That’s an excellent list.

I do loves me some Joseph Campbell, who was probably the greatest single influence on my thinking about this subject, some forty-odd years ago. But he's a daid guy now, and a lot has happened in the field since his passing - most of which I think he would heartily approve of.

My Big Three are based, more or less, on his Big Four, though shuffled a bit to better conform to current scientific understandings.

I have taken the liberty of deleting the cosmological from the 'modern day' responsibilities of religion, because, as you correctly point out, science now, clearly, does a better job.

The remaining three, I will argue, have not yet been adequately superseded by any secular discipline.

While Campbell's 'sociological' has been largely replaced by modern legal systems, secular law focuses more on the ethical than on the moral. If you steal your neighbor's motorcycle, the lawman will be very interested. If you covet your neighbor's wife, the lawman couldn't care less, because he probably did too, and the 'law' doesn't address it.

In this particular offering Campbell doesn't mention another sociological concern - that of social cohesion. There are countless secular activities that promote social cohesion, but the "countless" is the problem here. They promote cohesion within a narrow segment of society, which is often in competition with another narrow segment, so the society at large is more divided than unified. When was the last time the so-called "United" States of America did anything in unison? World War Two maybe? We couldn't even act in unison when hundreds of thousands of our numbers were being slaughtered by covid. We were ideologically divided, and are still getting more so by the minute.

And to be sure, in our multicultural world, religious factions now all too often create division as well. But that was not so much the case when entire nations were more monocultural. There are some ecumenical initiatives afoot, but we still have a long way to go toward achieving religious harmony for our national society, let alone our global society. The only secular competitor I can see is possibly nationalism, but please don't get me started! Even if it worked at the national level, it certainly would not at the global.

Physiological healthcare today is largely a subset of science, so it is possibly on track to be fully secularized sometime in the, hopefully, not too distant future. But psychological healthcare is still largely regarded as the red-headed stepchild. We adhere, dare I say, religiously, to dental checkups every six months, but six month mental checkups are not yet even on the cultural horizon.

We have robust secular educational systems, but at least in the public sector, spiritual training is prohibited there, full stop. Mention the mystical as a teacher and you lose your job. If the antique language is any kind of stumbling block, just substitute 'psychological' for 'spiritual', but we already covered that. There is no public education function that I am aware of that proactively guides a child through the emotional transition of puberty, or god forbid, anything like a gender transition, or the parents' divorce, or the death of a sibling, or courtship, or old age, or any other of life's innumerable 'spiritual' challenges. Nope. Not there yet.

Campbell's "sense of comfort and purpose" roughly corresponds to my "sense of personal wellbeing" which, in some future world, could conceivably be secularized under the banner of psychology, but virtually all psychology today is essentially remedial, and nothing approaching preemptive, like what the religions at least attempt to provide institutionally and weekly, if not more often, and with a modicum of success.

His metaphysical function probably belongs in the psychological category too, and I am aware of no broadly accepted secular practice that even claims to want to take up that challenge. That's where secular society screeches "That shit belongs in the churches! Get it away from me!!"

The one thing that Campbell, to my knowledge, never touches on ( nor anyone else in his lifetime probably ) is our relationship to our environment. Sure, we have environmental concern groups out the wazoo, but their focus is virtually exclusively on "saving the planet". What society-wide, secular institution provides free, lifelong, weekly training sessions for the public at large on how to avoid the hazards of evolutionary mismatch, such as tribalism, xenophobia, overindulgence, mimetic desire, negativity bias, belligerence, and so on, which religions have admonished against as their stock in trade for untold millennia? I'm all ears.

@Flyingsaucesir
There's all kinds of hanky panky going on everywhere. It's not a feature of religion, but a feature of Homo sapiens, which doesn't destroy the overall functionality of any of the institutions in which it occurs, including religion.

The places where religious identities are clashing are where cultures at large are clashing, and competing for territory, power, etc. Again not a feature of religion any more than a feature of Homo sapiens. The realm over which a religion supports social cohesion is the realm throughout which the religion is dominant. With increased population, cultures that used to be relatively isolated are now bumping up against each other. This does not change the fact that religions promote cohesion where religions reign. This is why a global religion, or at least a global meta-religion is urgently needed today. A global society without an effective method of social cohesion is a global society of chaos.

Regarding mysticism, as I mentioned, words like mysticism and spirituality are just antique words for human psychology. Human psychology is not rubbish, and still, it is not, to my knowledge, taught in public schools until college level, and then only as career preparation - not as life preparation.

The environmental awareness that the fossil fuel industry is sowing doubt about, unfortunate as that is, is as I mentioned, the save-the-planet kind. But neither the environmentalists nor their corporate opponents have any awareness, that I can see, of the psychological stakes of evolutionary mismatch - the difference between the environment we evolved to fit, and the one we now live in.

I hope you do not think I support, in any way, literal interpretations of mythology. I speak against it nearly daily here. If I had my way, everybody would be highly intelligent and super well-educated. The plain fact is... they aren't. Some 80% of the human population, according to the most recent science, has not fully achieved Formal Operational Stage thinking capabilities - meaning, the ability to manipulate abstract concepts. Correlation is not causation, but that does pretty neatly correspond to the approximately 80% of world population that claims religious affiliation. If you think a world without science literacy is bad, think what the world would look like with no constraints of any kind.

The fact is though, that wherever that 80% goes, we go also. It's high time we learn to speak a language they can understand, if we are capable of doing so. They will not be capable of learning ours.

@skado Heh heh! Well said, my friend. But however urgently needed a global meta-religion is needed, there is probably less chance of indoctrinating the 80% in that than there is of adequately educating them in science.

Notwithstanding my skepticism, I would hear you sketch out the profile of your global meta-religion. (You don't have to expend the energy that you obviously do with your paintings, which are fabulous, by the way!)

Now I have to admit that as a science educator I did drink the "every student can learn" kool-aide. And even after an entire career's worth of witnessing with my own eyes the intransigent laziness of the masses, I remain convinced that educating them is possible. A major stumbling block is religion. When people have already been indoctrinated in hokum and balderdash, you have an extra-steep hill to climb. Imagine if you didn't have that nonsense to compete with! Alas, that is probably just a pipe dream. But I still think that if you (we) can reach a certain critical mass, where a sufficient number of people in the students' environment say, "No, the teacher is right: we all did evolve from a single common ancestor; the earthworm really IS your cousin," then we will be "cooking with gas," as my dear departed grandfather used to say. In order to reach that golden tipping point, we're going to have to do education better.

I did not attend SDSU (I went to UCSB), but as of 20-something years ago they had a professor of biology who rejected Darwinism in favor of.... I'm not sure what; something along the lines of biblical creationism.

When I first joined the Science Department where I spent 19 years, I was assigned to teach 3 different subjects in 4 different classrooms. Each of the classrooms was already occupied by a teacher, and I was only there for the one period per day they weren't required to teach a class. In one of the classrooms where I taught biology, there was another teacher who also taught biology. After a while, we got to know each other and one day she told me that she really did not understand darwinian evolution. I mean, she did not know how it works, or that it is the grand unifying frigging theory of the science that she was credentialed by the State of California to teach! I promptly gave her a primer on the spot, and she seemed to get it. But I don't think she ever really fully appreciated the magnitude of what I told her. She had been brought up in the Mormon Church of Latter Day Saints, and just didn't give the origin of species much thought. Her passion was molecular biology, not evolution.

The Science Department Chair was young and superficially competent and confident. In reality, he was inexperienced, egotistical, and self-serving. He had never done any kind of work outside of teaching. He did not have a second language. He knew nothing if science outside of his own specialty (biology). And he had a lot of sway in the hiring of new people into the department. While our one physics teacher was preparing to retire, we had a fantastic replacement waiting in the wings. The anointed one had two credentials, one in physics, and one in math; he had work experience as a civil engineer; he was bilingual (English/Spanish) and our school was 85% Hispanic, most of whom were native Spanish speakers; he had great leadership skills; he was extremely passionate about teaching physics and had some great ideas for creating a program that would bring in many more students. Unfortunately, the Chair felt threatened by this stellar candidate, so when it came down to the wire, he torpedoed his candidacy. We ended up filling the position with a series of people who didn't have half the qualifications of the first guy, and none stayed more than a year. For several years, we had no one to teach physics at all. Meanwhile, the one that got away landed at another school in the District, set up the program he would have set at our school, and is still there today after nearly two decades. Faced with the tide of bullshit, we (especially the students) are lucky the man did not walk away from teaching entirely (like so many do. Most US teachers quit before they have taught five years.) This is no way to run a railroad.

Not too many years later, a new colleague showed up on campus. She was a recent graduate of SDSU, with a BS in biology and a credential to teach it. One day in passing she revealed to me that she did not accept Darwin's theory; she was under the impression that it was not all that widely accepted by biologists, that it was "just a theory." I did my best to impress upon her that the opposite is true: that Darwin is central to the science, that it has been roundly accepted by biologists for a hundred years, and that the evidence supporting it is massive and steadily increasing. She looked at me sideways, and I did not see her for a few days. Then we were about to pass each other in the hallway between classes and she stopped me and said, "I have been doing some reading, and you're right! Darwin is the whole ballgame!" It was one of the most gratifying moments of my entire career.

A few years later, while in a staff work room, I overheard a colleague from the English Department say she was taking a group of students to the Creation "museum" in the east-county town of Santee. (If you're interested, I think they have a website.) I couldn't believe my ears. I said to her, "Well, it's not really a museum, is it?" She argued that it was, and the conversation went downhill from there. Needless to say, I did not let her get out of that workroom without letting her know that I did not appreciate her teaching our students a bunch of brain rot that contradicted our Science Standards. Bummer. She was kinda hot and I had entertained the idea of dating her.

Mark Twain is reputed to have once said that a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is still lacing up its boots. Well, the educational system is still shoehorning its foot into the boot. It hasn't even begun to thread the laces. We have to do better in our training and credentialing of teachers. No wonder we're still behind the 8-ball. I can teach the science, and my student's friend who has a different teacher learns something that contradicts what I taught. And when they compare notes, they might just throw out the baby with the bathwater.

@Flyingsaucesir

Thanks!

The whole ballgame indeed!
Very gratifying when someone is willing to hear what you’re saying and examine it critically.

I’m a strong advocate for public education but they are not ours to indoctrinate. And they don’t need indoctrinating.

No meta-religion would work in our lifetime, or ever, that needed to reorient the worldviews of 80% of 8 billion people. That’s the wrong direction.

Their worldviews are not the problem. They have more similarities than differences. They only need to be shown those similarities. Once seen, they can’t be unseen. The meta-religion is only the connective tissue between the cultural variations of the single religious theme, and between them and a scientific perspective. It’s there for those who are willing to look at it. But it can’t fit on a bumper sticker. It takes some study.

The meta-religion doesn’t need to be invented. It just needs to be recognized.

@skado I would definitely go for that over what we have now, (assuming that we can't get our education system house in order first)!

@skado By the way, I don't think entertainment is the only good thing we can get out of the old myths and scriptures. For instance, honor thy father and thy mother.Good advice. We can always skip over the part where it says that if you don't, they have the right to drag your ass out into the street and have the neighbors help them stone you to death.