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Peter Gerdes's avatar

Several points

1) The ability of religion to perpetuate itself depends on it's continued relevance to people's lives. Given the inherent conservativity of established religions I wonder if they will be able to make the necessery adaptations to stay relevant during the coming radical cultural and social shifts brought on by computers and telecommunications.

2) Yes, obviously religious beliefs aren't really the same sort of beliefs as 'the loan shark will break my legs in a year if I can't pay him back' as demonstrated by our much weaker response to the punishment of hell. Of course there are always some true believers but they are a small minority.

However, it's unfair to critisize the atheist for speaking as if religious beliefs were no different than any other kind of belief since this is how religious people insist they mean it. Atheists are unpopular enough as it is if they told people they don't really believe what they say so should stop using the misleading terminology they would only generate more anger.

3) I'm quite skeptical that early man had some deeply more satisfying religious experience as the quotes suggest.

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In particular I suspect that religious belief, pushed by the need to have respectful views of contradictory faiths, will simply become less and less propositional over time and more openly symbolic/metaphorical. In another 200 years I wouldn't be surprised if religious belief was more a kind of cultural identification mixed with simple superstition (if I pray/whatever I will have a good day) than anything resembling a belief system.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

"It seems to me that religion will handily win this contest for a long time to come."

Religion is losing that contest, i.e., the contest of the dialectic. (The religious are deconverted at a higher rate the irreligious converted.) The contest religion is winning is the contest of reproductivity. So the barrier to a secular transformation isn't transaction costs but breeding dynamics.

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