Evolving Religions

THE EXACT NUMBER of religions in the world is difficult and evidently impossible to determine. Estimates vary widely, depending on the source of information. Nearly everyone seems to agree, however, that there are thousands,; estimates range from a mere four thousand to as many as eleven thousand. You might think we could figure it out exactly, but evidently cannot. Part of the difficulty consists in defining and identifying what a religion is. All of the world's major religions is highly fragmented into thousands of local units, all of which have their own unique set of behaviors, observances, beliefs. Is each one a different religion? Every religion in the world has adherents who proudly proclaim that theirs is the one and only "true" religion, and that all the others are false. That they all might be true seems difficult to believe, that one and only of them might be true seems dubious at best, that all of them are false, mere fantasies of the human mind seems to fit all the available evidence. The United States of America, that cradle of cultural creativity, has given the world several made in America versions of Christianity: Mormonism, Pentecostalism, Christian Science, Jehovah's witnesses, Scientology, among others. Religions are being born constantly, and old ones are dying, just like individuals, societies, species, planets, and ultimately, universes. Although traditional Christianity generally rejects to natural process of evolution as false, the Christian religion is, and have always been, evolving, right before our very eyes. Much scholarship has been and still is devoted to studying human religions and religiosity, and science has given us a few conclusions. There is no evidence that religion makes people better people, or that religion makes countries better countries, or that religion is a positive force for civilization. In fact, quite the opposite. In the United States, the most religious parts of the country tend to have the highest crime and poverty rate, the lowest educational achievement rate, and the least religious parts of the countries have the edge in quality of living, across the board. There is no law of nature which says that systems of morality or moral behavior must be based on religion. Morality, ethical philosophy, is an entirely separate domain from religion. Religion is generally considered by academics to have been humanity's way of dealing with the emotional and intellectual challenges of life in primitive times, while the human species was in a state of ignorance. It may be that religion, as humankind advances in its knowledge of nature through science, will become obsolete and fade away, and be replaced by a reverence for nature based on scientific fact, rather than mythology and superstition. Considering how detrimental organized religion has been historically to human progress, and remains to this day, the sooner, the better.