A common opinion in our secular society is that religious influence hinders progression. It is said that humanity is held back by superstitions and unfounded values, resulting in delayed scientific advancements while paving the way for discrimination and bigotry.

On first glance this may seem like a perfectly reasonable argument to make. After all, excerpts from the Old Testament clearly condemn homosexual acts and have been used through the ages to justify discrimination of homosexual individuals while there has been numerous cases of religious groups and societies destroying scientific works, deeming it blasphemous. At this point, however, there are two things that need to be considered:


1. These are isolated occurrences. The only thing that has been proven is that religion can be detrimental to societal progression.

2. The alternative to religion is even worse.


So what is this alternative? Just plain atheism? No, this issue runs far deeper than that.

In spite of all the bad things that religion has caused, there is one thing that it did absolutely right: It kept the human population in check, preventing it from fully expressing itself the way it desired. Today, when religion is largely seen as something that you leave at home when going to work, the dire consequences of our recent liberation are becoming increasingly apparent:


- People today are more entitled than ever before. They watch movies and listen to music for free, oftentimes illegally, then shamelessly go on to criticize its content on the internet. The youth has no problem asking their parents for new smarthphones and tablets every year, even if they are in a frail financial situation. Ungratefulness and poor manners spread like a disease as all responsibility is shifted towards someone else, oftentimes a politician or caretaker.

- Popular culture is more intellectually toxic than ever before. People have no second thoughts about idolizing even the most dimwitted celebrities; claiming to reward their "open-mindedness". Repetitive, vulgar songs regularly reach the top in terms of revenue and recognition. Simple, cheap video games are favored by the masses over games with extensive lore and great thought behind its music and gameplay concept.  What was previously known as "art" is gradually replaced with uninspired, provocative works as interest in true art fades away. And the list goes on and on.

- Critical thinking is overlooked. Instead, in a truly animalistic fashion, the loudest voice is the one that holds the most authority. Namely, the person who receives the most likes on youtube/facebook, the person with the most followers on twitter and the person whose reviews has the most readers. Popularity declares whether your word holds any value, rather than the word's content itself.


Needless to say, it has never been more apparent that freedom as we know it is severely overrated. When people have no god to look up to, they worship themselves and their own ideals in its place regardless of how destructive those ideals may be to the growth of our species.

As a non-believer myself I don't know how exactly this new religion should be formed or what beliefs it should entail. All I know is that the liberty that the people of today has obtained is unbridled and needs to be restrained as soon as possible if we are to solve this issue. Otherwise, the human population may never be humble again.

Why isnt star trek good enough for you?
and religion wouldnt help in any of those points you made. its not like the atheists are more moral corrupt. most of those people are christians or muslims, they just dont care so much about their religion.

Whatever happens now, when people look back on the history books in the future to the time we are in now they will cringe in embarrassment that people in this day and age can believe in such nonsense. It's like billions of adults all swearing allegiance to the tooth fairy. Both are just a real as each other.

There doesn't need to be a new religion. It's all a load of garbage. But it won't be an overnight thing for it to diminish unfortunately. But give it a few hundred years when we are the forgotten generations  and I'd bet anything that religion by then would be in the vast minority.

~Mod Edit~

This post has been moderated.

-Smeags

As medicine improves and fear of dying dissipates, religion will naturally go extinct.

I disagree. Humanity is in a desperate need for more pragmatism.

This.  Replacing old ignorance with new ignorance solves nothing.  Teaching humanity that the only 'entities' we can rely on is ourselves, is far more important.  Also, being moral, because it's the right thing to do, is far more genuine and 'good', than being moral because you fear some divine retribution if you step out of line (which basically means without God, you openly admit you'd be out murdering and raping).  

Sigh this is why I hate religon threads.....

EDIT: Why am I ignorant if I like to have a hope after i die anyway?

And can we stop these dumbass atheism vs religon wars they dont help anyone.

In my opinion. Religion should be strictly individual and it should be illegal to force your  children into religion. Everyone can belive in what they want, but aslong as it doesnt harm anyone or destroys anything that makes trouble for someone or something else, then that should also be illegal. If people want to make a sect or a group  of people that believe in the same things, they can do that, and the harming rule applies there. Well harming someone or someones property is already illegal ofc, but i mean. Look at the islam. THe extreme muslims. They are too extreme with their religions. Also some christian things here in the west are a bit too extreme, but tbh i think religion is slowly fading away for bit to bit. It probably will never disappear entirely but i mean sweden as an example has alot of atheists now. Atheism is growing. Is that good? well yeah in most cases. I just think religion is not something that should be looked as bad on entirely. It has alot of history and many interesting stories.

it would be better for people to understand what we have before asking for new things. Most of the world is ignorant and that is the main problem