Will religion ever disappear?

&gt; According to a Gallup International survey of more than 50,000 people in 57 countries, the number of individuals claiming to be religious fell from 77% to 68% between 2005 and 2011, while those who self-identified as atheist rose by 3% – bringing the world’s estimated proportion of adamant non-believers to 13%.<p>The World Religion Database disagrees, saying that the percentage of the world&#x27;s population that is religious increased from 87.1% in 2000 to 88.2% in 2010. They suggest that growth is continuing due to the spread of Islam in Africa and Christianity in China: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20131020100448/http://media.johnwiley.com.au/product_data/excerpt/47/04706745/0470674547-196.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20131020100448&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;media.john...</a>

It will probably remain true for a long time that a great portion of the population won&#x27;t be able to comprehend the concept of after-death (more specifically, what happens to your soul when your body no longer exists). Religion won&#x27;t disappear as long as that remains true.

Who knows; but if enough of us flag this, it will before it turns into a boring and potentially offensive flame-fest.

I tend to look at religion through a public health &quot;harm reduction&quot; lens. You&#x27;re never going to get rid of it. The best you can do is work for a society in which different group affinities crosscut each other. A zoroastrian is less likely to engage in violence against a buddhist if they are on a chess team together.<p>It&#x27;s when the buddhists all move to one part of town and don&#x27;t interact with the zoroastrians at all that we see religion become the driver of bloody conflict.

There&#x27;s always been atheists and the like, they are mentioned in the Old Testament, and it&#x27;s probably always been and always will be a very small minority. And a lot of the so-called &quot;New Atheists&quot; these days aren&#x27;t really best defined as atheists, they are better described as &quot;Scientists&quot; or &quot;Humanists&quot;, where the object of religious adoration is either the concept of scientific progress or human achievement.

The real question is whether mainstream religion will be re-categorized as superstition in the way that non-mainstream belief in supernatural agency is called superstition. Making superstition go away probably means changing the way brains work.<p>That is, religion currently gets a pass. That will probably, eventually, stop happening.

I used to hope so. Now I just hope that someday, people would just stop killing for their fairytale gods. Any gods.

We can only pray that it will.

I hope not.

No. If it&#x27;s not about a god, it will be about a political movement or idea. You can see religious similarities in many software communities.

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines</a>