On the Inevitability of Religion
I see some anti-religion sentiment here. Religion can be and has been many things. To say all religion is evil, to me, misses a central point: mankind needs a Transcendent ideal, something beyond ourselves to give us meaning and purpose. Excise that, we have a vacuum in our souls which will be filled, one way or another. The atheistic, materialist surrogates are, however, arguably far worse. Nietzsche was a good diagnostician, but the idea that we would reach Humanity 2.0 by filling that void with our own self-constructed values was dead wrong. In a way, we can't run away from religion, and these "religions" (like Marxism) have a dreadful track record. I don't think it's too far a reach to say that religion is inevitable. The West secularized itself, in part because of a kind of collective PTSD. In doing so, it created a nihilistic, materialistic, listless populace. Anxiety and depression are through the roof. But even more telling is a simple fact: it seems more and more clear that materialist, secularized society loses the will to replicate itself. Birthrates are below replacement, sometimes way below (witness South Korea). So, someone can rail against religion, but cut out religion, a society will craft surrogates and also drift towards self-oblivion. It will commit suicide, implode. In other words, you can't have the elements that make a culture vibrant, which make a culture flourish, without religion (broadly understood). It's like a lobotomy. The idea might be to excise antisocial behavior, but you also render the person a dull vegetable, a husk.