More to the point, can a society maintain complete intellectual freedom without doing away with religion?

Why would you think that what one believes is in any way under their conscious control?

Since society has never obtained complete intellectual freedom, it couldn't possibly maintain it.

Ouch. Why do I have the uneasy feeling that you are at least partly suggesting that religions somehow play a role in intellectual freedom? Hoping I'm wrong on that score, I then have a question for you. What could conceivably occur that would affect intellectual freedom in the course of removing religion from our midst? Religious argument is certainly not something we need to preserve merely because it is one more argument. In science we discard unusable ideas every day. We don't keep them around merely to have something to beat with an intellectual switch and I daresay you'd find precious few willing to defend them.

If, on the other hand, you are suggesting we should be free to pursue any idea whatsoever as 'proof' of our intellectual freedom, I suppose I'd be willing to pay lip service to the notion, but I don't see what good can come from defending the right to inanities and absurd notions. Oh, and yes, many of those notions can be shown to be absurd.

I am skeptical about wether or not "complete intellectual freedom" is even an absolute.

Obviously there are deegrees, but I think tribalism is so ingrained in our psyche that we have a natural bias against different ideas and opinions.

We will never be able to get away from religion. Some people just can’t accept the fact that when your dead it’s over , therefore we have religions as that gives them hope.

bees do it fantastically

If people are not allowed to choose their beliefs that’s not freedom.

The more any authority says 'X' is bad and 'Y' is good the more people drift towards 'X' if only out of a sense of rebellion and a dislike of being told what is good and what is bad. Nearly everyone I knew as a kid ignored their parents and often did what they were told not to do.

In a world with widespread intellectual freedom, bad ideas will have nowhere to hide from criticism. Religion, being one of the worst ideas, will wither away.

Doing away with religion gives us freedom, so yup - I'd say so. But don't ban religion... it'll go away by itself the more a society evolves for the better. Norway is a good example already mentioned... Banning religion like the communists just doesn't work.

In America, it seems that freedom 'from' intellect has a bigger following that freedom 'from' religion.

I think it's possible, one day. But humanity has a lot of growing up to do.

I would think so. What would prevent it?