Developed countries including the United Kingdom are becoming increasingly secular. Not necessarily at the state level, the Church Of England is the UK’s official state religion, but at a personal level. Your average member of the public is much less likely to consider themselves “religious” than, say, one hundred years ago. Why is this?
For a non-believer, it’s easy to attribute this to increasing literacy, technology, awareness of science and logic. Basically saying that people in westernised, formerly Christian countries are somehow cleverer or less gullible than they once were. It could even be true. Another school of thought however, maintains that the public are becoming increasingly stupid, fat and lazy, with their remote controls, ready meals and txtspk. So which is it?
Religion or belief in something greater fills a human need, which appears to be diminishing. From the time of the first modern humans until the twentieth century, life was hard. It still is for many but for an increasing and lucky majority of westerners, daily life is no longer a struggle for survival. We evolved like other wild animals in a dangerous world of eat or be eaten. The timeline of worries regarding daily nutrition from prehistory to the present goes something like “I hope I don’t get eaten”, “I hope I get to eat”, “I hope I get to eat properly”, “I hope McDonalds is still open”. Similar timelines could be cited for our other elementary concerns: shelter, sanitation, security etc.
So with decreasing hardship comes increasing acceptance. Conversely, belief in the afterlife, reincarnation, divine retribution, judgement day, the end-of-the-world or simply an all powerful and all loving God who isn’t going to let things get any worse for you, are clearly very comforting ideas for someone living in a world so horrifying they can’t accept its flaws.
So am I saying that religious faith is a kind of mental illness? Well, yes but not in a bad way. It is a clever and probably vital defence mechanism we humans have developed to keep ourselves sane. I just think the world will be a better place when comfortable delusions are no longer needed.
I shall risk quoting Karl Marx to finish, for he said it before me and with greater oomph,
“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness.”
