Will religion ever disappear?

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Will religion ever disappear?

A growing number of people, millions worldwide, say they believe that life definitively ends at death – that there is no God, no afterlife and no divine plan. And it’s an outlook that could be gaining momentum – despite its lack of cheer. In some countries, openly acknowledged atheism has never been more popular.

“There’s absolutely more atheists around today than ever before, both in sheer numbers and as a percentage of humanity,” says Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and author of Living the Secular Life. According to a Gallup International survey of more than 50,000 people in 57 countries, the number of individuals claiming to be religious fell from 77% to 68% between 2005 and 2011, while those who self-identified as atheist rose by 3% – bringing the world’s estimated proportion of adamant non-believers to 13%.

While atheists certainly are not the majority, could it be that these figures are a harbinger of things to come? Assuming global trends continue might religion someday disappear entirely?

It’s impossible to predict the future, but examining what we know about religion – including why it evolved in the first place, and why some people chose to believe in it and others abandon it – can hint at how our relationship with the divine might play out in decades or centuries to come.

Scholars are still trying to tease out the complex factors that drive an individual or a nation toward atheism, but there are a few commonalities. Part of religion’s appeal is that it offers security in an uncertain world. So not surprisingly, nations that report the highest rates of atheism tend to be those that provide their citizens with relatively high economic, political and existential stability. “Security in society seems to diminish religious belief,” Zuckerman says. Capitalism, access to technology and education also seems to correlate with a corrosion of religiosity in some populations, he adds.

Crisis of faith

Japan, the UK, Canada, South Korea, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, France and Uruguay (where the majority of citizens have European roots) are all places where religion was important just a century or so ago, but that now report some of the lowest belief rates in the world. These countries feature strong educational and social security systems, low inequality and are all relatively wealthy. “Basically, people are less scared about what might befall them,” says Quentin Atkinson, a psychologist at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Decline, however, does not mean disappearance, says Ara Norenzayan, a social psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and author of Big Gods. Existential security is more fallible than it seems. In a moment, everything can change: a drunk driver can kill a loved one; a tornado can destroy a town; a doctor can issue a terminal diagnosis. As climate change wreaks havoc on the world in coming years and natural resources potentially grow scarce, then suffering and hardship could fuel religiosity. “People want to escape suffering, but if they can’t get out of it, they want to find meaning,” Norenzayan says. “For some reason, religion seems to give meaning to suffering – much more so than any secular ideal or belief that we know of.”

Lots more here: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141219-will-religion-ever-disappear

In fact i shall leave this discussion for others to read themselves and draw their own conclusions from.

As its very good as an educational thread in regards to the problems found within religious belief.

Happy with that.

Paul Ettinger wrote:

Raggamuffin wrote:

It's not up to me to pussyfoot around you and indulge your bossiness, arrogance, and nosiness. If you don't want to be seen that way, stop being that way.

You're not criticising religion, you're patronising and slating those who have religious faith. Again, it's not your business what they believe in.

See again even more defensive, rude, nasty in all aspects about me and not the points made.
Again, you are clearly against Free Speech, which means you defend against bad beliefs being criticized.
Instead you invent lies as seen above to deflect from discussing the problems I am talking about.
Hence with every post you prove what is wrong with literal belief.
It takes the stand point of the inability of being wrong, to the extent, as you are doing now, and have continued to do so in this debate, but thrown poor insults and accusations.

I rest my case

So how is you saying that those with religious faith are "poor students" not rude? You don't seem to like me exercising my right to free speech and telling you that you're an idiot. Why is that?

Clipped from Eddie's opening article > > >
Decline, however, does not mean disappearance, says Ara Norenzayan, a social psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and author of Big Gods. Existential security is more fallible than it seems. In a moment, everything can change: a drunk driver can kill a loved one; a tornado can destroy a town; a doctor can issue a terminal diagnosis. As climate change wreaks havoc on the world in coming years and natural resources potentially grow scarce, then suffering and hardship could fuel religiosity.

Nothing can falsify a firm vow of 'I DO NOT BELEIVE', like being seated on a commercial airliner that is just developed engine trouble and is falling out of the sky {or some other similar disaster}...the people on board will become united in their plea's and prayers for 'SAVE US OH LORD'...
Nothing we cuss & discuss will modify or change the world as a whole

Raggamuffin wrote:

veya_victaous wrote:No Raggs I slag off Incorrect religions.

So how are you any better than Didge? That's exactly what he does. You both say these religions are "incorrect", even though it's not actually your business what people believe.

the progress of Science and knowledge is my business as it is everyone’s.
I have said before i don’t care if people wish to believe it in a spiritual realm, it is only if they are fundamentalists and wish to state their theocratic idea is a real world FACT.

I have no issue with your variant of Christian faith, you don't even go to church so you are hardly a literal Christian.
which is my opposition to didge, he is treating all variants as literal.
really his fundamentalist new atheism contains more of the core problems with religious institutions than many non-literal Christians.

I would like to convince you to call yourself a 'general monotheist' or 'Agnostic Christian' because it is more correct.

I have been thinking about my 'faith' (which i make up as i go) and i think I have a working Panpolytheist theology.
Based around the sun/stars being gods, providing the Polytheist elements, and the pantheist ideas expressed by Einstein and supported by big bang theory, laws of relativity and time space continuum. Basically that everything was a the first moment of time was a singular entity compressed to an atom, and if the physics is correct then eventually it will all collapse and contract back to a singular point in the very last moment of time.

eddie wrote:I'm with veya in the whole "God" department; I beleive in something, call it energy if you will, but what it is I truly don't know.

Atheism, to pick up on a point above, seems to be almost religion-like in that it is a belief in nothing, and some atheists do get quite zealous about it, much like a religious zealot.

Will religion ever disappear?
Not as long as there are humans...looking for answers.

yay an agnostic..
I wonder if you are the only one that got my point

'Coughs'

veya_victaous wrote:And Thank you for proving my point to eddies OP..

Religion will not cease to be because the animal that is homo sapiens has a primal coding that renders individuals to cling to the notion they have the answer or are following someone with the answer. thus the current institutions may fall but they are already being replaced by the 'new atheist' which behaves so similar to a Abrahamist that for all intents and purposes they are the same. it is merely updating the 'world view' to the science of a couple of decades ago, which is the best information they currently have. Which is exactly what the authors of the bible did when they wrote it.

the posts from didge prove my point.
He felt the need to defend his new atheist doctrine with greater vehemence than a christian like raggs defends the bible.

He cannot prove the sun is not a god, at no point has he raised any relevant counter, his only arguments against classifying the giant ball of energy that holds the solar system together and provides the bottom layer of the food chain and sustains all life on earth, is that is doesn't meet the definition of the single god defined by the abrahamist religion.

Again I am not sure that it is, but for all intents and purposes it exceeds the minimum requirements for godhood. and because there are billions of stars a monotheist definition would be illogical and can be seen to be false, we can see with our naked eyes more Giant balls of energy that are just further away than our sun. And we actually define the 'Goldilocks' zone where life as we know it is possible specifically by it distance from one of these giant balls of energy, so even science openly acknowledges that these entities are a requirement for the existence of life(as we know it)

I hold no specific dogma to be true, so take the average definition for the requirements of godhood, I am perfectly satisfied that these giant balls of energy are suitable to define as gods. My Hypothesis is that these giant balls of energy are what gods actually are and the 'sky giant' style gods are like dragons, just make believe.

I have never seen any real entity like the 'sky giant' definition didge and raggs use ... But I can see these giant balls of energy and if you where to ask me, 'what would a god look like?' my answer, even not taking into consideration the sun, would be that they are most probably beings of pure energy they look like giant glowing balls of pure energy... which coincidentally is what the sun and stars are.

If we ask questions and think we can come up with plenty of workings options. the universe is immense and we are very tiny, there are so many entities we know exist in the universe that are of a magnitude so much greater than not only us but our entire planet, that we really are being pretty narcissistic to even think we could understand it, let alone be a key reason for it.

I Don't have the Answer, because I Acknowledge I don't even know the Question...

Absolutely agree.  It's not calling the sun a God, but recognising that it meets the definition of what a god is supposed to be.  


And your final sentence completely sums up the human dilemma, so many say 'we know the truth' when they don't even know what truth they are looking for, or why.

The Meaning of Life isn't something we can answer, because we don't even know how much life there is, or where.