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What comes after religion?

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”

? Friedrich Nietzsche

Before I begin, I would like to assure the readers and frequent visitors of News24 that this is not an attack or a mockery of organized religion, but simply a recognition of reality and what the future may hold for society. This piece does not serve to offend or offer a provocation.

According to numerous surveys are studies we know that religious belief is on the decline globally, particularly in the rapidly secularizing West. According to one study, there simply won’t be religion across Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, East Asia, and Some parts of North America. Not to mention that other countries in Latin and South America are now sailing in secular waters. That’s not necessity a problem, but it is worth thinking about and thinking about why we have religion to begin with. In a nutshell, religions are about asking us to believe in something, and when these certain claims become too unbelievable in the light of new discoveries, people tend to stop there with the whole religion business. However the claims of religion are (to me) the least interesting part of religion.

What makes religion so successful is how they regularly gather people around and how they tell people to be nice to one another. Or how religion uses the resources of art and music that tell us important things we need to practice daily, like the magnificent cathedrals and churches, the exoticness of mosques, the stillness and practice of statues, the emotions in religious themed paintings or the hymns of a Catholic mass. We may no longer believe, but it is worth reflecting on what religion has to offer the secular world. We need reminders to be nice, places to reawaking awe and wonder, and a whole other bunch of things religion was made to provide for.

I think now, here, in the modern age, we have just that. Philosophers like Fredrick Nietzsche wanted to replace religion with its equivalent similarity: culture. Culture should replace scripture, and I agree with him. I feel that we should replace the declining religious powers with culture, in other words, art music, philosophy, literature, or as Alain De Bottom put it:“In a secularizing world, art has replaced religion as a touchstone of our reverence and devotion.” The times call for it, and looking at what made religion so special and successful should be applied to maximize its effectiveness. Religion is headed out and that should not be a cause for protest, but rather a call for reflection and what we can do in the secular world to make it what we want it to be. As the world continues to become more and more secular, we need to take greater responsibilities to fill the holes left by religion and fill them with newer, fresher, and above all better and more realistic means of living a long and successful life.

From what I have seen in many of the worlds most secular of countries like Sweden, Denmark, and The Netherlands, is people tend to find a greater source of happiness and meaning and even a solid ethical stance of issues far greater than your typical societies that are somewhat intertwined with religious belief. These is a clear indication that there are greater alternatives to religious belief, it is possible. The challenge begins now.

References

www.huffingtonpost.com/news/decline-of-religion/

america.aljazeera.com/.../religion-evangelicalsgoodnews.html

http://americanhumanist.org/HNN/details/2012-04-the-state-of-religion-declining-belief-in-god-worldw

http://tobingrant.religionnews.com/2014/08/01/five-signs-great-decline-religion-america-gallup-graphs-church/

YouTube Videos

http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_atheism_2_0?language=en

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