Reasonable_Move9518 t1_ix9lat9 wrote on November 21, 2022 at 8:10 PM

Reply to comment by boston_acc in So uh… are these Jehovahs Witnesses at the T stations ever going to go away? by jWalkerFTW

Also add in religions that favor high birthrates...

I think Dune got it right... the far future of humanity will be more religious not less, due to "spreadability", fervency, and higher birthrates in religious vs. secular communities.

boston_acc t1_ixa17mb wrote on November 21, 2022 at 9:56 PM

At least once a population becomes embedded in secularism, it’s exceedingly hard to revert back. Maybe not governmentally (see Iran 1979) but for the population itself. I don’t think we’ve seen an example of that in history (not least because widespread secularism is new) but I could be wrong. Religion needs parents to propagate down the generations, so once you cut that off, it withers and withers. Most religions throughout history have not a trace left.

Anyway that’s just my philosophical rambling.

THE_Killa_Vanilla t1_ixcs056 wrote on November 22, 2022 at 1:55 PM

Agree with a lot of what you said here, but I think we need to re-evaluate our idea of what "religion" in modern society.

Simplify religion to a "shared set of core beliefs + principles by a group that reinforces a specific view of the world", shift the focus from theism to cultural homogeny, and you can see the "new religions" forming. We see it on both the right and left, think MAGA/Trumpism or "woke"/anti-racist cultures.

There are tons of similarities between conventional religion and these new cultural belief systems. Religion isn't dying, it's just transforming. At the end of the day people still need a framework to view the world and make sense of things.