Religion is a primitive form of social engineering. In ancient times, it served as a source of moral justification and provided many comforting explanations about the world, some of which came with expectations for behavior. Usually in the do these things and you will be rewarded, don’t do these things or else you will be punished.

In modern times, religions rapidly losing ground to the more sophisticated and scientifically backed social engineering. This field of study is already a dominant force in everything from marketing to politics. I find it intriguing to see how effective it is. Have you ever bought something you didn't need, eaten something when you were not hungry, read a "click bait" article, wasted time playing a mindless mobile game, or supported a political opinion that isn't necessarily in your best interest? Chances are someone else made conscious effort to make a large number of people do those things.

Protecting yourself from this type of manipulation requires you to actively fight against your own nature as a human being. For example, it is well documented that the ideas that spread the fastest in social media are the ones that offend or make people angry. If you see something controversial in the news chances are you will want to tell everyone about it, a social mechanism evolved likely to encourage early primates to seek backup if their territory is threatened. I doubt my opinion so far is controversial, so my message likely won't spread. let’s change that.

Even the concept of morality, especially the "for the greater good" can be bent as a means to make people accept everything from debt to torture. Modern torture, or "enhanced interrogation" is nothing like the medieval variety where pain is the sole motivation. In modern interrogation, the interrogator acts like they are the best friend to the victim, and if pain is used, they pretend like they really don't want to do it but are being forced to. They straight up ask the person they are torturing for permission to stop, the idea being that the victim will try for the mutually beneficial solution of surrendering information.

Outside of atrocities to one’s fellow man, one’s sense of morality can and is frequently used to push political agendas. If you have seen the video of Occasio Cortez addressing congress prior to the preliminary vote on the green new deal, you have seen this in action and maybe not realized it. For example, she talks about Flint water crisis implying that it is an environmental issue, when the reality is that it was largely due to negligence of officials. She uses fear mongering, behaving as if the world will end if we don’t act now. She even links the environmental disaster to eating healthy. She is actively trying to make people feel guilty. AOC is a social engineering expert, whether or not she is aware of it. Trump does the same thing, although he tends to prefer the authority route over the moral one.

All of this implies that if you want to become a "social atheist", someone who actively fights against social influence you basically have to give up all your humanity, and let go of every reason and preconceived notion of right and wrong. Someone with misguided or even malicious intention may convince you to do something against your own self-interest. A potential end result is that a group may do immoral things for what they believe are moral reasons. (for example, support the development of autonomous weapons. )