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RE: Will The Internet Kill Religion?
April 13, 2014 at 12:21 pm
(This post was last modified: April 13, 2014 at 12:26 pm by Sedna.)
I became atheist because of the internet. Though, you could have said that I was atheist before I went online.
I turned to the internet when I was younger because I was afraid of hell because I couldn't force myself to believe in God and kept having atheistic thoughts.
At least, the internet helped me to realize that I didn't have to keep pretending to believe something I didn't. I think I'd still be trying to be a Christian right now if it weren't for what I learned being online.
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RE: Will The Internet Kill Religion?
April 13, 2014 at 12:37 pm
Xtianity was dying in Europe long before the internet. I do think it is a factor in the US, however.
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RE: Will The Internet Kill Religion?
April 13, 2014 at 12:39 pm
I started questioning things before I got into the internet, but the internet was a BIG reason I now call myself an atheist. Like the woman in the video said, the internet makes it a lot easier to get information and talk to people with different worldviews.
All through my childhood, we'd sometimes joke about what christmas trees and rabbits have to do with christianity, but no one was going to say it's a hold over from pagan religions. My pastor wasn't going to tell me that christianity incorporated belief systems into it to help convert people. No one was going to say that the idea of a virgin birth wasn't unique to Jesus. No one even said there really were people long ago that worshiped Zeus just as fervently as we worship Jesus today. No one explained that the days of the week are named after Norse gods.
It takes seconds to find out things that used to take hours. That's a big change.
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RE: Will The Internet Kill Religion?
April 13, 2014 at 1:00 pm
Nothing is going to completely kill our species gap filling gullibility that leads to the creation of religions. Having said that though, technology is making it harder for naked assertions and absurd claims to hide behind the taboos religions seek to set up.
Once you know what DNA is virgin births make no sense. Once you know what rigor mortis is, rising from the dead makes no sense. Just like there is no going back once you know the earth is a globe and not flat.
Religion does not deserve a pass, and it must be challenged and scrutinized at every turn.
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RE: Will The Internet Kill Religion?
April 13, 2014 at 3:01 pm
I think the Internet had a lot to do with me not believing, but I don't know that it will kill religion. It might push fundamentalism further to a lunatic fringe in the eyes of most non-fundies, but I don't think religion will go away entirely.
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RE: Will The Internet Kill Religion?
April 13, 2014 at 3:21 pm
It's not likely that religion will go away completely. I agree with that. Still, it's helping to educate people, and education really hurts religion. That's why the big thing Adam and Eve wasn't supposed to do was gain knowledge.
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RE: Will The Internet Kill Religion?
April 13, 2014 at 4:52 pm
(April 13, 2014 at 12:02 pm)Diamond Wrote: What do you guys think? Could the internet be a factor in people losing their religion? Or is this just a coincidence and nothing more?
It seems a reasonable assumption to make. The internet allows people to access information more readily while also reducing (or even eliminating) the peer pressure that may be used to keep them from seeking it out.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
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RE: Will The Internet Kill Religion?
April 13, 2014 at 5:29 pm
(This post was last modified: April 13, 2014 at 5:29 pm by Ryantology.)
Kill it? No.
Erode its power and influence to a depth unknown in human history? Absolutely. It arguably already has, and it has only really just started.
