I’m wondering about this assumption that some have that, given a colony of skeptics/atheists, eventually religions would arise, since the mindset that requires religion in the first place won’t be there, or at least be so uncommon that it would eventually die out.
But my contention is that religions aren’t inherently irrational–they fill social and emotional needs. The fact that relgious people believe incorrect things doesn’t mean that the religions don’t produce value for their adherents.
So if your method of keeping religion out of your colony is just to require everyone to swear an oath that they’re an atheist before you let them on the ship, but the society of the colony doesn’t meet the human needs that on Earth are addressed by religion, then what happens? The colonists will invent social structures that DO meet their human needs. And those new social structures could very well be religious in nature, or quasi-religious. See how religious affiliation has ballooned in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
I don’t believe religion or quasi-religion is a neccesary feature of human society, but given that the vast majority of human beings in recorded history have had religious beliefs, it seems like it’s a pretty likely feature–in the same way that autocratic government is a likely feature of human society. So you can’t just select atheists and expect that their children and their children’s children will invariably be atheists. Just like you can’t just select people who believe in democray and expect that’s all you need to do to ensure democracy forever.
If the Captain has sole control over the food replicators, and if you don’t obey the Captain you don’t eat, then your colony will be predisposed to autocracy. Are the kids taught science and logic in their classrooms, or just enough to do their jobs? Are there classrooms, or are the kids going to end up agricultural laborers? If we make Atheism the official state religion of the colony we’re going to end up with something that doesn’t much resemble skeptical atheism as we know it in liberal democratic western countries. And so on.
I can’t just wave my hand and declare that future civilizations will have no need for such primitive superstitions, because here we are in 2010 and plenty of people around the world seem to be holding tight to those primitive supersitions. If people on the space colony have a life that resembles that in a 21st Century liberal democracy, then religion as we know it will wither away. If it resembles life in a medieval village, or a Soviet-era industrial town, or a Roman latifunda, then religion is likely to flourish, or some quasi-religion that’s even worse.
I think religions fill a need the same way cigarettes do-they create the need that they themselves fill.
By even the wildest dreams of pragmatic science based possibilities the total number of folks ever leaving this planet will necessarily be a scarce and tiny minority of the vast pool of human beings. The skills and talents needed will be such a stringent sieve that silly questions about your beliefs in religion, or even politics will just not be on the radar.
Nothing about being a Muslim, Christian, Jew, Hindu, Zoroastrian, or any other religion will have much to do with the decision of who to take, and who to leave. Being intolerant of the particular views of others might be far more a matter of concern, since these will, of necessity begin as small groups, in stressful situations, who cannot take time for religious arguments.
The particular subset of humans on this board gives ample evidence that having faith, or not having faith does not correlate with being disposed to argue vociferously about other peoples faith, or absence of it. It isn’t about your religion, it is about your ability to work in groups, and build a social fabric that allows you, and a lot of other people to survive, and thrive.
Tris
I hope some of you know that you have me pounding my forehead on my desk. One more time… The last time I’m gonna try to get my OP across - In the FUTURE, will religion have gone by the wayside? I’m not talking about who leaves on the first starship bringing it with us or not. Or maybee I should have asked “how long will religion take to burn out when we leave the earth behind”?
I was thinking more An Alien Agony by Harry Harrison (the entire short story is available at that link). Taking religion into space does not always end well.
Religion has nothing if not momentum and staying power, not in the least because most religion explicitly includes practices to preserve and spread the religion itself. (Examples being “have faith and don’t question it” and “spread the good word” respectively.) If religion manages to get a significant foothold in an extraterrestrial society, I see no reason to expect it to progress any differently than in an earthbound society. So, either a deliberate or implicit filtering method occurs during the exodus process that prevents the religion from getting into space at all, or the fact that the colonies are in space or not is likely a completely irrelevent factor.
Well, your first post, and the first half of this post doesn’t set up the question like that.
Dozens of times events have been predicted to be the inevitable end to faith. Thus far, that has not been the case. You seem to think that some periods of time after the present moment are not “the future”, while some unspecified duration will satisfy your definition. Sixty or seventy billion years from now it is unlikely that the we part of “Will we still have religion?” will be noticeably similar to the we that are discussing it now. Oh, that’s too long, isn’t it?
You know, don’t you, that there may never be a starship, right? Or even if there is, that there might not be habitable locations within lifetime travel limits, even for our descendants? Deciding on the ultimate state of our faiths seems a bit much to ask when you won’t even narrow down the time period to the nearest billion years.
I don’t think it really is likely that all of the human race will start, or stop believing in anything, tomorrow, or in the next thirty or forty millennia. So, the question you ask is one of those that cannot be answered without a great deal better set of limits to the parameters.
Tris
Key word- ever.
Ever.
That is a very long time. So long, in fact that by then the absolute truth will have become apparent to everyone, by demonstration. Assuming, that is, that humans last forever, an assumption that presupposes that the faithful had it right all along, since the empiricists will have already had to face their error.
The reason your answers are so dissatisfying to you might be that your question is simply stated to prevent any sort of meaningful answer. Ever will include the epoch of proton decay, and the final dispersion of both matter, and energy. The possibility that thought of any sort could exist forever once again requires not only that the faithful remain faithful, but that they be right, in real world terms.
Tris
I meant “ever” to include now till next friday and I guess proton decay and you know it. Please cease from applying linear torque upon my phallus.
This is yet another formal warning, Claude Remains. The staff may review your posting privileges since you don’t seem to be able to avoid posting like this.