How likely is the rise of a major new world religion?

In My Humble Opinion
1

One with at least a few hundred million followers and a global scope? Barring obvious miracles how likely do you think it is that a major new world religion could rise within the foreseeable future, or do the current major religions have a lock on things and the internet and mass media prevent a new one gaining ground (or would the internet be a positive bonus?)

I have just finished reading one of the ‘Appleseed’ science-fiction books by Masamune Shirow. Written in the 1980’s as part of its backstory it posited the rise of a new religion ‘The Munma Holy Republic’ in the Middle East. But this was part of a major global upheaval featuring a nuclear Third World War. It doesn’t describe the religion as far as I’m aware apart from stating that it has replaced Islam to a certain extent.

Perhaps it would be something not immediately recognisable as traditional religion, but then of course we start getting into the problems of definition.

Thoughts? Thanks in advance :slight_smile:

2

I would like to think that anything capable of lighting the world on fire would, at this point, have to be a departure from the woo, but with compelling insights that overlap with what people have sought from the religions – a sense of what it’s all about.

That might be unduly optimistic.

3

Sunlight is being a pretty good disinfectant for established religions, which tend to be (but aren’t universally, of course) contracting and becoming less fervent in affluent, media-rich cultures–and those are the ones that already have inertia behind them. I would think a major new religion (hundreds of millions of followers) would need a fall of those cultures so that believers could be kept in the dark and fed bullshit.

4

100%.
Over a 1000 year period.

If not, seek me out, & I will apologize.

5

The number of professed “convinced atheists” in China alone is greater than the number of either Muslims or Hindus in the world. Western thought and power structure has been so steeped in enforced theocracy for such a long time, it is difficult for western thinkers to even envisage a world in which there is no religion at all, a more likely outcome than the prospect for a “new religion”.

6

Atheism has been popular before. It never lasts. Eventually some new religion will arise to fill the gaps.

But the question isn’t even particularly theoretical, because Falun Gong was founded in 1992, and now has somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million followers. Unless you want to argue that the world today is radically different from how it was in 1992?

7

It seems to me that any religion that is still around today has somehow built in a “Don’t fall for the scam when someone says they’re speaking on [the deity’s] behalf!” warning, if not at least a “Don’t believe the other guys!” clause. But, in general, I think they’ve all built in their ways to try and avoid having their believers get easily swept off to some other system-of-the-week. Something pretty big has to grab a believer’s attention and make him/her reconsider the whole paradigm of his/her life.

If some alien visitors# who. . .
A) Ignored human military defenses as if they did not exist
B) Ignored human military attacks as if they were not launched
C) Refrained from decimating human populations (intentionally or accidentally)
D) Demonstrated clearly peaceful and non-predatory intentions
. . . managed to communicate with the humans, they might be able to hand down a religion, providing it. . .
1] provided parsimonious explanations and solutions for our
a> philosophical mysteries
b> scientific limitations
c> metaphysical (woo) misunderstandings (e.g. the Easter Island statues)
2] bridged the perceived gap between religious and scientific and artistic milieu

Otherwise, long before the invention of the Internet many of the world’s more popular religions included built-in safeguards to keep the devout from straying. For instance, Christians would point the gospels and say, “Look! It says here ‘there will be false prophets who will claim to speak with my authority’ and I’m not going to fall for it!” and Jews would say, “No, no. The first Commandment is against following any other deities; this is just a test of our devotion. No; we are The Chosen and we will not break faith.” and Buddhists would say, “Ah, this is yet another illusion; I will not be fooled.” and Taoists would say, “Yeah, yeah. You can roll out a new grand plan, but people still need to eat and there’s still work to be done.”

And, for that matter, the latter two are perfectly accepting of people being Buddhist and ________ or Taoist and ________ or even Buddhist and Taoist and _________ without seeing a conflict. It’s the monotheists who have difficulty with mixing belief systems.*

—G!
#Yes, of course, this is what the millenarian UFO cults are/were all about: Some UFO’s will land and the benevolent aliens will save earthlings from themselves. Even for the non-religious, we’ve tainted popular media and literature by repeatedly suggesting such alien/UFO cults are just scams designed to bilk wishful idiots.
*It’s kind of like the way we do menus in our restaurants: Angus House says, “You can have the Prime Rib with Mashed Potatoes and Asparagus OR you can have the Chicken with Rice but we don’t list the Chicken with Mashed Potatoes.” But Wing Lung will say, “Sure! Pick one from section A, two from section B, and fried, steamed, or no rice from section C – plus a drink if you don’t want tea!”

8

There’s lots of well known religions that are less than two hundred years old.

Latter Day Saints - Founded in 1830. Around fifteen million followers.
Baha’i - Founded in 1863. Around six million followers.
Jehovah’s Witnesses - Founded in the 1870’s. Around eight million followers.
Caodaism - Founded in 1925. Around six million followers.
Rastafari - Founded in the 1930’s. Around a million followers.
Unification Church. Founded in 1954. Around two million followers.

And Chronos already mentioned Falun Gong.

9

If you believe in The Singularity, it is really hard to reconcile a faith-based theology with post-singularity thought. We will just ask AI “What is the true faith?” and that’s that. Or, to put it another way, humanity will simply consider post-singularity AI as the replacement for human superstition. Humans love to attach themselves to a presumption of authoritarian superiority., that’s what religion is. And that is, supposedly, only a generation away.

10

Tru dat, but the OP said “at least a few hundred million followers.”

I think that would include just Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam (in order of origin) - not just now, but across all of recorded history.

The most recent of those four is Islam, which is coming up on 1400 years old. Which is a few centuries longer than the period encompassing the origins of Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam.

So we’re in something of a steady state with respect to the rise of major religions. And it’s really hard to see where a new one is going to come from. If anything, the road ahead looks more like a growth and more widespread acceptance of atheism and agnosticism, while the other religions, big and small, gradually lose ground.

Even if there were reason to believe we’re overdue for the rise of a major religion (as defined by the OP), what would be the time frame? I think you’d need at least 500 years to say, “there’s a 50-50 chance of a fifth religion becoming a major religion in this time span.” The odds of its happening before I depart this mortal coil, sometime around mid-century with any luck, have to be pretty close to nil.

11

Well in my admittadly arbitary definition of ‘major religion’ we haven’t had one in the past 1000 years :wink:

Thats an interesting idea, I believe there was an earlier thread ‘What would happen if a sentient AI came to faith?’, I think the general concensus was that most people would assume it wasn’t functioning properly.

Thank you, I wasn’t sure how to define ‘major religion’ but I was aware of the large number of not insignificent religious movements that have appeared in fairly recent history but they do seem to stall at a certain level of adherents.

Thank you for the answers everyone :slight_smile:

12

The only real chance of a major new world religion with several hundred million adherents would be China if something happened to the government which then allowed religious freedom.

13

I seriously doubt it, because people seem to become more agnostic and atheist as wealth and education increases. Rates of secularism and unbelief in wealthy educated countries tends to hover around 50%+.

If you can argue that the technological singularity is a religion, that is the only one I can think of. It has the traits of a religion. A belief in an all powerful being (AI) creating a utopia down the road where age old problems are solved. Eternal life is granted.

There are even beliefs that sentient beings who have died will one day have their conscious minds rebuilt by AI in the far future (thousands of years from now), akin to a judgement day (without the judgment) where the dead will rise due to the hand of an almighty god.

Singularitarianism probably has tens of millions of adherents already. Only difference is Singularitarianism is arguably possible (unlike religion). And isn’t supernatural.

14

Uh, no. There are more Muslims than the total population of China.

15

How do they suggest this will happen? I mean how is the information that constitutes a person recovered?

16

They don’t. Us discussing it is like cavemen discussing how nuclear physics works. It is more of a theoretical concept of what may be possible sometime in the far future. As of 2017 our best science doesn’t even understand what consciousness is, let alone how to assemble it.

The argument is that if technology and science continues advancing, perhaps someday we will reach a point where the information contained in a sentient, conscious being can be reassembled long after death to resurrect them. They don’t claim they have any idea how to do it, but if the multiverse is an adiabatic system (I don’t know if that is the correct term, I mean nothing can enter or leave the multiverse) then the information that was contained in a conscious entity didn’t disappear. It just got dispersed. Same way that if you burn a log, in theory you can capture the CO2 and water and then reassemble it back into the log again.

However beliefs like that do give the singularity a religious feel. Raising the dead, all powerful and all knowing gods, utopias, eternal life, etc.

17

Ah I see, thank you :slight_smile:

18

We even have an evangelist here! (I won’t name names, but it rhymes with “GramuelA.”)

19

We already have the beginnings of the next major religion right here at home. Scientology.

Come back in 500 years and it’ll be all the rage.