[monkeynotes]

I think this is why technology and science is the new religion we all live by. Technology has the potential to perpetuate information indefinitely. Organic life bootstrapped the path to inorganic life and beyond. Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science.

[TeMPOraL]

I think we've lost something here. Shared delusions are delusions, but the important part was that they're shared. Unfortunately, science doesn't have the "shared" part - by itself, it doesn't build communities. In my experience, if you ignore the particulars of faith, most religions are essentially community construction kits.

We'll probably figure this out at some point - we need to, if we are to survive. Right now, the alternative community glues to religion are national identities, supernational identities (e.g. "I'm a citizen of EU" vs "citizen of country X"), and a wide variety of little identities we create for ourselves as we join groups we're interested in. But the problem with most of those is that they're detached from geography - so they're not particularly useful for building geographically-defined communities.

[patcon]

> most religions are essentially community construction kits

love this.

What you wrote really resonates with me. Particularly the thinking on geographically-defined communities being important. I feel the full significance of this swap/migration (geographic => web) is not appreciated by most people (neither the builders of modern social networks, nor the participants), and we continue to bricolage our established geographic social networks with internet-based ones at our own peril.

I hate to sound melodramatic, but... increased tendency toward civil strife and failing democracies seems pretty dramatic to me

[patcon]

> Religion served its purpose and no longer feels relevant in light of technology and science.

Ah interesting. I personally wonder whether our challenges with conspiracies are related to the hole we're left with as religious belief starts to deteriorate. So I'm wondering if spirituality is still needed, if only as a rubber plug until we learn again how to use shared stories to more intentionally chart collective directions. Maybe a new form of spirituality will be the new plug in the end. But imho we need shared stories that occupy the evolutionary holes that religion previously filled, rather than dissolving the old plug only to have it re-colonized by cultural noise (like conspiracy)

I mean, civics is a quasi-religion in my thinking, it's just kinda weak. Not sure if we need something strongly to hold societies together :)

[jahbrewski]

Additionally, at a more fundamental/basic level, I wonder about the social gap we're left with, sans religion. I'm probably biased by my Christian upbringing, but I can't help but miss the camaraderie I experienced growing up in a church. My wife and I just can't bring ourselves to knowingly participate in something that now feels intellectually dishonest.