“This is how we should order our lives together,” he said. “And frankly, yes, we are going to impose it upon you. If you don’t like it, I’m sorry, but this is good and right and just if it lines up with God’s standards, and I am going to enforce my morality on you in as much as our morality is God’s morality.”
“You should always check yourselves,” he continued. “Do I believe what God believes? Am I defending what God says is good?”
“And if it is, then you should have the courage to say, ‘This is how we’re going to run our town, this is how we’re going to run our county, this is how we’re going to run our state, and this is how we should run the United States of America by legislating the morality that we can find in the Bible.'”
I think it’s a mix, with overlap, and the ratios are tough to determine. Opportunists and believers align in stroking their egos and celebrating class or human exceptionalism. I imagine the tip-top of the pyramid consists primarily of opportunists, but I’d not be surprised if they’ve crafted their own batshit philosophies that justify their imagined superiority. The more dogmatic, rigid, and traditional ideas are reserved for the plebs.
Also, I don’t think that intelligence obviates belief/ego; in fact, I wager it can lead to an even more spurious web of justification, like epstein and the dark enlightenment bros. People are crazy and environmental chaos will amplify it.