I wrote:
Yazata said:
I think that religiosity arises far deeper in the human psyche than you seem to recognize. Religion is about as close to a human cultural universal as one can find, this side of use of a spoken natural language. Every human culture known, anywhere in the world, at any point in history for which information exists, has displayed some sort of religious belief and sensibility. The forms that these manifestations take is almost infinitely various, but some variety of religiosity always seems to be there.
Praty replies:
Well said, and true. And I do know that.
Unfortunately, you snipped out my next remarks in which I said this:
Yazata said:
That's led many thinkers to hypothesize that there's something in the human cognitive and emotional processes that generates religiosity. And if that's so, then it's highly unlikely that religion is just going to suddenly dissappear.
These emerging theories from the cognitive science of religion appear to contradict your prediction that religion will soon fade away and dissappear. If they are true, then your prediction is unlikely to ever occur.
Praty said:
But the need for religiosity can be and should be replaced by science (IMO);
"Replaced by science"? How? In what social and psychological role? You seem to be proposing to turn science into a new religion, or religion-surrogate. But wouldn't that imply the distortion and perhaps even the denial of science's own unique virtues?
Presumably, what you admire about science are the things that make it different than religion. So is it really a good idea to dream of a future in which it becomes one?
cause religion(most of it) promotes stagnation and warrants people to do stuff that otherwise would be immoral(Fact).
And science gives them the physical means to do evil and does nothing to morally dissuade them.
I said on the path, it won't go away suddenly, but eventually. Your blatantly denying of clear evidence doesn't help your cause. 'No religion' people are on the rise. Look!
"No religion people are on the rise" where? Everywhere on earth uniformly? In particular countries and cultures? There are parts of the world (like Scandanavia) where theistic religion appears to be in real decline, but there are also parts of the world (like sub-Saharan Africa) where it appears to be strongly rising. It isn't entirely clear whether there's any overall global pattern, or if so what it is.
"No religion people are on the rise" defined and measured how? By lower rates of conventional church membership and participation? Or with lower rates of underlying religiosity?
In Europe (which seems inordinantly proud of its atheist credentials), church adherence and participation have indeed fallen dramatically in the last couple of centuries. But if researchers word their poll questions a little differently and ask Europeans if they believe in "a higher power" or some vague and generic religious idea like that, then positive responses tend to pop right back up.
And it must be said that Europeans have shown considerably more interest than Americans in new (and Europe-spawed) eschatological quasi-religious movements such as Marxism and Naziism. It probably isn't coincidental that conventional religious adherence hasn't fallen quite as dramatically in America as in Europe during that period, leaving Americans feeling less in need of utopian emotional substitutes.
It's still an open question whether the elimination of traditional religion would be a uniformly positive advance of empirical reason, turning everyone into intellectuals, or whether it might render broader populations psychologically volatile and unstable.
