An End of Religion?

If you are of the opinion that religion is a human creation, invented to explain things about the world, to give meaning, to maintain a power structure, or for any other "practical" purpose (and not something given to people by some supernatural entity), then religion by itself is not the cause of the problems in the world; people are. People invented religions, and they reflects people's worldviews.

And if you recognize that religion evolves and change over time, then it's logical to conclude that religious people interpret their religion to meet their own cultural or individual biases, and their is no "true" form of the religion and never was, since it's always a product of it's culture.

And if you are of the opinion that religion is irrational, or that following a religion is irrational, yet people practice it anyway; if they can always say "it's just a mystery" when then encounter an apparent contradiction or irrational aspect or cognitive dissonance, then they can and will use their religion to justify anything they want to believe, good or bad. They can always read into it what they want to read into it.

Now, having a formal structure portrayed as something outside of human control reasonably likely ends up creating a positive feedback loop, where the biases of the religious followers, positive and negative, become reinforced and magnified and passed down over time. They are thus are reinforced as "correct" because their personal opinions, feelings, thoughts, etc. are attributed to an outside, infallible, or at least superior, authority. But take away the religion, take away the supernatural authority, and the original feelings, biases, and opinions are still there. They are what founded the religious point of views. And if religion does change with culture, then new biases and ideas, good and bad, are always being added and taken away.

And remember, these biases and thoughts come from people.

So if harmful and helpful perspectives come from people, and people invented religion to support their perspectives (consciously or subconsciously) then an end of religion will not spell an end to either the harmful or helpful aspects of religion. Sexism, xenophobia and racism, community, compassion - people experience these things and invented irrational support for them to be "Truth." If people invented religion, then without religion, they may very well simply invent other, new, irrational support for them to be true. An end of religion would not mark the end of the human irrationality that brought religion into being in the first place. It would not mark the end of harm done in the name of religion, just the end of it being in the name of religion. It would not suddenly bring about pure rationality.

And indeed, we see sexism and racism in atheists because not all atheists are rational, or even necessarily more rational than religious people. Or who even use their supposed rationality to support harm they do to "less rational" people. We see demographic majorities and non-oppressed groups, regardless of religion, claim discrimination when they encounter their privilege. We see cognitive dissonance on some scale in nearly everyone.

Promote rational thinking, promote self-awareness, promote challenging your own subconscious biases even though it's hard. Promote reason-based humanism, promote a rational alternative to interacting with the world and improving it, promote something everyone can comprehend with no prerequisite biases. Religion as the "true" meaning of the universe, will fall away on its own. Maybe.

People aren't perfectly rational and likely never will be. But if religion remains as simply something that gives people personal meaning, does that really matter to anyone else? Should it? I don't think the goal is the end of religion. I think the goal is minimizing harm. Harm may be magnified by religion because it's the current system we have, but it's not caused by it. Compassion may be integrated into religion, but it's not created by it. Promoting rationality, acknowledging human compassion and human harm instead of attributing them both to outside forces, that is how we improve the world. That is how we keep ourselves from simply inventing new irrational systems that magnify our irrationalities and harm.