Future of Religion?

[Lancer]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
On a related subject- Apolyton will be 14 years old when the world ends in 2012.

From time to time I reflecton how odd it is for all of us still around to have been here for what- 8 years+ now in my case, 10 for you Lancer, and for others... Arguably some of us "know" each others' internet personas better than "know" good friends. For the younger members, they might have spent more hours with internet friends on THIS site than with their significant others' !

Some of these personas a r e good friends. Hell, Sloww is about to get hit by a hurricane and I wanna go over to his place and board up windows or something. ...and therein lies the problem. We're a community where its really difficult to help a pal.

Regardingthe end of the world thread, you know I'm up for it DC.

[Zevico]

Bob, the Great Messenger, will descend from the heavens to welcome the faithful.
And yea, will the faithful be welcomed.
And yea, the welcomed shall be the faithful.
And yea, there will be an ellipsis.
And yea, no one knows what happens after that...

[FrostyBoy]

It will shrink in the developing world, and grow in the undeveloping world.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by DaShi
In the future of religion there will be robots.

But some will say they are only droids and that the real robots are still to come.

[Elok]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Historically the belief in heaven and the belief in utopia are like compensatory buckets in a well: when one goes down the other comes up. When the classic religions decayed, communistic agitation rose in Athens (430 B.C.), and revolution began in Rome (133 B.C.); when these movements failed, resurrection faiths succeeded, culminating in Christianity; when, in our eighteenth century, Christian belief weakened, communism reappeared. In this perspective the future of religion is secure.
- Will Durant

QFT

[Heraclitus]

The real question is what happens to religion once you have utopia.

[Elok]

Religion goes underground until such time as human beings screw up utopia the way they always screw up good things, at which point religion is reborn in a different shape. Assuming utopia is achieved at all, which is a BIG 'if.'

[BeBMan]

re Durant: Is he just describing that something 'fills the gap' when old forms of belief are down or does he mean that the decline of religion is the direct cause for fundamental political changes, for example that the crisis of the late republic incl. civil war in Rome was caused *primarily* by a decline in morale and religion? That was a common view by many Romans of that time, but today noone would accept it as root cause.

Also last time I read 'revolution' in relation to ancient Rome was in Syme's "The Roman Revolution" which is certainly a classic, but as well a product of the 1930ies, and its content shows that.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
The real question is what happens to religion once you have utopia.

Then Jesus has returned and we can stop worrying.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by OzzyKP


Then Jesus has returned and we can stop worrying.

Ahhh but is Jesus a Jew, Christian or Muslim? A lot of disappointed people in any case...

[OzzyKP]

I honestly don't think Jesus is going to be all too particular between them.

Either way, all you atheists are screwed.

[Kidlicious]

Holy ****! Utopia?! How are we ever going to get utopia when people are getting more and more wetodded everyday?

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Lancer
The future of Christianity is bleak. There are less and less believers and that trend will continue unless there is a revival. You see all the anti Christian people around? Eventually there will be a critical mass and the anger in them will play off each other and hate acts will occur. Eventually Christians will be persecuted and the religion will go underground. Suffering will be great as informers abound and brother turns in brother... Then the end is near.


Nikolai, that sounds like a revival.

(Sizes shown are approximate estimates, and are here mainly for the purpose of ordering the groups, not providing a definitive number. This list is sociological/statistical in perspective.)

Christianity: 2.1 billion

Islam: 1.5 billion

Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion

Hinduism: 900 million

Chinese traditional religion: 394 million

Buddhism: 376 million

primal-indigenous: 300 million

African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million

Sikhism: 23 million

Juche: 19 million

Spiritism: 15 million

Judaism: 14 million

Baha'i: 7 million

Jainism: 4.2 million

Shinto: 4 million

Cao Dai: 4 million

Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million

Tenrikyo: 2 million

Neo-Paganism: 1 million

Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand

Rastafarianism: 600 thousand

Scientology: 500 thousand

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

Still nearly 1/3 of the world population.

[FrostyBoy]

2.1 Billion Christians? I don't believe that for a second. It sounds as if all Caucasians are automatically labeled as Christians.

I'm aware there's a huge number of Christians in Korea, Phils, Africa and elsewhere, but it still sounds over the top.

[FrostyBoy]

Those numbers = about 3.5 billion, that leaves 2.5 billion; so for all other wacky religions, which I imagine are not that many in number individually, but accumulatively they amount to a high number such as 1 billion.. So it might assume that 1 billion are atheist/agnostic, in fact, probably more. Not too bad a number.