I think you touch on the core of the issue here, but didn’t take your thesis far enough.
For thousands of years, humanity overall has been in a theological “Just So” mode of thinking/mind set. By contrast, we’ve only had a few hundred years of Enlightenment, and at best a century or so of increasingly widespread secular thinking, concentrated mostly in industrialized nations with the educational infrastructure and cultural diversity to challenge traditional theological institutions and institutional thinking.
The secular line of (paraphrasing loosely), “You’re born; you live; you die. Make the best of it while you’re here, because ultimately we’re all just worm food” is kind of bleak to someone raised to believe (and has had that belief reinforced through widespread cultural contact) that a lifetime of “good” behavior merits an afterlife of heavenly bliss.
So they reject secular thinking for the more comforting religious line; that’s the secret, IMO, of the longevity of religion and religious institutions.
And taking your cite at face value, I like that an Irish pub made the top-10 list of oldest businesses. Guinness for everyone!
Religions are really, really good at brainwashing small children. Once they hook the kid, they then brainwash them into believing that when they grow up and have kids of their own, they must bring those kids in for brainwashing or they will burn in hayull, or whatever.
True, but that form of Christianity was the dominant institutional expression for maybe 100 years. On the other hand, the Catholic Church is obviously the same institution that it was in 600 C.E., and it’s hard to make any argument that it wasn’t the same institution at least as far back as the Council of Nicea, even if you discount the claims of apostolic succession going back to Jesus (which I do). That’s an impressive track record however you look at it. It’s matched by very few institutions of any kind, and I doubt you’d find the same degree of continuity in most institutions, however defined, with even a third of that longevity.
How does “Make the best of it while you’re here” follow from “ultimately we’re all just worm food”? What does “make the best of it” mean?
Do you think that maybe the Enlightenment carried with it a number of assumptions and values from its European context, including ideas about what “religion” is or what “make the best of it” means, and those might still be influential today, even in “secular” thinking?
I think that you are right that many people react against a “bleak” worldview that they feel with “secular thinking” and in contrast feel better with their religious worldviews. I’d just replace “comforting” with “meaningful.”
The thing that makes many people find the outlook you described to be bleak is that for them it’s not meaningful. For one thing, they don’t necessarily make the jump from “born, live, die” to “so let’s make this world the best we can, it’s all we’ve got.” In contrast, their religious worldviews, in seen and unseen ways, fill their lives with meaning. The things they do, the way they live, how they react to failure, to success, etc. Even if it is not always comforting, like for the people who go through intense hardship for their faith, or even for people scared of hell.
Of course I think that people can definitely derive meaning from life without incorporating an afterlife or deities or churches or scriptures or whatever. But in doing so, they are still doing just that - making meaning in their lives. And at least for me, “making the best of it” means living a life that feels meaningful to me.