Is Religion Going Extinct?

[TaylorBP]

Not fast enough! Without religion and government the world would be a better place.

Hey Starburst, what about suggesting getting rid of people while you are at it?

You have a point that religion and government are intimately entwined. But without government the planet would collapse into anarchy and war. Not good.

So. Maybe then we would find out if this almighty deity exist for real. Surely he would step in and safe us all. NOT!

Why would this almighty deity bother to save people that have so little faith in him that they feel they have to risk everything to prove or disprove his existence? What there to stop him from letting those of such little faith self-destuct, and then creating new people in their place? Better people, that won't question his existence and omniptence and feel the need to have him come and safe them from their own undoing to simply prove he's real.

[Interbane]

Why would this almighty deity bother to save people that have so little faith in him that they feel they have to risk everything to prove or disprove his existence?

Because the people you're talking about are otherwise good people. Because letting someone that is partially good to suffer for eternity is immoral. God should not let that happen. His actions, if he does let that happen, are immoral.

Consider the situation if you hold a human to the same moral standards. Let's say you're handcuffed to a train switch by a person that just mugged you(but otherwise left you unharmed). While he was running away, apologizing that he had to do this to feed his family, he stumbles on the tracks. He falls and knocks himself out, right across the tracks. You hear a train approaching, and notice that the train is currently pointed directly at the man. But if you pull the switch lever that you're handcuffed to, you can change the course so that the train misses the fallen mugger. You scream for help, but no one can hear you. You are the only person able to control the switch, and by extension, the life of the mugger. What would you do in this situation?

This is a good question to test how you rate others according to whatever moral rubric you use.

What there to stop him from letting those of such little faith self-destuct, and then creating new people in their place?

Where do we see these people self-destructing? Is this part of your fantasy? God IS letting us "self-destruct", but we're not destructed. We're all living quite normal moral lives. If something did spontaneously change and we were to self-destruct, it's wouldn't be according to the laws of physics. It would be supernatural, god. Satan wouldn't do such a thing. Atheists are Satan's preachers, with every person they convert, another soul goes to feed Hell's armies. Destroying all atheists is an act that god would do, not Satan. Don't kid yourself. If God wiped out every human on Earth who wasn't also a Christian, there'd be a frenzy of religious ecstasy. Perhaps some would initially question what evil could kill so many people. But afterward, they will be convinced by theologians that it was actually the Rapture.

[Azrael]

NEWSFLASH! No atheists or christian or anyone else can disprove or prove there is no god. No one has solid evidence that this almighty creator exist. The three major Abrahamic Religions claim he exist simply because they have the written words in books which does not prove he exists only that they believe he does. These written text just assume the answer with no solid evidence for a god existing. Atheism uses logic and reason to deduce that no god exist and atheists have no holy text to back up their claims only logic and reason with a little science added in.

The world itself is going to the dogs right now. Unrest in the Middle East is driving prices up for oil and that in turn raises the cost of other items such as food. Given the state of the human race at this point and time the only ones that can change the course of our path is us. Cloud people want to force feed this god down peoples throats well your preaching to the choir.

[johnson1010]

In a larger context, it is not possible to disprove the existence of SOME kind of god. But any individual god, with definitive traits and propensities can be tested for, and disproved.

The moment you claim that a god will answer the prayers of anybody with so much as a mustard seed's worth of faith, you have proposed something about a god that can be tested. When that god fails that test (inevitably), you have dis-proven that particular god.

Gods can also be dis-proven by tracking down the original authorship of a religion, as in the case of Joseph Smith and mormonism, which is an obvious fraud, L.Ron Hubbard and scientology (another obvious case of fantasy foisted on us as divine inspiration), or the self-contradictory, as well as flat out false claims of the bible, where it makes statements of omnipotence and then proves to be just plain old wrong on a whole gamut of things ranging from the taxonomic classification of bats to exposing complete ignorance (equivalent to the cultures which gave birth to this religion) of stellar bodies and their interactions.

While the glaring problems with the bible do not disprove all POSSIBLE gods, they do disprove the god espoused by the bible because that god is described as all knowing, yet clearly is rather limited in knowledge. This may also point to human fallibility and the ancient authors of the bible (who we know were men with political motivations) just didn't' adequately describe the real god they were attempting to encapsolate, the more obvious reason for this discrepancy between religion and reality is that they made it up, and that they did not know what they were talking about.

All of these are examples of particular gods and religions which are quite obviously wrong, bogus, fraudulent, or mis-informed. They propose things which are false from the outset and directly contradict all observable evidence, or can be found to be incorrect with just a bit of research.

[IrishLad17]

NEWSFLASH! No atheists or christian or anyone else can disprove or prove there is no god. No one has solid evidence that this almighty creator exist. The three major Abrahamic Religions claim he exist simply because they have the written words in books which does not prove he exists only that they believe he does. These written text just assume the answer with no solid evidence for a god existing. Atheism uses logic and reason to deduce that no god exist and atheists have no holy text to back up their claims only logic and reason with a little science added in.

The world itself is going to the dogs right now. Unrest in the Middle East is driving prices up for oil and that in turn raises the cost of other items such as food. Given the state of the human race at this point and time the only ones that can change the course of our path is us. Cloud people want to force feed this god down peoples throats well your preaching to the choir.

You should read the book, "The Case for a Creator." People always assume that finding out new scientific information will disprove religious beliefs. However, what if it went in the opposite direction (which it has been)?

Look at the complexity of our earth and every living organism and you will find that some things cannot be explained by science. Also, looking at Darwin's theory of evolution, he thought that his evolutionary model was incomplete because the fossil record has gaps. In the new age some of those gaps have been filled in and they have not been what Darwin estimated at all- in fact, the records have further dis-proven evolution.

[DWill]

Do you mean that in some particular, science has shown that Darwin wasn't right? Which particular? Or are you saying that science now shows that life didn't develop very slowly, from less complex to more, under natural selection? The latter would have to be the case if the general statement "Darwin was wrong" has any chance of holding up.

[johnson1010]

Look at the complexity of our earth and every living organism and you will find that some things cannot be explained by science.

You seem to be referencing irreducible complexity. This is not a problem for evolutionary theory. It was soundly defeated in a court of law, no less, and has since been trampled into the ground on numerous occasions with no defensible argument in favor. Often sited is the eye ball, bacterial flagellum, inner ear, and other such organs which do not function in modern humans if damaged, and thereby losing some particular part of the organ. It would not be expected that any of these organs would function after being damaged, but that is no indication of the previous states of those organisms in ancestral species. The eye ball does in fact have numerous stages of reduction present in both the fossil record, and in fact in living animals ranging from simple photo sensitive receptor cells, to photo-sensitive light pits right on through to fully lensed eyes as seen in humans. And of course there are at least 3 different versions of fully functioning eyes found in vertebrates, arthropods, and squids. All of which developed independently in examples of convergent evolution exactly as would be expected by evolutionary theory, and in defiance of religious assertions of magical creation.

Also, looking at Darwin's theory of evolution, he thought that his evolutionary model was incomplete because the fossil record has gaps.

It is correct that Darwin lamented the relative sparsity of the fossil record at the time of his writing. Of course that was two centuries ago, and no reflection of the state of the art in any science. Since then, thousands of fossil species have been discovered including a near continuous ancestral lineage for humans to such an extent that the different species are so numerous that finding definite distinctions between them has become difficult.

Transitional species:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfoje7jVJpU

In the new age some of those gaps have been filled in and they have not been what Darwin estimated at all- in fact, the records have further dis-proven evolution.

Darwin predicted that we should find some sort of proto-bird with un-fused wing fingers and a few years later we found exactly that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archeopteryx

Archeopteryx Lithographica is exactly the kind of thing that Darwin predicted, and the thing was found during his own life time. Since then there has been nothing but a colossal amassing of like data that suggests nothing other than the legitimacy of evolutionary theory to the exclusion of all other suggested origins of species.

There are no alternative evolutionary theories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TkY7HrJOhc

Please refer to this thread, where i have been attempting to shed some light on the misunderstandings people have of evolution.

http://www.booktalk.org/yes-evolution-t8939.html

[Meme Wars]

Have we strayed from the main topic?

Is Religion Going Extinct?

Thank you Interbane for the two interesting links. I believe the death of religion will occur, for better or worse, from free market distractions with the newest acquisitions (cell phones, cars) and their associate usages (facebook, & other social networks). As people sop up their time with the complexities of the modern world and its costly time management, religion will get the short end of our attention.

Other options for meeting our social needs, finding a meaningful place in society to find value in our existence & finding comfort in our temporal existence (or at least a distraction from the question) will supplant religion, gradually. Only the poor and uneducated not linked to these new resources will keep traditional religious institutions alive. These are good motivations for religious institutions to keep the downtrodden poor, but hard to attract finances for the institution's day to day existence. Perhaps the rich will see value in the old ways and finance these dying institutions.

The down side to these distractions is the quality of our interactions with each other and our ability to organize for good human causes. We will be too busy with our meaningless data overloaded gibberish to notices that the movers and shakers are taking advantage of our inadequate citizen involvement to permanently secure their power in this world. And what they have in store for us isn't pretty.

[lady of shallot]

Meme said:

Only the poor and uneducated not linked to these new resources will keep traditional religious institutions alive.

Religion may die out and appears to be. . . at least Christianity but I doubt it is for the reasons you cite. First of all kids in grade school are introduced to computer use and your claim reminds me of what a sister of mine says about volunteering at a food pantry. She said there is no one who does not drive up to it and use a cell phone while there.

It isn't lack of education that keeps people keyed in. There are many other reasons; custom, community, charitable considerations, empowerment, aesthetics, and comfort.

[Interbane]

I believe the death of religion will occur, for better or worse, from free market distractions with the newest acquisitions (cell phones, cars) and their associate usages (facebook, & other social networks). As people sop up their time with the complexities of the modern world and its costly time management, religion will get the short end of our attention.

Wow, you crawled out of the woodworks. Welcome back! I've enjoyed some of your older posts.

There are many lenses through which to gauge what will happen to religion. Here's a couple I thought of, the meme one tribute to you:

Memetic lens:
Just because new exciting memes have emerged in the memepool doesn't mean older meme(plexes) will go extinct. Just like the cyclical recurrence of influenza, different interpretations(such as Robert Tulip's) mutate the meme enough so that it can survive in a modern world. Yet there is far less safe territory for such a meme to develop, with science informing all our knowledge like a creeping moss. It will survive, but to a far lesser overall degree, and in an altered denomination.

Stratification lens:
With the humanity's knowledge pool growing at the rate it is, people will have to study for longer and longer to reach the frontiers of science in the various fields. To understand how different theories will fit together into "theories of everything", a person will likely have to study their entire life to be able to inform. Young geniuses and other brilliant people will still do it faster, but it will take more time than before. But future society will still need the majority of the population to be educated in entirely different things. As the frontiers of science get ever and ever further from baseline, it will polarize the people who understand it from those who barely understand a thing about the fields of science that deal with theories of everything. Even "layscientists" such as myself would find it increasingly difficult to follow along, as the math outdistances our ability to comprehend it without extensive study.

So while laypeople are still able to follow along at the moment, religion will decline in those educated countries. But at some point in the future, our theories, even though empirically validated, will seem as magical to most people as biblical stories. Only a lifetime of study would withdraw the curtain to reveal the science behind the magic. This would provide a good environment for the resurgence of religion.