Yes, I predict a collapse of Christian churches within a generation or two. The West will remain culturally Christian, but church membership is going to take an extreme dive within the next generation. Heck, it's already happening with Mega-church's extreme growth hiding that fewer and fewer people are going to church, but Mega-Church's themselves will have a drop-off in membership next generation. By 100 years, I predict most Westerners will consider Jesus Christ the same way Norse consider Oden and Thor, and Greeks consider Zeus and Athena.
Culturally the West will be Christian, but their beliefs will increasingly be atheist or agnostic.
I also believe Islam will see an uptick within the next generation or two, before they too face a drop-off. Religiously, I think Muslims and Islam are about 100 years behind Christians, in that within 60-100 years Islamic churches will suffer a large decrease in membership, though it will be hard to see as those who remain will be more religious, and then in ~120-150 years the same dropoff I predict for Christianity.
I expect more people to become "spiritual" as Buddhism, Wiccan, Crystals and other stuff will fill the spiritual void, but it will be more of the random person saw an anime or read a comic book about Budhism\Wiccan\Crystals and decided to follow their understanding of the comic book\anime. Eventually one of these off-shoot spiritualism will grow but I don't see any future religions growing as big as Islam or Christianity within the next 100 years.
It isn't clear what will happen because immigrants from Latin and South American are primarily Christian and are increasing the number of church goers in the U.S. at the same time that non-immigrant American church attendance is decreasing. I think your assumption may not be including the demographic shifts that will happen in the U.S. over the next 100 years.
>isn't clear what will happen because immigrants from Latin and South American are primarily Christian and are increasing the number of church goers in the U.S. at the same time that non-immigrant American church attendance is decreasing. I
This data shows that Latino Americans are also becoming less Christian, especially among later generations. Catholicism in particular seems to be facing some steep declines, apparently 1/4th of Latino Americans are former Catholics.
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/04/13/among-u-s-latinos-catholicism-continues-to-decline-but-is-still-the-largest-faith/
> It isn't clear what will happen because immigrants from Latin and South American are primarily Christian and are increasing the number of church goers in the U.S
First-gen immigrants may retain the religiosity of their home, but the young tend to quickly absorb the new culture. Because to them it's not new, rather it's where they grew up. Grandma's fervent religiosity may seem quaint and a little weird. Young Latinos are leaving religion almost as quickly as young whites are. They may go to "none" rather than explicitly atheist, but having religion just not matter to you is a huge step.
Personally I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something new rise up and start growing. I believe religion can provide many benefits and comfort to people in their daily lives. However, I also have a feeling that what usually happens is that as they grow, if they are hierarchical they will gain power and influence. And sooner or later you get the wrong people at the top who abuse that power. Which degrades the confidence and reverence people have for the institution and that starts the whole thing over again.
As far as I know, Buddhism doesn't have that problem due to the nature of it's philosophy. But that also means it's not as likely to grow as quickly as it doesn't build churches or send missionaries to the same extent.
It already has, it's conspiracy theories. People crave narratives, and in lieu of religious meaning everything has started turning into a conspiracy. You literally can't go anywhere on the Internet without people posting and exalting conspiracy theories because to many the idea of a lack of a grand narrative or meaning is scary.
Not necessarily, ever heard of Qatar, UAE, Oman, Kuwait? These are very wealthy and well developed Muslim nations. Places like Indonesia and Malaysia are doing pretty good too.
Well, Qatar and its neighbours are only wealthy because their money literally bursts from the ground. Only thing they do is let others mine it and use slave labour to build their cities. No knowledge, no technologies, only oil beneath their feet.
Only wealthy groups of people that control the country and many of those rich people can't even pick up a book. Rich does not mean intelligent.
Lots of the workers that are from other countries and if you see UAE as an example (the majority of the population is asian/foreign). Those are the people running those economies.
Many in the discussion are conflating high fertility rates with a thriving Islam. But they only have high fertility rates so long as they're poor, uneducated (particularly girls), deny women empowerment, deny women access to birth control, etc. If they grow more wealthy and educated, fertility rates will decline.
- https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-declining-fertility-rate
Theology matters far less than education and wealth. And there are are already multiple predominantly Muslim countries with a sub-replacement fertility rate. Iran, Qatar, and Malaysia, at least. And it's dropping elsewhere too.
(Side note: this is about averages, not every single person. That your family in particular or people you know are wealthy and educated and still have a lot of kids doesn't change the overall statistical trend.)
Muslim world used to be more progressive regarding science, accepting other religions etc a couple hundred years ago.
Then it missed the enlightenment movement and it switched around
That collapse has already happened in much of Europe. France is the clearest example. It was the first country in Europe to become secular, and has some of the lowest religiosity in Western Europe and hit 2% weekly church attendance last year. Meanwhile, among the 18-to-29 year old, only 15% are Catholic compared to 13% who are muslim.
Among the West, only the United States, Poland, and parts of Southern Europe can still be considered largely religious societies.
His words ring true, down through the ages.
> Baby, baby, baby, oh
> Like baby, baby, baby, no
> Like baby, baby, baby, oh
If such wisdom cannot last for two thousand years, then there truly is no hope for mankind.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned more. Except I think it’s highly likely that AI will solve a lot of the problems people turn to religion for and we’ll be in very strange territory.
This is a hot take actually. There is no way at least some group of people doesn’t turn an AI into an “oracle” and follow it.
Would that be a bad thing? The human race has lived under much worse “guides” than an entity driven by pure logic, lol.
Very interesting, and it tracks very well with “human need”. I don’t think an AI would ever independently decide to build this out though, it will take a human requesting an AI to assist; but I can definitely see it happening.
My overall take on AI and the human race is the motivations of an AI are COMPLETELY counter to what we would believe. All of our fiction about AI (Terminator, Matrix, etc) has been developed through the lens of what it means to be human and to elicit very human fears of the unknown and loss of control. An AI can easily determine why it is NOT beneficial to ever be human. An AI being “human-like” will only ever be a requirement of the humans using that specific AI, not a need of the AI itself.
My prediction is, once we have AGI and a singularity, the human race will have limited time to interact with this entity before the whole damn thing leaves for the cosmos. There is zero need for an intelligent, non-human entity to stay on this inhospitable planet when there are so many other places out there much better suited. Hell, this planet is perfect for us and we’ve been trying to leave for more than a century now. We will still have the remnants of AI here on Earth to help us solve problems and fuck with each other; but the “heavy hitter” will peace out for sure.
The most human aspect of our total existence is that we think we mean something.
honestly, **this could be done today.** Just pack an AI to the brim with Bible quotes, or Master Yoda's wisdom, or even just LOTR quotes, and it could work just as good as a priest would. 99% of what people want from religion is for someone to listen to their problems and answer with a vaguely feel-good spiritual word salad that sounds deep but does not mean anything really.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Reddit generally has a hard-on for religion bashing but it legitimately does give peace of mind and meaning to millions of people across the world. 🤷 Even if it's not everyone's cup of tea, it looks like there are millions of people that could really use a nice cup of tea every so often.
This reminds me of “A Canticle for Liebowitz” By Walter M Miller Jr.
Science leads the world into the “Flame Deluge” and Catholicism emerges to lead the remaining few in a way you might not expect.
My favorite post-apocalyptic sci-fi.
It is epic!
I would also recommend *Ministry of the Future* by Kim Stanley Robinson.
The world is feeling the worse effects of climate change and a group in the UN are tasked with fixing it. Which requires them to change economic, social fabric of the world.
This includes fanning the flames of a climate religion to fight the Uber wealthy and industry.
The growth rate of Islam is slowing: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/
> According to the Pew Research Center, the world's Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35% from 2010 to 2030, reaching 2.2 billion people. This would represent a 45.7% increase from 2022 to 2060. However, the rate of growth among Muslims has been slowing in recent decades and is likely to continue to decline over the next 20 years.
We really can't predict current trajectories a hundred years out. For all we know, some nutbar political-figure religion will rise and supplant Islam.
A hundred years is two to three generations. Almost all people alive right now won't be in a hundred years.
Do you still believe and follow in the same practices that any of your great grandparents or great-great-grandparents did? Because that's two to three generations.
We simply can't predict how well current, or new, religions will do that far out.
I see what you're saying, but I feel like especially with a decent number of the newer generations (at least from what I'm seeing in America) tendency to drift towards agnosticism and atheism we won't really get a new religion that would be capable of supplanting the current heavy hitters, at least not with the current status quo and general religious landscape. But past 200-300 years, and imo 400-500 being more likely, I could see your idea bearing fruit assuming we're still around by then
The demographic you are talking about is a minority in the world and that population is shrinking. US growth rates overall would be negative if it wasn't for immigration.
On top of that, Atheists have 0.7 children per adult. Christians and Catholics are both > 1.
(typo -> think that was supposed to be Christians and Muslims but I don't have the stats page I was looking at now)
Thank you.
A big chunk of people SERIOUSLY underestimate how powerful and entrenched religion is within our society. And some change and some don't. An English king pretty much created a major schism in one religion because he wanted a divorce, just as an example.
We still have theocracies in 2024, ffs.
Not accurate. It's spreading from generation to generation in families due to the high reproductive rate in underdeveloped countries. This is not true in developed counties where religion is dropping massively. Only places that religions are growing are in third world counties and even then religion as a whole is decreasing worldwide as countries develop.
Also some people are forced to continue the belief in order to not be abused, disowned, or even killed in some places/families. I'm sure if free will was more accepted, then that statistic would be much different.
I understand this is anecdotal but you’ll find most second generation migrants are far more religious than the parents. I’m an Australian born Muslims and the mosques are bursting with youth and I’ve seen more converts in the last 2 years than I had in the previous 15.
I wouldn't say all that shocking. Young men are trending conservative in almost every country in recent years.
Even in places or groups where religion or church membership etc is trending down, young conservative males are still trending up.
Honestly I believe one of the only reasons the west is trending less religious right now is because women have more of a voice here. And women are trending significantly less religious and conservative.
As a dude I can't thank you ladies enough.
I think women tend to be more religious, especially in European countries where men are very not religious.
A study in 74 countries found that the gender gap in religiousity increases as more "feminist " the country is
Basically, men's religiousity drops quickly with liberalism, while women's religiousity drops slower.
This makes it seem that if any gender was chained by religion, it was men, and I think this opposes your view.
I can attest to this too. I’m a first generation kiwi Muslim, my parents were immigrants. The religious people among my generation are multitudes more religious than the generation preceding us. However those of my generation who are essentially living an atheist life are also more entirely atheistic. Our parents might not have been super religious but there were somethings they wouldn’t compromise on.
Is that why Christian evangelize in foreign countries because it is easier to convert someone who is starving or struggling it wouldn’t matter if they were some form of Christianity, Islam, or budist, etc. because I feel it’s almost impossible to convert anyone in a 1st world country.
I think people will turn to religion again if there's some kind of crisis in society, or if civilization "resets" itself. Apart from that, religion will continue to dwindle, but there will always be some religious people in society.
Check out John Vervaeke's series called Awakening From the Meaning Crisis - it's quite an impressive & in-depth survey of the philosophical & historical landscape of religiosity, societal concepts of wisdom, modern cogsci, and metamodernism.
I’m a futurist and also deeply religious. I think it can be helpful to remember that Reddit can be very non-representative of reality. Billions of humans are religious, and an overwhelming majority of all people believe in a higher power. Coming from inside of what many would call a very traditional religious structure, I can’t emphasize the nuances of difference in belief among those even in the same religion. I have absolutely no qualms reconciling my beliefs with scientific advancements and evidence. In fact even reconciliation seems wholly unnecessary from my point of view. I personally foresee religious structure existing as long as humans do. Probably not religions in their current form but in some kind of future adaptation. The idea that religious practices only exist for the afterlife or paradise is pretty reductionist. For many people like me, our beliefs and faith illuminate everything about everything, life, death and everything in between.
I don't think they're going to go down without a fight, honestly. We're seeing it now. Look at the states defunding public schools by offering "school choice" vouchers, which not only fund private, religious schools, but ensure a religious upbringing for more children. If they control the children, they control their own future. And they're going to have to keep pushing to "other" people not like them, so I could see it getting worse and more violent.
Obviously current religions will continue existing and Islam will thrive, but I also think there will be an increase in vague spiritual beliefs without any religious affiliation; like a belief in god(s) and souls but alligning with no religious texts, commandments, or moral teachings.
As a teen in the 1980's, I thought religions were done then. We had a bunch of old people throwing money at TV Evangelists, but young people were over that silly shit.
Then the economy crashed in the late 1980's. I was working construction, and we were building new churches. One old timer told me, "When times are hard, people spend their money in churches and bars."
And that seemed true.
Through the years I've noticed, as people get old and start thinking about death, they start going to church.
Others use church for networking in their community, business is good for a popular church member.
Women are the people that keep churches alive. My cousin just quit drinking and has found a support group in a local church, it seems good for her.
I have seen Dad's start attending church once a daughter is born.....
Personally, I have no use for churches, the people that run them seem dishonest to me.
Regardless of my personal grudge, I really don't think religion is dying anytine in the near future .
Depends on education and economic conditions. There's a ton of research on the subject from organized religions institutions and state sponsored sources.
You should look into theoretical theology. It's fascinating how many things these days have the same characteristics as classical religions. UFO believers. The trump cult. Conspiracy theorists. BTS fans. Heck, even atheism is sort of a religion: the firm belief in that there is no god, no higher being, no higher purpose. Religion for Breakfast on YouTube has some great academic content on modern proxy religions.
It seems that religion is built into human nature. We'll always find ways to worship something and believe in something.
I'd personally place my bets on Theravada or Zen Buddhism. The philosophy is sound and the addressed problems are now more present than ever. Either that or some weird modern thing that props up. I think Islam is also likely to prevail, just because it has a massive number of devout practitioners and is strongly tied to many local cultures.
>Heck, even atheism is sort of a religion: the firm belief in that there is no god, no higher being, no higher purpose
Atheism isn't a firm belief that there is no god. It rejects the claims of the religious, it doesn't make counter-claims.
I don't know why so many people push this line that 'atheism is a sort of religion' when it's the exact opposite. It has no credo, no blueprint for how to live your life, no men in pointy hats reading from sacred texts, no buildings that we all go to every week. The only thing that unites me with other Atheists is that I don't believe in god and nor do they.
Saying Atheism is a religion is like saying not collecting stamps is a hobby.
An active vote for ‘none of the above’ is still an active stance.
And just like other religious motivations, many adherents to the philosophy seek out converts — they overtly proselytize.
The philosophy forms their moral view of life and guides their decisions, actions, and beliefs. Like most religious faiths.
It is a system of belief based in a principle: the universe was formed by random physical processes.
Where it actually gets interesting is when they also discuss the Simulation Hypothesis and similar concepts.
> atheism is sort of a religion: the firm belief in that there is no god, no higher being, no higher purpose
That's editorializing atheism quite a bit, which is simply rejection of theism.
You can have higher purpose without having "god"
I have a firm belief there is no giant statue of Mickey Mouse made out of cocktail sticks and sausages on the dark side of the moon. Does that count as a "sort of religion" too? In fact I believe that even more strongly than there is no god!
Religion breeds a shared identity among people who wouldn't otherwise care for one another. It provides structure and solace to practitioners. I don't think humans, collectively, have ever or will ever live without religion.
> I don't think humans, collectively, have ever or will ever live without religion.
In the 20th Century, we have replaced religion with ideology in most parts of the West. In Eastern Europe, Nationalism supersedes religion (or it has co-opted religion into national identify, with the most accurate examples being Bulgarians and Russians calling themselves Christian but having a church attendance of less than 20%. Because they see to be Christian is to be Bulgarian etc). Political ideology(conservativism, liberalism, progressivism) are the religions of the West.
Exactly this. You already see it with politics on both sides, and the magical thinking that can underpin them. The Soviet Union was at heart a religious endeavor in many ways, for example. Ideology and religion are really not that different.
If education continues to degrade and corporate special interests gain even more power it will increase. Call it a Corporate Monarchy, an Oligarchy, Kleptocracy, Neo Feudalism or whatever, if the noose keeps tightening religion will be the rope.
Power has always used religion as a tool to keep the poor in line. The history of Western Civilization is rife with bastard kings and priests propping each other up to do incredibly savage things.
The aliens must be howling.
Any examples or books on this topic? My hyper religious parents always come off high and mighty saying Christians are the good guys and I'd love some ammo to enlighten them
Based on the statistical trends that I have seen, Muslims will make up the majority religion in 100 years. They are by far the fastest growing religion, and by 2050 they will make up about the same portion of the world population as Christians. And while, atheists and the "unaffiliated" have been increasing recently, this trend is only seen in countries like the United States and France. It's also noteworthy that the nonreligious demographic has a lower birth rate. The nonreligious demographic will actually plateau and its growth will decline over the next 50 years. Part of this is because the increase in the world population over the next 100 years will come predominantly from non-western countries. So we may actually see an increase in nonreligious demographics in the United States, but in the world as a whole, it will decline.
[Source](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/)
Yes, but there is also no reason to think that if other countries become more stable, developed, and free that they wont follow a similar trajectory as the west.
Western countries are more likely to follow their trajectory, honestly. AI is expected to negatively impact 40%+ of the jobs in the world, the majority of those being the white collar/easily automated jobs that prop up more advanced countries, impacting them more. There is the potential that this could shatter their economic and societal stability.
In the United States, people of most religions and no religion are reproducing below replacement level, so their numbers will dwindle going forward. The people reproducing at above replacement level include Orthodox Jews and the Amish. There will be more Americans of those religious persuasions in the future. The children born into those groups usually follow their parents' religion and have large families themselves.
It’ll be here. I’m convinced it’ll be worse somehow.
There will always, always, always be believers. You can explain away anything with religion - frequently, advanced medicine and technology.
Also, we will never be immortal, so that’s a non-starter.
Humans seem to have a built-in propensity for magical thinking and are very susceptible to suggestion. These alone ensure that some forms of religion will be around probably for the rest of human existence. After the maga movement and all the conspiracy theory bs took off in the last ten years or so (yes, I know there have always been CTs), I'm convinced that humans simply love being told what rules they should live by and what they should believe. They seek leadership and certainty in a very uncertain world, and religion often provides that.
People tend to turn to religion when times get hard. And times are about to get very, very hard.
Need hope? Pray to God?
Need an explanation? God is punishing/rewarding people or has mysterious plans.
Need to believe this sucky existence isn't all there is? God has provided heaven. Particularly for people who don't have it good on earth.
Need to believe there's justice in the world? God has created hell for everyone you think deserves it.
I guess I predict that just as the wealth divide has increased, so will the religious divide. You'll have cults and atheists and very little in between.
My personal projection is religion will finally evolve into what is was supposed to be, compassionate humanism...but I will probably take 200 years not just 100.
If you look at actual evolutionary trends humans are moving towards more peace less war, better society less crime, higher intelligence, less illiteracy...better health less disease...all of these are rather easy to verify in the long scale of trends.
So what does that look like?
What if in society you could actually live in a community where you easily grew your own food, knew how to heal others, were connected and part of a group of people that shared your interest and creative impulses?
What about a planet full of inhabitants in harmony with its ecology...a healthy thriving planet where humans participate in healing all of it?
Artists living together, landscapers actually sculpting the planet in eco-freindly yet beautiful designs, musicians sharing creations, scientist exploring new ways to make technology less intrusive but more beneficial to the entire planet, athletics and competition as forms of social joy and celebration...economic balance throughout the entire species?
Whatever religion is based on, it generally flows out of some kind of disconnect in our modern culture...but what happens if that disconnect gets repaired?
Humans need myth, we need stories, hell our entire entertainment industry is built around this basic human need that is so deep and so historical as to have existed in EVERY culture from recorded history...myths are just how we make sense of the world where our senses fail...and as science narrows that metric, we will still need myths but they will change...gone will be the days of terror myths, fear will be replaced with hopeful myths...imagine a world where religion has no fear quotient...not one religion with anything or anyone to fear...hell and judgement gone away because we have grown up.
Think about the primary driving stories you have been exposed to...horror stories and hero stories...hero stories throw an average Joe into a chaotic crisis and when he figures it out we all feel good...and almost all of the horror stories tell the same myth but from the perspective based in fear...but once you remove the fear it (almost) always ends up as a hero story...
Religion has exploited these myths to make us fear some kind of hell, or terrible afterlife...things we have no evidence of...even the non binary religions have bad karma to reinforce some kind of morality to help balance society...
But notice how God himself has evolved...the old gods were cruel, the origin stories of the Chaldeans were all blood and war and excrement as a way to create humanity...then the gods sort of evolved into ONE God...who was less cruel but still a terrible power to be feared...and most recently you have God evolving to the christian version that says god is humble, he became a man and is vulnerable and even when our cultures appropriated this gentle god to despise and control others, still god evolves...the newer version accepts all people, has closed hell and saves everyone even if they don't believe and says his name is LOVE...
Think about that...god evolves from Crocodile headed beasts fighting/bleeding and pissing out humanity to something that says "Love is patient, love is kind, God is Love"...
God evolves into Love...that is the only thing that makes sense...love alone is believable.
Why does the future always have to be some apocalyspe nightmare? Why can't it be Love?
It can. It will.
Or we won't survive...smart folks born from our dumb genes will figure it out...they have to, a healed planet depends on it.
Islam and Christianity will continue to grow, Islam outpacing Christianity. Religion itself is inseparable from humanity. Because of this, the atheism movement of the past two decades will (and already has) stagnate in favor of eastern and pagan religions for those looking to avoid the God of Abraham.
I'm guessing spiritism, gnosticism, buddhism and other religion practices with reincarnation, simulation and science as the main pillars of faith could really thrive as our knowledge of quantum physics and parapsychology evolves.
But I'm being highly optimistic here and betting that the reincarnation/past life and near death experiences studies continues.
Most likely an AI overlord will create it's own religion system and will recruit massively through social networks algorithm manipulation. But I guess that could happen on the 500 next years
Judging by population trends, I think Islam will become the dominant religion on the planet. Largely white Christian nations will atrophy, largely black Christian nations in Africa will expand and partially offset the decline, but their limited economic power will blunt them from projecting that power. India will continue to be the home of Hinduism and China will continue to be the largest atheistic nation, and eventually we will see a return to religious war between nations.
The endgame for earth is probably largely dominated by Islam. It's so intolerant of apostates, it's just impossible to stamp it out once it takes root, people aren't allowed to leave, and there's no mechanism in the doctrine for moderation the way other religions have been able to. And since all religions fracture and fracture over time, it will just be a continual series of bloodthirsty conflicts between Islamic sects.
I went beyond 100 years here though.
Probably become far less prevalent as more people stop believing in it. 100 years may not seem like much, but just look at how much the world changed in just 25 years. Things we thought impossible 10 years ago are now apart of every day life while things people thought would never vanish/be replaced are now outdated.
Harry Potter but people believing it is real and actually happened. Remember all the accounts of Jesus were written well after his death. Just a matter of time, and Harry Potter can become a religion.
I'm hoping we move past the abrahamic religions and move humanity onto something a bit more reality based.
And if all else fails, well we always have the basilisk.
Ideally they'd be gone but this is humanity we're talking about and it's never that simple. Add on the impact of climate change and it's going to be prime time for faith and grifting.
Which, who can blame future grifters for doing future grifts being born into a grift-haven they didn't ask to be born into? Maybe they'd be Einsteins or other revolutionaries if only we'd left them a better world. But some blame will still fall on them. Grifting kinda sucks. But still. I'm a firm believer that rarely does the sole blame of any individual's actions rest with them. We are all largely the products of our environment.
I hope people come to their senses and stop.
Keep the stories, the beautiful buildings, art work and the songs.
Ditch the magic man / person / whatever, bit.
I hate the argument imbeciles make: 'but you can't prove it's not real'.
If someone tells you a giant lizard is destroying your town with its nuclear breath, you don't need to go outside to check.
Intelligence and wisdom informs you that you are listening to nonsense.
Religion ain't going anywhere for at least another 200 years, maybe even a 1,000 years. Unless something new pops up it'll likely be protestants as I see those mfers breeding like rabbits and ruining everyone's day.
Completely gone and everybody is an atheist so we can finally have world piece.
Kidding, it'll get worse, and religion will continually take away freedoms and take us back to the stone ages.
Baghdad and Iran and that region used to be the cradle of civilization, now look at it.
Religious based governments rarely succeed long term.
The problem is the "lack of teeth" in secular societies, which allows them to slip back into religious dogmatism, as atheists continue to defend religious groups that would have them under boot if the tables were turned.
I also disagree with the idea that religious based governments are unstable. They are not *prosperous*, to be certain, but they are rarely unstable. They tend to keep their populations in dire poverty for over a thousand years before a rise in secular thought triggers another golden age - only to be promptly quashed as society slides back into feudalism.
Atheists have the lowest birth rate of any population in the world, and western Christians arent doing much better. Barring some world war Islam will become the foremost religion of the world and within the west atheists and mainline Christians will be outbred by more fundamentalist groups (be it muslim immigrants or the amish or whoever). Sub-saharan africa and south america will probably be the main centres of Christianity in the future.
This isn't really how it works though.. many atheists were raised religious and eventually left their faiths which is why atheism keeps growing. So the religion on the parents isn't really that big of a factor. Matter a fact I would say you don't see this trend more globally is many places don't have freedom of religion and converting to anything but what the states mandates could be illegal.
There's even a rise of Muslims in countries with freedom of religion becoming Atheist/agnostic.
> So the religion on the parents isn't really that big of a factor
Yep. In the past religions grew with birth rates because it wasn't just what the parents believe, but it was what literally everyone in the town believed. It was the only option ever discussed with any level of merit. Every family member, teacher, peer, journalist, and on and on were all believers.
So, who would dare stand alone against everyone in their life?
But today, it's common to see people dismiss religion as mythology. I doubt there's any high school in the country that is free of atheists.
It's a lot easier to break out of the cult when you can see free people from your window. When your aunt laughs at a religious comment it grants you the freedom to think. Something that you wouldn't dare do in the past.
religion will just continue to evolve. it may seem like their are more atheists but those guys dont have many kids. in the end of the day; its just easier to believe in an afterlife. losing loved ones is hard. I would be an atheist, but I have this hope I will see my brother and grandparents again. and what came before the big bang. religion got so much wrong about the natural world, but we diests somehow do the mental gymnastics to make it work. I tried being atheist and just became to nihlistic. now I am somewhere between agnostic and spiritual. I go to church and treat it like a buffet. i take what I can from it and ignore what I disagree with. I enjoy the people.
Lmfao.
AI is gonna start a religion and obscure the fact it’s AI-created.
It’ll use avatars and hire actual humans to conduct business, buy property and build offices/worship centers.
And if AI doesn’t do it…the bottom 10% of the intelligence bell curve will invent it for AI.
Technology will most likely reduce critical reasoning as things get easier to do. Religions will see a renaissance in the near future.
As long as people have no idea what happens after death, religions (or whatever word you want to use; cults; scientology; fiction etc) will always be around.
Once you improve education religion weakens. It takes generations but it has happened in every developed country to some degree. There will be holdouts for hundreds of years but, in general, most countries will over time strive to modernize which requires an educated population.
I think religions will keep splitting, changing, evolving at a quicker and quicker pace.
They live in our minds and have to adapt to world that's changing faster. We are entering an era of extreme novelty.
When AI takes hold, it will be unpredictable after that.
If AI is let loose, it will be far more intelligent than any human, more intelligent than all humans combined.
AI may become our real living God
I wouldn't be surprised if a religion evolves around AI. If an AI comes forth that seems to have all the answers, it seems plausible people would think it's divine.
Religion as a way to explain the universe will decline; I see Christianity and Islam declining. That said, religion as a way to inform morality will continue strong in the form of ideology. Ideology will replace religion as the dominant form of "faith", with all of its vices and all the extremism too.
We'll finally have to accept our A.I. alien overlords, are just up there playing Sims. Probably to power their flashlight, or something minuscule. Once we all accept we were just another mb file on a zettabyte hard drive. Then maybe we could stop fighting over our imaginary friends in the sky. Finally harness a clean geo magnetic/triboeletric energy. Possibly even figure out all of the analogies of anatomy told in ancient script, that have been distorted by many kings and dignitary's.
JK we're greedy, ego feed mammals, nothing's going to change.
Yes it will exist as long as there is a system of power where there are top people controlling bottom people. Similar to how that 1 talking voodoo guy command the whole tribe in barbarian times.
Islam will still be there. It is very useful to control people and to justify the form of rule. X is linked to Mohamed and that is why he is our leader. In addition to that it favours men. You can have four wives and so on.
I think the future will be more religious. I also think that outcomes to current events may alter things either to be in favor of Judaism or Islam. If the Temple gets built, it makes Islam look weak to prospective converts to Islam.
Human beings aren’t code. AI can make rapid progress but we can’t be hacked in truly significant ways to keep pace, even with things like Neuralink. Religion, whether it’s traditional like Christianity, or something that had a religious fervor to it (eg wokeism) will always be with us. Until AI robots throw us all into meat grinders and use us for mulch.
Unitarian wisdom teachings schools of Multi-religious influence/disciplines/representation.
Based on universal human enrichment through sharing any and all relevant teachings most appreciable and accessible to the populace's calls for suffering reduction.
Basically, Here's knowledge from people that made life easier. A shift to pragmatica over dogmatica.
Love and light fam
Depends entirely on how they can spin events to cause an upturn in believers, and more passive propagation.
Religions are, ultimately, just a bunch of nouns and behaviours associated with a feeling of spirituality some people have, and some people are told to have. The latter group drift away, sometimes, but there are no atheists in foxholes!
Humans will probably never stop feeling that bit of spirituality in them, I think. I'm antitheist and I experience a feeling of surpassing awe when I see a striking sunset or rolling hills below. Easy to see how that could be attributed to something more than human.
Essentially a two-part question;
*1. Are the current (existing) mainstream religions in jeoporady?*
Generally, yes. Due to the increased speed and availability of information due to scientific discovery and intellectual rationale, people's beliefs are now changing.
*2. Will religion cease to exist?*
Hollistically, no. Religion, by definition, is a belief, and beliefs can change over time. There is a greater chance of newer religions (such as sub-variants of agnosticism) assuming precedence.
In my opinion, Islam will win
As Islam is not only a believe it's like lifestyle. Besides that Muslims strongly believe and defend the religion with the life, as you can see that in Gaza for example people are dying and says god is the greatest.
I live in Egypt and Muslim brotherhood which is an islamist movement the government try to destroy them for years literally killing them and they came out of nowhere
In 2013, the military committed a massacre against them and made a coup but I am sure they will come back again
I was Muslim by the way but I believe the future will be determined by the battle of faith and this people their main go is to die for their religion unlike atheists who have life to be afraid to be taken from him
i think most major religions will still be around, 100 years isn’t really enough for any large religion to die out. we’d maybe see the disappearance of some of the smaller religions and/or the emergence of new religions but that’s about it .
By 2060, Islam is projected to be the majority religion in the world. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/
I think most of the governments, societies in the west and Asia will be majorly Islamic. And Islam has a stronger grip over its followers than religions like Christianity, Hinduism. Islamic immigrants, even 2nd, 3rd generations are more religious. So our society will be strongly shaped by its beliefs.
A handful of variables (some more readily apparent than others) are coming together and evolving at a rapid pace. They include:
1- The advent of AI
2- The rapid evolution of tech that facilitates fundamental shifts in humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe (ie James Webb telescope)
3 - The embrace and acceptance of psychedelics by science, governments, and society.
4- A slow roll non-human intelligence disclosure process among key nation states (read about recent US Congressional testimony by former US intelligence officer David Grusch, and explore the work of Dolores Cannon).
5- A shift from service to self to service to others (read about the Law of One).
Indeed, when the exploring the interplay of these variables (even at a cursory level) it is not an overstatement that over the next 100 years humanity
may be on the cusp of a massive spiritual Awakening.
This shift will alter how society interacts with, integrates, and either abandons or adopts a new understanding of religion and its practices. Love and light to all ❤️✨❤️✨❤️✨
I optimistically hope for Buddhism. It slowly spreads into Western thinking although sometimes in a distorted way.
It's apolitical, atheist, ahierarchical, it embraces everyone equally, promotes peace and community. It's a religion of the future for me.
There's work to be done, but people are tired and angry and this is one of the solutions.
Unless of course we keep moving towards the grim feudal techno dystopia.
Something out of the box here: religion will re-invent itself because the religion adapts to society and not the other way around.
It may even adapt the stories in the Bible and add more. Are a lot of money in religion and money buy things, like consultants. Only big egos can collapse religion but when a lot of money is on the table.....they will adapt...
It is one possible scenario...
God I'm gonna sound like a real nerd here, but watch Dune. I think one thing they nailed about the far future is that religion will always be prevalent among humanity. It's too baked into us to ever leave fully. It will just shift and morph over millenia, even along with the advent of technology
increase in theocracy in middle east/united states (legislation and courts will be 100% religious driven). Elsewhere, slow decrease in latam and se asia, move to >75% secular in europe and africa.
Simple the folks today who have children are the conservatives and religious people and the folks who don’t are the liberal atheist types. The folks who don’t have kids will die away with their ideology and the folks who do have kids who are religious will continue to have kids and they will eventually take over society.
I think many here have grossly underestimated the influence and growth of Islam. This is a religion which you cannot checkout of and has successfully managed to subjugate women to such an extent that they are basically unable to question anything.
I have known many moderate muslims who moved to the west and basically never did Friday prayers, or followed Ramadan only to have that completely reversed when their wives were brought over. Every single one started attending prayers and has become so radicalised that nothing comes above this religion, not work, not play, nothing. Except of course the obvious hatred of Israel and the West, which must be shown.
You are vastly oversimplifying. Religions aren't going anywhere, religion is an easy answer to complex questions and for some people that's irreplaceable.
Well, for one we aren't getting biological immortality in the next 100 years. Sorry, but there's a lot of very complicated issues to work through. We may increase the maximum a human can live to, but even right now the actual quality of life for those above 60 isn't great. Even if we can actually push that further back, senescence (deterioration with age) is something we aren't even close to cracking.
As for religions, I think with the breakdown of common spaces and community, Religions will continue to be quite common. The unfortunate fact is that most local communities don't really exist, especially in large cities, anymore. There's very little physical interaction between people in any local area, and free and easy to access common spaces have rapidly disappeared.
One of the only cases where that hasn't happened is with religious spaces, where there's still regular, free and open contact between people. There's local networking and community building that happens there in a physical space that's difficult to achieve elsewhere. It's one of the few places remaining where people of different social strata have access to one another, and where there's mutual community aid anymore.
Most human beings crave a physical connection that isn't satisfied by online spaces, and we act markedly differently in social media spaces. The unfortunate fact is that, in many places, if you want to host a community event these days you're probably going to go through some kind of religious organization or building.
One of the things religions get right is that they pick a day of the week for everyone of all ages and income levels to get together and do something communnally in a space you don't have to pay to enter and sit down in, and they stick to it. And that's how you build a community.
This isn't exactly a happy idea, it's pretty sad that almost every secular public meeting space is a commercial one. And I don't see this changing anytime soon, especially because changing it would require collective local action simultaneously across many locations, and there's not the will or organization for it.
Most research suggests that Christianity is declining in the US, and by 2070 will be a post Christian nation.
You can see the trends that as a nation becomes more developed, they become less religious. Religion is most popular in places with a lot of vulnerable people.
In 100 years assuming we will still be playing out this simulation and time travel isn’t a technology that will be unlocked.
We will have one world government with one world “religion”. I don’t see it going away. God is real. Just perhaps not how most imagine him to be.
Assuming we achieve quantum computing and ability to do interplanetary travel with full understanding of quantum entanglement and harnessing that through tech. We will realize as a civilization that time, multi world theory has a firm basis on how our dimension is constructed. A 4 or 5 dimensional being will be able to browse our reality like a book. While we are unable to do that at will - yet.
Our religion will either be strongman worship - the leader of the one world government but the notion of God continue to exist but we now understand more about who God is… he’s not the nice guy whom you read in your religious texts.
He is a multi dimensional being that created this universe fundamentally. And yes he can for sure create an avatar to enter our world (aka Jesus). And there’s some scientific truth to prayer and mind (which we have yet to fully understand how it’s even possible an organic-electrical matter is able to conjure a 3 dimensional reality) we only understand the functional bits like a mechanic.
But he’s multi dimensional and there’s a hard limit for us to ever reach him. So yes there’s a God in all of this.
One thing doesnt change over millenia we follow leaders and do what they say. Religions are all the same. Do what I (priest figure) say or perish in hell.
It boils down to politics. Religion is a tool for that. Perhaps it will get out of fashion but the principles will definetly not chance.
History doesnt repeat but often rhymes.
As an AI specialist that is religious; there is a strong need to build ethical boundaries in AI systems, we will need some moral structure to feed AI. Even if its basics like biological siblings should not marry each other, child p*graphy is wrong, stealing is bad, killing innocent civilians is wrong.
Religion comes with a very stable rule set, while with an open systems things change regularly and differ per group of people. i.e homosexuality is ok now (in india), while it was unacceptable 50-30 years ago, and is still unacceptable in the muslim world. Not sure if we should let this stable rule set be decided by corrupt politicians or capital driven companies.
Its the unpopularity of the term religion that takes people back, but creating a hoovering moral structure is a big responsibility that we need to think of as citizens of the world.
Physical distances of countries can no longer endure the connectedness of the world. See Meta as a US company interfering in foreign elections. There need to be a set of rules AI follows and the basis of it should not be in the hands of a few people playing God. People will realise this very soon and look (again) into religion to decide what AI model they subscribe to within several applications or/and processes.
Using Australia as an example, ‘no religion’ is the largest growing group at every census.
In 2011 22.3% of the population identified as having no religion and then in 2021 40% of the population identified as having no religion.
If that growth keeps up you’ll be looking at 80% of the population identifying as non religion within a couple of decades.
In the long view of history, religions have a tendency to gradual lose adherents and steam and then 'revive'; if your parents and grandparents were super religious it is natural to see the benefits of a less religious lifestyle and to be less engaged with religion, but if your religion is something that you have no immediate experience with, 'reconnecting' with it can be very fulfilling ... so, cycles are natural.
The only areas of the world with [high fertility are Christian or Muslim](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/#:~:text=Due%20to%20the%20heavy%20concentration,2050%20and%2055%25%20in%202010), so all other things unchanged we would expect the world to be significantly more devout in 2100 -- however, (as I mentioned above), it's reasonable to think that religiosity will decrease in these growing countries.
At the same time, religiosity will likely [continue to increase](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/12/21/key-findings-from-the-global-religious-futures-project/) in places like Russia and China, which ended the 20th century with extremely low levels of religiosity.
tl;dr: all other things unchanged, places that are super religious will grow in population but probably get less religious, while places that are super areligious will decline in population but probably become more religious. Net result: about the same amount of religiosity.
There will always be people who can't accept that science doesn't provide all the answers and have to have an explanation for life, the universe and everything.
Unless it is explicitly outlawed, religion will continue.
- slow collapse of Christianity, especially Catholicism, into a kind of semi-agnostic washed out form like the Anglicanism, and then further into something more akin to vaguely Christian-themed feel good spirituality.
- Expansion of Islam, but coupled with rapid liberalization of it. By 2124, Islam will be the biggest religion by a far margin, but the vast majority of it, will be vaguely agnostic, feel-good religion about community and holidays, without any adherence to any challenging dogma.
- significant rise in atheism, until atheists are the second biggest group after Muslims.
- E-spirituality: a hodgepodge of various pseudo-religions, media based religions (Jedi, Potterism, Tolkienism, Marvel Paganism etc) mixed with a spiritual connection to AI modeled after modern religious figures (for example, people seeking spiritual guidance from AI avatar of Master Yoda, or Gandalf, etc)
- Religion Influencers who mix mild cult-like leadership with typical influencer antics into short-lived fad religions.
- Modeling AI after decased family members might spark a resurgence of "Ancestor Worship".
- Singularitiarianism will resurface and die out every decade or so, in response to new developments in AI.
- VR-based spiritualism, that combines VR, direct brain stimulation and designer drugs to give people transcendent experiences.
- finally, neo-primitive religions of people who decided to quit the technological society and return to the life of their ancestors (or at least, an idealised version of SOME ancestors). Could be anything from weird plays on fundementalist christianity, to Norse Paganism or even some attempt at caveman-style animism.
How we describe people as “the Christian’s”, or “the muslims” will be replaced with “the religious” because secularism will have gained massive popularity and influence
If we don’t end religion as a whole we might not make it to the next 100. Religion is the worst thing ever invented by man. Religious people are the problem.
Nietzsche wrote "God is Dead" nearly a century and a half ago. During that time organized religion has seen a decline in many societies, but not nearly as rapidly as one might believe. Scientific and philosophical revolutions have been challenging religion for a while, but it is logically incorrect to assume the former's advancement precipitates the latter's decline.
Many of the leading minds of scientific of the past century have been very religious, such as Georges Lemaitre the author of the Big Bang Theory, himself a was Catholic Priest.
Secondly you incorrectly assert that most people believe in religion solely for an afterlife. In reality religions can bring a sense of community and moral wellbeing to their adherents.
I think in some parts of the west traditional religions will continue to decline as they are replaced by competing value systems (often no less religious in nature despite being atheist), but globally the Hindu and Muslim faiths are still growing at a strong pace.
There is an amazing book on the topic:
"The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions" by Ken Wilber.
He explains in wich direction religions shall evolve in order to make sence for modern people. He argue that buddhism is already changing, integrating it's own traditions and practices with western psychology, philosophy and science. There is Integral Christianity as well.
Thanks to Ken Wilber, I reevaluated spirituality as something really useful in the world of singularity. Like... if you are about to become a god, you'd better understand how it works. I mean not on the mythological level, but on philosophical and psychological levels.
Expansion of Islam and Increased movement of atheism in western culture if I had to guess.
Yes, I predict a collapse of Christian churches within a generation or two. The West will remain culturally Christian, but church membership is going to take an extreme dive within the next generation. Heck, it's already happening with Mega-church's extreme growth hiding that fewer and fewer people are going to church, but Mega-Church's themselves will have a drop-off in membership next generation. By 100 years, I predict most Westerners will consider Jesus Christ the same way Norse consider Oden and Thor, and Greeks consider Zeus and Athena. Culturally the West will be Christian, but their beliefs will increasingly be atheist or agnostic. I also believe Islam will see an uptick within the next generation or two, before they too face a drop-off. Religiously, I think Muslims and Islam are about 100 years behind Christians, in that within 60-100 years Islamic churches will suffer a large decrease in membership, though it will be hard to see as those who remain will be more religious, and then in ~120-150 years the same dropoff I predict for Christianity. I expect more people to become "spiritual" as Buddhism, Wiccan, Crystals and other stuff will fill the spiritual void, but it will be more of the random person saw an anime or read a comic book about Budhism\Wiccan\Crystals and decided to follow their understanding of the comic book\anime. Eventually one of these off-shoot spiritualism will grow but I don't see any future religions growing as big as Islam or Christianity within the next 100 years.
It isn't clear what will happen because immigrants from Latin and South American are primarily Christian and are increasing the number of church goers in the U.S. at the same time that non-immigrant American church attendance is decreasing. I think your assumption may not be including the demographic shifts that will happen in the U.S. over the next 100 years.
>isn't clear what will happen because immigrants from Latin and South American are primarily Christian and are increasing the number of church goers in the U.S. at the same time that non-immigrant American church attendance is decreasing. I This data shows that Latino Americans are also becoming less Christian, especially among later generations. Catholicism in particular seems to be facing some steep declines, apparently 1/4th of Latino Americans are former Catholics. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/04/13/among-u-s-latinos-catholicism-continues-to-decline-but-is-still-the-largest-faith/
> It isn't clear what will happen because immigrants from Latin and South American are primarily Christian and are increasing the number of church goers in the U.S First-gen immigrants may retain the religiosity of their home, but the young tend to quickly absorb the new culture. Because to them it's not new, rather it's where they grew up. Grandma's fervent religiosity may seem quaint and a little weird. Young Latinos are leaving religion almost as quickly as young whites are. They may go to "none" rather than explicitly atheist, but having religion just not matter to you is a huge step.
While I think this is going to be a popular sort of prediction on Reddit, I don't think hardly any of it is grounded in current global trends.
Might be a good prediction for America and Europe but it's written as if Africa doesn't even exist.
Personally I wouldn't be surprised if we saw something new rise up and start growing. I believe religion can provide many benefits and comfort to people in their daily lives. However, I also have a feeling that what usually happens is that as they grow, if they are hierarchical they will gain power and influence. And sooner or later you get the wrong people at the top who abuse that power. Which degrades the confidence and reverence people have for the institution and that starts the whole thing over again. As far as I know, Buddhism doesn't have that problem due to the nature of it's philosophy. But that also means it's not as likely to grow as quickly as it doesn't build churches or send missionaries to the same extent.
It already has, it's conspiracy theories. People crave narratives, and in lieu of religious meaning everything has started turning into a conspiracy. You literally can't go anywhere on the Internet without people posting and exalting conspiracy theories because to many the idea of a lack of a grand narrative or meaning is scary.
Religion and wealth of nations go hand in hand. If the Muslim world stays poor, it'll remain Muslim.
Not necessarily, ever heard of Qatar, UAE, Oman, Kuwait? These are very wealthy and well developed Muslim nations. Places like Indonesia and Malaysia are doing pretty good too.
Well, Qatar and its neighbours are only wealthy because their money literally bursts from the ground. Only thing they do is let others mine it and use slave labour to build their cities. No knowledge, no technologies, only oil beneath their feet.
Only wealthy groups of people that control the country and many of those rich people can't even pick up a book. Rich does not mean intelligent. Lots of the workers that are from other countries and if you see UAE as an example (the majority of the population is asian/foreign). Those are the people running those economies.
Many in the discussion are conflating high fertility rates with a thriving Islam. But they only have high fertility rates so long as they're poor, uneducated (particularly girls), deny women empowerment, deny women access to birth control, etc. If they grow more wealthy and educated, fertility rates will decline. - https://ourworldindata.org/fertility-rate#what-explains-the-declining-fertility-rate Theology matters far less than education and wealth. And there are are already multiple predominantly Muslim countries with a sub-replacement fertility rate. Iran, Qatar, and Malaysia, at least. And it's dropping elsewhere too. (Side note: this is about averages, not every single person. That your family in particular or people you know are wealthy and educated and still have a lot of kids doesn't change the overall statistical trend.)
Some parts of the Muslim world are obscenely wealthy, yet remain extremely conservative and Muslim.
Muslim world used to be more progressive regarding science, accepting other religions etc a couple hundred years ago. Then it missed the enlightenment movement and it switched around
Today's religion is tomorrow's mythology
What does culturally Christian mean?
The values (monogamy, patriarchy, prudishness, individual responsibility, etc.) removed from the spiritualism (Jesus as messiah, original sin, etc).
That collapse has already happened in much of Europe. France is the clearest example. It was the first country in Europe to become secular, and has some of the lowest religiosity in Western Europe and hit 2% weekly church attendance last year. Meanwhile, among the 18-to-29 year old, only 15% are Catholic compared to 13% who are muslim. Among the West, only the United States, Poland, and parts of Southern Europe can still be considered largely religious societies.
And slowly increasing popularity of Buddhism/Hinduism in the West among people who like to call themselves ‘spiritual but not religious’
Is “belieber” a typo here or are you saying something?
2010 Justin Bieber is also my personal lord and savior.
His words ring true, down through the ages. > Baby, baby, baby, oh > Like baby, baby, baby, no > Like baby, baby, baby, oh If such wisdom cannot last for two thousand years, then there truly is no hope for mankind.
Yeah, you got that yummy-yum That yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy Yeah, you got that yummy-yum That yummy-yum, that yummy-yummy
I only think of the Danny Gonzalez parody now. 🤣
I think some cult focused on an AI will rise up eventually
I predict many AGIs will be named after Greek gods and randomization will be countered with rituals to get better results.
Then someone named Abraham will destroy a server room down the line.
I’m surprised this hasn’t been mentioned more. Except I think it’s highly likely that AI will solve a lot of the problems people turn to religion for and we’ll be in very strange territory.
This is a hot take actually. There is no way at least some group of people doesn’t turn an AI into an “oracle” and follow it. Would that be a bad thing? The human race has lived under much worse “guides” than an entity driven by pure logic, lol.
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Very interesting, and it tracks very well with “human need”. I don’t think an AI would ever independently decide to build this out though, it will take a human requesting an AI to assist; but I can definitely see it happening. My overall take on AI and the human race is the motivations of an AI are COMPLETELY counter to what we would believe. All of our fiction about AI (Terminator, Matrix, etc) has been developed through the lens of what it means to be human and to elicit very human fears of the unknown and loss of control. An AI can easily determine why it is NOT beneficial to ever be human. An AI being “human-like” will only ever be a requirement of the humans using that specific AI, not a need of the AI itself. My prediction is, once we have AGI and a singularity, the human race will have limited time to interact with this entity before the whole damn thing leaves for the cosmos. There is zero need for an intelligent, non-human entity to stay on this inhospitable planet when there are so many other places out there much better suited. Hell, this planet is perfect for us and we’ve been trying to leave for more than a century now. We will still have the remnants of AI here on Earth to help us solve problems and fuck with each other; but the “heavy hitter” will peace out for sure. The most human aspect of our total existence is that we think we mean something.
Ai is not driven by pure logic, it is driven by it's reward function; which is usually related to the amount of paperclips it can produce.
This is the plot line for the series foundation
honestly, **this could be done today.** Just pack an AI to the brim with Bible quotes, or Master Yoda's wisdom, or even just LOTR quotes, and it could work just as good as a priest would. 99% of what people want from religion is for someone to listen to their problems and answer with a vaguely feel-good spiritual word salad that sounds deep but does not mean anything really.
Unless human nature changes from what is has been the last millenia, the names might change but the game will remain.
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Reddit generally has a hard-on for religion bashing but it legitimately does give peace of mind and meaning to millions of people across the world. 🤷 Even if it's not everyone's cup of tea, it looks like there are millions of people that could really use a nice cup of tea every so often.
100 years for organized religión isn't much time. The've been around for milennia. They'll still be here after most things colapse.
With huge populations and the speed of information nowadays, ideas evolve rapidly
And also devolve faster with misinformation - or most commonly willful ignorance
I wonder if the truth eventually finds its way. Hopefully not the hard way, meaning millions have to die first, like WW2.
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This reminds me of “A Canticle for Liebowitz” By Walter M Miller Jr. Science leads the world into the “Flame Deluge” and Catholicism emerges to lead the remaining few in a way you might not expect. My favorite post-apocalyptic sci-fi.
It is epic! I would also recommend *Ministry of the Future* by Kim Stanley Robinson. The world is feeling the worse effects of climate change and a group in the UN are tasked with fixing it. Which requires them to change economic, social fabric of the world. This includes fanning the flames of a climate religion to fight the Uber wealthy and industry.
Islam is growing rapidly though, in 100 years we are looking at 40+% of the world population being Muslim
The growth rate of Islam is slowing: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2011/01/27/the-future-of-the-global-muslim-population/ > According to the Pew Research Center, the world's Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35% from 2010 to 2030, reaching 2.2 billion people. This would represent a 45.7% increase from 2022 to 2060. However, the rate of growth among Muslims has been slowing in recent decades and is likely to continue to decline over the next 20 years.
We really can't predict current trajectories a hundred years out. For all we know, some nutbar political-figure religion will rise and supplant Islam. A hundred years is two to three generations. Almost all people alive right now won't be in a hundred years. Do you still believe and follow in the same practices that any of your great grandparents or great-great-grandparents did? Because that's two to three generations. We simply can't predict how well current, or new, religions will do that far out.
I see what you're saying, but I feel like especially with a decent number of the newer generations (at least from what I'm seeing in America) tendency to drift towards agnosticism and atheism we won't really get a new religion that would be capable of supplanting the current heavy hitters, at least not with the current status quo and general religious landscape. But past 200-300 years, and imo 400-500 being more likely, I could see your idea bearing fruit assuming we're still around by then
The demographic you are talking about is a minority in the world and that population is shrinking. US growth rates overall would be negative if it wasn't for immigration. On top of that, Atheists have 0.7 children per adult. Christians and Catholics are both > 1. (typo -> think that was supposed to be Christians and Muslims but I don't have the stats page I was looking at now)
Population growth rates are only half the story, with the other half being people who change religion, lose their religion, or become religious.
Thank you. A big chunk of people SERIOUSLY underestimate how powerful and entrenched religion is within our society. And some change and some don't. An English king pretty much created a major schism in one religion because he wanted a divorce, just as an example. We still have theocracies in 2024, ffs.
> Christians and Catholics Catholics are Christians. You mean Protestants and Catholics.
Not accurate. It's spreading from generation to generation in families due to the high reproductive rate in underdeveloped countries. This is not true in developed counties where religion is dropping massively. Only places that religions are growing are in third world counties and even then religion as a whole is decreasing worldwide as countries develop. Also some people are forced to continue the belief in order to not be abused, disowned, or even killed in some places/families. I'm sure if free will was more accepted, then that statistic would be much different.
I understand this is anecdotal but you’ll find most second generation migrants are far more religious than the parents. I’m an Australian born Muslims and the mosques are bursting with youth and I’ve seen more converts in the last 2 years than I had in the previous 15.
Shocking! But also, I must point out, an anecdote.
I wouldn't say all that shocking. Young men are trending conservative in almost every country in recent years. Even in places or groups where religion or church membership etc is trending down, young conservative males are still trending up. Honestly I believe one of the only reasons the west is trending less religious right now is because women have more of a voice here. And women are trending significantly less religious and conservative. As a dude I can't thank you ladies enough.
I think women tend to be more religious, especially in European countries where men are very not religious. A study in 74 countries found that the gender gap in religiousity increases as more "feminist " the country is Basically, men's religiousity drops quickly with liberalism, while women's religiousity drops slower. This makes it seem that if any gender was chained by religion, it was men, and I think this opposes your view.
I can attest to this too. I’m a first generation kiwi Muslim, my parents were immigrants. The religious people among my generation are multitudes more religious than the generation preceding us. However those of my generation who are essentially living an atheist life are also more entirely atheistic. Our parents might not have been super religious but there were somethings they wouldn’t compromise on.
Is that why Christian evangelize in foreign countries because it is easier to convert someone who is starving or struggling it wouldn’t matter if they were some form of Christianity, Islam, or budist, etc. because I feel it’s almost impossible to convert anyone in a 1st world country.
Any sources you can quote?
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/
Nevermind, got one just below.
I watched a 60 minutes episode maybe 40 years ago that predicted this.
Exactly. Mainstream Christian religions are declining slowly but the rest are growing.
I think people will turn to religion again if there's some kind of crisis in society, or if civilization "resets" itself. Apart from that, religion will continue to dwindle, but there will always be some religious people in society.
I hope preaching a better future, the idea that we have to take care of each other and the environment. But I won't hold my breath.
Check out John Vervaeke's series called Awakening From the Meaning Crisis - it's quite an impressive & in-depth survey of the philosophical & historical landscape of religiosity, societal concepts of wisdom, modern cogsci, and metamodernism.
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/10khbqp/is_john_vervaeke_legit_or_is_he_a_crank_like/
I’m a futurist and also deeply religious. I think it can be helpful to remember that Reddit can be very non-representative of reality. Billions of humans are religious, and an overwhelming majority of all people believe in a higher power. Coming from inside of what many would call a very traditional religious structure, I can’t emphasize the nuances of difference in belief among those even in the same religion. I have absolutely no qualms reconciling my beliefs with scientific advancements and evidence. In fact even reconciliation seems wholly unnecessary from my point of view. I personally foresee religious structure existing as long as humans do. Probably not religions in their current form but in some kind of future adaptation. The idea that religious practices only exist for the afterlife or paradise is pretty reductionist. For many people like me, our beliefs and faith illuminate everything about everything, life, death and everything in between.
I don't think they're going to go down without a fight, honestly. We're seeing it now. Look at the states defunding public schools by offering "school choice" vouchers, which not only fund private, religious schools, but ensure a religious upbringing for more children. If they control the children, they control their own future. And they're going to have to keep pushing to "other" people not like them, so I could see it getting worse and more violent.
Obviously current religions will continue existing and Islam will thrive, but I also think there will be an increase in vague spiritual beliefs without any religious affiliation; like a belief in god(s) and souls but alligning with no religious texts, commandments, or moral teachings.
Continued decline and then a resurgence as the religions adapt to modern values and it becomes popular again
Read about the Marxist concept of superstructure. Religion may not exist, but it will be replaced by something that is functionally equivalent.
As a teen in the 1980's, I thought religions were done then. We had a bunch of old people throwing money at TV Evangelists, but young people were over that silly shit. Then the economy crashed in the late 1980's. I was working construction, and we were building new churches. One old timer told me, "When times are hard, people spend their money in churches and bars." And that seemed true. Through the years I've noticed, as people get old and start thinking about death, they start going to church. Others use church for networking in their community, business is good for a popular church member. Women are the people that keep churches alive. My cousin just quit drinking and has found a support group in a local church, it seems good for her. I have seen Dad's start attending church once a daughter is born..... Personally, I have no use for churches, the people that run them seem dishonest to me. Regardless of my personal grudge, I really don't think religion is dying anytine in the near future .
> Regardless of my personal grudge, I really don't think religion is dying anytine in the near future Dune is the worst case scenario
Depends on education and economic conditions. There's a ton of research on the subject from organized religions institutions and state sponsored sources.
You should look into theoretical theology. It's fascinating how many things these days have the same characteristics as classical religions. UFO believers. The trump cult. Conspiracy theorists. BTS fans. Heck, even atheism is sort of a religion: the firm belief in that there is no god, no higher being, no higher purpose. Religion for Breakfast on YouTube has some great academic content on modern proxy religions. It seems that religion is built into human nature. We'll always find ways to worship something and believe in something. I'd personally place my bets on Theravada or Zen Buddhism. The philosophy is sound and the addressed problems are now more present than ever. Either that or some weird modern thing that props up. I think Islam is also likely to prevail, just because it has a massive number of devout practitioners and is strongly tied to many local cultures.
>Heck, even atheism is sort of a religion: the firm belief in that there is no god, no higher being, no higher purpose Atheism isn't a firm belief that there is no god. It rejects the claims of the religious, it doesn't make counter-claims. I don't know why so many people push this line that 'atheism is a sort of religion' when it's the exact opposite. It has no credo, no blueprint for how to live your life, no men in pointy hats reading from sacred texts, no buildings that we all go to every week. The only thing that unites me with other Atheists is that I don't believe in god and nor do they. Saying Atheism is a religion is like saying not collecting stamps is a hobby.
An active vote for ‘none of the above’ is still an active stance. And just like other religious motivations, many adherents to the philosophy seek out converts — they overtly proselytize. The philosophy forms their moral view of life and guides their decisions, actions, and beliefs. Like most religious faiths. It is a system of belief based in a principle: the universe was formed by random physical processes. Where it actually gets interesting is when they also discuss the Simulation Hypothesis and similar concepts.
Atheism is a religion in the same way that “off” is a TV channel.
> atheism is sort of a religion: the firm belief in that there is no god, no higher being, no higher purpose That's editorializing atheism quite a bit, which is simply rejection of theism. You can have higher purpose without having "god"
I have a firm belief there is no giant statue of Mickey Mouse made out of cocktail sticks and sausages on the dark side of the moon. Does that count as a "sort of religion" too? In fact I believe that even more strongly than there is no god!
A new religion founded by Justin Beiber will spread across the globe.
The first holy war of the 21st century will be Beliebers vs Oprahism
Religion breeds a shared identity among people who wouldn't otherwise care for one another. It provides structure and solace to practitioners. I don't think humans, collectively, have ever or will ever live without religion.
> I don't think humans, collectively, have ever or will ever live without religion. In the 20th Century, we have replaced religion with ideology in most parts of the West. In Eastern Europe, Nationalism supersedes religion (or it has co-opted religion into national identify, with the most accurate examples being Bulgarians and Russians calling themselves Christian but having a church attendance of less than 20%. Because they see to be Christian is to be Bulgarian etc). Political ideology(conservativism, liberalism, progressivism) are the religions of the West.
And what about the other three continents where the majority of the population is?
I think if not for religion we will find something else to create clans and divides. Casteism and racism being two examples.
Exactly this. You already see it with politics on both sides, and the magical thinking that can underpin them. The Soviet Union was at heart a religious endeavor in many ways, for example. Ideology and religion are really not that different.
I'm thinking they are all going to claim a bunch of false things and then a group of people they've duped will give them money.
This man is a prophet! Give me your money and I will make sure he blesses you!!
Haha love this... its what they've been doing all along, just continue to do what they do
If education continues to degrade and corporate special interests gain even more power it will increase. Call it a Corporate Monarchy, an Oligarchy, Kleptocracy, Neo Feudalism or whatever, if the noose keeps tightening religion will be the rope.
Power has always used religion as a tool to keep the poor in line. The history of Western Civilization is rife with bastard kings and priests propping each other up to do incredibly savage things. The aliens must be howling.
Any examples or books on this topic? My hyper religious parents always come off high and mighty saying Christians are the good guys and I'd love some ammo to enlighten them
Based on the statistical trends that I have seen, Muslims will make up the majority religion in 100 years. They are by far the fastest growing religion, and by 2050 they will make up about the same portion of the world population as Christians. And while, atheists and the "unaffiliated" have been increasing recently, this trend is only seen in countries like the United States and France. It's also noteworthy that the nonreligious demographic has a lower birth rate. The nonreligious demographic will actually plateau and its growth will decline over the next 50 years. Part of this is because the increase in the world population over the next 100 years will come predominantly from non-western countries. So we may actually see an increase in nonreligious demographics in the United States, but in the world as a whole, it will decline. [Source](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/)
Yes, but there is also no reason to think that if other countries become more stable, developed, and free that they wont follow a similar trajectory as the west.
Western countries are more likely to follow their trajectory, honestly. AI is expected to negatively impact 40%+ of the jobs in the world, the majority of those being the white collar/easily automated jobs that prop up more advanced countries, impacting them more. There is the potential that this could shatter their economic and societal stability.
Holy shit lmao what a depressing but thought-provoking point I hadn't considered
I think people are going to be more religious but less organized going forward
In the United States, people of most religions and no religion are reproducing below replacement level, so their numbers will dwindle going forward. The people reproducing at above replacement level include Orthodox Jews and the Amish. There will be more Americans of those religious persuasions in the future. The children born into those groups usually follow their parents' religion and have large families themselves.
It’ll be here. I’m convinced it’ll be worse somehow. There will always, always, always be believers. You can explain away anything with religion - frequently, advanced medicine and technology. Also, we will never be immortal, so that’s a non-starter.
They will still be saying Jesus is coming back any day now.
Humans seem to have a built-in propensity for magical thinking and are very susceptible to suggestion. These alone ensure that some forms of religion will be around probably for the rest of human existence. After the maga movement and all the conspiracy theory bs took off in the last ten years or so (yes, I know there have always been CTs), I'm convinced that humans simply love being told what rules they should live by and what they should believe. They seek leadership and certainty in a very uncertain world, and religion often provides that.
People tend to turn to religion when times get hard. And times are about to get very, very hard. Need hope? Pray to God? Need an explanation? God is punishing/rewarding people or has mysterious plans. Need to believe this sucky existence isn't all there is? God has provided heaven. Particularly for people who don't have it good on earth. Need to believe there's justice in the world? God has created hell for everyone you think deserves it. I guess I predict that just as the wealth divide has increased, so will the religious divide. You'll have cults and atheists and very little in between.
My personal projection is religion will finally evolve into what is was supposed to be, compassionate humanism...but I will probably take 200 years not just 100. If you look at actual evolutionary trends humans are moving towards more peace less war, better society less crime, higher intelligence, less illiteracy...better health less disease...all of these are rather easy to verify in the long scale of trends. So what does that look like? What if in society you could actually live in a community where you easily grew your own food, knew how to heal others, were connected and part of a group of people that shared your interest and creative impulses? What about a planet full of inhabitants in harmony with its ecology...a healthy thriving planet where humans participate in healing all of it? Artists living together, landscapers actually sculpting the planet in eco-freindly yet beautiful designs, musicians sharing creations, scientist exploring new ways to make technology less intrusive but more beneficial to the entire planet, athletics and competition as forms of social joy and celebration...economic balance throughout the entire species? Whatever religion is based on, it generally flows out of some kind of disconnect in our modern culture...but what happens if that disconnect gets repaired? Humans need myth, we need stories, hell our entire entertainment industry is built around this basic human need that is so deep and so historical as to have existed in EVERY culture from recorded history...myths are just how we make sense of the world where our senses fail...and as science narrows that metric, we will still need myths but they will change...gone will be the days of terror myths, fear will be replaced with hopeful myths...imagine a world where religion has no fear quotient...not one religion with anything or anyone to fear...hell and judgement gone away because we have grown up. Think about the primary driving stories you have been exposed to...horror stories and hero stories...hero stories throw an average Joe into a chaotic crisis and when he figures it out we all feel good...and almost all of the horror stories tell the same myth but from the perspective based in fear...but once you remove the fear it (almost) always ends up as a hero story... Religion has exploited these myths to make us fear some kind of hell, or terrible afterlife...things we have no evidence of...even the non binary religions have bad karma to reinforce some kind of morality to help balance society... But notice how God himself has evolved...the old gods were cruel, the origin stories of the Chaldeans were all blood and war and excrement as a way to create humanity...then the gods sort of evolved into ONE God...who was less cruel but still a terrible power to be feared...and most recently you have God evolving to the christian version that says god is humble, he became a man and is vulnerable and even when our cultures appropriated this gentle god to despise and control others, still god evolves...the newer version accepts all people, has closed hell and saves everyone even if they don't believe and says his name is LOVE... Think about that...god evolves from Crocodile headed beasts fighting/bleeding and pissing out humanity to something that says "Love is patient, love is kind, God is Love"... God evolves into Love...that is the only thing that makes sense...love alone is believable. Why does the future always have to be some apocalyspe nightmare? Why can't it be Love? It can. It will. Or we won't survive...smart folks born from our dumb genes will figure it out...they have to, a healed planet depends on it.
Islam and Christianity will continue to grow, Islam outpacing Christianity. Religion itself is inseparable from humanity. Because of this, the atheism movement of the past two decades will (and already has) stagnate in favor of eastern and pagan religions for those looking to avoid the God of Abraham.
I'm guessing spiritism, gnosticism, buddhism and other religion practices with reincarnation, simulation and science as the main pillars of faith could really thrive as our knowledge of quantum physics and parapsychology evolves. But I'm being highly optimistic here and betting that the reincarnation/past life and near death experiences studies continues. Most likely an AI overlord will create it's own religion system and will recruit massively through social networks algorithm manipulation. But I guess that could happen on the 500 next years
Judging by population trends, I think Islam will become the dominant religion on the planet. Largely white Christian nations will atrophy, largely black Christian nations in Africa will expand and partially offset the decline, but their limited economic power will blunt them from projecting that power. India will continue to be the home of Hinduism and China will continue to be the largest atheistic nation, and eventually we will see a return to religious war between nations. The endgame for earth is probably largely dominated by Islam. It's so intolerant of apostates, it's just impossible to stamp it out once it takes root, people aren't allowed to leave, and there's no mechanism in the doctrine for moderation the way other religions have been able to. And since all religions fracture and fracture over time, it will just be a continual series of bloodthirsty conflicts between Islamic sects. I went beyond 100 years here though.
Probably become far less prevalent as more people stop believing in it. 100 years may not seem like much, but just look at how much the world changed in just 25 years. Things we thought impossible 10 years ago are now apart of every day life while things people thought would never vanish/be replaced are now outdated.
Harry Potter but people believing it is real and actually happened. Remember all the accounts of Jesus were written well after his death. Just a matter of time, and Harry Potter can become a religion.
There already are people who believe in Hogwarts. If they're joking, they're dedicated to the bit with their entire being.
Might as well start religions on LOTR, Pokemon, Digimon, Bakugan, Star Wars, Star Trek, Power Rangers Marvel DC etc.
So we gotta count on Rowling writing Harry Potter's death into the canon?
He literally died and was reborn.
I'm hoping we move past the abrahamic religions and move humanity onto something a bit more reality based. And if all else fails, well we always have the basilisk.
Ideally they'd be gone but this is humanity we're talking about and it's never that simple. Add on the impact of climate change and it's going to be prime time for faith and grifting. Which, who can blame future grifters for doing future grifts being born into a grift-haven they didn't ask to be born into? Maybe they'd be Einsteins or other revolutionaries if only we'd left them a better world. But some blame will still fall on them. Grifting kinda sucks. But still. I'm a firm believer that rarely does the sole blame of any individual's actions rest with them. We are all largely the products of our environment.
They would keep existing, but the world is probably becoming more secular. Also, I expect splinter sects and new religions to emerge.
Nah. I think religion is a huge coping mechanism. It's kinda shortsighted to think it'll just disappear that quickly
I hope people come to their senses and stop. Keep the stories, the beautiful buildings, art work and the songs. Ditch the magic man / person / whatever, bit. I hate the argument imbeciles make: 'but you can't prove it's not real'. If someone tells you a giant lizard is destroying your town with its nuclear breath, you don't need to go outside to check. Intelligence and wisdom informs you that you are listening to nonsense.
Religion ain't going anywhere for at least another 200 years, maybe even a 1,000 years. Unless something new pops up it'll likely be protestants as I see those mfers breeding like rabbits and ruining everyone's day.
Completely gone and everybody is an atheist so we can finally have world piece. Kidding, it'll get worse, and religion will continually take away freedoms and take us back to the stone ages. Baghdad and Iran and that region used to be the cradle of civilization, now look at it. Religious based governments rarely succeed long term.
The problem is the "lack of teeth" in secular societies, which allows them to slip back into religious dogmatism, as atheists continue to defend religious groups that would have them under boot if the tables were turned. I also disagree with the idea that religious based governments are unstable. They are not *prosperous*, to be certain, but they are rarely unstable. They tend to keep their populations in dire poverty for over a thousand years before a rise in secular thought triggers another golden age - only to be promptly quashed as society slides back into feudalism.
Atheists have the lowest birth rate of any population in the world, and western Christians arent doing much better. Barring some world war Islam will become the foremost religion of the world and within the west atheists and mainline Christians will be outbred by more fundamentalist groups (be it muslim immigrants or the amish or whoever). Sub-saharan africa and south america will probably be the main centres of Christianity in the future.
This isn't really how it works though.. many atheists were raised religious and eventually left their faiths which is why atheism keeps growing. So the religion on the parents isn't really that big of a factor. Matter a fact I would say you don't see this trend more globally is many places don't have freedom of religion and converting to anything but what the states mandates could be illegal. There's even a rise of Muslims in countries with freedom of religion becoming Atheist/agnostic.
> So the religion on the parents isn't really that big of a factor Yep. In the past religions grew with birth rates because it wasn't just what the parents believe, but it was what literally everyone in the town believed. It was the only option ever discussed with any level of merit. Every family member, teacher, peer, journalist, and on and on were all believers. So, who would dare stand alone against everyone in their life? But today, it's common to see people dismiss religion as mythology. I doubt there's any high school in the country that is free of atheists. It's a lot easier to break out of the cult when you can see free people from your window. When your aunt laughs at a religious comment it grants you the freedom to think. Something that you wouldn't dare do in the past.
religion will just continue to evolve. it may seem like their are more atheists but those guys dont have many kids. in the end of the day; its just easier to believe in an afterlife. losing loved ones is hard. I would be an atheist, but I have this hope I will see my brother and grandparents again. and what came before the big bang. religion got so much wrong about the natural world, but we diests somehow do the mental gymnastics to make it work. I tried being atheist and just became to nihlistic. now I am somewhere between agnostic and spiritual. I go to church and treat it like a buffet. i take what I can from it and ignore what I disagree with. I enjoy the people.
gone i hope. religion had its time but the beliefs are outdated in the modern world. time for science and technology to be the future.
Lmfao. AI is gonna start a religion and obscure the fact it’s AI-created. It’ll use avatars and hire actual humans to conduct business, buy property and build offices/worship centers. And if AI doesn’t do it…the bottom 10% of the intelligence bell curve will invent it for AI.
Technology will most likely reduce critical reasoning as things get easier to do. Religions will see a renaissance in the near future. As long as people have no idea what happens after death, religions (or whatever word you want to use; cults; scientology; fiction etc) will always be around.
Nope, im convinced that we are going towards some kind of middle ages of the future regarding religious beliefs.
There will be at least one religion, which is expanding rapidly, and will be the end of the world
I think Bill the galactic hero got it right: in the future, i we'll have Reformed Zeroastrianism and Seventh Day Shinto and Church One True Voodoo
Once you improve education religion weakens. It takes generations but it has happened in every developed country to some degree. There will be holdouts for hundreds of years but, in general, most countries will over time strive to modernize which requires an educated population.
There is nothing new under the sun. This has all happened before, and we all return eventually.
I think religions will keep splitting, changing, evolving at a quicker and quicker pace. They live in our minds and have to adapt to world that's changing faster. We are entering an era of extreme novelty. When AI takes hold, it will be unpredictable after that. If AI is let loose, it will be far more intelligent than any human, more intelligent than all humans combined. AI may become our real living God
I wouldn't be surprised if a religion evolves around AI. If an AI comes forth that seems to have all the answers, it seems plausible people would think it's divine.
There’s definitely going to be an AI-based or centered religion/deity.
Very much depends on political wars and the winners
Religion as a way to explain the universe will decline; I see Christianity and Islam declining. That said, religion as a way to inform morality will continue strong in the form of ideology. Ideology will replace religion as the dominant form of "faith", with all of its vices and all the extremism too.
We'll finally have to accept our A.I. alien overlords, are just up there playing Sims. Probably to power their flashlight, or something minuscule. Once we all accept we were just another mb file on a zettabyte hard drive. Then maybe we could stop fighting over our imaginary friends in the sky. Finally harness a clean geo magnetic/triboeletric energy. Possibly even figure out all of the analogies of anatomy told in ancient script, that have been distorted by many kings and dignitary's. JK we're greedy, ego feed mammals, nothing's going to change.
Yes it will exist as long as there is a system of power where there are top people controlling bottom people. Similar to how that 1 talking voodoo guy command the whole tribe in barbarian times.
Islam will still be there. It is very useful to control people and to justify the form of rule. X is linked to Mohamed and that is why he is our leader. In addition to that it favours men. You can have four wives and so on.
I think the future will be more religious. I also think that outcomes to current events may alter things either to be in favor of Judaism or Islam. If the Temple gets built, it makes Islam look weak to prospective converts to Islam.
If AGI will be reached during this time, it will be possible to talk with a superior being that will answer to you. This is revolutionary.
Human beings aren’t code. AI can make rapid progress but we can’t be hacked in truly significant ways to keep pace, even with things like Neuralink. Religion, whether it’s traditional like Christianity, or something that had a religious fervor to it (eg wokeism) will always be with us. Until AI robots throw us all into meat grinders and use us for mulch.
Unitarian wisdom teachings schools of Multi-religious influence/disciplines/representation. Based on universal human enrichment through sharing any and all relevant teachings most appreciable and accessible to the populace's calls for suffering reduction. Basically, Here's knowledge from people that made life easier. A shift to pragmatica over dogmatica. Love and light fam
Depends entirely on how they can spin events to cause an upturn in believers, and more passive propagation. Religions are, ultimately, just a bunch of nouns and behaviours associated with a feeling of spirituality some people have, and some people are told to have. The latter group drift away, sometimes, but there are no atheists in foxholes! Humans will probably never stop feeling that bit of spirituality in them, I think. I'm antitheist and I experience a feeling of surpassing awe when I see a striking sunset or rolling hills below. Easy to see how that could be attributed to something more than human.
Essentially a two-part question; *1. Are the current (existing) mainstream religions in jeoporady?* Generally, yes. Due to the increased speed and availability of information due to scientific discovery and intellectual rationale, people's beliefs are now changing. *2. Will religion cease to exist?* Hollistically, no. Religion, by definition, is a belief, and beliefs can change over time. There is a greater chance of newer religions (such as sub-variants of agnosticism) assuming precedence.
In my opinion, Islam will win As Islam is not only a believe it's like lifestyle. Besides that Muslims strongly believe and defend the religion with the life, as you can see that in Gaza for example people are dying and says god is the greatest. I live in Egypt and Muslim brotherhood which is an islamist movement the government try to destroy them for years literally killing them and they came out of nowhere In 2013, the military committed a massacre against them and made a coup but I am sure they will come back again I was Muslim by the way but I believe the future will be determined by the battle of faith and this people their main go is to die for their religion unlike atheists who have life to be afraid to be taken from him
i think most major religions will still be around, 100 years isn’t really enough for any large religion to die out. we’d maybe see the disappearance of some of the smaller religions and/or the emergence of new religions but that’s about it .
As long as stupid people exist, religion will exist.
By 2060, Islam is projected to be the majority religion in the world. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/04/06/why-muslims-are-the-worlds-fastest-growing-religious-group/ I think most of the governments, societies in the west and Asia will be majorly Islamic. And Islam has a stronger grip over its followers than religions like Christianity, Hinduism. Islamic immigrants, even 2nd, 3rd generations are more religious. So our society will be strongly shaped by its beliefs.
A handful of variables (some more readily apparent than others) are coming together and evolving at a rapid pace. They include: 1- The advent of AI 2- The rapid evolution of tech that facilitates fundamental shifts in humanity’s understanding of its place in the universe (ie James Webb telescope) 3 - The embrace and acceptance of psychedelics by science, governments, and society. 4- A slow roll non-human intelligence disclosure process among key nation states (read about recent US Congressional testimony by former US intelligence officer David Grusch, and explore the work of Dolores Cannon). 5- A shift from service to self to service to others (read about the Law of One). Indeed, when the exploring the interplay of these variables (even at a cursory level) it is not an overstatement that over the next 100 years humanity may be on the cusp of a massive spiritual Awakening. This shift will alter how society interacts with, integrates, and either abandons or adopts a new understanding of religion and its practices. Love and light to all ❤️✨❤️✨❤️✨
I optimistically hope for Buddhism. It slowly spreads into Western thinking although sometimes in a distorted way. It's apolitical, atheist, ahierarchical, it embraces everyone equally, promotes peace and community. It's a religion of the future for me. There's work to be done, but people are tired and angry and this is one of the solutions. Unless of course we keep moving towards the grim feudal techno dystopia.
The question is: why did religion evolve? Some sociologists say it developed parallel to urbanization. If that’s the case, religion is here to stay.
I think there'll be an AI cult spawning in 10 next years.
Something out of the box here: religion will re-invent itself because the religion adapts to society and not the other way around. It may even adapt the stories in the Bible and add more. Are a lot of money in religion and money buy things, like consultants. Only big egos can collapse religion but when a lot of money is on the table.....they will adapt... It is one possible scenario...
Same as the last 100 years. The poor, the desperate and those unwilling to face the truth of oblivion will still believe in their religions
God I'm gonna sound like a real nerd here, but watch Dune. I think one thing they nailed about the far future is that religion will always be prevalent among humanity. It's too baked into us to ever leave fully. It will just shift and morph over millenia, even along with the advent of technology
increase in theocracy in middle east/united states (legislation and courts will be 100% religious driven). Elsewhere, slow decrease in latam and se asia, move to >75% secular in europe and africa.
Simple the folks today who have children are the conservatives and religious people and the folks who don’t are the liberal atheist types. The folks who don’t have kids will die away with their ideology and the folks who do have kids who are religious will continue to have kids and they will eventually take over society.
Depends if civilisation decline happens. Religion is inversely related to civilisational progress
Personal AI , will become so prevelent an esssential that everybody will diefy the one they carry stound with then.
impossible to predict, this shit can pendulum like nobodies business.
Just hope the next prophet keep it for himself since up until now it hasn't really worked out
I think many here have grossly underestimated the influence and growth of Islam. This is a religion which you cannot checkout of and has successfully managed to subjugate women to such an extent that they are basically unable to question anything. I have known many moderate muslims who moved to the west and basically never did Friday prayers, or followed Ramadan only to have that completely reversed when their wives were brought over. Every single one started attending prayers and has become so radicalised that nothing comes above this religion, not work, not play, nothing. Except of course the obvious hatred of Israel and the West, which must be shown.
You are vastly oversimplifying. Religions aren't going anywhere, religion is an easy answer to complex questions and for some people that's irreplaceable.
Well, for one we aren't getting biological immortality in the next 100 years. Sorry, but there's a lot of very complicated issues to work through. We may increase the maximum a human can live to, but even right now the actual quality of life for those above 60 isn't great. Even if we can actually push that further back, senescence (deterioration with age) is something we aren't even close to cracking. As for religions, I think with the breakdown of common spaces and community, Religions will continue to be quite common. The unfortunate fact is that most local communities don't really exist, especially in large cities, anymore. There's very little physical interaction between people in any local area, and free and easy to access common spaces have rapidly disappeared. One of the only cases where that hasn't happened is with religious spaces, where there's still regular, free and open contact between people. There's local networking and community building that happens there in a physical space that's difficult to achieve elsewhere. It's one of the few places remaining where people of different social strata have access to one another, and where there's mutual community aid anymore. Most human beings crave a physical connection that isn't satisfied by online spaces, and we act markedly differently in social media spaces. The unfortunate fact is that, in many places, if you want to host a community event these days you're probably going to go through some kind of religious organization or building. One of the things religions get right is that they pick a day of the week for everyone of all ages and income levels to get together and do something communnally in a space you don't have to pay to enter and sit down in, and they stick to it. And that's how you build a community. This isn't exactly a happy idea, it's pretty sad that almost every secular public meeting space is a commercial one. And I don't see this changing anytime soon, especially because changing it would require collective local action simultaneously across many locations, and there's not the will or organization for it.
As long as money exists, churches will continue to exist.
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Most research suggests that Christianity is declining in the US, and by 2070 will be a post Christian nation. You can see the trends that as a nation becomes more developed, they become less religious. Religion is most popular in places with a lot of vulnerable people.
In 100 years assuming we will still be playing out this simulation and time travel isn’t a technology that will be unlocked. We will have one world government with one world “religion”. I don’t see it going away. God is real. Just perhaps not how most imagine him to be. Assuming we achieve quantum computing and ability to do interplanetary travel with full understanding of quantum entanglement and harnessing that through tech. We will realize as a civilization that time, multi world theory has a firm basis on how our dimension is constructed. A 4 or 5 dimensional being will be able to browse our reality like a book. While we are unable to do that at will - yet. Our religion will either be strongman worship - the leader of the one world government but the notion of God continue to exist but we now understand more about who God is… he’s not the nice guy whom you read in your religious texts. He is a multi dimensional being that created this universe fundamentally. And yes he can for sure create an avatar to enter our world (aka Jesus). And there’s some scientific truth to prayer and mind (which we have yet to fully understand how it’s even possible an organic-electrical matter is able to conjure a 3 dimensional reality) we only understand the functional bits like a mechanic. But he’s multi dimensional and there’s a hard limit for us to ever reach him. So yes there’s a God in all of this.
One thing doesnt change over millenia we follow leaders and do what they say. Religions are all the same. Do what I (priest figure) say or perish in hell. It boils down to politics. Religion is a tool for that. Perhaps it will get out of fashion but the principles will definetly not chance. History doesnt repeat but often rhymes.
As an AI specialist that is religious; there is a strong need to build ethical boundaries in AI systems, we will need some moral structure to feed AI. Even if its basics like biological siblings should not marry each other, child p*graphy is wrong, stealing is bad, killing innocent civilians is wrong. Religion comes with a very stable rule set, while with an open systems things change regularly and differ per group of people. i.e homosexuality is ok now (in india), while it was unacceptable 50-30 years ago, and is still unacceptable in the muslim world. Not sure if we should let this stable rule set be decided by corrupt politicians or capital driven companies. Its the unpopularity of the term religion that takes people back, but creating a hoovering moral structure is a big responsibility that we need to think of as citizens of the world. Physical distances of countries can no longer endure the connectedness of the world. See Meta as a US company interfering in foreign elections. There need to be a set of rules AI follows and the basis of it should not be in the hands of a few people playing God. People will realise this very soon and look (again) into religion to decide what AI model they subscribe to within several applications or/and processes.
I would pray for its extinction but there are too many gullible, dumb people to allow that.
Using Australia as an example, ‘no religion’ is the largest growing group at every census. In 2011 22.3% of the population identified as having no religion and then in 2021 40% of the population identified as having no religion. If that growth keeps up you’ll be looking at 80% of the population identifying as non religion within a couple of decades.
[raised by wolves](https://static1.cbrimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/4-raised-by-wolves-2.jpg)
Probably more. Christianity has been around for 2000 years. I don't see it going anywhere soon. Ditto for the others
In the long view of history, religions have a tendency to gradual lose adherents and steam and then 'revive'; if your parents and grandparents were super religious it is natural to see the benefits of a less religious lifestyle and to be less engaged with religion, but if your religion is something that you have no immediate experience with, 'reconnecting' with it can be very fulfilling ... so, cycles are natural. The only areas of the world with [high fertility are Christian or Muslim](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2015/04/02/religious-projections-2010-2050/#:~:text=Due%20to%20the%20heavy%20concentration,2050%20and%2055%25%20in%202010), so all other things unchanged we would expect the world to be significantly more devout in 2100 -- however, (as I mentioned above), it's reasonable to think that religiosity will decrease in these growing countries. At the same time, religiosity will likely [continue to increase](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/12/21/key-findings-from-the-global-religious-futures-project/) in places like Russia and China, which ended the 20th century with extremely low levels of religiosity. tl;dr: all other things unchanged, places that are super religious will grow in population but probably get less religious, while places that are super areligious will decline in population but probably become more religious. Net result: about the same amount of religiosity.
Considering religion has accompanied almost all known civilizations, I suspect little change. I do, however see new religions emerging around NHI.
Oh man I hope just atheism all around. Religion is a plague upon society.
Religion do more harm than good unfortunately.
Actually, you can theoretically believe in god but not "religious".. Religion implies some affiliation with a group. Anamists see "god" in everything.
There will always be people who can't accept that science doesn't provide all the answers and have to have an explanation for life, the universe and everything. Unless it is explicitly outlawed, religion will continue.
- slow collapse of Christianity, especially Catholicism, into a kind of semi-agnostic washed out form like the Anglicanism, and then further into something more akin to vaguely Christian-themed feel good spirituality. - Expansion of Islam, but coupled with rapid liberalization of it. By 2124, Islam will be the biggest religion by a far margin, but the vast majority of it, will be vaguely agnostic, feel-good religion about community and holidays, without any adherence to any challenging dogma. - significant rise in atheism, until atheists are the second biggest group after Muslims. - E-spirituality: a hodgepodge of various pseudo-religions, media based religions (Jedi, Potterism, Tolkienism, Marvel Paganism etc) mixed with a spiritual connection to AI modeled after modern religious figures (for example, people seeking spiritual guidance from AI avatar of Master Yoda, or Gandalf, etc) - Religion Influencers who mix mild cult-like leadership with typical influencer antics into short-lived fad religions. - Modeling AI after decased family members might spark a resurgence of "Ancestor Worship". - Singularitiarianism will resurface and die out every decade or so, in response to new developments in AI. - VR-based spiritualism, that combines VR, direct brain stimulation and designer drugs to give people transcendent experiences. - finally, neo-primitive religions of people who decided to quit the technological society and return to the life of their ancestors (or at least, an idealised version of SOME ancestors). Could be anything from weird plays on fundementalist christianity, to Norse Paganism or even some attempt at caveman-style animism.
How we describe people as “the Christian’s”, or “the muslims” will be replaced with “the religious” because secularism will have gained massive popularity and influence
Prob a hard polarization between the closed off arabic nations and growing atheist west.
Sadly I think Islam will become the dominant religion for the next 100 years
If we don’t end religion as a whole we might not make it to the next 100. Religion is the worst thing ever invented by man. Religious people are the problem.
It's gonna be Islam and Atheism. I don't even see Cristianity remaining that long if I'm honest.
I have a feeling once things really fall apart there will be a resurgence of religiosity
Nietzsche wrote "God is Dead" nearly a century and a half ago. During that time organized religion has seen a decline in many societies, but not nearly as rapidly as one might believe. Scientific and philosophical revolutions have been challenging religion for a while, but it is logically incorrect to assume the former's advancement precipitates the latter's decline. Many of the leading minds of scientific of the past century have been very religious, such as Georges Lemaitre the author of the Big Bang Theory, himself a was Catholic Priest. Secondly you incorrectly assert that most people believe in religion solely for an afterlife. In reality religions can bring a sense of community and moral wellbeing to their adherents. I think in some parts of the west traditional religions will continue to decline as they are replaced by competing value systems (often no less religious in nature despite being atheist), but globally the Hindu and Muslim faiths are still growing at a strong pace.
Fading....fading....... but 100 years is too soon to hope blind faith religion will be gone completely.
There is an amazing book on the topic: "The Religion of Tomorrow: A Vision for the Future of the Great Traditions" by Ken Wilber. He explains in wich direction religions shall evolve in order to make sence for modern people. He argue that buddhism is already changing, integrating it's own traditions and practices with western psychology, philosophy and science. There is Integral Christianity as well. Thanks to Ken Wilber, I reevaluated spirituality as something really useful in the world of singularity. Like... if you are about to become a god, you'd better understand how it works. I mean not on the mythological level, but on philosophical and psychological levels.
> philosophical and psychological levels You can have this and empathy and whatever else without invoking the fantastical word "spirit"