Has there ever been a society or nation that became a strong society or nation without a religion as a building block/component of the society/nation?

by no1_vern
[deleted]

That depends on how broadly you define the term "religion." China has strong traditions of Buddhism and Confucianism, for example, but neither of these belief system necessarily entail a belief in any sort of god or the reality of supernatural phenomena.

Marxism is a recent phenomenon and most true Marxists are atheists/materialists, but many scholars consider Marxism to constitute a "political religion." Many Marxist countries outright forbade religious practices because they believed that religious hierarchies could be a potential source of ideological competition and could command the loyalty of the masses better than the state could. Even so, the force of religious belief remained strong in many communist European states, to the point where the political power structure had to allow traditional religious practices.

estherke

Sorry, we don't allow throughout history questions. These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again.