Future of theism

[filip3rd]

Every time I have a debate with my fellow theist friends I tell them that their believe system will be abolished. In not far future (not my life time but my children) Atheism will be the norm, as religion is today. A Presidential candidate believing in "God" will be ridiculed. As if today a candidate would say he believe in Zeus he would be ridiculed.
However this will only happens after a great War and the destruction of the world as we know it; that will cause a major change in how people look at “God" and how their "God" is incapable to help, protect them.
The Great War that will come on us (in my life time) will be not just a power, wealth but also an ethical, moral War. A War that at firs will divide us in a way you can’t even imagine but initially unite humanity.
Where atheism thrives from reason and logic, religion will fail in the future because it will be short handed in finding "Godly" answers to some of important questions that will arise.
The world will finally recognize that indeed the Earth is going around the Sun.

[tacoma_kyle]

Sayin there will be a 'great war' is a little far fetched dont ya think?

[Mister Joy]

However this will only happens after a great War and the destruction of the world as we know it; that will cause a major change in how people look at “God" and how their "God" is incapable to help, protect them.
The Great War that will come on us (in my life time) will be not just a power, wealth but also an ethical, moral War. A War that at firs will divide us in a way you can’t even imagine but initially unite humanity.

Hmm... I agree. Oil crisis, as far as I'm concerned, insures the downfall of civilisation as we know it, as well as many more wars in the mean time. And it's not nearly as far fetched as many might assume. In fact no. It's a certainty, is what it is.

[Whitney]

Every time I have a debate with my fellow theist friends I tell them that their believe system will be abolished. In not far future (not my life time but my children) Atheism will be the norm, as religion is today. A Presidential candidate believing in "God" will be ridiculed. As if today a candidate would say he believe in Zeus he would be ridiculed.
However this will only happens after a great War and the destruction of the world as we know it; that will cause a major change in how people look at “God" and how their "God" is incapable to help, protect them.
The Great War that will come on us (in my life time) will be not just a power, wealth but also an ethical, moral War. A War that at firs will divide us in a way you can’t even imagine but initially unite humanity.
Where atheism thrives from reason and logic, religion will fail in the future because it will be short handed in finding "Godly" answers to some of important questions that will arise.
The world will finally recognize that indeed the Earth is going around the Sun.

^atheist prophecy?   How the hell can war unite and what are you talking about?

Religion will always exist in some from because humans will always wonder if there might be more to it than what we know though science and the more we know the more we realize we don't know.  Religion in general isn't harmful...it's the ones who make the beliefs of others their business who are harmful  (and it doesn't necessarily take religious beleif to fall into that category  :wink: )

[Kona]

Well, religion isn't going anywhere anytime soon.  'God' is in our genes and may even confer some sort of survival advantage which makes it persist in the genome.  Whether or not this can be overcome by continued evolution of the forebrain is anybody's guess.  A quick inspection of the world's greatest conflicts has religion right at the center so it would be of little surprise if the next great war is not somehow connected to it.  Many Xians are just buttering their bread for apocalypse.

[filip3rd]

This is not prophecy is fact by looking at the world. Only way you can avoid War and have peace is thru education. In 21th century while we have improved our high tech the illiteracy has not been proven. So this is why conflict comes to be. And the big man takes advantage of it. Religion divides us more than any border, Ocean, Mountain.

This division will eventually cause more and more hate, anger and eventually War. Of course the crusaders are not coming back but again looking at Amercian-Chrisitans I am not even sure about this statement. The Muslim Jihadist will not stop. Remember the only way a Muslim can go to heaven is to be as perfect as their Prophet Muhammad or the fast and easy way Martyrdom.

Oil, Water and many other resources will eventual become a very important more than it is today commodity. Global Warming and major changes to the Weather will cause problems that the world is not ready to deal with it. This is not prophecy is fact.

You see the problem is that average Americans are sitting in their living room watching American Idol and thinking this is the World. And the rest of the world or they are so poor that don't even care about anything but their piece of bread for that day or they are so controlled that can't even see the real world.

Is religion helping? No

Why should they, over 70% American believe they will see Jesus in their life time and that the Armageddon is coming soon and is not avoidable and is for seen in the bible and Quran.However they are ignorance of their own teaching since Jesus told to his aposltes they will see his return in their live time 2000 years ago.

No I am not a prophet with prophecy just an by stander watching how the Earth is being destroyed in the name of God, greed and ignorance. Mainly religious ignorance since 90% of amercian believe men is above anything else and God special creation and they have the ?God given right to destroy.

Oh and why I believe religion will be abolished? Because we will eventually recognize that the great big man in the sky is just an imaginary creation of men and that he has no power and we humans need to save our self from evil and not him. On the other hand the ridicules ideology of religion will eventually die down.

The reason I call it Great War because the destruction of it will be so devastating that humanity will not look into heaven for help but would be depended on each other for survival; it would be a new beginning of the human survival as one cannot even imagine.  When one recognize that God has done nothing to avoid it and will not they will more and more move toward reason and logic. Of course this will not happen in my life time however humanity will survive but God will not. Another reason is that religion is depended on ignorance, ignorance people make good soldiers and soldiers die easy in War. In the Great War great ignorance will be destroyed.

[Kona]

Remember the only way a Muslim can go to heaven is to be as perfect as their Prophet Muhammad or the fast and easy way Martyrdom.

I have not considered this...I think it is a good point.

What I have considered is that he who has the least to lose always wins.  If the Muslim extremists produce some type of WMD, then it might be enough to put an end to democracy world-wide.  No doubt many governments around the world would declare states of emergency should some sort of nuclear device be detonated in a major American or European city.

When one recognize that God has done nothing to avoid it and will not they will more and more move toward reason and logic.

No, this is what they are expecting.  Xians are apocalyptics....they are waiting for it to happen.  Then you get into sticky theological issues of pre- and post-millenialists.  

Another reason is that religion is depended on ignorance, ignorance people make good soldiers and soldiers die easy in War. In the Great War great ignorance will be destroyed.

I seriously doubt war could ever erase ignorance.  It is as hard to kill as roaches.  Shit, and they have been around for half a billion years.  In fact, it could be a bull market for ignorance if reasonable people are killed in significant numbers.

[Whitney]

Look...I don't doubt that the possibility of a large war is on the horizon; even in our lifetime.  However, it is not a certainty and to say that mass devastation would somehow wipe out religion is a gross misunderstanding of why anyone is religious to begin with.  The religious would see it as a test, as Armageddon, as their chance to allow themselves to shine to prove god's glory.  Religion actually thrives on destruction.  A small, yet recent example, Hurricane Katrina that hit the US gulf....the dooms dayers called it the wrath of god the optimists viewed the survivors and coming together to help their fellow man as the hand of god at work.

The average person is not religious for the rewards promised by their dogma nor because they feel a strong connection to god through what they think he does for them.  I think, the average person is religious because humans want to think there is something more to life than what it is because it's not perfect and they want to think they can live on past death.  If suffering would cause people to become atheists then we would expect athiesm to be on the rise in areas of Africa where people deal with absolutely terrible conditions on a daily basis...yet what's on the rise there?  Christianity; it gives them hope when there is no hope to be had.

If anything will ever cause religion to be absent from the world...it will be the result of us figuring out how to feed, clothe and comfort the tired masses without the need to look up to the sky in hopes of a fairy tale being true.

Remember the only way a Muslim can go to heaven is to be as perfect as their Prophet Muhammad or the fast and easy way Martyrdom.

That is a very extremem form of Islam...most are just trying to make their way thorugh life just like any other normal person.  The majority of them aren't much different than your average Christian or Jew...and if you think your average Christian or Jew is out to get you then you have an over-exaggerated view of what normal people think and do.  Religion itself actually isn't that bad...it's when people take it to extremes that things become dangerous.  The same can be said of any view.

[Smarmy Of One]

I think that atheism is the norm right now. People just won't admit it to themselves.

In western society, the church or god has very little relevance to most people's lives. They live a secular existence and are not really aware of it. When Nietzsche said "god is dead,"
he wasn't just waxing poetic.

 :wink:

[McQ]

....People just won't admit it to themselves.

In western society, the church or god has very little relevance to most people's lives. They live a secular existence and are not really aware of it. When Nietzsche said "god is dead,"
he wasn't just waxing poetic.

 :wink:

There is a lot of truth in that, Smarmy. I agree that many many people just don't want to admit that when it comes down to it, they are not really believers. But they are afraid of the alternative and haven't learned to deal with it.

[Mister Joy]

Look...I don't doubt that the possibility of a large war is on the horizon; even in our lifetime. However, it is not a certainty and to say that mass devastation would somehow wipe out religion is a gross misunderstanding of why anyone is religious to begin with. The religious would see it as a test, as Armageddon, as their chance to allow themselves to shine to prove god's glory. Religion actually thrives on destruction.

Too true. It's fair to say that mass devastation would almost certainly divide religious beliefs a whole lot more, too; amplifying the problem if anything.

This is not prophecy is fact by looking at the world. Only way you can avoid War and have peace is thru education. In 21th century while we have improved our high tech the illiteracy has not been proven.

Not sure I follow... I don't think religion has a whole lot to do with education or literacy. It's much more fundamental than simple intelligence: it's delusion more than stupidity. Some of the greatest minds in history have been theists.

Oil, Water and many other resources will eventual become a very important more than it is today commodity. Global Warming and major changes to the Weather will cause problems that the world is not ready to deal with it. This is not prophecy is fact.

Oil - Yep, can't argue there. If we haven't hit peak oil (in terms of overall global production) already in the last couple of years then it's estimated that we will do by the end of this decade - unless you go by government estimates, o'course, but they're all fabricates to make the problem seem less immediate and less severe. We are utterly screwed, in fact, and for once I agree: this is factual.

It's fascinating to think that civilisations come and go with relative ease, the average life expectancy being three to four hundred years, and the most common cause of collapse being depletion of vital resources; yet we, even as our end is in sight, still arrogantly assume that we're indestructible and can simply outwit basic geographical laws and everything will be fine. We assume that there can only be constant growth, as past civilisations have also done. Human culture today is the most complex, luxurious and sadly vulnerable that humanity has ever known and will ever know and more importantly, it's global. The whole world is tied together with trade, diplomacy and a shared need for the same commodity - whether enemies or allies - and it'll inevitably fall together, too. On the positive side, we are now living at the very apex of the species. A truly amazing period of history. I doubt we'll even realise just how amazing until it's over! Industry, large scale global trade, the internet, walking on the moon, a global population of around 6 billion, the kind of lifestyle that'd have any monarch, sultan or emperor of the past mad with envy et cetera? All of these things are thanks to the treasures we found in our basement 300 years ago & we'll never reach such a high again. It makes me feel extremely lucky to have been around to see it from right at the very top. On the negative side, though, people of my generation are going to have to survive as it rapidly collapses, and the ride down is going to be far worse than after we've hit the bottom. Wars, totalitarianism, genocide, mass starvation and worse are all a given and they'll be happening in places people - particularly those in the western world with their baffling optimism, arrogance and sense of indestructibility - would never have thought feasible. 5 billion of the 6 pillion people on Earth (a large majority at least) will have to die, simply because without our fossil fuel friends (or an 'energy slave' that matches it - which doesn't exist and no other even compares) the planet cannot sustain a population so large.

- rant over and done with -

Water - this isn't going to run out. Fortunately.

Global warming - I'm sceptical of this. I don't think there's a whole lot of evidence to substantiate it fully. If we are damaging the atmosphere to such a point that it'll eventually devastate the planet beyond recognition if we continue, though, and it wouldn't surprise me if we are, I don't think it matters. It's going to be a self solving problem (thanks to the oil thing I talked about above) and seems like a smoke screen to me. "Everything'll be fine so long as we don't use too much hairspray, recycle our beer bottles and make sure we arrange them into the right glass colour category as we do so. " I don't buy it.

Why should they, over 70% American believe they will see Jesus in their life time and that the Armageddon is coming soon and is not avoidable and is for seen in the bible and Quran.However they are ignorance of their own teaching since Jesus told to his aposltes they will see his return in their live time 2000 years ago.

No I am not a prophet with prophecy just an by stander watching how the Earth is being destroyed in the name of God, greed and ignorance. Mainly religious ignorance since 90% of amercian believe men is above anything else and God special creation and they have the ?God given right to destroy.

You're not really substantiating your points here... people have always thought in the ways that you describe. Ok, America is going to get more and more into the idea of war (is that what you're trying to say?) because they'll desperately want to maintain their standard of living in the future. If I were American at the moment, for instance, I'd be baring in mind that any presidential candidate who claims to be reforming foreign policy is lying. American foreign policy centres entirely around the acquisition of oil, with the occasional flimsy cover, and has done since the 70s. So does the UK's, increasingly so, since the turn of the century. And it's going to stay that way until the our economies collapse, our governments are reduced to simple feudal structures and people start killing each other off for basic needs.

I don't think religion is going to cause the 'end of the world'. In fact I think religion is irrelevant to it. However I do think that people's religiosity will become more of a problem because of it, if that makes sense.

Oh and why I believe religion will be abolished? Because we will eventually recognize that the great big man in the sky is just an imaginary creation of men and that he has no power and we humans need to save our self from evil and not him. On the other hand the ridicules ideology of religion will eventually die down.

I don't think people are like that at all. They're natural group thinkers. However much we like to credit ourselves for thinking 'independently' and that we admire those who can do it if such creatures exist, et cetera, this is simply untrue. Anyone here study/studied psychology? Heard of Asch's line experiment? Even atheists are just as controlled be these influences, just as much as anyone else, though we like to think we're dependent entirely on logic and rational thinking. We've simply found ourselves a single niche in a sea of human delusion & I'm willing to bet that many of us wouldn't be atheists if it weren't for there being other atheists around.

If anything, I'd say that an impending 'apocalypse' would only strengthen people's religious beliefs, particularly considering how most major religions today can be categorised as apocalyptic faiths.

The reason I call it Great War because the destruction of it will be so devastating that humanity will not look into heaven for help but would be depended on each other for survival; it would be a new beginning of the human survival as one cannot even imagine.

Religion is born out of conditions like these.

Another reason is that religion is depended on ignorance, ignorance people make good soldiers and soldiers die easy in War.

HAhahahaha. Ok so you've got a chain of reasoning that goes as follows:

- Stupid people are good fighters/stupid people become soldiers (can you back this up?)

- Soldiers shoot other soldiers. That's what soldiers do.

- Stupid soldiers die, while the clever people (who don't become soldiers and can't fight because, you know, high IQs = no muscle power and ineptitude when it comes to weaponry) will be free to sit back, lots of time on their hands, to philosophise over their own faith - to the point where they denounce it - over tea and crumpets as this desperate struggle for survival goes on around them.

I'm sorry but I can't make out any sense in this...

[filip3rd]

Mister Joy you sound like some one that has found the tea pot orbiting the Sun and is very confidence is an English Tea pot. !!!!

[tacoma_kyle]

Although I disagree with Mister Joy on the earlier statement that a OIL war is coming (somethin like that) but I fully agree that being a soldier does not mean your ignorant. The definition of 'ignorant' is somethin along the lines of 'lacking knowledge.'

That doesnt support you well, filip3rd.

Even then that is obviously going to be interpreted as it is... I am 2/3 of the way through school. If I did it over again I wish I went into the infantry. Why? Who the fuck knows---I'd have to think about it for actual legit reasons (other than cheap college). Maybe I have some deep need to kill some dip shits. I dunno.

No I am not sayin that just because I wish I went into the armed forces that that completely defeats your statement. My point is your statement is retarded and completely generalized. You should have stated initially. Even then it i still pretty over the edge...so to speak...

[Smarmy Of One]

I am 2/3 of the way through school. If I did it over again I wish I went into the infantry.

If you only have one year left, I'm sure you'll still get your chance to sign up. :wink:

[filip3rd]

Although I disagree with Mister Joy on the earlier statement that a OIL war is coming (somethin like that) but I fully agree that being a soldier does not mean your ignorant. The definition of 'ignorant' is somethin along the lines of 'lacking knowledge.'

That doesnt support you well, filip3rd.

Even then that is obviously going to be interpreted as it is... I am 2/3 of the way through school. If I did it over again I wish I went into the infantry. Why? Who the fuck knows---I'd have to think about it for actual legit reasons (other than cheap college). Maybe I have some deep need to kill some dip shits. I dunno.

No I am not sayin that just because I wish I went into the armed forces that that completely defeats your statement. My point is your statement is retarded and completely generalized. You should have stated initially. Even then it i still pretty over the edge...so to speak...

I was US Marines my self, and I was stupid enogh to join the Marines. However I had a better rank since I spoke Farsi and thats what they need, but I am sure there are very smart people in the military, on the other hand I am not talking jsut about USA. USA and UK is not the world, look at the millitary of many other countries.