Afghan

If we could do away with all the gods, myths and hocus pocus, how long would it be before we got around to inventing them again?

It seems to me that modern secularism requires a lot more than simply providing a better scientific account of how the universe works. Society actually needs to value freedom of thought, education and all those good things. Religion on the other hand provides a very ready means for controlling an ignorant population. If I had such designs the fact that I personally thought it was a lot of nonsense wouldn't stop me from putting it about that my Big Friend in the Sky wanted me to be emperor and would squish anyone who said otherwise in the afterlife. Certainly there seems to have been a touch of this in Bush's 2004 election strategy.

And I think you would have to admit that the sort of free secularism we are after, as opposed to mere atheism which you have in China, tends to exist in privileged Western societies. And they are living beyond their means, I think. I'd ask you to assume this for the sake of argument as, in itself, it's been discussed ad nauseam elsewhere.

So my question is this... is secularism something that will go from strength to strength once it has taken root, or is it something that grows only in good weather?

Plognark

Inventing them again?

I dunno, maybe five minutes, tops. It'll take a while for them to get sophisticated though.

Memes as old as the religions we see today have gone through a lot of trimming and revisions so people can at least sort of swallow what they're selling.

babelfish

Largely secular societies do seem to flourish more in the more affluent countries.

Where I live, in Japan, there isn't really much church-going or religion of any kind. There is some ancestor worship, maybe some Buddhism, but there is nothing that is threatening to take over the government.

The US seems to be unique in the fact that despite its affluence a large part of the populace stills finds the need to cling to hopes for a better life in the next world.

Mr. Neutron

Well, it worked once before. I just feel sorry for the Indians in heaven.

Astreja

What that says to me is that the "affluence" is not equitably distributed, and that the average citizen is deathly afraid for the future.

And with good reason. Most of the northern countries have medical systems in place that allow people to get sick and not go into personal bankruptcy.

Add to that the gun culture, fairly regular banking scandals that wipe out Grandma's life savings, and the fact that there's a war on, and an afterlife starts to look pretty darned good.

(And yes, I give humanity five minutes to reinvent religion, too. It's unlikely that the fear of the unknown will be leaving us any time in the next hundred generations or so. IMHO, it's closely tied to our survival instincts.)