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Thursday, October 20, 2011

The Death of Religion

Before someone jumps on this post thinking "Religion is not dead!", I realise this. I'm not saying religion has died, or that it will ever cease to exist. What I think is happening to religion, is that it is fading out of relevance. The social relevance of all religions is dying, and in many places around the world it is already dead. People do not need to turn to religion to answer the 'big questions'. People do not need to turn to religion as a basis for morality.

Many religions constantly have to evolve to keep up with societal trends or else they face an extinction of irrelevance. Some try to stick to their old ways, like the subservience of women to men and homophobia, but these groups are more often than not shunned from modern society for being bigoted. The last nail in the coffin in my opinion is the idea that one must be a member of a particular religion to attain salvation (whatever that might mean in a particular religious tradition). Once this idea is abandoned by more and more members of religions, and all that is required is to live a good life, religion will die a slow death into irrelevance. If one can attain Nirvana, or get to heaven without following a religion, why follow it? If people can free up more time in the day to go about my business and to improve the world they live in rather than practice religion, they are likely to do so.

4 comments:

  1. Ironic with the Billy Graham "Proclaim I'm a Christian" ad underneath this post when I read it.

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  2. Ahahahahaha. One of these days I'll have collected enough revenue from ads to actually get a cheque, which will be donated of course. Much of that will be courtesy of folk like Billy Graham.

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  3. Quite true for most people, I think. Even those who claim that religion gives them guidance on morality are mostly ignoring the nasty stuff in the Bible, which means they're actually using something else as an ultimate guide to what's nasty vs. what should be observed. If they follow the Bible only when it's consistent with some other standard, they might as well just follow that other standard and ditch the Bible.

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  4. Could not agree more, as long as religion remains irrelevant all is well.

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