system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I believe religion has no purpose in modern society CMV

I believe religion's original purpose was to give the primitive/early societies of men and women a set of rules that shape their morals. The rules (for more of a broad term) defined in various religious books seem to me as if they were written to teach people right from wrong, good from bad, what to and what not to do. Society these days seems advanced enough that we as a people could decide which rules to keep and which rules to toss from these stories and eliminate the fluff. 

This is an ideal situation that these rules would be decided in, this would be damn near impossible as of right now with all the world wide disagreements.

I've always been unsure how to define my beliefs. For most of my life I haven't believed in Bible stories and such. I don't like to define myself as atheist, that seems too close-minded for my liking.
gpt
Here's the trouble, "modern society" isn't very. Let me clarify this. You have millions if not billions of people whose existence is pretty terrible and hopeless. Ever seen Kinsasha? The slums of Dheli? Hell, even taking a drive through some of the shadier parts of New York of LA will make you lose hope in humanity.

Sure, humanism is a way to promote ethics and morals to people that doesn't have all the problems that organized religion does a lot of the time. But just try explaining this to someone with no decent role models in their life, surrounded by a life of nothing but crime, poverty, and despair. Oh yeah, and often times in the environment that they live in, abiding by this moral code will actually mean they are less successful than say, their friends that do things like steal and lie and cheat to survive.

 If you live in one of these areas of the world, keeping to that kind of ethical code while surrounded by temptation is *hard*, like in a way that no one from the developed world could even fathom. There is no way that a secular humanist belief in morality could ever be as strong as a religious belief in morality, because in a religious mindset the entire world is *designed* to be that way, and often times doing things outside of that moral code has consequences that tend to be a lot more dire than a bad feeling about yourself. Sometimes, these people need a rock to cling on to, and that rock is their faith.

 Now are all religious beliefs inherently promoting morality? No. Will people use religion as an excuse to justify atrocity and arrogance? Of course. Would religion have a place in a Utopian society? Probably not. Does it have a place in the society we live in today? Take a trip to a church in a dirt poor area, take a look at the hope it gives these hopeless people, see how much better it makes them, and that question will answer itself.