My hypothesis

[Nihilist Virus]

Religious rituals? Dafuq?

Some people like them. In the US, Ethical Culture is probably the most prominent version, but you could make a case that Unitarian Universalism amounts to religious humanism in many congregations, particularly those founded as Fellowships. As far as the UU goes (much more common, most cities have one), they attend a service on Sunday morning, there's hymns (but they don't mention Jesus), announcements, an offering (and often half of the collections go to a charity like Planned Parenthood, the Progressive Network, an Animal Shelter, a food bank, homeless assistance, etc.), and a service which is basically a talk on some topic or another. There may be a meditation. Older, more traditional Unitarian churches may be as close to Christian as makes little difference, but many in the South and West established after the Fifties don't have actual prayer or worship. The previous pastor of the UU in my city of Columbia SC was Neal Jones...he's an atheist, so the service was definitely religious humanist while he was around. The interim minister is a little harder to pin down, but her services aren't overtly theistic.

And you don't see this ever dying? Even when there are no other churches around? This seems to exist purely as a secular alternative to church.

[Firewalker]

Religion is like a parasitic organism and its ideal environment is an ignorant society. It is dying in our information age.

Two or more religions can form a daughter religion and over time a religion will reproduce itself with variation in a population according to selective pressures (known scientific facts).

This model predicts that many religions should appear spontaneously in ancient history (no selective pressures) despite low population and that religion should go extinct in the near future despite high population.

So essentially, the population of evolution deniers is dwindling according to principles of evolution.

The problem with your theory is that the "information age" has not given any info about the nonexistence of God. So, religion will thrive until it does. And if extinction is in the cards, it won't be because of Christians. It will be in spite of them.

Religion, especially Christianity, will not go extinct. No matter how much "information" is available, there will always be science "denyers". There are college educated Christians denying science in rants and tirades typed into their laptops and dissemenated over the internet daily. Religions are so vague, that they can be reinvented whenever their message wanes. Remarkably, Christianity in America is very different than it was during the birth of the US. People today are much more fervant in their beliefs.

[Mister Agenda]

And you don't see this ever dying?  Even when there are no other churches around?  This seems to exist purely as a secular alternative to church.

While there may be no good reason to keep it, there's no good reason to get rid of it either. The aspect of organizing on a regular basis for community and teaming up on charity and justice projects has value and is worth preserving, though it could be less religious-y. I would give it a catchier name, and replace the choir with a rocking house band, but otherwise it's not really broke.

But what I was actually talking about becoming the norm was 'casual humanism', not religious humanism. People who are basically humanists because they absorbed it from the culture, not because they consider themselves humanists. A lot of people are already like that, they don't let whatever supernatural beliefs they may have keep them from not being dicks. More of them would be an improvement. Especially around election time.

[noname]

Religion is like a parasitic organism and its ideal environment is an ignorant society. It is dying in our information age.

Two or more religions can form a daughter religion and over time a religion will reproduce itself with variation in a population according to selective pressures (known scientific facts).

This model predicts that many religions should appear spontaneously in ancient history (no selective pressures) despite low population and that religion should go extinct in the near future despite high population.

So essentially, the population of evolution deniers is dwindling according to principles of evolution.

The problem with your theory is that the "information age" has not given any info about the nonexistence of God. So, religion will thrive until it does. And if extinction is in the cards, it won't be because of Christians. It will be in spite of them.

The non religious population is increasing rapidly, and the religious population has largely disappeared in northern European nations, and millions of people are leaving religion in the US, religion (in western nations at least) is declining, not thriving. There is no way around it, just because your church got more participants does not disprove the fact that the religious population is declining all around the world, and that secularism, and atheism is on the rise.

[Redoubtable]

I suppose I differ from a lot of people here in that I see religion as being useful in particular contexts. In more primitive times, when there was basically no knowledge of how the world worked and no sophisticated understanding of how to positively control human behavior, religions formed as a kind of dam to control and guide the 'river' of human development until such a time that humanity was more capable of controlling the 'waters' of its own development with its own conscientious and informed decision making.

The earliest human societies had many of the same problems we do now, for example: people killing other people. How do we solve it today? Prison, rehabilitation, crime prevention, a fair judicial system, etc. How did humans solve it back in primitive societies? One way was that they developed this religious idea that even after death you can be punished in horrific fashion for your crimes even if the society didn't discover them or was able to punish you. Today, we can handle things a lot better and most people don't rely on the fear of suffering in an afterlife as an incentive not to murder or commit other injustices. Many of these religious constructions simply aren't necessary to generate good behavior anymore, so we have lost much of our use for them just as we lose the use for braces once they have served their purpose in straightening our teeth.

*In this context I'm using religion not merely to mean philosophical or spiritual ideas, but coercive systems of belief which are characteristic of most major religions.

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps it was less intentional. The common human tendency to punish those who have wronged us..or to interpret misfortune towards those who have wronged us as having somehow been connected to their deeds...combined with a belief in an afterlife much like our regular life, would have...almost as an afterthought, led to notions of post mortem justice.

In the next world, the sun rises and sets..there are families and homes and houses and life...and bad things™ happen to bad people™ - just like it is in this one.

This sort of relationship between the mundane world and the divine world is formalized in ceremonial magic with the statement "as above, so below"...and it's the core of all sympathetic rituals, charms, and spells.

[Angrboda]

In a significant study the psychologists Jesse Bering, of the University of Arkansas, and David Bjorklund, of Florida Atlantic University, told young children a story about an alligator and a mouse, complete with a series of pictures, that ended in tragedy: "Uh oh! Mr. Alligator sees Brown Mouse and is coming to get him!" [The children were shown a picture of the alligator eating the mouse.] "Well, it looks like Brown Mouse got eaten by Mr. Alligator. Brown Mouse is not alive anymore."

The experimenters asked the children a set of questions about the mouse's biological functioning—such as "Now that the mouse is no longer alive, will he ever need to go to the bathroom? Do his ears still work? Does his brain still work?"—and about the mouse's mental functioning, such as "Now that the mouse is no longer alive, is he still hungry? Is he thinking about the alligator? Does he still want to go home?"

As predicted, when asked about biological properties, the children appreciated the effects of death: no need for bathroom breaks; the ears don't work, and neither does the brain. The mouse's body is gone. But when asked about the psychological properties, more than half the children said that these would continue: the dead mouse can feel hunger, think thoughts, and have desires. The soul survives. And children believe this more than adults do, suggesting that although we have to learn which specific afterlife people in our culture believe in (heaven, reincarnation, a spirit world, and so on), the notion that life after death is possible is not learned at all. It is a by-product of how we naturally think about the world.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...nt/304425/

It would appear from studies that belief in religious concepts is more neurological and inborn, than psychological and learned. If so, the evolution of religion likely predates civilization by a good margin, as it had to develop with the development of our brains. That would also mean that any purely psychologically derived theory about the extinguishing of the religious impulse is a vain hope. The form of belief may change, but religion rests upon our neurological responses, and those don't fade with exposure to information.

[Drich]

Religion is like a parasitic organism and its ideal environment is an ignorant society. It is dying in our information age.

"allah ackbar! "

Tell me the truth. If you're at a crowded air port and her someone shouting "Allah Ackbar" over and over then hear a series of pops, are you going to retain full bowel control if they are comming in your direction??

Being forced out of a 'normal state of control into a flight or fight response is NOT the sign of a dead or dying religion or the practice there of.

If anything in your 'information age' the term allah ackbar is more notable and bring on more meaning than it did 100 years ago.

The only thing you've been able to do in your information age is find more like minded believers and created a little 'safe space' for yourselves. When in truth whilst you have your heads burried in the sand this same information age has poured gasoline all over the flames of the (whatever name makes you sleep better at night) and their cause/population has exploded.

What you thought was a sickle turned out to be a doubled edged sword.

Two or more religions can form a daughter religion and over time a religion will reproduce itself with variation in a population according to selective pressures (known scientific facts).

This model predicts that many religions should appear spontaneously in ancient history (no selective pressures) despite low population and that religion should go extinct in the near future despite high population.

So essentially, the population of evolution deniers is dwindling according to principles of evolution.

84% of the world's population are by definition 'religious.'

IDK sport but I think one of us has a bad definition of the word "dwindle."

[Harry Nevis]

84% of the world's population are by definition 'religious.'

IDK sport but I think one of us has a bad definition of the word "dwindle."

But not YOUR Religion.  Less than half self-identify as your religion. And I'm sure there are a lot of those you don't consider True Catholics.

And its just SO ironic to see a christian criticizing the right definition of a word.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Religion is like a parasitic organism and its ideal environment is an ignorant society. It is dying in our information age.

Two or more religions can form a daughter religion and over time a religion will reproduce itself with variation in a population according to selective pressures (known scientific facts).

This model predicts that many religions should appear spontaneously in ancient history (no selective pressures) despite low population and that religion should go extinct in the near future despite high population.

So essentially, the population of evolution deniers is dwindling according to principles of evolution.

I've often referred to religion as a parasitic meme. I mean meme like Richard Dawkin's used it in the Selfish Gene.

The parasite influences the actions of a host to increase its chances of spreading to new hosts and in so doing costs the host precious resources.