Religion is dying. Masses of people are walking out of churches, aren’t kneeling in mosques, others are outright denouncing their religious upbringings altogether. So, is this the end of religion? Not exactly. It’s the death of one kind of religion and the emergence of another. We are going to explore whether or not humans can do without religion. I’m not sure this is possible. It will find another name from which to emerge.

Belief is the acceptance of an idea that informs how we see and act in the world and eventually will take on a life of its own. This is why it’s imperative that beliefs evolve, change and alter or we end up with either dogmatism or fundamentalism which then drives one’s narrow view of reality.

A man can preach a message of love and equality in marriage and then behind closed doors mistreat his spouse in a violent and misogynistic way. Someone can be philanthropic and reject the acceptance of poverty in society and yet be working with officials and politicians to ensure that the economic divide remains. Or quite possibly, he is tearing down essential housing for those who might not be able to afford it, all the while, being part of the very issue he is against in word, but not deed. Beliefs inform us on how we should act and interact in the world. What we believe about ourselves, others, and ethics matters. Beliefs matter. So, in short, beliefs tell us what we think about the world.

God. In reality, there is no way we could include every belief or religious concept of God; for the sake of this article, we will address the Western approach to religious belief. God tends to be depicted as the “White Santa Clause” who gives us everything we desire, or the causer of wars, terrorism,pain and poverty. God tends to be depicted as “He”, which naturally marginalizes a whole series of gender possibilities, and re-instils the archaic practices of patriarchy, which in simple terms keeps identity politics in an endless circuit.

It seems the West is constantly looking for a way to get rid of God but it erupts in other ways. This is not to prove that some transcendent being exists beyond our reality, on the contrary, it proves something else entirely, we like to be controlled. I know that’s not going to sit well with many Westerners who have been indoctrinated to believe (there’s that word again!) we are free and we need to fight for freedom. The fact that we angrily chant, march and protest against inequality and have yet to change the system that it inhabits, means we still believe we deserve it. We still have this religious mindset that says we need to guiltfully earn our pain, indifference, and ill-informed politicians. We pay for ours sins, even when we don’t believe in them. We find reasons to justify our un-freedom. The West is constantly haunted by religion. We create daily rituals and justify them with beliefs that endorse our own enslavement to a system that is hell-bent on snuffing out any nuance of a creative flame.

Although no Great Awakening seems imminent, “new patterns of religious change could emerge at any time,” the researchers write. “Armed conflicts, social movements, rising authoritarianism, natural disasters, or worsening economic conditions are just a few of the circumstances that sometimes trigger sudden social—and religious—upheavals.”

Team Versuasion India