Why the Future of Religion Is Bleak

[LiberalAndProud]

Today one of the largest categories of religious affiliation in the world—with more than a billion people—is no religion at all, the “Nones.” One out of six Americans is already a None; by 2050, the figure will be one out of four, according to a new Pew Research Center study. Churches are being closed by the hundreds, deconsecrated and rehabilitated as housing, offices, restaurants and the like, or just abandoned.

If this trend continues, religion largely will evaporate, at least in the West. Pockets of intense religious activity may continue, made up of people who will be more sharply differentiated from most of society in attitudes and customs, a likely source of growing tension and conflict.

...

Hardly anybody today believes in—or would want to believe in—the wrathful, Old Testament Jehovah, for instance. A God who commands our love is a nasty piece of work by today’s perspectives, and has been replaced, over the centuries, by ever-less-anthropomorphic (but more “loving,” more “forgiving”) addressees of our prayers. (Isn’t it curious how the obsolete term “God-fearing” is still used in some quarters as a commendation?) God has no ears, but may “listen” to our prayers, and “works in mysterious ways,” which is a face-saving way of acknowledging that He doesn’t answer them at all.

Do you remember the impressive and rigorous Benson Study? It was conducted by a Harvard Medical School team that labored for years. It was finally published in 2006, and it concluded that intercessionary prayer for the recovery of heart-surgery patients not only didn’t work; in some conditions it showed a small but measurable increase in post-surgical complications.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-future-of-religion-is-bleak-1430104785

Personally, I think Dennett is overly optimistic about the future of religion. Still, his opinion piece sparked a kerfuffle in the religious community, and that's not a bad thing.

[salimbag]

1. On a personal level

I am an an atheist, but my parents were xtian. Their attempt at indoctrination failed miserably. My wife was a casual xtian when we married, she is now an atheist. I never tried to persuade her in any way, it was her own personal growth. I have three children, all adults now, and all atheist. My parents tried to indoctrinate them, but it was another failed effort. Looks like we are part of the modern movement toward free thought, and the rejection of superstition.

[Arugula Latte]

6. My mom was raised Catholic, figured out it was complete b.s. when she was in college.

My dad was born of Lutherans, but they were never very pious. Both parents became atheists. My sibling and I were never religious. My husband comes from a big family -- formerly the go-to-church-and-Sunday-school every week type of family. All the kids and even the parents realized religion was utter mythology, and they all despise religion now (partially because of the way they were treated by the church when they were still believers). Our kids are disgusted by religion. All the cousins are atheists, except one, who was raised primarily by a somewhat nutty mom after a divorce.

[mountain grammy]

2. Can't happen soon enough..

[Binkie The Clown]

3. I agree that Dennet is too optimistic.

Considering the cyclic recurrence of disasters of one sort or another, there will always be an ample supply of human misery to fuel the false hope that religion feeds on. Especially if any one of the many possible, and maybe even likely catastrophes caused by economic bubbles, nuclear war, nuclear power accidents, overpopulation, environmental degradation, topsoil erosion and depletion, global climate change, ocean acidification, peak oil, growing ineffectiveness of antibiotics, the global water crisis and resulting hunger and, in some places, famine, ... the list goes on.

At some point in the not too distant future, one or more of those points of failure will break, and religion will insert itself into the crises as a "solution". Some things just never change, and human gullibility is one of those constants that will never go away.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

4. But, Bink, I think you ignore the power of the

Last edited Sat May 2, 2015, 03:16 PM - Edit history (1)

intertubes. Except for those truly abused souls who are not permitted computers, iPads, cell phones, or even a Wii (and I can think of a child abusing Texas judge who best the crap out of his teenaged daughter for texting a friend on her computer), kids ask questions and check out the crap taught to them by ministers, priests, and their ultra conservative Christian leaders. They may even prey and try to keep track of the results (if I pray, will daddy dearest beat me as hard, compared to when I don't pray, but lie to daddy that I did?)

My point is communication, information, and the intertubes have destroyed religion as we know it. Those seeing seas and and meadows of empty pews in their whorses of whorship already sense that their's is a losing battle. They continue to try to drive up attendance and tithing with their patented "Scare and Fear" approach as a last resort. After all, it has worked for some millennia so far. The only group that doesn't get it is the current crap of GOP presidential wanna-bes. I think the huckster, Cruz, Rubio and even Jeb honestly think that preaching hard, then harder is the only way to win their nomination. But that alienates them from the rest of Muricca.

[Binkie The Clown]

5. Bah! The Internet is a passing fad.

And when it goes away, ignorance will return with a vengeance.

The Death of the Internet

Or even if the Internet does somehow survive, it will be a corporate-run, corporate-controlled medium that will show you only what "they" want you to see.

[Arugula Latte]

7. That rock and roll jungle music won't last, either!

[Binkie The Clown]

8. And doubleknit polyester bellbottoms are here to stay.

The only sure-fire way to know the future is to wait until it becomes the past.

Of course, after the Internet fades into oblivion, I won't have any way to tell you "I told you so!" That kind of deprives me of the satisfaction of knowing I'm right.

[Arugula Latte]

9. I know, and you and I will both be deprived of telling the religious:

"See, we TOLD you there's no god and no afterlife!" ... 'cuz we'll all be dead. So that's no fun.

[Binkie The Clown]

10. Wouldn't it be a kick if...

... there is an afterlife, but there is no god, and atheist souls in the afterlife are still trying to convince the god-believing souls how silly their religion is?

[Arugula Latte]

12. Oh, man. That would be bizarre. And we'd be stuck with those people forever.

Hmm, I think I'd rather just go back to dirt.

[LiberalAndProud]

11. Without commenting on the future of the internet,

that article you linked to was a long-winded and truly ill informed bit of drivel.

But I think you knew that.

Film mogul Darryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox said in 1946:

“Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
http://www.elon.edu/e-web/predictions/150/1930.xhtml

[Binkie The Clown]

13. I am a true believer...

... in the transience of industrial civilization. I take this graph very seriously:



This too shall pass.

And to answer your quote:

"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon if ever a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as (bears) have predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months."
- Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in economics, Oct. 17, 1929

After an event, it is always easy to find someone who was spectacularly wrong to quote. Having found such a quote does not justify taking either side of an argument before the fact. Nor does a long record of either successful or failed predictions guarantee future accuracy. One New York Times financial columnist (Alexander Noyes) predicted the coming crash in nearly every column starting in 1928. By September 1929 everyone shrugged him off as "always wrong". On the other side, anyone can look at their own experience and claim that, since they have never died, they never will.

All we can do is wait and see, and make prudent preparations for any eventualities we consider to be likely. Personally, I consider the demise of the Internet likely. Not today, or in the next five years, but sooner than most would believe possible.

And to say that I am wrong because Thomas Watson, president of IBM, said in 1943 "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." is hardly sound reasoning against my case for the transient nature of the Internet.

[LiberalAndProud]

15. Interesting take. In my view, the internet will meet its demise

as soon as a faster, more efficient form of communication becomes available. Short of devastating nuclear warfare, I'll stand by that prediction.
'

[ChairmanAgnostic]

18. I recall that the same week some weirdo named Addison? Edison?

Addelson? Was stringing wires and weird glass bulbs on a street in New York, the local lamp lighter's Union decided to call a strike for better wages and safer means to light the gas lamps.

I wonder what happened to them.

Still that graph looks a lot like gas lamps, telexes, telegraphs, and fluid mimeography machines. The intertubes may disappear from our flat earth, but they will be replaced by something much more effective and efficient.

[Binkie The Clown]

19. And every child will have a unicorn that farts butterflies.

Star Trek here we come. We will all have flying cars, and personal robots to do our cooking and cleaning.



(Or maybe: Ooops! I forgot to stand in line for my ration of Soylent Green today. I guess I'll have to go hungry until tomorrow.)

[ChairmanAgnostic]

21. Looks like warp speed is here.

As for the flutterbyes, can mine be psychedelic or neon colored?

[onager]

23. Here's a whole book of that fun stuff...

Popular Mechanics The Wonderful Future that Never Was: Flying Cars, Mail Delivery by Parachute, and Other Predictions from the Past by Gregory Benford

http://www.amazon.com/Popular-Mechanics-Wonderful-Future-Never/dp/1588169758

[deucemagnet]

14. ^This.

The truth about religion has gone viral and there's no putting that genie back in the bottle. I think I would have become an atheist much sooner if the internet were around when I was a kid.

[Binkie The Clown]

17. Part of why I became an atheist in the early 1950's was: Public Libraries.

(For you younguns, that's a pre-Internet brick-and-mortar building where actual paper and ink books were stored and made available for reading at no cost. Instead of "Google", we had "card catalog" which served much the same purpose.)

[FiveGoodMen]

16. "Hardly anybody today believes in the wrathful, Old Testament Jehovah, for instance"

The ENTIRE American South, dominated as it is by the SBC.

[olddots]

20. I think humans eill always find an organized dumbth

to follow in hopes that they themselves will be the leader of dumbth .

[Novara]

22. Well, and all the hate masquerading as "religious conscience" is old testament crap....

....picked and chosen to fit a narrative. Cite Jesus and love and tolerance to these fucks and their heads explode. One thing that's always pissed me off about the religious is their utter disavowal of anything that doesn't already fit their prejudices. They bend their holy text to fit their version of hate and call it "religious conscience." They have no self-awareness of how damned hypocritical they are. Fuck 'em all.