new coup for you

I think atheism was practiced somewhat in ancient Greece

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And why does your tone suggest that you do not care about children?

new coup for you

It's no longer a significant force in their society

Mach

That matches my far more long-winded observation.

Given no organized religion, religious belief usually retreates to fictional beliefs that aren't problematic to every day life, in the wake of beliefs based on reality (science). This happens naturally, and it's why many people have no problem integrating science with their religious beliefs. They can maintain belief in afterlife and prayer helping those in need, for instance, but still accept the latest medications to cure their ailments. And that compartmentalized set of beliefs based on faith, may never really have to go away, but they certainly have a far diminished impact on every-day life.

Organized religions though, can be powered by greed, revenue, fame, influence, etc. These potent mechanisms can counter that to some degree, and whether or not it can continue indefinitely, or where it reaches "equillibrium", I'm not convinced we can really say.

-Mach

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Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and I am content.- Conan

Lightdemon

That is not to say that the US was not a religious society.

Gov't and society are two different things.

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Cara

Do you mean as in religion not influencing government as it seems to do in the USA? That I can agree with but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of Europeans practice religion.

If true, we will at least have a comparative study in say 1,000 years or so.

new coup for you

whether they believe in god in their heart of hearts is irrelevant, religious institutions have very little social power, at least in Western Europe.

nkgupta80

a lot of ideas play a pivitol role in mate selection. The question is whether these ideas are directly rooted in some biological feature. Furthermore, over 6000 years of human history, is enough genetic change possible to alter that biological feature.

Now we all come to religious beliefs AND non-religious beliefs based on a mix of emotions, ideas implanted in us, experiences, and so on. We always see religious people become non-religious, non-religious people become religious, conversions, different religions, etc. It isn't like religious people exhibit a different phenotype from non-religious people...Therefore, believing in a religion would have no direct biological effect on a population. Key thing to remember is that biological evolution and natural selection are based on genetics.

The reason religion (or any idea for that matter) survives in populations (or withers) is cultural selection based on the movement of ideas through language, not movement through genetics.

Lightdemon

Most likely the problem is that we do not share the same definition of "religious societies."

For me, religious institutions are the ones that are irrelevent. Whether a society is religious is solely based on the people themselves, not whether or not there is an instution facilitating the religion.

Perhaps it's more likely that a religion is established if there existed an institution, but even when the US adopted a secular constitution, Americans were still God fearing people.

Cara

It's interesting to note that religion played a role in advancing society for a while yet now the most religious societies are on the bottom of the heap, for instance the Islamic countries. It seems that as the West evolved beyond religion, if it did, it became the world leader.

But. In the end it boils down to the tribe mentality. The tribe is always US and the non-tribe is always THEM. What holds the tribe together and helps them thrive could be religion, nationality, etc., or any common experience that allows people to believe they are the ones in control. Therefore, the OP is flawed in crediting this to religion, as religion has been supplanted as the tribal force.

Jerry

Strange that in my mental serch of historical civilisations of note, non were atheist.

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"Nature has it's bad designs eaten by it's good ones."
Eyes of Nye, episode 114