Against the Robots

I do not believe that atheism is a substitute for, or can fulfill the same function as, a religion, any more than I believe that violence can become a substitute for authority. But if we heed the exhortations of the conservatives who, at this moment, have a fairly good chance of being heard, I am quite convinced that we will have no difficulty in producing such substitutes, that we will use violence and claim to have restored authority, or that our rediscovery of the functional utility of religion will produce a ersatz religion—as if our civilization were not already sufficiently cluttered with all sorts of pseudo-things and meaningless things.