The toxic consequences of secular ideologies

Sam is well known for his dedication to atheism, and his criticism of religious thinking, especially when scaled to large populations. I’m an atheist/agnostic and largely agree with him (although he has been disproportionately critical of Islam IMO).

I wonder what it would take for Sam to move beyond his focus on the harmful consequences of ideologies rooted in faith/religion, and instead consider a broader perspective: harmful ideologies can come in many varieties, some of which are strictly secular (or at least not overtly religious. Two examples…

The anti-vax movement has claimed hundreds thousands of lives, and won over a big chunk of the US population. It’s based in bad faith “thinking” and rooted in ignorance (or willful self-delusion).

Western interventionism is another bad-faith ideology that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. This one is more complex, and I suspect many here will not think it fits the bill. But via Sam’s own “minimize suffering” code of ethics, this ideology has caused massive harm, potentially more than Islamic terrorists did over the same time scale as the US’s wars in the middle east. If you want a seed of un-truth at the heart of this one, I’d point to the insincere motivations we’re all expected to believe (e.g. killing those people will somehow make the US safer, WMDs were a credible threat, we’re not over there because of oil, etc.).

Sam has recently come around on the latter somewhat, and he certainly has a lot of vitriol for the anti-vax movement. Is it time for Sam to redefine “the enemy” (in terms of harmful thinking) to encompass all deceitful/harmful ideological thinking? In other words, even if/when the war on religion has been won, is it likely that ignorance and stupidity will just contribute to human misery via secular ideologies? Is religion in itself even that harmful?