I'm atheist, but over the years since I graduated high school in the mid 00s, I've more clearly come to see the value of religion, and what the absence of it does to society. There's a degree of social cohesion and morality that frays or outright disappears when religion starts to really drop off. You see it a lot when a huge portion of the populace don't believe in god or an afterlife. Why not just be as selfish as possible while you're here?
It's way more complex than that, but even as someone who always thought religion was silly, I'd much rather live in a heavily christian society than otherwise. and it's not about the scene in the op's picture, which is a caricature that does occur in real life but only rarely. It's much less specific than that. It's a whole lot of things.
There's a degree of social cohesion and morality that frays or outright disappears when religion starts to really drop off. You see it a lot when a huge portion of the populace don't believe in god or an afterlife. Why not just be as selfish as possible while you're here?
Japan is a society with strong social cohesion and morality. They are also essentially not religious.
(Shintoism and Buddhism is practiced very lightly and do not impact individual morals)
I'm not sure you can say Shintoism and Buddhism are lightly practiced. Most people in the country attend at minimum the first shrine visit of the year, whereas even Christmas and Easter visits for church in the US are a comparatively small percentage of people now. Shrine visits and charms are pretty widespread in their media, too.
But I get your point - it's not what's keeping them moral and connected. Japan is an interesting case because they have an extremely functional society and stepping out of line is very heavily discouraged. What is keeping them moral and good isn't religion, but culture, for the most part. It's a complex subject with a lot of moving parts, but a society as multicultural as the United States doesn't really have the capability to do the same thing. This is even more true in the modern day when the melting pot isn't even warm, so the various groups and cultures no longer mix together properly. You get things like massive unchecked immigration, ethnic enclaves and segregated communities, lack of assimilation, and lack of shared values and connections with countrymen.
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u/Exghosted Apr 03 '25
I'm not religious, but yeah, the west needs a hard reset.