I'm sorry to say this, but religion is obsolete. I use the same analogy every time. It's no different from mythology. It's a belief system with utterly backing. The Greeks, Egyptians, Norse, Chinese, etc. all created their own "proto-religion" system in attempts to explain all the happenings of the world. Why then, did we dismiss them? Obviously, there are few people today who believe mythology to be true. It simply died out. Mythology was just too far-fetched. Mythology is treated much like fantasy. We read it and we think the stories are silly or completely fictional, and once new fancy religions such as the monotheistic religions moved in, mythology was abandoned. Inevitably, the same will happen to all religions. Religion and mythology are the same thing. They are both based on absolutely no concrete evidence, they were founded to explain things that were otherwise unexplainable, and both will eventually be dismissed as fiction.
Role In everyday modern Life
You're kidding, right? It's fairly obvious that the role of religion has dwindled to near nothingness. I wouldn't say that an outstanding majority of people are atheists, but in this day and age, how many Christians actually attend church regularly or read more than two pages of the Bible? I hate people like this. You can't just claim to be part of a certain religion. You have to actually believe in it.
Anyway, what I think is that religion serves two main purposes. The first, as stated above, is to explain the unexplainable. Secondly, religion is a preliminary system of laws, of sorts. Actually, it's more like a code of ethics. It sets a standard as to what is morally right or wrong. Thus, it makes perfect sense that, at the time when religion was still young, the church was held in the same hand as the government. It served it's purpose when people believed in it. When God told you that it's wrong to kill, you didn't kill. In modern terms, you can just as well describe this as propaganda. No, I'm not saying that it's okay to murder your annoying neighbor, but religion is a highly inefficient system for keeping people "under control" as not everyone follows the same religion (or rather, not forced to follow the same religion), therefore, not everyone will have the same ethical values. What use, then, do we have for modern religion? I don't disagree with the idea that religion makes someone a better person. I have nothing against people who believe in religion. But it's too difficult to force everyone to act to a certain degree of morality. Using religion to keep people in check is the lazy man's way. If you tell a kid that he'll get a lump of coal from Santa Claus if he does something bad, he'll believe you. Religion is no different in that regard.
