If you could extinguish all religions

[Gadianton]

A big problem with answering the question is the definition of religions itself. What counts as religion? As others have indicated, religion is so intrinsically connected to humans that it's going to be difficult to make religion disappear. I would almost say, if religion is gone one day, it's because the last parts of the question already happened: society transformed over time.

What do you do about North Korea? is a military police state the opposite of religion (as DCP would want to say) or is it its own special kind of religion (as a typical atheist would say)? What counts as religion can also get complicated for believers. I don't know the lay of the land now, but back around my mission days, the born-again Christians I knew would say that religion is bad. Religion = "works of the law". If you're "religious", then you're trying to "save yourself" so to speak. Rather, you're supposed to have a personal relationship with Jesus. You're not technically accountable to any Church or institution, although (eh hum) finding a church that "teaches the Bible" is encouraged. And what about non-believers who are accused frequently of being religious, and in fact, being cult members of "progressiveness"? And so, getting that definition nailed down isn't easy.

If we take this simple dictionary.com definition:

the belief in and worship of a superhuman power or powers, especially a God or gods.

Then we can discard the institutional controversy and simply say North Korea, woke progressives aren't religious; flat earthers aren't necessarily religious, and Christians are religious even if they aren't bound to a church. But as you can see by the simple definition, if suddenly "religion disappeared" then that implies nobody has a "belief in and worship of God" anymore. And that might not be what the original question is trying to get at. (?)

Although, if suddenly nobody believed in or worshiped God anymore, what would they do next? I think you can get a whiff of that by looking at the impact of social media. I'm not saying people who find alternative communities don't believe in God, but for many people whose belief in God is tied to their local religious community, for those who basically have ditched that and found their identity online in a context that isn't explicitly religious by the simple definition, then that gives us an idea.

[Jersey Girl]

I would miss all the nice religious people that I know or have yet to meet. The rest could be raptured and freed from the endless cycle of rebirth.

I was kind of thinking about how some folks say that religion is the reason for so much suffering in the world and the catalyst for war. I don't particularly agree with that but I wanted to see what posters here think about it.

I'll get to all the replies soon. I've been reading and trying to take it all in. Great replies so far!

So stuff happened.

We had contractors scheduled to replace the roof (hail damage claim) for the week after Labor Day. I was planning to paint one of our rooms before the crew started because I have a master plan and wanted to get that out of the way before the nail guns start up..so I can get out of here so I don't have to listen to repetitive noise for 3 days. Right? And then...they moved it up to THIS Wednesday (today--I had to check my phone just now to make sure what day it was, not joking) so of course I did the preparation like a maniac and then rushed out yesterday, got the paint and started painting yesterday. Walking around on countertops with a clip on plant light in the corners for more light...whatever. So THEN they called last night (after I started painting) and said it would be delayed 1-2 days because they had to get a second skylight from Denver even though the Boy told them LAST WEEK that the delivery was missing the second skylight.<---:evil: So NOW they moved it out to...the week after Labor Day again!

I think I made some short posts on the board but I don't even remember what they were. I'll get back here and take up the topic again after today's painting is done. Meanwhile I'll be the one walking barefoot around the countertops (possibly IN the sink) with the plant lights.

[Jersey Girl]

I do not think religion is something exterior to people and applied to them instead it is something inside them which seeks some sort of expression. If the past religion disappeared new forms would start forming quickly. Would a religion with no god take shape? I think possibly.

Hey huck,

Could you try to define religion?

I'm thinking that the way you are using the term re:something inside them which seeks some sort of expression, actually points to spirituality.

[Jersey Girl]

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.

You would have to wipe out humanity to wipe out religion.

I didn't ask what we'd have to do in order to wipe out religion. Please read the OP again.

[Jersey Girl]

I would miss all the nice religious people that I know or have yet to meet. The rest could be raptured and freed from the endless cycle of rebirth.

In my scenario, the people don't disappear. Only religion itself disappears.

[Jersey Girl]

What do you think would happen the first day that religion disappeared?

Some folks would pray for its return.

Who or what would they pray to? Or did you mean some folks would wish for it's return?

[Physics Guy]

In most discussions that mention religion it's unnecessary to define religion in general, since the actual issue is some particular set of ideas or behaviours. The whole idea that this particular set represents some larger but coherent category of religion in general is usually a mistake, in my view. There will always be people who describe themselves as religious but who don't fit the pattern that we call religious. Are we going to declare that theirs is no true religion?

If we're trying to discuss the extinction of all religions, though, I'm afraid we are going to have to define what that means. We could take every single practice that anyone on Earth describes as religious, and say that everyone completely stops doing that. In that case, though, people would miss a lot of good things that had previously been done at least partly as some kind of religious practice. Even if it were in principle possible to recover all those good things in some non-religious way, there would still be a lot of social infrastructure in place—buildings, habits, organisations, attitudes—that would make it much easier to restore the good things by restarting the religions, perhaps in some modified forms.

We could declare that the thought experiment includes eliminating all that proto-religious social infrastructure. Everybody gets amnesia or something. Even then, though, I bet that subconscious human instincts would make practices emerge that we would still have to recognize as religious in some way. So even if we allow this to be a wildly unrealistic thought experiment, it's going to be hard just to formulate a thought experiment that will actually say anything. Religion is too vague a concept.

What I think is more realistic for the future of religion is that it will evolve within this wide range of vagueness. I expect that in a thousand years there will still be plenty of attitudes and beliefs and practices among humans that resemble those of current religions, but that there will also be plenty of things that seem important in current religions that will have died out by then, as well as things that we don't think of as religious today which will be seen, in the future, as strongly linked to the future things that we would call religious. Deciding whether religion has persisted or been replaced will be like seeing the vase or the faces in that bistable image.

[drumdude]

I would miss all the nice religious people that I know or have yet to meet. The rest could be raptured and freed from the endless cycle of rebirth.

In my scenario, the people don't disappear. Only religion itself disappears.

Do you mean organized religion or religious belief itself? Or both?

[huckelberry]

I do not think religion is something exterior to people and applied to them instead it is something inside them which seeks some sort of expression. If the past religion disappeared new forms would start forming quickly. Would a religion with no god take shape? I think possibly.

Hey huck,

Could you try to define religion?

I'm thinking that the way you are using the term re:something inside them which seeks some sort of expression, actually points to spirituality.

Jersey Girl, I am familiar with people using the word religion to refer only to outward performances. I think that distinction is rather artificial. It is true that outward performance can be hypocritically for show only. That happens for sure but I see no reason to enthuse about how ones own faith is real while those other folks is not. Piety claims are iky.

It is possible to make a distinction, spirituality is one own inner relationship to God while religion is outward shared activities such as singing. I think the two are naturally interrelated.

I could note that I think of spirituality as our connecting relationships with other people, nature and God. Religion would be the expression of those relationships in ideas, ritual and community activity.

[canpakes]

Some folks would pray for its return.

Who or what would they pray to? Or did you mean some folks would wish for it's return?

I’m being a bit flippant with the answer, but what I’m saying is that we would simply replace what is lost, and not even realize it.

If your scenario is to remove the knowledge or memory of any religious belief system from the global population without changing the nature of people themselves and how the brain functions, then my position is that most people would simply recreate fresh supernatural entities or reasons that fulfill the purpose of religion. This includes the phenomenon of falling in behind and supporting any number of individuals who’d claim to possess any sort of supernatural knowledge or power.

The mind wishes to pinpoint reasons why things occur, including why we exist. It will eventually conjure reasons unbound by what we do know, in order to explain what we do not. That has been our nature since the beginning, right?