New Bremerton wrote:Satuga wrote:Honestly a large portion of morale's came from religion, however now that we have a far more functional society I don't really think it's religions job to be that morale giver anymore. It's society as a whole's job to do that, to teach children the rights and wrongs. Religion should be for mostly closure and hope now, rather than the morale enforcer its been for centuries.
Also it should be moderate like everything less we have another Jones-town.
Religion should ideally be relegated to history as an intangible cultural artifact, yet celebrated in much the same way that Greeks, Italians and Scandinavians celebrate their pantheons of old without actually worshipping Thor or Zeus or sincerely believing in the old religions. This has already kind of happened with Christmas and Easter. It's a real pity most Egyptians don't bother with Amun-Ra these days. We can marvel at Abbasid-era architecture without actually worshipping Allah and idolizing Mohammed. A prosperous, democratic, secular Middle East would be nice. As for China, the ancient civilization fuses elements from animistic ancestor worship, Mahayana Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism in a sort of syncretistic mix, such that there is no clear dividing line between religion and culture like there is in the West, and the one blends seamlessly into the other.
Once we render religion subordinate to culture and national identity, people will have something exceedingly rich and colorful to rally behind and be proud of without the religious aspect of their culture holding them back in practice. The solution is to replace theocracy with secularism, and not so much blind faith with atheism. The latter is a bonus, but it's by no means a requirement. Replace religion but fail to implement secularism and establish liberal, democratic institutions to fill the void, and we run the risk of replacing one authoritarian ideology with yet another equally totalitarian ideology that calls itself atheist.
When you don't find something to fill the void of religion, something like anti vax usually takes its place. People do need something to believe in, but I wish it was something we could see with our eyes and know is real, and not a fantasy that inspires insanity among millions