Hello

@Matias What an idiot believes doesn't influence me in the least but nice to know that stupid is still a thing with a strong following.

@Matias Throw in a little French and everything sounds so much more eloquent. lol

@Matias If you grew up in a bi-lingual country like Canada, then you would realize that Americans hijacking other people's language while at the same time demanding that 'the god damn world needs to learn to speak American' does not in and of itself constitute Francais becoming Anglais, let alone whatever language American's speak because it sure as fuck isn't The Queen's Good English.
Look it up, google it even.

@Matias
I can deny that organized mainline religions are losing ground. When you’re talking about “sapiens” you’re talking about a species. And as a species, we’re getting more, not less religious:
Pew 2015 [pewresearch.org]
Pew 2017 [pewresearch.org]

I don’t deny we’re a moral species, and I don’t deny that propensity for morality shows up in places other than in traditionally religious activities, but religion is more than just public moral outrage in wealthy nations.

And even in those wealthy nations, the trend toward less religion is way too young to be taken as linear. It may be fashionable today and unfashionable ten years from now.

@Matias
Species-wise, Christianity won’t need to stage a “comeback,” because, species-wise, it is not in decline. The decline is in isolated pockets surrounded by ongoing ascendancy.

It’s way too early to tell whether those pockets are temporary fashion or permanent trend. The causation/correlation debate notwithstanding, those same pockets are also experiencing destabilizing polarization. The noticeable issue here being that the evolutionary function of organized religion is to counter polarization.

Nobody knows the future, but my guess is that stable societies without unifying society-wide religions is a mirage that will never materialize… or at least not in the next few hundred thousand biological years or before we evolve into non-biological creatures.

There are, of course, different levels of analysis of religion, and many different definitions. And I think they all have some truth from a given angle. Many, maybe most of the definitions are descriptive, and accurately enough descriptive.
But I prefer a more explanatory definition, because I think it is more universal and more durable than merely descriptive ones.

Regardless of what proximate effects religion might produce in a given time period and location, it must, in my view, always be viewed from its most upstream explanatory definition in order to avoid losing the meaning of the word.

So as far as I’m concerned, the main functions of religion nowadays are the same as they’ve always been - to unify a given society into a functional whole, and to help individuals find meaning (real or imagined) in a meaningless existence. Everything else is culture-specific window dressing.

Politics, on the other hand, it seems to me, is, in its most universal sense, about the distribution of power - who has it, and who doesn’t. It’s not that religion and politics aren't interlaced at many points of contact - they certainly are. But social justice is primarily an issue of unequal power distribution - not one of existential angst, and certainly not one that engenders unity.

Politics, at its deepest essence, is about society-wide competition between factions. Religion, at its deepest (and pre-globalized) essence, is about the society-wide unification of factions.

Religions competing with other religions in a global society not only doesn’t dilute the evolutionary definition of religion, but, in fact, illuminates the need for a world meta-religion that does for global society what national religions used to do for nations - give a large group of unrelated, biologically tribal individuals an imaginary sense of group identity.

Politics gives identity to competing factions within a society (fostering civil war). Religion gives identity to a whole society (fostering civil peace). The difference could hardly be more stark.

It may well be that when religions fail, as ours arguably are doing in pockets, people turn to whatever they still find believable to find meaning, even if that is fighting. But fighting will never bring peace, as George Carlin humorously pointed out. There is no lasting explanation, morality, belonging, or justification in "We're right and you're wrong."

If a global religion were to emerge it would need to turn explanation over to science, morality over to ethics, belonging over to Homo sapiens, and justification over to philosophy. What it can safely continue to offer for the foreseeable future, with no apparent competition, is the same regular training in self transcendence that has defined it since its beginning. I would argue that it is the hunger for absolutes, along with every other Pleistocene instinct, that is religion's competition. It has always been religion's esoteric purpose to retrain those instincts for the world we inhabit now.

And yet could not pomise of reward or threat of punishment, make some turn away from being a good person. So while it may not make anyone better, it could make them worse.

I didn't think of that. yes... you are right... see it every day @Fernapple