I've always been irritated by the conservative trope that "X is a substitute for religion" -- with X standing for some modern thing that conservatives don't like. It's a truism that doesn't illuminate because in the past religion saturated cultural & intellectual life.
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In various points in human history, religion has served as science, art, politics, psychology, social services, history, etc. Modernity includes a progressive differentiating out of these tasks from their sacred origins. That doesn't mean they are a substitute for religion
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Replying to @HeerJeet
I agree this is sometimes sloppy. You can be a liberal w/o liberalism being your religion but liberals make the reverse mistake: you can have a belief system with ritual, iconography, repentance, eschatology, etc that acts as a religion even if you say you’re not “religious.”
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Replying to @ubookman
To the extent that various belief systems have rituals, iconography etc. that's because rituals, iconography etc are a time-tested & useful ways to structure social life -- they are the socially functional part of all religion & much non-religion.
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I don't think they are distinctively religious except that historically they were once the monopoly of religion and are now much more widely used by religion & non-religion alike. Maybe what is distinctly modern is seeing religion as a sphere apart from social life.
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