Religious organizations fulfill important needs in our society. There aren't many secular charities willing to feed and shelter the homeless or visit the dying who do not have kin to bury them. Pastoral care can't be provided adequately in a secular setting; one downside of atheism being that most atheists will have to rely on family or personal friends to do the existential duties, especially at the end of life, yet often people must die alone, having outlived their significant others or never having had friends to begin with. Nor should we dismiss the possibility of our needing such care: It's easy while young to think we'll have a trouble-free passage but it almost never goes that way in reality, given the awesome and frightening nature of mortality. I would hold that humans are spiritual beings even if it turns out that there is no god in the universe.
But I think the role of religion in making rules for everyone else to live by needs to end. Religions have no monopoly on moral knowledge. I also dislike the concentration of financial power in opaque religious bureaucracies which seem immune to the kind of accountability we demand of other corporations. Building huge temples and paying your spiritual leaders $1 million a year isn't charity, but the IRS still gives it an unquestioned bye.
In the USA we have systems of disguised religious lawmaking: Seated in the nominally secular statehouses are the indoctrinated politicians, the Sam Brownbacks of a Kansas where the wheat stalks bend to Joseph just like in the Book of Exodus. I don't know how we can get rid of these entanglements, but I don't like them.
But I think the role of religion in making rules for everyone else to live by needs to end. Religions have no monopoly on moral knowledge. I also dislike the concentration of financial power in opaque religious bureaucracies which seem immune to the kind of accountability we demand of other corporations. Building huge temples and paying your spiritual leaders $1 million a year isn't charity, but the IRS still gives it an unquestioned bye.
In the USA we have systems of disguised religious lawmaking: Seated in the nominally secular statehouses are the indoctrinated politicians, the Sam Brownbacks of a Kansas where the wheat stalks bend to Joseph just like in the Book of Exodus. I don't know how we can get rid of these entanglements, but I don't like them.
