Robert Tulip wrote:v - thanks for joining the conversation here. Your observation of the inertia of Christian belief makes sense, but then there is also the fact that sometimes change can happen quickly. When Columbus discovered America, and to a lesser extent when Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter and Darwin discovered the law of evolution, there was a sudden shift in opinion. Educated public opinion recognized that these new findings made sense, and this informed view then percolated through society.
My view is that Christianity is headed towards a cusp, a broad recognition that its tradition is mythological, not factual. To date this argument has not been presented in a way that is persuasive for believers, because atheism has generally argued that religion as such is a bad thing, invalidly inferring a broad critique of spirituality from the valid critique of religious traditions.
If the argument gets traction that religion is necessary and good, but has been based on some simple errors that can be corrected, we could see rapid change in mass opinion.
I think that atheism has generally argued that religion as such is a bad thing because religion , especially Christianity, has always tried to stagnate the reasonable thought . For instance, Sir Stephen Hawking in his famous “ The brief history of time “ tells us that when he and his colleagues had an audience with the Pope he recommended them not to consider carefully the events occurred during the Big Bang, because it was a “god ‘s creature”. I suppose that if even the Pope prefers not to know the fundamentals , so what changes in religious mass opinion we can speak about ? . Why am I talking this kind of people about ? Because they are in a majority ! In brain-wise studies in neurophilosophy by P.S. Churchland we read : “ Galileo , for example , was shown “the instruments of torture” to force him to retract his claim that Earth revolve around the Sun , a claim based on observation and reasoning . Recant he did , rather than submitting to the rack and iron maiden , but even so , he spent the rest of his life under house arrest by church authorities “
