Evolution of man = suppression of religion? Pages 1 2 NEXT | |
Not at all. There's been a drastic increase in atheism in recent years. If you want actual good answers, I'd go searching on the atheism subforum of reddit, or just toddle 'round the internet and check it out on google. Mostly I'd suggest reddit. They're informative like that. | |
You are ignorant, but in a way that many people are. First, you have an incorrect view of evolution. You can't and mustn't think of evolution of a species as something which happens a rate. Evolution also doesn't happen without selection pressure. That's why you presumably have useless nipples and a useless appendix. Conflating atheism with religion. There are atheistic religions, several of them. Which leads me to... Eurocentrism. I think you're incorrectly ascribing trends in Western society to changes in the world as a whole. | |
Well, depends on how you are using the word "evolution" there. If you are meaning social change, then sure, systems that were fine for things as they were might not suit things as they are. If you are using it in the way it's usually used, to mean genetic changes, then no, definitely not. Mind you, in any case, you are being a bit parochial. The Vietnam war may have been a big deal in places like Vietnam, Australia and the US, but not for a greater many other nations. EDIT: Ninja'd. | |
^^ This isn't about the scientific theory at all. The OP is basically noticing the phenomenon of atheism appearing/being more prevalent online. There's a fairly simple explanation for that, and it's that information--good, solid information--is readily available on the internet. Some people deconvert when shown how their religion is wrong or ridiculous in this, that, and the other way. Or, in other words... | |
The human race hasn't evolved too much over the past tens of thousands of years. You mean cultural development or, if you want to use evolution, at least put a qualifier there. Anyway, while I think I can see the underlying point, I also think you're overestimating our ability to cooperate. The problem is tribalism in general, which religion and countries and ideologies and so on are a part of. And while I think that having people become less religious can help reduce the amount of tribalism, I don't think that on that day, tribalism and other reasons for conflict will suddenly cease existing altogether. Doesn't mean that we shouldn't strive for an increased secularisation (which is the real goal, I don't care too much about growing Atheism), but don't expect it to be a panacea. Also, "suppression" sounds forced. You can't force people to give up their religion. You have to provide the proper circumstances where they don't feel the need for religion. Education, socio-economic stability, peace, happiness, freedom to choose for themselves. The moment you try to force such a change, it not only doesn't work because you can't control people's minds, it is also highly unethical and exactly the opposite of what you would want to do if you wanted to create a better, freer and more secular society. Such a change, if it ever happens, has to come of the free will of the populace. But while I don't think religion will ever vanish completely, I do think we are trending in the right direction. | |
Nipples aren't useless, they're there for piercings ;) And the appendix is there to explode and kill us :P | |
As others have said, if you mean genetic evolution, you should learn more about what evolution is before using it as part of your beliefs, because I do not think it means what you think it means. As for atheism being increasingly common, that's due to a lot of things, and it's been going on for longer than you think. I know there were atheists in western civilization in the 1600s, and there must have been some earlier than that, though it's difficult to know how many because for much of history, atheists have had very good reasons to not make their beliefs known to the public. I imagine atheism has probably been around for as long as religion itself. I don't expect religion to disappear entirely, just as we haven't seen the last of people who believe in a flat earth. I also don't think that its disappearance will be the sole factor that lets us make any great leaps forward. Besides, there isn't a big conflict between science and religion everywhere. I hear that in Europe it scarcely matters. Oh, to live in a civilized country. | |
Appendices are obviously terrorists who should be put on watch lists. | |
That subforum is the worst place for discussing religion I have ever seen on the internet, and probably one of the most intolerant places I've ever seen. Not exactly a great suggestion. OT: evolution just doesn't happen on a timescale of 40 years or so. Humans will still be predisposed to believe in Gods without any rational reason, as it seems to be a key part of how we perceive the world (i.e., if you're in the middle of a jungle and you hear a rustling in the bushes at night, you want to assume that something bad is going to happen because of the sound, rather than deduce what is actually causing the sound & then get out of there). Also, I'm fairly sure that more people are religious in the UK now than they were in Victorian times (although I might be wrong). | |
Thank you for your many corrections in this case. I think I have a better understanding of this now. Religion has cause many of our past wars: Crusades, WWI, WWII, hell, even current conflicts have something to do with a previous war based on religion, like Afghanistan. The way I see it, because religion is slowly being eliminated from the problem we will have more reason to see the bigger picture and not believe that someone or something else can solve our problems but we have to solve them ourselves. As for evolution I am talking social. I don't think someones religious belief links to how many toes they have (lol). | |
I can't find it now, but there was a thread that gave some census results in the UK that suggested that Atheism/Agnosticism is now the majority belief. | |
Calling religion and government a higher power is a misnomer, for government at any rate. And belief of the same kind afforded to religion is not (and indeed should not be) required for engaging with government. In addition, there is no ultimate, universal "best" solution in evolution, it depends entirely on what the environment selects. Personally, I think the future distribution of belief and non-belief depends on how stable our future is. If survival becomes more challenging globally for us - be it through war, natural disasters, climate change or whatever, then religion will probably gain a resurgence. Because brutally honest, rational assessments of our chances in situations like that frequently don't produce social cohesion so much as a belief that everyone gets a do-over in the next life. | |
Hang on, didn't you start another thread on this? Again, WWI and WWII weren't religious wars! | |
Ugh.. Here's a thought for you. When you woke up this morning, there were around 100,000 more Christians in Africa than there were when you woke up the previous morning. I'm not just talking about children being Christened or people being converted, I'm talking net growth in the number of Christians per day. Even in the developed world, we have the so-called "American exception". The US has simply not secularized in the same way as the rest of the developed world. We still see religious issues discussed daily in American politics. We still see public displays of religosity which would be unthinkable in Europe. We still see fairly consistent patterns of church attendance. Oh, American Christianity has changed, but it has not gone away to be replaced by "inevitable" atheism. This isn't how culture (or evolution for that matter) works. There is not a single carefully pre-ordained path down which all life must flow deterministically towards a particular goal. It is a much more chaotic process, and as long as religion continues to adapt itself to society, it will continue to thrive. In a semi-global context, religion is actually experiencing a bit of a revival at the moment precisely because there is a clear threat in the form of aggressive secularization. What we're probably experiencing now, and are certainly likely to experience in future, is not a frictionless slide towards smug, contented atheism as everyone realizes how silly they were for believing in Jesus, but a period of heightened religious activity and tension as the religions of the world reorganize themselves to appeal to new people in a new environment. I don't think I get the connection to government. Does anyone believe that government is composed of immortal supermen? We have journalists whose entire job is to reveal how petty and generally rubbish the human beings who make up our governments are. People don't trust government, but they generally trust society. There's a difference. | |
I don't see how being a Deist would keep a person from trying to better themselves or others. You should look it up, because if you know what Deism is, then you would know that those that believe in such a thing rely on humans to better the existence of the human species. | |
It is quite silly. It relies on a very superficial grasp of what religion is, informed by a shallow understanding of the prominent religions of your area. There is absolutely no reason religions need to be in conflict- in fact, for most of human history most religions have coexisted quite easily. Most polytheistic religions have essentially just been extensions of a community's culture. These pantheons are almost never threatened by the existence of a neighbor who doesn't believe in them- in fact, there is evidence of significant borrowing and exchanging between pantheons as people encounter deities from other cultures and adopt their own gods to more resemble the other religions' deities they like. Now of course, sometimes members of those neighboring religions did go to war, and naturally they would at such times hope that their gods favored their people over their opponents. But from what I've studied of history it never seemed like an ideological conflict caused by the religion. Religion is an application of the human theory of mind to the world around them[1]. The human theory of mind is involuntary. While people may not consciously make a personal declaration of faith in a deity because they have imagined a personality to the world around them, they cannot turn off the ability to imagine it. So this means that so long as humanity has a functioning theory of mind, we will have religions. And in order to cease having a functioning theory of mind, I posit that we would need to collectively suffer such traumatic brain damage that as a species we no longer count as sentient. So in short, so long as we do not suffer massive devolution into a herd of Savannah primates, we will have religions. Sorry if that threatens the atheists in the room. Get over it. Now naturally the hope is that secular rule of law in societies will eventually lead to a world-wide status where the existence of multiple religions (and a-religions) does not threaten community stability. In most of the post-industrial world we already have this situation to a large extent, though certain religions (notably Islam) often get bullied in the western world because it is new and different and therefore scary to most of us. But I would argue that this is not a religious conflict, this is a cultural conflict. And one other point I think is very important to point out. You post presupposes that difference in beliefs impedes growth. This is the opposite of everything we know about how ideas are formed. The brain's chief learning mechanism seems to be association, as in ideas are stored on the basis of how they link together. That's why when I smell diesel gasoline and lawn clippings I think of my dad. Conceptually my dad and those smells have little to do with each other, but growing up I often encountered them in the same context, so in my brain they are linked. When I taste a really good curry I think of the first place I had it, Japan. When I hear the opening theme song to The Mysterious Cities of Gold, I get in the mood to make out (don't ask.) This goes beyond memory. There are numerous studies of bilingualism that show that children who master multiple languages early on develop skills that make them more academically successful or more creative later on. It is theorized that reconciling the differences in language in their brain gives bilinguals more strategies for processing information. And there is no reason for religion to be any different. Understanding the principles of different religions gives us access to new ideas, which gives us new alternatives for processing what we thought we understood before. For example, I am not and as far as I can imagine will never be a Muslim. But I recently realized that the motivation some Muslim women have for wearing head/face coverings is a perfect metaphor for my own approach to dealing with religion. Learning about a new paradigm for understanding the world, even if I choose not to adopt it, has improved my ability to understand myself. Therefore I believe the co-existence of religions and non-religions in the future will not only not impede our development, it will actually be vital for continuing our evolution. The notion that we would ever as a species adopt a single ideology is pretty far-fetched. Not once in our entire history has that ever happened. But if it were to happen, I am all but certain it would lead to our intellectual stagnation and eventual destruction. The evolution of species thrives on biosphere diversity. The evolution of ideas thrives on conceptual diversity. [1] I've written on this topic several times, I recommend doing a board search if you want to read more. | |
Please tell me how religion started either World War one or two. Really, I want to know what information my school has been holding back that indicated that WWI and WWII was caused by religion. | |
Atheism has been around for a long time, it's just making itself known now is all. | |
Is what you described 'religion'? Is it only belief, or does it include practice? How did we ever come up with the term and why? Does it work and will it in the future? What would happen if the concept of 'religion' disappeared (not religions themselves, just the identification of them)? It's not silly. It's just not easy to answer at all. And my answer is a resounding no. I'd say it isn't decreasing or increasing at any significant rate; religion just changes how it manifests itself. Think New Ageism. I could get more examples, but it is late. | |
On the account that several people have submitted various opinions on the subject matter, and my knowledge of this is clearly limited, than I will simply leave the subject matter alone with this last statement: A disagreement in beliefs can lead to one of two things: Conflict or working to understand which is right or if both can be linked. The best solution I can come up with is to simply not have a solution and just go on with life because there are more pressing matters to worry about right here and now. This is made painfully obvious by the impending energy crisis for those of you who have taken a college level environmental science class. I apologize if I have agitated anyone but I'm simply a n00b and don't really know much except for what happens in the world that concerns me which would be limited to a space that most of you obviously have no concern with at the moment. I can pretty much say that yes indeed I am ignorant and reject my statement on how religion is the sole cause of conflict because it isn't, and that is quite obvious. It's intolerance I believe that causes conflict meaning the inability for one to consider another option. | |
If you check my profile you will find that I made an account only four days ago. This is the only thread I made because I was simply impatient when it came to getting an answer from the conglomerate (I have no idea if I used that word correctly) | |
No need to talk yourself down. You posed a question based on an uninformed premise. There's no shame in that. None of us are able to be well-informed on everything. Asking questions at the risk of exposing our incorrect assumptions is how we learn. The fact that you admitted you didn't have all the answers when you saw the responses you were getting puts you in good standing on the Internet as far as I'm concerned. I apologize if my post was overly harsh. Allow me to provide a little context. This is a board where a vocal minority of posters routinely spread misinformation about religion and bully religious people, and for some reason the moderators tolerate it. One of the most notorious of these people is also infamous for ban-jumping. So when a new poster with 7 posts to his name shows up making an claim about religion that would be quite at home coming from one of our recently banned anti-religion trolls, I can't help but be a bit brusque while typing out an epic wall of text. Have fun, and good luck! | |
Human beings evolve long ago to be able to obtain a mental state of transcendence; of being part of something bigger and higher than oneself. We were willing to do more for the sake of the tribe or fight for an ideal rather than our material gain. Religion can be seen as the perfect metaphor for this, and is one constructed way of allowing people reach this state. But even if these were taken away, even if all the tribes became one, I think we would still seek reaching this transcendence, as it is how our brain are wired to think. We will always have faith in something higher, even if that is merely a concept or an ideal. And called by any other name, that still seems like a religion to me. While the idea of every human being part of the same group seeking the same higher aspiration sounds like a wonderful and powerful thing, I could find myself hating that sort of peace. Our desire to rebel from conformity and express new ideas is what keeps the human race interesting. Let the divide groups co-exist in peace, but let us never imagine we all fall under one way of thinking, whether that is atheism or any other faith. | |
Religion will always exist. However ALL religions die. They are mortal. Their priests will die out. Their temples will crumble to dust. Their gods will become mythology. Future children will laugh at the niaveness of our people to accept such "bullshit" while worshipping "god 2.0" in some new religion. Our holy books will be preserved in museums and held in as much power as the book of amun ra is today. Religions die. It is inevitable. Everything is mortal. The egyption,s romans, greeks, all loved/feard their gods, some with the fervor of a bible basher today. And now they are ashes. Their names forgotten. Their gods dead. Their lifestyle that they would have sworn was the true light is a joke. A tv show. A selection of childrens books. So dont fear. All religions die. Religions can be born though. Dont forget that either. | |
Uh...there's still millions of people who worship egyptian, greek, and roman gods And they are devout in their faith and culture. Edit: Religion adapts but I don't think that their "gods" change | |
I think the problem is that currently it's more like a pendulum, 1 or 2 decades go by when everyone is Conservative and deeply religious the next 1 or 2 everyone becomes more liberal and less religious. This is mostly true in America and true in the ME (although more spread out and we haven't seen it go full circle yet). So often when intellectuals see religion decline they think that it will continue its decline into oblivion, this is what I think Time said in 1976, of course then the 80's and 90's happened and in fact America became even more religious in that time. | |
There are? Gods do change im afraid. Lets review. Xloactle the myan bloody handed lord of murder? I dont see too many of his acolytes running around im afrad. Religions die. They run a life cycle. Im afraid im going to have to ask for citation on the "millions". Some maybe. A scant few. But to the majority the gods are a funny story. The common belief is that its utter rubbish and a fun mythology. Its a natural and very observable cycle that new religions come and trample all over the previous religions to become top dog for a bit. Then another religion will come and do the same. If all gods are alive then im afraid some die. They die out. Even if the ones i name perhaps live on with a few followers (and i doubt millions) there are more that died. Cults. Myan gods are definately dead. Its definately something you can see. | |
Hmmm seems that the numbers are still kinda loose and it could be up to 4 million(but it is growing) http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html#Neo-Paganism But yes they are still a minority compared to the abrahamic religions. And there are still people who are trying to reconstruct their religion that predates Christianity. | |
Actually statistically speaking, there has been a solid growth in atheism and agnosticism, and a decline in religions. Islam is growing because they breed prolifically, all other religions are contracting. There has not been a growth in religion, there has been a growth in the amount of noise religions make, and their perceived political influence. Religions have been getting organized to take away people's hard won rights, and remove the separation of Church and State. The point is that religion no longer offers us a credible explanation for the world, the future belongs to Science. | |
It would be nice if you could provide those statistics. | |
From what I could casually dig up by a quick google, the reverse of Platonics statement seems to be true: While there isn't a massive growth in people adhering to religion, there's nothing to suggest we are seeing a decline in religion. On the contrary, several religions seem to be getting adherents faster then just natural population increase would suggest. | |
I'd probably put forward that, at least in western cultures, it isn't that we are 'losing faith', so much as we aren't getting it in the first place. Sure, some of the older generations may actually have faith and then lose it, but I'd imagine that a lot of it is that the younger generations[1] just aren't becoming religious in the first place (or aren't becoming as religious, meaning it is easier for them to lose faith because they have less of it/it isn't as strong). [1] Keeping in mind that faiths are taught; I'd highly doubt that babies are born believing not only in the supernatural, but also in a highly focused form of the supernatural specific to morality and the beginning of life and/or reality and/or the universe as we know it today. | |
Specifically, we're seeing large organized religions, like various sects of Christianity, displacing local traditions in most of the developing countries. Also, the rise of megachurches in the U.S. seriously creeps me out. | |
TC, you're essentially describing a form of positivism. See Auguste Comte's Law of Three Stages. As a theory of history, this is similar to parts of Marxism, only in reverse; it puts material changes as a result of ideologies rather than ideologies being epiphenomena of material forces. | |
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Call me an ignorant person if you disagree, but I have noticed an increasing amount of atheism or agnosticism in the past years as the human race has inevitably evolved to the point where communication between different countries is now not only possible but in most cases absolutely free. This lack of religion wasn't there before, it was actually progressive as the years go on, I think. Since the Vietnam War at least, people have started to lose faith in a higher power. If you disagree with this, or if I'm actually wrong, please tell me. I wish to know your point of view.
But I personally have established a strong belief that the day the human race stops having faith in a higher power such as a deity or government for that fact will be the day that any sort of philosophical progress is made in the goal of understanding and working together. Even though the idea of world peace is entirely far fetched its comforting to know that the lack of a religion may give more reason for people to get up and start working for the betterment of themselves, and indirectly, man kind.
Please tell me if any of that is quite simply silly. I'd like to know if I need to see a doctor.