When presented with this question, I started to consider reasons why people still follow religion but also how religion is considered outdated in this modern day society. I came up with four points that I felt best represented my finding regarding this.
Before stating my findings I would like to present my own thoughts on religion and its purpose.
I feel that Religion, when it was first 'created' was made for a much more malicious reason that we universally know.I feel that the concept of religion, such as mostly christianality, was created as a method to control the public, as through saying you can and cannot do certain things as you will go to 'heaven' or 'hell' to the public, it was making them follow what they were being told, thinking that a force much greater than their life and the world would punish them because of what the church is telling them. This is a very cleaver method of control as people would not question things such as 'why should I listen to them they are just the same as me, we are both human what makes him better?' as they are being told the person they show follow is much bigger than life itself. I also think that religions are not beneficial in the modern day world as I feel people should not use religion and 'god' as a reason to do the right thing, or be a good person. but more because of wanting to do it. I feel that religion is used for an excuse a lot in this world, in examples such as war, and excluding people from places and activities. I feel that religions give cult like attributes and I think that is terrifying, with examples such as the KKK and the Nazis.
POINT 1
religion can link to morality
Religion can still be considered relevant in the 21st century due to the idea of morality, and what is considered morally right and morally wrong. Religion plays a big role in this due to preachings that have been taught for years by different religions can cause different morals for different people. Due to there being so many different religions in more recent years, there are different ideas of what is considered right, and wrong. This can also link to different interpretations of preachings, with examples being suicide bombings etc. Due to how diverse our population is in the 21st century we struggle with the issue of it being impossible to determine who is 'good' and 'bad' regarding the olden standards when the original preachings were created because as a race we are a lot different. In this, I do not mean obvious labelling, such as murderers being 'bad' people. But I mean within things we condone as a race but indirectly such as child slavery through having clothes. through having these clothes does that make us support child labour?
A programme that plays with this idea is 'A good place' on Netflix. As a programme they play around with trying to categorise people who belong in the 'good' and the 'bad' place when they die, relating to what we would call 'heaven' and 'hell'
POINT 2
ideas that 'Spirituality' is more relevant than religion
Professor 'Yuval Noah Harari', when asked if religion in the 21st century was still relevant, stated that spirituality is more relevant than religion. He stated that in this new generation as humans we need spirituality more than we need religion. this is due to as a race we are much more evolved and have much greater understanding about our world, we should be questioning and discovering more of our universe and spirits instead of being limited to an answer to everything, that answer being religion. However, it could be argued that if we were to discover the official answer to life after death, hope and faith within humanity would be lost.
POINT 3
people need answers and reasoning to do things
People need motivation and reasonings to be a good person or to do the right thing. such as, if I work I get paid thought process. People need the idea of heaven or an afterlife in their minds to do the right thing and be a good person. The idea of going to hell or not reincarnating after life stops people doing irrational things such as killing people etc. This makes religion relevant in the 21st century as it makes people controlled and not going crazy killing people etc.
POINT 4
Religion is not considered to still be relevant
due to ideas of the 'afterlife' being challenged
Due to revolutions in science, people are starting to question religion more and more as we evolve, with more people believing in science rather than religion due to proof being shown to them. examples are the creation of the world being believed as the 6 days it took made by God being challenged with the idea of the 'Big Bang'
another example of the religious afterlife being questioned is with the rise of psychedelic drugs such as DMT. DMT is a natural drug that grows in plants etc and people who have taken DMT all claim to experience and see the 'after life' or 'people on the other side' who state they can return when they die. It can be argued that this is possibly the afterlife, due to DMT being a naturally grown drug and the concept that we are all one and combined with nature.
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