(June 5, 2014 at 6:47 pm)vodkafan Wrote: Even in Victorian times, Christianity was judged by evangalists to have failed. They could not get the urban working class to attend church en masse.
Islam has been in the doldrums for a couple of hundred years. Every country that has tried to base it's laws and politics on Islam is a failure.
That's why the fundies all over the world are rising up. Because they are afraid.
I think these next few years will be the last gasp for religion. This century will be about all the resources running out. When the oil runs out and we suddenly realise it's too late to find ways to share wealth and feed everybody nobody will give a shit about the bible thumper or the imam shouting in the corner. That's my opinion.
No, religion is not finished. Religion prospers wherever there is poverty, inequity, fatalism, lack of realistic prospect for self improvement, and a lack of collective will to fight superstition.
Religion is attracted and thrives on disappointment and social upheaval the same way blowflies are attracted to and thrives on corpses.
Unfortunately, with climate change and on-going major reordering of world's distribution of wealth and productivity, 21st century will not want for social upheaval, disappointment, poverty, inequity, and the lack of realistic prospect for self-improvement. Furthermore one down side of collapse of eastern block in the 20th century is the diminution of the collective will to fight the form of superstition embodied in established religions. So 21st century will likely not be the century in which religion dies.
