Your initial response didn't refer to my larger point, so I hope you can understand why it appeared to me like you missed my point.

I still think that it's important to make a distinction between an outright legal ban, as opposed to a cultural discouraging. And I think we should prefer the latter over the former.

I think a ban is dangerous - not because I've "been socialized to believe in make-believe stories" (although I'm sure that would be some people's reasoning). But I think it's dangerous, because it limits free speech, and I don't want to be on the receiving end of a goverment that has a bad interpretation of what free speech means.

I know you've written previously about how Medium threatened to ban you or take down your content because it supposedly broke their rules - even though it was arguable that you didn't break any rules. And that's what I'd be worried about. That a government could claim that something was "religious- / god- / nonsense- speak" when in fact it is perfectly sensible.

That's why I think it needs to be a cultural ban, not a lawful ban.

And to be clear, I do think it's dangerous that christianity, mormonism, etc can spring up and hijack people's brains so quickly.

But I think the main reason its possible is because our current culture gives nonsense a free pass.

But if we had a culture that reacted to nonsense with suspician and disdain, then I don't think such nonsensical ideas would spread so quickly.

But I also don't think dangerous nonsense is limited to "god" speak, and so, by your definition of religion as "relating to god", I think we'd be letting lots of other nonsense slip through the cracks.

So instead, I think it's best to just say that the culture should hold all nonsense in disdain, not just "god" nonsense. And in that respect, it's better to not even use the word "religion", or else use a broader definition of religion, which, to my mind, is still ambiguous, and must be defined whenever it's used.