Post Religion

[FreeTony]

Even if religion were to eventually die out, will it just be replaced by similar superstitions?

For example conspiracy theories. In the UK I've met more conspiracy theorists than Christians and they are just as impossible to convince they are wrong. They could potentially do just as much damage to other people as religious people can/have.

Are people any more skeptical nowadays than they were in the past and, if so, is this the reason for falling religous numbers?

I was reading the reviews of the "Ancient Aliens" DVD online, and people were making comments like "I used to be a Christian, but this makes much more sense". I'd say "Ancient Aliens" is actually more plausible than religion, purely because there are no supernatural claims, so possibly someone going from Christianity to this are making a slight step forward??

From what I've read there are certain phenomena that the brain experiences, such as Sleep Paralysis, that are responsible for many Alien Abduction claims, and could well be responsible for some of the older religious claims. These are not going to go away, though maybe better education would help. There are many many more examples of the brain not being perfect, leading to all sorts of strange conclusions (e.g. seeing faces in random patterns)

What do you think, is there any hope?

[Silver]

Campbell had a theory, from his book The Power of Myth, that all religions would eventually be left behind in history to be replaced by a sort of universal humanistic spirituality.

[FreeTony]

I have a feeling people like conspiracy theories as it makes them feel like they are more knowledgeable than other people. They know the "truth" and everyone else is an idiot "the sheeple".

Not being religious I'm not sure if religious people feel the same, but I'd have thought they probably do.

This is all slightly hypocritical as I feel I know more than these people (though I'd like to think I have the evidence on my side and am willing to believe them if they comw up with sufficient evidence).

[earwaxyness]

Nope, no hope. Oh well.

I don't see how religion could die out. Even with an educated society there will be those who claim a "soul" or some unknowable human trait that separates us from animals. In fact, I just saw a book recently that was written by a neurosurgeon who was an atheist until he had his own personal near death-white-light-experience and is no longer an atheist because of it. In short, I don't think the issue of religion dying out will be a problem in our lifetimes or even those of our children or grandchildren.

[Ryantology]

Conspiracy theories tend to be little more than highly-specialized religions, with the same vaporous foundations in reality. Leaving Christianity to become a Truther is just taking off one soiled pair of underwear and replacing it with another.

[Jacob(smooth)]

All the while people can be herded by the stick and carrot of religion in the direction powerful people with them to go, religion will never die out. It remains the number one way to get popular support for anything from war to tax laws.

From the outside America seems far more religious new than it was 20 years ago.

[Ryantology]

All the while people can be herded by the stick and carrot of religion in the direction powerful people with them to go, religion will never die out. It remains the number one way to get popular support for anything from war to tax laws.

From the outside America seems far more religious new than it was 20 years ago.

From inside, that is understandable but not really correct. What's really happening is that religious Americans are far louder and more public and pushy about their beliefs because, for the first time, they feel that Christianity's status as de facto national religion is legitimately threatened.

[Jacob(smooth)]

That makes sense.

I'm still scared of you.

[FreeTony]

Conspiracy theories tend to be little more than highly-specialized religions, with the same vaporous foundations in reality.

I do find it sickening that Alex Jones has, according to Forbes, an $800,000 house and $5million net worth. I've often wondered if the best way to amass a fortune is to exploit the gullibilities of some people.

Relgions use fear of death/hell and exploit this to sell the solution to avoid this. Do conspiracy theories do the same? I guess people can and do gather weapons and go and live in isolated communities to protect themselves from the government, but they can't be the majority of truthers*. You can go and see David Icke, pay a large amount for a ticket and more for a book, but will that protect you from the lizard people? What it does do is further convince you that you are correct in your beliefs, much like going to Church does for Christians.

Browsing the Alex Jones shop ( http://www.infowarsshop.com/ ) it does seem you can buy lots of things to protect you, relocation advice books, portable generators etc etc. Plus Super Male Vitality, I assume so you can re-populate the resistance quickly when the antichrist Obama decides to kill you all.

Maybe just having the knowledge makes you feel more in control of you own lives and that makes people feel better. Conspiracy theories are generally vast oversimplifications of the real world, and so easy to understand.

*I so so hate that term

[Angrboda]

All the while people can be herded by the stick and carrot of religion in the direction powerful people with them to go, religion will never die out. It remains the number one way to get popular support for anything from war to tax laws.

From the outside America seems far more religious new than it was 20 years ago.

From inside, that is understandable but not really correct. What's really happening is that religious Americans are far louder and more public and pushy about their beliefs because, for the first time, they feel that Christianity's status as de facto national religion is legitimately threatened.

I believe there are actually some statistics which support the notion that the U.S. has become more religious over time since its beginnings, and in a big way, but I'd have to research the question more thoroughly, as there are complications regarding the data point I'm resting this on. (There's a chart in a book on "selling God" that I read a while back which purported that early America was possessed of about 20% church membership, and that figure has since tripled or quadrupled. Of course, verifying that's a valid statistic is only the beginning of figuring out the relationship of those facts to the question.)

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I would say that religion and things like superstition and especially conspiracy theories are categorically different things. The religions and religious behaviors, in addition to having social components, appear to capitalize on cognitively useful aspects of the mind and the brain, repurposing them to purely psychogenically rewarding behaviors with little, no, or even counter-productive instrumental utility (good brain circuits, used in bad ways). Conspiracy theories and superstition and woo, to my mind involve faulty cognitions resulting from either cognitive deficits, or from faulty learning experiences (see the classic experiment regarding making "pigeons superstitious"; my hunch is that CT thinking, like woo, is a product of a learning reinforcement pattern during acquisition and assessment of evidence, combined with certain common cognitive deficits, which produces the equivalent of "historical woo."). So I suspect what leads to, and perpetuates religion, is categorically different from that which contributes to a person developing "woo infected beliefs," whether they relate to UFOs, quantum consciousness, or the JFK assassination. The fundamental operating principles between religion and woo, are, I suspect, radically different.

One of the fundamental problems in getting rid of religion is that many of the behaviors of ritual religion have directly rewarding and stimulating effects on the mammalian brain, particularly dealing with the dopamine systems and the endocrine system, but also secondary rewards and stimulations. Secular behaviors, unless they incorporate similarly stimulating and rewarding ritual behaviors, will have a tendency to be "out-competed" by religion because of the powerful hormonal and neurological reinforcement of that ritualized religious behavior.