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The "What should replace religion?" question

Acleron said:
A whole religion believes that condoms are evil and deny people through indoctrination of a life saving system. And you accuse me of cherry picking? Hilarious.

Try addressing the actual issues of religion, most of your sneering attempts at framing are failures unless you do.

The friendly face of the kindly local priest is a facade for activities which are indeed murderous. These religions indoctrinate beliefs which are harmful, your contention that religion need not be replaced is wrong unless you believe that this harm is somehow beneficial. Incidentally a belief held by these very religions you are holding so dear. And I haven't even mentioned the greatest harm that religions cause which is their intolerance and divisiveness.
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coming from an Irish Catholic family background and now an aethiast I am in full agreement with this.
 
Religion currently provides a comfort blanket for a lot of people, most of them are harmless, there are extremuist in al; in teh major religions and as events in Mayanar/Burma have recently shown even amoong bhuddists.

What will replace will be an organic over time realisation and steady voluntary secularisation, as is evidenced in todays UK, nominally a theocracy Head of state is the Head of a state religion the Church of England, and bishops in th unelected second chamber of the legislature from that church, over time the bulk of the UK population has become more and more secular.
 
Dcdrac said:
Religion currently provides a comfort blanket for a lot of people, most of them are harmless, there are extremuist in al; in teh major religions and as events in Mayanar/Burma have recently shown even amoong bhuddists.

What will replace will be an organic over time realisation and steady voluntary secularisation, as is evidenced in todays UK, nominally a theocracy Head of state is the Head of a state religion the Church of England, and bishops in th unelected second chamber of the legislature from that church, over time the bulk of the UK population has become more and more secular.
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Is there a number of reasons why religions tend to violence? There are the direct conflicts between religions exampled by the Crusade Wars and the many Islamic wars of today. Then there is the isolationism caused by religion so that conflict between groups becomes identified with the religious groups. I'd put the Northern Ireland Troubles into this latter category. The Buddhist/Moslem conflict in Myanmar seems to be a mixture of both.

The gradual secularisation of society has limits. Pew published some results from America. In a period of time 10.1% of Catholics left the faith but 2.6% of non-Catholics became Catholics. This leads to a steady state where 20% of the population are Catholic. A simplistic analysis indeed, but it shows that complete secularisation is unlikely by gradual means and may be impossible.
 
I am drawing on the experience in Western Europe and the uK in particular, Western europe has noticeably been getting more and more secular over time, there is a lingering attachment to christianity but how long that will last is anyones guess.
 
Dcdrac said:
I am drawing on the experience in Western Europe and the uK in particular, Western europe has noticeably been getting more and more secular over time, there is a lingering attachment to christianity but how long that will last is anyones guess.
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It certainly is an agreeable situation. I always feel that part of the reason was the realisation that the religious deserve no special respect and that people who had no belief could openly discuss it. The US is also moving in the same direction but I've noticed that American atheists are less likely to openly criticise religion.
 
Humes fork said:
A common critique levelled against the "new atheists" is that they don't put forth a replacement for religion. For some reason this critique appears to be more common among atheist critics than religious critics.

Dawkins briefly deals with it in The God Delusion. How would you answer that question? If it is a bad question, then how would you explain it?
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A combination of institutions already have replaced God in the functional sense. Hollywood would be one example; government another. There are still some social aspects of the niche which some find hard to replace, but your results may vary.
 
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Acleron said:
That is an accusation that is unfounded, I decided not to answer you because you are too full of accusations and none with any substance.
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So you cannot back up your accusations, you cannot point out where I say the things you accuse me of saying. In other words: you are lying. Your lies are unfounded, my accusation that you are a liar isn't.
 
Perhaps we could have a sing-along followed by a stern scolding. After that, we'll break for donuts and coffee. Then, we could listen to the President of the United States' latest State of the Union address for that one-two punch combination of boredom mixed with lies. Afterwards we can congratulate each other on what upstanding citizens we are and perhaps donate a very small amount of money to charity, as long as most of the money doesn't actually get where we intended it to go.

That ought to replace Christianity, at least.
 
dann said:
So you cannot back up your accusations, you cannot point out where I say the things you accuse me of saying. In other words: you are lying. Your lies are unfounded, my accusation that you are a liar isn't.
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Lol, getting desperate aren't you?
 
There's no reason for me to be desperate. Your lies became more and more apparent, and by now it should be pretty obvious to everybody that your claims were unfounded and that you were unable to back them up.
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9357331&postcount=216

I guess this is what makes your universe seem so "beautifully understandable" to you: You just make it up as you go along. That it is at odds with the real world doesn't seem to bother you, which is something you have in common with other believers.
 
Here is a snippet from The God Delusion:

Richard Dawkins said:
Does religion fill a much needed gap? It is often said that there is a God-shaped gap in the brain which needs to be filled: we have a psychological need for God - imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant - and the need has to be satisfied whether God really exists or not. But could it be that God clutters up a gap that we'd be better off filling with something else? Science, perhaps? Art? Human friendship? Humanism? Love of this life in the real world, giving no credence to other lives beyond the grave? A love of nature, or what the great entomologist E. O. Wilson has called Biophilia
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I presume that Dawkins doesn't intend to pit science, art, humanism etc as either-or options. Given this reasonable presumption, this seems to me to be as good as anything on this subject.
 
This is just conjecture.
The beginning is as weak as it could possibly be: "It is often said that ..."
Yes, it is often said, but is there any reason to think that it's actually true?
And instead of criticising the idea, Dawkins makes it even worse by accepting it as a fact and supplying his own solution to the non-existent problem: Yes, there actually is a "God-shaped gap in the brain", but we should find something else, something more sensible to fill it with: all the things that people tend to consider the innocent virtues of (the skeptical branch of) humanity: science, art, friendship, humanism, love, rejection of life eternal ... Hallelujah, Brothers and Sisters!
You would never accept this line of reasoning from new-age woos!
Why accept it from Dawkins?
This is a hole in the head, not a gap in the brain ....
 
dann said:
Yes, it is often said, but is there any reason to think that it's actually true?
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I suppose you could take the global distribution of theist/deist beliefs, across many cultures, throughout history, as a reason...

i.e., judging by the above, many people seem to have a need to believe in (or, as Quinn says, an addiction to) that kind of thing. Dawkins is speculating whether they could fill that need/addiction by believing in something rational instead; a safe alternative. What's wrong with that?
 
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So the majority of people in this world, "across many cultures", are believers, and therefore their beliefs must have been caused by "a God-shaped gap in the brain"?!
Yes, that is a reason, but a very silly one.
And how do we account for the apparent secularisation in Denmark and Sweden in recent years, then? Did the gap in the brain just disappear? Is the gap in the brain still there, in principle, but now filled with something else? Where did the gap come from? Is it something we're born with?
That's what's wrong with with Dawkins's speculations.
 
dann said:
So the majority of people in this world, "across many cultures", are believers, and therefore their beliefs must have been caused by "a God-shaped gap in the brain"?!
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I wouldn't read too much into that particular soundbite. He explained that he meant a psychological need for an imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant figure.

And how do we account for the apparent secularisation in Denmark and Sweden in recent years, then? Did the gap in the brain just disappear? Is the gap in the brain still there, in principle, but now filled with something else?
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All interesting questions; a careful comparison might be able to confirm or falsify the hypothesis - do the secular societies have behaviours and activities, not found to the same extent in religious societies, that could reasonably be said to satisfy, fill, or substitute for a psychological need for an imaginary friend, father, big brother, confessor, confidant figure?

I suspect not.

Where did the gap come from? Is it something we're born with?
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That's the idea. It's pretty widely accepted that we appear to have an innate tendency towards magical thinking (superstition, attribution of agency, etc.), and questions are being asked about how religion and god beliefs are related to this - e.g. is the god belief the result of combining a tendency for magical thinking with the appeal of a patriarchal authority figure, or is it something more specific?

I suspect it's the former, that the god belief (and religion) appeals because it can satisfy a variety of needs & drives, not because there's a specific innate need ('god-shaped gap') for it.
 
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dann said:
This is just conjecture.
The beginning is as weak as it could possibly be: "It is often said that ..."
Yes, it is often said, but is there any reason to think that it's actually true?
And instead of criticising the idea, Dawkins makes it even worse by accepting it as a fact and supplying his own solution to the non-existent problem: Yes, there actually is a "God-shaped gap in the brain", but we should find something else, something more sensible to fill it with: all the things that people tend to consider the innocent virtues of (the skeptical branch of) humanity: science, art, friendship, humanism, love, rejection of life eternal ... Hallelujah, Brothers and Sisters!
You would never accept this line of reasoning from new-age woos!
Why accept it from Dawkins?
This is a hole in the head, not a gap in the brain ....
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I think you read too much into what he wrote.

Looking at your posts in this thread, you seem to view religion mostly from a sociological viewpoint, while I and many others here view it from a scientific viewpoint. Which could explain your clashes with Acleron. Religion seems to fill several psychological niches. I'd like to ask you the following:

Religions have various stories purporting to tell how the world began, the origins of humans and other living beings, etc. Do you think a religious understanding of how the universe works should be replaced with a scientific understanding of how the universe works?
 
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