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What does mean to be religious?

I'd argue that it doesn't affect your actions, people do what they're gong to do.  Religious people simply do the good and bad acts and have an invented guilt tacked on to their bad acts, lol.

I guess I'm a Golden Rule guy, and I do believe there is something "out there", a higher power.

Not a churchgoer. Used to be but got jaded on it. Long story.

THE WAY WE WEREN'T: RELIGION IN COLONIAL AMERICA - The Washington Post
THE WAY WE WEREN'T: RELIGION IN COLONIAL AMERICA - The Washington Post

In 1776, only about 17 percent of the country were church members, compared to about 65 percent today, said Stark, who has tallied church membership as a percentage of the population over the past 250 years using church records and census figures.

Even in the populated cities and towns, colonial Americans were not particularly religious. "It's safe to say that most people walking around had some nebulous notion of God even though they had never been in a church and were just vaguely Christian -- nobody had ever instructed them."
Why didn't early Americans go to church? Part of the reason is that most of America even in the 18th century was still untamed frontier filled with untamed frontiersmen who preferred drinking and wenching to tithing and praying.

Women, churches and schools came later. Even by the first U.S. Census in 1790, men still significantly outnumbered women in the United States and its colonies, Stark reported in his book, "The Churching of America," which he wrote with Purdue sociologist Roger Finke.
Besides, congregations need clergy to lead them, and men of the cloth were in short supply in colonial America. What few there were left much to be desired: Many had fled from Europe or Scandinavia to escape debts, scandal or unhappy marriages. "Why else would you want to leave Norway or Germany?" Stark said. And once here, these scoundrels continued their dissolute ways. "The clergy was pretty notorious."


Church Membership In America Percentage of population that belongs to a church:
1776 17%
1850 34
1860 37
1870 35
1890 45
1906 51
1916 53
1926 56
1952 59
1980 62
1995 65

* *Estimated. Source: "The Churching of America: 1776-1990" by Roger Finke and Rodney Stark and Gallup Organization data. Don't Call Me Raoul

And then they lose to Northwestern. And we can't explain it. They're not SUPPOSED to lose to Northwestern. So we claim "they got caught looking ahead".

But... Did they really? I think much like the example of the on-field injury, once you get into those pads and you get onto the field, you're not thinking about next week's game. You're thinking about the play that's called, performing your job, and beating the guy across from you. There's no such thing as "looking ahead".

Why do I say this? Because OSU probably has a win probability of 0.95 over Northwestern, but we never need a narrative for the 19 times out of 20 that OSU wins. But when OSU loses, we can't just accept that there's a probability function and Northwestern is going to win some. Because they're not supposed to. OSU is supposed to win. So we need to create a narrative as to "why".

So this kind of fascinates me because it’s sometimes true and sometimes not.

In a lot of cases, we make up myths about our teams as a bit of a pacifier to justify outcomes. But there are also moments that are far more interesting where a team really just does think it’s hot shit and totally drop the bag.

I’m always interested in moments of the latter, when people actually have those human things happen. (There’s a ton of myth making about coach decision making, when 90 percent of the time it’s about a player not being good or messing up. And learning actual good stuff about how they do things is always interesting)

Pew study shows acceptance of atheists is low but gradually increasing - Freedom From Religion Foundation (ffrf.org)

Americans continue to rate atheists more negatively than positively but atheists have edged up slightly above Muslims and Mormons in terms of favorability ratings. Only 20 percent of Americans have favorable opinions of atheists, and more — at 24 percent — hold unfavorable opinions. Muslims command slightly less favor at 17 percent, with 22 percent unfavorable, and Mormons 15 percent positive and 25 percent negative. What may be surprising, given concerns about growing anti-Semitism, is that Americans express the most favorable feelings toward Jews, who receive the highest plurality — 35 percent — of favorable ratings and lowest unfavorable ratings at 6 percent.

Most Americans are neutral overall about religions, however.

Not surprisingly, Pew found that people tend to rate their own religious group positively. So Pew adjusted findings to examine how people rate religious groups other than their own. The most significant revelation is that among Americans who are not born-again or evangelical Protestants, the balance of opinion toward evangelical Christians is negative (32 percent unfavorable vs. 18 percent favorable). Evangelical Christians are among the most negatively rated religious groups by people outside that group. Likewise, “the balance of opinion is negative in the case of Mormons,” Pew cites, with a quarter holding very or somewhat unfavorable views.

Also not surprising in our religion-deferential nation is that public attitudes toward Jews, Catholics and mainline Protestants are relatively warm, including by people with other identities. About four-in-10 Americans (41 percent) do not express an unfavorable view toward any group studied in the survey. Roughly one-quarter express a negative view of just one group, with atheists and evangelical Christians most likely to be singled out.

Thank God!

I don't disagree with any of that.

I just don't deem religion a useful myth or model today. 

Understood. But you have to think about a replacement. And how to SELL that replacement to the masses. We've already agreed they're not sophisticated, so you need easy answers that they can all readily fall in line behind. 

"Hey y'all, just follow the Golden Rule." isn't a good replacement. It's not a myth that has any shock and awe to it. It's not built around an institution. It's not easily something that can be turned into identity. It's a great idea, but it's not enough. 

I assume perhaps your answer is "secular humanism", which is a fine answer. And to an extent its moral code is pretty much the Golden Rule. I'd probably consider myself a secular humanist. Nobody's managed to sell it, tho. Even the name sucks. 

"The masses" NEED myths. I understand and share your issues with the religious ones. But I don't really have an answer for how to sell one better than the religious folks are doing right now. And I don't have an answer for how to sell a myth based on love, tolerance, compassion, and acceptance, over division, hate, fear, etc. The ones selling those seem to be in a golden age. 

So I'll ask... How would you market secular humanism (assuming that's near your worldview) better? How would you structure that myth to outcompete others?