If you look at Scandinavia, you see that wealth, well being and contentment/ happiness lead to less religion. It might not be a valid conclusion, just my thought.

No hopes . As long as people not in good terms with death , sickness , loss , the religion crutch and " hope " will continue to infect us .

The general, overall trend is for it to diminish. To become more dilute in the sense of less doctrinaire, less authoritarian, less rigid, less literal. That has already been going on for several generations. I think that fundamentalism will become a marginalized fringe movement within the next four generations. The rest of it will cease to be a major influence much later, probably on the order of centuries.

I don't foresee religion ever being 100% erased from society. There will always be at least a few people passing through, or stuck in, a magical thinking phase of development. And there will always be hucksters to fleece them.

Northern Europe is mostly secular, so I think it is possible.

I think religion will diminish. It'll likely take 300 years (assuming we haven't destroyed ourselves) as we gain more scientific knowledge.

Th trends show that with more information/education, income and wealth, stable society and rational thinking religion reduces. In northern Europe this is very much the case but a strong reduction in birth rate also follow. The world population is growing mostly in poorer religious regions. I don't have the statistics but I would not be surprised if the percentage of religious people in the world is growing.

The future trend depends lot on the growth of income and distribution of wealth and providing education. Unfortunately it's not clear which way it will go. Like always we will know afterwards......

It fluctuates in cycles. People on this website often say that religion is diminishing, but that is exactly what they said 50 years ago in the 60's with the Death of God movement. Then a reaction set in and it got stronger again. People tend to get more religious when they feel insecure and threatened. Sometimes it doesn't even take that much. Religion got stronger around the year 2000 just because it was the end of the millennium. Just wait until climate change becomes a serious threat and you will see the no-atheist-in-a-foxhole (or waterhole) syndrome rear its head.

Religion is moribund, finally on the way out. Many great scientists thought it was a goner after the evolutionary synthesis in the '20s when genetics was discovered. I always enjoyed Theodocius Dubzanski's line: Any book or philosophy formulated before 1859 should be discarded. Richard Dawkins said the something similar after he published The Selfish Gene.

I think religion will be a constant. People have a need to be lead or to believe in something. We’ve had thousands of religions in the past and I’m sure there will be thousands more.

Secularism has increased over the years and I do not see any convincing reason why this would stop or decline. I suppose people may start perceiving a more Jung like approach to religion increasingly before a title like atheism can be attached to them. The way Jordan Peterson talks about it. I'm not entirely convinced religion will be eradicated in it's true sense but I'm willing to pre-suppose my former statement.

As the world becomes increasingly educated, the periods or age(s) of reason and secularism progress, and religion fades. As Kenneman, of Barna Religious Research, says only 4% of young adults now believe in Satan & judgment. Since the Southern Baptist Convention says, "If you don't believe in Satan, you're not a 'biblical worldview' Christian. Ergo, in twenty years, churches will be museums and fitness centers.

Atheists and agnostics seem to think all these young adults will fall into their groups. However, it's just not the case. Atheism/agnosticism can't seem to break the 4% statistical glass ceiling. So where are young adults headed?

Parade Magazine published a poll in Oct. 2009 finding that 24% of the population had migrated to Spiritualism. And it's been growing since then. They're still theists, but they've rejected patronistic brimstone religion that they see as utterly out of touch with the contemporary free wheeling perspective of the cosmos. Spiritualism is not religion because, as apologist Ravi Zacharias criticizes, it's a "gelatinous belief system lacking consistent structure," individually created by each person according to his/her beliefs.

I'm convinced that the greatest cause of the shift from religion to spiritualism was the 1975 secular revelation by Dr. Raymond Moody of the Near Death Experience. (NDE) Churches have been quietly convulsing over the fact that the church's brimstone/judgment scenario has been abandoned by most for the NDE scenario of passing into a serene and blissful state while being drawn into a bright, loving light while being helped by friends and family. The Southern Baptist Convention has forbade Baptists to associate with the NDE scenario, as being, "antithetical to scripture." It follows because if Christians stop fearing judgment and hell, why would anyone need the church to save them?

I dream of a time when the whole idea of God/s is a thing of the past. Although I doubt it will happen for another 2000-3000 years. And there will be a billion more pointless deaths in stupid wars based in delusional ideologies before that day comes.

Stronger.
We're heading towards a disaster. Probably a combination of global warming, overpopulation, pestilence and economic crashes.

Look at how superstitious and stupid people are now with all the fruits of scientific discovery at their fingertips. Imagine how stupid they will be when they are starving, sickly and dying with no real hope. Imagine what ridiculous crap they will cling to when things are hard.

As human knowledge increases, the need for a supernatural explanation diminishes and the absurdity of traditional fairy tales as truth becomes obvious. Human progress = Irrelevancy of human religion.

Old data but trending in the right direction:

[pewforum.org]

i have no idea, nor any stake in it, really. people may believe what they will. stupid ideas are not limited to religion. there will always be stupid people. the trick is to get people to stop trying to legislate, execute and adjudicate religion. if that happens, even door knockers won't bother us as much.

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One on hand, the internet has fostered an environment where people are exposed to new and controversial ideas that their immediate social environment simply doesn't provide them. This I believe causes religion to decline to a certain degree.

On the other, population growth currently causes religion to grow. Every child that grows up indoctrinated into religion has a chance of passing that religion onto their children. More children equals more religion being passed on to the next generation.

It's hard to say which one will win out, but I'm hopeful that as education and the world in general gets better, less and less of those children will end up passing those beliefs onward. There's two main things that I think diminish religion the best, and those are better education and creating a better world for us all to live in.

I want it to end. It probably won't. I don't mind the Canadian Aboriginal religions, and I bet theirs others like it. But most are shit.

How can there be a future after the rapture. REmember only the golden will go to heaven and we mortals will burn in hell.

I think it will diminish. There has already studies done on it. Hopefully our community will out number the religious fools one day. I hear France is an atheist country and to my knowledge they are doing fine with out the religious bs.

Organized religion is such a controversy to begin with, I have always been curious to find out all I can before even starting to begin an opinion. with christianity it's a little different, while never actually being one, I have been involved with several of their denominations if you will. knowing that it started in and around the roman empire based on a person with a good heart but surrounded with the mysticism of a ancient fairy tale. One should expect that if a person could do those sorts of things, the whole world would have known about it over a period of time. (short) 1 - 2 years at that time in history. no news does not travel fast then we all know that but it does travel. and only in a very narrow of a region was this known and no actually roman documents to show it is a fact. only some simple references by writers that do not directly name him but show a parallel to someone like him. and conspiracy theories abound, no direct reference in the dead sea scrolls either but they were perhaps written before his time... not sure. I just look at it as a whole, using scare tactics to make you do things, ie: give money to our church or you will go to hell. yikes! so fortunate that I do not buy into that type of a control system.

We often see what we want to see.It is a mixed situation depending on where one is located in the world.Religion will always be with us as many millions of people have a visceral need to believe in a higher power not of this world but in some extra terrestrial dimension which can only be imagined.Apart from the substantive urge to believe in the above and beyond in the hope there is eternal life, religion can act as a strong social bond to make its adherents feel they belong to a group who share values from a common source.The symbol of the Christian cross or the call of the muezzin can bring tears of hope to those whose secular often mundane lives are enhanced by religion whatever we sceptics may think of such sentiments.Even in China where freedom to worship is subject to strict conditions believers are willing to jump through all the necessary hoops to avoid being denied the right to worship.It will be a long time before religion is history.

Disappearing
modern slavemen looking for new thing