Religion's Future or Lack of it

[Wandering Monk]

What's the future for religion? It's a big question but it looks like it's on the decline, especially in west.

What are the reasons for the decline?
- Decline of the Patriarchal society
- Acceptance of diverse cultural and societal issues like same sex marriage, gender, abortion, IVF, divorce, abortion, homosexuality and contraception. (Wow)
- Public morality being determined by law and not religion
- Hypocrisies of religion
- Society can see that countries that are less religious actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower murder rates than religious ones
- Individual critical thinking
- Any more?

And how long has religion got? A few hundred years or less?

Here are just a couple of the hundreds of articles on the subject.

Why is religion suddenly declining?

An analysis of religious trends from 1981 to 2007 in 49 countries containing 60% of the world’s population did not find a global resurgence of religion—most high-income countries were becoming less religious—however, it did show that in 33 of the 49 countries studied, people had become more...

blog.oup.com

A surprising explanation for the global decline of religion

Since the year 2000, there has been a global decline of religion. In a recent paper, scientists suggest automation could be the cause.

bigthink.com

I think there is a correlation between educational level and loss of religion. Leaving religion is largely an intellectual response/rejection of things not falsifiable.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

But I am weird since I am a strong skeptic and cognitive relativist.

I suspect that you only pretend to be -- both to yourself and to others. You live your life, make decisions, and conjure up hopes and fears entirely on just the opposite set of assumptions.

 

[Tomef]

Well, knowledge as a concept is connected to truth, so ultimate truth could be defined as - the idea of a piece of knowledge, general knowledge or universal knowledge that is so, that it can't be false.
Notice I didn't say it is real, I stated it as an idea.

To my mind, that would qualify as ‘a’ truth, whereas the idea of ultimate truth points at something more all-encompassing.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I suspect that you only pretend to be -- both to yourself and to others. You live your like, make decisions, and conjure up hopes and fears entirely on just the opposite set of assumptions.

Well, in practice it shown up in debates of what reality really is and how other versions are wrong. In effect for the usual debates, who knows what is realy real, I am the one the points the limitations of knowledge for both religious and non-religious claims.
The same applies to objective morality in effect.

I have in effect faith in and acts as if objective reality is real, fair, orderly and knowable. I just can't prove that or have evidence for it.
So yes, I believe this is real and you also exist.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

To my mind, that would qualify as ‘a’ truth, whereas the idea of ultimate truth points at something more all-encompassing.

Ultimate means in part final. So it could be final singular truth or more all-encompassing as you understand it.

 

[Tomef]

Ultimate means in part final. So it could be final singular truth or more all-encompassing as you understand it.

A long time ago during a very interesting trip, I was overwhelmed with the idea that symmetry was what might be called the final singular truth of all things, so I have more sympathy with that idea. For anything to be ‘all’ encompassing though, it would have to somehow comprise all subjectivity, which seems rather bogus.

 

[danieldemol]

The problem is that if we looked back in history at what people considered to be “demonstrably harmful” we see things like homosexuality, racial impurity, Jewishness, etc that people wanted to eradicate.

We then assume we are much more enlightened now and will only use it for good.



Throughout history, how many personality types do you think have been considered “malignant” at one time or another?

How many of these do you personally consider malignant today?

This shows that science improves over time in my view.

What makes you assume that the powers that be will roughly agree with your view on what is undesirable and to be purged from society?

There are no guarantees, but we should treat people with mental illness and other demonstrably harmful problems anyway in my view. I bet you don't feel uncomfortable going to the doctor today just because historically it started out as quack science with leeches being applied etc.

How likely do you think it is that we try to scientifically eradicate undesirable personality types without significant unintended consequences emerging?

There will always be unintended consequences to science, still I feel confident most humans would prefer not to live in the stone age.

What from human history fills you with confidence that good faith people won’t mess it up by mistake and bad actors won’t exploit it for negative ends?

Bonus: How many MAGAs in America do you think view “wokeness” as malignant (and vice versa)?

MAGAs are a small proportion of the scientific community and most of them are anti-science and just as happy to die a cruel stone age death as you apparently are in my view.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

What's the future for religion?

My prediction? Diminution to the point of irrelevance. Man's millennia with religion will bridge the time between when men first started asking questions about reality and sought ways to control it and when they got those answers. Foer many, that's now, for many others, it will be their descendants that leave religion behind.

What are the reasons for the decline?

I can only speak to the decline of religion in the States, which seems multifactorial:

• The appearance of best sellers by authors promoting atheism and the rise of the Internet have given humanists a platform (like RF) and made atheism much more respectable.
• The rising numbers of people self-identifying as atheist or irreligious makes joining them less of a social risk
• Scandal after scandal has flown by since the rise of the televangelists in the 70's continuing today, right up to the church pedophilia cover up and the failed Palin and Duggar examples of Christian family values. Jim Jones and David Koresh didn't help the church any.
• The entertainment media mostly depict the church and clergy as hypocritical or ineffectual.
• People are put off by Christian homophobia and hell theology.
• People are put off the religious incursion into government and people's freedoms. The Handmaid's Tale look isn't a good one for the church.
• Science and evolution have made atheism more tenable.
• People find the church and religion increasingly less relevant in daily life. It doesn't meet their needs.
• Removal of the church, state-led prayer, and creationism from public schools
• And most recently, the rise of theocratic tendencies and misogyny.

In the case of Christianity, I think one of the biggest reasons is that people just love something else more than what Jesus says.

That's true for me.

For people who hate the truth, Jesus can be annoying.

You and I have a different definition of truth, and likely fact, correctness, and knowledge as well. Faith is not a path to truth or knowledge.

That is our God given right, all the best.

My rights don't come from gods. Neither do yours. The come from mankind, from people willing to enumerate and enforce/defend them. Gods play no part in that.

I'm personally of those that hope orthodox versions of the Abrahamic religions decline.

Agreed. My years on RF have helped me focus on just what it is about religion I object to. It's not the polytheists, who are generally earth-centric, nor the Abrahamic humanists. It's the zealous Abrahamics, who believe in a god who is cruel, irrational, lives outside of nature, and issues commandments from there. Is there an attitude more hostile to what I call authentic spirituality, which requires a sense of connection with nature and life - something this other worldview does violence to, view that causes people to think that if you don't have children, your garbage, as if that's their concern or place to judge.

What I mean is that there are questions science cannot reasonably ask

Did you mean that science cannot answer? If a question can't be answered using empiricism (reason applied to observation), it can't be answered at all. Religion has no answers, just unfalsifiable dogma (guesses). Philosophy has no answers to such questions. Mathematics has no answers there, either. Just empiricism, or as many like to call it, science, even though it's something we all do all day while awake. We observe and answer questions applying valid reason to the evidence of our senses. As I said to another poster in this reply, there is no other path to truth (knowledge).

Can there be things that do not exist?

Rhetorical question?

What are the equalities of the nonexistent? Let me rephrase that: what are the qualities of things that exist? Three:

[1] They affect and are affected by other things that exist,
[2] they do this someplace in space
[3] and at some time

Consider the difference between a wolf and a werewolf. The former meets all three of these criteria and the latter none of them. It is also not possible to meet only one or two of the criteria. Real (actual) things meet all three and imagined things meet none. Ideas about real thigs exist and have a referent that exists. Ideas about imagined things also exist but have no external referent.

This is why I treat the idea of gods as imagination. People may claim that other people claimed to have witnessed a god raised a dead body in the Levant two millennia ago, but we have no more reason to believe them than we do claims about werewolves. And their answer for that? This god lives outside of time and space, so don't go looking for it anywhere, or "It's beyond the purview of science. It transcends science."

 

[Jimmy]

I think Jesus will gain followers in years to come as more people become enlightened to his return.

 

[Madsaac]

I ask how do you know better? How do you know what religion is? Are your version so for all of the world and all humans? And please use critical thinking.

I may not know better, but I have my own ideas. And they have been expressed on various occasions throughout the thread but if you want to hear them again then so be it.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam (maybe migration may change this) are reducing in importance in Western countries. (See articles below)

Key Findings From the Global Religious Futures Project

The Global Religious Futures (GRF) project is jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The John Templeton Foundation. Here are some big-picture findings from the GRF, together with context from other Pew Research Center studies.

www.pewresearch.org

Losing my religion: More people across Europe have little or no belief

In Italy, the cradle of Catholicism, new research suggests that only 19% of citizens attend services at least weekly, while 31% never attend at all - and it's a trend already growing in some European nations.

www.euronews.com

And I think the reasons for the decline relate to the points below because these religions oppose them. Yeah make sense??

- Decline of the Patriarchal society
- Acceptance of diverse cultural and societal issues like same sex marriage, gender, abortion, IVF, divorce, abortion, homosexuality and contraception. (Wow)
- Public morality being determined by law and not religion
- Hypocrisies of religion
- Society can see that countries that are less religious actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower murder rates than religious ones
- Individual critical thinking
- Science advancement
- Any more?

And I think these are good things.

Do you agree? Do you think the decline in religion in western countries is a good thing?

So in essence, do you agree with my points or not? For example, do you like a patriarchal society?

 

[Madsaac]

I think there is a correlation between educational level and loss of religion. Leaving religion is largely an intellectual response/rejection of things not falsifiable.

So, are you saying the better educated put less importance on religion.

 

[Madsaac]

I think Jesus will gain followers in years to come as more people become enlightened to his return.

So does that mean less of the points below for society, because religion opposes the following:

- Decline of the Patriarchal society
- Acceptance of diverse cultural and societal issues like same sex marriage, gender, abortion, IVF, divorce, abortion, homosexuality and contraception. (Wow)
- Public morality being determined by law and not religion
- Hypocrisies of religion
- Society can see that countries that are less religious actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower murder rates than religious ones
- Individual critical thinking
- Science advancement
- Any more?

I don't think people in general want less of these points so religion will continue to decline.

Do you want more or less of the above?

 

[Jimmy]

So does that mean less of the points below for society, because religion opposes the following:

- Decline of the Patriarchal society
- Acceptance of diverse cultural and societal issues like same sex marriage, gender, abortion, IVF, divorce, abortion, homosexuality and contraception. (Wow)
- Public morality being determined by law and not religion
- Hypocrisies of religion
- Society can see that countries that are less religious actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower murder rates than religious ones
- Individual critical thinking
- Science advancement
- Any more?

I don't think people in general want less of these points so religion will continue to decline.

Do you want more or less of the above?

Why not both?

 

[Augustus]

I bet you don't feel uncomfortable going to the doctor today just because historically it started out as quack science with leeches being applied etc.

I certainly wonder what current medical understanding may be wrong about given we can be absolutely certain they are wrong about many things.

The fact that most people don’t is telling.

MAGAs are a small proportion of the scientific community and most of them are anti-science and just as happy to die a cruel stone age death as you apparently are in my view.

What is deemed “malignant” is a political decision.

People often like to treat “science” as a pure, normative abstraction that they can pin their hopes and dreams on. It’s no different from a religious believer insisting that all the people who used their religion for harm were not real believers.

All knowledge and technology that can be politicised or used for harm will be politicised and used for harm.

There are no guarantees, but we should treat people with mental illness and other demonstrably harmful problems anyway in my view.

We already do that.

Saying we should treat illness is not the same as saying we will eradicate human flaws and create a better human race through bioengineering.

This shows that science improves over time in my view.

It revises its findings over time. This does not eradicate any harms done based on ideas deemed “scientific” at the time yet later found to be wrong.

There will always be unintended consequences to science, still I feel confident most humans would prefer not to live in the stone age

This is the kind of strange logic that shows we don’t actually learn from experience.

Either you trust “science” to eliminate human failings or you want to live in the Stone Age.

No middle ground.

It’s not even about some normative abstraction called “science”, but about ideologically and politically influenced human activity.

Humans collectively (and individually) are irrational and far less intelligent than they like to assume.

Even if people in the past believed stupid things and used these beliefs to harm others, we are much smarter now and it won’t happen again. This time we really did learn!

The main advantage of religion is that it stops humans from thinking they are god.

The ancient religions understood that humans were doomed to repeat their errors as they are flawed and prone to hubris.

The tragic view of history is that human failings cannot be cured and that we will have good times followed by bad.

As humans are not collectively rational, any assumptions that rely on humans being consistently rational in order to succeed are folly.

Most people misunderstand the pessimistic/tragic view of history as meaning there is no point in trying to make things better.

In reality, it is the view that we are better served by following course of action that assume many humans will be violent, corrupt, malicious, selfish, bigoted , irrational or whatever rather than assume we can fix these problems.

and just as happy to die a cruel stone age death as you apparently are in my view.

Then you have completely misunderstood.

 

[1213]

Jesus said that righteous will go to eternal life does not mean that Jesus is the way to eternal life, since people don't need to believe in Jesus to be righteous. Maybe in the end you will see that to be true when you die and see non-Christians in heaven.

I agree that it is possible to count person righteous, even if he doesn't know about Jesus. But, it is still Jesus who has said the condition and so is the one who defines who gets in.

...My point is that Jesus never said that He was coming back to earth, never. Rather, Jesus said He was no more in this world.
...

For the Son of Man will come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he will render to everyone according to his deeds.
Matt. 16:27

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I may not know better, but I have my own ideas. And they have been expressed on various occasions throughout the thread but if you want to hear them again then so be it.

Christianity, Judaism and Islam (maybe migration may change this) are reducing in importance in Western countries. (See articles below)

Key Findings From the Global Religious Futures Project

The Global Religious Futures (GRF) project is jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and The John Templeton Foundation. Here are some big-picture findings from the GRF, together with context from other Pew Research Center studies.

www.pewresearch.org

Losing my religion: More people across Europe have little or no belief

In Italy, the cradle of Catholicism, new research suggests that only 19% of citizens attend services at least weekly, while 31% never attend at all - and it's a trend already growing in some European nations.

www.euronews.com

And I think the reasons for the decline relate to the points below because these religions oppose them. Yeah make sense??

- Decline of the Patriarchal society
- Acceptance of diverse cultural and societal issues like same sex marriage, gender, abortion, IVF, divorce, abortion, homosexuality and contraception. (Wow)
- Public morality being determined by law and not religion
- Hypocrisies of religion
- Society can see that countries that are less religious actually tend to be less corrupt and have lower murder rates than religious ones
- Individual critical thinking
- Science advancement
- Any more?

And I think these are good things.

Do you agree? Do you think the decline in religion in western countries is a good thing?

So in essence, do you agree with my points or not? For example, do you like a patriarchal society?

I have another understanding of what religion is. But yes, in the narrow sense of the limited range of religion you use, you have a limited point.
So let us leave it there.

 

[danieldemol]

What is deemed “malignant” is a political decision.

Its the same with mental illness, to a religious person hearing the voice of your god is a blessing, to those who either don't believe in god or don't believe god intervenes its psychosis in my view.

People often like to treat “science” as a pure, normative abstraction that they can pin their hopes and dreams on. It’s no different from a religious believer insisting that all the people who used their religion for harm were not real believers.

Hardly, I'm not saying that people who use science for harm are not scientists.

All knowledge and technology that can be politicised or used for harm will be politicised and used for harm.

Great, that's pretty much all science - back to the stoneage for you in my view.

We already do that.

As we should, but a religious person could consider that playing god if they wanted to.

Saying we should treat illness is not the same as saying we will eradicate human flaws and create a better human race through bioengineering.

Bioengineering is a pretty broad term, i'm not advocating Eugenics here. I'm just saying once we got flawed people here why not fix them?
You seem to be afraid that the science would be used to get rid of undesireables, yet you aren't suggeesting that we should bury gunpowder airplanes and helicopters and forget about the technology just because these are the chief means of genociding undesireables such as Palestinians in my opinion. In other words the tech to get rid of undesireables already exists, I'm simply proposing that instead of getting rid of undesireable people we fix such traits as are demonstrably harmful and keep the people. I believe you on the one hand don't complain about the existing tech mentioned but complain about the development of proposed tech to deal with narcissists and the like because you are worried about the unlikely event that someone may develop the tech to convert us all into a bunch of stupid MAGAs or something.

It revises its findings over time. This does not eradicate any harms done based on ideas deemed “scientific” at the time yet later found to be wrong.

Sure it doesn't, but learning curves are inevitable, you can't know things in hindsight before they have happened the way I see it.

This is the kind of strange logic that shows we don’t actually learn from experience.

Either you trust “science” to eliminate human failings or you want to live in the Stone Age.

No middle ground.

Your proposed middle ground seems to be to keep the tech that is actually used to genocide people such as gunpowder and aircraft, whilst inciting fear about potential tech which could allow us to live in peace in my view.

The main advantage of religion is that it stops humans from thinking they are god.

*Newsflash* God doesn't intervene in the physical realm, if I thought I was God I'd refrain from intervening just like God in my view.

The ancient religions understood that humans were doomed to repeat their errors as they are flawed and prone to hubris.

The tragic view of history is that human failings cannot be cured and that we will have good times followed by bad.

As humans are not collectively rational, any assumptions that rely on humans being consistently rational in order to succeed are folly.

Most people misunderstand the pessimistic/tragic view of history as meaning there is no point in trying to make things better.

In reality, it is the view that we are better served by following course of action that assume many humans will be violent, corrupt, malicious, selfish, bigoted , irrational or whatever rather than assume we can fix these problems.

I'm not assuming we can fix these problems, I'm saying let's try and fix the problems rather than just assuming we can't do something because we've failed at it before. Humans had to fail at flying before they could reach the moon. I simply do not share your defeatist attitude in my view.

 

[Madsaac]

I have another understanding of what religion is. But yes, in the narrow sense of the limited range of religion you use, you have a limited point.
So let us leave it there.

Yes we'll leave it there but it would be nice for you to express opinion about something else apart from the 'truth' 'reality' 'objective' 'subjective' 'truth' and so on

 

[Trailblazer]

For the Son of Man will come in the glory of his Father with his angels, and then he will render to everyone according to his deeds.
Matt. 16:27

Jesus never said that He was coming back to earth, never. A writer whose identity is unknown said the Son of Man will come.

Author and date​

According to early church tradition, originating with Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD),[10] the gospel was written by Matthew the companion of Jesus, but this presents numerous problems.[9] Most modern scholars hold that it was written anonymously[8] in the last quarter of the first century by a male Jew who stood on the margin between traditional and nontraditional Jewish values and who was familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time.[11][12][note 2] However, scholars such as N. T. Wright[13] and John Wenham[14] hold there are problems with dating Matthew late in the first century, and argue that it was written in the 40s–50s AD.[note 3] German scholar Adolf Jülicher argued that the gospel "cannot possibly be the translation of a Hebrew original" and that it most likely dates from "about the year 100."[15]

Gospel of Matthew - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Maybe the author believed that Jesus was going to return based upon his hopes, but Jesus said that he was not going to return to this earth.

John 14:19 Yet a little while, and the world seeth me no more; but ye see me: because I live, ye shall live also.
John 16:10 Of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more.
John 17:11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.

Look carefully at Mark 8:38. Look at how the verse is separated by a semicolon and then the verse says “of him also” indicating that the Son of man is someone other than Himself who would come in the glory of his Father.

Mark 8:38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

Again, in Matthew 16:27, the verse says that the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father.
The verse is not Jesus saying “I will come in the glory of my Father.”

Matthew 16:27 For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works.

Look carefully at Luke 9:26. The verse separated the Son on man from Jesus (ashamed of me, of him shall), and then the verse says that the Son of man shall come in his own glory and in His Father’s glory indicating that the Son of man who will come is not Jesus.

Luke 9:26 For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels.


Moreover, in the Old Testament it was prophesied that one like the Son of man would be the messianic of the latter days.

Christians believe that the following verses are about Jesus, but if Jesus was the Son of man, as Jesus claimed to be, the following verses cannot be about the Jesus.

Daniel 7:13-14 I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.

I believe that those verses are about Baha'u'llah who was one like Jesus, so he was the return of the Son of man.

 

[paarsurrey]

Religion's Future or Lack of it

Religions' future is as bright as ever, as G-d keeps it revived by sending his Messenger/Prophets, and it is an attribute of G-d to send them, please, right?

Regards