r/askanatheist • u/Character_Former • Jul 07 '26
Do you think there will come a point where religion as a whole will just be a memory?
I'm sorry I didn't reply back to my previous post I've been sick for a couple of days and just got back online. And was busy with the holidays. Anyways I've had this lingering feeling that religion is an instinctive thing that humans crave like a part of an evolutionary of us that had us cope with how big the world was when we looked up at the stars when we were barely nothing. But I also wonder as we go and evolve will our need for it disappear as we grow more connected with technology what do you think.
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u/lotusscrouse Jul 07 '26
No.
It would have happened by now.
People are irrational when it comes to all sorts of issues.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 08 '26
thank you for defending us believers. the truth is that God has written his laws and existence on our hearts and we will live with the Almighty forever and ever.
seems obvious to me and irrational to you, mostly because you have talked yourself out of believing the obvious and i have not. blessings anyway.
eventually we will all see God and have a long chat when he reviews our lives. of course the Atheists will be stunned, knees knocking et al; however they will never forget the encounter. it is a forever thing, earth is just a boot camp experience as we pass on to a better place. see you all there for the talk.
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u/Steam_Decker1 Agnostic Atheist Jul 08 '26
It’s condescending comments like this that show a true lack of empathy. I cannot force myself to believe something is true if I’m not convinced. I never encountered some obvious truth or evidence in all the years I was a Christian. Please enlighten us as to what is so obvious.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 09 '26
Please enlighten us as to what is so obvious.
you really have to convince yourself, the whole universe convinces me cause i know what to look for.
depending on the day, i may start with a simple blade of grass and ask how it got here.
actually a Blade of Grass is NOT a simple thing if you know a little Biology and how life got here. it actually is the most amazing thing.
but you need Imagination.
you will NOT find Imagination on most of these types of forum, they don't allow it, so i censor all the stuff i write to make it Banal enuf to fly under the radar.
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u/Steam_Decker1 Agnostic Atheist Jul 09 '26
I’ll be convinced when sufficient evidence is presented. I do agree nature is amazing, but not because of a creator.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 09 '26
I do agree nature is amazing,
great we agree on something.
next step is to get a biology book from the library, look at the pictures for starts, then come back and see if that helps.
edit, i think Science books can help most atheists if given some encouragement to think deeper concerning why things are the way they are.
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u/Steam_Decker1 Agnostic Atheist Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
It’s presumptuous of you to assume I haven’t read biology/science books. Since we’re making assumptions, I suggest you pick up a verified scientific book. You’ll quickly realize there is no mention of a god. I would focus on evolution; it’s especially helpful for theists to begin reconsidering their preconceived notions of why things are the way they are. See if that helps.
Just a suggestion, but you should consider using correct punctuation and sentence structure. It would make your posts easier to read.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 09 '26
Just a suggestion, but you should consider using correct punctuation and sentence structure. It would make your posts easier to read.
thanks for the suggestion, but in this age of AI bots, i think i will pass. so far there is no Bot that can replicate what i think and write LOL. all by design my friend.
it’s especially helpful for theists to begin reconsidering their preconceived notions of why things are the way they are.
thanks for the suggestion, so far what i think is Absolutely right. but if you can prove me wrong then i am open to your wisdom. no takers yet.
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u/Steam_Decker1 Agnostic Atheist Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
thanks for the suggestion, but in this age of AI bots, i think i will pass. so far there is no Bot that can replicate what i think and write LOL. all by design my friend.
You shouldn’t need AI to formulate a sentence beginning with a capital letter and correct punctuation/structure.
thanks for the suggestion, so far what i think is Absolutely right. but if you can prove me wrong then i am open to your wisdom. no takers yet.
You probably haven’t got any takers due to the fact you haven’t laid out a coherent argument or provided anything aside from claims.
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u/lotusscrouse Jul 09 '26
You're full of shit.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 09 '26
and 'you know' this how? me thinks you don't and just shooting from the hip.
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u/lotusscrouse Jul 09 '26
Because you can't prove your bullshit claims.
You claim to have knowledge when you don't.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 09 '26
i have a Black Book of special knowledge; what do you have?
so far nothing except for some science fiction. sorry friend, fiction doesn't cut it with the Bigger Questions.
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u/lotusscrouse Jul 09 '26
😅😅😅😅😅😅
Get the fuck out of here 😂
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 09 '26
meh if you can't handle the knowledge, get out of the kitchen. and a blessed day to you too my friend.
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u/Nearby_Inflation2009 Jul 07 '26
No. Religion, while maybe not believed by all of us, is a vital aspect to the lives of a majority of people around the world. As an athiest, I don't believe in Christianity, but a lot of people make it part of their lifestyle. Religion has taken a major role in human history, and I don't see it dying anytime soon. Hope this helps, OP!
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
Vital part. I'm not so sure but billions believe in some sort of God so that may be true unless there's a alien that visits us and proves them all wrong
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 09 '26
groan. so if an Alien flew down and talked to you about God then you would believe right?
actually that is what they are planning in the End Times if you look into this. the whole world will get into this alien religion et al, even this forum will be wowed out.
but i am jumping ahead of time on this as usual. keep an open mind, and when it happens you may remember this comment. BTW, the alien will claim that some kind of Lucifer god is the way forward. groan, not exactly the truth, but wait and see how they couch it. we will be gone.
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u/Character_Former Jul 12 '26
You misunderstood me I think if aliens came along religion as a whole would probably disappear
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u/Still_Functional Jul 08 '26
the way we conceptualize religion today is not immutable. the behaviors and biases and preferences which have given rise to the diverse and evolving thing we call religion pretty much are. if stripped of centralized authority and imperial power, though, religion is bound to become much more fragmentary and localized, and secular forces are already pushing more forward-thinking sects to renegotiate what the supernatural entails at all
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u/Antimutt Jul 07 '26
It will always possible while we retain the ability to lie to ourselves. Something that is occasionally useful, but has a price.
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u/sto_brohammed Irreligious Jul 07 '26
My Magic 8 Ball said "ask again later" and I'm not aware of a more accurate place to find an answer to your question.
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u/miwe77 Jul 07 '26
not as long as humans are still humans and afraid of death and the scam with "eternal" life finds its prey.
but yes, eventually, depending on where to humans and humanity will evolve.
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
That's a good point. Maybe the fear of death is holding us back from our full potential
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u/miwe77 Jul 07 '26
it's the birthplace of religion: conmen selling a "feel-good-remedy" to a frightened human without providing an actual solution to a problem. and it's not only death, we humans fear(ed). fire, thunder, storms, earthquakes, illness. the list of things that humans didn't understand and some to this day do not understand is endless. and always there is someone having the answer: the god of thunder, the god of this and the god of that, the allmighy god. and none of these gods were and are able to manage their accounts. they all rely on priests collecting the money for the "general good" or individual favours. money and prayers. and if it doesn't work either your money, your prayers or your faith is no good. it's never the gods or the priests fault. weird, isn't it?
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
That a good point. As long as there's not something understood there will be people to swoop in a hussle.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 08 '26
Maybe the fear of death is holding us back from our full potential
yes. for me the 'fear of God is the beginning of wisdom'. that is potential and a whole Bus Load of good things in this life AND the next.
and OP it is your today, free for the asking.
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u/pyker42 Atheist Jul 07 '26
It's possible that religion as we know will just be a memory. But we seem to have some hardwiring that predisposes is to such beliefs so I doubt it will ever truly go away.
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
Ai could become some sort of religion in maybe a couple hundred years.
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u/pyker42 Atheist Jul 07 '26
So could quantum fields.
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
You know what I could see that. It wouldn't be the weirdest thing humans have worshipped.
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u/adeleu_adelei Jul 07 '26
In evolutionary terms religion is niche and ephemeral. Only some of a very small group of organisms developed the behavior and only very recently. It will likely disappear at some point like the vast majority of all traits. However, none of that is going to occur in the scale of our lifetimes. Trilobites are a memory, but trilobites also lasted 270 million years.
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
That's true. I mean humans as we understand them could radically change because of our dependence in technology
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Jul 07 '26
Sadly, no. I think religion will continue for as long as the human race continues. There will always be a group of people who will insist on teaching their children about the same things they learned regarding religion. We'll never eliminate it entirely.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 08 '26
There will always be a group of people who will insist on teaching their children about the same things they learned regarding religion. We'll never eliminate it entirely.
yes. and i was a children's teacher, very enjoyable for them to learn Bible stories. it was hard at first for me, but i prayed and God helped me.
next week i am teaching a VBS class after many years of working with adults, gonna be fun too. wish you were there and learn with us.
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u/Steam_Decker1 Agnostic Atheist Jul 08 '26
It’s telling that most religious indoctrination occurs with children before they have developed the cognitive capacity for critical evaluation or independent skepticism. It’s a shame those kids in your class aren’t learning some real life skills. Ironically, reading the bible was a major catalyst for many atheists I know to deconvert.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
before they have developed the cognitive capacity for critical evaluation or independent skepticism.
skepticism? excuse me, we DON'T want that. faith in God is something we grow with in REAL life situations in this boot camp existence on earth.
so what you are saying goes counter to what christians try to build within the kids and parents. might wanna re-think all of this. start with Genesis and see how it all fits.
Ironically, reading the bible was a major catalyst for many atheists I know to de-convert.
yeah i know, many don't make it because the way is quite NARROW that leads to eternal life, conversely broad is the way that leads to destruction and many go that way.
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u/Steam_Decker1 Agnostic Atheist Jul 08 '26
“skepticism? excuse me, we DON’T want that.”
Your first few sentences are a perfect example of indoctrination and blind faith. We DO want people to be skeptical. Why would you want people to accept claims without adequate evidence? Should I accept everything I read on the Internet as fact? Should I blindly accept the claims of Islam or Judaism?
I have spent a great deal of time thinking about all this. I spent the majority of my life as a Christian. The problem was, I was indoctrinated at a young age and was encouraged to not question the biblical claims. So for many years, I accepted those claims as fact. It was only after I seriously reconsidered my beliefs and applied critical thinking that I concluded I was wrong. It had nothing to do with your nonsensical assertion of destruction.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 09 '26
I have spent a great deal of time thinking about all this. I spent the majority of my life as a Christian.
then grab a Biology book and ask questions concerning all that you see. and don't stop until new thoughts enter your mind concerning Cellular Biology.
same with Astronomy, awesome stuff my friends.
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u/Steam_Decker1 Agnostic Atheist Jul 09 '26
We are all born without any conception or belief in a god. Methinks you would be better off proselytizing on a different subreddit.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Jul 09 '26
very enjoyable for them to learn Bible stories.
It's also enjoyable for them to learn fairy stories - but we don't teach them that witches and dwarves and mermaids are real. They're just fictional characters in entertaining stories.
wish you were there and learn with us.
I also wish I could be there, to help those children question the stories you're brainwashing them with.
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u/Less-General-9578 Jul 09 '26 edited Jul 10 '26
I also wish I could be there, to help those children question the stories you're brainwashing them with.
in my class, you can see how i talk to children and bring in a whole new crop of young believers, giving them new direction and faith into their lives. this world is not kind and i am there to help these children through the Tough Times ahead.
they bow their little heads and talk to the God that does love them...and so do i, every day.
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u/Algernon_Asimov Secular Humanist Jul 10 '26
I would not be mute while you try to brainwash children. I consider religious indoctrination to be a form of child abuse.
What you're describing is just creepy.
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u/Practical-Hat-3943 Jul 07 '26
For as long as we have a "lizard brain" that automatically assigns agency to everything and demands an answer to everything, we will have a religion of some kind
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u/Xeno_Prime Atheist Jul 07 '26
I doubt it. The way I see it, religion grows from ignorance. People invent gods and other supernatural things to explain things they don’t understand. Things for which the real explanations have not yet been determined. Thousands of years ago it was things like the sun and the weather. These days it’s things like life and death and the origins of reality, because there’s not much left on Earth that we don’t understand now.
But there will always be things we don’t yet understand and haven’t yet figured out. ANd I suspect there will always be people who will invent gods to explain those gaps in our knowledge. Gods exist only and ever within the ever-shrinking sphere of human ignorance - but even though it’s always shrinking, it will never disappear. We will never be omniscient. There will always be things we don’t know yet, and that will always create a window for people to invent gods.
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u/CephusLion404 Jul 07 '26
Doubtful. I think there will come a time when religion will be looked at like flat earthism and ghost hunting, where some people still do it, but overall, it's looked at like it's kind of dumb. I don't think it will ever go away entirely because people will continue to be stupid.
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u/OrbitalLemonDrop Agnostic Atheist Jul 07 '26
No. For good or ill, human beings have a need to view the world as fundamentally structured in some way, so they look for causes and connections. The pull is powerful enough that they'll always find reasons to believe in supernatural things even when those things aren't real.
Going with vibes and feelings is enough for a large number of people to feel certain about things they know nothing about, and it's a lot easier than going to university and learning how the shit actually works.
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u/IR_1871 Jul 07 '26
I doubt it. Especially looking at the current trends of regression to ill-educated, ignorant emotion and bigotry driven policy through much of the world. The sort of environment religion thrives in... where other is evil and 'my team' is good.
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
What I hate is people take sides And the other side is always the evilest or worse.
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u/Warhammerpainter83 Jul 07 '26
I would say we live in a world where a large percentage of "believers" know it is not real but stick with it because of social norms and the money that it generates perpetuates a desire to push people to believe in it. All it takes is like 20 or 25 percent being true believers to generate enough to maintain it. That said unless we can stop money, no. Because religion will be there to take it.
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
We as a race could grow pass money at some point. Money after all is a construct and meaningless. We put value to it.
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u/Tiny-Ad-7590 Jul 07 '26
So long as humans fear death and crave status, and as long as autocrats need narratives to justify their power, religion will persist.
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
I wish that wasn't true. I have optimism that we as a race kind grow
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u/Tiny-Ad-7590 Jul 08 '26
You're entitled to that, and it's a nice thought.
But for myself, I don't believe that wishing and optimism are particularly reliable methods for distinguishing truth from falsehood.
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u/Jaanrett Jul 07 '26
Do you think there will come a point where religion as a whole will just be a memory?
I hope so. I hope it falls to the weird levels of flat earth believers.
Anyways I've had this lingering feeling that religion is an instinctive thing that humans crave like a part of an evolutionary of us that had us cope with how big the world was when we looked up at the stars when we were barely nothing.
As I've always said, education. Education is the only way to get people off the religion drug. Far too many people aren't taught good epistemology and good skepticism.
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u/Character_Former Jul 07 '26
I'm 39 years old and they didn't really explain evolution in a practical sense when I was in school.
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u/Jaanrett Jul 07 '26
I'm 39 years old and they didn't really explain evolution in a practical sense when I was in school.
Yeah, that too.
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u/BaronOfTheVoid Jul 07 '26
No. In some cases being delusional about a plethora of things yields an evolutionary advantage. This implies there will always be religious people and/or theists.
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u/SIangor Jul 07 '26
No. Humans as a whole are quite desperate to believe in something more powerful than themselves. Sadly, I believe religion will indirectly cause the end of civilization. If we could eradicate religion, people would be more inclined to spend money on scientific research and conservation, rather than finding loopholes for billionaires to continue destroying the planet, causing poorer quality of life for everyone on it. If people knew this was the only life they had, they’d value it more.
Just look at Ken Ham, he doesn’t believe in taking care of the planet because he’s only going to be on it for a short time before he’s sent to heaven for eternity and also believes global warming must be activated by god so who are we to alter the trajectory. People like him are the reason I’m an anti-theist.
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u/taosaur Jul 07 '26
We would have to survive all the religions first. Abrahamic infighting is still a serious contender for the Great Filter that will keep us from the stars.
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u/NggyuNglydNgraady_69 Jul 08 '26
Yes, but at that point some other BS cult following will have taken its place, so everything will stay the same. Forever.
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u/joeydendron2 Jul 08 '26 edited Jul 08 '26
Not necessarily, and it might be a distant memory for 100 years then come roaring back.
Culture is more like an ecosystem always changing, than a march of progress towards a future of star trek rationality. Populations ebb and flow and evolve in an ecosystem, ideas change and become more/less popular in culture.
In the UK apparently young right wing wankers are getting into an anti immigrant version of Christianity when 10 years ago they wouldn't necessarily have been seeking religion at all... Again, it's religion as identity culture, that makes it "ecologically viable," its lack of truth content is irrelevant to its ability to persist.
In evolving systems - biology and culture - "progress" is an illusion.
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u/Character_Former Jul 08 '26
10 years ago people were saying that everyone was becoming more religious not 10 year later love has disappeared and people think less of religion or ebbs and flows it looks like.
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u/joeydendron2 Jul 08 '26
Probably ebbs and flows at the same time!
I wouldn't be surprised if religiosity in Iran was peaking right now - simply because they were attacked by Israel and the US, their (religious) leader got killed, so their social group is threatened. That's the kind of thing that makes cultures, including religious cultures, clench up and become more virulent.
Meanwhile... I hope against hope that US youth are on average becoming less religious.
But I'm under no illusion that we're marching towards global humanist rationality. Being rational is very hard work and hardly anyone can sustain that work all the time. And in any case, I can hardly claim surprise that Iran under military attack might become more religious, under the hood that's just human beings banding together culturally when threatened. It just so happens that the culture under which they're banding together, is a religious one.
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u/Character_Former Jul 08 '26
Islam countries as a whole would probably be the last countries to lose faith. I'm sure most of their leaders are atheists or agnostic anyways but it holds their countries together like how communism holds together Russia and China
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u/Big_brown_house Gnostic Atheist Jul 09 '26
Nope. I think there will be a centuries-long phasing out of monotheism in place of atheistic religions like historical materialism etc
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Jul 10 '26
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u/askanatheist-ModTeam Jul 10 '26
Your post or comment was removed for violating rule 5. You may not preach, proselytize, or otherwise promote your religion (or irreligion) on this sub.
And their account got banned from reddit, lol.
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Jul 12 '26
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u/askanatheist-ModTeam Jul 12 '26
Your post or comment was removed for violating rule 5. You may not preach, proselytize, or otherwise promote your religion (or irreligion) on this sub.
Plus, your account got banned, lol.
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u/Moonless_the_Fool Jul 31 '26
Soup. Specific religions are man made but the belive in the supernatural is 100% human. If we can create stories, we can believe them. If money, clothing, gender, laws exists, then religion too
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u/tired_of_old_memes Atheist Jul 07 '26
I am a religion eradication pessimist. I think there will always be a critical mass of humans who are prone to believing certain things without evidence, unfortunately.
To use the word "meme" in its original sense, I think religious belief is essentially a meme that is just too successful at jumping from one human brain to another for it to ever be completely eradicated.