A good survey , but first justify the need for any form of worship involving any human and any supernatural figure or object. Surely it demeans humanity and its collective potential

@Mcflewster. I don't think there is or was a need, only that it is a natural thing for humans to have done when they were ignorant of so many things. Having the knowledge we have today, it is mind blowing that people still feel a "need" to worship some invisible being. To believe in a creator god/force is one thing, but to think it needs/wants us to worship it is quite another.

So how do we stop something so damaging now? There is still so many people drawn to religion and the cult mentality. How do we stop it now? There are a lot of people getting hurt needlessly over this...

@Desertcactus we teach that citizenship, civics, ethics we create a new identity for them.
People are not religious because they believe, they believe because first the identity of religious come.
They even think that following a middle Eastern religion makes them unitedststian... we give first a way out of this identity and then they can learn

"Religion itself is just a set of bad ideas." I would prefer

"Religion itself is just a set of bad conclusions."

The early 'elders' actually used a crude idea of science . You can have any idea (hypothesis) you like but when you portray it as " recording of a conclusion of a supernatural being which the listeners cannot possibly verify. This is when the trouble starts . The idea of god is perpetually attractive. Every time you swear you are perpetuating that unproved idea.

Thanks spongebob! Thats exactly how I expected you to react!

[memes.getyarn.io]

Aw, shucks.

you are wrong. There is no leopard in this explanation, it is a tiger.. (just making a silly joke about meaningless differences that can cause huge cisms).

This explanation of cost of error - bias - stabilizing stronger tribes - most effective organization really close the case.

Religion is a huge crane that built the society, but now that we have elevator system installed and people want to enjoy the view, that huge crane outside is just disturbing us...

Well at least for the developed countries is like this. But there are many places in the world that religion is still the only form of organization that can keep the people cooperating.

@Pedrohbds

there are many places in the world that religion is still the only form of organization that can keep the people cooperating.

And yet I can't help thinking of Christopher Hitchens' argument that the combination of ancient religious beliefs and 21st-century technologies spells almost inevitable disaster. For example, fundamentalist Muslim fanatics could never have invented the skyscraper or the jet airliner; all they could do was bring these two inventions of modern, secular society into deadly conjunction.

Perhaps the people cooperate with one another in the name of religion, but just as often it's a force to unify against everyone else; whereas there is no reason a secular society can't unite just as well without the need for declaring war on everyone who doesn't believe the same.

@Paul4747 Yes, but you forgot to say that in some villages in countries that do not matter for the western society. Any psychological, medical social and other services are still only provided by religious or religious based entities and not by a civil/secular group. So it is natural that those ideas about a world without religion are absurd for them.

The moral argument can be false, but given that some religion is the only thing helping or organizing some places, this argument is still valid.

@Paul4747 I would take your thoughts on this opinion: The US legal system also relies on religion as a base in some ways. Most people miss the connection but laws are created with the assumption that people think the same and have the same perspectives, in essence that differences are illegitimate or the fault of the individual. It is not necessary though, and I think the constitution was meant to give people the benefit of the doubt, but now stupid TV shows and mass media (hysteria) I think are creating a combination of chronic fear of differences and false confidence that people are supposed to all think the same way. (notice how they stereotype any school shooter or criminal as a misfit then stereotype any misfit as a criminal.) It is embedded in our own society so deep I think people are not seeing it for what it is -a religious based ideology (that everyone could or should think the same) that is hampering our ability to have a more peaceful society.

@Desertcactus even the idea of nation or country is an ideology if you think...

@Pedrohbds Ya, I know. I think the ancient tribal systems were better. There was an emphasis on personal freedom and authority was not able to get so large it would be able to squash people, much less be motivated by money to do so. I am not sure how to make tribal systems work in a world where, undoubtably some country will still be hyper-organized enough to be bigger power system though. Perhaps that itself would be motivation for tribes to cooperate though.
Have you thought much about a replacement system? or just no system at all perhaps, like most places 5K years ago when families would organize and fight larger threats together then disband to their own personal freedoms?

@Desertcactus The US legal system, inasmuch as that is the Constitution, is explicitly NOT based on religion; in fact it excludes established religion in the 1st Amendment. Where religioun crept in was on the level of statute law, meaning state and local laws, which were most definitely religiously founded. Many laws forbade blasphemy (and are still on the books in some places, just not enforced). There are still laws against sodomy in some states, which most people don't realize includes heterosexual oral sex as well- and they would have been quickly stricken down if the laws had been enforced across the board, not just against gay men.

The founders envisioned a legal system based on ethics, rather than religion. There's some overlap, to a degree. Not murdering, not stealing, not committing adultery, not bearing false witness (perjury) make sense ethically, because they keep order in society. You don't want to be murdered or robbed, so it makes sense to have laws that forbid this kind of behavior. Lying under oath should be a serious matter, so there are perjury laws. And in the small communities of the time, adultery was likely to stir up violence and killing, so one can see how laws against adultery would be seen as being in the public interest. The fact that these are also some of the Mosaic commandments don't mean they're exclusively religious. An atheist can consider "Don't commit murder" as being a worthy rule on its own merits, it needs no deity in the clouds to hand down such a law.

@Desertcactus tribal system based on friendship/familiar ties will always lead to small groups fighting each other. We as a species based on industry and technology need big numbers. We need universities from the whole world to cooperate, we need industries to trade in global scale, we need mineral resources to be transported to places that have energy to turn them into materials.
So no, a tribal system would bring only chaos. Immagine if an industry needed to coop with rules for every tribal territory that the truck with products has to pass.... If there is roads there.
We need to transcend the tribe, and the civics, ethics and turning the whole mankind our tribe is the answer.

@Pedrohbds I tend to agree. The history of the human race has been one of forming larger coalitions; villages, towns, cities, nations, alliances. A town by itself is screwed when a natural disaster hits or an enemy threatens. As part of a nation, it has neighbors to turn to, a government with relief agencies prepositioned to come to its aid (at least, ideally) and usually a military to protect it. Likewise, a nation that eschews allies is crippling itself. Survival in the international arena demands that one makes friends, because enemies come about of themselves.

@Paul4747 If you go for the source of human power as a species is our numbers, the more we can gather to some degree of cooperation, the better we are.
Books are like hard drives, they can store a lot of info, but they do no do work. But this info in someone's brain works like RAM memory and can produce technology and progress. That is why it is in everyone interest that every human possible should be educated so we maximize our RAM memory and processing power.

@Pedrohbds People like me with alternative perspectives, (literally my brain processes things differently) who have solutions to issues because of those perspectives are the first ones booted out. Even if we try to get along with everyone they'l change the rules that will force us to THINK like everyone or get profiled as a criminal. Been happening all through history, Still happening today, becoming MORE common in criminal profiling. I think that would get worse if everyone had to cooperate on the same things and the more people decide to weed out people with differences (in the name of cooperation) the more people realize most of us have an abnormality of one sort or the other that is seen as anti-compliant to the norm. Most of us have something different about how we think that eventually too many people get frustrated with the constant compliance and thats how "perfect looking" ancient societies fell apart...over and over. The ones that want to kill anyone with differing perspectives just eventually realize they've killed so many people that their gonna get wiped out if they continue, the neuro-minorities will cooperate temporarily with each other to eradicate the superpowers when necessary but not in regular day to day ideas or life. The everyone cooperate plan doesn't leave room for alternative perspectives and the smartest people are ALWAYS in the minority. That plan has been tried by every society since the dawn of man but it will never work. The closer it gets to working the more people die from injustices meant to stereotype the majority. The closer societies get to appreciating differences and actual justice being blind, and giving people the benefit of the doubt the more progress is made, like in early America. Feels like were moving backwards in the US now.

@Desertcactus if it feels that things are moving backwards even in US, is because media wants you to be afraid.The world was never so peaceful, what is happening is that the people that were in the "bad part" are having voice and the Crystal castles of the privileged is not so insulated.
And one group having contact with the other, knowing and accepting (after the initial clash) will make the tribe grow...

@Pedrohbds Hmmm...There is a lot of fear mongering going on for sure.

Religion likely evolved because some was reading a book that had written in it "religion ... pure and faultless is this: to help widows and orphans in need and avoiding worldly corruption " James 1:27

Then someone come along and seen a person reading out of this book and asked the person reading what they were doing.

So then, the person reading said, "I am learning how to be religious " meaning how to help widows and orphans while avoiding worldly corruption.

Then the person took the book as being a "religious " book and now you know the rest of the story.

In agreement with you on that thesis 100%.

@Word Or maybe there was no need for a 'book' at all, for those seeking enlightenment from a solitary man humbly seated in full lotus.

And don’t forget brainwash!!

Dawkins Selfish Gene creates a phenotype-US- to carry out the goal of getting reproduced in the next generation. The gene does not care what it does or who is damaged in its march to get itself replicated. It does not even care for itself, so the bigger and better brutes or predators always win out. The major example is homeo sapiens winning type A behavior that has killed off all other human species. Religion, it could be argued, was used to justify power in those who sought power, So religion could be said to have helped facilitate the selfish gene's blind march toward replication in generation after generation.