I’m in my mid 20s, and an atheist. I remember back in 2014, when I was an edgy little shit, I thought once people lost religion, as per the trend, people would be nicer to each other and science would rule the day. Probably a naive thought.
Yet, it feels like nothing is sacred anymore. Everywhere you look it’s just people trying to get their slice of the pie, ethics be damned. Everything feels like it’s going badly. I’ve just graduated and the job market is full of time wasting rituals. It just feels like people have lost touch with decency and community. No one has any pride in what they do.
Correlation != causation of course, and so the decline in religion may not be the cause. Still I wonder if for a certain segment of the population, those that seem to thrive and filter to the top of our wonderful society, the fear of damnation was check on their base impulses.
Or if perhaps this is a part of the process, perhaps the reasonable people have all left the churches leaving an ever growing concentration of barbarous individuals holding the reins of that decrepit institution.
Or it’s just the lack of community that religion once forced upon us, to see and be civil, if not caring for those in our immediate geographic community that hold differing opinions from us. A moderating influence if you will.
religion was never the issue. the issue is people being stupid and lacking morals, which they will do and justify regardless of the situation.
I’d use Nietzsche’s quote, “God is dead” to explain why we don’t need religion and how Nietzsche used it to explain why we need to look for other sources of morality and ethics, but I’m too lazy to type rn.
Depends on the type of religion. One that preaches peace and tolerance and service and is against greed could be beneficial.
But the type of Christian fascists that elected Trump are not beneficial to society. They’re the ones that either want you kiss dear leader’s ass or die.
It should never be “Do we need religion?”, it should be “Do I need religion?”. Some people might need it, but it doesn’t need to be pressed upon others.
Also religion or no religion, assholes will be assholes. Even if all religion disappeared from the world like it was never there, number of assholes in the world won’t change.
Assholes don’t need an excuse to be one.
That’s also very true, unfortunately.
You alraedy say it yourself in as many words, but we need more community. Where I am from, our country was ‘columnized’ up until the 1970s. You had a catholic ‘column’, a protestant ‘column’ and a socialist ‘column’, each with their own clubs. So you had a catholic football club, a protestant football club and a more public football club simultaneously. The same went for schools, pubs, etc.
For all the good and bad that gave us, people were shoehorned into their own communities (note my explicit use of ‘shoehorned’).
About 50 years ago, our society got ‘decolumnized’ and people got more individualistic. Add to it the rampant neoliberalism of the latest decades and well here we are: people do not know how to find each other anymore. I notice that many yourger people have similar questions like yours.
Do we need religion as in something to believe in or to have faith in? Possibly? However, I do not know what to believe in to be honest. Progress? Not going to live to see that anymore. It will get very ugly very soon. Maybe my kids will see things get better / more enligtened/ etc, but only after getting screwed over for a few decades I fear.
I do think that religion is not the answer. Men running around in dresses trying to force the ideas of mistranslated books written by goat herders several thousands of years ago are not to be taken seriously.
Did you notice all the harm Trump has caused in his first 24h because evangelical christo-fascists love and vote for him?
No. Religion is toxic.
My interest you in the gospel of solar punk? Praise the sun!
Religion is a tool. We just need to fix the message.
Unless you’re George Carlin worshipping Joe Pesci, religion sucks for society.
if everyone was like super chill like buddy Jesus, I’d beg to differ. It’d just for some reason religious people are not trying to be like Christ. Has religion failed us? Yes. Could we use it to spread the love of Solarpunk christ? Also yes.
I think we need community again; I don’t think that means religion necessarily. Some of the most shameless, godless people in America are evangelical christians
Because some kids need to think Santa is real to not be little shits…
Not everyone needs that, but when religious people say the only thing stopping everyone from being a piece of shit is the threat of a bad afterlife, we should understand it’s at least true for them personally.
When all the rational people stopped going, all that was left was those people and it didn’t take long for them to decide if someone wasn’t “of the flock” Sky Daddy ain’t going to get mad at them for being shits to the non believers.
So community ain’t enough
They need to be manipulated into not being pieces of shit.
No, fuck religion. Religion is the source of so many of our modern problems. People need more practice at rational thinking and religion often discourages that.
I’m fine with having better community but it’s like… a really simple problem. Look at Spain, everyone spends their free time in common spaces where they develop relationships with their communities are stronger for it.
What we fucking need is less cars and more parks and plazas - we don’t need a church meddling in our shit.
Not sure what country you’re in, but have you seen the United States lately? The majority of the assholes here making life worse for all of us are doing so in the name of their god.
I am from the United States. I don’t really know anymore. I don’t understand how both parties can be so terrible, but they are. I cannot abide my own contradiction in that I believe in democracy, I believe in the ideals espoused by my country: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, yet I no longer believe in the people, or the institutions.
I don’t understand how both parties can be so terrible
You might enjoy the book https://theinvisibledoctrine.com/ which thoroughly explains the rise of neoliberal ideology which is responsible for the state of our institutions.
I’d say it’s about time for the Age of Enlightenment to begin. For us to do liberty, progress, tolerance, use science and technology to our advantage. Invest in education. Maybe overturn the monarchs and billionaires.
Fuck No!
People. Family, friends, neighbors. Connect with real people. Not some con that’s fooled countless people into giving away their $$ for fake promises and false “gods”.
You’re right that people are more selfish lately. That’s deliberate - the elites are backing us all into a corner using stress and rage so that we’ll fight each other instead of fighting them.
Who are the elites? It’s a term thrown around, yet do we mean the billionaires? Are they working together? What is their goal in the long term? Without answering these questions, I find it hard to differentiate between meaningful political discussion and conspiracy theory. The trump people blame the “elites” as well, which we can presume are in some way different from the ones you’re talking about.
The elites are the ones who don’t feel anxious when the economy gets worse
They actually feel better, economic crashes are a great time to acquire assets at a discount.
religion = smarmy cruel assholes
while community is desperately needed, religion is a con to control humans. the idea of the divine is utterly absurd and has no place in the modern world.
People didn’t listen to their commandments when the majority of people believed in them, it just gave them a reason to hate those that were different from them.
Overall, I’ve found people who aren’t religious to be more open minded, and far more accepting of people different to them.
The next step should be replacing fear of damnation with fear of the guillotine.
