Peices horoscopes

I wrote a really long peice on some thoughts I had from reading about events during the early French Revolution and from early marxists. I thought people here might find it interesting. I don't think this sub is supposed to be about politics but this is really more about ideas, language, and virtues that are repeated today and their origins. When people today say they believe in science but maybe see religion as a social utility they are not the first to do so.
Much of the anger during the French Revolution was directed at the Catholic Church and it's clergy. But as this anger unfolded there were cults that cropped up and attempted to replace the Catholic Church and Christianity. I've found many of the same ideas that started in this era are being recycled by the modern far left and the "intellectual" class. Much of it is even repeated by the right, or just by many people who don't even know what they're saying. Personally I'm a Protestant and not here to defend the Catholic Church. People were very angry at the Catholic church because of how much land, money, and valuables they possessed during a time when the people were starving. But what I'm interested in is looking at the ideas from the "enlightenment" also spilled in to try to replace the void left by the church.
So first was the Cult of Reason, the name says it all really. Their main focus was on "Reason" or human reason, but also "Liberty", "Nature", and the victory of the Revolution itself. When people oppose Christianity one thing they usually cite is "reason" they can't reason that there is a God. They will also say that what appears in the Bible is based on superstition. Personally this has never sounded like a strong argument because someone can easily look at the world they find themselves in and use reason to conclude that a God, an all powerful being, must have created human beings and the physical universe. But Christians don't (usually) believe in God because of reason, they believe based on faith. If you have ever debated an athiest they are very focus on reason and science and do not understand faith. But if you tell them that they are putting their faith in the word of scientists instead of the word of God you will usually get a heated response. Human "reason" in my experience can often be accompanied by a heavy bias. We all know of people who "believe in science", belief in science was also a focus of the "Cult of Reason". But this has all turned into "believe what scientist say", or believe what a scientist hired by a corporation says or science is now being dictated by politics. The majority of the population isn't involved in medical science or biology or chemistry or any other field of science. Leading many to point out that scientists act like a new priest class.
They also cite Nature, something that has always confused me, nature is itself material. What I assume they mean is that they are trying to apprecaite the beauty of nature. This makes me think of the "Hippie" types that have a heavy focus on nature and the universe. But as beautiful as nature can be it's not a conscious being, the universe is not a being with intelligence capable of action. In modern times people who worship nature or the universe in some way are not acting because of reason. These people tend to also partake in holistic practices and drug use, there's a large crossover with occult practices, witchcraft, horoscopes, worship of "mother earth", tarot cards, or they adopt practices of indigenous groups/people or even pagans. Most of us will know someone like this, someone who wants to be "in tune with nature" or with "the universe". The Cult of Reason was opposed to catholic superstitions, but anyone who focuses on Nature as a belief usually ends up as a person with many superstitions.
Especially in America there is a heavy focus on Liberty and remembering the revolution among people on the right and Americans as a whole. Every man desires freedom and to be free from oppression, this is a reasonable desire for any human being. But if you look at modern American lifestyle, liberty and freedom have given way to excess and lifestyles many early Americans would be disgusted by. Consumption of fastfood to the point of obesity, diabetes, and even death. A constant desire for high end consumer products, constant stimulation, very little impulse control, people have many habits that are hedonistic but harmful to themselves in many ways. People want liberty to do what they want but if they use their liberty and freedom to do drugs and abuse their bodies until they die that's seen as their own choice. Even when excess is discouraged it's usually from an environmental standpoint. Do whatever you want, as long as nature and the environment isn't harmed. Freedom and Liberity is rarely balanced with any other virtues.
I feel the main tenants of the Cult of Reason are alive and well, and when you see the ultimate result of practicing them unabated it's quite depressing. I've barely mentioned much about this cult, they also met as a congregation to worship "reason" and the believed that human beings were the central focus of the universe instead of the Christian focus on God as the creator and Jesus as our saviour. And today people always state the wonders of human progress, inventions, and how good we have it because of our accomplishments. There is a lot of dialogue focused around the wonder of human success and achievements, and a lot of the time people are repeating an attitude which was the focus of this cult. Horrific wars happen, "How could a God allow this?", what happened to human achievement? Are we suddenly not responsible for our failures as well? Good things happen, mankind gets the praise, bad things happen and the blame is on God which people don't even believe in.
There was even a "Festival of Reason" where Anacharsis Clootz said, "one God only, Le Peuple (the people)". The people had made a god out of themselves. Joseph Fouché had crosses removed from cemetaries and the cemetary gates were enscribed with, "Death is an eternal sleep". This is a common attitude that we see repeated today, there is no life or judgement once we die. Only blackness. During the "Festival of Reason" people replaced Christian alters in churches with alters to Liberty. Women dressed as "goddesses" of Liberty, hard not to make the connection between this and the Statue of Liberty. This all seems very similar to what the modern far left is doing in many ways. There was a recent video of a drag queen dancing through a church and telling school children how amazing they were (not how amazing the children were, the drag queen was talking about themselves). For years there has been a big push for diluting basic Christian doctrine in churches such as no female ministers, not endorsing homosexuality or homosexual marriages, etc. Clearing out a church and banning Christians from attending while replacing everything with their own fabricated religion seems to be a desire for some people in our time just as it was in Revolutionary France.
The other cult was the "Cult of the Supreme Being". Some people at this point in the revolution didn't buy into the athiest Cult of Reason. So instead a new cult was invented, they believed in a supreme being and the immortality of human souls. This cult seems to have a utilitarian desire for a "supreme being". This is all very similar to when people in our time will say "I don't believe in God, but I believe in something". There have also been many people since the time of this cult and in recent years who will say "religion has social utility, so I think it's a good thing for people to believe in something". No true Christian is in it for the social utility. Some people today also claim to believe in "Humanism", again a bunch of beliefs thrown together for social utlity.
These cults are also similar to an early marxist theory called "God-Building". They claimed they lacked the symbolism, ritual, and stories that religions possessed, so they would have to fabricate their own. When we see communist groups today they use the same black fist sybol, the communist flag, antifa flags, they all dress in black, etc. This is done by right wing groups as well, but it's not enough for communists to have an ideology, they have to fill the gaps and make their movements into something more. Anatoly Lunacharsky wanted to create a new religion that was compatible with science and accommodated to communism. Ludwig Feuerbach envisoned a "religion of humanity" that worshipped human potential and human achievements. This is again humans/humanity worshipping itself. Lunacharsky wrote, "For the sake of the great struggle for life... it is necessary for humanity to almost organically merge into an integral unity. Not a mechanical or chemical... but a psychic, consciously emotional linking-together... is in fact a religious emotion." We can see this happening today in social media, especially on reddit, twitter, and facebook. People spend all their time together online being angry at the same things, being driven emotionally by the same news articles. If we return to Lunacharsky, he writes, "You must love and deify matter above everything else, [love and deify] the corporal nature or the life of your body as the primary cause of things, as existence without a beginning or end, which has been and forever will be... God is humanity in its highest potential. But there is no humanity in the highest potential... Let us then love the potentials of mankind, our potentials, and represent them in a garland of glory in order to love them ever more." Again and again they return to worshipping humanity as a whole, the human race, human accomplishments. Lunacharsky's ideas were rejected by other marxist leaders but it's apparent the same themes are still around today.