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ORIGINAL: kalikshama

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It's also not the first time I have heard someone suggest that Obama wasn't really a christian and just lied about it to get elected.

Perhaps you heard that on snopes right before it was debunked?

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

Claim: Since it is politically expedient to be a CHRISTIAN when seeking major public office in the United States, Barack Hussein Obama has joined the United Church of Christ in an attempt to downplay his Muslim background.

As noted above, Barack Obama describes himself as "a Christian," says that he is "rooted in the Christian tradition," and his association with the United Church of Christ began over twenty years ago, long before he contemplated a political career. (Obama was first elected to the Illinois state senate in 1996, but he has been involved with the United Church of Christ since the mid-1980s.)

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

there will always be people who find solace in religion, who are true believers in a supernatural god, who fear death...

I've heard this before, but none of the self-styled "rational" folks who pitch this nonsense from the back of their wagons has ever managed to provide a rational explanation for why someone who believes that death is NOT the end of life would be afraid of it. I suppose the assumption here is that they want to believe because they fear death, but there is nothing "rational" about reasoning backwards to whatever convenient assumption happens to suit your conclusion.

K.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

there will always be people who find solace in religion, who are true believers in a supernatural god, who fear death...

I've heard this before, but none of the self-styled "rational" folks who pitch this nonsense from the back of their wagons has ever managed to provide a rational explanation for why someone who believes that death is NOT the end of life would be afraid of it. I suppose the assumption here is that they want to believe because they fear death, but there is nothing "rational" about reasoning backwards to whatever convenient assumption happens to suit your conclusion.

K.

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ORIGINAL: LanceHughes

Un-drifting, and making my point DIRECTLY to the OP's title:

"Religion will become as unacceptable as racism"

Nope. Religion will simply disappear.  Might be an historical artifact, as is the study of the Egyptian Ra.  Give it (the peoples of the book) 10,000 years and report back, okay?

ETA: It's ALBERT (not Robert) Ellis.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: chatterbox24

I am not afraid to die here, but I do fear the way I might die. I also sometimes have a fear of dying to soon because I have young children, and I definitely am not ready to die. I try not to think about it, and I am successful usually. To discuss it then it makes me think of things that I still need to work on, such as not having any fear and having faith it will work out as it should. It is all a process.

Well, my only comment would be that I think there's a difference between being afraid of dying in an awful way, or leaving one's children without a mother, or not being able to finish something important, and being afraid of death per se.

K.

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess

We've had threads before about how people "need" religion. I am one of those people who believes that a certain percentage of people (pick a number) will always need religion. And therefore, regardless of whether I, personally, need it in my life to be a good person, regardless of whether I feel religion causes harm in the world in other ways, religion is always going to be with us. The best we can do is to try and have a dialogue about how to minimize the ill effects on society as a whole (the imposition of religious rules on the secular, wars waged in the name of religion, etc.) But even then, in my experience in life, most of the truly religious are not really interested in playing well with others, because they believe they are the only ones with the right answer. That type of entitlement doesn't lend itself to cooperative society building. In other words, we are due for more of the same…... I wish I could be less pessimistic, but I see no evidence pointing the other direction.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

there will always be people who find solace in religion, who are true believers in a supernatural god, who fear death...

I've heard this before, but none of the self-styled "rational" folks who pitch this nonsense from the back of their wagons has ever managed to provide a rational explanation for why someone who believes that death is NOT the end of life would be afraid of it. I suppose the assumption here is that they want to believe because they fear death, but there is nothing "rational" about reasoning backwards to whatever convenient assumption happens to suit your conclusion.

K.

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ORIGINAL: GotSteel

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
Does O'Dowd have a point? Will religons' insistence upon preaching against sexual minorities and clinging to redundant dogmas result in it reaching its use-by date? Will organised religions have to change with the times in order to survive?

Keep in mind that the problems christianity has caused Ireland in recent history and it's ongoing religious problems are much worse than what your mentioning.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Yes. I suspect that you are correct and that there will always be those who need religion, and that many of the religiously minded citizens of our various countries will always put their religious beliefs ahead of their social obligations.

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I don't share your pessimism however. In most Western countries, the trend has been that more highly educated the general populace is, the less religiously inclined it is. Ireland is a good example of this trend. (The US appears to be somewhat of an exception to this trend). So, as time goes by the ability of the religious to impose their beliefs on the rest of us is diminished. These attempts will never disappear totally - indeed there are areas of social policy where religions contribute positively and their contribution should therefore be welcomed. But on the whole, I don't see any reason to suppose that this trend will be stopped or reversed.

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle
In line with this trend, it may be that increasingly religous belief and obervance will be seen more as part of the personal private sphere rather than the public social sphere. So I doubt that religion will ever become totally unacceptable as per the OP. But I do see it as becoming less and less relevant and influential as time goes by.

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ORIGINAL: thishereboi

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ORIGINAL: tweakabelle

Yes. I suspect that you are correct and that there will always be those who need religion, and that many of the religiously minded citizens of our various countries will always put their religious beliefs ahead of their social obligations.

Social obligation as in feeding the hungry and giving aid and shelter to those who need it? Because if I am not mistaken religious groups already do that, yet your post seems to imply they don't. If memory serves me correctly they majority of charity organizations are religious in some way. So why do you hate on them and try to imply they don't care about anyone.

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ORIGINAL: vincentML

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I don't share your pessimism however. In most Western countries, the trend has been that more highly educated the general populace is, the less religiously inclined it is. Ireland is a good example of this trend. (The US appears to be somewhat of an exception to this trend). So, as time goes by the ability of the religious to impose their beliefs on the rest of us is diminished. These attempts will never disappear totally - indeed there are areas of social policy where religions contribute positively and their contribution should therefore be welcomed. But on the whole, I don't see any reason to suppose that this trend will be stopped or reversed.

The difficulty in identifying trends lies in sorting definitions of what constitutes religious identification. According to this data the population of Christians and non-believers is shrinking worldwide while the population of Muslims is increasing. I suspect much of this derives from the observed phenomenon that as education and industrial prosperity grow within a population the birth rate falls. In Europe then it is not so much a falling away from Christianity as it is about producing smaller numbers of Christian babies.

My pessimism is grounded in the observation that religion has been an unrivaled historical instrument of control. It has a binding power, a patriotic glue, stronger than any nationalist ideology. For the far right in America the Constitution is a document of biblical proportions and so the power advantage goes to those who successfully equate Christianity with Patriotism.