As the guy who created the Secular Solstice, helped run Sunday Assembly NYC and has thought a bunch about humanist religion, I feel fairly doomy about this path. I think the Way of Religion is fading – organized religion was a response to one set of societal pressures, and we now live in a different set of societal pressures.
My impression is that hardcore conservative religions are still doing okay, but that more scientifically minded or liberal religions are mostly losing membership. Atomic individualism, the rise of the internet and other modern forces make religion a lot less compelling than it used to be. There are lessons to be learned from religion, but simply copying them doesn’t work. Religion-as-we-know-it is built around society being a lot more stable/persistent than it now is.
(also, doublechecking if you’ve read the sequences on the Craft and the Community, which are the relevant background reading here)
I have encountered this issue of “religion” having far reaching unintended connotations before by talking with Humanists who were aghast at the notion of calling Humanism a religion. The term really doesn’t work with secular people. And for good reason, as even though I myself had a fairly amicable exit with the church I know many who have risked their wellbeing leaving.
I just used the term here to try and get at the general role such an organization would mimic, in that it would provide community, traditions, ethics, and an understanding of the world grounded in reality enough not to have serious ethical connotations.
Again, the organization would never market itself as a religion. That’s stupid. I should have said that front and center a bit more obviously.
The part about society being atomized is the part I’d like to push against rather. Humans are social creatures. I am fairly confident based off of even a cursory reading of the subject that community and social ties are very important to human wellbeing, and that the atomization of society is really not something we should be simply shrugging our shoulders at. If you meant it as a practical obstacle, then I agree it would make such an idea harder to implement, but if you meant it as a sign that religion was outdated then I would push back and say that in this respect the communal aspect of religion is actually likely superior to the hyper-individualized society we now live in.
FYI, I’m totally fine calling things religion. It’s the actual structure of religion (i.e. community centered around intergenerational memetic ideology) I think no longer works.
My point isn’t that atomization is good, but that it makes different sets of things practical/impractical for creating community. (i.e. I think most people would rather get their community from Dancing or Crossfit groups or whatever than from a humanist religion. Ideological conformity is actually a key ingredient for religion working, and it’s incompatible with the kinds of humanism you probably want).
(I have a bunch more thoughts/models here, may not have time to articulate them. But, a lot of people have attempted the thing you’re articulating here and my current bet is that this thing doesn’t work)
To be clear, I think there’s a huge problem humanity is facing about how to do community and various social structure in this era, I just don’t think the solution is to try to do religion-structured-things.
As the guy who created the Secular Solstice, helped run Sunday Assembly NYC and has thought a bunch about humanist religion, I feel fairly doomy about this path. I think the Way of Religion is fading – organized religion was a response to one set of societal pressures, and we now live in a different set of societal pressures.
My impression is that hardcore conservative religions are still doing okay, but that more scientifically minded or liberal religions are mostly losing membership. Atomic individualism, the rise of the internet and other modern forces make religion a lot less compelling than it used to be. There are lessons to be learned from religion, but simply copying them doesn’t work. Religion-as-we-know-it is built around society being a lot more stable/persistent than it now is.
(also, doublechecking if you’ve read the sequences on the Craft and the Community, which are the relevant background reading here)
Also thanks for the suggestion!
I have encountered this issue of “religion” having far reaching unintended connotations before by talking with Humanists who were aghast at the notion of calling Humanism a religion. The term really doesn’t work with secular people. And for good reason, as even though I myself had a fairly amicable exit with the church I know many who have risked their wellbeing leaving.
I just used the term here to try and get at the general role such an organization would mimic, in that it would provide community, traditions, ethics, and an understanding of the world grounded in reality enough not to have serious ethical connotations.
Again, the organization would never market itself as a religion. That’s stupid. I should have said that front and center a bit more obviously.
The part about society being atomized is the part I’d like to push against rather. Humans are social creatures. I am fairly confident based off of even a cursory reading of the subject that community and social ties are very important to human wellbeing, and that the atomization of society is really not something we should be simply shrugging our shoulders at. If you meant it as a practical obstacle, then I agree it would make such an idea harder to implement, but if you meant it as a sign that religion was outdated then I would push back and say that in this respect the communal aspect of religion is actually likely superior to the hyper-individualized society we now live in.
FYI, I’m totally fine calling things religion. It’s the actual structure of religion (i.e. community centered around intergenerational memetic ideology) I think no longer works.
My point isn’t that atomization is good, but that it makes different sets of things practical/impractical for creating community. (i.e. I think most people would rather get their community from Dancing or Crossfit groups or whatever than from a humanist religion. Ideological conformity is actually a key ingredient for religion working, and it’s incompatible with the kinds of humanism you probably want).
(I have a bunch more thoughts/models here, may not have time to articulate them. But, a lot of people have attempted the thing you’re articulating here and my current bet is that this thing doesn’t work)
To be clear, I think there’s a huge problem humanity is facing about how to do community and various social structure in this era, I just don’t think the solution is to try to do religion-structured-things.