The current major religions have lasted for quite some time...but if you look back at history, religions tend to die out with cultures. We study the Pantheonic (is that the correct term) religions of the Greeks and Romans and Babylonians, and we consider them as folk tales, fiction, and entertainment. I frankly see no difference between their devout religions and "ours" (not mine, but that of Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, etc.).

I don't want to get into a debate about whether or not Christianity is true/bull, so...this thread is directed towards those who believe it's as much true/false as say...the Ancient Roman religions.

What types of changes in society would be necessary for some of the various prevalent religions of today to die out? I'm looking for something more specific than "civilization collapsing".

its dieing out now.no1 goes to church anymore or gives a flying fuck about that woose Jesus or that cunt God

I'm not sure if they will ever completely die out but with time, seeing how humans are progressing, a lot of questions will be answered leading to a lot of believers converting to "normal" people.

P.S. I hope it happens in my life time.

quote:Originally posted by ohhi:

P.S. I hope it happens in my life time.

Don't count on it.

I think you saw the other post about how atheists are the most mistrusted social group in the states.

And no matter how many questions are answered, believers won't change because they think they already have the answers. Did they stop believing when they found out the earth wasn't flat? No. Did they stop believing when they found out the earth revolves around the sun? No. (Both claims they violently opposed, quoting the Bible in saying that the claims were heresy). Now they condemn modern genetic science on the grounds that it is a 'satanic cult, mimicking the works of god'. They won't look at science's answers and realize they are wrong; they'll either adapt their interpretation of scripture to allow science, or protest (sometimes violently) science in attempt to censor it. It's what they have done, and always will do.

http://www.totse.com/bbs/frown.gif (http://www.totse.com/bbs/frown.gif)

[This message has been edited by Elephantitis Man (edited 04-17-2006).]

quote:Originally posted by Elephantitis Man:



Not flaming, Elephantitis, but I thought you were on the fence between atheism and non-atheism. Have you chosen a side?

With the rise of technology and the way the world is, the current big religions will never die out, they are much too powerful and have far too much support. Religion will die out along with the human race, it is a somewhat natural assumption that seems to happen in the heads of human beings.

I personally do not believe that just because christianity and the like explain life "rationally" and are followed by billions that they are in any way connected to "reality" outside the human mind.

Current religions will last longer than any previous religions because of their ambiguity. Christians have evidence that some of the people in the Bible are real, Islam has some predictions by Muhammed that actually came true. Current religions have endured through several generations of science, logic, reasoning and criticism. They have ultimately taken advantage of the scientific method, "If you can't prove us wrong, you're not right, absense of evidence isn't evidence of absense blah blah blah."

I know it feels right to just lump all religions as being the same and saying they all equally suck, but differences do exist in their infrastructure. Christianity is not the same as some tribal belief of spirits and whatnot.

Believing in one god, reading stories of moral crusaders; the personification you find in the Bible/Quran and the relativism is a lot easier to believe than it is to believe in Mt. Olympus and polytheism. Class is about to end so I'll revise this and add to I'm online at home later.

For now, make no mistake, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism arent founded on the delusions of hunter-gatherers.

quote:"...difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a common censor over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced an inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth."

[Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virginia [1781-1785]"]

quote:"All through the centuries scholars and scientists have been imprisoned, tortured and burned alive for some discovery which seemed to conflict with a petty text of Scripture. Surely the immutable laws of the universe can teach more impressive and exalted lessons than the holy books of all the religions on earth."

[Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman's Bible

Part 2. (From Great Infidels pg. 143.)]

Some people see this and break away from mass religion.

Others on the otherhand...

quote:"When the human race has once acquired a supersitition nothing short of death is ever likely to remove it."

[Autobiography of Mark Twain]

quote:Originally posted by Elephantitis Man:

Don't count on it.

I think you saw the other post about how atheists are the most mistrusted social group in the states.

And no matter how many questions are answered, believers won't change because they think they already have the answers. Did they stop believing when they found out the earth wasn't flat? No. Did they stop believing when they found out the earth revolves around the sun? No. (Both claims they violently opposed, quoting the Bible in saying that the claims were heresy). Now they condemn modern genetic science on the grounds that it is a 'satanic cult, mimicking the works of god'. They won't look at science's answers and realize they are wrong; they'll either adapt their interpretation of scripture to allow science, or protest (sometimes violently) science in attempt to censor it. It's what they have done, and always will do.

http://www.totse.com/bbs/frown.gif (http://www.totse.com/bbs/frown.gif)



I wasn't reffering to religion dieing out. I was reffering more to the time where science will be able to completely refute it. Hense "I wish it happens in my life time".

quote:Originally posted by ohhi:

I wasn't reffering to religion dieing out. I was reffering more to the time where science will be able to completely refute it. Hense "I wish it happens in my life time".

Oh. Haha, I thought you implied that the masses would actually accept said science.

quote:Originally posted by Elephantitis Man:

Oh. Haha, I thought you implied that the masses would actually accept said science.

As if that will ever happen haha

Real christianity is already extinct.

[This message has been edited by Tommy Lund (edited 04-18-2006).]

quote:Originally posted by Tommy Lund:Real christianity is already extict.

quote:I was reffering more to the time where science will be able to completely refute it.

Basic logic already does.

quote:Originally posted by Daz:

Basic logic already does.

That's not enought for some people apparently.

I'd say Christianity has a long time to go. It's greatest strength in my opinion is how the religion has changed with the different cultures. Just look at our holidays, as long as that is continued, should last a long time. Or armegeddon(sp?) divine, human, or sheer dumb luck.

Soon I hope.

since someone presented some quotes, so will i (i've highlighted a few that i thought were extra interesting)...

Last Words of Famous People

Fearful Last Words:

Cardinal Borgia: “I have provided in the course of my life for everything except death, and now, alas, I am to die unprepared.”

Elizabeth the First: “All my possessions for one moment of time.”

Kurt Cobain (suicide note): “Frances and Courtney, I’ll be at your altar. Please keep going Courtney, for Frances. For her life will be so much happier without me. I love you. I love you.”

Ludwig van Beethoven: “Too bad, too bad! It’s too late!”

Thomas Hobbs: “I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.”

Anne Boleyn: “O God, have pity on my soul. O God, have pity on my soul.”

Prince Henry of Wales: “Tie a rope round my body, pull me out of bed, and lay me in ashes, that I may die with repentant prayers to an offended God. O! I in vain wish for that time I lost with you and others in vain recreations.”

Socrates: “All of the wisdom of this world is but a tiny raft upon which we must set sail when we leave this earth. If only there was a firmer foundation upon which to sail, perhaps some divine word.”

Sigmund Freud: “The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.”

Tony Hancock (British comedian): “Nobody will ever know I existed. Nothing to leave behind me. Nothing to pass on. Nobody to mourn me. That’s the bitterest blow of all.”

Phillip III, King of France: “What an account I shall have to give to God! How I should like to live otherwise than I have lived.”

Luther Burbank: “I don’t feel good.”

Voltaire (skeptic): “I am abandoned by God and man! I will give you half of what I am worth if you will give me six months’ life. Then I shall go to hell; and you will go with me. O Christ! O Jesus Christ!” (The talented French writer once said of Jesus, “Curse the wretch!” He stated, “Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror ...Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.”) He also boasted, “In twenty years Christianity will be no more. My single hand shall destroy the edifice it took twelve apostles to rear.” Some years later, Voltaire’s house was used by the Geneva Bible Society to print Bibles.



Philosophical Last Words:

Aldus Huxley (humanist): “It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‘Try and be a little kinder.’”

Karl Marx: “Go on, get out! Last words are for fools who haven’t said enough!”

Napoleon: “I marvel that where the ambitious dreams of myself and of Alexander and of Caesar should have vanished into thin air, a Judean peasant—Jesus—should be able to stretch his hands across the centuries, and control the destinies of men and nations.”

Leonardo da Vinci: “I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”

Tolstoy: “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.”

Benjamin Franklin: “A dying man can do nothing easy.”

Grotius: “I have lived my life in a laborious doing of nothing.”



Unexpected Demise:

H. G. Wells: “Go away: I’m alright.”

General John Sedgwick (during the heat of battle in 1864): “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist——!”

Bing Crosby: “That was a great game of golf.”

Mahatma Ghandi: “I am late by ten minutes. I hate being late. I like to be at the prayer punctually at the stroke of five.”

Diana (Spencer), Princess of Wales: “My God. What’s happened?” (per police files)

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.: “Never felt better.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt: “I have a terrific headache.”

Sal Mineo: (stabbed through the heart): “Oh God! No! Help! Someone help!”

Jesse James: “It’s awfully hot today.”

Lee Harvey Oswald: “I will be glad to discuss this proposition with my attorney, and that after I talk with one, we could either discuss it with him or discuss it with my attorney, if the attorney thinks it is a wise thing to do, but at the present time I have nothing more to say to you.”



Unusual Last Words:

Vincent Van Gogh: “I shall never get rid of this depression.”

James Dean: “My fun days are over.”

Oscar Wilde: “My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go . . .”

W. C. Fields: “I’m looking for a loophole.”

Louis XVII: “I have something to tell you . . .”



Assurance of Salvation:

Jonathan Edwards: “Trust in God and you shall have nothing to fear.”

Patrick Henry: “Doctor, I wish you to observe how real and beneficial the religion of Christ is to a man about to die . . .” In his will he wrote: “This is all the inheritance I give to my dear family. The religion of Christ which will give them one which will make them rich indeed.”

John Owen: “I am going to Him whom my soul loveth, or rather who has loved me with an everlasting love, which is the sole ground of all my consolation.”

D. L. Moody: “I see earth receding; heaven is opening. God is calling me.”

Lew Wallace (author of Ben Hur and former unbeliever who tried to show that the Bible is historically inaccurate...was converted through his attempt): “Thy will be done."

Alexander Hamilton: “I have a tender reliance on the mercy of the Almighty, through the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am a sinner. I look to Him for mercy.”

William Shakespeare: “I commend my soul into the hands of God my Creator, hoping and assuredly believing, through the only merits of Jesus Christ my Savior, to be made partaker of life everlasting; and my body to the earth, whereof it was made.”

Martin Luther: “Into Thy hands I commend my spirit! Thou hast redeemed me, O God of truth.”

John Milton (British poet): “Death is the great key that opens the palace of Eternity.”

Sir Walter Raleigh (at his execution): “So the heart be right, it is no matter which way the head lieth.”

Daniel Webster (just before his death): “The great mystery is Jesus Christ—the gospel. What would the condition of any of us be if we had not the hope of immortality? . . . Thank God, the gospel of Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light.” His last words were: “I still live.”

General William Booth (to his son): “And the homeless children, Bramwell, look after the homeless. Promise me . . .”

David Livingstone: “Build me a hut to die in. I am going home.”

Charles Dickens: “I commit my soul to the mercy of God, through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try and guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament.”

Andrew Jackson: “My dear children, do not grieve for me . . . I am my God’s. I belong to Him. I go but a short time before you, and ...I hope and trust to meet you all in heaven.”

Isaac Watts (hymn-writer): “It is a great mercy that I have no manner of fear or dread of death. I could, if God please, lay my head back and die without terror this afternoon.”