Will religion die out?

Post Reply New Topic

There are a few true believers out there, who devote their lives unselfishly to their faith. Those people are the actual followers of the religion that everyone else claims.

Most people are too self-interested to truly commit to what the faith they claim demands, but you can't deny the existence of people like Mother Theresa, who do truly devote themselves to their faith.

It's odd for me to be arguing this point, because I'm an agnostic, but perhaps if more theists were like Mother Theresa, and less like GW Bush, I wouldn't hold such a poor opinion of them.

Television replaced religion as the opiate of the masses long ago, and it's shifting now to the internet.

The content of the opiate has gone from being handed down from on high, to determined by the network executives, to user defined. I withhold judgement on whether the inmates are running the asylum or man has finally reached a free state.

You're joking, right?

While the necessity of organised religion has died, religion and religious organisations are still flourishing, with new religions being invented every day.

I'm glad you agree that religion is a manifestation of a basic human need embeded in the structure of the brain and was not inspired by some divine deity.

I sure hope so, there is no way to know for sure.
But I will say that there are more sceptics today then where about 20 years ago. In a thousand years religion could die out, or a new one could get started.

Not with everyone, There are many peoples around this world. Gotta check them all!

Of course there are people who believe in all sorts of things from flying saucers to astrology to heaven and hell and an afterlife but the general aim of religion aside from these tinsel decorations is to make people behave decently to each other and preserve the wonder of a planet that can sustain us all. Do you really see this happening?

Hmmm, just like God; Winston and O'Brien only exist in a literary sense.

I've seen people acting decently!

granted not in politics, or in any real position of power or influence, or spot lightness.

Jimmy Carter was a humble, honest Christian. He did better things outside the Presidency than within it, though, so I don't know if that counts as someone in a position of power and influence.

Why can't it be both?

A divine deity, a Creator. Why is this such a hateful idea?

not hateful.

just irrational.

what I'm afraid of is that the amount of sceptics could be more or less constant and only be higher now because scepticism is not penalised anymore.

I don't think that's true, but I dread the idea.

It's not the idea of the creator that's hateful.

It's the personification given to him by people, and the atrocity carried out in the name of a Deity that is hateful.

I hate the abrahamic god, not because of the message of Jesus..... that was actually a pretty good thing, but because of the way it's been twisted and abused throughout history, and is still abused today.

I'm neutral on the concept of a god, because whether god just popped into existence, or the universe just popped into existence...... something sometime somewhen just popped into existence. Whether it was God or the Universe doesn't matter, but we know the Universe exists, we just hope God exists. It is hard, in the presence of empirical evidence that the Universe exists, and a lack of Evidence of God, for a mind that believes in the logic of the scientific method to accept the premise of God. Occam's razor demands that we make as few assumptions as possible, and positing God popping into existence first is one really big assumption.

The Abrahamic God is a contradictory tangle of personifications that's been heaped upon by different times and cultures to the point where now he bares no resemblance to anything approaching reason.

Reason leads us to Secular Humanism, but if you look at the tenets of Secular Humanism and compare them to some of the more liberal Christian churches... They're really not that far off.

The fundamentalist churches who insist on exclusionary and vindictive attitudes ruin religion. This isn't limited to Catholicism, Christianity - But also Muslim sects and Jewish sects that are isolationist and/or militant/harsh. Shariat law is pretty damn rough, and what's worse is it actually has the force of law in some countries. Is that really what we want?

Reason alone will never satisfy all of mankind.

If theistic religion is susceptible to human error and villainy, why would secular humanism be any different?