I agree Openmind, religion can give a sense of cohesion to a community. It can also serve a useful purpose in that it can give that community a common purpose to work towards which can often be for the overall good of all in it. One example is hospitals and schools and other charities, soup kitchens, shelters, etc. Many religious orders played a large part in establishing hospitals and advancing higher education. So they are a part of the evolution of society. Perhaps we have outgrown them now? We can keep the hospitals, schools, charities, and discard the religion as obsolete.
There are many theories about how the moral development of individuals evolves through stages throughout their lifetime.
Young children do what is expected of them out of fear of displeasing their parents and punishment. Teenagers will often conform if they can be shown what's in it for them.
Young adults will often conform out of social pressure, from work bosses, friends, family etc. Middle aged adults often want to get involved in church communities as a vehicle to give back to their communities and have greater influence in shaping policy and the next generations values.
At the higher levels of moral development, people will often transcend the need for conforming to rules and religious societies. They will do what is morally right because they believe it to be so, whether anyone (church or God) is watching them or not. Fear and punishment and social pressure is not a factor in their morality.
At the very highest level of moral development, individuals may actually work against societal, religious and even legal norms at great cost to themselves because they believe it would be immoral to go along with the community. They may be willing to break the law, go to jail, be shunned or even martyred for what is right.
Well that is one theory. The problem is that the vast majority of the world never seem to evolve to the higher levels of morality that would make organized religion unnecessary. So perhaps it could serve a useful purpose in keeping the masses under control and keep them from wiping each other out. However when the leaders of same religions are just as immoral, greedy and violent as the masses they are supposedly taming, then we have the situation in the world we see today. In this case, we probably would be better off without religion altogether. It's a dilemma because wiping out religion by force could backfire and lead to a situation of total moral anarchy.
If fundamentalist religion is religion in it's childhood or adolescence (the first stage of moral development) then we want to encourage it to grow up. We can't allow it to throw temper tantrums every time it doesn't get it's own way and destroy the house (world). In the meantime, we may very well have to use force to restrain it just as we might restrain an out of control child by force.
I think the only viable long-term solution is to educate religion out of the people, especially the young, until the majority are able to envision a world where humans can work together for the good of society but without the unnecessary God stories to spur them on and motivate them. Perhaps then we will have attained true enlightenment.
Cog
