This is a very low-resolution understanding of what a religion is. It has much more depth to it. (The writer of Sapiens actively tries to ignore this by reducing every single belief humans have (including religions) to random meme propagation.)

That religions are just mind-parasites has become a meme on its own. To me, the book "Darwin's Cathedral" made a very good case that we should look at religions as adaptations that allowed creating larger societies. And so I finally came to peace with religion. Will stay atheist, thank you for asking.

Another very thorough analysis I can recommend is Jordan Peterson's youtube series called "Psychological significance of biblical stories". There are about 10 2-3 hour lectures, but they are packed with great content and original thoughts. People think JP is some political activist because of his media portrayal, but in his core he is a student of a much more substantial content that has little to do with politics.

Well it took me 35 years but I escaped religion despite being indoctrinated from a young age. And leaving was a difficult choice but education and evidence were the keys that freed me.

Piercing cognitive biases is hard, maybe harder if those most in need feel forced.

Be kind to yourself and know that a fair swathe of the early years of life are necessarily of low agency.

> Piercing cognitive biases is hard, maybe harder if those most in need feel forced.

I think about this article (post?) called “How to Change a Mind”[1] a lot. It’s about a woman whose husband was in a religious cult and how he finally realized it.

[1]https://forge.medium.com/how-to-change-a-mind-1774681b9369

From some of the terminology used, I'm pretty sure the cult in question are the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Thankfully that one seems to be dying off. Their membership is in decline, the internet has made it more and more likely that any potential convert has already heard the horror stories.

I could have clarified more- I’m saying that even with these sort of deep fakes that breaking people out might be just as hard. Especially if objective proof becomes “malleable” similar to how religion can lack objective proof, manipulating people in a new way means we need methods.

Your point seemed clear enough to me. Perhaps my response drifted too far. I see education as a common solution to the "it's all relative" and "no one can know for sure" shortcuts some people take to hold on to what's more comfortable to believe.

And just as religion may often teach people to turn off their critical thinking skills they can be taught to use them again. And human brains evolved to recognize unhealthy or unnatural facial imagery for millennium. So unmasking the more successful techniques may be enough to break us out of the "anything can be fake" malaise.

>> people will believe whatever they want to first.

Including Harari. There's more wrong in that book than there is right, aside from basic facts that people should already know.

Chriatopher Ryan (Civilized to Death & Sex at Dawn) explores the few compelling points made by Sapiens in depth and without all of the disingenuity and naive philosphy present in Sapiens.

This is on point, but we need to be clear on the direction of causality, which I believe you have correct, though I'll try to state it more clearly:

The human mind and body is predisposed for social cohesion through shared narrative, and this exposed a weakness in our psychology: we are, as groups, extraordinarily gullible.

As a result we have religion, conspiracy theories, politics, and crime.

It remains to be seen whether this is an evolutionarily fit strategy.