(October 12, 2018 at 10:24 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I doubt that very much to be honest. There's a human instinct for worship that is unlikely to be weeded out. For now, it's just replaced by idolization of pop stars, athletes and so on.
What probably WILL die are literalist interpretations of reality. A flat Earth or one that's only a few thousand years old are pretty hard sells at this point. And anyone who's ever been with ONE virgin can tell you that 72 virgins waiting for you when you die would probably be better proof of Dante's Inferno than of a paradise worth sacrificing for.
But there's PLENTY of room for god-in-the-gaps, and this will eventually lead to new religious movements. We literally have no idea (like none at all) how a material universe can include subjective experience rather than not.
Also, we are likely to see artificial godlike entities soon enough. When google knows enough about you that it can start predicting your behavior, or manipulating the behavior of masses by directing media, it won't be long before we realize that we're no longer the top of the intellectual food chain-- not even close.
How many major religions (say, with more than 10 million adherents) have arisen in the last 40 years?
