Religion is about culture, belief and community. The fading of the mainstream religions is making room for the more fundamentalist, marketing driven religious practices that are often about money and politics.
There are parts of Europe that have far more community and where people are far more social but far less religious than the US.
Religion is just a long surviving irrational belief system. It may serve a more social purpose or a less social purpose. Oppositely, the purpose of unifying a community can be served by a number of things, religion isn't necessary for that. As other mention, extreme religiosity is rising in the US even as average religion is declining but that's naturally ideological.
This is an extremely ignorant position that trivializes "religion". First of all, as I have written elsewhere, everyone is religious. The question is: how good and true is your religion? To call it merely irrational is to show a total lack of understanding of the subject. And because religions are many, it makes little sense to speak of "religion" categorically in this way because they often have little or nothing in common. You have to address and criticize particular religions for particular reasons.
Furthermore, those who defect from the religious faith on which their society or civilization was built often ride the coat tails of that religious faith without working out the logical consequences of their rejection. That is, it is better to describe the rejector as a heretic or an apostate than someone who has somehow freed himself from the faith in question and all its trappings. Many of these ideologies we're seeing are profound distortions or perversions of some selected element of Christianity or previous heretical position. That's one reason heresy was always regarded as dangerous. It comes from the Greek hairesis meaning "a taking or choosing for oneself, a choice"[0] meaning taking a cafeteria approach toward the dogmas of the faith which exist as a coherent whole. Any distortion or selectivity produces severe downstream consequences like ideology. Secularism and liberalism are examples. They are Christian heresies and cannot be comprehended apart from the Christian context within which they emerged.
Nietzsche, who was an atheist, was smart enough to see this. The "Twilight of the Idols" is all about how silly this secular triumphalism, or even just contentment, is because it fails to see that the consequences of having "killed God" are not yet fully made manifest, but eventually will be made manifest because this state of affairs is unsustainable, and that this will result ultimately in total disorientation and chaos (I disagree with Nietzsche that God was merely an instrumental idea, but he did at least grasp the parochial and myopic nature of so many atheists and secular people; for him, atheism was a terrible thing). Intellectually serious atheists are all in agreement about how terrible atheism is (i.e., not the provincial variety like Dawkins). This state produces a fertile ground for ideology, i.e., irrational half-assed false religions.
This is an extremely ignorant position that trivializes "religion". First of all, as I have written elsewhere, everyone is religious.
-- I can't see how that statement doesn't trivialize religion at least as much. IE, if everyone is "religious", you've set a very low bar for what qualifies as religious
I think made it clear you have religious beliefs, which involve ... clearly false views of the cosmos (with the possible exception of Buddhism) and you have religious institutions, which serve a variety of social, economic and psychological purposes. A church can be club with a few nods to God or it can be something like a political party hell bent on power or it can be other things. Many American Unitarians maintain the form of religion while dropping all the God part and that's as fine as anything as far as I'm concerned.
> if everyone is "religious", you've set a very low bar for what qualifies as religious
And if everyone has “beliefs” then you have set a very low bar for what qualifies as belief which makes everyone a believer.
You are playing a silly power game where you dismiss other people’s conceptual schemes so you can peddle your own.
My view of the cosmos is that it is a computer simulation.
It isn’t clearly false. But it is clearly a religion. Even though it is backed up by the fact that all asymmetrical/equational reasoning (all of the Mathematics supporting Physics/Cosmology) is computational.
And if everyone has “beliefs” then you have set a very low bad for what qualifies as belief.
Sure, if you look at what qualifies as a belief, it's pretty random.
My view of the cosmos is that it is a computer simulation.
It seems like the main thing this shares with religion is that it's wholly unverifiable. If you develop it in common with others and perhaps add rituals, you could qualify it along with Pastafarians [1]. But Pastafarian know it's a joke.
I might have some wholly unverifiable beliefs but I don't have a commitment to maintain such beliefs. That's where I'd locate the difference.
You can verify that Physics is captured in Mathematics.
Mathematics is a Turing-recognisable language.
If the universe is Physical then it is computable. This is a trivially true belief (see Church-Turing-Deutsch principle).
You can falsify my belief by producing Physics in language other than Mathematics.
Of course, as an instrumentalist/physicist, I don’t care if my beliefs are “actually true” as long as they work.
> “Why do science and philosophy matter?” has only religious/ideological answers
The question needs not be asked. But most people are not areligious, they have been raised within a context of religion where the question was asked to them. Religion begets religion because it teaches people that there are higher meanings and pushes people to seek their answers.
A true areligious person does not ponder about the meaning of life, why we are here, and what it is we need to do with ourselves. An areligious person can simply exist in peace, guided simply by ones natural desires for fun, pleasure, comfort, safety, growth and love.
I agree with you that in the absence of what we conventionally call "religion" doesn't mean the essential character of religion is erased. Abandoning one religion means adopting another. Abandoning a religious faith with thousands of years of refinement for some quackery invented yesterday, especially without proportional reason, is not exactly the move of a sound mind.
I also think religion serves a real need, but all real needs have real objects. And so I do not use the word "utility" here as if the content of the faith didn't matter, that religion is just some instrument that gets us this "other stuff" and has no intrinsic truth or meaning itself. A true religious faith is practiced because it is about the ultimate meaning of one's life and thus the meaning of everything else in life. Thus everything is always subordinate to one's faith. It is important for the faith to be true in order to be able to live one's life in the light of true ends, not mythical counterfeits. This does not contradict the essence of your main point, namely, the the eviction of one religion does not abolish religion. It typically just replaces it with something inferior.
> “Why do science and philosophy matter?”
I would say philosophical and religious answers. Recall that philosophy is also reflexive.
But indeed, scientism is indefensible. It is a philosophical position and thus cannot be defended scientifically. You cannot simply assert it without justification.
I don't understand the question. Truth is the correspondence of the mind with the real. The value of some truths is mostly instrumental. The value of others is that it is good for us to know them for themselves. If you are using "utility" to mean "value", then maybe you accept this, but utility is typically something like a species of value, as I understand it. Pure practicality is incoherent. They needs to be a terminus.
What is "need" here? Toward what end? Need is always about ends.
> Reflexivity is precisely where meaning/religion comes from. From the self.
Meaning doesn't come from ourselves. We cannot invent meaning. Either something means something, or it doesn't. What you describe is mental illness and delusion. I also don't see what this has to do with truth/utility.
You saw sagacious Solomon |
You know what came of him |
To him, complexities seemed plain |
He cursed the hour that gave birth to him |
And saw that everything was vain |
How great and wise was Solomon |
The world, however, did not wait |
But soon observed what followed on |
It's wisdom that had brought him to this state |
How fortunate the man with none
You saw courageous Caesar next |
You know what he became |
They deified him in his life |
Then had him murdered just the same |
And as they raised the fatal knife |
How loud he cried "you too my son!" |
The world, however, did not wait |
But soon observed what followed on |
It's courage that had brought him to that state |
How fortunate the man with none
You heard of honest Socrates |
The man who never lied |
They weren't so grateful as you'd think |
Instead the rulers fixed to have him tried |
And handed him the poisoned drink |
How honest was the people's noble son |
The world, however, did not wait |
But soon observed what followed on |
It's honesty that brought him to that state |
How fortunate the man with none
Here you can see respectable folk |
Keeping to God's own laws |
So far he hasn't taken heed |
You who sit safe and warm indoors |
Help to relieve out bitter need |
How virtuously we had begun |
The world, however, did not wait |
But soon observed what followed on |
It's fear of God that brought us to that state |
How fortunate the man with none
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Brendan Michael Perry / Bertolt Brecht / John Willett
Religion serves a function. Even if that function is psychological.
When you take religion away, something else will fill the utility-gap.
Silly humans failing to grasp the purpose of stories/narratives.
Edit for the downvoters (who clearly don’t understand): the question “Why do science and philosophy matter?” has only religious/ideological answers.