Imagine No Religion | Caroline Schaffalitzky | TEDxCopenhagen

Take a look at this image and it might look familiar to you. Raise your hand if you think this sounds familiar. Yes, some think it's fine. So this may look familiar to you because it looks like it's in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, but it's actually not. It is a replica located in a small town in the Ivory Coast, it took five years and 300 million dollars to build it and a good question now is why there is a replica of Saint Peter. St. Peter's Basilica in a small African town. I promise we'll come back to that, so this talk is about perhaps the most important thing: they are a typical type of belief, that is, religious beliefs, and religious beliefs are beliefs about the supernatural, for example, believing in God. or belief that the law of karma is true and many people see beliefs as the core of

religion

s and religious traditions, but today I would like you to reconsider that point of view.

I will argue that

religion

is less about beliefs and more about human needs and this is important. because religion has a huge influence on the world and is a source of conflict, so if we wanted less conflict it would be a good idea to understand more about religion. I have a background in philosophy and about 10 years ago I did a project called what is religion and during that time it occurred to me that many people, believers and non-believers, associate religion with belief, so, for example, think about religious people who They go door to door trying to convince others of their own beliefs or maybe some of you remember the atheist society bus campaign in Rosamond a few years ago that said something like why do you pay taxes to the Church when you don't believe in God? and, in fact, religion is less about beliefs than we tend to think and show you this.

I would like to start by inviting you to

imagine

a world without religion, you know, some people say it's easy if you try right, so take a look at these impressive buildings, they are very visible signs of religion in the world, could you

imagine

a world without religion? These buildings raise their hands again, who could imagine a world without these buildings? So I'm fine, I mean, I could, in fact, I could kill some of you, but the point is that even if they can, we have to remember that religion is so much more than awesome. The religion of buildings is also about these things, which is why we have yoga, the lucky cat.

The bonfire of Saint John. Lucy's procession calendars and the Christmas elves' school holidays and you even see the passport inside the image inside the Danish passport, so what these things and many more have in common is that they are all examples of something that has a religious origin and religion has ended. the place and that's why I think it would be quite difficult to imagine a world completely without religion, but I imagine some of you are thinking now, okay, but these things are not really religion because they may have put Christmas elves in their shop window.

If you own a store that doesn't mean you believe in Christmas elves and I suppose a lot of people can use a calendar without being religious so maybe these things aren't really religious unless people believe in them and that might be an argument that you actually need to believe in religion, but it's not that simple and I'll give you two reasons why it's not that simple: the first religious thought is not simply about belief and the second religion is not simply about think, so let's take a look. religion religious thinking is not simply about beliefs, imagine someone who does not believe in the law of karma but still fears that it may be true, so he walks very carefully trying not to step on snails, beetles, etc., this is how he acts. as if because he feared that the law of karma might be true, then you have an example of someone who does not believe in the law of karma but is still religious and this is actually not that surprising, we know this from many cases that our thinking is more what beliefs so take a look at this imagine you really believe this glass floor will hold up you're actually pretty sure you know this glass floor will hold up but even if you know it you really believe it how many of you?

I can step on this glass floor without the slightest hesitation, raise my hand again, please, what about you? room and you see, let's pretend this is a voodoo doll, you see it, you see an old lady violently stabbing a voodoo doll of your best friend and the old lady, of course, sees that you are alarmed, but she says oh, but not really you worry. Voodoo doesn't work, so this has no effect on your friend and you can believe her, but you would still like her to stop stabbing, they voted right, yes, or a final example that sounds familiar to you, think about lucky charms, maybe.

You know someone who has, say, a pair of lucky soccer socks and deep down he knows that these socks don't really work, he knows that they have no effect, but he will never go to a soccer game without his lucky socks , so these are all examples. that we are more than our beliefs that maybe some of the things we do make sense even if we don't believe them, so it can make sense to be part of a church ritual, like a wedding or a funeral, without being religious, it can that it even makes sense to pay taxes to the Church even if you don't believe and that brings us to the second part that religion is not just about thinking because religion is about beliefs but also about rituals, clothes, stories, objects, songs , places and many more things, but all these things have different functions, so the function of religious beliefs is to provide people with an explanation of the meaning of life, the purpose of the world, etc., but religious rituals provide More than that, they provide a sense of belonging, a sense of community, a meaning. of order in the world, etc., religious clothing can be a way of expressing a cultural identity in a very easy way and religious stories are easy to remember and are intriguing to us because they are interesting and strange, think for example of How many times have you seen references in popular culture to Jesus walking on water, for example, it's something that sticks in your mind.

Some people can't even hear thunder without listening and we are always thinking of Saul soaring through the sky in his goat cart. That's nice. As strange as it may seem, the point is that religion has all these kinds of functions and what they do is serve different humans and this actually means that if we can understand more about religion, we can understand more about what it is to be human and Let me give you a quick example of how we can use this information so that in Denmark you know that we have a tradition of burning witch dolls in the street.

The bonfires on Midsummer's Eve, people outside of Denmark think this is really strange, really strange, and I think it's strange, especially because we don't believe in witchcraft, so what is this? Well, it probably has nothing to do with belief, but with tradition and the power of community and the sense of order that it brings to us, so maybe if we can see the strange actions of other people, even if you know that they Other people's strange actions are always stranger than your own, true, but other people's strange actions can also Maybe it's about human needs and not so much about beliefs, so I think if we focus on beliefs we will focus on something that divides us, whereas if we focus on human needs we will focus on something that we have in common and you know.

In fact, I think John Lennon was wrong. I'm sorry. I don't think it is easy to imagine a world without religion if we know that we have religions because we have human needs or, to put it another way, if we have religion because we have human needs. What exactly do we imagine when we imagine no religion? Let me finish by returning to this image. What I promised correctly. What is a replica of Saint Peter? St. Peter's Basilica in a small African village is probably not so much about belief, it is probably more about status, power, search for identity, all the normal human needs, so let me repeat once again, if we have religion because we have human needs, what exactly is it? imagine if you don't imagine any religion