, but by fulfilling the prophecy, cause a sudden infatuation with the stranger. It is in this sense that the ritual virtually contains a prophecy. Without this possibility being nurtured, belief in the unknown as an enemy would be nothing but delusion.

The religious phenomenon then reveals itself as a high-caliber epistemological machine, and beliefs, along with their ritual prescriptions, a sure way to navigate the world. Rituals, always using the same neural circuits, form a mental prison, condemning the individual and the community to perpetual repetition, while simultaneously offering the possibility of escape to freedom from this very prison. But because it is a neural (and electrical) circuit, it can be rewired, remodeled, by the magic of a religious genius. This religious genius, we call a prophet: this is the exceptional, extraordinary individual who becomes aware of the rituals and acts in such a way as to positively subvert them for those imprisoned within them.

The prophecy has this ritualistic quality of promise, in that beliefs about the world are largely negative beliefs that leave little hope for salvation. This hope is the prophecy, and its fulfillment is salvation. Indeed, moving from a world where a stranger is an enemy to one where a stranger is a potential soulmate is, in this instance, very beneficial. Similarly, in science, we have a narrative that diminishes us more and more, to the point where we perceive ourselves, planetarily, as a mere blue dot in a vast ocean of emptiness, but with enough non-emptiness that our non-emptiness seems like just another filled dot among billions of others. We await the next Einstein, and I believe that he will be the one who, in a way, will make us the navel of the universe again. As a final example, Jesus opened the way for the concept of the afterlife and the chance of eternal happiness by gaining a place in paradise: before Jesus' revolution, we simply lived, and at death, went to Sheol, a kind of nothingness where only a handful of saints would have the right to a bodily resurrection: nothing more than a return and not a kind of well-being buffet as paradise is conceived in Christianity (and Islam).

Scapegoat: revolutionary magician

The process by which a religion can reinforce, modify, or replace beliefs through rituals is that of sympathetic magic, most often combined with the process of identification. We all identify in some way with those in our community and relate to them as equals. The same rules apply to everyone. Thus, if we believe that this stranger in the alley is a danger, our belief in equality will lead us to assume that they could be a danger to anyone, and that is why we will tell a loved one to be careful of strangers in alleys at night. In turn, the loved one will begin to fear them, and thus a new convert has been created.

The prophet's action takes place when sympathetic magic is simultaneously fulfilled and subverted. In addition to the equality or resemblance between the prophet and the believers, both being human, there is also an element of otherness that leads to a re-evaluation of beliefs, a transvaluation. Take the example of Jesus: he is both human and divine, therefore he possesses enough resemblance and otherness to effectively perform his magic trick and produce what is called "The Good News," thus transitioning from the religion of Israel to those of Judaism and Christianity. It is through the death of Jesus (respect for the sacrificial ritual) and his resurrection (subversion of expectations and confirmation of hopes) that the revolution occurs. Thus, what holds true for Jesus becomes true for all other mortals through sympathetic magic. If one mortal could conquer death, all mortals can believe in life after death. This is how hell and heaven, which were not part of the religion of Israel, became dogmas disseminated by Christianity. Beliefs, through the prophet's actions, were overturned: liberation from the prison of the past, which saw only death and then nothingness, except perhaps resurrection for those who were saints, to the new prison of eternal life after death, is what we call the Good News. Death is no longer the end for us. The resurrection of Jesus came to "reveal" a world completely different from what we imagined, and the God we believed to be so great, sublime, and terrifying, is revealed, like us, to be a being capable of profound love and mercy.

Thus, the religion of Israel was split in two: those who rejected the new mental prison in order to retain the old called themselves Jews, and those who believed in these new beliefs, and therefore believed that tradition had long been misguided, called themselves Christians. This is because the sacrificial ritual (which led to the death of Jesus) was performed according to the rules of ritual.

“When there is found within you, within any of your gates that the Lord your God is giving you, a man or woman who does evil in the sight of the Lord your God, transgressing his covenant […] On the testimony of two or three witnesses, that person shall be put to death. […] First, the hands of the witnesses shall be against them to put them to death, and then the hands of all the people. Burn away the evil within you.” Deuteronomy 17:2-7

This also fulfills the curse of YHWH in the event of a breach of the Covenant.

            It was as a scapegoat that Jesus was in a position to effect this "transvaluation." He was ostracized, treated differently from others while still being subject to and having suffered under the same law. He was both the protagonist and the antagonist. It is by being in this role of scapegoat, and by understanding it, that one can thus succeed in changing beliefs. The scapegoat has this function of uniting the community that turns against one of its members and provides him with the perfect position to be a prophet: similar enough for sympathetic magic and the process of identification to operate, and different enough to subvert rituals and fulfill prophecies, and thus change our beliefs.

In conclusion

Religions are far broader and more interconnected phenomena than Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and so on, might lead us to believe. It's true to say that wherever there is belief, there is religion: it's the entire set of epistemological mechanisms (the machine) that produces, reproduces, delivers, and disseminates beliefs that can be described as religion. The shift from one religion to another, the transvaluation, is always surprising! It's never as we expect it to be: thus, having a preconceived image of how prophecies might be fulfilled leads to stumbling over the repetition of the same beliefs. We need to be pulled from our world, our prison of beliefs, by the unexpected: the hope we didn't even know we held is then validated, the floor gives way beneath our feet, and we find ourselves in a whole new world to explore. It is literally through the magic of a scapegoat that these revolutions are most likely to occur. Christianity and Einstein's astrophysics are good subjects of study for this topic: both are religions that emerged from another religion, with parameters clear and well-documented enough to analyze the phenomenon of prophecy fulfillment. All that is probably missing is for someone to take it upon themselves to propel humanity into the next world: this person would, I hope, be able to unite religions, including science, with the most unexpected fulfillment of all prophecies. This is the project that I, Messy Erzast, have set out to undertake.

[1] Descartes, in fact, had mystical experiences around his Metaphysical Meditations Dark or waking dreams, experiences that surpass understanding. Mysticism is at the basis, it seems, of all "foundations", of all higher-order knowledge.