What will replace Christianity?

[John Dibble]

I'd imagine there might not be one mass system - with greater access to information and freedom of movement that did not exist in times past people might just start following whatever happens to resonate with them. It'll be at least another century or two though, if not more, before this becomes noticeable.

[John Dibble]

Hopefully we go back to the Greek Gods. They were actually interesting and not boring as hell

I'm not sure if I could deal with the constant worry that Zeus might try to rape my wife.

[John Dibble]

Religion will die out. Atheism will replace it, ushering in a new age of peace.

After all, religion is the only reason for violence.

[John Dibble]

I hope the world doesn't ever become a majority of Atheists, or Fundamentalists of any religion. Both are incredibly bleak futures.

What exactly would make a world of majority atheists bleak?

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The people who have problems with it have varying different reasons. I don't hate Christianity or Christians - heck, some of my favorite people are Christians - but I do think that Christianity and religion in general should be abandoned. My primary reason for thinking that is that belief informs actions. For example, if you believe that there are such things as witches and you also believe that your god has commanded that they must die then you're far more likely to go on a witch hunt. Though belief in witches has decreased in developed nations, this practice still goes on in others. Of course the typical response I expect when giving this example is "well that's not real Christianity", but considering that what constitutes "real Christianity" has been debated among Christians since Christianity came onto the scene almost two millenia ago I don't find that response particularly relevant.

But as I said, belief informs actions. If you believe something that is false and it causes you to act, the results of your actions are more likely to be harmful. Therefore I would prefer to believe as many true things as possible and as few false things as possible. The best means available for that is not religious faith, but rather empirical evidence.

[John Dibble]

A world of majority atheists would be bleak because Atheism, imo, is a very depressing and bleak worldview. Everything is an accident, we're all here for no reason at all. It makes life utterly worthless and meaningless.

You know most atheists don't think "everything is an accident", right? That's a gross oversimplification. Random chance may have been involved, but if our universe truly came from naturalistic forces alone then given enough time something like our universe coming into being may well have been inevitable - give infinite monkeys infinite typewriters and infinite time and you'll eventually get Shakespeare.

And as far as meaning, we can assign our own meaning to our existence. I mean something to myself, as to the people who are important to me. I don't need some outside person telling me what my meaning is. I can decide that on my own.

Also, if you want to talk about bleak worldviews, how about the one where all of humanity is wretched, evil, and unworthy and need to be saved from eternal hellfire because we fail to live up to a standard of perfection that we could never possibly reach but are held to anyways? It's called Christianity, and frankly it's pretty damn bleak if you ask me.

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Atheism doesn't necessarily lead to rationality, that's true, but religion inherently requires believing something fantastical without evidence, which is pretty irrational when it comes down to it. Between the two, atheism is more likely to lead down the rational path IMO.

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First off, moral relativism is a fact - people have different morals. You can see this in your own community as well as across the world. There is no one set of moral rules people follow.

Second, nobody said everything is nothing. Existence is existence. In this world behaving badly can have very bad consequences. I don't need an invisible man in the sky to tell me that murdering someone is going to potentially piss a lot of people off and make them come after me. We are social animals by nature, and some of our morality is hardwired. If you've got a spare hour you should listen to this lecture on the subject.

Third, from the perspective of someone who doesn't believe in the Bible I find much of it's contents that are espoused as just and moral to be morally repugnant. That doesn't mean I don't think there's anything good there, but there's a lot of horrible stuff in there such as justifying the mass murder of women and children, slavery, stoning people for various reasons I don't find justified at all, the treatment of women as a kind of property, etc.

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You do realize that most people who call themselves agnostics are actually atheists, right? All that is required to be an atheist is to not have a belief in any gods. Atheism is about what you believe, agnosticism is about what you know. I'm an agnostic atheist - I don't believe in a god, but I don't claim to have knowledge about whether such a thing does or does not exist, at least in the general sense.

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Maybe the more vocal ones are, but did you ever think that maybe you just don't notice the non-vocal ones because they aren't vocal about it?

Also, there is no atheist dogma, so I don't know how they could be dogmatic about it.

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Here's the thing - you can't blame the horrors of communism on atheism because atheism wasn't the driving factor behind that. Atheism only requires not believing in a god, and there's nothing directly linking that belief to deciding to create a tyrannical regime that kills and oppresses people. You have to add additional beliefs to that line of thought to get there.

On the other hand I can blame Christianity for many of the horrors done in the name of Christianity such as witch hunts. As I stated, belief informs action. Part of the Christian Bible states quite clearly that witches should be put to death. Therefore if you are a Christian and you believe someone is a witch then your Christian beliefs dictate that you must put that witch to death. It's part and parcel of the belief set - to say it isn't when it's clearly written in your most important holy text is intellectual dishonesty.

Also, you can't blame it on insanity - these actions were not performed by insane individuals. If they were those individuals wouldn't have made such a large mark on history. These actions were done by large groups of normal people with perfectly functioning minds.

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Yes, they should be abandoned too.

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I can't think of one religious good that actually requires religion to do it. For instance I don't have to be a Christian to give to charity.

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Again, many atheists do not actually say there is absolute certainty that there are no gods. Atheism is only not believing in any gods. Not believing and not acknowledging possibilities are entirely different things.

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Even those who claim absolute certainty are probably less arrogant that fundamentalists are. The reason I say that is simply that they are rejecting a fantastical claim. I mean seriously, would you say someone was arrogant for saying that they were absolutely, 100% certain that leprechauns didn't exist?

[John Dibble]

That is probably true Gustaf, but I am not sure that is due to religion qua religion, as opposed to other factors correlated with religion, and second, what I was focused on was the concept that lack of religion is a generator of unhappiness. It may be that non-theists also tend on average to be more socially anomic than the norm, and to that extent, and largely solely due to that as a correlated factor, may be less happy on average than the norm.

Just my random thoughts on the matter.

Quite. IIRC one of the studies showed greater happiness in church goers than non-church goers, so I'd be my money on it being to having a larger supporting social network or something of the sort.