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).
That is a good point. In this case I guess we could say I mean that any thought needs to be produced from an empirical basis, and its conclusion can only be considered valid and true once it has also been verified empirically, and held as "mere" hypothesis until then.
But it's true that reason can perfectly be non empirical
right ok. so then i guess with religion, a lot of it can be verified empirically - not to everyone's standards of proof - but there are felt experiences associated with spirituality/religion that serve as an empirical justification for the religion, and also tangible artifacts of religion.
if you define spirituality as 'unreasonable' (not verified) beliefs then yeah it'd be impossible to abandon it, a lot of our thought even in hard sciences is unverified or currently unverifiable empirically.
but I think your op was mostly talking about faith/hope, so in your phrasing that would be an unreasonable (unverified) thought, because we don't know if things will get better, or if we will succeed?
i worry that this is a trap of inactivity. if we always wait empirical verification it will take to long. so we turn to spirituality, an old trusted method, in the absence of hard proofs in order to counter the fear of the future. but we can predict the future, and act on those predictions without having to wait for empirical proof, and without having to be ambiguous & enigmatic like the spiritualist.
can't we provide reasonably accurate material predictions of the future, and source hope and belief in that future without fairy tales? Sure we have to show the path to that future, but shouldn't it always be more persuasive & tangible than spiritualist motivations (like a murkily defined afterlife)?