The Role of Religion in a Civilized Society. For many societies, religion is best understood at the level of spiritual life. For a large number of persons in modern societies religion is neither good nor bad but simply irrelevant, given the many alternative ways to find meanings in various forms cultural pursuits, ethical ideals, and lifestyles. As defined, religion is the beliefs and worship of people opinion concerning the existence, nature and divine involvement in the universe and human life. In a society religion has always been the cause of divine involvement. > >Religion, like any institution can have a positive or a negative impact on society. Its special place in our society whose sole official purpose is the ethics and morals of humanity that gives it its awesome responsibility. In that responsibility, the majority of religious leaders have failed, and failed miserably. > > Our society's religion is divided into two groups, the seculars and the fundamentalists. The seculars have decided that right and wrong are what the society say it is. Rather than be an example unto the nations, they would abandon their beliefs. To add, the fundamentalist accepts the need for an independent standard of morality, their morality. In most situations they encourage their congregants not to think about themselves but about the other individual as well. Many people in today's society are secular in their outlook upon the world. Persons such as these are the seculars. They have decided that, since God is not seen in this world, god has no place in this world. On the other hand the fundamentalist claim God has a place in this world, but they simply take their doctrine and call it God, doctrine often as rooted in local cultural mores as the degenerate hedonism of the seculars. > > The advantages of religion in a civilized society are that it makes religiously based convictions a better spring board for action. It is a fact of history that people w...