One of religion’s chief functions is as a way to alleviate death anxiety, by telling believers that they won’t truly die but will be transported to a supernatural realm. But when people grow too certain of this, when they sink into the depths of fundamentalism, an insidious inversion occurs. They come to view that hoped-for other world as more important than this world, to the extent that wanting people to not die is “demonic”. As an atheist, I don’t believe in demons – but the nearest secular equivalent must be advocates of the horrifically upside-down morality that treats human survival as evil and mass death as a praiseworthy outcome!
This seems similar to the Cluster B thing – where the tyrannical dictator or drug lord – has no problem killing people. Basically, human life becomes something unimportant. In fact, also as mentioned in the article and Religion and Slaveholders, cruelty becomes a vague concept – as punishment is dealt out with little consideration.
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