Are there dangers in an increasingly secular society?
Today religions are not necessary to have large moral communities–just take a look at a society like Denmark–a very cooperative society that is one of the least religious (almost 75% of Danes are not believers); but the large moral communities of today may not have come into existence without religion. In the past, when reliable secular mechanisms were unavailable, religion–big brother watching–may have been the only game in town to organize strangers into cooperative groups. However, it is possible that religions can do a better job than secular ideologies when conditions are extremely difficult. From anthropological research, we find that when there are strong internal and external threats to group stability (internal disputes, natural disasters, etc.) as in the case of utopian communities in 19th century America, religious communities outsurvived secular ones. But many large modern societies have developed effective secular institutions that successfully promote cooperation with
