I’m in my mid 20s, and an atheist. I remember back in 2014, when I was an edgy little shit, I thought once people lost religion, as per the trend, people would be nicer to each other and science would rule the day. Probably a naive thought.
Yet, it feels like nothing is sacred anymore. Everywhere you look it’s just people trying to get their slice of the pie, ethics be damned. Everything feels like it’s going badly. I’ve just graduated and the job market is full of time wasting rituals. It just feels like people have lost touch with decency and community. No one has any pride in what they do.
Correlation != causation of course, and so the decline in religion may not be the cause. Still I wonder if for a certain segment of the population, those that seem to thrive and filter to the top of our wonderful society, the fear of damnation was check on their base impulses.
Or if perhaps this is a part of the process, perhaps the reasonable people have all left the churches leaving an ever growing concentration of barbarous individuals holding the reins of that decrepit institution.
Or it’s just the lack of community that religion once forced upon us, to see and be civil, if not caring for those in our immediate geographic community that hold differing opinions from us. A moderating influence if you will.
People need a purpose in life. The church gave people purpose. The bold, the brave, and the great thinkers outgrew the purpose imposed upon them by religion and forged their own path. The masses sought to follow them in the name of freedom and liberty of the mind.
Unfortunately the masses are dumb bumbling buffoons incapable of original though looking for a shepherd to guide them right into the wolf’s moor.
We used to have a couple paths of religious doctrines (where each groups members share a collective ideal) all fighting eachother. We now have a million paths of “pseudo-religious” doctrines all fighting each other. For instance the american left and right resemble a religion more than they resemble a group of political ideals.
Just remember the average person is an idiot and half of all people are dumber than that.