If the metric used is the number of figures in the pantheon, it will be very interesting to do the math for hinduism, budism, dao and shinto.

Like it or not, religiosity belief isn’t going anywhere. Science can not provide meaning for life or the universe where we exist.

What we can and should fight for is a society where belief is solely personal matter, with no room or weight on the broad public forum.

science does give you an answer though, there is no meaning for life, or if you want to interpret it that way the meaning is for your DNA to reproduce, that’s what we are programmed to do.

That makes me feel so great about life. Why would I ever turn to faith.

In our society, one that teems with parasitic behavior between its individual members, yes, it raises a question why we might want to live without higher meaning. Sartre didn’t address it until late in life, but Camus recognize that most people at least commit philosophical suicide (that is, take a leap of faith) if the choice is between that or committing literal suicide. It’s why he offers embracing the absurd, imagining Sisyphus happy, and finding a way to get there, yourself.

To be fair, I’m not even there yet, finding that my society has willfully betrayed me from my childhood (as it does for all kids in the US) trying to create an obedient and disposable laborer / soldier to build vanity projects for billionaires, rather than prepare us to shape society the way we want it as we grow into it. Ours is now a gerontocracy as well as a plutocracy, while the kids have their own ideas and are looking to defy the natural social order.

So my story and yours is in how we break free from the fetters and find our own way. Or not, as the case may be.

You won’t ever be able to overcome the ills of society alone, by yourself you’ll never be able to “break free from the fetters and find your own way” Making a better society requires coordinated collective effort. Religion bonds people together in a very rare way. You can’t get people to work together in a coordinated way without some ideal in their minds, they have to believe that their effort might not help themselves directly but might help make future civilization a better place. That takes faith of one kind or another.

That takes faith of one kind or another.

Bullshit. You can choose any number of career or volunteer paths that demonstrably help people or society without needing any “faith”.

Here’s the context of that sentence that you are quoting: “You can’t get people to work together in a coordinated way without some ideal in their minds, they have to believe that their effort might not help themselves directly but might help make future civilization a better place. That takes faith of one kind or another.”

I was talking about getting people to work together for a better world, not an individual choice"