Evolving As A Culture, Spiritually

RESEARCH SHOWS that fully twenty five percent of the American people have no religious affiliation, are simply not religious. That is a dramatic increase in the number of unfaithful in recent years, and continues a trend ongoing for decades. There are now more non religious people in America, most of them either atheist or agnostic, than conservative evangelical Christians, although it doesn't always seem that way. Non believers, it seems, are neither as well organized, nor as loud and outspoken, or attract as much attention, as the evangelicals. Perhaps that too will change. The baby boomers, now in the process of dying off, have the highest level of religious affiliation; the younger the American, the less likely to be religious. This fact alone does not bode well for the future popularity of religion...Apparently, religion is on the decline in America, and has been for a long time, and will continue the decline, although there is no way of knowing the future. Every religion that has ever existed has either become extinct, or is extant. Whether our more than four thousand organized religions currently on Earth flourish in the future, or decline and go extinct, as have all past religions, is impossible to predict. Eventual extinction of all religions seems a plausable theory. Religion, especially organized religion, has served and still serves a vital funcion in any civilization; it provides comfort and inspiration. Also, it provides community, acts as a cohesive force binding masses of individuals into a community,a civilized soiety,contributing to social cooperation and organization. Then too, religion embraces nonsense, outright falsehoods, defends doctrinal and dogmatic idiocy, stifles freedom of thought and artistic creativity, brutally enforces a narrow cultural conformity,and creates divsions among ethnic and national groups which often leads to violence and war. The scientific revolution which began about five hundred years ago is still sweeeping across the world, replacing primitive religious mythology with modern scientific spiritualism. Einstein, a Jew who embraced the pantheism of Spinoza, expressed a faith that the religion(s) of the future would be based upon our much more comprehenisve understanding of nature, while recognizing that our level of understanding remains incomplete, verily, puny. Einstein's conception of God was of an "infinitely superior spirit manifest in the laws of the universe". Einstein preferred "humble admiration" to "worship". Worship can be seen as an extreme, illogical state of mind, like sudden uncontrollable rage, or falling madly in love. Perhaps the religion(s) of the future, if there are any, will be more intellectual, less violent and emotional and illogical, athan our traditional, ancient ones. We can hope. From earlist childhood I have known that I can enver embrace a religion whose central fact and event is the torturing to death of a living being to atone for the sins, mistakes, bad behavior of all humans, but only on the condition that we worship as God the sacrificial victim who, miraculously, rises from death to live forever. Too violent. Too primitive. Too much senseless symbolic theatrical bloodshed. If indeed a religion, any religion, is going to decline in membership and become extinct,I feel, on the whole, that a religion such as that would be a good candidate.