I am in complete agreement with your statement, excepting the final line. Organised religion leading society’s and their involvement in government is detrimental.

What I aim to bring to light here is that religion, belief and faith in something greater than oneself is (in my belief) healthy for humanity when it is driven by personnel introspection.

I feel that all too often we have very intelligent people who completely ignore the entire prospect or field of spirituality due to the negative light it is cast in.

I’m also happy for people to ignore it but speaking from my own experience, I never thought to investigate this side of the human condition as I had wrapped all notions of spirituality up with the atrocities and lack of logic or reasoning of organised religion. Religion was bad and stupid and I wanted nothing to do with it. But I’ve since grown and adapted my world views & hope to share my experiences from an empathic viewpoint to maybe assist others who can relate.

When I say we need more faith, I don’t really mean faith in any particular god, entity, alien or higher power. I mean more so that faith in oneself, faith in the connected nature of all things and faith in the universe, this form of faith is a very empowering source of energy that we as a collective can draw upon.

It’s open to interpretation and appreciate your response.

Lots of good discussion going on here, majority of folks have covered off on the pitfalls and deceitfulness that comes with religion so thought I’d give an alternative perspective.

I think in some ways religion is a very helpful tool. It provides people with guidelines to live a good life - ‘as long as you do these things everything is gonna be alright’. It takes away uncertainty. It gives people purpose. Pretty sure they attribute a lot of humanity’s early adoption of cleanliness and hygiene standards to religion. The whole ‘invisible man in the sky is watching you’ thing does wonders for keeping people accountable behind closed doors.

Whether or not it’s fake is up to the individual. Personally I define religion as a ‘way of living’ (a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion). Do I subscribe to organised religion? No. Do I think that it’s fake for those that do? Definitely not. Can different faiths be praying to the same god/s? Yes, I think it’s possible, we are all connected.

What I’m getting at here is that even if you think it’s fake, it’s important to continue questioning and exploring the spiritual or religious aspects of the human condition and develop your own understanding for yourself.

Religion has typically been used as a tool for controlling the masses but to dismiss it solely as a manipulation tactic is an injustice. There is more there to be uncovered if you are willing to look.

The world needs more faith.

The person that commented below kinda has a point. While I agree that there’s nothing special about LLMs an argument can be made that consciousness (or maybe more ego?) is in itself an emergent mechanism that works to keep itself in predictable patterns to perpetuate survival.

Point being that being able to predict outcomes is a cornerstone of current intelligence (socially, emotionally and scientifically speaking).

If you were to say that LLMs are unintelligible as they operate to provide the most likely and therefore most predictable outcome then I’d agree completely.

Like others have said one of the easiest things to do is simply don’t buy the junk.

Personally I found that the real game changer is finding a healthy snacking alternative. For me this is almonds and dried apricots. They’re still quite a ‘dense’ energy snack but it scratches the sweet tooth itch and is much more filling. Plus you get the added protein, fats & micro nutrients that you would usually miss in processed items.

Try out some different alternatives (my wife loves to snack on dates and Greek yoghurt for example) and try mainly just to focus on finding something you enjoy so you can swap the habit.

Good luck!