No.
However, in order to discuss this point, let’s be clear on what we are talking about. First, let’s clarify what religion
is not:
- Belief in God or gods. Religions often have this characteristic, but it is not a necessary thing. There are atheistic or agnostic religions that plainly identify themselves as such. Conversely, many deists believe in deity to some degree but have a very low level of what atheists would regard as religiosity.
- Church. No institutional organization is required for a religion to exist.
- Holy books. No sacred text of any sort is essential for a religion to exist. Secular people often criticize Christians for not having any idea what is in their own holy book, and they are right to do so. However, in making this argument, they show how someone can be quite religious even without a holy book of any sort. And of course, there are plenty of religions - especially tribal religions - that have no holy books.
- Clearly codified morality. You know, all the “shalt” and “shalt not” statements. This may be characteristic of some religions, but not all.
- Tradition. If religion were exclusively a matter of tradition, no new religions would ever form.
So what is religion?
In my mind, the most useful definition I can give for religion is to say that it is
a system of belief based on a set of either non-empirical concepts or purely experiential evidence on which one bases one’s life.
In my experience, even the most cynical nihilist lives his life according to certain non-empirical beliefs that he holds, whether he admits to them or not. These beliefs constitute his religion. Secular humanists pride themselves on being rational, but at the core of their worldview is a belief in the value and importance of humanity - a belief that is not in any way empirical or beyond debate.
Belief in an imaginary value is not any more rational than belief in an imaginary deity.
Atheists often say “atheism is a religion like ‘off’ is a channel”, but this is a poor comparison, as atheism is not defined as the absence of religion. Rather, atheism is defined as the lack of belief in deity. As noted above, some religions are openly atheistic in nature (and others not so openly). Atheism is not a religion, but neither is theism a religion. I do not attend the Church of Theism. Rather, the question of theism vs. atheism is simply an issue that most religions address, just as liberalism vs. statism is an issue that most political ideologies address.
So what am I getting at?
What I am getting at is that every normally functioning human has a religion. That is, every normally functioning human invariably lives according to certain beliefs for which he or she cannot directly produce any empirical evidence for others to view and analyze. Humans are naturally religious, whether they believe in deity or not, whether they belong to a church or not. And since society is, I assume, always going to be composed of humans, that means that society cannot exist without religion.
However, some people may say that their religion is not religion in an attempt to seize power and give their religion institutional primacy over other religions.
