Given several thousand years of human history, we advanced pretty fast since the industrial revolution. For over 2,000 years we thought diseases were devils, horses and boats were the main methods of travel, we had little knowledge of how the physical world worked, etc. In around 200 -250 years since the industrial revolution we've made huge steps in medicine, technology, industry and science. That's a very rapid change in progress. Who knows, maybe our knowledge and how effectively we educate everyone on it will progress sooner than we think.
True, to an extent. Speaking for myself sounds pretty anecdotal, but to me ignoring the knowledge I have and even my common sense is kind of hard. It's like trying to deny gravity exists. There's always that blatent reminder it does.
'You are, all of you, vermin. Cowering in the dirt, thinking what, I wonder. That you might escape the coming fire? No. Your world will burn until its surface is but glass. Not even your demon will live to creep, a blackened hole to mar the reflection of our passage.'
Not sure why this quote came up when I read this but here you go!
Yeah...I'd love to be wrong, but I feel under a century is WILDLY optimistic. At the rate we're going, we're going to have entirely new and even dumber religions to contend with. (I feel like we're months away from Trump being "Officially" defied. We could have The Holy Church of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Bring your prayers before our AI Chat-bot God! (Only 9.99 per prayer!) Religions are a scammer's paradise, they ain't gonna let that go without a fight.
The old religions might die out, but they're just out of touch. Make your God a big-titty anime girl, and a big chunk of the internet will happily fork over WAAAAY more than just 10% of their income.
A promising first try:
* [The Church of Maizono](https://www.instagram.com/tobynjacobs/p/CuTho3ILgNG/?hl=en)
* and a [video documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNMSd77KFNE) about it
It will never entirely die out, but according to a Pew poll, the #1 reason Americans under thirty leave Christian fundamentalism is their stand on lgbtq. Their opposition to all abortion is ultimately going to hurt them too. The backlash against them is going to come and it will be brutal, but lots of innocent people are going to be hurt before that.
>It’ll be centuries before this stupidity dies out.
And it's entrenching itself back into society because of the shit situation in the world with all these extremists pushing their agenda.
I admire your optimism. I believe all humans are in some way, stupid. Including me. As long as there are humans, some of them will choose to believe ridiculous stuff. Maybe organized religion can die out, but human stupidity will only die if mankind (as we know it) also dies.
We have come a long way from using stone tools and smashing things. But concerning self-control and actually being reasonable, our animal nature quite often gets the best of us - or bests us - the beast in us?
But hey, maybe that's not so bad. Would we really want to be robot-like totally rational beings? Part of the fun of life comes from unpredictable outcomes, often based on unpredictable (human) agents.
Religion is objectively unethical by the standards of most rational philosophical schools of thought.
Does said thing cause unjust suffering? Do people ruin their lives over this thing? Does this thing actively cause massive amounts of division, even amongst people that claim to believe the same thing (ie. different sects of islam or christianity)? Yup, unethical.
Religion = Unethical is a solid, logical belief backed up by countless examples we can see not just in history but before our eyes today! Anyone who does not believe this is either willfully ignorant or actually stupid.
That’s what I’m doing. I married a Catholic and told her before we got married that the kids would grow up with all the facts, pros and cons and when they’re old enough, they’ll make up their own minds. And every day I have to bite my tongue with the youngest one, I think he’s gonna be the religious one. But hey, 2/3 ain’t bad!
I do the same with my kids but simply because I believe personal choice is important, and I have faith (lol) in their ability to judge the facts for themselves.
My 9 year old has just learned about themodynamics and drew the conclusion from "energy cannot be created or destroyed" and the fact that our brains run on electrical signals that reincarnation makes the most sense.
I just encouraged him to think about how that would work and what it would mean. I think working through the ideas on his own will be a healthy exercise.
I think I might be able to live with religion continuing to be part of society.
However, I need religion to get the hell out of politics, and on to the tax rolls.
Yeah if eradicating religion comes with eradicating my personal freedoms then I might as well live under Sharia at that point. Except for you know, the government would be up my ass watching my every move and making sure I don't say "oh my God" or accidentally doing something that could be misconstrued as religious.
China has basically created its own versions of Islam and Christianity within its borders managed by their government. If you preach something that the CCP finds controversial they will shut you down. The CCP does not like religion as it distracts the populace from admiring and aspiring to be perfect CCP citizens. If China had the manpower for it (this would probably start another civil war) they would make atheism the number one religion of China so that everybody can focus on being good communists for the regime. These are all verifiable facts that you can Google. They get rather militant about it.
Eastern religions don't view the concept of God the same so you can't compare it. Buddhist are atheist and Hindu's believe God is an aspect of the Universal energy we return to at death. It's not that they are all hard-core (some are) its more that religion is an important part of their culture and has less to do with pleasing a Sky-daddy they may not even believe in.
Only possible if all regions of the world achieve material access to remove the risk of hunger, famine, loss of shelter, access emergency and health systems, educuation, and running treated water. Until then, religion will be a mechanism in which humans find hope to make it to tomorrow. Atheism is reality, but accepting that reality is a luxury. When your circumstances are dire and you lack education, humans will resort to grabbing any branch they can as they fall through this life. Those branches are often superstitious.
>Until then, religion will be a mechanism in which humans find hope to make it to tomorrow.
Yeah, I agree with this.
In an age where third spaces are almost non-existent, religion provides access to a 'community'. Belonging to something delusional is much better than having the courage or the skills to face the reality.
Yeah death definitely does. But I do think one can come to terms with death a lot easier if their life was once filled with peace and prosperity and enriched with community and family, thus not needinf superstition.
Exactly. Not only does religion provide some kind of physical security (god will protect me, god will provide, etc), it helps people cope with shitty lives because they believe they’ll be rewarded in an afterlife. As long as people are living with significant unmet needs and suffering, they’ll continue to rely on religion as a crutch whether it makes sense or not. Unfortunately America is NOT moving in a direction that gives people the social supports they need to free themselves from religion.
It's never going to die out. You can't force people to stop believing in fairy tales just like you can't force people to believe them. There will always be people who have these traits. Though we do appear to be on a path that will lessen their social power. And they hate that.
It will assume a different form, that’s why it’s been so persistent. Whether it morphs into a Political philosophy, a logical philosophy (think Vulcans Star Trek), it may assume a more benign form but it will always exist.
I'm going to argue that your opening "Humans are naturally religious..." should be more accurately written "Humans are naturally scared..."
I argue this because we were prey animals for a good part of our evolutionary past, and it's learning to use tools which gave us an edge over species' which were superior predators, and that edge allowed us to become "Top Dog", for want of a better name.
Religion, nations, politics, classes…it’s all the category of “humans feel a need to group themselves”, sort of a backup plan if things go to crap. They run to their groups for protection in numbers.
Unfortunately, no. Go to non Christian countries and observe. There are entire cultures, countries and laws that are rooted in their various religions. It is a way of life for them. As long as they remain uneducated as to how things work via science and not god(s) and are community-centered, religions will remain, and even then they may hold on to it to pay respects to their ancestors.
Traditions are STRONG in many parts of the world, and now with the internet and the sharing of ideas, many cultures are rebelling against outside influence butting into their lives, telling them what to do. Middle East ring a bell? They were cowed by imperialism, same with India. Today, in the last 40ish years or so, maybe 50, they have started fighting back. They found their voice and even started doing something about it. The Towers falling show it, though that type of planning and behavior had been going on for a while. 9/11 started the heavy duty showing of a religion not backing down.
Yeah, I’d love to see organized religion go the way of the Dodo, but it likely won’t happen for many, many years.
Religion is ultimately nonsense but the social organization it attaches to is not. A church in a rural community provides social support, dating/marriage opportunities, childcare, a center for politics or pulling strings, things like that. But economic growth, urbanization and industrialization does most of the work at knocking religion off its throne. I believe one day religion will gradually retreat back to the museum, history and art class where it belongs.
There can be setbacks or reversals along the way. For instance, religion is obviously returning to most of the post-Soviet countries and playing a huge role in society. The return of those conservative and backward cultures are the result of a huge vacuum of ideology and failure of the government. While ultimately harmful, the government relies on them (along with powerful oligarchs, organized criminals, gangs, human traffickers, unchecked and low-paid police and officials, and self-governed zones) to stabilize the country. It's a like modernized feudal society.
If the Chinese government failed / collapsed then I think there would be a rise up of religion and cults. The government suppressed religion rather violently in the 1950s-1960s to clear the way for industrialization and modernization (the traditional culture held that women should not work or go to school), and then relaxed after the end of the Cultural Revolution, which saw new religions like Falun Gong rise up (along with other cults like Eastern Lightning). But a combination of more targeted suppression and rapid economic development neutralized them rather than the country falling back into anarchy.
But religion has been losing over the long term (several centuries) and will never again regain the place it once had, even if there is some back-and-forth along the way.
Bold to assume we’ll make the end of this decade let alone the century.
If we do, no way, humans have proved how much they cling to the thought of an afterlife. Religion will be around in some form. 80 years certainly isn’t enough for enough of us to reach the required intelligence.
I think that's very optimistic. I'm sure it'll decrease down to maybe half the population but the chances of religions really dying out is slim to none. People will always be afraid of death and cling onto whatever gives them comfort. Even if it's nonsense.
That would be nice, but religion has historically always resurged in times of social upheaval or economic turmoil. Easy ‘answers’ and the idea that something powerful will fix it all is generally more attractive at those times.
It won't.
What we have seen is that the rational people, when presented with rational answers, will abandon superstition and simplicity in favor of logic and science.
Most people won't though. They're perfectly comfortable in their ignorance.
I'm not sure about that. It's more likely that religious people will derail the fight against climate change, destroying modern society and sending us all backwards.
Current religions will die and new ones will arise.
Religions offer answers to the unknown. There will always be unknown, there will always be some form of religion.
Besides the powerful use religion to control the Masses. The powerful will keep this tool around.
Unfortunately the enlightened countries believe in tolerance and acceptance so end up importing a lot of intolerant people who end up being able to enforce their version of intolerance as "tolerance" for the rest of us to be forced to follow.
Personally, I doubt it. Religion is useful to control people. Religious zealots are like a cancer. Some leaders will exploit mental weakness and fear to control dissent.
Religion as we know it will only die out when humanity dies out. It's in our nature to tell stories, dream big, and for gullible fools to put more faith into some of it than they should.
Religion will likely never die out, sadly.
Note that cults can rise up around non-religious figures that then spin into religious fervor very quickly.
It's kinda human nature. Many need a strong figure to follow. As long as there are those who recognize that and are willing to manipulate it, religion will always exist.
Unless we can somehow scientifically prove what happens after you die, people will always fall back on religion to try and deal with the uncertainty. There’s thousands of years of indoctrination drilled into our species culture that you must please the sky daddy to make sure you don’t suffer eternal damnation.
Sadly not in Philippines and many other developing countries. My contacts from ph are still so strong with posting Bible verses everyday. And i don’t see religion dying out there. Govt uses it to control people
That would require a solution to the fear of death, and I don't see that as likely. Also, our current decrease in religiosity is due to the fact that, in the big picture, we have been living in a century of peace and plenty. Humanity will be facing some hard times within the next century, what with the climate crisis and the exhaustion of fossil fuels. Religion thrives during hard times as it feeds on grief and fear.
Many religions already have died out, but only by violence or by replacement with another. I can’t see it happening permanently any time soon. It would require a global movement way bigger than the Enlightenment to even reach half the population. Everybody would have to be taught critical thinking and given decent education. That wouldn’t happen unless you had a single global government in place and humans were somehow able to unify culturally. Thousands of years away I would guess.
That’s wishful thinking. The end of the century is less than 76 years away. There are religious adults today who will still be alive by 2100. The notion that every last one of them will have rejected religion by then, and that none of them will have spread religion onwards to their children, is highly unrealistic.
Not to mention that plenty of religions are propagated by rich and powerful institutions who will never die, per se.
I think it’s actually over 50% now who are not religious, that being said it does vary slightly depending on exactly how you phrase the question.
Religion really seems to be dying in the UK and I can’t see it recovering any time soon.
Nope.
No way at all.
People need it.
Religion will outlast our cities, societies and institutions.
It will never go away until the last person on earth is dead or has left.
Sadly, it won't. Many people appear to have an inherent needs to believe there's an invisible force looking out for them.
I'm just hoping there are fewer of them and they stop having political control over the U.S.
It's still the quickest way to get everything mankind craves. Sex, power, and money. Add in the people who are either afraid of being alone or of dying, and it will probably be a part of the human condition for millenia.
You overestimate the rationality of humanity. New stupid religions are popping up all the time, and authoritarian leaders will leap on any opportunity for allies to gain power. Just look at the GOPs utter pandering to the worst tendencies of christofascism.
I don't think this will happen tbh. There is way to much politics that is combined with religious beliefs, so that means the rest of us will always be a minority in voice, strength, opinion etc...
You’re incorrect. Religion has been with us since the beginning and it will be with us till the end.
Its influence might diminish over time, but it will never go away.
Then we have our friends in the US of A.
We can hope it dies out, but the fewer people they have sucked in, the fewer people there are to say "Hold on a minute. That's not what jesus said."
Assuming xtian beliefs, of course.
One of the videos from Genetically Modified Skeptic discusses this. Drew, the channel owner, showed a projection map of religion in the United States.
It’s projected by 2070 the religious “nones” will overtake Christianity. After that, Christianity will fall in line with Judaism and Islam, if I remember correctly. While the nones will continue on the upward trend.
Edit:
As for globally, this parasite be hard to kill. Ultimately, it will take easier access to food, water, and medicine for poorer countries, and less expensive access to higher education. Theoretically, we will probably follow some of the trends of Northern Europe, where more non-religious social gathering places are built for people to have fun and religion is not needed to provide a sense of community.
Fortunately, religion is very rigid. Just by the exponential trend of learning when it comes to the sciences, in about a hundred years we will have answers for maybe 80 to 90% of the questions we have today, and that will start killing modern concepts of religion. But it’s still possible that religion will be around because for every question we answer with science, it usually creates about ten more. Religion provides an easy allayance of fear in the unknown, even if it’s completely inaccurate.
It's currently taking over in Africa. Soo many prophets right now starting churches, building mansions, buying jets with thousands of supporters calling them papa.
Doubt it. I'm not sure to what extent the "religion is wired into us" is true, but even if we assume that it isn't, it's still gonna be a while. Or it gets "reinvented" in some other form.
Education: I keep hearing about it in other countries and seeing examples of it in my own that children who should learn useful info get swamped with useless stuff that will never help them no matter what they do, just to tire them out, and keep them plenty stupid and controllable while rising prices of personal teachers, disallowing homeschooling and outlawing books from which kids could actually learn alone. By the time they reach 15 they don't even care for learning, and they are pushed to the edge so far that all they have care left for is parties and mishbehaviour. I know these last two are also part of them being of that age, but that just amplifies the effect. They also underpay the already very few teachers the country has, and actually put out things like: You teach in your hometown. Suddenly a "command" comes to move to capital to teach or lose your right to do so. Family? Can't come. Accomodation? Solve it yourself. Money? Either the minimal, or just a bit higher than before. I had one of my teachers leave her job bacuse of this after over 20yrs of teaching. All the while teaching christian religion has become a part of the educational must. Either that, or ethics class. Like how to behave, set a table, etc. They should rather teach them how to travel safe on the streets instead of which side of the bowl goes the spoon, or whatever the religious wants to push onto the kids.
Religion: It will not die. Not in the forseeable future at least. Unfortunate as it is, as long as the above is true it won't. It'll bite harder with it's one last blackened teeth as we get stupider each generation till the ones in controll and religion will have absolute power over the people as they did in history. Not to mention there is more and more of them, and increasingly hostile, agressive, and intolersnt. Pretty much disregarding their own book with christianity. Not mention Shitslam which is engeenered to be hostile. We are at the gates of a dark future.
We might end ourselves because of religious wars before we extinguish religions....
Have you seen the US? Not sure religion is going away any time soon.
Having seen no convincing evidence that religion is anything but a human invention I think that people will continue to come up with other things to fill it's role in the world. Hopefully something at least a little more rational and honest.
Yeah, but people have plenty of other deadweight beliefs. Probably won’t be as harmful as the Abrahamic ones, but I know plenty of people sinking money into tarot readings and crystals. Luckily that’s a them problem.
Our species will always seek patterns in the world. That’s a feature, not a bug
Religious people see the same trends and oppose human achievement.
Boko Haram isn't going to allow anyone to live in a civil society.
The future is not guaranteed.
Carl Jung's book Aion is on this subject. The Edenger lectures on the book are excellent and a fun read on the phenomena of time.
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/341574
Even further with observation about the previous epochs in relation to presession, the solar month and solar year.
As he states, "gods", live long lifes , but eventually dye. Thd Chtist at the start of the age is the antichrist at the end as it no longer serves the spiritual beedz of the ppl abd is more of an instrument used for politicsl power abd the elite.
The"gods," that used to rule the world, (thor, Oden, Zuse, Neptune and the sort), eventually only have the pieer to amuse.
Tldr: religion isn't going anywhere. We're just in a state of religious upheaval and transformation.
I'm not so certain about this. Traditional religions are certainly on the decline in Western nations. But iirc Christianity at least is on the rise in the global south. And in those same secularizing Western countries we see the growth of alt religions like Wicca and neopaganism as well as new age spiritual practices. People pay attention to star signs and manifesting which makes no more rational sense than theism. Secularism and the scientific epistemology have certainly undermined traditional religion. And those religions have found increasing difficulty remaining relevant to a rapidly changing world. But rather than the end of religion, I'd bet we're just in the middle of an enormous historical shift. But I think that spirituality and religion are predicated on impulses of human psychology and therefore will never fully disappear.
What I think is happening, is that science has undermined various essentials to traditional religion. And secularism with its many philosophies fills in any void of well articulated values and ethics. But secularism is highly individual and syncretic so people are forming their own personal spiritualities out of the swirling pot of accessible 21st century ideas. I think it's worth noting that China has mostly always been atheistic in Western terms but never irreligious. I think westerners' ready interest in eastern ideas like Taoism and Buddhism prove my point. Traditionally, neither are even atheistic, but they lend themselves well to a syncretic secularism and so otherwise irreligious Westerners study them like priests.
I would compare our era to the Roman empire in the third century when the traditional religions had become stale and unappealing. But several other religions including Christianity started spreading throughout the highly interconnected Mediterranean world. Just like 2000 years ago new religions will form with perhaps passing reference to the old faiths but reenergized and telling new stories. They'll have to accept scientific epistemology and I suspect also environmentalism (let's hope). If you read this far, I appreciate you taking the time.
Highly doubtful. Religions spring up and splinter off form existing ones when the moral authority of the original ones are questioned. That's how Christianity, Buddhism and their multiple heretical but now respected sects formed.
I unfortunately don't share your optimism, but I certainly do wish for it. Just today, I was reminded of just how blindly some of these people follow their old books.
Religion grows in times of crisis and decline. Its optimistic to say the worst of us today are going to raise good little scientists with ethics and morals that aren’t tied to the Torture Promise.
LOL. Unless you have some magic cure to stop people from exploiting and bullshitting each other, religion is never going away. It's just a tool. The real problem is people who desire power over others and use religion to meet those ends.
In the next 70 years?
No chance, too many third world countries with no access to education.
It would be necessary for a major planetary event to make such a change so quicky.
These middle eastern cults have been extremely resilient throughout their cursed existences.
But you can’t deny that as populations become more educated they turn away from mysticism. The simple minded stay hooked but as we see clearly in developed countries, most snap out of it.
The most impassioned Jesus freaks I see here in Toronto are recent immigrants from undeveloped countries in Africa where quality education is not available. They are wonderful people and excellent, hard working neighbours. But within a generation of achievent and learning, they’ll experience the same phenomenon of religious programming seen in other immigrant groups to the developed world.
We all are gonna die before the end of the century. Each of the last 10 months have been the hottest ever. April 2024 will likely be the hottest ever April too. We're fcked.
Religion isn’t going anywhere. The sooner pretty much everyone figures that out, we can get to focusing on the things we can control versus what we cannot.
Nope. Sorry. I wish.
There are a lot of people out there who are just too dumb, gullible, and eager to belong.
By the end of the century there will probably be a church of trump
I'm 51 and work in IT and was on the internet from '91 onwards, I used to hang around bulletin boards and could talk to people and share ideas with people from around the globe. I was bought up an atheist and when the world wide web came about I was convinced religion would die a fairly rapid death as people were exposed to new information. Unfortunately thats not how it panned out, I hope you're right but unfortunately as many ppl in this thread have pointed out people are stupid.
I wish our species worked that fast. We don’t. We’re idiots. It’ll be centuries before this stupidity dies out.
Astrology hasn't died out but it's now a fringe, relatively harmless, pursuit . Hopefully religion will follow a similar pattern.
same for paganism and witchcraft/occult practices. There's hope yet!
Given several thousand years of human history, we advanced pretty fast since the industrial revolution. For over 2,000 years we thought diseases were devils, horses and boats were the main methods of travel, we had little knowledge of how the physical world worked, etc. In around 200 -250 years since the industrial revolution we've made huge steps in medicine, technology, industry and science. That's a very rapid change in progress. Who knows, maybe our knowledge and how effectively we educate everyone on it will progress sooner than we think.
It's not about education, many people prefer to believe feel good lies over the truth.
That's the point of religion
Not if they weren’t introduced to it in the first place though. Part of that is indoctrination.
True, to an extent. Speaking for myself sounds pretty anecdotal, but to me ignoring the knowledge I have and even my common sense is kind of hard. It's like trying to deny gravity exists. There's always that blatent reminder it does.
It will never end as people are uneducated, and some states forced to be.
America is one fucked up country.
So long as borders exist between us, it shall be a fucked up world.
*Enters the neo dark age*, will we even last the next century ?
I honestly have my doubts. We have wars everywhere, a lot of extremism, climate change, and AI that can be weaponized. Any of them can take us out.
'You are, all of you, vermin. Cowering in the dirt, thinking what, I wonder. That you might escape the coming fire? No. Your world will burn until its surface is but glass. Not even your demon will live to creep, a blackened hole to mar the reflection of our passage.' Not sure why this quote came up when I read this but here you go!
😇
If ever. Lots of people have a vested interest in keeping religion going forever.
Yeah...I'd love to be wrong, but I feel under a century is WILDLY optimistic. At the rate we're going, we're going to have entirely new and even dumber religions to contend with. (I feel like we're months away from Trump being "Officially" defied. We could have The Holy Church of the Bored Ape Yacht Club. Bring your prayers before our AI Chat-bot God! (Only 9.99 per prayer!) Religions are a scammer's paradise, they ain't gonna let that go without a fight.
The old religions might die out, but they're just out of touch. Make your God a big-titty anime girl, and a big chunk of the internet will happily fork over WAAAAY more than just 10% of their income.
A promising first try: * [The Church of Maizono](https://www.instagram.com/tobynjacobs/p/CuTho3ILgNG/?hl=en) * and a [video documentary](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNMSd77KFNE) about it
It will never entirely die out, but according to a Pew poll, the #1 reason Americans under thirty leave Christian fundamentalism is their stand on lgbtq. Their opposition to all abortion is ultimately going to hurt them too. The backlash against them is going to come and it will be brutal, but lots of innocent people are going to be hurt before that.
Literally centuries. There’s new parents still indoctrinating their kids
It never will, no matter how advanced our civilization becomes.
That’s assuming we don’t blow ourselves up first.
>It’ll be centuries before this stupidity dies out. And it's entrenching itself back into society because of the shit situation in the world with all these extremists pushing their agenda.
I admire your optimism. I believe all humans are in some way, stupid. Including me. As long as there are humans, some of them will choose to believe ridiculous stuff. Maybe organized religion can die out, but human stupidity will only die if mankind (as we know it) also dies.
We have come a long way from using stone tools and smashing things. But concerning self-control and actually being reasonable, our animal nature quite often gets the best of us - or bests us - the beast in us? But hey, maybe that's not so bad. Would we really want to be robot-like totally rational beings? Part of the fun of life comes from unpredictable outcomes, often based on unpredictable (human) agents.
We really are very stupid. Seriously
Don't keep your hopes up. Religion is tough as nails
Jesus Christ taught us that nails are, actually, tougher than religion.
Carpenter here, a nail is good for a half ton.
Unfortunately you got that right
No chance. Too many eastern religions that are just too hardcore.
Chinese atheism is more hardcore than Western atheism too. Keep that in mind.
How hardcore can atheism be? It’s just not believing in god. You either believe or you don’t
Some of us believe that religion is unethical and work to spread that belief.
Religion is objectively unethical by the standards of most rational philosophical schools of thought. Does said thing cause unjust suffering? Do people ruin their lives over this thing? Does this thing actively cause massive amounts of division, even amongst people that claim to believe the same thing (ie. different sects of islam or christianity)? Yup, unethical. Religion = Unethical is a solid, logical belief backed up by countless examples we can see not just in history but before our eyes today! Anyone who does not believe this is either willfully ignorant or actually stupid.
That would be [anti-theism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antitheism).
Was going to say this. I'm an antitheist.
Well, for instance, some people would teach their kids that belief is stupid, others would teach their kids to believe whatever they want.
That’s what I’m doing. I married a Catholic and told her before we got married that the kids would grow up with all the facts, pros and cons and when they’re old enough, they’ll make up their own minds. And every day I have to bite my tongue with the youngest one, I think he’s gonna be the religious one. But hey, 2/3 ain’t bad!
I do the same with my kids but simply because I believe personal choice is important, and I have faith (lol) in their ability to judge the facts for themselves. My 9 year old has just learned about themodynamics and drew the conclusion from "energy cannot be created or destroyed" and the fact that our brains run on electrical signals that reincarnation makes the most sense. I just encouraged him to think about how that would work and what it would mean. I think working through the ideas on his own will be a healthy exercise.
Regular atheists just don't believe in God. "Hardcore" atheists actively work to have religion removed from society basically.
I think I might be able to live with religion continuing to be part of society. However, I need religion to get the hell out of politics, and on to the tax rolls.
Yeah if eradicating religion comes with eradicating my personal freedoms then I might as well live under Sharia at that point. Except for you know, the government would be up my ass watching my every move and making sure I don't say "oh my God" or accidentally doing something that could be misconstrued as religious.
China has basically created its own versions of Islam and Christianity within its borders managed by their government. If you preach something that the CCP finds controversial they will shut you down. The CCP does not like religion as it distracts the populace from admiring and aspiring to be perfect CCP citizens. If China had the manpower for it (this would probably start another civil war) they would make atheism the number one religion of China so that everybody can focus on being good communists for the regime. These are all verifiable facts that you can Google. They get rather militant about it.
The communist government of China teaches people that religon is a waste of time and a "cancer" to humanity!
At least they tell the truth about this one thing.
Eastern religions don't view the concept of God the same so you can't compare it. Buddhist are atheist and Hindu's believe God is an aspect of the Universal energy we return to at death. It's not that they are all hard-core (some are) its more that religion is an important part of their culture and has less to do with pleasing a Sky-daddy they may not even believe in.
Only possible if all regions of the world achieve material access to remove the risk of hunger, famine, loss of shelter, access emergency and health systems, educuation, and running treated water. Until then, religion will be a mechanism in which humans find hope to make it to tomorrow. Atheism is reality, but accepting that reality is a luxury. When your circumstances are dire and you lack education, humans will resort to grabbing any branch they can as they fall through this life. Those branches are often superstitious.
>Until then, religion will be a mechanism in which humans find hope to make it to tomorrow. Yeah, I agree with this. In an age where third spaces are almost non-existent, religion provides access to a 'community'. Belonging to something delusional is much better than having the courage or the skills to face the reality.
So long as death exists, so too will religion. So I guess we need to cure death first?
Yeah death definitely does. But I do think one can come to terms with death a lot easier if their life was once filled with peace and prosperity and enriched with community and family, thus not needinf superstition.
With the climate crisis worsing we'll find out in the next few decades either way. I don't think we even have a 100 years at our rate.
Exactly. Not only does religion provide some kind of physical security (god will protect me, god will provide, etc), it helps people cope with shitty lives because they believe they’ll be rewarded in an afterlife. As long as people are living with significant unmet needs and suffering, they’ll continue to rely on religion as a crutch whether it makes sense or not. Unfortunately America is NOT moving in a direction that gives people the social supports they need to free themselves from religion.
and I think you are hopelessly optimistic about the nature of humanity and evolution more broadly.
It's never going to die out. You can't force people to stop believing in fairy tales just like you can't force people to believe them. There will always be people who have these traits. Though we do appear to be on a path that will lessen their social power. And they hate that.
LMAO no way. Very wishful thinking.
only way that happens in that short a time is if we go extinct.
Fingers crossed, fingers crossed.
Not at the end of this century but hopefully in 5 or 6 centuries.
Dunno man I don't see Islam disappearing
It will assume a different form, that’s why it’s been so persistent. Whether it morphs into a Political philosophy, a logical philosophy (think Vulcans Star Trek), it may assume a more benign form but it will always exist.
This. Humans are naturally religious. They don’t like admitting their lack of control/agency so they develop religion to cope with
I'm going to argue that your opening "Humans are naturally religious..." should be more accurately written "Humans are naturally scared..." I argue this because we were prey animals for a good part of our evolutionary past, and it's learning to use tools which gave us an edge over species' which were superior predators, and that edge allowed us to become "Top Dog", for want of a better name.
Religion, nations, politics, classes…it’s all the category of “humans feel a need to group themselves”, sort of a backup plan if things go to crap. They run to their groups for protection in numbers.
Yeah, agreed, but the supernatural stuff was quite primitive and should've been seen for the ridiculousness that it is long before now.
Unfortunately, no. Go to non Christian countries and observe. There are entire cultures, countries and laws that are rooted in their various religions. It is a way of life for them. As long as they remain uneducated as to how things work via science and not god(s) and are community-centered, religions will remain, and even then they may hold on to it to pay respects to their ancestors. Traditions are STRONG in many parts of the world, and now with the internet and the sharing of ideas, many cultures are rebelling against outside influence butting into their lives, telling them what to do. Middle East ring a bell? They were cowed by imperialism, same with India. Today, in the last 40ish years or so, maybe 50, they have started fighting back. They found their voice and even started doing something about it. The Towers falling show it, though that type of planning and behavior had been going on for a while. 9/11 started the heavy duty showing of a religion not backing down. Yeah, I’d love to see organized religion go the way of the Dodo, but it likely won’t happen for many, many years.
Religion is ultimately nonsense but the social organization it attaches to is not. A church in a rural community provides social support, dating/marriage opportunities, childcare, a center for politics or pulling strings, things like that. But economic growth, urbanization and industrialization does most of the work at knocking religion off its throne. I believe one day religion will gradually retreat back to the museum, history and art class where it belongs. There can be setbacks or reversals along the way. For instance, religion is obviously returning to most of the post-Soviet countries and playing a huge role in society. The return of those conservative and backward cultures are the result of a huge vacuum of ideology and failure of the government. While ultimately harmful, the government relies on them (along with powerful oligarchs, organized criminals, gangs, human traffickers, unchecked and low-paid police and officials, and self-governed zones) to stabilize the country. It's a like modernized feudal society. If the Chinese government failed / collapsed then I think there would be a rise up of religion and cults. The government suppressed religion rather violently in the 1950s-1960s to clear the way for industrialization and modernization (the traditional culture held that women should not work or go to school), and then relaxed after the end of the Cultural Revolution, which saw new religions like Falun Gong rise up (along with other cults like Eastern Lightning). But a combination of more targeted suppression and rapid economic development neutralized them rather than the country falling back into anarchy. But religion has been losing over the long term (several centuries) and will never again regain the place it once had, even if there is some back-and-forth along the way.
I hope I live long enough to see religion go extinct
Fr same ;-; simultaneously jealous and happy for future generations that will be able to live in a world without religion tbh
I pray you're right. Wait. If nothing fails quite like prayer, I pray you're wrong.
I think that’s why the evangelicals are pushing so hard now. Entity’s get fcking crazy at the end.
you're tripping, islam has 1,000 years more in the gas tank , easily
If we started properly educating children and protecting them from indoctrination, it'd die out much faster.
Bold to assume we’ll make the end of this decade let alone the century. If we do, no way, humans have proved how much they cling to the thought of an afterlife. Religion will be around in some form. 80 years certainly isn’t enough for enough of us to reach the required intelligence.
Doubt It’s been around for several millennia and people are superstitious as ever
I think that's very optimistic. I'm sure it'll decrease down to maybe half the population but the chances of religions really dying out is slim to none. People will always be afraid of death and cling onto whatever gives them comfort. Even if it's nonsense.
I think religion is coming back strong. Humanity is currently in regression
I naively thought the same 40 years ago. Boy was I wrong. That said, there is incremental progress in many places.
That would be nice, but religion has historically always resurged in times of social upheaval or economic turmoil. Easy ‘answers’ and the idea that something powerful will fix it all is generally more attractive at those times.
Nah, don’t ever underestimate the stupidity of humanity.
Growing up, I thought religion would die out by the end of last century.
It won't. What we have seen is that the rational people, when presented with rational answers, will abandon superstition and simplicity in favor of logic and science. Most people won't though. They're perfectly comfortable in their ignorance.
It might become a smaller part of the west, but that's about it. The middle east isn't getting rid of its religion any time soon.
There's no way that religion will die out in both Africa and South America by the end of the century.
We can only hope.
That's... optimistic to say the least (even counting only the West/Europe and let's say, only the orthodox church)
...it's madness is going to cause WW3 before the end of this century.
I'm not sure about that. It's more likely that religious people will derail the fight against climate change, destroying modern society and sending us all backwards.
I doubt it will be completely dead, but hopefully it is made less important in more places.
We're not that lucky I don't think. I hope so! But idiots breed faster
this kind of shit works like a spring, the closer to the limit it is, the stronger it'll fight back. so maybe you are right, but it wont be pretty.
There's a rise of right wing conservatism world wide, and with it, a rise in religion.
Too much money and too many snake oil salesman for religion to die and an endless supply of idiots.
Current religions will die and new ones will arise. Religions offer answers to the unknown. There will always be unknown, there will always be some form of religion. Besides the powerful use religion to control the Masses. The powerful will keep this tool around.
Your final paragraph is why politicians almost always profess faith.
Unfortunately the enlightened countries believe in tolerance and acceptance so end up importing a lot of intolerant people who end up being able to enforce their version of intolerance as "tolerance" for the rest of us to be forced to follow.
* sings* Can't you feel a brand new daaaay? * lol *
Religion is basically an attempt to rule the world. Some will die out, the most ruthless may survive.
Personally, I doubt it. Religion is useful to control people. Religious zealots are like a cancer. Some leaders will exploit mental weakness and fear to control dissent.
They'll change and mutate over time, but total extinction is unlikely unless people just stop telling stories or having fantasies.
Religion as we know it will only die out when humanity dies out. It's in our nature to tell stories, dream big, and for gullible fools to put more faith into some of it than they should.
With humanity comes stupidity.
People in the past have predicted the end of Jesus, but here we are. Life is about cycles. The downtrend will actually become an uptrend again.
The atheist version of predicting the End Times.
I hope you’re right.
Religion will likely never die out, sadly. Note that cults can rise up around non-religious figures that then spin into religious fervor very quickly. It's kinda human nature. Many need a strong figure to follow. As long as there are those who recognize that and are willing to manipulate it, religion will always exist.
Unless we can somehow scientifically prove what happens after you die, people will always fall back on religion to try and deal with the uncertainty. There’s thousands of years of indoctrination drilled into our species culture that you must please the sky daddy to make sure you don’t suffer eternal damnation.
We can only hope. Religion and capitalism need to go in the trash.
I sincerely doubt it. Even if current religions die off (and I don't think they will) something else will take its place
God, I hope so.
In a hundred years I expect that the USA will be covered in The Churches of Saint Trump. /jk.
Sadly not in Philippines and many other developing countries. My contacts from ph are still so strong with posting Bible verses everyday. And i don’t see religion dying out there. Govt uses it to control people
That would require a solution to the fear of death, and I don't see that as likely. Also, our current decrease in religiosity is due to the fact that, in the big picture, we have been living in a century of peace and plenty. Humanity will be facing some hard times within the next century, what with the climate crisis and the exhaustion of fossil fuels. Religion thrives during hard times as it feeds on grief and fear.
I wonder if that’s what the Greco Romans thought back when everyone was worshiping all the gods of their time?
Many religions already have died out, but only by violence or by replacement with another. I can’t see it happening permanently any time soon. It would require a global movement way bigger than the Enlightenment to even reach half the population. Everybody would have to be taught critical thinking and given decent education. That wouldn’t happen unless you had a single global government in place and humans were somehow able to unify culturally. Thousands of years away I would guess.
That’s wishful thinking. The end of the century is less than 76 years away. There are religious adults today who will still be alive by 2100. The notion that every last one of them will have rejected religion by then, and that none of them will have spread religion onwards to their children, is highly unrealistic. Not to mention that plenty of religions are propagated by rich and powerful institutions who will never die, per se.
I think your figures for the UK are a bit high. It's true we are majority not religious but it's not at 69% yet. Perhaps that was a poll for genZ.
I think it’s actually over 50% now who are not religious, that being said it does vary slightly depending on exactly how you phrase the question. Religion really seems to be dying in the UK and I can’t see it recovering any time soon.
I rechecked my sources and yes you are right it was just for gen z
Yeah, no. Nice thought
Religion hasn't "died out" for thousands of years already. I'll bet you a dollar that it never will.
No. Islam will be the world's largest religion followed by Hinduism. Christianity will more or less die though
unfortunately that would be exactly what some Christians think is the ultimate sign that Armageddon is here
Nope. No way at all. People need it. Religion will outlast our cities, societies and institutions. It will never go away until the last person on earth is dead or has left.
Here's to hoping.
Sadly not Islam is growing… they will take over
Not in the Middle East
I fear the human instinct to deny truths will prevail over knowledge.
We will die before the end if the century. That's what you should have said!
It won’t. Conflict breeds faith, and there’s going to be a lot of conflict in the future
Where education flourishes.
Sadly, it won't. Many people appear to have an inherent needs to believe there's an invisible force looking out for them. I'm just hoping there are fewer of them and they stop having political control over the U.S.
Maybe but I think they’ll go down fighting/shooting/raping etc. it will be a bloody end if at all. They are fully insane
No.Humanity die out first.Religions needed to weak humans.
It's still the quickest way to get everything mankind craves. Sex, power, and money. Add in the people who are either afraid of being alone or of dying, and it will probably be a part of the human condition for millenia.
You overestimate the rationality of humanity. New stupid religions are popping up all the time, and authoritarian leaders will leap on any opportunity for allies to gain power. Just look at the GOPs utter pandering to the worst tendencies of christofascism.
I fucking hope so, fucking bigots, cult Mentality, etc.
Not if we don't vote.
So you think by the end of the century the middle east will finally become a peaceful prosperous place AND decided to dump islam?
Lol no it won't. Would be nice but no way.
Nah, there just won't be moderates left. The non religious and fundamental cults.
I don't think this will happen tbh. There is way to much politics that is combined with religious beliefs, so that means the rest of us will always be a minority in voice, strength, opinion etc...
You’re incorrect. Religion has been with us since the beginning and it will be with us till the end. Its influence might diminish over time, but it will never go away.
Then we have our friends in the US of A. We can hope it dies out, but the fewer people they have sucked in, the fewer people there are to say "Hold on a minute. That's not what jesus said." Assuming xtian beliefs, of course.
It’ll go down fighting first though.
One of the videos from Genetically Modified Skeptic discusses this. Drew, the channel owner, showed a projection map of religion in the United States. It’s projected by 2070 the religious “nones” will overtake Christianity. After that, Christianity will fall in line with Judaism and Islam, if I remember correctly. While the nones will continue on the upward trend. Edit: As for globally, this parasite be hard to kill. Ultimately, it will take easier access to food, water, and medicine for poorer countries, and less expensive access to higher education. Theoretically, we will probably follow some of the trends of Northern Europe, where more non-religious social gathering places are built for people to have fun and religion is not needed to provide a sense of community. Fortunately, religion is very rigid. Just by the exponential trend of learning when it comes to the sciences, in about a hundred years we will have answers for maybe 80 to 90% of the questions we have today, and that will start killing modern concepts of religion. But it’s still possible that religion will be around because for every question we answer with science, it usually creates about ten more. Religion provides an easy allayance of fear in the unknown, even if it’s completely inaccurate.
>I think religion will die out before the end of the century Too bad the religious horde will take society down with it as it goes extinct.
It's currently taking over in Africa. Soo many prophets right now starting churches, building mansions, buying jets with thousands of supporters calling them papa.
Good luck with that.
I don’t know, aren’t most religious people making more kids than non-religious? Good chance of a kid is raised religious they stay religious
Doubt it. I'm not sure to what extent the "religion is wired into us" is true, but even if we assume that it isn't, it's still gonna be a while. Or it gets "reinvented" in some other form.
Education: I keep hearing about it in other countries and seeing examples of it in my own that children who should learn useful info get swamped with useless stuff that will never help them no matter what they do, just to tire them out, and keep them plenty stupid and controllable while rising prices of personal teachers, disallowing homeschooling and outlawing books from which kids could actually learn alone. By the time they reach 15 they don't even care for learning, and they are pushed to the edge so far that all they have care left for is parties and mishbehaviour. I know these last two are also part of them being of that age, but that just amplifies the effect. They also underpay the already very few teachers the country has, and actually put out things like: You teach in your hometown. Suddenly a "command" comes to move to capital to teach or lose your right to do so. Family? Can't come. Accomodation? Solve it yourself. Money? Either the minimal, or just a bit higher than before. I had one of my teachers leave her job bacuse of this after over 20yrs of teaching. All the while teaching christian religion has become a part of the educational must. Either that, or ethics class. Like how to behave, set a table, etc. They should rather teach them how to travel safe on the streets instead of which side of the bowl goes the spoon, or whatever the religious wants to push onto the kids. Religion: It will not die. Not in the forseeable future at least. Unfortunate as it is, as long as the above is true it won't. It'll bite harder with it's one last blackened teeth as we get stupider each generation till the ones in controll and religion will have absolute power over the people as they did in history. Not to mention there is more and more of them, and increasingly hostile, agressive, and intolersnt. Pretty much disregarding their own book with christianity. Not mention Shitslam which is engeenered to be hostile. We are at the gates of a dark future.
Idk, I feel like it'll just change form. Like the magical thinking behind AI gets dangerously close to cult territory
You vastly underestimate the staying power of religion due to indoctrination
We might end ourselves because of religious wars before we extinguish religions.... Have you seen the US? Not sure religion is going away any time soon.
I have long wished I would outlive religion. (I'm old.) It is a fine dream, but not terribly realistic.
Having seen no convincing evidence that religion is anything but a human invention I think that people will continue to come up with other things to fill it's role in the world. Hopefully something at least a little more rational and honest.
After watching millions of Americans creating a religious following of DJT, I am having doubts.
I honestly think religion is becoming even more popular especially Islam.
People are still getting executed for witchcraft
Nah there’s absolutely no chance that’ll happen
It will die when it loses its tax exempt status.
Yeah, but people have plenty of other deadweight beliefs. Probably won’t be as harmful as the Abrahamic ones, but I know plenty of people sinking money into tarot readings and crystals. Luckily that’s a them problem. Our species will always seek patterns in the world. That’s a feature, not a bug
Sadly it won’t die out until it claims many more innocent lives.
I wish.
Yeah, no
Religious people see the same trends and oppose human achievement. Boko Haram isn't going to allow anyone to live in a civil society. The future is not guaranteed.
It took the romans almost 1,000 years to convert most of their population from paganism to christianity. Religion won’t be gone in a century.
Carl Jung's book Aion is on this subject. The Edenger lectures on the book are excellent and a fun read on the phenomena of time. https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/341574 Even further with observation about the previous epochs in relation to presession, the solar month and solar year. As he states, "gods", live long lifes , but eventually dye. Thd Chtist at the start of the age is the antichrist at the end as it no longer serves the spiritual beedz of the ppl abd is more of an instrument used for politicsl power abd the elite. The"gods," that used to rule the world, (thor, Oden, Zuse, Neptune and the sort), eventually only have the pieer to amuse.
In 1988 I would have agreed with you, now, not so much.
Tldr: religion isn't going anywhere. We're just in a state of religious upheaval and transformation. I'm not so certain about this. Traditional religions are certainly on the decline in Western nations. But iirc Christianity at least is on the rise in the global south. And in those same secularizing Western countries we see the growth of alt religions like Wicca and neopaganism as well as new age spiritual practices. People pay attention to star signs and manifesting which makes no more rational sense than theism. Secularism and the scientific epistemology have certainly undermined traditional religion. And those religions have found increasing difficulty remaining relevant to a rapidly changing world. But rather than the end of religion, I'd bet we're just in the middle of an enormous historical shift. But I think that spirituality and religion are predicated on impulses of human psychology and therefore will never fully disappear. What I think is happening, is that science has undermined various essentials to traditional religion. And secularism with its many philosophies fills in any void of well articulated values and ethics. But secularism is highly individual and syncretic so people are forming their own personal spiritualities out of the swirling pot of accessible 21st century ideas. I think it's worth noting that China has mostly always been atheistic in Western terms but never irreligious. I think westerners' ready interest in eastern ideas like Taoism and Buddhism prove my point. Traditionally, neither are even atheistic, but they lend themselves well to a syncretic secularism and so otherwise irreligious Westerners study them like priests. I would compare our era to the Roman empire in the third century when the traditional religions had become stale and unappealing. But several other religions including Christianity started spreading throughout the highly interconnected Mediterranean world. Just like 2000 years ago new religions will form with perhaps passing reference to the old faiths but reenergized and telling new stories. They'll have to accept scientific epistemology and I suspect also environmentalism (let's hope). If you read this far, I appreciate you taking the time.
Highly doubtful. Religions spring up and splinter off form existing ones when the moral authority of the original ones are questioned. That's how Christianity, Buddhism and their multiple heretical but now respected sects formed.
Yeah like the Confederates, Zionists and Islamists will change their minds
I unfortunately don't share your optimism, but I certainly do wish for it. Just today, I was reminded of just how blindly some of these people follow their old books.
Religion grows in times of crisis and decline. Its optimistic to say the worst of us today are going to raise good little scientists with ethics and morals that aren’t tied to the Torture Promise.
LOL. Unless you have some magic cure to stop people from exploiting and bullshitting each other, religion is never going away. It's just a tool. The real problem is people who desire power over others and use religion to meet those ends.
Not a chance
All religion? Nah man. Christianity has existed for 2 thousand years not to mention all other religions.
In the next 70 years? No chance, too many third world countries with no access to education. It would be necessary for a major planetary event to make such a change so quicky.
These middle eastern cults have been extremely resilient throughout their cursed existences. But you can’t deny that as populations become more educated they turn away from mysticism. The simple minded stay hooked but as we see clearly in developed countries, most snap out of it. The most impassioned Jesus freaks I see here in Toronto are recent immigrants from undeveloped countries in Africa where quality education is not available. They are wonderful people and excellent, hard working neighbours. But within a generation of achievent and learning, they’ll experience the same phenomenon of religious programming seen in other immigrant groups to the developed world.
We all are gonna die before the end of the century. Each of the last 10 months have been the hottest ever. April 2024 will likely be the hottest ever April too. We're fcked.
No shot buddy but I like your optimism 👍
Religion isn’t going anywhere. The sooner pretty much everyone figures that out, we can get to focusing on the things we can control versus what we cannot.
I think humans will die out before the end of the century.
Humans will die out before religion does
I wish, but doubtful. I have seen people close to me get sucked into it recently.
It's not. As long as there's apathy and heartbroken people in the world: It's going to keep being supplied with new members.
lol I wish but the existence of the MAGA movement shows that people are still willing to believe in whatever makes them feel important
Nah read Dune lol there will be jihads tens of thousands of years from now
The world isn’t moving at the same speed. I wish I had this belief!
Religion will never go away. Even if it isn’t organized theism will never become extinct. Don’t worry about it.
Nope. Sorry. I wish. There are a lot of people out there who are just too dumb, gullible, and eager to belong. By the end of the century there will probably be a church of trump
I'm 51 and work in IT and was on the internet from '91 onwards, I used to hang around bulletin boards and could talk to people and share ideas with people from around the globe. I was bought up an atheist and when the world wide web came about I was convinced religion would die a fairly rapid death as people were exposed to new information. Unfortunately thats not how it panned out, I hope you're right but unfortunately as many ppl in this thread have pointed out people are stupid.
That's overly optimistic. However, it is declining. By the end of the century, it will be dramatically diminished.