Man's mind, say the mystics of spirit, must be subordinated to the will of God... Man's standard of value, say the mystics of spirit, is the pleasure of God, whose standards are beyond man's power of comprehension and must be accepted on faith....
The purpose of man's life... is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question?"
- Ayn Rand, For the New Intellectual
If more individuals today are religious sceptics than in centuries past, that is mainly because accumulated knowledge has inclined more people toward such doubt.
It would have been harder to be an atheist hundreds of years ago, when so many mysteries about the universe had not been answered. The scientific discoveries of the last few hundred years have filled in so many gaps that the idea of a Grand Designer with some kind of special affection for humans seems more implausible than ever to many.
Early childhood indoctrination by family, for example, is a key environmental factor that promotes religious beliefs. I mean, you might not have been a Christian if you were born into a Hindu or Buddhist family. And vice versa. If you had been born on an island where just your parents lived and they told you that a certain brick was god, you would have grown up believing that. Until your common sense kicked in.
But living in a close society as we humans do, prevailing social views that disapprove of open disbelief will often discourage serious exploration of secularity. In other words, the major environmental factor that promotes disbelief (and discourages belief) tends to be accumulated knowledge, whereas the most significant environmental factor in promoting belief (and discouraging disbelief) tends to be family and social indoctrination.
Religion, especially Christianity, has always been about control. Through the ages, the control the Church had over the people was total. Peasants worked for free on Church land. They paid 10% of what they earned in a year to the Church (a practice which still continues today). A failure to pay taxes, so the peasants were told by the Church, would lead to their souls going to Hell after they had died. You also had to pay for baptisms (if you were not baptised you could not go to Heaven when you died), marriages (there were no couples living together in Medieval times as the Church taught that this equaled sin) and burials - you had to be buried on holy land if your soul was to get to heaven. Whichever way you looked, the Church received money. The Church also did not have to pay taxes. This saved them a vast sum of money and the church just kept on getting wealthier and more powerful. Not something to be easily given up without a struggle.
Spirituality means something different to everyone. For some, it's about participating in organized religion: going to church, synagogue, a mosque, etc. For others, it's more personal: Some people get in touch with their spiritual side through private prayer, yoga, meditation, quiet reflection, or even long walks. Visiting Nature is as close to any god as you can get, her awesomeness is irrefutable and we could take many lessons on spirituality from her.
It seems that, once we believe in something, we will try to explain away anything that conflicts with it. Humans can't help but ask big questions—the instinct seems wired in our minds.
"If the explosion of knowledge in recent centuries has made the idea of disbelief more compelling, it would seem that the long-term trend toward secularity, even if slow, is likely to continue. In fact, it is remarkable that secularity has spread so impressively even though powerful forces have tried to shape the environment against it."
- Psychology today
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