Is Religion Going Extinct?

DWill · Mon Apr 04, 2011 5:50 pm

Do you mean that in some particular, science has shown that Darwin wasn't right? Which particular? Or are you saying that science now shows that life didn't develop very slowly, from less complex to more, under natural selection? The latter would have to be the case if the general statement "Darwin was wrong" has any chance of holding up.

johnson1010 · Mon Apr 04, 2011 8:08 pm


	Quote: Look at the complexity of our earth and every living organism and you will find that some things cannot be explained by science.

You seem to be referencing irreducible complexity. This is not a problem for evolutionary theory. It was soundly defeated in a court of law, no less, and has since been trampled into the ground on numerous occasions with no defensible argument in favor. Often sited is the eye ball, bacterial flagellum, inner ear, and other such organs which do not function in modern humans if damaged, and thereby losing some particular part of the organ. It would not be expected that any of these organs would function after being damaged, but that is no indication of the previous states of those organisms in ancestral species. The eye ball does in fact have numerous stages of reduction present in both the fossil record, and in fact in living animals ranging from simple photo sensitive receptor cells, to photo-sensitive light pits right on through to fully lensed eyes as seen in humans. And of course there are at least 3 different versions of fully functioning eyes found in vertebrates, arthropods, and squids. All of which developed independently in examples of convergent evolution exactly as would be expected by evolutionary theory, and in defiance of religious assertions of magical creation.


	Quote: Also, looking at Darwin's theory of evolution, he thought that his evolutionary model was incomplete because the fossil record has gaps.

It is correct that Darwin lamented the relative sparsity of the fossil record at the time of his writing. Of course that was two centuries ago, and no reflection of the state of the art in any science. Since then, thousands of fossil species have been discovered including a near continuous ancestral lineage for humans to such an extent that the different species are so numerous that finding definite distinctions between them has become difficult.

Transitional species:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU


	Quote: In the new age some of those gaps have been filled in and they have not been what Darwin estimated at all- in fact, the records have further dis-proven evolution.

Darwin predicted that we should find some sort of proto-bird with un-fused wing fingers and a few years later we found exactly that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archeopteryx

Archeopteryx Lithographica is exactly the kind of thing that Darwin predicted, and the thing was found during his own life time. Since then there has been nothing but a colossal amassing of like data that suggests nothing other than the legitimacy of evolutionary theory to the exclusion of all other suggested origins of species.

There are no alternative evolutionary theories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc

Please refer to this thread, where i have been attempting to shed some light on the misunderstandings people have of evolution.

yes-evolution-t8939.html

Meme Wars · Sun Apr 10, 2011 12:00 pm

Have we strayed from the main topic?

Is Religion Going Extinct?

Thank you Interbane for the two interesting links. I believe the death of religion will occur, for better or worse, from free market distractions with the newest acquisitions (cell phones, cars) and their associate usages (facebook, & other social networks). As people sop up their time with the complexities of the modern world and its costly time management, religion will get the short end of our attention.

Other options for meeting our social needs, finding a meaningful place in society to find value in our existence & finding comfort in our temporal existence (or at least a distraction from the question) will supplant religion, gradually. Only the poor and uneducated not linked to these new resources will keep traditional religious institutions alive. These are good motivations for religious institutions to keep the downtrodden poor, but hard to attract finances for the institution's day to day existence. Perhaps the rich will see value in the old ways and finance these dying institutions.

The down side to these distractions is the quality of our interactions with each other and our ability to organize for good human causes. We will be too busy with our meaningless data overloaded gibberish to notices that the movers and shakers are taking advantage of our inadequate citizen involvement to permanently secure their power in this world. And what they have in store for us isn't pretty.

lady of shallot · Sun Apr 10, 2011 1:53 pm

Meme said:


	Quote: Only the poor and uneducated not linked to these new resources will keep traditional religious institutions alive.

Religion may die out and appears to be. . . at least Christianity but I doubt it is for the reasons you cite. First of all kids in grade school are introduced to computer use and your claim reminds me of what a sister of mine says about volunteering at a food pantry. She said there is no one who does not drive up to it and use a cell phone while there.

It isn't lack of education that keeps people keyed in. There are many other reasons; custom, community, charitable considerations, empowerment, aesthetics, and comfort.

Interbane · Sun Apr 10, 2011 7:20 pm


	Quote: I believe the death of religion will occur, for better or worse, from free market distractions with the newest acquisitions (cell phones, cars) and their associate usages (facebook, & other social networks). As people sop up their time with the complexities of the modern world and its costly time management, religion will get the short end of our attention.

Wow, you crawled out of the woodworks. Welcome back! I've enjoyed some of your older posts.

There are many lenses through which to gauge what will happen to religion. Here's a couple I thought of, the meme one tribute to you:

Memetic lens:
Just because new exciting memes have emerged in the memepool doesn't mean older meme(plexes) will go extinct. Just like the cyclical recurrence of influenza, different interpretations(such as Robert Tulip's) mutate the meme enough so that it can survive in a modern world. Yet there is far less safe territory for such a meme to develop, with science informing all our knowledge like a creeping moss. It will survive, but to a far lesser overall degree, and in an altered denomination.

Stratification lens:
With the humanity's knowledge pool growing at the rate it is, people will have to study for longer and longer to reach the frontiers of science in the various fields. To understand how different theories will fit together into "theories of everything", a person will likely have to study their entire life to be able to inform. Young geniuses and other brilliant people will still do it faster, but it will take more time than before. But future society will still need the majority of the population to be educated in entirely different things. As the frontiers of science get ever and ever further from baseline, it will polarize the people who understand it from those who barely understand a thing about the fields of science that deal with theories of everything. Even "layscientists" such as myself would find it increasingly difficult to follow along, as the math outdistances our ability to comprehend it without extensive study.

So while laypeople are still able to follow along at the moment, religion will decline in those educated countries. But at some point in the future, our theories, even though empirically validated, will seem as magical to most people as biblical stories. Only a lifetime of study would withdraw the curtain to reveal the science behind the magic. This would provide a good environment for the resurgence of religion.

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