In ancient times, gods were bound to the fate of cities. When a city fell, its gods fell as well. They were captured, carried away like spoils of war, and chained inside the temples of the victors. For this reason, the idols once held inside the Kaaba have always made me think of something: perhaps the figures displayed as idols were actually the gods of defeated and powerless communities. From this perspective, the sacred may be understood less as an absolute descending from the heavens and more as the language of power itself. The sacred becomes the sealed form of order, but whose order? Naturally, the order of whoever holds power.

Across thousands of years, the intellectual evolution of humanity may have changed the stage hundreds of times. The scenery was renewed, costumes changed, the script was updated. Yet the gods endured simply by changing names. More importantly, this endurance was less the achievement of the gods and more the achievement of humanity itself. Human beings are remarkably skilled at packaging the systems they create as sacred truths and then selling them back to themselves. This is less a matter of faith and more a matter of economics and governance. It is the game of producing legitimacy to collect taxes, narratives to enforce obedience, and sanctities to draw boundaries. That is why the thing called “god” changed names countless times across history, wore different masks, spoke through different languages, yet always remained devoted to the same destination: power.

Over the last few centuries, capitalism made a far more refined move. Organized corporations, financial centers, holdings, and banks absorbed temples, churches, synagogues, mosques, and every imaginable form of sacred structure into the machinery of the system itself. No separate sphere of holiness was left outside its reach. Everything was either purchased, integrated, or neutralized. As a result, money became the single sacred force governing human life, much like the gods of ancient ages.

Then sacredness itself transformed. It ceased to be a form of worship and became a form of obedience. Today, human life is defined through economic verification systems ranging from credit scores to rental agreements, from work permits to health insurance. Independent of who you are, what you believe, or what you defend, your existence is shaped by how the system scores you. And now it is not only actions that are measured, but intentions as well. What content you view, what you like, what you search for, and even the sentences upon which your eyes hesitate are tracked. The feeling of being accepted has been stripped away from the sacred and converted into approval granted by the system itself. Heaven and hell now open and close with a single click: limit, score, risk, and compliance.

As I mentioned earlier, nothing truly changed throughout the ages. Only the instruments changed. Power, money, and authority have for thousands of years shifted forms while remaining concentrated within certain groups. What once operated through temples now operates through contracts. What was once enforced by priests is now enforced through algorithms. The story remains the same. Only the apparatus changes.

The darker side of this order is not new either. Examples such as Epstein Island are merely the visible surface of a much larger structure. Throughout history there have always been counterfeiters who exploited human weakness, faith, poverty, and desperation in order to accumulate power. They still exist today. Only the methods have evolved, the scale has expanded, and their immunity has become stronger. Because what is called sacred is often less an agreement around truth and more a pact of silence organized around power. Rather than breaking this agreement, human beings usually choose to believe in it.

And what humanity believes in is often not discovered truth, but manufactured sacredness. Within the sacred structure of the modern age, those who control economics and therefore the management of money continue domesticating the masses. Politics functions simultaneously as both shield and sword within this mechanism. On one hand it produces legitimacy, while on the other it trims away resistance. Dogmas distract people with promises of salvation, pretending to give meaning to suffering while actually transforming it into something manageable. When economy, politics, and dogma unite, they become an invisible chain.

With the rise of modern technologies, this trinity evolves into a digital version of itself. At this point there is no longer any real debate about whether these systems will capture the masses. It appears almost inevitable that they will do so from the same point, only through more refined methods. The cities of the new age resemble the data-woven digital temples imagined in George Orwell’s 1984. Human beings become both the observed and the devoted digital worshippers at the same time. They are monitored while voluntarily pressing “follow.” They are constrained while simultaneously feeling grateful for acceptance. This dual condition is perhaps the most cunning form of modern obedience, woven together with desire itself.

The sacred here no longer consists only of money or economic assets. A much wider network is being constructed. Through community rules, a new fabric of sacredness is woven, while algorithmic systems reward mediocrity with louder applause and push human intelligence through a kind of reverse evolution. Algorithms amplify not what is good, but what captures attention. They sanctify engagement rather than truth. They reward reflex instead of thought. Then these rewards are marketed as “the will of the people,” shifting responsibility back onto humanity itself.

For this reason, concepts such as good and evil, sin and virtue, are increasingly reduced not to intention but to measurable visibility, likes, followers, and metrics. Morality itself is weighed through numbers. Who was watched more? Who was shared more? Who became trending? This inverted order saves neither believers nor nonbelievers. Even those who claim not to believe still use the sacred as a tool because of the architecture of approval. They say, “I do not believe in this,” yet they do not hesitate to use the crowd gathered around the sacred, the immunity provided by the sacred, or the bargaining power generated by the sacred. The issue has moved beyond belief itself and converged instead upon resources, access, and digital immunity.

For this reason, the question “Does God exist or not?” should no longer stand at the center. That doorway has become too narrow. A far more disturbing, destructive, and destabilizing question must now be asked: where are sacred systems being organized, and by whom? Who packages the sacred and places it on the market? Who identifies our deepest needs and attaches sacred labels onto them? Because the sacred today often no longer produces meaning that elevates humanity. Instead, it pushes humanity toward obedience, shrinks the self, and causes people to worship and surrender to systems that make them forget who they are. Once this surrender is glorified as faith, resistance itself becomes branded as ingratitude or betrayal.

Every age has its own gods. The god of this age is being reshaped through the pleasures and desires for which people live. The lust of this era is digital approval. Those who are approved imagine themselves to exist and begin worshipping whoever grants that approval. Those who fail to receive approval become invisible. Then, in order to soothe the pain of invisibility, they chase even greater approval. Thus the cycle closes. Human beings transform into creatures begging the very system that diminishes them to “make a place for me.” Most tragic of all is this: people often mistake this begging for free will.

The system’s greatest success lies precisely here. It teaches people to love their chains, transforms those chains into ornaments, and then into identities. Afterwards, anyone attempting to remove those chains is labeled a threat to order. The new language of the sacred is simple: like, approve, remain silent, and adapt. Because adaptation is the faith of this age.

And to those standing outside the line, those who have read this text to the very end as outsiders to conformity, my greetings. May no one ever be allowed to kill the human being within you and then walk smiling through your funeral procession.