It depends what your point is, Paul...

I think that the traditional organized religions are, to some extent, outliving their usefullness....as are most of our other traditional systems, almost all of which are cultural spinoffs from the traditional religious ideas on which our cultures were founded.

For example: capitalism - the notion that man's proper destiny is to profit through an ever-expanding mercantile activity which generates ever larger quantities of products and cash. That's an idea that is living on borrowed time, to say the least, because Nature is not an infinite source that can be exploited on an ever-expanding basis.

For example: warfare. (Obviously a stupid, self-destructive idea, yet it has been indulged in for all of our recorded history!)

My point was simply this, that the "religious impulse" in humans is that impulse which conceives of higher motives in life than mere animalistic survival. As such, it is the impulse that lies behind art, higher moral concepts of all kinds, every form of social idealism, the scientific impulse to know and understand the mysteries of Nature, our higher concepts of love and brotherhood....indeed everything that really makes life worth living.

That's why the Tao, for example, I see as springing from the religious impulse, and Buddhism as well, although they presuppose no deity, no God, but rather a harmonious "way" of being and functioning that is seen occurring throughout existence, and which can be learned and applied by a wise human being.

All of that is good. It is highly beneficial. And it does NOT require belief in various forms of strange mythology, gods, goddesses, etc.

So, as you say, it all depends on how one defines "religion" or "socialism" or all these other common words. I find that most people define them in a very superficial manner, merely as something on which to hang their established emotional prejudice about the subject, rather than as a way of opening a door to larger possibilities.

Most people have a heavy emotional prejudice either for or against what they call "religion". Their prejudice seems to render them incapable of doing anything except attacking "religion" or promoting it...when instead they could use it as a doorway into understanding human life better.

It makes it useless, basically, to even discuss religion with most people. They don't want to think about it at all. They just want to either attack it or defend it, as a matter of course. Either way, in my opinion, is a waste of time. It achieves absolutely nothing except the blowing off of emotional steam and the perpetuation of prejudice.