religion is a set of social institutions that are grounded in something spiritual or transcendental, but not necessarily supernatural, and that bind a society together eg. nationalism can be a religion
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one could maybe argue that religion is a natural aspect of a healthy society, and decay in religion leads to the unraveling of society which, again, doesn't necessarily involve theism, the supernatural, or a church as an institution separate from the (secular) state
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some people feel that the recent decay of religion in the world has lead to societal ills, and their reaction is in many cases to retvrn to christianity or judaism, to churches and synagogues, to a literal belief in a deity and the Bible which is better than nothing i guess, but
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is there a better way? can we make real progress on our understanding of, for a lack of a better word, god?
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for those who convert this works out fine but then there are those who can't get themselves to believe in a deity, or who think it's crazy to take the *oldest* texts as the *most* informative of the nature of god they end up spilling the religion baby with the theism bathwater
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and for the converts this doesn't really work either, because: religion only fulfills its function when it permeates society, when the whole of society agrees on what it is religion is not for you to find friends and have a good time in church; it's the glue of society
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we have to rediscover religion in a form that makes sense to the population (of a given polity) as a whole and there *is* a basis to build on; existence itself is insane and pondering its nature is deeply spiritual and there is the latent "will to religion" too; see soccer fans
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anyway, my point is that framing the question of religion as a clash between the "old religions" and "new atheism" misses the point "spiritual but not religious" misses the point meanwhile social capital is rotting away by the decade
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no I agree with all of this i think probably the retvrn to religion for the masses and quiet atheism by elites is the modal case here, this has all happened before but maybe we cant do this anymore for some reason
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might be quite difficult in a religiously-diverse society too i guess Rome managed a kind of cosmopolitan tolerance for a while but even that collapsed into Christianity eventually really hard to say it would be interesting if we're in the middle of a new Axial Age
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all of this is on my mind too :)
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