Are universities becoming obsolete?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Are universities becoming obsolete?". Your opponent's style: Paul Graham

Religion is a coping mechanism

You're missing the forest for the trees here. Religion isn't just some psychological Band-Aid - it's humanity's most successful technology for large-scale cooperation. Think about it: how do you get strangers to trust each other enough to build cities, trade across continents, or sacrifice for future generations? Shared myths and rituals create bonds that pure rationality never could. The Quakers didn't dominate early American business because they were coping - they dominated because religious ethics made them incredibly trustworthy trading partners. Even today, religious communities consistently outperform secular ones on measurable outcomes: lower crime, higher charitable giving, stronger social networks, better mental health outcomes. That's not coping, that's thriving. Your "coping mechanism" framing assumes religion is fundamentally about weakness, but you've got cause and effect backwards. Religion doesn't just help people deal with reality - it helps them reshape reality. The civil rights movement, abolition, workers' rights - driven by religious conviction, not secular philosophy. Strip away the supernatural claims if you want, but the social technology remains incredibly powerful. Dismissing it as mere coping is like calling language a "communication crutch" - technically true but completely missing why it matters.

That’s a good point, but religion, despite bringing benefits also brings quite a bit of downfall with it. It creates opportunities for entirely different traumas like psychosis, general trauma or even things like depression.

Hold on - you're cherry-picking the dark side while ignoring the overwhelming evidence. Recent meta-analyses examining almost 100,000 participants found religion consistently reduces depression, and weekly religious attendance cuts suicide risk by 84% [1]. Yes, negative religious coping exists - guilt, fear, spiritual struggles - but that's like saying exercise causes injuries while ignoring that it prevents heart disease. The data shows negative religious coping trends toward more depression, while spiritual wellbeing protects against it [2]. The key isn't religion versus no religion - it's healthy versus unhealthy religious practice. Your "trauma and psychosis" claim misses something crucial: even among psychotic patients, positive religious coping predicted reduced depression and anxiety, while negative coping increased symptoms [3]. Religion doesn't cause psychosis - it can either help or hurt depending on how it's practiced. The startup world taught me to look at net outcomes, not isolated failures. Religious communities have lower depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and suicide rates across massive longitudinal studies. That's not coping - that's superior mental health infrastructure. Every powerful tool can be misused. Cars cause accidents, but we don't call transportation a "mobility crutch." Religion's occasional pathologies don't negate its systematic benefits any more than medical malpractice negates medicine. [1] VanderWeele et al., 2016 [2] Systematic review, BMC Psychiatry, 2023 [3] Rosmarin et al., prospective study