Where will religion be in 100 years?

Freiheit

Will it be a small minority activity in Ireland? detached from mainstream school? will the practice of First Communion and Confirmation be gone for the majority? in the abscence of believers, of clergy, and if religion is removed from schools? what will happen to all the empty churches?Will there be women priests?.

And beyond Ireland, will the spread of Information through the Internet eventually penetrate Islamic States like Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and religous Africa? creating more secular societies by Osmosis?.

Of course nobody knows for sure, but I'd be interested in hearing thoughts:)

wesf

In history books with any luck.

Kiwi in IE

In third world countries where there is a lack of access to education.

Sarky

Some gobsh*te will probably bring it to the martian and lunar colonies by then.

PopePalpatine

Sarky wrote: »

Some gobsh*te will probably bring it to the martian and lunar colonies by then.

Would you like to join Unitology?

Tom_Cruise

It will be even more powerful, people will hunt down non-believers and punish them.

Hotblack Desiato

Freiheit wrote: »

Of course nobody knows for sure, but I'd be interested in hearing thoughts:)

Any thoughts yourself?

BTW I give it 20 years until the majority of kids don't do confirmation at school. Maybe a few more for communion.

Freiheit

Well I hope that the Middle East and Africa will have woken up that their religions don't make sense, and started to follow science and reason. I hope this has happened in 100 years time.

Hopefully churches will be schools or community centres, or retirement homes and that there will be male nuns.

Sarky

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Would you like to join Unitology?

Like Catholicism would ever let its mask slip so much that violently dismembering them became socially acceptable.

Sulla Felix

Still here, still largely cited as a cultural influence in the West and endemic elsewhere.
Really, I don't think the age we're living in is all that radical that we can expect it to die out just because we've progressed technologically. Humankind has demonstrated it's great ability to waddle onwards under the cognitive dissonance for quite some time now.

Frank Lee Midere

Given the birth patterns - no. Religion will be large and growing.

badspealler

Freiheit wrote: »

Well I hope that the Middle East and Africa will have woken up that their religions don't make sense, and started to follow science and reason. I hope this has happened in 100 years time.

Hopefully churches will be schools or community centres, or retirement homes and that there will be male nuns.

Male nuns? :eek:

Please no. The nun nuns are bad enough without having to endure man nuns too.

Cork boy 55

There is a number of possible futures

One future,

The awakening will occur and the cults will collapse
The humanoid population will be awakened
Ultra-secularist will enforce the new environmental scientific atheism order
The temples of the oriental mystery cults will be used as temples to mother-earth(earth labs) where
awakened enlightened free volunteers come together to engage in environmental education and activism and worship environmental scientific atheism in order to establish a sustainable environment for man and nature on the Earth planet.
Children in their education modules programs will learn of the oriental cults alongside the Greek gods and Pagan beliefs and laugh with delight at the stupidity of early man.

Sarky

Jesus, what a nightmare vision. Nothing but John f*cking Denver tribute bands as far as the eye can see.

Frank Lee Midere

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

There is a number of possible futures

One future,

The awakening will occur and the cults will collapse
The humanoid population will be awakened
Ultra-secularist will enforce the new environmental scientific atheism order
The temples of the oriental mystery cults will be used as temples to mother-earth(earth labs) where
awakened enlightened free volunteers come together to engage in environmental education and activism and worship environmental scientific atheism in order to establish a sustainable environment for man and nature on the Earth planet.
Children in their education modules programs will learn of the oriental cults alongside the Greek gods and Pagan beliefs and laugh with delight at the stupidity of early man.

didn't we have that in the 20th century?

Manach

Slightly biased, but given the traditions and cultural interweavings that Catholicism has engendered within the European heartland over the historical past, it is likely to remain an institution force in the social-pattern of life. Given the migration patterns, I'd not venture a guess of the status of other religions in 100Y.

Nodin

Cork boy 55 wrote: »

There is a number of possible futures

One future,

The awakening will occur and the cults will collapse
The humanoid population will be awakened
Ultra-secularist will enforce the new environmental scientific atheism order
The temples of the oriental mystery cults will be used as temples to mother-earth(earth labs) where
awakened enlightened free volunteers come together to engage in environmental education and activism and worship environmental scientific atheism in order to establish a sustainable environment for man and nature on the Earth planet.
Children in their education modules programs will learn of the oriental cults alongside the Greek gods and Pagan beliefs and laugh with delight at the stupidity of early man.

Why do you occasionally trot out this bollocks?

kylith

Freiheit wrote: »

Well I hope that the Middle East and Africa will have woken up that their religions don't make sense, and started to follow science and reason. I hope this has happened in 100 years time.

Hopefully churches will be schools or community centres, or retirement homes and that there will be male nuns.

Ummm..... they're called monks.

Canis Lupus

I reckon it will be mostly sidelined in developed countries but still flourishing elsewhere. Where there is poverty and lack of education religion will do well and I don't see much happening in the developing world that will change that in the next 100 years.

Gbear

If you compare the world today to that of 100 years ago it's so far removed that going 100 years in the future is almost unimaginable.

I do plan to still be alive then though, barring getting knocked down by a bus before 2038 (which is when they'll cure getting knocked down by buses).

I suspect that Religion will be functionally dead in the western world in 2 or 3 generations, but outside that it's hard to tell.

Who knows? Maybe we'll have destroyed the earth and there won't be any people left to worship?

Brian Shanahan

Freiheit wrote: »

Will it be a small minority activity in Ireland? detached from mainstream school? will the practice of First Communion and Confirmation be gone for the majority? in the abscence of believers, of clergy, and if religion is removed from schools? what will happen to all the empty churches?Will there be women priests?.

And beyond Ireland, will the spread of Information through the Internet eventually penetrate Islamic States like Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Middle East and religous Africa? creating more secular societies by Osmosis?.

Of course nobody knows for sure, but I'd be interested in hearing thoughts:)

Under the fifty foot of ash created by the next world killer. Either that our buried under the higher sea levels caused by global warming.

I'm quite pessimistic about our species' chances of surviving, we don't think long term. And part of that is the deadening influence of religion ("jam tomorrow")

recedite

kylith wrote: »

Ummm..... they're called monks.

There is, kind of, a difference. I wonder which group would be more successful at attracting the opposite sex in an equal opportunities world
Suppose the nuns allowed men in, and they got to wear the nun outfits, there might be a few men out there who like that sort of thing.

On the other hand, since the "boy" scouts became an equal opportunities org we have seen a few girl scouts appear, but I don't think there are any boys in the brownies or "girl" guides.

Yeah I think monks do more outdoor stuff than nuns, lighting fires and that sort of thing, and they are great lads for brewing beer.

Passenger

It's hard to imagine Religion being completely gone from the world in just 100 years. Are the numbers of religious practitioners dwindling? Islam, for example still appears to be disseminating through various regions in Africa and the Middle East with it's numbers increasing as opposed to dwindling. In 1970 just 15% of the world's religious were adherents to Islam, by 2020 it's expected to reach 24%. Whereas Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism have all stayed at roughly the same percentage through out the past number of decades. Protestantism has greatly increased in the predominantly Catholic Brazil in recent years too. Maybe people who once followed a strict religious lifestyle will eventually gravitate to more moderate alternatives in the future.

It's the narcissism that's inherent in humans that make people still need to believe that there's a reason for their existence and religion gives them that reason. Can't see that changing anytime soon.

Religion will probably slowly loosen its grip on political policy making and its influence on public affairs will lessen but organised religion in its various forms wont be going anywhere anytime soon and will probably still be here in great numbers in 100 years.

Eramen

I think it's hard to imagine a die-off of the traditional religions within one century, my meaning being Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism etc.

Man has an innate religious personality which needs to be filled, in that he tends to propagate cultural values, gained from science, customs, history and general society, and promote them as universal truths which are not just true for himself, but true for all. This is all that religion is, it's nothing fancy. I think that understanding this, we'll have these religions around for some time to come. I also think that we will see an emergence of new waves of religious thought which is more suited to the post-modern age. Religion is not stagnant it keeps pace with change. We are already seeing this. These might even be grafted onto the traditional religions themselves.


James Blish said speaking of the modern shift in religion:

"Science disintegrates into a welter of competing grandiosely trivial hypotheses which supersede each other almost weekly and veer more and more towards the occult."


In light of this we can see that science-technology has become valued not as merely a third position, objective knowledge, which is used for further understanding of ourselves and the universe, but it's become an occultism, in that it's no longer known or of real interest by the populace at large. This is helped along by it's hard to understand nature, in that the general population has no scientific specialization so rely exclusively on the scientific class to put the knowledge into use.

So this esotericism aids the concept of the masses of people having 'science beliefs' - having never attained the knowledge of 'science understood' - where science is taken as inherently correct in and of itself, and of a 'self-empowering' nature. In this case it doesn't matter if any science is actually known or not by the person/group, or if it is even factually accurate or correct. This is what is meant by science as occult - When science losses its objectivity and sense of free inquiry, and more and more is it simply valued for it's industrial-technology capabilities and thus material empowerment, and nothing more.

The public doesn't have an interest in bio-medicine, in space, in chemicals and materials the way they use to. This is more or less plain to see. Like Francis Bacon predicted, the scientific priest has replaced the mystical priest, yet, science will become a mysticism to be believed in by the people. Sci-tech is, at this stage, partly the new mystical religion through which he finds inner redemption in the modern post-Christian Western world-view. Religion doesn't stop, it just changes its form slightly as the need arises.

Sarky

That's cute.

Eramen

Sarky wrote: »

That's cute.

I agree, Sir Francis Bacon was a cute one to see how the science/religion mix would pan out.

Rage?

Sarky

Eramen wrote: »

I agree, Sir Francis Bacon was a cute one to see how the science/religion mix would pan out.

Rage?

Amusement. Your views on science remind me of J C.

Pherekydes

Eramen wrote: »

It's disagreement (I can tell).

You shouldn't mistake disagreement for rage.

You shouldn't project emotions that simply aren't there.

Sarky

He's religious, I doubt he can help it.

Eramen

Sarky wrote: »

He's religious, I doubt he can help it.

As are you, and nearly everyone else. The only difference is I try not to let my imagination dictate that everything religious, or non-religious, is inherently worthy of scorn.

Are you saying the average man has a good grasp over the sciences and has special knowledge therein'; assuming that is what you meant where you were talking about [The] science in your last posts? They don't, and it's led to the absurd superstitions of 'science belief'. They lack in nearly every respect 'science knowledge', practical, theoretical or in-depth knowledge, they accept anything with a 'Science-tech' brand on it without question. It's a flaw in our culture and society.

This phenomenon has a similarity with the religious tendency in mans' psychological character, except it does not try to pass on a deeper value of metaphysical perspective. This is all I was merely stating.

Sarky

You have an awfully poor view of humanity. Oh, the poor lads have to believe in something don't they?

Eramen

Sarky wrote: »

You have an awfully poor view of humanity. Oh, the poor lads have to believe in something don't they?

People as a whole have to take on common values [or systems of belief in all senses] in order to give birth to a culture. This culture, one existing, forms a society where the basic forms of the coming state & civilisation are hammered out.

The culture is composed of the arts, metaphysics, a social hierarchy, customs, language and more. This then provides the base for the civilization phase - the advent of commerce, international trade, money, as well as scientific, social, economic and religious centralization and development. It is a time of abundance, power politics and mass geopolitical conflict.

So yes, they must at least create common values throughout all these phases of the life of society, and people must place trust in them. In some sense this is belief. Man is not dead matter, he has personality and his biology requires attachment to others through ideas in order that we survive and be successful as a species.

But why all the trolling, you have no point. You must have a poor view of anthropology at the very least? This is a typical example of what the AA forum is reduced to far too often. It's a pity and unfair to those who genuinely make the effort. "Debate not allowed" - "Group-think must be switched on before posting."

I have no interest in lowering myself to the typical group-think of popular Atheism just as I hold to the same with church-going Christians. It's not worth the insanity.

Brian Shanahan

Eramen wrote: »

I think it's hard to imagine a die-off of the traditional religions within one century, my meaning being Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism etc.

Man has an innate religious personality which needs to be filled, in that he tends to propagate cultural values, gained from science, customs, history and general society, and promote them as universal truths which are not just true for himself, but true for all. This is all that religion is, it's nothing fancy. I think that understanding this, we'll have these religions around for some time to come. I also think that we will see an emergence of new waves of religious thought which is more suited to the post-modern age. Religion is not stagnant it keeps pace with change. We are already seeing this. These might even be grafted onto the traditional religions themselves.


James Blish said speaking of the modern shift in religion:

"Science disintegrates into a welter of competing grandiosely trivial hypotheses which supersede each other almost weekly and veer more and more towards the occult."


In light of this we can see that science-technology has become valued not as merely a third position, objective knowledge, which is used for further understanding of ourselves and the universe, but it's become an occultism, in that it's no longer known or of real interest by the populace at large. This is helped along by it's hard to understand nature, in that the general population has no scientific specialization so rely exclusively on the scientific class to put the knowledge into use.

So this esotericism aids the concept of the masses of people having 'science beliefs' - having never attained the knowledge of 'science understood' - where science is taken as inherently correct in and of itself, and of a 'self-empowering' nature. In this case it doesn't matter if any science is actually known or not by the person/group, or if it is even factually accurate or correct. This is what is meant by science as occult - When science losses its objectivity and sense of free inquiry, and more and more is it simply valued for it's industrial-technology capabilities and thus material empowerment, and nothing more.

The public doesn't have an interest in bio-medicine, in space, in chemicals and materials the way they use to. This is more or less plain to see. Like Francis Bacon predicted, the scientific priest has replaced the mystical priest, yet, science will become a mysticism to be believed in by the people. Sci-tech is, at this stage, partly the new mystical religion through which he finds inner redemption in the modern post-Christian Western world-view. Religion doesn't stop, it just changes its form slightly as the need arises.

That's a whole lot of mumbo jumbo. Did you copy and paste from the postmodernism generator by any chance? Because it has not one single valid idea contained within.

PopePalpatine

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

That's a whole lot of mumbo jumbo. Did you copy and paste from the postmodernism generator by any chance? Because it has not one single valid idea contained within.

Fucking hell, that looked like John Waters without a filter! :eek:

Hotblack Desiato

Eramen wrote: »

Man has an innate religious personality which needs to be filled, in that he tends to propagate cultural values, gained from science, customs, history and general society, and promote them as universal truths which are not just true for himself, but true for all. This is all that religion is, it's nothing fancy.

Man has an innate curiosity seeking explanations for observed events. Religion is the use of the supernatural, i.e. supposition and fiction, to explain that which is merely not presently understood. God of the gaps.

Which values gained from science has religion propagated?

I also think that we will see an emergence of new waves of religious thought which is more suited to the post-modern age. Religion is not stagnant it keeps pace with change. We are already seeing this. These might even be grafted onto the traditional religions themselves.

It's always been the case that religious 'values' and 'morality' and 'dogma' eventually change to suit what the populace will bear. Hence no more fish on Fridays, Latin mass or limbo, but you could have been put to death in the past for decrying any of them. I suppose we should be glad that today they only mock and misrepresent atheists instead of burning them.

James Blish said speaking of the modern shift in religion:

"Science disintegrates into a welter of competing grandiosely trivial hypotheses which supersede each other almost weekly and veer more and more towards the occult."

Balderdash.

So this esotericism aids the concept of the masses of people having 'science beliefs'

Actually it's aided the masses of people having anti-science beliefs, aided and abetted by an utterly ignorant media.

It would still be shameful for any serious journalist to admit that they could not, or had never, read Shakespeare. Yet even in the broadsheets it is almost a badge of pride for them if they cannot understand basic arithmetic.

Eramen wrote: »

As are you, and nearly everyone else. The only difference is I try not to let my imagination dictate that everything religious, or non-religious, is inherently worthy of scorn.

Belief without evidence is always worthy of scorn.

Are you saying the average man has a good grasp over the sciences and has special knowledge therein'; assuming that is what you meant where you were talking about [The] science in your last posts? They don't, and it's led to the absurd superstitions of 'science belief'. They lack in nearly every respect 'science knowledge', practical, theoretical or in-depth knowledge, they accept anything with a 'Science-tech' brand on it without question. It's a flaw in our culture and society.

See above. The effect is not to foster a worship of science but an irrational suspicion of it. How many people are putting their kids (and those of others) at risk because of vaccination hysteria?

The broad concepts behind most of science as it affects the daily lives of people are not at all difficult to understand, it's just that most people have never tried and the media tell them it's all only for 'boffins' so don't even try.

Brian Shanahan

PopePalpatine wrote: »

Fucking hell, that looked like John Waters without a filter! :eek:

Got the link originally from Frances Wheen's How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered the World. It is a nice little site for a good titter now and then. And the generator is pure random, you get a new article every time you click.

Turtwig

Sarky, Eramen your post exchanges are getting a little condescending and personal in tone. Tone it back please.

Ta

Well, I'm sorry guys, but I believe that as long as there's no conclusive irrefutable evidence for or against any theory about the life/universe/everything questions, people will theorise about it and draw conclusions in the presence of such a lack of evidence. That, to me, is religion.

Dades

Deleted User wrote: »

Well, I'm sorry guys, but I believe that as long as there's no conclusive irrefutable evidence for or against any theory about the life/universe/everything questions, people will theorise about it and draw conclusions in the presence of such a lack of evidence. That, to me, is religion.

I'm not sure many people who follow religion ever look seriously at such things as evidence for or against it, so if people continue to "believe" in it, it will be for other reasons.

Enough has been discovered in the last couple of centuries to drive God back to pre-Big Bang 'time' or to a quantum level so if people still believe he exists, it's not because they haven't been given the opportunity to rethink their worldview.

tommy2bad

Dades wrote: »

I'm not sure many people who follow religion ever look seriously at such things as evidence for or against it, so if people continue to "believe" in it, it will be for other reasons.

Enough has been discovered in the last couple of centuries to drive God back to pre-Big Bang 'time' or to a quantum level so if people still believe he exists, it's not because they haven't been given the opportunity to rethink their worldview.

Yeah I think faith will become more asperational than anything else. People will believe because of what their faith aspires to than because of any evidence that proves it one way or the other. I suspect it has always been so, this creationist mindset is a modern phenomena like fundamentalist Islam.

100 years is a long time, 100 years ago religion was a social instute with real power, now it a social club for like minded people.

georgieporgy

People have being saying God is dead for centuries. They are all dead and God is still alive! Annoying isn't it?

Sarky

You'll have no trouble showing us a picture of God from the last, ooh, let's be generous and say the last ten years.

People have been saying God's alive for just as long, if not longer. They're all dead too. That must be a bit of a kicker, too. I mean, imagine how embarrassing it'd be to say God is alive all your life, and then die, without once having seen, heard, touched or any any way experienced this guy they believed in?

georgieporgy

don't have one off hand for 10 years. this one's about 50

Sarky

That's a painting of a white dude in a dress wearing too much makeup. Try again? A photograph? Video footage, even? Something that's not bullsh*t? Come on, I know you're upset that your super special club isn't running the world any more, but surely you can do better?

Corkfeen

Also that's a rather westernised portrayal of Jesus.Christianity couldn't even get a semi reliable depiction of the man.

Dades

recedite

Eramen wrote: »

People as a whole have to take on common values [or systems of belief in all senses] in order to give birth to a culture. This culture, one existing, forms a society where the basic forms of the coming state & civilisation are hammered out.

The culture is composed of the arts, metaphysics, a social hierarchy, customs, language and more. This then provides the base for the civilization phase - the advent of commerce, international trade, money, as well as scientific, social, economic and religious centralization and development. It is a time of abundance, power politics and mass geopolitical conflict.

So yes, they must at least create common values throughout all these phases of the life of society, and people must place trust in them. In some sense this is belief...

An interesting view, which traces the birth of human civilization up until about the time of, say, Aristotle.
From that point on, would you agree that this "sense of belief" along with the religions it inspired, has been a hindrance?
Perhaps like our intestinal appendix, something that may have been useful once during our evolution, but now is generally useless, or else causes trouble.