Religion in the Future – Part 2

What is it Good For

So in the previous post I critiqued the rather facile view of projecting Christianity into a distant future. That doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be religions in the future. But what makes them useful.

Strong Community Good or Bad

Community is the first thing. There have been surveys where they find the religious live longer than non-religious. Once people try going through the confounding variables this may not be true per se. A deeper look shows that it is people who are part of a community religious or not, are the ones that live longer.

A religion however gives you a very strong community because it gives you a very solid set of beliefs that everyone accepts, and from there you look to find more commonalities in your fellow group members. It also ends up creating an in-group and out-group. The other outside is dangerous. So you cling closer. While these are not always the best reasons for a community it does create a solid one.

Another example of strong communities is the various aspects of the homosexual groups. When homosexuality was more reviled by society you would have very close private often secretive groups that were tight knit. As homosexuality gained greater acceptance/tolerance some of the cohesion in the groups decreased. People who are similar will group together, but with less pressure from outside threats there is less of a specific need. In the context of a religion you may not always need a god, but you do need a devil.

Existential Dread

Animals are the perfect Zen practitioners. They live in the eternal now. Eat when hungry. Sleep when tired. As humans we cannot live that world. We have the ability to see into our future and see our death. For many people they need an escape. A religion giving them an afterlife removes this dread. It can also increase it by adding a hell if you don’t follow its tenants, keeping you in the faith. I believe this is a feature not a bug.

Prosperity or Lack Thereof

If you have a crappy life you can console yourself that you will have a better afterlife. It can make dealing with this one easier. On the other hand you can go to the prosperity gospel side, and justify your wealth because it was what good wanted you to have.

The Post Scarcity Society

The Kardashev scale is all about a societies use of energy. A couple things happen in the future, we finally figure out fusion, or as a space faring civilization we end up using more space based solar collectors. This tips the scale to almost unlimited free energy. Add to this more industry that can use that cheap energy and automation scarcity of goods disappears. It is always said land will be scarce since no one is making more. Add O’Neil Cylinder space habitats and yes we are, all we need.

Provided you have good governance, a rising tide lifts all boats. This also assumes a good social net. The table below shows that top six countries that find religion unimportant. One commonality is all of these are prosperous countries and a think the safety net of the Scandinavian countries is legendary. So as prosperity goes up religiosity goes down.

The Immortal Society

Aubrey de Grey talks about the concept of the actuarial escape velocity. The concept that all we need to be immortal is for science to extend lifespan on average by just a little over one year per year. At that point there is always a technology that can add on to your life. This is functional immortality not actual immortality since a very bad disease or accident can kill you.

This now makes a very different view on society. Today most of us want to live longer, but do we still have that desire when we are 200? 400? 1,000? In the distant future we worry about a life well lived and not death.

Heaven on Computronium

The concept of heaven for most people is eternal bliss. Although some people say it would be to be in god’s prescience praising him forever. That is a vision of being in church for the rest of your life. I don’t think most people like the concept of it fully taking up a Sunday morning. The other thing most people consider is what are you going to do for eternity until unending boredom sets in. Making the only difference between heaven and hell is how long before you start screaming, “Let me die.” The next concept to also consider is the concept of uploading. If we find of way of uploading consciousness into a computer simulation, we have created heaven. You can now be completely free of want or pain. Or if you need something to strive for nothing is preventing you. Once again if you reach that time you realize that time that you have completed all of your life’s goals you can decide to shutdown your consciousness. This is already better than some versions of heaven.

Stand Back I am Going to Try to Use Science

The largest skill I have developed in talking to Young Earth Creationists is the ability to nail jello to the wall in any discussion.  There are all sorts of cases of goal post moving and outright dishonesty in their arguments, but one honest point they make is: “If evolution is true then Christianity is false.” The simple argument is evolution is true then the whole Adam and Eve story is a metaphor. The problem is you do not need salvation from a metaphor. So in one swoop the core tenant of Christianity gets wiped out.The other issue is in the past when we didn’t know something it was always attributed to the god of the gaps. The only problem is that we keep figuring things out and the gaps keep closing. In history invoking god as an explanation has never been a good one.  Could that change in the future? It is possible, but not likely. Even today there are issues that our current understanding of Quantum Field Theory seem to rule out the existence of a soul if Sean Carroll is right here.

So in the end, most of what we want from religion can be replaced by future technologies, and many of the claims we have today are being shown to be demonstrably false. Whatever the future of religion is it will not resemble anything we have today.