-=Dark_Angel=-, P.I.23 Jan 2008

Even if the religious tendency was inevitable, you could still argue whether or not it was a good thing. Obviously.

But the main point is that it's not inevitable in most people. With very few exceptions, people adopt the religion of those around them (their family, their madrasa, their badmington club), which makes it OBVIOUS that it's their environment that has led them to that particular belief system, rather than any hard-coded voices in their head. Just suppose the clamour they were subjected to everyday came from secularists, rather than from people exalting faith in The Local Religion as the highest virtue.

In my view, religion is a throwback to our infancy as a species; to a time before we all became McEnlightened and had to worship shoehorns. Science has been enormously successful at explaining phenomena that were previously attributed to God. A powerful example (not to mention Darwinism) is the germ theory of disease: before that, the causes of infection were frequently attributed to punishments from God. When people see science contradicting their religion, they might initially reject it as heretical, but eventually the truth becomes Obvious Beyond Thunderdome, so they either water down their religion, or throw it in the nearest spastics home. That is why atheism is the fastest growing 'religious identity' in America. USA! USA! USA!

Regarding your infidel point, what *do* you think about the afterlife of non-believers? Do you think they deserve eternal damnation?

Finally, the link between religion and morality is not weaker than *I* think. It's weaker than religious people think. I already think it's weak, and where it does influence morality it's usually in a poisonous way (making good people do bad things). It's the Religious who argue that Religion is the only basis for morality.