What if Religion is last?

The popular view of religion is as being the first development of a civilization. The thing that predates a people before they discover reason & science.

What if we thought of it instead as the culmination of a civilation? A civilization's peak product right before collapse?

The Romans were efficient administrators, engineers, philosophers with a great cultural heritage from the Greeks. Eventually they culminated in circuses, decadance, scandal which gave rise to the Christian religion not based on reason but strictly on arbitrary choice of faith.

Today in the US we are culminating into a time of hyper-partisan politics, unreasonable arguments, safe spaces, hyperbole, picking observations that fit a narrative rather than the reality. The culmination of this is a new religion. The religion of Left and Right where world views are arbitrary, held with unwavering faith and and not grounded in reality. The collapse of the US will leave in its wake the religion of liberalism.

Notes on Above

I hate when people pontificate just as I have and then somehow think that their pontifications reveal some sort of truth about life or the world. Below are the considerations we'd need to make before we can make any sort of assertion that this is in fact how the world is or ever has been.

• We assume many civilizations left a religion post-collapse. Is this true?
  • Mayans? Aztecs? Egyptions? Greeks? Romans? Civilizations in India, China, Africa?
• Were the Romans really that well governed, data driven, and virtuous at the outset?
• I'm assuming what the collapse of the Romans was
  • Poor government
  • Corruption
  • Lack of grounding in reality
  • Loss of virtue
• Rome is just one example of a empire that collapsed around the same time a religion was being born. This could be coincidental and not causal
• I talk about how the US is culminating today in hyper-partisan and irrational politics. The US, and all countries for that matter, may have always been this bad or worse. Time periods to investigate primary sources of below:
  • Cold war
  • Vietnam War
  • Slavery, Civil rights, KKK
  • Civil War
  • ...

Alternate View

What if we thought of it instead as the culmination of a civilation? A civilization's peak product right before collapse?

We can change this to:

What if we thought of it instead as the culmination of a civilation? A civilization's peak product, at the height of their power.

The new interpretation would be that the civilization (the culture) had come to a full understanding of the place of reason in life. That while yes, we can make rational arguments, people ultimately make an arbitrary choice on how to live their lives and what to believe -- no matter the reasons they're presented with. You can choose to live by reason or you can choose to live by whim or you can choose to live by faith or you can choose to inconsistenly live by many of these things.

Religion is a recognition that people will always make a choice whether there be evidence or not, a solid argument or not. That even if there is great evidence, the realms of knowledge are so vast that a well sounding and contrary argument can always be raised and create doubt in the human mind.

Religion is the culmination in understanding the limits of human reason.

Notes on Above

It depends on the level of development of the religious person.

As in the dogmatist is a just a blind follower with no understanding of the insights his religion may be bringing. Or are the insights of religion just people reading into the religion to justify its continued existence?

Alternate Alternate View

What if we thought of it instead as the attempt to cure the ills of the culture?

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