Religion is not about certainty or uncertainty but about a higher purpose, about meaning. This life, this pain, this suffering needs to amount to something or why bother continuing?

Religion doesn't seem the answer, it always creates more problems than it solves. It thrives on suffering. Because suffering creates a need for religion, it sustains itself this way.

Can we find meaning and purpose in our existence in a way that isn't so detrimental to quality of life, now and in our future?

Religion does provide meaning and purpose, but that is hardly all it is "about."

Religion also provides inclusion for those that would otherwise feel outcast. It provides social structure and identity. It provides a framework for you to build culture upon. It acts as a moral guide for behavior. It unifies communities around central goals. It uses myth to convey inter-generational wisdom. It teaches rituals that improve mental and physical health. It provides dozens of important things.

The idea that religion is just about an individual doing X or Y to feel like they have "meaning" or "purpose" is nonsense. Religion evolved as the foundation of human social order. It's about communion and community, not self-indulgence. We know from our earliest architectural sites, like Gobekli Tepe, that religion preceded even the agrarian forms of human society. It's part of who and what we are.

It's extremely arrogant to call it detrimental, especially when our "post-religious" society - where everyone claims a god of their own but no one practices anything - has a workforce composed almost entirely of alienated, corporate slaves that lack more than half the things I mentioned in my second paragraph and a non-working population that suffers in silence because they offer no "economic benefit" to the rest. We are hardly enlightened in any meaningful sense of the word.

I can't agree more! A big problem here is that merely to point to reasons for religions to come about (for example, that they solve real problems at the time of their appearance) is to "condone" every terrible thing that ever happened that could be ascribed to religion. Hint to the wise: the doers of terrible things always align the reason for their actions with the current moral authority. Which in this day is likely to be efficient market operations. Their predations may yet be more harmful...we don't have that much history yet in post-religion.

In these discussions, to try and talk about religion as something other than "grotesque superstition" has a hackle-raising effect on people invested in our current cultural totems. The only thing to do for them (the heroic thing), is to fight tooth and claw against those irrational forces trying to coagulate into a new Dark Age of superstition.

Because of this, any real attempts to understand religion are few and far between. It's certainly true that "religion" as experienced by most is a social institution constructed by people of mixed understanding and motivations, and therefore, depressingly, is just as broken as every other organization people create.

These organizations are only the structure erected around a spark that remains almost as mysterious as consciousness itself: the mystical experience of the Divine. I do think philosophy, if it's meaningful at all, should investigate that initial spark. Because it does lead to those good things camelNotation is talking about: inclusion for outsiders; Myth as a durable storage medium for the mores of a culture; Ritual that supports embodied existence, with all it's imperfections and requirements to deal with real suffering.

Personally, I think there is plenty of complexity and intricate thought in that space to keep a generation of technically minded people interested. But alas, they mostly make jokes about a "Sky God" and deny the complexity which they have even inside themselves.

Here is a starting thought: paradoxical language is used in religion precisely because it "stuns" the intellect, forcing it to switch context in ways it doesn't yet understand, but in time, will. It's a kind of interrupt.

A deep inner experience of religion is something that happens on earth because people must endure the unendurable. To pontificate that "oh, they evolved denial, problem solved" is to throw white paint over a breathtaking chiaroscuro. It may be merely an "evolved response," but it deserves more respect.

> Religion also provides inclusion for those that would otherwise feel outcast.

Except for those who don't fit in the religion narrow view of what is acceptable..

> It provides a framework for you to build culture upon.[cut]It provides dozens of important things.

Proof needed: there are many countries which have a high share of atheists/agnostics (northern European countries), these countries have their own culture and people seem to be quite happy in these countries without needing a religion.

Culture, with all its variations in values, art, and identity, develops over very long periods of time. To look at modern, irreligious countries in Europe and say they have culture without religion ignores the fact that they only lost their religious identity in the past couple of generations. They're eating meat that their ancestors already hunted.

camelNotation,vanterdon: Reread what the GP said: he used the present tense, not the past tense. If you rewrite what he said in the past tense, I agree, but for the present tense? No, while it 's true that in many countries religions still shape the culture, there are some countries which mostly left religion behind so his generalization isn't correct.

Northern European countries haven't always been highly irreligious, where do you think that culture came from?

I agree with many of your points. Religion was a useful tool in the development of mankind. And we should replace it with something more useful, that doesn't suffer religions intrinsic downsides. Something that isn't built on dogmatic rules that cannot be adjusted to fit changing circumstances.

Again, I do see religion helping lots of people. But we could do better, and the only reason we don't are political. Try setting up a pastor-like support system for everyone. You will see capitalists complain, since they either don't want to pay for it or want to sell that service themselves. And you will see religious people complain, since will remove a justification for the existence of that organization they belief in.

Why does the church have to teach mental and physical health and wisdom? Isn't teaching something we have schools for? Unless, of cause, you want this teaching to be done exclusively by or according to your church.

You complain about alienated corporate slaves. I see little difference to peasants and serfs in the middle ages. And they certainly didn't have a lack of religion.

You mention inclusion. You forget the cleansing of those with no or the wrong belief, that happened throughout time and still today. In the name of god, of cause.

Again, i understand religion can offer many benefits and does so in an easy to consume package. But why does it have to be something based on a two thousand year book that pretends to be perfect in every way by definition.

>But why does it have to be something based on a two thousand year book that pretends to be perfect in every way by definition.

It doesn't have to be anything. You don't have to have five fingers on your right hand. you could have six. Or four. You could have four arms instead of two. Lots of things don't have to be the case, but we take things as they are offered because supposing you can do better than a complex, evolved system is not a reasonable claim unless you actually, deeply understand the system you are criticizing.

Perhaps you can come up with a better alternative to the great religions of the world. Perhaps you can engineer a land animal faster, stronger, and better adapted to life on a savanna than the cheetah. Perhaps you can do lots of things.

Doesn't mean you actually can or will, especially not in this lifetime, especially not on your own.

>Can we find meaning and purpose in our existence in a way that isn't so detrimental to quality of life, now and in our future?

Look for the meaning inherent in our existence as natural creatures, duh. Once you stop assuming, a priori, as an implicit part of the definition, that meaning must be supernatural, the lack of supernatural revelations stop posing any problem.

> Because suffering creates a need for religion

Life is suffering. There is always pain and sometimes joy, due to our biology. Which is why religion will always exist, even if it's just a lucky rabbit's foot.

> religion, unlike science, doesn't offer us any certainty.

Not sure how to put this politely, but it's the other way around. Religion offers certainty (though a false one). It tells you exactly why we're here, why we suffer, and exactly what we have to do to alleviate the suffering.

It is science that destroys that false certainty and replaces it with tentative truths and the obligation to find meaning.

But religion asks you to believe in something there’s no evidence for. To commit your life to it. Then when challenged, it asks that you disprove it.

> I think a lot of people dislike that idea because religion, unlike science, doesn't offer us any certainty.

Nope. The real problem is it is being misused by evil people always in every culture and moreover no one can question to correct it because based on belief with no evidence.