"This is true for an individual, but not a society as a whole, there is an objective loss to society due to religion, as I highlighted in my previous argument."
Individuals make up a society. A whole society so of course it's a society as a whole. Not meaning deciding for all but individually deciding in all.
Do you follow?
It's up to the individual to decide whether religion is useful. That is the only valid stance. You're coming along saying outright it is not useful.
Which contradicts what you just said about society as a whole. Your stance is communicating to decide for society as a whole that religion is useless.
"This is just absurd, atheism is the disbelief in religion, then how can it be called a religion itself?"
Well to keep it simple it all depends on what definition you use. If you define atheism as a lack of belief you say lack of a religion. If you define it as a belief in a lack thereof , it's another religion along with other belief systems.
Bottomline is, atheists have beliefs just as the rest of society because having beliefs is an integral facet of society and humanity.
"Humans are social animals and hence obviously need a sort of belonging to one another, but why does it have to be religion? "
We have beliefs because we don't know everything. There are somethings we can only believe in or have faith in concerning the present moment.
"People chose to believe in religion as it answered difficult questions, when there was no way to get a verifiable and objective answer, but today that is not the case."
Well the theory of evolution appears to answer questions sufficient for those with questions so they buy into believing evolution.
Also there is no verifiable way to disprove what religious folks believe in currently or else religions would not exist at all.
That is the ones that only have no way to be disproven.
"Yes, but that doesn't make it true, some people still believe the earth is flat that doesn't make it true."
Well I'm not arguing about what is true or false.
If something has been proven fact and presented to a person that has held a belief about said thing, that person can no longer hold a belief honestly about said subject. At that point, the person can just accept it as knowledge or reject it and remain in delusion.
Beliefs can only exist in the realm of a lack of knowledge.
"That is completely delusional, can you please elaborate how that is not the case?"
Remember what I said about definitions and what religion is down to its bare bones and you said yes to it.
"Religion when broken down to its bare bones is a belief system, a set of beliefs and practices"
So the government is who? A body of people. Do not these people have beliefs? Do not these people use a system of some democracy to execute elections based on who? The people that vote for what? What they believe in and vote for those that believe in what they do and to see that go into legislation, into law to regulate the people's actions and practices.
Remember that religion is a belief system that governs a way of life. People live their lives or lifestyles according to their religion. A voting citizen and elected government official, elected politician is no different in believing in the same thing, believing in policies to run society, a country, a land of people, etc.
"There are many atheistic societies"
They have faiths in a lot of things, plenty of it like everybody.
"Conclusion
Con made a rather obvious attempt to move the goalpost without providing any objective rebuttal to the points I made in my previous argument."
The actual conclusion is , it's erroneous and invalid to decide for an entire society that religion is utterly of no use. Therefore the opposing side's stance is rebutted.
