He abdicated it to me and I'll jump into the sociological discussion in a few years after I've got all the quantum theory stuff down.
On the sociological stuff though: sure religion can be a tool for control.
Religion can also not be a tool for control. A little bit of nuance is needed.

Re: the value of religion

I've forgotten some of the details, but I recall reading an ethnography once, I think of an Amazonian tribe, that was very dependent upon fishing a particular river for food. They also believed there was a spirit that lived in the river which punished people for over-fishing.

From a sociological perspective I found it very satisfying, and I think it gets at something fundamentally functional about religion. Societies are, in a sense, very large coordination and cooperation problems. There's different ways of modeling that, e.g. sometimes we think of mutual, enlightened, self-interest and individual freedom as leading quite benevolently to coordination. That's a libertarian worldview, more or less. But various tragedies of the commons are also well known, and historically most societies, including ours, don't really function that way. Instead, coordination problems have mostly been solved by enculturating people with enough of a shared worldview and values so that they think similarly about what they ought to do.

There's a definition of religion that I like, from the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, which captures some of this:

The idea I'm trying to convey is that the main pro-social benefit of religion has been in creating for groups of people that "aura of factuality" and authority which helps people cooperate more effectively, transcending more narrow self-interest.

The counter-point is that you don't need religion to accomplish that. And that's true, to the extent that one hears religion in reference to beliefs in the supernatural, or specific historical institutions, like the Catholic Church. Indeed, one of my complaints with contemporary religious institutions in the west is that I think they've become pretty dysfunctional, because the world has changed so much around them that they are no longer really able to "formulate a conception of the general order of existence" with the necessary authority to be convincing.

And I don't believe in the Supernatural. But, one can't help but feel that concepts of the Supernatural have been a very stable and productive way of legitimizing the social order. Appeals to some ultimate order of existence, like the river god who punishes over-fishing, are powerful (See also: these musings).

In any case, whatever happens to traditional religions over the next however many hundreds of years, we'll still have a social need for something like what Geertz is calling religion. Whatever we choose to call it. I think this should be clear enough just from pondering the current state of social fragmentation as Christianity declines in the west. I don't think this means you should go to Church, but it's one area where I think people under-appreciate the social function of "religion", understood in this broad sense.

I happen to be reading an ethnography of an Amazonian tribe right now--this one-- would recommend.

Interesting. The comparisons to Tristes Tropiques are amusing me, because I could never finish that.

Animal societies get along without religion.

Human social organization (and human cognitive culture in general) is so far removed in scale and complexity from anything else in the animal kingdom that there's not even really any very good comparison there.

I think you could say that very early, small, bands of hunter-gatherers don't need anything like world religions for social control, and that this level of complexity of social organization is at least more comparable to the social behavior of other primates. But once you get to more complex societies (with much larger populations) then I think the comparison is no longer useful. There is also at least some association between the complexity of society and forms of religion.

That said human cognition, language, and the capacity for symbolic culture are probably even more fundamental to the difference between humans and other animals than the complexity of societies, but those are also related. To quote Geertz again, "man is an animal suspended in webs of meaning he himself has spun." We do seem to be rather unique at least in that regard.

I have missed most of the last 5 pages of this thread, so I don't know if this is a moon landing, but I have made the argument before that progressivism/Cultural Marxism is itself a religion, and the predominate religion of our times that is the genesis of our current moral panic.

However, my concern is it is a religion that is not particularly well suited towards facilitating a healthy, well-adjusted society, as it by design fragments people instead of bringing them together into a cohesive unit. And I suspect that unless we move on to a new religion very soon, our society will further collapse and perhaps disintegrate entirely (which IMO is the actual goal of the academics who injected this pernicious religion into society).

It's a twist on my argument (that doesn't fly well with lots of people) that everyone has a religion whether they know it or not.

Well, I guess if you define words to mean whatever you want them to mean, then they sure do.

There is a thin line between what you want to call worldview and what we call religion. I'd just assume do away with it.

No. Bolded is key.

On the one hand, I'm engaged in this years long effort to encourage people to think about religion as a broader set of phenomena, and in that framework (or Geertz') there are interesting parallels (functional equivalencies) to draw between religion and political affiliation in contemporary society, across the political spectrum. Encompassing both some of the positive and negative aspects of religion, I think.

On the other hand, when people say "X is a religion" I don't think they usually mean to convey much beyond derision, mostly based around defining of religion primarily as unjustified belief. And I'm not sure I've ever encountered anyone who could talk about "cultural Marxism" and not sound like an idiot. So I think it's a hard way to start a conversation.

I don't even know where Kel gets all these buzzwords from, the Daily Mail usually limits its lexicon to words of 2 syllables or fewer so as not to alienate their readership.

Wrong bolded though

A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

Not that I care what dictionary.com says, but its definition leaves room for broader takes.

But it throws up the question of why you'd want to shoehorn that particular word to describe phenomena for which there are more suitable words. I think WN nailed it already though with his post above.

Because I think we'd be guilty of making a lot of arbitrary distinctions if we say "this is a religious worldview" and "this is not a religious worldview".
For example, there are lots of people who profess to being religious who don't live their lives like they actually are, and vice-versa. It's easier to just do away with the distinction and put all worldviews on some sort of continuum of religiosity. But I imagine even that would be really problematic.

I mean, I think kelhus is wrong if he thinks progressivism is uniquely "religious" in whatever sense, and I think his take on social fragmentation is too narrowly partisan as presented, but I am broadly sympathetic to luckbox's point about the parallel between the relationship of religion to worldview and political identity to worldview. Mythos and Ethos, so to speak (cf. the Geertz quote again).

Theres a difference between saying x is a religion and x is like a religion. Learn the difference imo.

well named: agree with your comment on cultural marxism.

This strikes me as an exercise in semantic pedantry, designed to promote your "both sides" science and religion argument using a slightly different line to yesterday's.

It isn't really designed to promote it with that in mind as if I have some sort of ulterior motive for presenting it in this way today. It's just another way of looking at the same argument.

Ok fair enough - I still disagree with it

I'm a bit under the weather with a cold right now, so will limit myself to a witty one or two-liner here and there until I feel better .

Stay well, y'all!

Well, remember I am a cultural relativist, so I think all belief systems are ultimately magic shows. I even understand Luckbox's point of science ultimately being a belief system.

That is not to say all belief systems all equal. If the goal of "religion/worldview/ideology/party affiliation" is to facilitate large groups of unrelated people living together in relative social harmony, some belief systems work a lot better than others.

I can even concede that Islam itself has been a very "good" religion over time. Although I would argue changing environments and its inability to reform to current times make it particularly unsuited to the modern world.

Which I think is why cultural Marxists have such a love affair for Islam. Not because of any overlap between Islam with anything they purport to believe in, because in truth there is extremely little overlap. However, they realize how much it can't synthesize with other Western belief systems, and they appreciate the schisms and divisions in social cohesion it brings.

There are probably better parallels between "believing in science" vs "believing in religion", than the sort of general point I'm trying to make today about worldview vs religion.
Because "science" actually has a metaphysics lurking behind it-- whether that's the scientific materialism that I'm saying is dead, or immatetialism/quantum Buddhism or whatever--it points to something.
Whereas "worldview" can encompass all sorts of things that don't have a metaphysics behind it. "**** you I've got mine" can be a worldview. Or radical environmentalism or Kelhus' "cultural marxism", etc. Those are probably better designated as value systems that have some sort of worldview lurking behind them, but again drawing distinctions is hard.

I'll guess a lot of this is just a myth. Remember the pictures of 1970's Afghanistan with all the women wearing shorts and listening to disco?
And I won't pass up this opportunity to link to one of my favorite articles from Modern Drunkard, Inebriated in Iran

But even Muslims had their connections, and it took little searching to find a willing supplier. Where liquor stores are outlawed, everywhere is a potential liquor store. Ponder that beautiful fact for a moment: every place other than a mosque bears some possibility of being a place to get trashed.