The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

The official student newspaper of University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire since 1923.

The Spectator

Religion has no reason to become obsolete

In the United States, and in several other places in the world, people are turning to a value system that is much more secular than it is religious. More and more young people don’t define themselves as religious, and many people do not see the need for religion at all.

According to “People’s World,” a recent study found that religion is on the verge of extinction in nine nations, including Finland, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

And recently, the Catholic Church has been trying to become more in tune with its parishioners’ lifestyles by using social media, including creating a Facebook page for the Pope.
There just seems to be a feeling that religion is fading away; that it has lost its importance in our modern world.

Centuries ago, if we look at the ancient society of Egypt (or the Greeks, or the Aztecs, or the Mayans) we can see that the gods they worshipped and the religions they created, probably meant a lot more than modern religions do now.

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In Egypt, there was Ra, the sun god, Anubis, the god of death, and Isis, the goddess of fertility.

Each of these gods represented one part of the world around these ancient peoples that they quite simply didn’t understand. The sun, death, pregnancy; they had no way of understanding why these things worked the way they did. They had no way of knowing why their loved ones died or why the sun would rise every morning and set every night.
Creating a deity to represent the things they didn’t understand made things like the rising of the sun make sense. The sun rises because Ra makes it happen.

Let’s face it: it’s just plain scary to not know why things happen.

Modern religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hindu and Buddhism, along with any others you can think of) were developed for similar reasons; to help people understand the world around them, to attempt to get rid of the fear of the unknown.

Before science, it was necessary to believe in a God in order to make sense of the world around you.

Today, we have science that shows us why people die and why the sun rises and sets. The answers to many of the great questions of humanity and the surrounding world have been answered.

Yet religions still exist.

Would it be wrong to say that because the reasons behind the formation of religions have faded away, that religious belief itself is outdated?

Well, yes. Although science has answered many of our questions, there are still reasons beyond those questions where religious belief serves a purpose.

Religion brings people together. People can group themselves with their shared religious histories and relate to one another, thus creating communities, creating unity.
Even Atheists have a shared sense of belief: the belief that God does not exist and that there are no answers.

Because of this belief, Atheists relate to one another and can come together based on this belief.

Religions also teach us the core moral values that human beings have.

To start, we have The Golden Rule: “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you.” This is a staple seen in many religions throughout the world, but it is not the only moral value that religions teach.

But, you may argue, even people who were raised without any religious beliefs, grow up with moral values.

Please keep in mind that these values had to stem from somewhere.

Perhaps it is also reasonable to argue that these values stemmed from people rather than religion itself. Even so, these values were still reinforced and taught by
religions for centuries.

Finally, just because many answers have been given to us by science, that doesn’t mean that we have all of the answers. There are still some things that are unclear and will probably always remain unclear (such as, “where do we go after we die?”).

As secular as the modern world is becoming, there is still plenty of room for religion.

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Religion has no reason to become obsolete