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boston_acc t1_ix9hrh3 wrote

Reply to comment by Reasonable_Move9518 in So uh… are these Jehovahs Witnesses at the T stations ever going to go away? by jWalkerFTW

Yeah, unfortunately memetics doesn’t work in our favor here. Religions that have ideas condoning spreadability and “till I die”-adherence are the ones that will climb highest in the race for frequency (I could’ve phrased that better but yeah).

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Reasonable_Move9518 t1_ix9lat9 wrote

Also add in religions that favor high birthrates...

I think Dune got it right... the far future of humanity will be more religious not less, due to "spreadability", fervency, and higher birthrates in religious vs. secular communities.

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boston_acc t1_ixa17mb wrote

At least once a population becomes embedded in secularism, it’s exceedingly hard to revert back. Maybe not governmentally (see Iran 1979) but for the population itself. I don’t think we’ve seen an example of that in history (not least because widespread secularism is new) but I could be wrong. Religion needs parents to propagate down the generations, so once you cut that off, it withers and withers. Most religions throughout history have not a trace left.

Anyway that’s just my philosophical rambling.

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THE_Killa_Vanilla t1_ixcs056 wrote

Agree with a lot of what you said here, but I think we need to re-evaluate our idea of what "religion" in modern society.

Simplify religion to a "shared set of core beliefs + principles by a group that reinforces a specific view of the world", shift the focus from theism to cultural homogeny, and you can see the "new religions" forming. We see it on both the right and left, think MAGA/Trumpism or "woke"/anti-racist cultures.

There are tons of similarities between conventional religion and these new cultural belief systems. Religion isn't dying, it's just transforming. At the end of the day people still need a framework to view the world and make sense of things.

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