Sand wrote:
Religion is based on gullibility and religions will fall when there will be no gullible people left. Probably human life on Earth will end long before that occurs.
While gullibility is a factor I think it is somewhat simplistic to blame religion entirely on gullibility. Kids born into highly religious cultures stand little chance of escaping it, they are indoctrinated with it from birth. Often scientific knowledge is withheld and the people are discouraged from learning anything that could disagree with those religious beliefs or that disagrees with the established order. The kids may be quite rational and far from gullible in other respects, they are just brought up in a place where strong religious beliefs are endemic.
I view religion as a disease of the mind, it gets passed on from generation to generation. The spread and severity of infection depends very much on geographic location as to what strain of religion they suffer from. The problem of religion is further exacerbated due to those with power. They often hold some sort of religious rank. It is in their own personal interests to perpetuate the religion and withhold knowledge from the masses that would undermine the structure of their society and their positions of power within it. Anyone rocking the boat gets shunned, outcast or worse.
The average kid growing up in a fundamentalist religious environment is likely never to even hear the words "evolution", "big-bang", "cosmology" etc let alone be encouraged to explore knowledge, truth and ask questions for themselves. They grow up with an entirely different mind-set and pass on the same mind set to their own children perpetuating the cycle.
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I've left WP indefinitely.