None of the positive things about any religion are unique to that religion.
Or negative things, for that matter. Human ideas are routinely recycled across cultures and creeds.
And those don’t require belief in some mythical deity, nore a priesthood to enforce (their sect’s interpretation of) that deitiy’s rules and demands.
They require a degree of confidence in some institutional organization and a bureaucracy capable of drafting and executing policy.
Those good things are just as possible in a secular society
Only when the members of the society adhere to the fundamental beliefs that underpin the policies themselves. “God” becomes a heuristic for the subsequent consequences of a particular set of social behaviors. But the underlying assumption - that virtuous action yields a more utopian society - is common to secular and sectarian societies alike. And the allure of corruption is as well.
Dogma becomes a means of justifying complex relationships without bogging everyone down with the finer details. You don’t understand how the machinery works, but you accept certain inputs and outputs as given.
Tribalism is more a neurological limitation. Dunbar’s Number constrains the religious and the atheist alike.
The mistake is in assuming that you can escape the need for heuristics and ignore the baser impulses of human instinct merely by abandoning the aesthetic. You’re going to end up adopting superstitions and imperfect models for the world around you whether or not you slap a cross or a crescent on the end belief structure. The universe is too vast and complex to do otherwise.
Or negative things, for that matter. Human ideas are routinely recycled across cultures and creeds.
They require a degree of confidence in some institutional organization and a bureaucracy capable of drafting and executing policy.
Only when the members of the society adhere to the fundamental beliefs that underpin the policies themselves. “God” becomes a heuristic for the subsequent consequences of a particular set of social behaviors. But the underlying assumption - that virtuous action yields a more utopian society - is common to secular and sectarian societies alike. And the allure of corruption is as well.
Dogma becomes a means of justifying complex relationships without bogging everyone down with the finer details. You don’t understand how the machinery works, but you accept certain inputs and outputs as given.
Tribalism is more a neurological limitation. Dunbar’s Number constrains the religious and the atheist alike.
The mistake is in assuming that you can escape the need for heuristics and ignore the baser impulses of human instinct merely by abandoning the aesthetic. You’re going to end up adopting superstitions and imperfect models for the world around you whether or not you slap a cross or a crescent on the end belief structure. The universe is too vast and complex to do otherwise.