I was watching a video on YouTube at 11PM which talks about the statutes of limitation, which is a law that sets the amount of time in which the parties involved in the dispute have to initiate legal proceedings. For example, the limitation for felony theft in California is 3 years, so if you were in California and suspects someone of stealing from you, you cannot report them 3 years after the crime. Furthermore, even if everyone knows that person is a thief, they are legally innocent if they have never been convicted in the three years. This is not universal and usually only exists for crimes that are relatively less extreme such as theft, and usually, murder does not have a statute of limitation, meaning you cannot just try to wait out the statute of limitations and become legally unaccountable(There are exceptions such as Japan, where the statute of limitations for murder is 25 years.) There are many reasons for this, such as from an economic standpoint is to ensure the detectives, police and the courts will be able to focus on more important crimes, i.e. the more recent crimes, and the resources and space which are used to save the evidence and be used for more recent crimes as well. From the perspective of the court, it ensures the decision can be fair, as, over time, the evidence and witness accounts are often altered by age and may no longer be reliable. The video does state a third reason, where it quotes philosopher Derek Parfit and says that as time goes on, the individual is now distanced from the crime and therefore should have a second chance.
Now whether you agree that if sufficient time passes means a person can no longer be held accountable for their actions or if there are certain unforgivable crimes, this got me thinking about the karmic system in the Buddhist religion. In Buddhism, it is believed that every action leads you to have good and bad 'karma', and that karma determines not only what happens to you in the future as well as what happens in your afterlife and reincarnations. Hence unlike the law and justice system which may be fallible to losing criminals, the karma system always ensures that punishment is given. While the idea that karma ensures that one is always punished in the future sounds fair and just, I dislike the idea that it affects your reincarnations' lives as well. Imagine having to suffer, just because your past life did something wrong, despite you not knowing what that person did, why they did it or what type of person they are. It doesn't make sense that you should be punished for an action done by an individual who is completely different from you in every way except for your soul, which carries no memories since all memories are lost during reincarnation. My conclusion is that it makes little sense that karma should carry over and affect your lives after reincarnation.
Despite my criticisms of the logic of karma in Buddhism, I still believe the morals of Buddhism are right and should be followed, as they teach us to be peaceful. But then, a religion that has good morals and illogical explanations for why we should follow those morals is not uncommon. Almost all religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and so on teach their followers to be kind to one another, but use stories that are usually illogical. This also results in people criticizing religion to be useless due to the illogical stories, or worse people may twist those stories in ways that can create extremist ideas deviating from its intended morals.
In short, the mythology of religion exhibits plenty of flaws, yet it still exists, because they all serve a purpose, a purpose that is needed to convince people into religion, they all tell you to believe in something larger than yourself, which can be seen in the mythology of gods, or the existence of the supernatural in our world. It is important the belief in something larger than yourself. For example, in the movie <Serenity>, a science fiction movie which takes place in the future where an empire called the Alliance rules the galaxy while cannibalistic Reavers roam poor planets and consume innocents, in which Mal, the protagonist, begins as a character who lacks faith, and as such has the tendency of prioritising his mission and survival over others, as seen in Act 1 of the movie where he sacrifices an innocent trying to board his vehicle in order to keep his crew and the goods they were transporting away from the enemies. Shepherd Book, a Christian pastor and a friend of Mal often talks to him about his behaviour, telling him he lacks faith. When Mal insists he doesn't believe in god(as he says, "I ain’t looking for help from on high"), Shepherd Book replies, When I talk about belief, why do you always assume I'm talking about God?" When 'faith' is talked about, it is often associated with religion, such as in Christianity: the belief in God; in Islam: the belief in Allah; in Buddhism: the belief in Dharma and so on. However those are not necessarily the only beliefs that one can have, as faith can come in the form of striving for the greater good of humanity, the betterment of the environment, the advancement of information and art, as long as it the virtuous rather than harmful. Without faith, one may become more unwilling of putting in effort in working to be better and keep to themselves, while faith can give someone the courage they may need to become a better version of themselves. At the end of <Serenity>, Mal decides to begin fighting to expose the Alliance for lying about the cause of the Reavers(they made them in a project gone wrong), he is able to beat the previously unbeatable agent sent to hide the truth. Similarly, in reality, religion allowed groups of people to win crusades, spread their religion, and spread their feudalism to other lands as well as gain political and economical advantage for their own leader. Alright, perhaps this doesn't sound really virtuous, but that leads me into my second point and the problem which can arise from traditional faith.
While belief can create courage for virtuous acts, it can similarly create courage for malicious acts, which is a statement which I believe can be easily proven in this day and age, as all religions may have extremists which do malicious acts out of belief similar to those who do virtuous acts out of belief. This is often as ancient and traditional religious media(texts and stuff) either have explanations on how the world works or have contains context which is outdated and allows people to justify their bad actions. This is only one of the reasons that a larger proportion of the world population is now atheist. The other reason is that with the advancement of information and technology, people are now more aware of different worldviews, including those of other religions, philosophies such as nihilism as well as the fact that the human race is insignificantly small in comparison to the size of the observable universe and the depths of how the world functions, people are more open to understanding the concept of working for something larger than themselves rather than being overtly selfish. As such, it is no longer as necessary for traditional religion for people to function and as such a decrease in theism in general. However, I do not see this as necessarily a bad phenomenon as I believe that as times change, it is natural that what people believe in also changes. Of course ultimately there may not be a perfect way to live your life, hence there is no fault if one wishes to remain with traditional religion or make their own faith, as long as it is not harmful and they are always open-minded to question and test if their faith and their way of living is good or bad.
In conclusion, those were my views on why atheism is more prevalent in modern society, however, I believe that traditional religion is not completely needed, as long as people still strive to work for something larger than themselves and believe in virtuous acts.
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