# And no religions, too
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [January 5, 2012, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516 "2012-01-05T15:45:40Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 3
### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2012, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516/41 "2012-01-07T18:22:43Z")
> [@scudsucker](#):
>
> Given the massive proliferation of conspiracy theories and other unscientific means of searching for answers, since the internet became widely available, I would argue the speed at which information is available now would actively encourage the growth of religions.
It might in the aid in the growth in the _number_ of religions, but with the isolationism necessary for a lot of them(getting information for a limited number of sources that are also authority figures), I just don’t think any of them would grow as large as the majors we’ve got going now.
---
### Author:  [@Taomist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Taomist)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2012, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516/42 "2012-01-07T19:41:51Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Premise: All religions vanish today-No memories, history, churches, relics etc.
> Do new religions develop? If so, what might they be like?
> Might the world go atheist?
Without reading any responses, I just have to comment that without religion, there would be no atheism. 😛 Atheism is a negative. Good luck proving a negative without a positive! 😛
---
### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2012, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516/43 "2012-01-07T19:56:48Z")
> [@Taomist](#):
>
> Without reading any responses, I just have to comment that without religion, there would be no atheism. 😛 Atheism is a negative. Good luck proving a negative without a positive! 😛
Without religion, atheism(lack of belief in deities) would be worldwide. The word itself might not exist, but the condition would.
---
### Author:  [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 7:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516/44 "2012-01-08T07:55:43Z")
Honestly, I think of God as an importuning, psychically charged, heuiristic national psyche. Purely, psychologically, a halo, avatar, and dynamic geographical, tribal, and warring archetype. Religions that have survived this long have killed. I think these anthropomorphic psychic entities of the collective psyche, these domains, are more important to most people than the organizing and holographic universal principles of the Universe. minds prejudices and nationalities, seem more important to the denizens of this board.
I believe in God only so much as people have manifested Him through the need of the mind and social conventions… Holographs of the many. Not of the one. There is no Christian God… There are billions of Him by the natural workings and design of reality.
---
### Author:  [@Don\_t\_Panic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_t_Panic)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516/45 "2012-01-08T08:20:09Z")
> [@PandaBear77](#):
>
> Man is hardwired to worship _something_. Those who claim to not believe in any kind of deity still worship something (usually themselves […] )
I really don’t believe that last part to be true, but even if it was - how the heck does “worshiping oneself” count as being religious? Unless you mean that these people genuinely believe themselves to be divine entities?
(And in case you’re wondering, no, I won’t accept hardcore sports fans or Trekkies as “religious” either.)
---
### Author:  [@WhyNot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WhyNot)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 8:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516/46 "2012-01-08T08:20:21Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> Are there currently any spiritual movements that don’t have their basis in already established religions? What sort of spirituality could arise without childhood indoctrination of the supernatural?
Most neopagans enter into their spiritual path as adults. Some were raised in more mainstream religions, many were not. It’s probably the NRM most made of apostates.
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> But if religions arise out of unanswered questions, what current unanswered questions might a new religion spring from? I can’t see any new sun gods arising, for instance.
You’re thinking too big. Think small. Think selfish. How can you get more money? Will she fall in love with you? Why did he get sick and die but she got sick and got better? Why does the jerk sometimes (often) win?
People, by and large, hate feeling like the universe is random and Bad Things are beyond our control.
> [@Eonwe](#):
>
> I think modern Paganism/Wiccanism (at least as practiced/believed by the people I know who are into it) is an example of the sort of thing you’d see pop up again pretty quickly. Maybe not quite the same and without the same trappings, but millions of people have vague (or not so vague) belief in tarot, astrology . . . basically, some sort of wisdom/predicative power that will tell them What To Do. The appeal of that belief, and the emotional need people have to believe those things will not go away.
I agree. I think the hypothetical new religions would form, but they’d look a lot more like Humanism and neopaganism, until people got organized by charismatic leaders and then they’d start to look more like Ifa or Santeria (but of course with different Orishas/Saints).
But I think that, in today’s day and age, we’d see more emphatic personal power religions, and fewer religions worshiping absent gods.
---
### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516/47 "2012-01-08T08:22:32Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#):
>
> It might in the aid in the growth in the _number_ of religions, but with the isolationism necessary for a lot of them(getting information for a limited number of sources that are also authority figures), I just don’t think any of them would grow as large as the majors we’ve got going now.
Probably more importantly, it would be hard for any one of them to get the kind of power it needs to forcibly convert or kill hundreds of millions of people. It was mostly terror and bloodshed that got the major religions to where they are today, and most modern governments frown on private crusades.
---
### Author:  [@devilsknew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/devilsknew)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2012, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516/48 "2012-01-08T08:39:48Z")
Religio and God is a natural artifact of tribal animism. We, the human collective conscious, imbue objects and temporality with special and natural (supernatural) and totally narcisiistic objexts of the Ego. Ego is the God of every Christian and organized religionist I have ever met. None are truly without reflection.
[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/and-no-religions-too/608516.md?page=2)