How do you view the future of religions?
According to me, christianity will fade away in advanced countries and will be replaced by “personal faiths” (to every person his creed), by agnosticism and by atheism.
There will always be people who follow the teachings of the New Testament. They will worship Christ and call themselves Christians. They will get together (“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them” - Mat. 18:20) and pray together and call themselves a church.
Not really seeing how that’s going to “fade away.”
Perhaps it will become a marginal phenomenon. It will regress to the state of sect.
Yeah.
Perhaps.
MY PERSONAL VIEW:
religion=faith
faith=irrational ideas making people feel purpose on earth (i.e. telling them what they want to hear to make them feel loved)
so long as human idiotism doesnt change, religion will continue on…who cares what type of religion. religion is faith to me, and i beleive that atheists/agnostics fall under that category.
it no longer matters what you beleive in, just that you beleive in what they WANT you to beleive. nobody likes to be discriminated against.
as for me-i shall resort to existentialism 
Religion is profitable.
Until either that changes or people cease to desire power and profit, religion will continue.
The end.
After all these centuries there are some who still practice ancient religions which you may think have long “faded away” in the passing bliss of modern day technology.
Hi
The same but only more high tech.
EZ$
Religion may also continue on because of the existence of people who regard it not as “irrational” or “idiotism” but as a sincere and noble means by which some of us, through ritual and sacrament and metaphor and symbolism and fellowship, attempt in our human way to experience something of the beauty of God.
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2 thoughts…
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I think that religion is attached to politics. When countries take over other countries the religious idealogies are used to condition the conquered people. [Even some relief aid has a christian carrot attached.] Though the religious idealogies are not as confrontational as in the pass ages it still occurs. This seems to continue with the spread of dominate religion going.
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We have a sort of like an idealogical counter culture/revolution against dominate religion. I can see a change there. [Like the reformation of the church.]
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Astute observation.
The roman emperor Constantine was a devout follower of Mithraism(ancient persian religion, popular at the same time as the rise of the original ‘christian’ movement.)
Mithraism, however, was not dogmaticly suitable to control and keep people in line, and that was exactly what Constantine wanted to do.
A new religion was formed…taking much of his native religion, mithraism, and infusing the god-like characteristics into the previously undeified jesus(yes, before the counsil of nicea in 325 AD, ‘jesus’ was not believed by anyone to be god)
Constantine and his panel of bishops did a bang up job…they created a religion of subversion and control with with a deadly dual pronged hook of both fear and guilt that thrives to this very day…to the glee of the tax exempt churches, and clergy, who’s very existance is owed to money pilfered from a deceptive scam.
Religion has ALWAYS been about control - and what is more political than that?
haha…ok.
Is this your attempt at an intellectual argument?
It’s not a very good one.
On the contrary, I would argue that the only counter argument for utter nonsense would have to be utter nonsense as well.
I didn’t take either argument to be utter nonsense. The argument (such as it was) from embracetrees was actually a sarcastic statement expressing disagreement. I didn’t take it to be nonsense, just woefully incomplete by the standards of a philosophy message board. It made sense, in so far as it went. It just didn’t go very far.
As for my original statement, I have offered a viewpoint on religion and what it means to me. My sense is that it means roughly the same thing to millions upon millions of other people around the world. Hence my strong belief that it isn’t going to “fade away†as had been suggested here. I threw the statement out there mainly because it offends me when people make sweeping generalities about religion and use words like “irrational†and “idiotism.â€
Religion is many things. Like any human institution, a religion may have bad people doing bad things. But among all the things that religion might be, it is most certainly what I described it to be. Your use of the phrase “utter nonsense†seems a bit extreme (if not altogether erroneous).
This is already happening in America- of course most people still keep the name ‘christian’ though. This has been my experience anyhow.
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Sâmkhya writes
I believe Christianity will basically remain the same. In fact because the increasing complexities of life through technology will vivify its obvious absurdities, the search for Christianity will actually increase.
However the influence of Christendom will become even more political and secular since many of the more sincere, sensing a void, will lose their incentive for ritual participation with many falling into one or the other enchantments of “experts.”, only to be replaced by more politics in the attempt to retain its influence.
I guess this is how it must be.