How will religion ultimately disappear? The death of Christianity, Islam and all the other religions.
I have said this before, it is actually pointless to argue with religious people about how their religion is wrong since this will never really convince them into change and you will put all that energy in only achieving a complete waste of your time. So this post is not addressed to those religious people rather those that are either non-believers or those that are not closely affiliated with what they are meant to believe as believers. In other words this is the guide to how atheists will take over the world; this is most likely how religion will be slowly removed from the societies that we live in. Using these points of reference might take a long time but I assure you that, although it might take as long as trying to convince religious people to give up, it will work (most likely) and you will end up making the world a better place in the process. Plus you won’t have to talk and argue until you get to the point that arguing with a whole new set of people without thinking about how your responding to them becomes normal because they are saying the same thing over and over and over again. At no point is violence used!
Should religion ultimately disappear? Yes! I read on the apostates of Islam, which is a group of ex-Muslim believers, that Muslims are the main victims of Islam. This is an interesting point and it also is true, it is Muslims that are dealt with unjustly within Islamic Law and it is them who suffer from the “false doctrine of hate and terror”. The terror is well known by the women of Islam! Christianity is based on an evil book, if you think that the bible is God’s word then you have to accept the bible as God’s word you can’t pick from it, even the bits where it says killing and raping are justifiable. In God’s word it is fine to kill those that deny god, are homosexual, talk back to their parents and pickup sticks on the Sabbath. They want to kill me for my lack of belief and all I want is them to listen to me for a change. Certainly the concept of hell and the guilt of Jesus has never anything to do with the divine. There are other religions and they each have their own reasons for logical objection, feel free to add them for me. Pascal’s Wager is the idea it’s better to believe in God even if reason can’t prove that God is real as you will in the end not lose anything. That is not true, you do lose out by belief and so do a lot of other people, this is not a new perspective on Pascal’s Wager I admit. Steven Pinker’s study on violent crime showed a massive drop at the time of Enlightenment, the period were religion suffered the most in Europe and it’s from this period of history we can learn how to remove religion across the world making it a safer place in the process.
Step one – The tolerance for others opinions and belief structures! This might sound like a very stupid thing to say, especially when the idea of tolerance never really comes up in the new atheist movement, still remember that the more you allow for tolerance the more likely the atheist idea is allowed to grow. Without each of us having our own belief & respecting each other then it leads to the road of closing off all communication which is something that would harm science and atheism. During the Enlightenment once people had got fed up with conflict between different religions, people simply allowed others to believe what they wanted and this allowed for non-believers to have the breathing room that was necessary. In Julia Sweeney’s letting go of God, she makes a point by telling us of what her father said when she came out as a non-believer; her father said “why could you just not be gay!” It is funny how being an atheist or non-believer can be worse than being gay, still it shows us about the level of tolerance that is currently out there. This does provide a very big problem though, as atheists and non-believers we have to also show tolerance back, this does not mean acceptance at every level, we can question even though we cannot allow ourselves to become confrontational all the time. Confrontation only allows people to move away from us and what we want is people to come closer and ask us more questions so we can share the things that we have learnt. There is no chicken or egg question here, first tolerance and then atheism. This is a two way approach of course still at a practical level rather than simply attacking religious people demand tolerance and teach them about why we don’t believe. Demand respect for your non-belief and also respect other people’s views.
Step two – the idea of Social Justice! In America this idea is not very well used, it works in Europe and other English speaking countries like Canada for example, it might work well in other countries that I am not aware of. If we start taking care of each other, providing free health care, education and many other things then it is more likely that the need for religion is reduced. Sweden is a great example of this, it has a low crime rate and a healthy population, the level of non-belief is up to 85% depending upon the study used. I am not suggesting that there is a link between religion and crime (or anything else) religion does not create those things, it does tend to disappear when people’s lives are improved. Matthew Chapman describes the current situation as very bad in some societies, the church is the only place where people can go in order to experience community and it is also the only place where people can show care for others without being considered socialists or liberals. Just because it can only happen within the church never means that is a reason to why the church should never be challenged on other grounds. He does not say this is about America as a point of reference, I do rather consider his opinions about the land of the free, the richest nation on the planet, the one of only few that are so rich but consider each other’s needs so inadequately. So what can we learn from this? Taking care of each other is not only a worthy goal it also means a better, more rational society, this will push religion to the fringes as it will mean the need for it is reduced and only belief is left. When religious people only have belief left, let them decide for themselves and if Europe is any example the level of atheism will increase quickly.
Step three – empowering every person on the planet! I could simply state here that if you feel that you cannot achieve the first two steps then you have already given up, never give up and if you think that your efforts cannot make a difference ask yourself, did you try at all? Just because something appears too difficult it does not mean that it is impossible. Still this is not what I wanted to discuss in step three, I will leave it to Christopher Hitchens to make an interesting point. Hitchens said in one of his many attacks on mother Teresa that she was never a friend of the poor she was simply a friend of poverty. He of course means many things by this but one thing I noticed through his attack was that she after being given a lot of money never actually help the poor get out of poverty, rather the journey that was made was just dealing with the end result. She was given millions of dollars most of which was not spent on the poor at all; the point was that rather than empowering the poor she conceded to clear up the mess. Whether she even did that is debatable! We must empower women to make decisions about abortion for themselves, we must empower teachers to teach evolution, we must empower societies to allow them to determine their own laws, the more we empower people the better society will be. I have heard that empowering women is the most important step after all religion perhaps within every context treats women as the second class of humans. I don’t really know how to go about this, but start with your own life and then try to work outwards.
How do I know that this is true? Well it has already happen in some parts of the world and let’s be honest the difference between us are not really that great at all. Tolerance is an interesting thing, it something that has to be worked on and the next generation always seem to understand much more than their parents. Who does not want universal health care free to all? Other than those the benefit from such a system, since there are only few of them that makes the rest of us in a stronger position to change what is going on. There is no excuse for anyone to not demand universal health care free to all and not get it in America. I am not American and I do have universal health care free to all in my country, if it ever was removed I would burn down parliament. It’s a human right not a luxury. If you are against it then you cannot call yourself moral in any respect. I did not want to get political then but everything I say is political, so I can’t help it! Empowerment is difficult to achieve, maybe someone telling another they have a choice whether they can be a catholic or not, is enough to give them a chance to become an atheist. We can empower children by giving them a very useful skill, as well as a very easy one to teach – critical thinking! Religion one day will end and when that day comes I don’t think that it will be scary at all. I think there will be peaceful joy and the knowledge that the things we do while we are alive are so important we better do them right.
A little more on this matter…
I have mentioned Pat Condell before and on his website it clearly states that he does not respect your beliefs! See earlier post: http://therationalunderstanding.wordpress.com/2008/05/16/pat-condell%e2%80%99s-christian-and-islamic-comments-and-the-feedback-he-gets/. Since atheism is not a belief system I don’t consider that Condell’s views as coming from a person within my group. I do understand why he is saying what he does but it is difficult to see why it is helpful to those that share his views on religion. In fact a lot of the websites about atheism that I have come across never practice what they hope to achieve, in order for people to understand why religion is at fault it needs to be explained in such a way that it does not form a personal attack from the start. Do people like Pat Condell think that their confrontational style really helps in their goals? It does not! We are just the same as those religious people if all we do is tell others they are wrong, we need to be better and explain why we think differently. I did find a blog called the friendly atheist, this is the best blog I have found so far and in particular the post titled “The Four Cs of Atheism”, it gives us a set of wonderful rules! http://friendlyatheist.com/2008/06/03/the-four-cs-of-atheism/ I will end on this note: we are all perhaps guilty of producing statements that we know will get attention, the point is once we get people’s attention we need to use it a lot better.
Danial Dennet put it best. The two secular scenarios he listed where religion disappears are either antitheist state (where people are suspicious of anyone with faith) or, my personal favorite, Disney’s Magic Kingdom of Allah- where religion and its rituals get converted into tacky theme parks or museums.
Personally I hope for the second one- where everyone is atheist and don’t understand how religious people think so they turn holy sites into tourist traps… well, more so than they are know.
I have always liked Dan Dennet and I know why now! I personally love the idea of the Disney theme park of religion, still having a little giggle about Disney’s Magic Kingdom of Allah! I think the first scenario will be more likely however!
Thank you for your comment!
cool blog
First you say “it is actually pointless to argue with religious people about how their religion is wrong since this will never really convince them into change…”
Then you say “I read on the apostates of Islam, which is a group of ex-Muslim believers…”
Funny. Some Muslims changed their mind… and then started a support group for ex-Muslims. But, faced with this evidence of shock, horror, ‘free thinking’ amongst Muslims who changed their mind, you still believe that it is “pointless to argue with religious people” because you will never convince them to change.
How do you reconcile knowing about ex-Muslims, indeed, there are ex-Christians, and ex-Sikhs, etc, etc, and yet still holding the view that religious people ‘don’t change’?
This does not compute.
No, I think that it does make sense, still perhaps let me try to explain it so you can understand what I am trying to say. First of all not all religious people are the same, there are those that don’t have belief which is as strong as perhaps others. For those that do have a strong religious belief it is pointless for me to argue with them about their religious wrongness. That is to say; if you have a strong belief and I wanted to attack you (with words, never violence) it is pointless since you will simply think I don’t believe and that is why I am attacking. Many Muslims actually when presented with evidence that show their faith in a bad light will just go into ‘defending my religion’ mode, at this point it is not useful to carry on with the conversation. Those that believe strongly in religion have a vested interesting in maintaining their belief.
The Apostates of Islam did not change their belief via nonbelievers attacking their religious convictions, if you read their website it is clear why this happened. The idea of truth, harm and wrongness are the reasons for the apostates of Islam, in essence Islam caused these people to become nonbelievers! Although I don’t have time to take a poll for all of those that became ex-believers, the members of apostates of Islam I think make it clear they had a morality that far surpassed that of Islam, it is their morality which made them reject it. I don’t have to reconcile anything here; I just need to invest time in the three steps that I mentioned being that of tolerance, social justice and empowerment. It is these three ideas which I consider important that will create the ex-believers and at no point does this include attacking the convictions of religious people. I never said religious people don’t change, I said my arguments as a nonbeliever will never cause them to change directly. Other things will however. Me saying there is no God does not help, me demanding equal rights for women will. I will always point out the wrong things and make an argument against them, I just won’t invest my time into attacking religious convictions.
Thank you for your comment; I hope I made that clearer for you!
Tell me something, have you read the Bible all the way through? It doesn’t seem like you have. Could you point out the parts where it says that “it is fine to kill those that deny god, are homosexual, talk back to their parents and pickup sticks on the Sabbath.” and “where it says killing and raping are justifiable.”? I am, as you can probably tell, a “believer”, as you stereotype and group us into one. I am trying to be open here, and that’s why I want the biblical references.
Also, you teach tolerance here. Why are you then intolerant toward Christians and Muslims? You trash their beliefs and for some reason take this as proof there is no God.
Of course, I would argue religion makes life better, and that it is not a need but a choice for religion, but that’s neither here nor there right now.
Well you are wrong, I was brought up in a protestant household and at the age of 4 I was given my first bible, for me to keep and read. I even wrote my name in it, as instructed and took it to every Sunday school lesson I attended. So I am not interested in debating about whether bits of the bible could be seen like this or like that, because it would provide no use. If you can’t find those things in it, then why don’t you read it again? If you think that religion makes your life better – go for it, I don’t have a problem with it at all! Do it and believe in it, it does not bother – this is the tolerance that I will show you.
This is what I will not show tolerance towards– the introduction of intelligent design as a science in schools when it clearly is not science, most schools will therefore, not teach the science of evolution. That is child abuse! If I were to threaten my child with being beaten to an inch of their life if they were not good, that would be child abuse even if I never did it. Why? Because it’s what is called emotional abuse and trust me, that abuse stays with people for a long time. So why is this different than telling children about hell and how their non-Christian friends will go there simply because they are of a different religion? Why is it as a tax payer do I have to accept the tax free exempt status that religion enjoys? I am paying more to help support something that I don’t believe in. I could go on but you get my point, there are many more examples.
I will be intolerant to people who think they have the right to force their religion on me and on my country. I happen to not live in a country where there is a difference between the state and the church, if you do then you are very lucky. It means that you don’t have to put up with superstition entering into decisions made by your government under the protection of ‘religion’. If the person that runs your local hospital believed in Voodoo magic as the answer to treating cancer and you did not share their values, would that not make you intolerant & a little angry? You be religious in your life but don’t expect me to put up with your values as I don’t share them and I don’t want them! One final point: there has been centuries of reasoning to why there is no [religious] God, I can’t sum it all up so I would encourage you to go and find that stuff out. Not to change your religious belief rather to understand how others think differently from you.
Thank you for your comments.
Not finding these passages in the Bible and asking you for them came more out of laziness then anything. I will attempt to find it. I do live in a country where religion and state are seperate. I don’t believe religion should be forced upon anybody, nor that taxes should be paid that go toward religion. I guess you and I living in different countries has contributed to us having a different view of religion. I believe both Creationism and Evolutionism should be taught in schools, to expose children to both views. By the time I reached the age where we were taught Evolutionism I had already made up my mind that it wasn’t true. This is why I believe both should be taught, because I could see an Atheist having the opposite but similar reaction as me.
Good point about the the no God thing. I should’ve thought that through better before I said it.
Just stumbled upon this site by way of search engine results. Due to my frustration with the religious world. I was, for many years a devout Christian follower and for a brief time, Pastor. It was through an intense period of introspection and investigation that I came to a point that demanded I leave the faith. I have been separated from the Christian world view four years now. Unfortunately, my wife has clung to her beliefs even more tightly as a result of my de-conversion. This is a very difficult process for us as we also have four children.
I applaud every point that you have suggested here and am living proof that it is the only way. Though my wife has not let go of her beliefs, there has been a real learning process here of how tolerance breeds freedom. At the time of my de-conversion I experienced a myriad of emotions to include anger, which I vented by attacking the church (verbally), over time however, I realized the uselessness of such devotions. If anything, it proved to solidify my wife’s conclusions further producing anger within me and forming a vicious circle. As of lately, I have become much more tolerant of her position only to make it clear that the same respect be made of mine. I even support and encourage her to study ever the more deeply. The result has been slow but positive. She has loosened her totalitarian grip ever so slightly and two of our kids have proclaimed a disbelief in the Christian method. A third child is teetering and the other is just way to young to understand any of it. But I am careful to allow them the opportunity to explore and discover for themselves. I encourage critical thinking and present the world as a magnificent discovery zone that seems to get easily overlooked by the common man. It was my own sense of freedom to explore that I came to the point where I am now.
In those early days of leaving Christianity I searched for support, which was difficult to find at the time. But I did find it and one thing I noticed was that I would shy away from any verbiage that sounded militant, dogmatic, judgmental or hateful. Those qualities did nothing encourage me to move further from the system I was leaving. I longed for the sincere individual that was painfully committed to the truth. Sadly, many of the support sites were littered with “evangelical” atheists.
I know this is a long response and I apologize, however I believe you have made a very valuable point and wanted to express my thanks to you. May the world grow strong through loving understanding.
I think you are getting God and religion all mixed up.
Try to work on your ideas of a religionless world and see if you need to take away God from man’s heart and mind.
What you will find out if you are honest is that you will take out God the intelligent God and substitute the unintelligent evolution or disorder for God.
So that instead of an intelligent God in charge of everything you have a dumb God of evolution or disorder to be in charge [sic] of everything and mankind the intelligent entity coming from disorder.
Think about that: which is an intelligent worldview that an intelligent God started everything including intelligent mankind, or a dumb evolution which is disorder started everything by way of disorder and eventually man came forth the intelligent organism.
Gerry