This post is technically spurred by me reading the latest post on this forum, by johnswentworth, but it's an important topic in and of itself so I made a post.

Reading stuff like how millions of people could starve next year makes me wish there was an actual Humanist church. Not necessarily a "Humanist" church, but one that simply actually values Human wellbeing first and foremost--one that considers Longtermism, EA, and precisely the sort of problems such as the ones pointed out in this post. 

I don't care about creed, belief in god, or even if you're a rule utilitarian or Virtue ethicist. I just want a culture that values people continents away and it seems like the only way of actually achieving that is fundamentally changing human society and cultural norms. In order to have such a culture, is there consideration on this forum of starting a "religion"? I mean religion in the academic sense: as in a community, with beliefs about the world and ethics, and with traditions. The motivation to create such a cultural force is somewhat obvious to me. Religion is extremely effective at spreading and influencing the worldviews of people, and we could use this to our advantage. We want people not to die in the Sahel? We want a compassionate society? We don't want humanity to perish to malevolent AI? Then what better way to make sure our considerations will have a positive affect than by emulating the most historically effective way of spreading ideas? As in, why don't we consider making a religion out of this? 

I want missionaries, but not going to spread a faith, ideology, or even the very notion that wellbeing ought to be the main goal of humanity. I want missionaries who spread wellbeing. People who travel to remote villages not to hand out bibles, but rather to hand out vaccines and antibiotics. It's Kant's age old concept of treating people not as means, but as ends in and of themselves, (as much as I may specifically disagree with Kant.)

I have a Mormon friend. Mormons go on "Missions" at 16 to go spread their religion around the world. It's what made me think of this idea in the first place. I want something like that, except, I want a culture/religion and society and a community that doesn't care about your faith, it cares about your humanity. 

There is a real chance that this winter or in the next few years there is an absolutely devastating famine in the developing world. Be it due to economic recession or the war in Ukraine hampering grain/cereals or both. It enrages me beyond belief and fills me with the deepest most sincere despair that the world will likely simply watch and let it happen. Like Rwanda in the 90s. 

I know you could say I should go and do this myself. There is in fact by the way the: https://www.peacecorps.gov/ if anyone feels inspired by the last article and wants to get involved. (Though I don't know about EA's/LessWrong's notion of the peace corps. Mine is a mainstream understanding of it which is pretty amicable--there may be longstanding critiques people have of it on here that I'm not aware of.)

But I am more so lamenting the fact that there is no cohesive movement to get everyone in society to recognize and consider going to another part of the world to help. What I'm annoyed with is that there is no religion/cultural movement that get's it's members to seriously consider at 16 whether they should go to a remote part of the world and just increase wellbeing--and not in exchange for bibles or whatever as many of the missionaries in the Amazon do. Because I could go to Mali and hand out some anti-biotics as johnswentworth suggested, but a cultural force that promotes such behavior seems like a much more effective way of increasing good in society. Kinda like an extreme version of https://www.thelifeyoucansave.org/  in that it get's people to seriously  consider these things. 

I also think there might be a unique chance in western society at starting such a religion. People are leaving in droves from organized faith. If we could emulate the positives of religion: community, belonging, tradition, ethics, without the negatives and without splitting into hundreds of disorganized sects then idk maybe we have an actual chance of changing society for the better? I'm not talking about "atheism church", because again, I don't really care what your worldview is as long as you care first and foremost about human wellbeing on the subject of morality, and that you use rationality (steered by a bit of passion/emotions,) to determine what it is that is best for humanity. (That seems like the only hard line we'd really need to draw, right? No? Not even that is necessary? More is? I'd appreciate criticism in the comments.)

That leads to the question of "what exactly would be the tenets/structure of such a religion" but I was not actually seriously suggesting we go and create such a thing tomorrow. I understand that Lesswrong, EA, and Longtermism are very broad subjects and that not everyone who engages with them would even be comfortable or compatible sharing a "religion". (Though I am maybe opposed to such a term.) I was just asking what people think about such a concept and I was looking for some critiques as to why such an idea is stupid (and why I'm stupid and an idiot and big dumb.) 

Though I will self-promo my video that I think solves not having an absolute set-in-stone creed for such a religion: 

I also suspect that maybe people have had this thought before. If there are people who have, and they have a serious plan or are already getting started on exactly this task, then I would appreciate enlightenment on such a matter.