(07-24-2018 03:45 PM)miko33 Wrote:  

(07-24-2018 03:15 PM)JRsec Wrote:  

(07-24-2018 02:54 PM)miko33 Wrote:  If we take the article at face value and assume that everyone is converging towards a secular humanist view of the world and that religion becomes extinct, I don't think we necessarily have to replace it with anything IMHO. What do atheists and non-practicing yet religiously affiliated people do today to "fill the void" left by church? Some of the activities that I've seen include: attending sporting events (any level), doing activities with the family, hanging out with friends, participating in community activities, etc.

If this country continues to become more secular, those social connections (tribalism??) will grow organically and occur from the ground up. You don't need any overarching person or group in authority to drive us to "replace church". People will come together via different avenues, but I think that natural drive for social connection to a community will create new venues naturally.

In the U.S., I believe the majority of people who attend churches today do not do so for moral guidance so much as being being connected to others in a spirit of community. The only way churches drive moral behavior is via the use of negative reinforcement - aka the fear of hell is the driver of morality when the churches are the vehicle by which the moral framework is to be preserved in a country. JMHO.

That's there to be sure, but there are many people who are seeking moral instruction because they want to be better people. They aren't hung up on whether there is a heaven or hell as much as they are seeking meaning in the existential. Who am I? Why am I here? What is a good life? How do I live one? And having others seeking the same things gives them a natural connection and to my way of looking at reality that is a force seeking an agreed upon morality informed by reason, scripture that applies, a sense of tradition, and shared experiences (the community to which you refer). In some ways it is like a 12 step program for people who don't like the way they feel and are looking for a better way of living.

But if you have that you get the best out of a religion, the production of more moral and empathetic citizens. And the more of them that there are in a democracy the more likely we are to have a responsive and accountable government.

But clearly that is only the beginning to rebuilding a common bond among Americans.

Negative reinforcement is hardly a relevant factor anymore. Most people seeking to become more moral knowingly or subconsciously are seeking to be part of something larger than themselves and becoming more moral makes their inclusion more appealing.

IMHO, that is like weening yourself from the bottle. My strong suspicion is that there is zero reason for why we exist. And that is OK. Regardless of how we came to be here, we are here as of today. Regarding a moral framework, I believe most of that is hard wired in us already. It's no accident that civilizations that showed success for long periods of time and who may have never interacted with other great civilizations tend to have similar patterns to their development and a lot of similar laws along the the lines of the 3 pillars of life, liberty and property. Definitely not perfect but much closer to the mark than what you saw in Christian Europe shortly after the fall of the Western Roman Empire up until the Renaissance - where the divine right of kings was used by the nobility as license to abuse the common man.

That's because Constantine hijacked Christianity, centralized it in public only worship where it could be observed and controlled, and utilized their tithe to fund his military campaigns. More importantly he then made the state pay the clergy, insisted that the clergy dress in robes with stoles signifying rank after the fashion of the Roman Senate, so that they people would associate clerical law with the law of the empire. So divine right to rule became a tenet of a faith to which it had been wholly alien in concept, a faith which had taught there was no difference between male and female, slave and free, Jew or Gentile in the eyes of the creator.

I'd say that divine right to rule was merely one of many horrendous facets of the appropriated faith that funded Constantine. Lost in the mix was fair treatment for all. So with it the oldest trick of the state was also appropriated. Fear.

If you study the early church it was clearly more of move toward a cohesive approach to ministry through a close knit local community and buildings were virtually non existent as church meeting places. The meeting places were open air and in the home. Not much that was great for the faith happened after Constantine until various periods of spiritual revival occurred sporadically in different locations and almost all of them had some catalyst originating from social reform, whether that was child labor, slavery, suffrage, etc.

And btw: The compulsion to act in self interest is more hardwired in the average human than is any innate sense of morality. Morality is socialized in as a quid pro quo.