# In 100 years Religion will be
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [December 21, 2014, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812 "2014-12-21T08:27:52Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/1 "2014-12-21T08:27:52Z")
In 100 years Religion will be looked upon the way we do Astrology, Alchemy and Voodoo, in other words, patently false, completely man made delusions. Agree or disagree?
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### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/2 "2014-12-21T08:38:17Z")
We have a poll of scientists:
> [@](#):
>
> According to the poll, just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power.
> **[Scientists and Belief](https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/)**
>
> When President Barack Obama announced on July 8, 2009, that he would nominate renowned geneticist Francis Collins to be the new director of the National
Scientists are supposed to be rational. So if half of them believe in a deity now, I would expect that at least that many of the general population would also 100 years from now.
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### Author:  [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 8:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/3 "2014-12-21T08:51:44Z")
> [@PastTense](#):
>
> We have a poll of scientists:
>
> [Scientists and Belief | Pew Research Center](http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/)
>
> Scientists are supposed to be rational. So if half of them believe in a deity now, I would expect that at least that many of the general population would also 100 years from now.
believing in god and being religious are not the same thing
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### Author:  [@Robert163](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robert163)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/4 "2014-12-21T09:00:54Z")
> [@PastTense](#):
>
> We have a poll of scientists:
>
> [Scientists and Belief | Pew Research Center](http://www.pewforum.org/2009/11/05/scientists-and-belief/)
>
> Scientists are supposed to be rational. So if half of them believe in a deity now, I would expect that at least that many of the general population would also 100 years from now.
One fact that concerns some Christians and elates some atheists is that 93 percent of the members of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the most elite scientific organizations in the United States, do not believe in God.
[http://www.catholic.com/blog/trent-horn/does-it-matter-that-many-scientists-are-atheists](http://www.catholic.com/blog/trent-horn/does-it-matter-that-many-scientists-are-atheists)
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### Author:  [@iljitsch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iljitsch)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 9:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/5 "2014-12-21T09:17:31Z")
Here in Europe, hard core organized religion has certainly lost a lot of ground. At the same time, more and more people have vague, new-agey beliefs. I see that trend continuing and spreading to more parts of the world, but it looks like at least a big minority of the population will maintain belief in the supernatural in one way or another.
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### Author:  [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/6 "2014-12-21T09:21:15Z")
100 years is a long time, too long for good predictions. In 100 years everyone may have mind control chips that force them to believe in the religion chosen by their government, or civilization may have fallen.
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### Author:  [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 9:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/7 "2014-12-21T09:22:19Z")
With any luck that will be the case. Shame it isn’t now.
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### Author:  [@Mr.Kobayashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Kobayashi)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/8 "2014-12-21T09:35:56Z")
It’s stuck around for thousands of years, so I have scant confidence that a mere century will do away with it completely. Like always it will probably just permuted into a variety more in line with secular values in order to survive, in 1914 the Church of England preached homosexuality as filthy sin, now we the Archbishop of Canterbury talking about ‘building bridges’ over gay marriage. Holy Mother Church likewise changes with the times, His Holiness Pope Francis I has said _“If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge them?”_ Such a statement a century ago would be unthinkable from the Bishop of Rome.
That said…I can’t see any circumstances where in the Muslim world people would \*ever \*even start to think of the Quran alongside a horoscope.
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### Author:  [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/9 "2014-12-21T09:50:39Z")
Voltaire said back in the 1700’s that he expected Christianity in 100 years would be looked back as an odd superstition of the past similar to old Greek and Norse mythology.
Humans will always want to turn to a higher power and the more we discover about the world, the more we have to learn.
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### Author:  [@Octarine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octarine)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 2:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/10 "2014-12-21T14:01:30Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#):
>
> Voltaire said back in the 1700’s that he expected Christianity in 100 years would be looked back as an odd superstition of the past similar to old Greek and Norse mythology.
Machiavelli has a similar quote from the 1500s. He was . . . a little off in his timing, let’s say.
If the OP has specified “Christianity,” then maybe we’d have a little bit of a debate, although I would argue it’d still be in full force. But _religion_? Religion has been with us since the earliest cave paintings. It’s inherently human. People are in the tricky position of having conscious minds that can predict and dwell on their own demise; religion is a cure to the existential crisis.
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### Author:  [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 2:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/11 "2014-12-21T14:16:13Z")
Not enough time, in my view. In 100 years, religion will be less of a major part of day-to-day human activity than it is today, but it will still be pretty major, I think.
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### Author:  [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/12 "2014-12-21T14:24:03Z")
> [@Robert163](#):
>
> In 100 years Religion will be looked upon the way we do Astrology, Alchemy and Voodoo, in other words, patently false, completely man made delusions. Agree or disagree?
I can’t even agree that Astrology is looked upon as patently false today. Looks like Voodoo still has[practitioners](http://www.newsweek.com/2014/09/05/voodoo-rebounding-new-orleans-after-hurricane-katrina-266340.html?piano_d=1) as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if Astrology is still kicking around in some form under some “Now New and Improved Age” spirituality in 100 years.
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### Author:  [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/13 "2014-12-21T14:39:46Z")
No way to know.
It comes, & it goes.
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### Author:  [@Bullitt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bullitt)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/14 "2014-12-21T14:45:35Z")
It’ll be around, and strongly so. It’s been around for thousands of years.
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### Author:  [@Aquadementia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aquadementia)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 3:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/15 "2014-12-21T15:30:16Z")
In a hundred years it will be essential for most people to belong to one of the robot religions, for networking purposes.
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### Author:  [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/16 "2014-12-21T16:03:25Z")
In a hundred years I suspect it will be much as it is now although I do expect a rise in the number of atheistic churches such as the UU and others.
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### Author:  [@panache45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panache45)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/17 "2014-12-21T16:23:44Z")
Back in the '60s, many of us believed that religion would be dead by the year 2000.
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### Author:  [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/18 "2014-12-21T17:15:24Z")
> [@Robert163](#):
>
> In 100 years Religion will be looked upon the way we do Astrology, Alchemy and Voodoo, in other words, patently false, completely man made delusions. Agree or disagree?
The thing is, with each of these things we get rid off, we invent two new ones—for each alchemy, there’s now a quantum healing, a The Secret, a Deepak Chopra. I don’t think there’s any humanity-wide trend towards higher rationality, rather, there’s just some set of competing fashions, some go out of style, some come back into style. We look at the silly nonsense back then as silly nonsense that we have progressed so far beyond by overcoming, because we don’t see the silly nonsense of today as silly nonsense yet. It’s always the same old woo in new clothes, and in so far as humanity will always need some crutch to manufacture meaning on the cheap, there will always be a market for it.
So, the people 100 years from now will consider themselves educated and wise beyond our uncivilized savage ways—while perhaps believing that the harmonies of the string vacuum resonate in tune with our pineal gland, so that the right belief can change the probability matrix of the universe—or whatever else the buzzwords of tomorrow will be.
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/19 "2014-12-21T17:15:46Z")
Strongly disagree. God has not allowed religion to vanish, and will not.
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### Author:  [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)
#### Post date: [December 21, 2014, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-100-years-religion-will-be/707812/20 "2014-12-21T17:51:12Z")
I thought this was going to be about religion, not theology. I fear that 100 years from now, the people of the influential nations of the world will be in regimented religious lockstep, somewhat the way the Middle East is now, intolerant of deviant thought. It is baked into authoritarian political power.
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