The Evolution of Religion

Are religions the only thing left holding societies together? Why is that? Is it possible that even though religion belonged to "prescientific rationalism" it still serves an important sociological role today? A lot of people are abandoning organized religion (the 7 or 8 major cultural systems that Francis Fukuyama mentioned) in search of a more 'evolved' religion that fits their spiritual needs without conflicting with their logic and the advances of science. Fukuyama believes it is essential to keep religion alive and that religion is more functionally important than people realize. That is true in the sense that religion has provided common cultural and moral rules that brings forth more cooperation than other institutions like schools and government have attempted to do in the past.

In my opinion, if people were less concerned with putting a label on their religion and more concerned with how they feel about it and the fact that regardless of what you call it, it generally breaks down to being a good person and doing to others what you would have them do to you, we could begin to demand that sense of community and belonging and societal bonds in other areas of our lives. I was very interested to find yoism.org (at the end of the Aldous Huxley videos) and couldn't help but check it out. While the verbage was quite dense and there was so much information to go through, I was intrigued by the message of unifying all religions and belief systems and focusing on those values we all have in common rather than the position history has taken by focusing on the differences. It is definitely something I will be looking further into...