Will religion ever disappear?

[con-templative]

> According to a Gallup International survey of more than 50,000 people in 57 countries, the number of individuals claiming to be religious fell from 77% to 68% between 2005 and 2011, while those who self-identified as atheist rose by 3% – bringing the world’s estimated proportion of adamant non-believers to 13%.

The World Religion Database disagrees, saying that the percentage of the world's population that is religious increased from 87.1% in 2000 to 88.2% in 2010. They suggest that growth is continuing due to the spread of Islam in Africa and Christianity in China: https://web.archive.org/web/20131020100448/http://media.john...

[kailuowang]

It will probably remain true for a long time that a great portion of the population won't be able to comprehend the concept of after-death (more specifically, what happens to your soul when your body no longer exists). Religion won't disappear as long as that remains true.

[bkurtz13]

That's assuming that "the soul" actually exists. I think it will be more interesting to see what happens once humanity comes to grips with the truth that free will is an illusion.

[davidw]

Who knows; but if enough of us flag this, it will before it turns into a boring and potentially offensive flame-fest.

[peatmoss]

I tend to look at religion through a public health "harm reduction" lens. You're never going to get rid of it. The best you can do is work for a society in which different group affinities crosscut each other. A zoroastrian is less likely to engage in violence against a buddhist if they are on a chess team together.

It's when the buddhists all move to one part of town and don't interact with the zoroastrians at all that we see religion become the driver of bloody conflict.

[cgore]

There's always been atheists and the like, they are mentioned in the Old Testament, and it's probably always been and always will be a very small minority. And a lot of the so-called "New Atheists" these days aren't really best defined as atheists, they are better described as "Scientists" or "Humanists", where the object of religious adoration is either the concept of scientific progress or human achievement.

[Zigurd]

The real question is whether mainstream religion will be re-categorized as superstition in the way that non-mainstream belief in supernatural agency is called superstition. Making superstition go away probably means changing the way brains work.

That is, religion currently gets a pass. That will probably, eventually, stop happening.

[neals]

I used to hope so. Now I just hope that someday, people would just stop killing for their fairytale gods. Any gods.

[petegrif]

We can only pray that it will.

[jtth]

I hope not.

[paulhauggis]

No. If it's not about a god, it will be about a political movement or idea. You can see religious similarities in many software communities.

[ytturbed]

Yes. We could define it as any movement which condemns people on the basis of their professed ideas.

[j_m_b]

>If it's not about a god, it will be about a political movement or idea

Maybe a programming language?

[staticshock]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines