THE WORLD OF CHRISTENDOM is becoming less christian, more secular. Its a process which began with copernicus and galileo, and the scientific, empirical, observational approach to truth seeking. Each decade europe is a bit less christian, in another five hundred years, who knows...
To me it really doesn't matter. The human search for truth and meaning through religiosity is a fine and noble undertaking; the precise forms this search takes are mere details. It seems so very obvious, to some people, that whether one is christian, moslem, agnostic, or athiest, one reveres the same thing; existence.
Part of the impending thrill of direct communication with advanced lifeforms from other worlds will be exchanging information concerning religion; what will their religion be like? How many forms of religion are being practiced throughout the galaxy?
You sense that the human race will doing most of the learning, and less of the teaching, but, you never know. Its an evolutionary process, and surely must be, everywhere. The best guess is that five hundred years from now, the religions of the world will be much different than they are now.
Take a look at any religion in the world, the way it is now, then look at it several hundred years ago. Its changed. Its evolved. And yet, at each evolutionary step along the way, its practitioners have claimed to practice it in its final, absolute form. Nobody acknowledges that the religion will be different in the future. And yet it will be, quite obviously.
Many religions, and there are evidently close to eight hundred on earth, might no longer exist. But something will exist, some spiritual "reality" will emerge to replace what is abandoned, just as christianity arose to replace the religions of the ancient greeks and romans.
Atheists are no less "religious" than the rest of us, in a sense, because they , like the rest of us, seek truth. Their truth resides in the material world, the directly perceivable phenomena of nature. "Behold the phenomena", said goethe, "for they are the doctrine".
"When I realized that everyone invents his own religion, i decided to invent mine" said goethe. (This website should probably be paying royalties into the goethe estate, if there is one.) I heard a lady on the radio tell her story, in which she and her husband of twenty years, both atheists, were quite happy, until he was killed flying an F15 for the air force.
He spent a month, severely burned, in a catholic hospital, until he died. His wife, a professor, said she repeatedly informed the hospital that both she and her husband were atheists, but the priests would not go away.
She got tired of hearing people tell her "he's in a better place now". Hell, she said, he's in the ground, rotting. She ended up writing several books on how to endure the grieving process, if you're an athiest. You have to admire her, as well as feel sorry for her, living in this culture.
In the future, people like her probably won't have to endure so much narrow minded nonsense.
At least, we hope not.
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