I tried to flush that huge religious turd down the toilet, but it was just to big of a turd.

@Archeus_Lore Hahahahahahahahahaha

Sorry, but I disagree. Even if it is decreasing with some people in some places, it will take a lot longer than that. Look at how strong fundamentalism is in various parts of this country, and in other countries around the world.

@Tomfoolery33 I was going to make the same point. Just don't look at this country. I recent survey states that the "NONEs" in Europe has surpassed 50%. On filling out an applciation when asked Religion, more the half wrote "None." Here it would be I believe, under 20%.

@Tomfoolery33 Here's a little recapitulation of religious thought I made in a previou post:

Let’s not use words like “whacky” and “bizarre” in describing the religious beliefs of Christians and others. But it’s hard not to.
Maybe “screwy” would fit. As I understand the Bible, God got lonely so he created a companion “in his own image.” He called the creature Adam. But Adam got lonely also, so God took one of his ribs and created somebody to fuck around with whom he called Eve.
Now God told them both, look around, this is Paradise and it’s all yours. Just don’t eat the fruit of the tree over there, OK? That’s the tree of knowledge and it’s not for you. So an angel called “Bearer of Light” overheard this and got jealous. So what do you think he did? He turned himself into a talking snake and cajoled Eve into taking a bite of the apple and then convince her boyfriend to do the same.
God got pissed because he figured he was giving them a great deal and they sill couldn’t obey the rules. So he threw them out of Paradise and told they had to work for a living like everybody else.
So what happened? God felt sorry for them and decided to redeem them with the torture and death of his own son. In other words, God needed to palliate himself. So he waited a couple of thousand years and Jesus came along. The son of God then told some working-class people “Come follow me” which they did.
We all know what happened next. Poor Jesus was nailed to the cross and they (the humans) lived happy ever after. That is: if they continually adore and praise the Creator with the holy mass so he won’t forget the wonderful sacrifice his son Jesus made for humanity.

@Aristippus Another point I should have made, is that even though more people are unaffiliated with particular religions, a lot of those same people still have general religious beliefs, like a belief in god or other supernatural things. Witness the rise of "New Age" beliefs, which don't connect to specific religions or sects.

@Tomfoolery33 Today's major religions have been around for thousands of years. Islam is especially involnerable because it protects members from outside beliefs. At madrazzahs the Koran is all they learn. It's hard to pierce the shell. Did you know that the word "Taliban" means students?

It's my hope that modern technology is the answer. On a blog of mine a Nigerian kid from Lagos told me he be killed if he got caught communicating with the likes of me. But the more protected Islam is from the truth the more volnerable it becomes.

I have heard this, the god gene, I do not give it much attention as if the body has to think this way it would not be because of genetics but because it provides something beneficial to the society.

There it is again! That obscure James I reference. Holy shmokes, this guy never misses an opportunity to throw it in the mix.

That sounds like promoting a cure for homosexuality and removing an individual’s life practice because it doesn’t suit the ruling regime.

Eugenics and Master Race come to mind.

@Geoffrey51 Homosexuality, Eugenics and Master Race might come to mind, but they would be false analogies. People aren't born with religion, it is nearly always gained by forced indoctrination. Also not corresponding is the notion that the absence of myth is advocated by the ruling regime. Non-belief remains as blasphemy to the ruling regime. Both the ruling regime and the religion that supports it have become existential threats to the human species. Many of the religionists clamor to instigate Armageddon. Removing both the ruling regime and it's religion are necessary to avoid extinction for everyone. It might be different if the religionists genuinely believed in martyrdom, but they always want non-believers to go first. Infecting the deranged with an otherwise harmless virus seems far more humane than the murderous solutions they have always resorted to.

@racocn8 okay. Sounds like you are entrenched with that one so I’ll leave you to it.

Quite agree. Why take away someone’s colourful reality to replace it with someone else’s greyness.

What does it matter? The important thing is to get through life which can be quite daunting for some without having to countenance someone else’s ‘Truth’ along the way

@Geoffrey51 Agreed. One of the main points that I struggle with, as a hard facts and logic person, is what is one supposed to work towards, with life evolving without a hard objective. But the point of liberation is that the objective can be whatever one wants to make it. For me, it's to be happy in the moment, and to act in a morally responsible manner to other people and animals.

@Leontion
It's not easy to understand, and it took me 67 years to see it. But I learn more every day, so I'm very likely to see it differently a year from now. This is just how it appears to me today.

Individual potential is very different from species potential, and we are all species-dependent individuals. So while it may not be true for you and me in our daily experience, it appears, to me, to be true for our species. And where entire societies appear to be outliers, a closer look reveals that the thing I call religion is still at least partially in evidence under different names. And... the Scandinavian experiments are still quite young, historically speaking, and causal links between secularism and prosperity have not been demonstrated.

. . . . . . . . .

"Traditional Language. . . .The average Christian in the United States might view such beliefs with some suspicion, but to argue that Scandinavians are not very religious is to stretch the evidence too far. A further mistake that must be attributed to Zuckerman is his adoption of a rather depressing view of religion in general, and of Christian faith in particular. Scandinavians are not very religious, he claims, since they do not believe in “the literal, punishing, vengeful, merciful, or forgiving God of the Bible” (p. 7). Of course, if all the components in such a description are necessary criteria for Christian faith, then most Scandinavians are indeed secular. The problem is that most Scandinavian Christians would not agree with Zuckerman's characterization of true faith."

"The problem of interpreting religion in Scandinavia is highlighted in Ina Rosén's 2009 dissertation, I’m a Believer—but I’ll be Damned if I’m Religious. It concerns the difficulty of using traditional religious language in interviews and surveys. When the focus groups in her survey/interviews talked about religion, they connected to what Rosén calls “routinized religion,” a category in line with her concept “packed religion.” When using this type of category or conception, religion appears “thin, cultural, declining or diffuse” in Denmark—a statement, therefore, in accordance with Zuckerman's findings."

"However, when Rosén used an “unpacked” conception of religion, she was able to conclude that three-quarters of the Danes are believers; in “glaring contrast” to Zuckerman's results. In sum, after passing a religious language barrier, this recent study shows that a “majority of Danes believe or are willing to identify as religious to a lesser or greater extent.” Putting the pieces of evidence together thus allows a critical perspective on Zuckerman's contention that the Scandinavian societies are secular."

"A more sophisticated discussion on the dialectics of religion and the secular in the Scandinavian societies is presented in Katedralen mitt i staden (The cathedral in the center of the city), with the subtitle Om ateism och teologi (On atheism and theology), authored by Mattias Martinson, professor of systematic theology and studies in world views at Uppsala University. When he presents his “atheistic theology,” a sort of immanent study of religion, he also describes the interdependency of religious and anti-religious or atheist arguments in the Scandinavian situation, stating that both religion and atheism are returning to the Swedish stage." This “return” of both secularism and religion can be seen as an uncertainty in the cultural identity, a sign of prevalent cultural “worry” on all sides."

"A Post-Secular Society. . . . Some observers would describe the situation as post-secular. Religion and faith are still, in the midst of modernity, engaging the Scandinavians; an indication of that is the fact that some well-known individuals in the Swedish cultural establishment recently have written books on their conversion experiences to Christianity (such as Elisabeth Sandlund and Göran Skytte). Again, it is highly problematic, if not impossible, to separate religion from culture in the Scandinavian setting. There are various interdependencies and interactive flows between the two entities that can be described both as indispensable aspects of Scandinavian history and contemporary mentality."
[diva-portal.org]

. . . . . . . . .

And keep in mind that I'm that person who speaks in abstractions. When I speak about "religion" I'm not talking about religion as it is presently manifesting in the world, or especially not as it is perceived by only the non-religious. I'm talking about religion as the evolutionary forces that necessitate the behaviors which, in retrospect, humans have called religion (and have thoroughly polluted, as they do everything they touch). There is nothing in this deepest essence of the biological religious impulse that requires a belief in the supernatural (though we have biological tendencies toward that also).

What is at the heart of the religious impulse is the understanding that our "evolution-given" animal nature alone does not serve us adequately while living in groups of more than about 150, mostly related, individuals. For that, (civilization) we need to modify our instincts according to wisdom we have gained through thousands of years of trying. This collected wisdom, is, like every other arena of human behavior, susceptible to corruption and misuse, but it is a necessary part of maintaining what we call civilization. And our individual intelligence alone cannot replace, on the fly, thousands of years of human experience.

The problem that we're now facing, regarding religion, is not that it exists, but that it is stuck in the past, and is by nature, slow to change. It is after all considered sacred, and the sacred should not be tampered with carelessly. But reform has always occurred, and will again, even if painfully, if we are to survive as a species.

@Leontion

What makes religion so difficult to talk about is that it isn't just one thing. It's a very strange and complex amalgam of conflicted impulses. The part of it that's so visible, especially to outsiders, is the part that our animal instincts supply; the selfish, destructive part. The part that is less understood is the invisible part; the cultural part that has evolved to correct the biological part. When you think about it though, it makes perfect sense that those two parts would attract each other.

What's considered "normal" in 21st century America is to use the word "religion" to describe, mostly, religious literalism, which is actually biological tribalism. The irony of this is that organized religion arose as a cultural correction to biological tribalism. Three point seven billion years of evolution isn't easy to resist with artificial means, so the fact that any attempt to do so is immediately swamped by animal instinct is completely unremarkable. It amazes me that it has worked as well as it has.

But it does appear to have worked to some degree, in spite of the odds, to extend our natural altruism beyond the limits of our immediate tribe. As that reach grows larger and larger the effectiveness of the corrective is increasingly tested, and is currently in danger of collapsing. Now is not the time to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but rather to look for ways to get that baby to grow up.

Supernaturalism does not come from the cultural side of the equation. It comes from the biological side. It is what authentic religion was designed to combat. I'm not talking about a looser usage here, like football. I'm talking about a tighter usage, like the causal impulses behind the physical behavior. I agree that it helps to find a common language with which to discuss complex ideas, but I like to base that in etymology and history rather than in popular understanding. The terminology that seems most accurately descriptive of the supernaturalism you associate with religion are terms like tribalism and fundamentalism.

It seems to me that religion isn't tied to group identity so much as group identity is tied to religion, and it is in great need of being cut loose, or at least seen in its proper relationship. The habits of mind, which as you correctly say, are of biological origin, and now maladaptive, are exactly the habits of mind which authentic religious practice aims to restrain. Knowledge alone doesn't suffice. We graduate from school but we never graduate from church. That's because school delivers knowledge and church conducts the ongoing practice that is needed (by a majority of our species) to temper 3.7B years of evolution.

Loss of supernatural beliefs and education about science, together, must make up the central focus of progress, if there is any hope for progress at all. But overlooking the relationship between that goal and the practice of wisdom traditions has proven to be a terrible mistake.

The main point of the OP is that pitting science against religion is a bad idea that will never work. It will never work against our animal nature because nothing ever will entirely. And it should not be brought to bear against the only thing that has proven to work to some degree, because that is just counter-productive. Real religion, that is to say, our collective time-tested wisdom tradition, is all that has ever worked to mitigate our instinct for murder long enough for us to cooperate on large projects that benefit us all.

It's a hard sell in today's Dawkins-saturated world, and I realize how counter-intuitive it seems, but after years of private study on this specific subject, I'm convinced that science and history point in this direction.