You know, the memes about a world with no religion being more advanced, or libs quoting Lennon's Imagine, etc etc... well, I realized that they never question whether a world can actually be with no religion.
Now, I do not mean religion only as in organized religion like Catholicism or Islam or Buddhism, but simply as a faith shared by a group of people, a belief not grounded in "pure reason".
With this definition in mind, I don't think that Humans can exist in a world with no religion. Maybe some individuals might be able to exist in a state of complete disbelief and empiricism, but as a society as a whole, it is hard to envision.
And if we look closer to home, i.e. communist revolutions, for example the 21 years long fight in China by the CCP to take power, including the Long March, this cannot be driven by reason alone. To endure what they did, to continue for so long, these people must have had the kind of religious fervor that I doubt most "religious" people actually have.
I do not think it would be desirable for society to abandon all religion, i.e., unreasonable beliefs, which include hope, hope for something better (e.g. communism).
Oo, finally a post I can participate in. I've taken various classes on (roughly) this subject, and short answer, no, a world without religion can't really exist. Because basically, we (humans) are hardwired to be religious - it's just in our brains to seek out and engage in some form of religion or spirituality. Sure, there can be hardcore atheists out there, but for society as a whole, a form of agnosticism (and/or folk belief) is more common, outside of "institutionalized" religion that is. And if you expand your definition of "religious" a bit, you'll see that religion/ritual/belief is truly everywhere.
Religion and Marxism is something I've spent a long time thinking about. I do wonder what religion would like under socialism, and what it would truly mean to de-organize and "de-institutionalize" it. Because for so many religions, the "institution" is a natural part of it. All I know is that religion has to be there, in some form, and don't think throwing out all the old beliefs or making communism into a "religion" itself is the best course of action.
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When you begin analyzing the apparently 'secular' american culture through the lens of 'this is just exactly a religion but doesn't call itself that', the whole thing really makes a lot more sense.
Spirituality is arguably the only core human trait/need that a lot of the big-L Left think is inherently 'bad' and something we should attempt to 'abolish'. It's akin to seeking the abolition of thumbs, as far as I can see.
Incidentally, atheism is a religion haha and I don't just mean spiritual people who don't have a god as part of that. There is a fervent culture of atheists that run around proselytizing people in the streets. 'Hey, have you heard the good word that there is no god?' They have a shared worldview and public figures, and extremely firm beliefs on questions that, honestly, we simply are not able to answer hahaha
I think there are actually lots of 'good' spiritualities alive today, to touch on your question, much as marxists believe there was something like 'original communism' :)
I am fascinated by your knowledge and would read book-length posts about it, if you'd like hahahaha
Early Christianity could maybe be an example of institutionless religion (or rather, with weak institutions), I mean first century Christianity. Or maybe the piraha people who only believe you if you say something that you have experienced first hand?
thanks for this, out of interest, what do you mean by hard-wired?
if u don't mind expanding, why would you say religion has to be there? I don't necessarily disagree I just want to know what you think
Coming back to your answer, it makes me question one thing. At which point can we start considering then that machine learning systems, like neural networks, have become religious? Because the output of such a machine learning system is not a guaranteed truth right, it's only a form of "belief" on a possible result.
And I'd argue that it is non deterministic, since the order in which the training data is passed to the model, as well as its initialization both play a role in making the result of the training unique, which is quite comparable to humans