The next Pope will "not" be the last Pope, nevertheless, the demise of religious institutions has

The Catholic church, the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire, is changing by default of its inability to change with modern times. The church has always been slow having only recently (in human years) given into the reality that the earth and the church is not the center of the universe and that the earth revolves around the sun, as do endless billions of other planets around endless billions of other suns inside of an infinite never ending universe. Science barely grasps such a phenomenon and is not looking forward to having to rewrite all of its books concerning astronomy and physics.

All religious institutions are on their way out; having peeked in the Twenty Century they now struggle to keep members against the increasing tide and onslaught of the information age...unleashed by the Internet. Knowledge does set minds and people free. It is a slow process and will take time but it has begun.

reply to post by sleeper

All religious institutions are on their way out; having peeked in the Twenty Century they now struggle to keep members against the increasing tide and onslaught of the information age...unleashed by the Internet. Knowledge does set minds and people free. It is a slow process and will take time but it has begun.

One doesn't need to look very far to see what this glorious age of information has wrought. Kids coming out of school today can barely use an ink pen, much less find their way on a map. Violence in schools is is still rising and our answer so far has been to pin the tail on an inanimate object.

People who do go to college can find themselves in debt for the first third of their lives, even if they land a rare, good job. Parenting skills have all but disappeared as children are raised like machines, babysitted either by strangers in cold, childcare day centers or in front of a video screen seeing how many cars they can steal or how much cyber blood they can spill.

Faith on god... any god at all is indeed being challenged but the trade off has not led to anything positive. As a culture, we have discarded our moral compass, choosing to avoid taking responsibilities for ourselves, our behaviors or that of our children. Right and wrong don't carry much weight any more. If it makes you feel good, you just do it and anyone hurt along the way can be damned.

I'll call your demise of faith and raise you a future that won't be worth living to see.

Best

John Paul II increased the churches numbers by large margins. Repercussions from abuse set in shortly after his death when scandals from during and before his reign came to light. The church has suffered a number of people that walked away from it in recent years but it gains ground with other countries and people that are newly exposed.

With over a billion catholics worldwide, I don't see it vanishing any time soon.

If the church changes its policy for priests to wed, perhaps it can get rid of the weirdos that apply for tenure.

In any case, I see large mosques, orthodox churches and other meeting places being built in my local cities and the surrounding ones, with war and death comes people looking for religious salvation, and there is never a shortage of war and death.

It won't vanish overnight and it will never vanish entirely. Churches prey on weaknesses and turn them into perceived strengths for the people that follow. We will always have people who want to blindly follow something that makes them feel not so overwhelmed by all the negative things around us.

reply to post by redoubt


Out of chaos comes order. And out of order, chaos. Never ending progression towards something...

Right now it's chaos towards new world order. Then chaos again aftersome time. It's the natural order of things i believe

Originally posted by redoubt
reply to post by sleeper

 

All religious institutions are on their way out; having peeked in the Twenty Century they now struggle to keep members against the increasing tide and onslaught of the information age...unleashed by the Internet. Knowledge does set minds and people free. It is a slow process and will take time but it has begun.

One doesn't need to look very far to see what this glorious age of information has wrought. Kids coming out of school today can barely use an ink pen, much less find their way on a map. Violence in schools is is still rising and our answer so far has been to pin the tail on an inanimate object.

People who do go to college can find themselves in debt for the first third of their lives, even if they land a rare, good job. Parenting skills have all but disappeared as children are raised like machines, babysitted either by strangers in cold, childcare day centers or in front of a video screen seeing how many cars they can steal or how much cyber blood they can spill.

Faith on god... any god at all is indeed being challenged but the trade off has not led to anything positive. As a culture, we have discarded our moral compass, choosing to avoid taking responsibilities for ourselves, our behaviors or that of our children. Right and wrong don't carry much weight any more. If it makes you feel good, you just do it and anyone hurt along the way can be damned.

I'll call your demise of faith and raise you a future that won't be worth living to see.

Best

I agree, but there is no shortage of righteous religious people burning in the hells of ignorance and atheist rejoicing in the halls of integrity. The world is far from heading into oblivion and will prosper to higher levels of economic prosperity in the coming years, decades, and centuries; but as always, and under every system of government religious or secular, not all of the people will prosper. Most of those people being trapped in archaic economic and religious indoctrinated Third World Countries.

reply to post by sleeper


“Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”


― Émile Zola


Darn wish I came up with that.

Originally posted by boncho
John Paul II increased the churches numbers by large margins. Repercussions from abuse set in shortly after his death when scandals from during and before his reign came to light. The church has suffered a number of people that walked away from it in recent years but it gains ground with other countries and people that are newly exposed.

With over a billion catholics worldwide, I don't see it vanishing any time soon.

If the church changes its policy for priests to wed, perhaps it can get rid of the weirdos that apply for tenure.

In any case, I see large mosques, orthodox churches and other meeting places being built in my local cities and the surrounding ones, with war and death comes people looking for religious salvation, and there is never a shortage of war and death.

It won't vanish overnight and it will never vanish entirely. Churches prey on weaknesses and turn them into perceived strengths for the people that follow. We will always have people who want to blindly follow something that makes them feel not so overwhelmed by all the negative things around us.

The church needs to stop being hypocritical when it comes to sex, and the "god" given right to have sex.

True, Islam is the fastest growing and no slowing down in sight religion in every country still. Nevertheless, it too will fade away.

What will not fade away is war and death, which is part of what life is all about on this planet...hate, and mostly caused by "envy", the greatest of all evils. And death, well, that's the only way off this rock, if only temporarily.

reply to post by boymonkey74


"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
- Albert Einstein

Originally posted by redoubt
reply to post by boymonkey74

 

"It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity."
- Albert Einstein

That can be taken in more than one relative way Perhaps Einstein never visited a Third World Country. Most people on this planet live without technology, and live as animals, drink filthy water, no sewage, few if any schools, no hospitals, no grocery stores, and none of the things that make life half way decent. Most people have no technology and live in mind numbing poverty as they did hundreds of years ago in the Dark Ages.

I know, most people in western society are not aware of what is going on in the rest of the world.

Originally posted by boymonkey74
reply to post by sleeper

 

“Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”


― Émile Zola


Darn wish I came up with that.

So...what are you going to replace it with?

Humans think in the abstract most of the time and to do away with religion is to also suggest we don't think in the abstract anymore...

I don't care what you call it, but it will always be there.... Seems today many put their new faith into aliens...

reply to post by Xtrozero


God should be a personal feeling, why do we need another person to tell us who God is? with searching you can find him/her/it yourself.
Religion is man made and other peoples idea of God which they mess up to use it as a tool for control and to make money.
You can be a believer and I do not mind anyone believing what I do not like is people trying to brainwash others to join their club and all those people who threaten Hell etc If you disagree.
We as humans are just inteligent apes, how can we even comprehend God? we can try but Priests etc talk like they know and lets face it we do not.
Just reading about what organized Religion has done over the years sickens me, The OP is right many people are just finding their own way nowadays, I do see a future without all the major Religions and that future is bright that future is humanities next step.

Originally posted by Xtrozero

Originally posted by boymonkey74
reply to post by sleeper

 

“Civilization will not attain to its perfection until the last stone from the last church falls on the last priest.”


― Émile Zola


Darn wish I came up with that.

So...what are you going to replace it with?

Humans think in the abstract most of the time and to do away with religion is to also suggest we don't think in the abstract anymore...

I don't care what you call it, but it will always be there.... Seems today many put their new faith into aliens...

If you look at the roots of "all" religions, they were created by "aliens", beings from the sky that came down and indoctrinated humans.

reply to post by sleeper

The church has always been slow having only recently (in human years) given into the reality that the earth and the church is not the center of the universe and that the earth revolves around the sun, as do endless billions of other planets around endless billions of other suns inside of an infinite never ending universe. Science barely grasps such a phenomenon and is not looking forward to having to rewrite all of its books concerning astronomy and physics.

What the hell are you talking about??

Science is ever evolving because of new discoveries new theories proven and unproven, etc.

There are countless re-writes in science books and journals just to keep up.

the church is not the center of the universe and that the earth revolves around the sun, as do endless billions of other planets around endless billions of other suns inside of an infinite never ending universe

Duh

Science has nothing to do with the church. And you say science can't handle the fact that there are billions of galaxies?

Who do you think produced that information in the first place????

FFS

A complete lack of worldwide communications was most likely largely responsible for the original creation and expansion of religious beliefs in the first place.

It is inevitable that the ever-increasing simplicity of communicating in this day and age will continuously weaken the church daily.

The only thing that could prevent this continuous weakening, and re-strengthen the church, would be for God to show himself. (Don't hold your breath)









reply to post by boncho

Originally posted by boncho

The church has suffered a number of people that walked away from it in recent years but it gains ground with other countries and people that are newly exposed.

That is a limited amount though. There are only so many countries(or areas) on this Planet. Eventually, there will no longer be any countries/people that are newly exposed.

Whether good or bad, all things eventually come to an end.

The interesting part to religion is that humans are not very nice anyway you look at it, and even with religion no matter how pure it may seem in philosophy in practice it runs the full bar of good acts align with doctrine to extremely evil acts that are also aligned with doctrine.

Another part that I find interesting is that most religions do rest on a moral foundation and is basically Man working towards a common good, but when religion is removed Man has a tendency to really show just how bad we can get. I would say we are the most vicious animal on the planet and our intellect struggles with that.

This part that I fear is when the last remittance of religion is wiped out what will humans be like then? Given that we are an extremely vicious animal I don't see a very rosy picture.

reply to post by sleeper

All religious institutions are on their way out; having peeked in the Twenty Century

Really??? (I am assuming you meant to say the twentieth century)

What about the hundreds of years ago??

Rise of Islam, crusades, indulgences paid to the church to go to heaven??

None of that outshines "the twenty century"???

reply to post by Xtrozero


Just to point out not all Religions are Religious (odd but hear me out) Buddism is at its core anti God and more about yourself which is a good thing.

Originally posted by boymonkey74

Just reading about what organized Religion has done over the years sickens me,

It has done much good too...When other factors are infused with religion, such as greed, power, politics, hate, insanity...etc it seems to keep the religious label but is it really religion anymore?

Think about what an atheist society does too. The Crusades killed about 5 million over 500 years and it can easily be suggested that it was more political than religious, but when we look at China that killed over 100 million to enter their industrial age, or Russia 60 million under Stalin, or Pol Pot 3 million, or even Darfur 4 million in recent times humans can really go over the edge at any time.
To think the world will be all fun and laughter without religion is laughable to say the least.

Originally posted by sleeper
If you look at the roots of "all" religions, they were created by "aliens", beings from the sky that came down and indoctrinated humans.

You are the perfect example to my statement that we cannot remove religion (faith/belief) from humans since it is a fundamental part of how we think...

Originally posted by boymonkey74
reply to post by Xtrozero

 

Just to point out not all Religions are Religious (odd but hear me out) Buddism is at its core anti God and more about yourself which is a good thing.

I understand your point, but if it has a faith/belief based system then it is religion..whether that belief is God, self actualization or aliens it is all basically the same. And all of it is Man's intellectual struggle with who we are.