Is Religion Going Extinct?

Interbane · Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:58 pm

Here is an interesting article about religion going extinct in certain countries.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80bea ... countries/

Which leads one to wonder about the ramifications, which Massimo Pigliucci talks about here:

http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/ ... dhist.html

What do you guys think about different social groups taking the place of religion? Also, what do you think about Humanism or some other set of global ethics taking the place of the ten commandments/religious morality?

Robert Tulip · Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:12 am

Religion will not go extinct. It will adapt. As supernatural faith is increasingly regarded as ridiculous, new forms of religion will evolve that are compatible with science. There is nothing about religion per se that is incompatible with science, in that both seek to validate human life by knowledge of an ultimate truth. There is only one truth, so false religion will gradually die out to be replaced by true religion.

The clash between science and religion is the result of the conservative nature of faith, its desire to hold on to ancient teachings. So far, religion has had the social power to ignore evidence. This is no longer the case, because modern people regard willful ignorance with contempt and mockery. As false ancient teachings are progressively shown to be wrong, new interpretations will arise that find the real truth concealed within the false veneer.

TaylorBP · Thu Mar 31, 2011 7:54 am

Religion as we know it now may become less and less prevelant, but it will never go completely extinct. Even now, those who are religious, and are "willfully ignorant" of scientific advances and modern society's view on a supernatural faith, see how the world is turning a deaf ear to their concerns for humanity. They are very much aware of how the world views them, and that it isn't always a postive view. However, that will not stop them from practicing and believing in their religion. They would have scientific proof of their beliefs to offer up, just as someone who has no traditional religion would.

DWill · Thu Mar 31, 2011 7:57 am

While there is some evidence of adaptation--for example, liberal or non-literalist Christians--in my view this all points to religion losing its hold. Adaptation to the findings of science means, inevitably, that religion becomes weaker and weaker. There is really no point to religion if it just mirrors materialist reality. Religion always must posit some ultimate, beyond the scope of materialism. If it doesn't, what is there in it that takes effort to believe in? That effort to believe is what religion is all about, and that's what materialism frees us from (or enslaves us to, if you want to take the opposite stance). The most you could create under a scientific understanding is a deliberate ethos or ethic, which might mimic the orienting worldview of a religion.

So far, to the extent that religion has aligned itself with science, it has simply decided to avoid confrontation, choosing to think that natural selection can be part of God's plan and reading Genesis as figurative. But this is a weakening, not a strengthening, of the social niche of religion. Take away all the scientifically unverifiable elements, and you have no religion at all.

TaylorBP · Thu Mar 31, 2011 8:12 am

But isn't the scientific proof and talk of adaptation that Christians have to convince the world of their validity? Truely believing Christians, not those who are in the church due to peer pressure or for the sake of maintaining a facade, will believe regardless of whether or not there's any real proof of what they believe. That's the whole point of Christianity, to take all of this crazy sounding testimony to be true, solely based on faith in God and what the Bible has said He's done and others have done through Him. Religion may lose its hold on the world, but there will remain a handful of people that believe in God and His omnipotentence and all it entails. And they won't care how much people ridicule them for believing as they do. So, traditional religion will never go extinct it'll always be around, even if only in small, concentrated amounts.

DWill · Thu Mar 31, 2011 9:06 am

Yes, extinction is too strong a word. The point should be that if religion diminishes by 90%, the world will be far different than it is today. We can't expect it not to exist at all. Of course, there is no immediate prospect of this happening. The study johnson cited involved nine countries with surely no more than a few percent of the world's population. Look at the Muslim countries, Christian Africa, Latin America, Europe (Muslim growth), as well as the U.S. Religion is getting stronger, overall, in these places. It isn't inconceivable that religion will come to dominate life as it doesn't today.

lady of shallot · Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:49 am

Robert Tulip:


	Quote: because modern people regard willful ignorance with contempt and mockery.

I would disagree with this statement. Modern people are religious in great part and many of them are highly intelligent and highly educated.

This is my desk top dictionary's definition of religion:

religion |riˈlijən|
noun
the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, esp. a personal God or gods : ideas about the relationship between science and religion.
• details of belief as taught or discussed : when the school first opened they taught only religion, Italian, and mathematics.
• a particular system of faith and worship : the world's great religions.
• a pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importance : consumerism is the new religion.

So how religion could remain, absent a supreme being, is difficult for me to understand. What would be the point of it? Who would want to subscribe to it? It would seem that only those who could be ensnared in some one else's new dream of religion would be the willfully ignorant that Robert Tulip says modern people regard with contempt and mockery.

The big question, in my opinion, that never seems to be addressed, is the psychology of religion. Why is some kind of spirituality so important to some of us and totally absent as a need in others?

Azrael · Thu Mar 31, 2011 6:22 pm

Not fast enough! Without religion and government the world would be a better place.

Robert Tulip · Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:55 pm


	Star Burst wrote: Not fast enough! Without religion and government the world would be a better place.

Hey Starburst, what about suggesting getting rid of people while you are at it?

You have a point that religion and government are intimately entwined. But without government the planet would collapse into anarchy and war. Not good.

Azrael · Fri Apr 01, 2011 7:04 pm

Robert Tulip wrote:


	Star Burst wrote: Not fast enough! Without religion and government the world would be a better place.

Hey Starburst, what about suggesting getting rid of people while you are at it?

You have a point that religion and government are intimately entwined. But without government the planet would collapse into anarchy and war. Not good.

So. Maybe then we would find out if this almighty deity exist for real. Surely he would step in and safe us all. NOT! :lol:

TaylorBP · Sun Apr 03, 2011 8:28 pm

Star Burst wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:


	Star Burst wrote: Not fast enough! Without religion and government the world would be a better place.

Hey Starburst, what about suggesting getting rid of people while you are at it?

You have a point that religion and government are intimately entwined. But without government the planet would collapse into anarchy and war. Not good.

So. Maybe then we would find out if this almighty deity exist for real. Surely he would step in and safe us all. NOT! :lol:

Why would this almighty deity bother to save people that have so little faith in him that they feel they have to risk everything to prove or disprove his existence? What there to stop him from letting those of such little faith self-destuct, and then creating new people in their place? Better people, that won't question his existence and omniptence and feel the need to have him come and safe them from their own undoing to simply prove he's real.

Interbane · Sun Apr 03, 2011 10:00 pm


	Quote: Why would this almighty deity bother to save people that have so little faith in him that they feel they have to risk everything to prove or disprove his existence?

Because the people you're talking about are otherwise good people. Because letting someone that is partially good to suffer for eternity is immoral. God should not let that happen. His actions, if he does let that happen, are immoral.

Consider the situation if you hold a human to the same moral standards. Let's say you're handcuffed to a train switch by a person that just mugged you(but otherwise left you unharmed). While he was running away, apologizing that he had to do this to feed his family, he stumbles on the tracks. He falls and knocks himself out, right across the tracks. You hear a train approaching, and notice that the train is currently pointed directly at the man. But if you pull the switch lever that you're handcuffed to, you can change the course so that the train misses the fallen mugger. You scream for help, but no one can hear you. You are the only person able to control the switch, and by extension, the life of the mugger. What would you do in this situation?

This is a good question to test how you rate others according to whatever moral rubric you use.


	Quote: What there to stop him from letting those of such little faith self-destuct, and then creating new people in their place?

Where do we see these people self-destructing? Is this part of your fantasy? God IS letting us "self-destruct", but we're not destructed. We're all living quite normal moral lives. If something did spontaneously change and we were to self-destruct, it's wouldn't be according to the laws of physics. It would be supernatural, god. Satan wouldn't do such a thing. Atheists are Satan's preachers, with every person they convert, another soul goes to feed Hell's armies. Destroying all atheists is an act that god would do, not Satan. Don't kid yourself. If God wiped out every human on Earth who wasn't also a Christian, there'd be a frenzy of religious ecstasy. Perhaps some would initially question what evil could kill so many people. But afterward, they will be convinced by theologians that it was actually the Rapture.

Azrael · Mon Apr 04, 2011 6:07 am

NEWSFLASH! No atheists or christian or anyone else can disprove or prove there is no god. No one has solid evidence that this almighty creator exist. The three major Abrahamic Religions claim he exist simply because they have the written words in books which does not prove he exists only that they believe he does. These written text just assume the answer with no solid evidence for a god existing. Atheism uses logic and reason to deduce that no god exist and atheists have no holy text to back up their claims only logic and reason with a little science added in.

The world itself is going to the dogs right now. Unrest in the Middle East is driving prices up for oil and that in turn raises the cost of other items such as food. Given the state of the human race at this point and time the only ones that can change the course of our path is us. Cloud people want to force feed this god down peoples throats well your preaching to the choir.

johnson1010 · Mon Apr 04, 2011 12:46 pm

In a larger context, it is not possible to disprove the existence of SOME kind of god. But any individual god, with definitive traits and propensities can be tested for, and disproved.

The moment you claim that a god will answer the prayers of anybody with so much as a mustard seed's worth of faith, you have proposed something about a god that can be tested. When that god fails that test (inevitably), you have dis-proven that particular god.

Gods can also be dis-proven by tracking down the original authorship of a religion, as in the case of Joseph Smith and mormonism, which is an obvious fraud, L.Ron Hubbard and scientology (another obvious case of fantasy foisted on us as divine inspiration), or the self-contradictory, as well as flat out false claims of the bible, where it makes statements of omnipotence and then proves to be just plain old wrong on a whole gamut of things ranging from the taxonomic classification of bats to exposing complete ignorance (equivalent to the cultures which gave birth to this religion) of stellar bodies and their interactions.

While the glaring problems with the bible do not disprove all POSSIBLE gods, they do disprove the god espoused by the bible because that god is described as all knowing, yet clearly is rather limited in knowledge. This may also point to human fallibility and the ancient authors of the bible (who we know were men with political motivations) just didn't' adequately describe the real god they were attempting to encapsolate, the more obvious reason for this discrepancy between religion and reality is that they made it up, and that they did not know what they were talking about.

All of these are examples of particular gods and religions which are quite obviously wrong, bogus, fraudulent, or mis-informed. They propose things which are false from the outset and directly contradict all observable evidence, or can be found to be incorrect with just a bit of research.

IrishLad17 · Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:49 pm


	Star Burst wrote: NEWSFLASH! No atheists or christian or anyone else can disprove or prove there is no god. No one has solid evidence that this almighty creator exist. The three major Abrahamic Religions claim he exist simply because they have the written words in books which does not prove he exists only that they believe he does. These written text just assume the answer with no solid evidence for a god existing. Atheism uses logic and reason to deduce that no god exist and atheists have no holy text to back up their claims only logic and reason with a little science added in. The world itself is going to the dogs right now. Unrest in the Middle East is driving prices up for oil and that in turn raises the cost of other items such as food. Given the state of the human race at this point and time the only ones that can change the course of our path is us. Cloud people want to force feed this god down peoples throats well your preaching to the choir.

You should read the book, "The Case for a Creator." People always assume that finding out new scientific information will disprove religious beliefs. However, what if it went in the opposite direction (which it has been)?

Look at the complexity of our earth and every living organism and you will find that some things cannot be explained by science. Also, looking at Darwin's theory of evolution, he thought that his evolutionary model was incomplete because the fossil record has gaps. 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.

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