Organized religion: Is it all bad?

http://www.wordonfire.org/resources/blog/why-atheists-change-their-mind-8-common-factors/4729/

Why Atheists Change Their Mind: 8 Common Factors
by Matt Nelson April 17, 2015
...
1. Good Literature and Reasonable Writing.
...
2. “Experimentation” with Prayer and the Word of God.
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3. Historical Study of the Gospels.
...
4. Honest Philosophical Reasoning.
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5. Reasonable Believers.
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6. Modern Advances and Limitations in Science.
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7. Evidence For The Resurrection.
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8. Beauty.
This list of bullet points makes it appear that the only alternative to atheism is "the one true religion". Frankly, that is a good example which illustrates the title of this thread, "Organized religion: Is it all bad?".

It's not my wish to sow discord and disharmony. But at the same time, the narrowness of the list of options offered is one of the biggest obstacles to progress in this area. I can't emphasise enough how a broader and more inclusive approach is needed. There's no need to suggest that once someone veers even slightly off the path of atheism they are on the slippery slope leading inevitably to some fundamentalist religion. It's not a constructive approach, for several reasons. That is, at least in the context of the Skeptiko forum, it doesn't accurately represent the full range of possibilities. Many here are not atheists but hardly any subscribe to an organised religion. In addition, many new readers here may want to know what Skeptiko is all about, and may be misled into thinking that it is just one more site promoting religion. It isn't. My view of the function of Skeptiko is that it aims to move thought and ideas forwards into newer ways of seeing the world, and clearing away misconceptions. This is where I think more emphasis needs to be placed.
 
http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/05/for_its_moral_i095901.html


For Its Moral Ideals, Evolutionary Materialism "Freeloads" on Christianity

Nancy Pearcey May 8, 2015

Westerners pride themselves on holding noble ideals such as equality and universal human rights. Yet the dominant worldview of our day -- evolutionary materialism -- denies the reality of human freedom and gives no basis for moral ideals such as human rights.

So where did the idea of equal rights come from?

The 19th-century political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville said it came from Christianity. "The most profound geniuses of Rome and Greece" never came up with the idea of equal rights, he wrote. "Jesus Christ had to come to earth to make it understood that all members of the human species are naturally alike and equal."

The 19th-century atheist Friedrich Nietzsche agreed: "Another Christian concept ... has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the 'equality of souls before God.' This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights."

Contemporary atheist Luc Ferry says the same thing. We tend to take the concept of equality for granted; yet it was Christianity that overthrew ancient social hierarchies between rich and poor, masters and slaves. "According to Christianity, we were all 'brothers,' on the same level as creatures of God," Ferry writes. "Christianity is the first universalist ethos."

The Confession of Richard Rorty

A few intrepid atheists admit outright that they have to borrow the ideal of human rights from Christianity. Philosopher Richard Rorty was a committed Darwinist, and in the Darwinian struggle for existence, the strong prevail while the weak are left behind. So evolution cannot be the source of universal human rights. Instead, Rorty says, the concept came from "religious claims that human beings are made in the image of God." He cheerfully admits that he reaches over and borrows the concept of universal rights from Christianity. He even called himself a "freeloading" atheist: "This Jewish and Christian element in our tradition is gratefully invoked by freeloading atheists like myself."

At the birth of our nation, the American founders deemed it self-evident that human rights must be grounded in God. The Declaration of Independence leads off with those bright, blazing words: "We hold these truths to be self-evident -- that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

In the summer of 2013, a beer company sparked controversy when it released an advertisement for Independence Day that deleted the crucial words "by their Creator." The ad said, "They are endowed with certain unalienable rights." (Endowed by whom?) The advertisement is emblematic of what many secularists do: They borrow ideals like equality and rights from a biblical worldview but cut them off from their source in the Creator. They are freeloaders. Christians and Jews should reclaim those noble ideals, making the case that they are logically supported only by a biblical worldview.

Atheists often denounce the Bible as harsh and negative. But in reality it offers a much more positive view of the human person than any competing religion or worldview. It is so appealing that adherents of other worldviews keep freeloading the parts they like best.
More articles by Nancy Pearcey
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/vi...y=author&searchType=all&includeBlogPosts=true
 
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http://www.bloombergview.com/articl...i-say-unto-you-christians-care-about-the-poor
Conservative religious groups spend an enormous amount of time and energy on fighting poverty, much of it in the kind of hands-on, direct action that us secular types rarely get involved in. The Mormon Church runs one of the most effective private welfare states in the world. And if you don't like that model, which focuses on other Mormons, you can go to the Catholic Church's many poverty ministries, or the private welfare organizations run by evangelical megachurches across the land. You'll find pastors and lay volunteers stepping into the gaps that government welfare doesn't fill: helping single parents get cars and apartments using church funds, offering material help and social support for drug addicts who are trying to get clean, providing everything from day care to a new stove for families who cannot afford them. These churches are sending their members out on mission trips, here and abroad, that offer food, medicine, and help building homes or infrastructure needed by the community. They are going into prisons and working with inmates. They are fostering needy children. Obama's first salary as a community organizer was, in fact, paid by Catholic churches.

These services are not contingent on professing the faith; they are contingent on needing help, though sometimes also on a modicum of effort at helping yourself. Conservative Christians are taking part in the "national conversation" on poverty. They're also taking action. If there is a society-wide effort to fight poverty, it is arguably the secular folks who are shirking.

There's a common trope among liberals, that many Christians are abdicating Christ's message by focusing on stupid issues like sexual morality and abortion rather than his true message about serving the poor. This shows ignorance about how conservative religious denominations actually operate. Why do so many people hold such a distorted view? It's a product of availability bias: If you don't actually interact much with those churches, then your understanding is shaped by the politically controversial stories about abortion and gay marriage. These are readily called to mind because they are perennially discussed, while the vast work that churches do to help struggling people, day in and day out, goes unremarked.
 
Religion was not the intention of the so called Prophets. It was mankind unbelief that necessitated the rituals. Truth is that the divine is within.

Religion is summed in the one word, "Truth."
"I am the truth, which is the way and the life" for mankind,... especially if one wants to be saved from extinction by Reality, as it unfolds.
 
There's a common trope among liberals, that many Christians are abdicating Christ's message by focusing on stupid issues like sexual morality and abortion rather than his true message about serving the poor. This shows ignorance about how conservative religious denominations actually operate. Why do so many people hold such a distorted view? It's a product of availability bias: If you don't actually interact much with those churches, then your understanding is shaped by the politically controversial stories about abortion and gay marriage. These are readily called to mind because they are perennially discussed, while the vast work that churches do to help struggling people, day in and day out, goes unremarked.

Here I differ with your point of view.

Religion is the only force on society which works to make marriage the only place for sexual activity.
They ask promiscuous people to be silent about what they think and do.
This is so kids grow to see sex and marriage go together as a horse and a carriage.

The purpose is to prevent Welfare and bastard kids.
These bastards suffer great child abuse, and then become the violent criminal element.
 
I think a lot of people underestimate the benefits of religion because they don't see the harm religion prevents. Like in Libya, only after Qaddafi was deposed and the country descended into anarchy did anyone realize that his dictatorship prevented chaos. If you look back in history and catalog all the times religion was misused, you don't necessarily get a sense, during those times and those conditions, how much the abuses might have been offset by benefits. This is also true today. The data we do have about what happens when religion is absent is from communist countries and their record is not very good.

http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/03/video-lecture-by-john-lennox-explains.html
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

“Over a half century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of old people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened." Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: "Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.”
 
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During the dark ages, in many places in Europe, the "rulers" were just armed thugs who, rather than provide for their needs honestly, used violence to steal what they needed or wanted from the peasants. The church tried to curb this practice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_and_Truce_of_God
The Peace of God or Pax Dei was a proclamation issued by local clergy that granted immunity from violence to noncombatants who could not defend themselves, beginning with the peasants (agricolae) and with the clergy. The Synod of Charroux decreed a limited Pax Dei in 989, and the practice spread to most of Western Europe over the next century,[7] surviving in some form until at least the thirteenth century.
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Excommunication would be the punishment for attacking or robbing a church, for robbing peasants or the poor of farm animals
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Children and women (virgins and widows) were added to the early protections. The Pax Dei prohibited nobles from invading churches, from beating the defenseless, from burning houses, and so on. A synod of 1033 added merchants and their goods were to protected list. Significantly, the Peace of God movement began in Aquitaine, Burgundy and Languedoc, areas where central authority had most completely fragmented.
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The Truce of God or Treuga Dei had its origin in Normandy in the city of Caen.[10] It dates from the eleventh century.[11]
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It confirmed permanent peace for all churches and their grounds, the monks, clerks and chattels; all women, pilgrims, merchants and their servants, cattle and horses; and men at work in the fields.
...

see 1:20:46 - 1:24:44

Here's the transcript from the indicated segment...
1:20:46
your typical medieval knight had much more in common with Tony Soprano
than with Lancelot
They're thugs they're muscle they're violent individuals
whose primary purpose is to beat people
up and the owner of a castle would
unleash knights on peasants in the neighboring territories
and they would enter the village assaulting people
taking property and attempt to force these peasants to accept the lordship of the
owner of the castle
in the decades after the last viking attacks Europe was teeming with
unemployed soldiers trained killers
who found it hard to hang up their swords
the viking invasions had done a lot to
militarize Europe a lot more soldiers and so forth were put together
into armies
once the threat is over what do you do with all these soldiers
with no immediate danger looming the soldiers allied with local counts
who were wealthy enough to hire their own private armies
local lords who are ruling over these very small areas
they become the principal sources of authority these are
people who build castles not a necessarily to protect
the countryside from from outside raiders but to subjugate the
countryside to enforce their will upon local peasants
to take from them what they needed this period in particular if you're a peasant
would've been a pretty rough time to be living in
in a desperate bid to stem the violence the Catholic Church tried to place
limits
on when where and against who the Knights could strike
and to get the Knights to pay attention the clergy relied on the most powerful
weapons in their arsenal
the clothes blood and bones of the Saints
they would gather all the relics from a given area
and collect them in one place often in an open field [in a] giant pile
and then they would summon all the nights and they would show them
the pile of relics and demand that they swear to obey the peace and truce of God
otherwise the Saints associated with these relics
would attack them and punish them and so
when you're confronted with these relics it had a powerful psychological
affect on knights sometimes they just collapsed senseless on the ground at the thought
of all these collected Saints
punishing them
to reinforce the power of the relics the church issued two proclamations
detailing God's position on war
they were called the peace of God and the truce of God
the peace of God proclaimed that certain individuals
peasants widows priests
individuals who cannot defend themselves should not be attacked by Knights
The truce of God proclaimed that certain periods of time should be free
of knightly violence entirely that lent
or Sunday's the period around Christmas
those should be periods were there is no warfare

"Your typical medieval knight had much more in common with Tony Soprano than with Lancelot. They're thugs, they're muscle, they're violent individuals whose primary purpose is to beat people up. And the owner of a castle would unleash knights on peasants in the neighboring territories and they would enter the village assaulting people taking property and attempt to force these peasants to accept the lordship of the owner of the castle."

"These are people who build castles not necessarily to protect the countryside from from outside raiders but to subjugate the countryside to enforce their will upon local peasants to take from them what they needed."

"[The Church] would gather all the relics from a given area and collect them in one place often in an open field [in a] giant pile and then they would summon all the nights and they would show them the pile of relics and demand that they swear to obey the peace and truce of God. Otherwise the Saints associated with these relics would attack them and punish them. And so when you're confronted with these relics it had a powerful psychological affect on knights sometimes they just collapsed senseless on the ground at the thought of all these collected Saints punishing them"

"The Peace of God proclaimed that certain individuals, peasants, widows, priests, individuals who cannot defend themselves, should not be attacked by Knights"


http://ncu9nc.blogspot.com/2015/04/video-john-lennox-on-problem-of-evil_7.html
Dennis Prager
To put this as clearly as possible: If there is no God who says, "Do not murder," murder is not wrong. Many people or societies may agree that it is wrong. But so what? Morality does not derive from the opinion of the masses. If it did, then apartheid was right; murdering Jews in Nazi Germany was right; the history of slavery throughout the world was right; and clitoridectomies and honor killings are right in various Muslims societies.

So, then, without God, why is murder wrong?

Is it, as Dawkins argues, because reason says so?

My reason says murder is wrong, just as Dawkins's reason does. But, again, so what? The pre-Christian Germanic tribes of Europe regarded the Church's teaching that murder was wrong as preposterous. They reasoned that killing innocent people was acceptable and normal because the strong should do whatever they wanted.

"My reason says murder is wrong, just as Dawkins's reason does. But, again, so what? The pre-Christian Germanic tribes of Europe regarded the Church's teaching that murder was wrong as preposterous. They reasoned that killing innocent people was acceptable and normal because the strong should do whatever they wanted."
 
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Difficult to tell from the title, but this video is relevant to the discussion here. He makes some interesting arguments about the value of organized religion, which he contrasts against the rise of 'personal mysticism' in the 60s with the boomer generation.

 
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To me, "the "science of being"... which is something I don't have confidence will ever be fully understood in terms of something mechanical.. is not served by then imposing the things that any religion seems to impose. Yet, within most religious streams can be found a mystical component.

My experience included finding the mystery pointed to in many ways by many of these "inner" streams. Once I "got it" (meaning the mystery), I felt that religions actually distract, not assist those seeking the deepest truth.

So it was my exploration of religions that led me to the mystery and through discovering the heart of the mystery (which I cannot express in words... at best I can use metaphor to give an idea) religion no longer has a place in my world view nor my experience.
 
Here I differ with your point of view.

Religion is the only force on society which works to make marriage the only place for sexual activity.
They ask promiscuous people to be silent about what they think and do.
This is so kids grow to see sex and marriage go together as a horse and a carriage.

The purpose is to prevent Welfare and bastard kids.
These bastards suffer great child abuse, and then become the violent criminal element.
Well You only need to look at ISIS to see where this leads - a road that Christianity has trod in centuries gone by.

Virginity outside marriage becomes so prized that girls can't be let out of the house, or even given an education.

Girls who make a mistake, or who are raped become ostracised or even killed.

People such as homosexuals (who are almost certainly just born different - this isn't something one chooses) are seen as sinners worthy of being killed.

Religion and sex form a terrible combination. It is worth noting that Jesus himself does not seem to have pursued this issue much.

David
 
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Well You only need to look at ISIS to see where this leads - a road that Christianity has trod in centuries gone by.

Virginity outside marriage becomes do prized that girls can't be let out of the house, or even given an education.

Girls who make a mistake, or who are raped become ostracised or even killed.

People such as homosexuals (who are almost certainly just born different - this isn't something one chooses) are seen as sinners worthy of being killed.

Religion and sex form a terrible combination. It is worth noting that Jesus himself does not seem to have pursued this issue much.

David

I think this is somewhat backwards in terms of what leads to what; I think that many lifestyles are (within certain parameters) dictated/directed by socio-economic factors. There may be some counter examples, but it seems to me that the poorer, more destitute, more warring groups will always tend towards more (sometimes extremely) traditional lifestyles. Places in the West have the option of discarding those lifestyles, but I believe it's by and large because we're so affluent and under almost no immediate threats. If something horrible happened and people's food supplies were threatened or there were more immediate threats on people's lives (war or environmental disaster), I'm certain that we'd move towards more traditional lifestyles more or less automatically . . . this whether any of us like it or not. But ultimately, I don't see this as good or bad, but rather as an automatic survival function. This is why I have trouble with those who fully and endlessly equate progressive political ethics with spirituality. I considered myself a radical leftist for the longest time; I would say of myself that I was violently pacifist, to give something of an example of where I stood and how I saw myself as very, very far left (on almost everything - not just war). But over time I've come to be more than suspicious of the idea that all/most traditional ways are ignorant, unethical, and unspiritual, even though many of those ways are certainly unpalatable for many in Western countries today. There are certainly tons of traditional attitudes and lifestyles that I wouldn't necessarily want to put up a defense of, but I believe with a whole lot of it there's a hidden wisdom. I believe that's what cupid dave's certainly touching on. In fact, I'd go one further and say that the advantages of a strong, (more or less) traditional family unit probably go much further than just preventing welfare and the abuse of bastard kids . . . into more subtle and hard to describe advantages.

That said, the examples of raped girls or homosexuals being killed for those reasons are beyond terrible. We certainly all agree on that. But I think you're going to the extreme, extreme end of a spectrum and using those examples to color anything to the [reluctant use of the word] 'right' of where we are today.
 
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I think this is somewhat backwards in terms of what leads to what; I think that many lifestyles are (within certain parameters) dictated/directed by socio-economic factors. There may be some counter examples, but it seems to me that the poorer, more destitute, more warring groups will always tend towards more (sometimes extremely) traditional lifestyles. Places in the West have the option of discarding those lifestyles, but I believe it's by and large because we're so affluent and under almost no immediate threats. If something horrible happened and people's food supplies were threatened or there were more immediate threats on people's lives (war or environmental disaster), I'm certain that we'd move towards more traditional lifestyles more or less automatically . . . this whether any of us like it or not. But ultimately, I don't see this as good or bad, but rather as an automatic survival function. This is why I have trouble with those who fully and endlessly equate progressive political ethics with spirituality. I considered myself a radical leftist for the longest time; I would say of myself that I was violently pacifist, to give something of an example of where I stood and how I saw myself as very, very far left (on almost everything - not just war). But over time I've come to be more than suspicious of the idea that all/most traditional ways are ignorant, unethical, and unspiritual, even though many of those ways are certainly unpalatable for many in Western countries today. There are certainly tons of traditional attitudes and lifestyles that I wouldn't necessarily want to put up a defense of, but I believe with a whole lot of it there's a hidden wisdom. I believe that's what cupid dave's certainly touching on. In fact, I'd go one further and say that the advantages of a strong, (more or less) traditional family unit probably go much further than just preventing welfare and the abuse of bastard kids . . . into more subtle and hard to describe advantages.

That said, the examples of raped girls or homosexuals being killed for those reasons are beyond terrible. We certainly all agree on that. But I think you're going to the extreme, extreme end of a spectrum and using those examples to color anything to the [reluctant use of the word] 'right' of where we are today.
First, I don't think this a rich vs poor issue, or indeed left vs right (whatever that means nowadays).

Second, not everyone in Western countries is well off - far from it - and most people accept that a woman has the right to decide who she marries, and that must involve some period of dating and falling in love. Most also accept that if you are gay, you are gay.

Third, not every poor country adopts extreme sexual conservatism - this is primarily a fault of the Abrahamic religions. Do you imagine that young people only dance together in the West!

I think we in the West have become too apologetic about our culture - sure there are excesses and corruption, - but the basic idea that people can date and fall in love on their own initiative, is one of our best features.

Finally, sexual conservatism doesn't produce a purity - all sorts of vile practices flourish under the surface - it just destroys the joy of falling in love for many people.

I agree that the West has gone too far in the sense that we are in danger of destroying our family structure, but one extreme doesn't justify the opposite extreme.

Our culture has also spawned a freedom to explore spiritual issues - SKEPTIKO - that doesn't exist in more conservative societies (your phrase - I think I'd describe them differently). I suspect many people in such countries, secretly doubt the teachings of their faith, but are unable to explore alternatives on pain of death.

David
 
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http://www.boredpanda.com/praying-together/
every-kids-need-pets-102__700.jpg
 
The old saying, " When Religionists are good , it's because they are good, not because they're Religionists". Most sane ordinary people have a good idea of what good means. It annoys me when someone is said to be "A good Christian" for example when this only means he or she adheres to the dogmas and beliefs of a Church, not moral behaviour.
 
Science is wrong about almost everything because ... they have to lie about history, creating a myth that Christianity impeded the development of science, in order to protect methodological naturalism and materialism from philosophical opposition.

"...the “scientific revolution” was a continuation of developments that started deep in the Middle Ages among people whose scientific work expressed their religious belief. ... Given the advantages Christianity provided, it is hardly surprising that modern science developed only in the West, within a Christian civilization."

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/10/modern-sciences-christian-sources

Modern Science’s Christian Sources

Exploding the persistant myth that Christianity impeded the growth of science.

by James Hannam

October 2011
...
Back in 1978, Carl Sagan included a time line of scientific progress in his book Cosmos, showing that nothing at all happened between a.d. 415 and a.d. 1543. This barren period, he implied, was caused by the thousand-year dominance of Christianity. The “conflict thesis” of science and religion was born in the salons of ancien régime France, where philosophes like Voltaire and d’Alembert used it as a weapon against the Catholic Church. It was further developed in Victorian England by T. H. Huxley in his battle to diminish the influence of the clergy in London’s Royal Society. And it was perfected in American universities by the likes of Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, who provided the theory with intellectual ballast in his heavily annotated A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology at the end of the nineteenth century. It has been promoted in countless articles in popular magazines and elementary-school textbooks.
...
...the “scientific revolution” was a continuation of developments that started deep in the Middle Ages among people whose scientific work expressed their religious belief. The conflict thesis, in other words, is a myth.
...
As it happens, much of the evidence marshaled in favor of the conflict thesis turns out to be bogus.
...
It is remarkable that authors who consider themselves skeptics can swallow some of these stories whole.
...
Historians have been debunking these legends for over a century now, but each new generation of popular writers continues to recycle them.
...
Modern science stands as one of the great achievements of Western civilization—not of Islam, China, or even ancient Greece. Many historians of science are still reluctant to admit this. They praise ancient Greek and Arabic sciences as successful on their own terms but have lost sight of the fact that the theories advanced by early science were largely false.
...
Aristotle started from the passive observation of nature and then built up a system based on rational argument. This had two enormous disadvantages: Compared to controlled experiments, passive observation is usually misleading, and not even Aristotle’s powers of reason could prevent blunders in his arguments.
...
Aristotle’s faulty method was struck down by the Catholic Church, allowing previously forbidden ideas to flourish. The Church also made natural philosophy a compulsory part of the courses it required trainee theologians to follow. So, science held a central place in Christian centers of learning that it did not hold in Islamic madrassas. And Christianity itself provided a worldview especially compatible with experimental science.
...
Christianity made science a theologically justified and even righteous path to pursue. Since God created the world, exploring how it works honors its Creator.
...
Christians realized it was impossible to work out the laws of nature through rational analysis alone. The only way to discover his plan was to go out and look.
...
Given the advantages Christianity provided, it is hardly surprising that modern science developed only in the West, within a Christian civilization. Although other religious traditions could have provided a similarly fertile metaphysical ground for the study of nature, none actually did so. Christianity was a crucial cause of the unique development of Western science, the only science that has consistently produced true theories of nature.​
 
I ultimately see religions faltering more and more.

Personally I think shoring up something from their near inevitable wreckage is worthwhile, and more likely the more fruitful option.
 
The aspect of Religions that makes them counter-productive is their stance as the sole bearer of, and gateway to, the absolute truth. While I think it is obvious than we exist in an absolute reality, our experience of that reality, or how we chose to relate to that reality, is necessarily as individuals, just the same as when we relate to other persons: as one individual to another individual. This means that all the hard lifting we have to do to understand the nature of our reality, as experienced by each of us, is ours and ours alone. Religions can’t really deliver what they promise because we are each unique private persons and they are a socializing public institution which necessarily divides society into true believers (the saved), heretics and apostates (the lost, confused and the damned). I think we can reasonably extent this argument to any socializing public institution like academia, Science, and any of the “isms” that claim to be the sole bearer and gateway to truth.
 
I'd say religion is what got us into a space where people would rather deny their own meaningful existence than accept anything that looks like God or leans toward It. Part of the problem is the absolute gateway, but part of it is this idea you should hate yourself for your sexual urges and that damnation awaits you because you are a horrible sinner. (Switch some of those terms for Hinduism and other religions, but that sexual repression/control is definitely there especially for women.)

The faster religious authority wanes, seems like the faster the prospects for parapsychology or even immaterialism in general will improve. At the very least the value of secularism should be continually emphasized in the Western world, it might also help counter the fundamentalist recruitment issue as well.
 
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