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There was a really good (and long) article on the BBC website about the future of religions in the world. It goes into explaining various religions and why some survive and others don't and what they might look like in the future, even though I'm a devout atheist, I found the article very interesting to read:
There was a really good (and long) article on the BBC website about the future of religions in the world. It goes into explaining various religions and why some survive and others don't and what they might look like in the future, even though I'm a devout atheist, I found the article very interesting to read:
As education increases, superstition decreases. Religious belief is already on the wane in the more well educated countries of the world. How long religion will survive into the future largely depends on how long it takes for the current so called third world countries to become well educated. Some types of spiritual beliefs that serve to satisfy the emotional needs of individuals may continue indefinitely.
Advancements in the general dissemination of knowledge, such as the internet, can rapidly increase the process of general education. The time table for the overall demise of religion is hard to predict. Hardcore religious belief may well take into the 22nd century before it is more or less fully extinguished. Until then expect the death throes of religious belief to be agonizing.
I think that religion will continue to decline, unless life gets harder. (Such as food shortages due to rising sea levels and shorter growing seasons). When people have hard lives, they seek some sort of bigger picture to make sense of things, and that often means religion.
It really depends on what you mean by "religion". Some countries that are thought of as very secular, such as Japan, really are not, even though Japanese think of religious belonging differently than people in the western world.
There was a really good (and long) article on the BBC website about the future of religions in the world. It goes into explaining various religions and why some survive and others don't and what they might look like in the future, even though I'm a devout atheist, I found the article very interesting to read:
Never seen anyone describe themselves as "devout atheist". Interesting.
This article misses a simple point: truth. It assumes all religions are equally false. That's begging the question. Fact is, they blew it in the first sentence. There is no "before Jesus". He is God and was present at creation, before even the universe existed. He will not pass away, and Christianity will exist until he returns.
Having said that, it's quite possible that it will not be a dominant religion in 10, 20, 50, 5000 years, if this earth is still spinning. God never promised he'd be the most popular one. He just said he was the only true God and we should have no others.
Never seen anyone describe themselves as "devout atheist". Interesting.
This article misses a simple point: truth. It assumes all religions are equally false. That's begging the question. Fact is, they blew it in the first sentence. There is no "before Jesus". He is God and was present at creation, before even the universe existed. He will not pass away, and Christianity will exist until he returns.
Having said that, it's quite possible that it will not be a dominant religion in 10, 20, 50, 5000 years, if this earth is still spinning. God never promised he'd be the most popular one. He just said he was the only true God and we should have no others.
Many religions and deities predate Christianity. Your beliefs are your beliefs and that’s your right to believe as you do. Those that aren’t Christian interpret things differently . So “before Jesus “ makes no sense to non Christian people . Telling a non Christian about Jesus being at the beginning of time will have no effect on them as it’s a foreign belief system. Whatever anyone believes, it will change and evolve in the future just as our present beliefs have differed from the past whether people admit it or not
I think organized religion with churches and hierarchical authority may die out. People are very skeptical of it these days. I stepped away from that a long time ago but I didn't drop spirituality. I look for what speaks to my heart instead of being told by some authority what to believe. Religion may go away but individual experience and what fuels the heart will remain. Thats my thoughts anyways for whats its worth.
Instead of assuming a divergence between Faith and Reason over time, one could also assume a convergence upon Truth.
If you see God as the source of all truth, as Truth itself, then there can be no conflict between the truth of faith and the truth of reason, since all truth comes from God.
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves...”
The plan of redemption was announced in Genesis 3. So while Jesus had not been born yet in Bethlehem, the plan was there.
Quote:
Your beliefs are your beliefs and that’s your right to believe as you do. Those that aren’t Christian interpret things differently . So “before Jesus “ makes sense to non Christian people . Telling a non Christian about Jesus being at the beginning of time will have no effect on them as it’s a foreign belief system. Whatever anyone believes, it will change and evolve in the future just as our present beliefs have differed from the past whether people admit it or not
I understand that. And my point was that the article is written from an atheistic point of view -- assuming all beliefs to be equally false. And yes--I realize beliefs will change. I get that. I said as much in my post. But to write an article analyzing religions from an atheistic worldview is ironic, in my opinion, and lacking.
There was a really good (and long) article on the BBC website about the future of religions in the world. It goes into explaining various religions and why some survive and others don't and what they might look like in the future, even though I'm a devout atheist, I found the article very interesting to read:
I'll have a look at that. I see a decline in Religion as per individual gods and the orders of Holy Books. Unless we get a sort of Al-Ghazali reversion to Fundamentalism (I would have considered that impossible, but it's boing pushed for right now, and not just in America) I think we'll see the vanishment of Religion apart from a Few Quaint Customs like Cheeze -rolling, kissing the flag and weddings (1) and 'God' will become a more Einstein-Spinoza thing, being prime mover and the Mind behind evolution. I/D being - as it should logically have been - how evolution is able to work, rather than how Behe used it (being an evolution - denying Creationist) to claim that evolution never happened. This will somehow also be a sort of inspirer of humanity with the humanist moral codes which those denialist atheists think we devised all by ourselves. It will absorb a few scraps of Other religions, like the Buddha to come, Jesus' sacrifice, a Hindu cosmic God concept and the less said about Islam the better, and this will probably be called 'Mysticicism'.
(1) women love them. Men indulge the women, and never mind that imbecile Dogma of forty or so years ago that Men want to force women into marriage. And the advantage of a secularist society is that a woman can have as many full church weddings as number of husbands she can get through.
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