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LINK BBC - Future - Tomorrow’s Gods: What is the future of religion?

“Throughout history, people’s faith and their attachments to religious institutions have transformed, argues Sumit Paul-Choudhury. So what’s next?”

skado 9 Aug 2
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12 comments

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A bloody long article, but interesting, and I'm pleased to have been introduced to the Deep Civilisation page that it comes from. That's my toilet reading sorted for the next few weeks – thank you.

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There were humans long before there were gods...we did alright.

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All hail the robot overlords !!!

2

New gods? Greed,exceptionalism and super humans... apologies,you know that 🤔

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Just what I thought. Jesus has a hollow head.

Looks like he might have lost his head altogether!

0

If gods and the supernatural do not exist, then like anything that does not exist, they are blank unwritten tablets. Therefore you can write on them anything you wish, and they can pretend to fulfill any need you wish, and they are because of that limitless in scope and variation, and can be endlessly reinvented, and so also can most of human culture. Is it therefore any wonder, they can be so easily and cheaply made and marketed by pretenders ?

In the novel Moby Dick, the cabin boy falls over the side of the boat and is left floating in the empty ocean for several hours, without sight of land or ship. When he is found it is discovered that several hours without being able to touch anything solid, locate himself, know where anything else is or which way he is facing, have sent him quite mad. This is a good a metaphor for humans trapped in the cultures which they make for themselves. Like spiders caught in their own webs they can not touch the sides or escape, or find contact with objective reality. Which is why the anti-cultural element of science is so valuable, it main defining feature and perhaps our only hope.

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I couldn't help but think in terms of idealism expressed as ideologies.

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More of the same but different I expect!

1

online video games.

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Satoshi will be worshipped. Bitcoin followers will search far and wide for his presence. A new bitcoin sect will appear destroying the fiat money system one by one.

All hail the paperless society and the anonymous(pseudonymous?) future.

Oh and BTW... For me -- praise Cthulhu! 😈

@RichCC I remember when computers first came out, all you heard was "paperless society"...now, 3 decades later, not so much.....

@AnneWimsey true but businesses have been getting rid of paper contracts slowly. We still have stores that takes checks🙄. Lol

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Gee really? China, India, thousands of years of civilization with masses of "small" gods, all European civilizations and South America ditto, Greeks, Romans with their pantheons......WTH are you talking about?

All will change. Evolution isn't confined to genes. Everything evolves. Continents move. Religion does not have a special exemption

@Petter still do not know what you are talking about...the thread posited a single strong gawd was the key to a major society, and I think my post refuted that idea......

@AnneWimsey Precisely. All will change. A major society will evolve where the myth of an invisible "head of state" is no longer needed for control of society. Truth, as in Science, will take its place.

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i do not believe that for an instant. so many other factors also allowed the formation of societies made up of strangers, among them encountering other groups and merging, independent of big-god religion; the need to hunt efficiently; the survival instinct that expanded to include the kind of organization required by and at the same time enabled by large groups/societies. god more likely developed from the large groups than the other way around.

g

Don’t forget the unifying effects of beer!

@Haemish1 i don't drink beer and yet for some reason i do not live in a cave. go figure.

g

@genessa
There has been conjecture that the desire for beer/alcohol was key to developing agriculture and civilization.

@Haemish1 since i have not myself developed either of those thing, and do not drink beer, that may be true.

g

@Haemish1 ,
especially hoppy craft beer.

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