The world is (almost) godless !

[bobevenson]

Is that an agnostic McCoy or an absolute fool of a McCoy bob?

Theist, agnostic, atheist. As Bob the Baptist, I can tell you that the first and third are fools, and absolute fools at that.

Anybody who isn't an agnostic is a fool.

You've heard of a babbling brook, right? Well, there isn't a brook in the world that can hold a candle to you.

[Lacewing]

Isn't it a simple question to answer, Bob? Why do you keep avoiding it? Based on what you've said, does this mean that you are an agnostic?

Theist, agnostic, atheist. As Bob the Baptist, I can tell you that the first and third are fools, and absolute fools at that.

Anybody who isn't an agnostic is a fool.

[Hobbes' Choice]

I am the only one , who could recognize the EXISTENCE of the real creator of the universe .

Why are the most people against and (almost) nobody for the real creator of the universe ?

Because they want to do what they WANT , and not what the real creator of the universe WANTS (from them) !

The world is (almost) godless !

Good News. Only one more person to go, and he's too insane to make any difference.

[Obvious Leo]

The world is (almost) godless !

Good News.

You and I won't live to see it, Hobbes, but the end of god is in sight at long last. I reckon that within two generations the god hypothesis will have all but vanished from human culture and gone the way of the leprechauns, a quaint historical relic of a less enlightened age. Few will mourn its demise.

[Arising_uk]

You've heard of a babbling brook, right? Well, there isn't a brook in the world that can hold a candle to you.

So you can't answer a question about your own words bob? How prophetic.

[Arising_uk]

You and I won't live to see it, Hobbes, but the end of god is in sight at long last. I reckon that within two generations the god hypothesis will have all but vanished from human culture and gone the way of the leprechauns, a quaint historical relic of a less enlightened age. Few will mourn its demise.

Dream on I reckon.

[Hobbes' Choice]

The world is (almost) godless !

Good News.

You and I won't live to see it, Hobbes, but the end of god is in sight at long last. I reckon that within two generations the god hypothesis will have all but vanished from human culture and gone the way of the leprechauns, a quaint historical relic of a less enlightened age. Few will mourn its demise.

I think in most of Europe and the anglophone Commonwealth this will probably be the case. But I can't see it disappearing from Much of Africa, the middle east or India.
South America will probably still go through the motions of Catholicism, but that is so archaic that it's little more than ritual anyway.

Oh and the USA...WTF?

[Obvious Leo]

The world is (almost) godless !

Good News.

You and I won't live to see it, Hobbes, but the end of god is in sight at long last. I reckon that within two generations the god hypothesis will have all but vanished from human culture and gone the way of the leprechauns, a quaint historical relic of a less enlightened age. Few will mourn its demise.

I think in most of Europe and the anglophone Commonwealth this will probably be the case. But I can't see it disappearing from Much of Africa, the middle east or India.
South America will probably still go through the motions of Catholicism, but that is so archaic that it's little more than ritual anyway.

Oh and the USA...WTF?

Things can change very quickly in an internet age. God has all but vanished from my own culture in the course of my own lifetime and this has unquestionably been a worldwide trend related to the ubiquity of information. The only way to keep people religious is to keep them ignorant and I can't see how this will remain possible for ever. No doubt it'll hold out for a bit longer in various pockets of fundamentalism but even the Americans can't beatify stupidity indefinitely.

[Greta]

I think in most of Europe and the anglophone Commonwealth this will probably be the case. But I can't see it disappearing from Much of Africa, the middle east or India.
South America will probably still go through the motions of Catholicism, but that is so archaic that it's little more than ritual anyway.

Oh and the USA...WTF?

Africans and middle eastern people are highly exposed to the effects of climate chance and increasingly their lands will become unliveable. If my life was as difficult, dangerous and devoid of hope I might also believe that there must surely be something better.

[Hobbes' Choice]

I think in most of Europe and the anglophone Commonwealth this will probably be the case. But I can't see it disappearing from Much of Africa, the middle east or India.
South America will probably still go through the motions of Catholicism, but that is so archaic that it's little more than ritual anyway.

Oh and the USA...WTF?

Africans and middle eastern people are highly exposed to the effects of climate chance and increasingly their lands will become unliveable. If my life was as difficult, dangerous and devoid of hope I might also believe that there must surely be something better.

We were talking about religion not environmental catastrophe. To what degree GW will happen, and to what degree that will enable people to live at all, and what access they that remain will have to world knowledge through technology is highly speculative. But the reaction might go either way.
When knowledge, learning and communication improved in the "West", the deprivations of the past led to the further secularisation. What will happen in the "South" and developing world is anyones guess. Many of the countries we once thought of as "third world" can be far more developed than many people imagine.

[Greta]

My point was that if you are living in such adverse circumstances it seems that a common response is to seek relief through religious belief. So I don't see significant change ahead in religiosity of those living in most of Africa and the middle east.

[Obvious Leo]

My point was that if you are living in such adverse circumstances it seems that a common response is to seek relief through religious belief. So I don't see significant change ahead in religiosity of those living in most of Africa and the middle east.

I don't think this is true. I think religious belief can only be sustained within the culture if it is interwoven into the power structures of the state. There is no evidence that belief in the supernatural is a default stance for an intelligent mind. In fact all the evidence suggests that shared myths are learned behaviours.

[Dubious]

My point was that if you are living in such adverse circumstances it seems that a common response is to seek relief through religious belief. So I don't see significant change ahead in religiosity of those living in most of Africa and the middle east.

I don't think this is true. I think religious belief can only be sustained within the culture if it is interwoven into the power structures of the state. There is no evidence that belief in the supernatural is a default stance for an intelligent mind. In fact all the evidence suggests that shared myths are learned behaviours.

Evidence for more than a hundred years suggests the very opposite. Myths are what Bastian termed "elementary ideas" and Jung called "Archetypes of the collective unconscious". It's exists without exception within every tribe and group of people and in its grandest manifestations within the main literal high cultures of history whose sociological structures were termed monads by Frobenius: Sumerian, Babylonian, Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian-Islamic, etc,.

It's a huge and complex subject but to quote J. Campbell in a single sentence summary:

...as the imagery of a dream is metaphorical of the psychology of the dreamer, that of a mythology is metaphorical of the psychological posture of the people to whom it pertains.

The peoples of history were not in any way less intelligent than we who are merely the most recent among the societal monads in the history of the world.

Beyond being merely learned behaviors they are biological and psychological urges as epitomized by the rituals and ceremonies of the cultural societies in which they germinated.

Also, defaulting to that which binds when "anarchy is loosed upon (someone's) world is a shelter for those who can still respond to their own silent queries in the face of misery.

[Obvious Leo]

My point was that if you are living in such adverse circumstances it seems that a common response is to seek relief through religious belief. So I don't see significant change ahead in religiosity of those living in most of Africa and the middle east.

I don't think this is true. I think religious belief can only be sustained within the culture if it is interwoven into the power structures of the state. There is no evidence that belief in the supernatural is a default stance for an intelligent mind. In fact all the evidence suggests that shared myths are learned behaviours.

Evidence for more than a hundred years suggests the very opposite. Myths are what Bastian termed "elementary ideas" and Jung called "Archetypes of the collective unconscious". It's exists without exception within every tribe and group of people and in its grandest manifestations within the main literal high cultures of history whose sociological structures were termed monads by Frobenius: Sumerian, Babylonian, Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian-Islamic, etc,.

It's a huge and complex subject but to quote J. Campbell in a single sentence summary:

...as the imagery of a dream is metaphorical of the psychology of the dreamer, that of a mythology is metaphorical of the psychological posture of the people to whom it pertains.

The peoples of history were not in any way less intelligent than we who are merely the most recent among the societal monads in the history of the world.

Beyond being merely learned behaviors they are biological and psychological urges as epitomized by the rituals and ceremonies of the cultural societies in which they germinated.

Also, defaulting to that which binds when "anarchy is loosed upon (someone's) world is a shelter for those who can still respond to their own silent queries in the face of misery.

I don't see how any of this is a counter-argument to what I said. You're basically agreeing with me that beliefs in the supernatural are an artefact of the society which gives rise to them and do not generate spontaneously within the mind of an individual. How else could you explain the self-evident fact that members of the same cultural group tend to believe the same bullshit while members of different cultural groups believe different bullshit.

If all you're saying is that an individual mind has a natural yearning to believe in the supernatural then you're raising a rather different question. This is generally understood to be a function of a higher-order intelligence which can deduce that all events must have a cause. If no cause for a particular event is immediately apparent then it simply becomes natural to invent one rather than assume that none exists.

In my view the signs are good that most of homo sapiens has outgrown this rather infantile approach to the unknown.

[Greta]

My point was that if you are living in such adverse circumstances it seems that a common response is to seek relief through religious belief. So I don't see significant change ahead in religiosity of those living in most of Africa and the middle east.

I don't think this is true. I think religious belief can only be sustained within the culture if it is interwoven into the power structures of the state. There is no evidence that belief in the supernatural is a default stance for an intelligent mind. In fact all the evidence suggests that shared myths are learned behaviours.

We can play chicken and egg with this one but it's fair to say that some kind of religion has always been around.

Since we can't wind the clock back, it's fair to say that the vast majority of people in Africa and the middle east will be exposed to religious memes from an early age. I can imagine people in the most dire of circumstances in refugee camps - lost everything, beaten, assaulted, raped, humiliated, vilified, and starving child - and, given the memes passed down through history, such people will surely hope for something better. I would.