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bogdan » religion: the psychology of control

10:34 pm on Oct 31, 2025 | read the article | tags: ideas

in the beginning, it was fear.
fear of the unknown, of death, of the night. fear needed a name, so we gave it one. God. and for a moment, that helped.

religion was the first theory of everything. before science, it offered coherence: rules for why things happen and comfort for when they end. it was not about control, not yet. it was about surviving the terror of not knowing. then someone noticed that belief could move people faster than armies. that words could rule without swords. religion stopped describing the world and started managing it.

the priests took over. wonder became hierarchy. faith became obedience.

we like to imagine that religion began as revelation, but maybe it was always negotiation, between curiosity and control. once a story becomes sacred, it stops changing. and once it stops changing, it starts to rule.

the original prophets talked about light. the later ones learned to hide it. the church, any church, thrives on mystique. the less you know, the more you imagine. the more you imagine, the more you believe. secrecy is not protection of truth, it’s protection of authority.

the Vatican’s library, the annual miracles, the relics and rituals, all maintain an illusion that somewhere behind the curtain lies a higher meaning. most likely there isn’t. most likely it’s only dust and history. but the suggestion that there might be more keeps the institution alive.

it’s the same trick used by freemasons, secret orders, esoteric circles. it doesn’t matter if they hold cosmic knowledge or just schedule breaks from domestic boredom. what matters is the performance of depth. in a shallow age, mystery is marketable.

modern religion has adapted. it no longer competes with science. it competes with the state. when faith runs out of miracles, it seeks legislation. when the pulpit loses the crowd, it borrows a flag. nationalism is only religion with geography attached. today, divine destiny is spoken through campaign slogans, and political power dresses itself in moral certainty.

both feed on the same psychology: fear of insignificance. we still want to belong to something eternal, even if it kills us. the result is what passes for the ideology of the third millennium, a theocratic nationalism that calls itself democracy while preaching salvation through strength. it no longer promises heaven; it promises order.

and because chaos terrifies us, we obey.

the irony is that in the information age, religion has learned to imitate its greatest rival. it speaks in algorithms of morality, viral commandments, emotional shortcuts. it uses technology to distribute faith faster than any missionary ever could. yet behind the noise, the logic is ancient: create the fear, then sell the cure. every new uncertainty – climate, economy, identity – becomes a sermon waiting to happen. and once again, control is justified as comfort.

maybe we never outgrew the first night around the fire. we just replaced the shadows with screens. we still project meaning where we can’t see clearly.

religion survives because fear survives. and fear, when ritualized, looks like devotion. there’s nothing supernatural about it. it’s psychological engineering perfected over millennia. to question it feels dangerous because it was designed to feel that way.

the only honest faith left is curiosity. the courage to say i don’t know and not fill the silence with God. perhaps that’s what divinity was meant to be all along; not control, not hierarchy, but awe. not something to obey, but something to explore.

the rest – the miracles, the councils, the relics, the oaths – are just the noise that power makes when it pretends to be sacred.