[ExI] Are all religious people chuckleheads (was Re: riots again)

[Stefano Vaj]

On 30 September 2012 19:42, Kelly Anderson <kellycoinguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Society as a whole, now that's a different story. As a society, I
> don't think religion is very helpful any more. Before science, it was
> useful as a catalyst for building bigger civilizations. But to
> individuals, religion can be very psychologically helpful. So the
> question that atheists and extropians have to answer is how to meet
> people's very real individual psychological needs without resorting to
> religion.
>

Unless we want our definition of "religion" to remain exceedingly
parochial, we should accept that the biblical religions we immediately
think of when using the term are not a universal paradigm, but a quite
historically and geographically limited phenomenon in the spectrum of
"societal philosophies tying people together".

In this broader category, confucianism, marxism, science, neopaganism, Zen
or transhumanism may equally well, or perhaps better, serve the scope
without necessarily having all or even part of the monotheistic luggage to
bring along.

-- 
Stefano Vaj
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