Great question. Every day find the good, the interesting, the value, the lesson, the connections. In other words, create and enjoy the process. Schedule in positive friends and meaningful moments. Reading, walking, video games, working out, painting, singing, etc. Demand these things in your priorities.

Also, have a personal 'ritual that supports your belief in self. You believe in you and that you are the captain of your ship. Then you can progress and enjoy and adjust and be daily happy, and able to handle the challenges as they come.

I sort of agree with this thinking, but I believe religion is mostly a mechanism for people to abdicate responsibility for their own lives and just allow religion to control/direct their actions. A multitude of excuses are built into the process, as you described above.

I like to believe that I guide my own actions, and I do to a certain extent. However, my need for survival drives me to continue to go to work and collect my paycheck in order to keep my home, medical insurance, and my car (which enables me to keep going to work), and to maintain my standard of living, such as it is. Sadly, I think a majority of people are in my boat, or worse.

Coffee

I go to work every day. That's all the order or structure I need.

Ok... I've numerous rituals and superstitions.
This is one my favorite uncle showed me. The "empty wine bottle" ritual:
Upon finishing off a good bottle of vino, I take the bottle outside and let the last few drops drip onto the soil. It has to be dirt, not concrete. Natural rock is ok. I then say "thanks for this great bottle of wine, and thanks for...... <whatever comes to mind, different each time>". Basically sharing the bounty of the planet with the planet. I'm not thanking a diety as such. Just being grateful.
Pretty silly, eh?

1. Believe in institutions like the government and universities.
2. believe in human rights
3. believe in significance of my actions and hence assume agency

Meditation and yoga help me balance, my morning tea wakes me up. I anyways felt felt helpless trying to hold on to religion. Nature always gives me direction and fills me with peace.

I come to this site and at times see people who reject the god order but have something just as bad

Having coffee in the morning!

I'm agnostic so I don't look to religion for salvation. I am certain that there is no God as defined by religion, but I hope there is a afterlife of some kind just in case because we need to have justification to get our just reward, and it keeps us on the right path.

Very insightful post. Many atheists/agnostics often make the mistake of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Your comment points to the need to have secular replacements for the needs that religion fulfills.

As far as for a purpose in life, I tried to speak out for Justice.

I work, read, think, and pool. Like you wrote, religion is a primitive form of philosophy. It gives answers to some of life's fundamental questions - albeit primitive answers. It also can prevent you from finding the truth if you base your beliefs on an authority or commandments, rather than on your own reasoning.

I practice yoga and meditation to stretch my body and discipline my mind. I practice music and martial arts to develop dexterity and strength. I burn the sacrament of cannabis to calm and sooth my mind and body. I don’t pray or believe “good vibes” can be sent mentally necessarily. I believe keeping a positive or at worst neutral outlook and being grateful and service oriented make all the difference in how I engage with the world.

Things I believe in showing reverence for:

1. Scientific method and the knowledge it produces
2. Learning from history/the elderly and the wisdom it produces
3. Women in general
4. Music/arts in general
5. Nature, including our place within it and the healing/life sustaining things we harvest from it
6. Any less fortunate, more oppressed person or group than myself (except the imaginary persecution of straight white Christian males, that’s a group delusion like most all their other beliefs)
7. Getting lost in the process of any mindful skill you can practice including number 4 or more practical methods of building/repairing.
8. The transient, temporal nature of life and suffering. The fact that everything is temporary and one may savor both the lows and highs.
9. Admitting when you’re wrong/not being afraid to apologize for, own and correct past mistakes
10. Authentic, artful performance of any act or skill displaying humility and vulnerability.

A lot of my philosophies are derived from eastern spirituality and personal experience, subjective feelings, psychedelics, and funk music. Although I no longer consider myself even vaguely spiritual, I think the value of these things, although subjective, is hard to deny if you engage with them yourself. Basically everything our president is a disgrace to is something practically worthy of worship. I’m using hyperbole by saying worship, but for all practical purposes those are the closest things to gods I’m compelled to show honor for.

A tradition I carried subconsciously from my Dad was to keep a work log, which I've used to track my time and earnings at multiple jobs, just as he did as a teacher & bartender for many years. It functions as a sort of quantifiable diary to lend order to my working life, which was often multi-tiered. For answers to life's more existential mysteries, though, I've relied on multiple sources such as authors, poets, comedians, & friends.

[com2340-summer-10.blogspot.com]

I try and avoid rituals and order...I gravitate more towards chaos than order. I like not knowing or having a plan...life happens anyway so everything planned is subject to change for me.
I find myself both annoyed and thrilled/invigorated by disruption...like traffic...mostly annoyed but thrilling in ways calculating an escape on the fly

I go to work every day. That's all the order or structure I need.

Ah, yes, the utility argument—religion is useful, so it must remain. It serves a purpose for the masses, albeit inconsistently, and answers troubling questions, replacing them with even greater questions in the guise of the mysterious. But we haven’t always had religion. Organized religion arose during the Neolithic Revolution, as cultures transitioned from nomadic hunter-gatherers to agriculture and settlement. Imposters who called themselves prophets, oracles and priests claimed unique authority, and the compliant and ignorant were subdued. And in nearly every nation or empire, the altar supported the throne, and the throne endowed the altar.

But we now know, if we know anything at all, that the doctrines, creeds and dogmas were of purely human invention, and that the pompous pretenders who go by the title of ‘clergy’ and who have the gall to assert a special calling, know nothing more about the infinite than do we, the so-called laity. Religion is a sham, its comforts are a placebo and its promises are hollow, and worst of all, it continues to slither around the halls of political power, seeking advantages for itself, and in return, obtaining justification for its very existence.

I would suggest anyone that has left religion to pick up the satanic bible and tag the first half. It's an interesting perspective on religion and guides you to focus on yourself.

Religion may bring the illusion of order to an individual's life. since order is not a normal characteristic for individuals, the illusion is pretty easily shattered, unless to that illusion one adds DElusion, rituals may feel calming to come. i even enjoy some rituals now and again (lighting the chanukah candles, for example) but neither rely on them for a sense of well-being nor mistake them for more than they are. i really enjoy passover a lot but have never read the same haggadah two years running. i don't WANT to do things by rote, rote activities lose their meaning. on passover i want to think about how slavery has not been abolished in the world, not even in the usa, and how until everyone is free, no one is free. one does not have to believe in an imaginary boss to appreciate those thoughts. one does actually have to think, though. so one can use ritual to stimulate thought, or to replace thought. i have reason to believe most religionists use it, and religion itself, to replace thought. no wonder ritual seems so calming to such folk!

g

God is a deflection of responsibility. A happy make-believe blanket to help cope with nightmares. A dram of Dutch-courage by day.

Order to my life? Order depends on the person, I have no ritual to bring my life order. The fate of Karma and Energy of the Force in Meditation and daily life. I have no order, and no ritual to my being.

I run and meditate every day!

Read a book once about the evolution of religion. No pun intended. Can't recall the author, but it was an interesting read. Basically said what you just stated that religion was a way to explain the unknown, that it was a necessary step in the evolution of society. However it surmised and I agree that it has outlived its usefulness. I have friends who are non-believers, but believe that religion is a good thing. They say that it helps people to be better individuals or to keep them in line. What do you think?

Maybe I'm a little late to the conversation, but Science - and the pursuit of science - is in itself a great way to find order. And if we all followed Science as religiously as many followed God, we might all live in a much better, happier, healthier, economically stable world.

If your loved one dies in a car accident - God did it?
Or maybe it was the car company who knew full well that they had a faulty part that may cause crashes, but figured it was cheaper to pay out a few deaths and replace their entire production line.
Or maybe that drunk jerk from down the road who religiously drinks himself silly every other night and crashed into your loved one? Still God?

If a thousand kids die in an earthquake - GOD did it?
But maybe they were going to school in a poorly made building, built by deliberately cutting corners and knowingly wasn't up to code... was that God or a bunch of money grubbing jerks.

Ya - I know what you're saying, and community is a very valuable thing, but when it's used as a replacement for critical thinking and real answers - I dunno - I would prefer to find another community.

...and that's were Agnostic.com come in.
(and family and friends)

((edit: Ha ha - I spelled night with a K... LOL - drunk jerk probably not a knight, although Knights probably did drink a lot too.))