How Does the Human Species Move Past Religion?

  • Thread starter Dotini
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Dotini

Dotini

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CR80_Shifty
In another thread we encountered,

Duke
I AM SO BERKING DONE WITH RELIGION IN EVERY FORM.

How have we as a species not moved past this yet?
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I tried to counter that billions of people seem to need religion, but my arguments were ultimately destroyed by brighter minds. So now I will take the affirmative approach and pursue the question of how we as a species move past religion.

note: I am not religious, never have been, and neither has my family.
 
I think religion is a coping mechanism, a way for some people to give meaning to suffering and failure.

If you end misery and suffering religion will die out naturally. So you only need to end poverty, tyranny, war, illness, and you're basically in home stretch. Easy.
 
Religion has likely existed since we became a species. There are even a few hypotheses that state Neanderthals had a religion of sorts too.

But in order to completely get rid of religion, you'd need to explain everything that's unexplained, or at the very least explain the big questions like why are we here. We won't get to that point though. We can come up with scientific theories, but we wouldn't be able to get to the point where it would be considered a law.

Instead of ditching religion though, we really need to pull back religion injecting itself into government and laws. That's doable albeit difficult. The US, in theory at least, should have an easy-ish way to do this through legal action and lawsuits. In practice, it's difficult though and is definitely not cheap.
 
Dotini
Here is a possibly helpful graphic...







World map showing nations that formerly or currently practice state atheism[26] Most of the countries that practice state atheism are socialist states, with some exceptions such as France during the French Revolution and Mexico during the Cristero War.
Countries that formerly practiced state atheism
Countries that currently practice state atheism
en.wikipedia.org

State atheism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
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State-enforced atheism? I don't think that has been shown to be effective at... anything good.
 
Is there a way to hide threads on the main page started by a particular author?

Asking for a friend.
 
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Liquid
Oh look, another esoteric thread to control the conversation. State atheism is completely different from a secular nation.

A very dishonest way of presenting this... whatever this is supposed to be.
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A handy forum tool may be a "threads created after a user noped the **** out of discussion elsewhere" search.
 
Liquid
Oh look, another esoteric thread to control the conversation. State atheism is completely different from a secular nation.

A very dishonest way of presenting this... whatever this is supposed to be.
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A secular state is one that condones religion, correct? I thought the object was for humanity to move past religion?
 
Joey D
A secular state remains neutral on religion or doesn't have an official religion. The US is technically a secular state whereas England (not the UK though) isn't.
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I of course thoroughly approve of secular states. But the title and premise of the thread is How Does the Human Species Move Past Religion? The first two replies contain several good ideas. We should revisit them. But when I added a world map showing the distribution of humanity that had moved past religion, the forum overreacted slightly.
 
You have nobody to blame but yourselves. Engaging Dotini is a pitfall of ****-covered stakes and doing so with even the slightest expectation of meaningful reciprocity is pure folly.
 
Wow, creating an entire new thread to avoid addressing a couple of point!

That's taking avoidance to an entirely new level.

Never fear, as it's tangentially related I will simply move them here, you claim that the US has a defined separation of church and state, that the church doesn't make laws and inferred that it has little to no influence in that process (at either the legislative or judicial level), I argued that was not the case and used two examples as counter-points, saying:

Scaff
The Supreme Court of the US's recent rulings say you're wrong.

States that require you to believe to hold public office say you're wrong.
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Joey D
Religion has likely existed since we became a species. There are even a few hypotheses that state Neanderthals had a religion of sorts too.

But in order to completely get rid of religion, you'd need to explain everything that's unexplained, or at the very least explain the big questions like why are we here. We won't get to that point though. We can come up with scientific theories, but we wouldn't be able to get to the point where it would be considered a law.

Instead of ditching religion though, we really need to pull back religion injecting itself into government and laws. That's doable albeit difficult. The US, in theory at least, should have an easy-ish way to do this through legal action and lawsuits. In practice, it's difficult though and is definitely not cheap.
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I found these remarks to be on topic and thought provoking. I especially like the part about getting completely rid of religion. I can think of at least one scenario which might "explain everything that's unexplained, or at the very least explain the big questions like why are we here."
 
Joey D
whereas England (not the UK though) isn't.
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Without Googling to see if I'm talking rubbish first, the UK's head of State is sworn defender of the faith.. granted, it's to the Church of England, but she's head of state and has Royal prerogative for the United Kingdom, not just England, and I believe devolved parliamentary bills still require Royal assent.
 
I think we don't.
Furthermore seeing the rise in fundamentalist groups, Christians as well as other religions.
 
MatskiMonk
Without Googling to see if I'm talking rubbish first, the UK's head of State is sworn defender of the faith.. granted, it's to the Church of England, but she's head of state and has Royal prerogative for the United Kingdom, not just England, and I believe devolved parliamentary bills still require Royal assent.
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Yep, it's not just England, but the UK as a whole, but it is a little blurry.

While the Royal assent side of things is 100% ceremonial and as such doesn't really qualify as religious interference (directly or indirectly), it however is still one of three factors do stop the UK from being considered secular, with the other two being:

  • The UK having a state religion (Christianity as a whole, Church of England for England)
  • The Lords Spiritual

Now it's the second of these that is the biggest concern for religious interference within the UK, as the Lords Spiritual are 26 members of the Anglican Church who are automatically given seats in the upper house and have full voting rights.

That the upper house in the UK is unelected is bad enough (but a topic for another thread), that 26 of those seats are then given, with full voting rights, to the state religion is more than enough to ensure that the UK can't be called a secular state.

As the Humanist society stated when Rishi Sunak described the UK as a secular country:

"‘Uniquely amongst the four nations, England does still have an established Church, and there are various areas of public policy which privilege Christianity over other religions and beliefs, for example, the presence of bishops in the House of Lords, the large number of state-funded Christian schools, and the requirement to hold Christian collective worship in other state schools. But these are not reflective of the population of the UK today. These matters must be examined, to ensure our state institutions keep pace with the changed demographics.’"
humanists.uk

Rishi Sunak: ‘This is a secular country’

In an interview with the BBC, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has described the UK as a secular country and explained how Christmas is a festival celebrated by everyone, of all religions or beliefs. Humanists UK has welcomed his comments, as standing in contrast to comments from previous political...
humanists.uk


Socially the UK is secular, factually as a state it's not.
 
Scaff
Yep, it's not just England, but the UK as a whole, but it is a little blurry.

While the Royal assent side of things is 100% ceremonial and as such doesn't really qualify as religious interference (directly or indirectly), it however is still one of three factors do stop the UK from being considered secular, with the other two being:

  • The UK having a state religion (Christianity as a whole, Church of England for England)
  • The Lords Spiritual

Now it's the second of these that is the biggest concern for religious interference within the UK, as the Lords Spiritual are 26 members of the Anglican Church who are automatically given seats in the upper house and have full voting rights.

That the upper house in the UK is unelected is bad enough (but a topic for another thread), that 26 of those seats are then given, with full voting rights, to the state religion is more than enough to ensure that the UK can't be called a secular state.

As the Humanist society stated when Rishi Sunak described the UK as a secular country:

"‘Uniquely amongst the four nations, England does still have an established Church, and there are various areas of public policy which privilege Christianity over other religions and beliefs, for example, the presence of bishops in the House of Lords, the large number of state-funded Christian schools, and the requirement to hold Christian collective worship in other state schools. But these are not reflective of the population of the UK today. These matters must be examined, to ensure our state institutions keep pace with the changed demographics.’"
humanists.uk

Rishi Sunak: ‘This is a secular country’

In an interview with the BBC, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has described the UK as a secular country and explained how Christmas is a festival celebrated by everyone, of all religions or beliefs. Humanists UK has welcomed his comments, as standing in contrast to comments from previous political...
humanists.uk


Socially the UK is secular, factually as a state it's not.
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How strong is the presence of Freemasonry in England today?
 
Dotini
How strong is the presence of Freemasonry in England today?
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In what regard?

I know a few masons, and aside from mainly using it as a way to socialise, most of its focus' is around charitable work.

Too focused on being both religious and supportive of the monarchy for my tastes, but as the Guide to the Galaxy would say 'mostly harmless'.
 
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Scaff
I know a few masons, and aside from mainly using it as a way to socialise, most of its focus' is around charitable work.
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Same here. The requirement for monotheism doesn't seem to apply anymore, and none of the masons I know practice any kind of religion in reality.

Dotini
Is their membership slowly declining like it is in the US, or is it holding somewhat stable?
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In decline apparently.
 
Dotini
I tried to counter that billions of people seem to need religion, but my arguments were ultimately destroyed by brighter minds. So now I will take the affirmative approach and pursue the question of how we as a species move past religion.

note: I am not religious, never have been, and neither has my family.
Click to expand...
'Moving past religion' as a statement to me doesn't mean banning it, it means making it irrelevant. Unrequired. Unnecessary if you like.

You got to ask why we have religion in the first place?

As Joey says above, most civilizations have probably always had one form of religion or another, but a lot of that was little more than worshiping various gods. Floods?, wild fires?, crops failing? - you've angered the gods in some way, so you must leave an offering or make a sacrifice to appease them. It went some way to explain why certain 'acts of god' happened seemingly randomly before we actually understood why they happened (ie scientific knowledge - giving rise to why even now organised religion is at odds with the science community - stop ruining our stories! - now we're going to have to find an even more convoluted explanation to why it's still the work of god).

More organised religions, lets use the Abrahamic ones for an example, took this further by writing and preaching scripture which could be used to control or keep in line an expanding population of largely very poor peoples. If you live in a shack, farming in a dry dusty enviroment, where half the children you give birth to die in infancy and you struggle to feed and water those that don't, if you're likely to suffer and die yourself at what we'd class now as a young age from some horrible disese, then scripture offering a life after death where theres no suffering - as long as you follow these rules! - sounds like a pretty good deal. You can endure a increasingly s****y existance on earth if there's a paradise-like enternal afterlife to look forward to when it ends. You can see why abrahamic religions are still popular in undeveloped corners of the world as their existances are often little better now then they were in biblical times.

So how do we 'move past' this strangle hold?

As long as there's still unnecessary suffering and massive inequality, there's always a place where religion can get it's teeth stuck in. Make the world a better place for everyone, starting from the bottom up, and people will no longer feel the need to look to religion for comfort.

In more developed nations where poverty is a lesser issue, you just have to ensure, like i said in the other thread, that religion has no say in the governing or laws of that land - or used as a reason to persecute people of other religions in your own or in other countries. It can still be practised as a hobby, just not pushed on people who choose not to follow that particular brand of religion, or any religion at all if they prefer.
 
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Dotini
Is their membership slowly declining like it is in the US, or is it holding somewhat stable?
Click to expand...
Declining as far as I can see.
MatskiMonk
Same here. The requirement for monotheism doesn't seem to apply anymore, and none of the masons I know practice any kind of religion in reality.
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Yep, none of the members I know are practising at all.
 
m76
I think religion is a coping mechanism, a way for some people to give meaning to suffering and failure.

If you end misery and suffering religion will die out naturally. So you only need to end poverty, tyranny, war, illness, and you're basically in home stretch. Easy.
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So far, this seems to me the most succinct and logical prescription for the human species to move past religion in every form. However, it sets a very high bar which seems to be getting higher by the day.

Joey D
But in order to completely get rid of religion, you'd need to explain everything that's unexplained, or at the very least explain the big questions like why are we here.
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This particular remark adds an open-ended twist that I like quite a lot. I feel this will also be required to achieve the desired goal.
 
Scaff
Wow, creating an entire new thread to avoid addressing a couple of point!

That's taking avoidance to an entirely new level.
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Remember, it also adds to Dotini's massive list of pointless threads in which he can post replies to himself.
 
Humanity doesn't need to move past religion, it just needs to accept that all glory goes to the hypnotoad!

submit matt groening GIF by Feliks Tomasz Konczakowski
 
Northstar
Humanity doesn't need to move past religion, it just needs to accept that all glory goes to the hypnotoad!

submit matt groening GIF by Feliks Tomasz Konczakowski
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Agreed - in the sense that a fundamentally altered state of consciousness may be required at a global level.
 

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