
Will religion ever disappear? - pauldix
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20141219-will-religion-ever-disappear
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con-templative
> According to a Gallup International survey of more than 50,000 people in 57
> countries, the number of individuals claiming to be religious fell from 77%
> to 68% between 2005 and 2011, while those who self-identified as atheist
> rose by 3% – bringing the world’s estimated proportion of adamant non-
> believers to 13%.

The World Religion Database disagrees, saying that the percentage of the
world's population that is religious increased from 87.1% in 2000 to 88.2% in
2010. They suggest that growth is continuing due to the spread of Islam in
Africa and Christianity in China:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20131020100448/http://media.john...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131020100448/http://media.johnwiley.com.au/product_data/excerpt/47/04706745/0470674547-196.pdf)

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kailuowang
It will probably remain true for a long time that a great portion of the
population won't be able to comprehend the concept of after-death (more
specifically, what happens to your soul when your body no longer exists).
Religion won't disappear as long as that remains true.

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bkurtz13
That's assuming that "the soul" actually exists. I think it will be more
interesting to see what happens once humanity comes to grips with the truth
that free will is an illusion.

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davidw
Who knows; but if enough of us flag this, it will before it turns into a
boring and potentially offensive flame-fest.

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peatmoss
I tend to look at religion through a public health "harm reduction" lens.
You're never going to get rid of it. The best you can do is work for a society
in which different group affinities crosscut each other. A zoroastrian is less
likely to engage in violence against a buddhist if they are on a chess team
together.

It's when the buddhists all move to one part of town and don't interact with
the zoroastrians at all that we see religion become the driver of bloody
conflict.

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cgore
There's always been atheists and the like, they are mentioned in the Old
Testament, and it's probably always been and always will be a very small
minority. And a lot of the so-called "New Atheists" these days aren't really
best defined as atheists, they are better described as "Scientists" or
"Humanists", where the object of religious adoration is either the concept of
scientific progress or human achievement.

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Zigurd
The real question is whether mainstream religion will be re-categorized as
superstition in the way that non-mainstream belief in supernatural agency is
called superstition. Making superstition go away probably means changing the
way brains work.

That is, religion currently gets a pass. That will probably, eventually, stop
happening.

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neals
I used to hope so. Now I just hope that someday, people would just stop
killing for their fairytale gods. Any gods.

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petegrif
We can only pray that it will.

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jtth
I hope not.

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paulhauggis
No. If it's not about a god, it will be about a political movement or idea.
You can see religious similarities in many software communities.

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ytturbed
Yes. We could define it as any movement which condemns people on the basis of
their professed ideas.

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staticshock
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

