(January 17, 2015 at 5:17 pm)dyresand Wrote: I mean well in most first world countries religion to me looks like its on life support.I don't think it's anywhere close to that. We're nowhere near a tipping point even in countries where a majority of people are not affiliated with any religion. I think that there will continue to be an increase in the number of people who express belief in god but do not practice religion (or do so only sparingly, like attending church only on holidays), and that will erode the influence of religion. But I don't expect to see religion gone in my lifetime.
"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
-Stephen Jay Gould
