RE: What date do you estimate atheism will overtake theism in the world population
September 9, 2017 at 8:17 pm
(September 8, 2017 at 9:45 pm)Tres Leches Wrote: Seems like if atheism were going to take over theistic beliefs, it would have happened by now. We humans are pretty dumb and probably not much different than people, skepticism-wise, than people 500 or a thousand years ago.Well ... seems like if Christianity were so compelling it would have better than a one-third market penetration after 2,000 years, even by the most charitable criteria (cultural Christianity).
-Teresa
The length of time something holds or doesn't hold sway is no indicator of its rightness or wrongness, only of its overall (lack of) appeal and the durability of its memes.
I would suggest that the Abrahamic faiths, if you step back that far to look at it, have had the most enduring memes for the past couple thousand years, but began to falter as far better epistemological approaches to finding truth have come forward -- particularly, the scientific method, free compulsory secular education and democracy (as well as the relative wealth that they have produced, giving people more time and energy to reflect on life rather than simply react to it). And we're getting better at these things all the time.
Because of the above factors I think we are becoming more skeptical and better at skepticism, which requires deliberate effort to push back against the faulty thought processes that evolution has given us, as well as to deal more effectively with awareness of both self and mortality.
This is not a fast process and not without flaws and risks, but I am hopeful that it will eventually win out overall. That's why I assume it will take many hundreds or even thousands of years to get to a better place. It's been 500 years since the beginnings of recognizably modern scientific endeavor, maybe 250 years since the modern scientific method was firmly established, and the Information Age has been underway at scale for maybe 50 years. These represent virtuous cycles, assuming they aren't cut short by some man-made or natural crisis that is either existence-ending or a huge setback.
