A Religion Without God
A group of prominent Effective Altruists, including Elon Musk, discussing how to respond to future existential threats. Photo courtesy of Robbie Shade.
We find ourselves in a strange and difficult age. With the decline of mass politics in the last century, a whole new host of political ideologies has emerged in response. One of the most prominent and emblematically new ideologies on the scene is Effective Altruism (EA): an ostensibly bold, new tendency popular among many Silicon Valley tech moguls. Contrary to the words of one of its pole-bearers, Peter Singer, Effective Altruism is not “an advance in ethical behavior as well as in the practical application of our ability to reason.” Instead, it is an old idea given new strength by the modern technologies of language and production. Specifically, there are profound similarities between Effective Altruism and Calvinism, the Protestant sect that gave rise to the characteristic Protestant work ethic that powered the transition into the modern age, rendering the core beliefs nothing new.
The principles of Calvinism were a crucial stepping stone to the development of capitalism and the market-based economy that Effective Altruists so passionately embrace today. Medieval society was based upon a socially reinforced religious order, and therefore the rise of markets needed a religious justification to persist within Feudal society. Enter Calvinism, where religious relations became increasingly market-oriented: a fundamentally competitive relationship of all against all. As a result, formerly immoral actions like the Highland Clearances–the forced eviction of inhabitants of the Scottish Highlands, which was supported and aided ideologically by many Calvinists–and the spoliation of church property became justifiable.
In a contemporary secular world increasingly dominated by the same market forces, the key tenets of Calvinism are sharpened and raised to new heights, despite prevailing multiple centuries apart. Arguably, the continuum between Calvinism and EA is a strong belief in moral stewardship, the practice of making ethical decisions and acting on behalf of others rather than pursuing personal interests. In practice, however, Calvinists and EAs alike use this principle to justify what would otherwise be considered immoral: the hoarding of money and resources. For the Calvinists, who existed in a state of active persecution, usury, the lending of money at excessively high rates, was considered a sin under Catholicism. To circumvent this belief, one of the most prominent beliefs among Calvinists was that money should be used to honor God and that therefore, wealthy people were simply those his light shone brightest on. This focus on honoring God is at first difficult to square with EA’s characteristic ideological commitments to rational world government; however, the parallel is simply obscured by centuries of technological growth.
Thus, the link between Effective Altruism and Calvinism’s view of money is not as stringent as it may seem. Will MacAskill, one of the forerunners of the EA movement says, "...innovators only collect 2 percent of the value they generate; that is, for every dollar an innovative company makes in profit, society has benefited by fifty dollars.” According to MacAskill’s analysis, by becoming an innovative entrepreneur, you are, on average, producing benefits to society that far exceed your paycheck. For Calvinists, embracing the free market was made acceptable with an interpretation of religious doctrine; for the Effective Altruists, pursuing wealth if the pursuit is coupled with philanthropic efforts. In either case, money is simply a tool to fulfill moral obligations–but for Effective Altruism, this is reflected in a twenty-first-century context. Sam Bankman-Fried, the criminal trader behind the FTX freefall, represents this tenant of Effective Altruism par excellence, justifying a meretricious avarice to make as much money as possible with the nebulous promise of giving it all away.
Furthermore, the similarities between EA and Calvinism are apparent in the way both ideologies view posterity. Calvinism sees a long-term plan for humanity as part of God’s divine providence, guiding humans toward perfection. Similarly, standard EA dictum cherishes what they deem as “long-termism,” which purports that, “For the purposes of evaluating actions, we can in the first instance often simply ignore all the effects contained in the first 100 (or even 1000) years, focusing primarily on the further-future effects. Short-run effects act as little more than tie-breakers.” According to Effective Altruists, they are justified in preserving their wealth and guiding humanity’s development because they’ve clearly shown themselves to be the most responsible in using those resources. Aside from the obvious moral angle, this almost messianic view of technology, specifically its precise management by a few market-qualified individuals, is not unlike Calvinist views of inheritance and divine providence.
The parallel is additionally reflected in another aspect of long-termism: the belief in the societal benefits of having children, which manifests in a duty to reproduce as much as possible. This usually takes the form of appeals to progress, urgent calls for the sake of those who would be born: as MacAskill says, “Think about how much worse the world would be if Benjamin Lay, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman had never existed, or if Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, or Isaac Newton had never been born.” However, in practice, this means the maintenance of EA bloodlines, fortunes, and influence on the world. Who else could afford to have a dozen children? The answer is, once again, the elect: those who have succeeded in the market. This is best embodied in a man like Elon Musk, another outspoken orator of EA, who obsesses over specious fears of a declining global birth rate and supposed impending mass extinction as a result.
While the link between Effective Altruism and Calvinism may seem alien to someone living beyond the comparatively heroic age of early modern Europe, where Protestant merchants waged war on the backward religious order of Medieval times, the two have strikingly similar characteristics. This is obfuscated by dramatic shifts caused by the economically and politically mobilizing breaks and flows throughout the centuries, spanning from the Protestant Reformation to today. While Effective Altruism is commonly accepted as novel, the truth is laid bare in the overwhelming world-historical similarities in the actual moral, economic, and technological views between this second-growth Calvinism and its predecessor.
Evan Sanders (CC ’28) is a staff writer studying economics-philosophy with an interest in political economy and the development of capitalism.