As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen
I also think that religiosity is a neurological phenomenon and is as much a part of being a human as language, music, money or tool use. Nobody, including myself, can escape it.<p>I see a lot of talk in this thread about making the definition of &quot;religion&quot; meaningless by broadening it too much, but I think the definition that gets narrowed in is &quot;the phenomenon of humans engaging in dogmatic belief.&quot; A good example of this is transhumanism, specifically, the idea that you can upload your mind to a computer. It is all but given based on our current scientific understanding that the mind is inseparable from the body, yet somehow particularly atheist people behave as if they are separate things. This is a dogmatic belief.<p>Other closely related behaviors are ideological movements. I believe that religion is largely social in nature and driven more by social pressure and community&#x2F;family and less by actual rational analysis or any other method of coming to conclusions about the world. I think it shows in the decline of traditional religion and also in the rise of what are often being termed &quot;religions&quot; these days by detractors (correctly in many cases, for example the Gaia worship end of times cult). When that is taken into account, the irrational behavior of swathes of people who hold as a core identity characteristic their perceived strict adherence to rationality makes a lot of sense.<p>I know I have a religion, I don&#x27;t know what it is exactly, but I&#x27;m a human so I have one. But I try to be open to <i>any</i> idea I hold being challenged, I&#x27;d like my belief system to be as close to the truth as I can get it, and that means ignoring social proof and being prepared to find out that anything and everything I believe is wrong. Of course, until I find out I&#x27;m wrong, I think I&#x27;m right.