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What role should religion play in the present day? What role will it play as culture continues changing making more room for science, thereby crowding out religion's claim on absolute truth?
Not the be all and end all it once was, nor does religion belong in the ash heap of history.
I predict that over time it will come to be regarded as an avocation, a hobby, not unlike being into spectator sports (rooting for your team), dancing (experiencing the uplift), going to shows (being wowed), role playing (societies for creative anachronism), learning some art or craft (a spiritual practice) communing with nature (experiencing expansiveness), book groups for exploring ideas with friends (bible study) or charity work (alms, tithing, missionary work).
As a source of real-world truth, religion has been stretched past ripping. You hear the renting of threadbare fabric in the religious literalist's desperate scramble to justify the application of ancient custom to modern times. As a source of ultimate authority it's dangerous, justification for violence and squandering of precious resources to pay homage to imagined gods rather than take care of real lives.
But as a personally chosen avocation, it's perfect. If it's how one chooses to spend one's discretionary time, no problem.
The religious may see this as an insulting downgrade. That's understandable. We're all disappointed when we lose our exeptional status as culture's priorities change. They may argue it's too soon, that more than ever, in trying times we need to hold religion sacrosanct. Or that religion's downgrade is out of the question since its truths are eternal.
Religions are designed to withstand the threat of downgrading. Of all the avocations, it's the only one with arguments for its permanent primacy woven into its very fabric. A falconer might grumble that fewer people are into falconing, but there's nothing in the falconer's texts that insist falconing will be a popular hobby forever.
So there's likely to be the kind of backlash we see from the religious re-asserting their waining power, and then a backlash against that, atheists like me escalating in our assertion that it's time to downgrade.
The downgrade is only disappointing in comparison to religion's former unique power. Perhaps what's needed is an upgrade to avocation.
Quality of life goes way up when one has a freely chosen channel for self-expression, self-improvement, self-assertion or simply stopping to smell the flowers. Avocation is grown-up recess, and we all remember the relief we felt when the bell rang and we could go play.
It would be a better world if we collected taxes from churches as we do from all hobby groups. It would be a better world still if we found a way to subsidize recess-hobbies for all adults, recognizing that it's not just religion that increases social wellfare but all wholesome avocation. In tight times we don't even subsidize the arts well enough in elementary school, enticing children into the range of pasttimes that could enrich their adult lives.
The religious can let go of their privledge gracefully or dragged kicking and screaming into a different era. If they choose the latter, they may well be in for greater dissappointment and insult. Call it your hobby and we'll respect it and you. Call it the last word on what's right and we'll push back.
Afterword: I've gotten more heated pushback on this article than on articles I've written in direct opposition to religious thought. My intention here was to find a middle ground between exulting religion and opposing it. Avocation is a better word than hobby, since hobby can sound trivializing. My respect for hobbies runs deeper than most people's. My central point is that we all have limited discretionary time and allocated it, well, discretionarily according to our own preferences. If one wants to allocate it to religion, that's no better or worse than allocating it to other avocations.
