If we selectively create and populate a new country (or planet) solely of atheists, do you think there would be religious people after a few generations?

Yep. Damn teenagers have no respect for our traditions.

Probably, the human mind likes to create stories about things we don't understand and how they came to be. It doesn't have to be supernatural either if you take the god aspect out of religion you can easily fall prey to worshiping other ideas in a devout way.

This planet started with nothing but atheists and look what it is now. Maybe it takes more than a few generations, but unless education systems are also more comprehensive, religion will probably keep coming back. It's not enough to cure the world, it needs to be vaccinated.

Yeah, because people are prone towards superstition. We seek out patterns and apply meaning. I think that would lead to a god-like mythos.

A simpler confirmation: Every con game ever invented is still being practiced. NONE have died.

On such simple conditions of course they would emerge (this is important because some atheists never get to know the emotions involved) because the "organic" capacity of the human brain to produce the chemicals that are translated into the "religious emotions" will be intact (even if untrained) and they are incredibly strong when they are ignited by unforeseeable events. Thus, imagine a completely secular society where, under a false premise, people thought that the best way to suppress religions (or the belief on the supernatural or what produces them) is by subtracting any information about them as natural processes (or having a wrong understanding about them); at any point, by some random concoction of circumstances, a person suddenly feels the religious emotion and understandably, is overwhelmed. He may logically try to make sense of it, but as there is no (or the wrong) information he may begin to slowly build a new ontology based on such (huge for the senses) experience and, if he has an epiphany (if he thinks that he made some sense of them) he may try to share it with others. Because we are social animals and we tend to try to share what we feel is a great good.

On a social scale the structural elements to sustain them may be already present too (and this always comes along because some people do not understand religions as the resultant of human traits). The content of this hypothetic religions may be quite different but they would take advantage of what is already at place. Humans tend to re-arrange systems into religious-like beliefs with ease, because we evolved structuring religion (though not the same type that nowadays) because it offered specific survival advantages on those times. Think about some ideologies and how easily people begin to shape them under the "form" of religions, how some people get angry when other people dare to criticize the "founder father" or some core values of those ideologies and so on and on. Whatever system of beliefs you take, you can easily fall into the known structures we evolved with religion, countering those is a hard work and some atheists don't even know how to, and take their worldview too with "religious" zeal, what funnels the belief slowly closer into the religious pattern. The supernatural condiment could emerge on those who (for instance, as a possibility) giving an extra step finally reach the emotions I mentioned before. On societies there are plenty or rituals that keep some atavistic emotions alive and strong by the way, think of team sports and how ethnocentric emotions are grown to the point of paroxysm; those emotions not only remain (even when they are not "trained") but they are attractive (because they got the human species going on key points of its survival).

Religions (as they are today) have many layers of complexity that can be successfully replaced. What you can not suppress (but you can manage) is what I mentioned (the human brain's capacity to produce some huge emotions that override any rational path) thus it not enough to have an atheist's society by tossing some atheists there, you have to have the right knowledge and give an pragmatic alternative (like some philosophies) to handle those emotions when they appear (because they will) so they don't derail into ticking bombs because the wrong attitude was taken.

If, in time, some social sector on that planet (let's called Athea, please, please, please) doesn't receive proper education and people on that group becomes ignorant, they will inevitably revert to superstition and mysticism.

So, I would answer your question with "it depends on how efficient education is in Athea" ;)

Without a doubt. Religion is the consequence of cognitive biases and unless you can breed that out of the settlers they'd have religion. It wouldn't be our religion(s) but people would find supernatural explanations for things to explain the randomness of life.

Irrational thinking will definitely be around. There will be 'new age' type religions and science based religions (ie. Holding a belief that is not supported by the science but is supported by the 'science' community with the belief) An example would be climate change. You will have two sides - one will be irrational but still feel they are backed by science.

I read the book The World Before Yesterday a while ago. It's all about how we lived back when we were hunter gatherers. There was one interesting part where he was talking about religion and superstition. There was this one tribe, that had two fishing spots depending on the time of the year. One spot was unpredictable, the other spot always provided good fish. Before going fishing at the unpredictable spot, there would be a kind of superstitious ritual that would take place to try and improve their odds. Whenever they went to the good fishing spot, there was no ritual, they just went and fished.

I think religion or some form of it will always remain so long as there is a lack of control to some outcome. And I don't think this will go away until we conquer every uncertainty in our lives, including death. There will probably always be superstition, cause humans will probably always enjoy gambling, but I think you need heavier stuff like death or good vs evil for religions to take hold.

Would there be superstition and irrationality? Of course.... Will people believe in deities? Maybe. But how you can think the answer is anything but yes when we have things like Scientology.

I'm kind of toying with a novel with this as a background concept. The way I see it there will always be minor philosophical backwaters that people get trapped in. It obviously has some allure for some people, but the main population would be majority rational. I see it as similar to the situation in northern Europe. Sure there is some but it isn't a factor in major policy decisions and such.

I think it depends on the population size you are starting with and the extent of the education system and general access to resources. With the right circumstances it would be possible to that an evolutionary leap forward could suppress the parts of the right parietal lobe that lead to feelings of spirituality which appears to be an byproduct of needing to form community for evolutionary success.

When I was in full-blown puberty, I decided I wanted to become a wiccan. I didn't know any wiches, I only knew them from books and to lesser extent the (very early, I'm sooo old ;)) internet.

It blew over because it was too expensive to build an alter and also because I came to see the inconsistancies and I just started to care about other things.

But I do know that a lot of people are fascinated by the occult, and the more mysterious the better. (It was for me!) So I think there would be religion pretty fast.

If you allow for the idea to be presented there will always be some damn fools who will take a shine to it.

But try this: What if you woke up one day to a world identical to this one in every way except no one had ever heard of god(s). The people in this world know everything we do about the germ theory of disease, plate tectonics, meteorology, physics, genetics (plus epigenetics and proteomics), et fucking cetera. Would anyone propose some invisible, unknowable, supernatural creator deity? Why would they do that?

Now take your scenario that allows the introduction of the idea BUT people explain "Those god ideas go back to when people didn't know that earthquakes are caused by ______, they didn't know that germs spread disease, they didn't know diddly about the way the universe works so they (naturally, Cf. Paul Bloom et al.) invented wild ideas about it. And each group had their own, incompatible with other groups', ideas. Now we know better." If there is no cultural acceptance of the now universally recognized to be simple minded god blather then it won't take.

It would depend on how the populace was assembled, the kind of culture established, what we mean by "religious", and any number of unforseeable factors; but generally, yes. I can see a "post-religious", highly scientific society bravely settling new worlds; and as long as they retain the historical, biological, cosmological, etc. knowledge to answer the kinds of questions that give rise to origin myths, such doctrines would be unlikely to catch on among more than a "loony" fringe. But I think very basic elements of human psychology - e.g., fear of death, loneliness, hyperactive agency detection, dreams and visions - would naturally give rise to ideas of willful supernatural agency.

Yes, when fear runs over reason, someone will come along to offer relief.

With a single country of committed atheists, understanding of science, in the current world -- like, people who have thought about the alternatives to atheism and rejected them, not just people who were never taught about gods -- I don't think religion would ever take hold. On the other hand, have an isolated place with no contact with the current world where the first inhabitants are still all committed atheists, and well, maybe religion would start, maybe it wouldn't, but traditions definitely would, and in four or five generations, there would be very distinct groups of people with different traditions, and those groups of people would fight each other, initially with the excuse that they're fighting for resources, but eventually it would just be pure hatred. If we didn't have religion to divide us, we'd have something else. It's human nature.

But those traditions might eventually evolve into full-blown religions. A father would tell stories to his children, who would pass them on to their children as stories from their father, and those children would keep passing it down, and maybe someday the original meaning -- they're just children's stories -- would be lost and people might start believing them. I don't think this would happen to an enlightened society. I guess it depends on whether society devolves.

Would there be sports teams, comic book franchises, or operating systems? If so, there will be some form of religion.

It would be about as prevalent as astrology or psychic readings are today.

The mere popularity of any religion gives credence to others. When they're all gone, I don't see them making a comeback.

What I would be more interested is the philosophies of a society which rejected the notion of all supernatural, ghosts, souls, gods, and all.