A friend of mine, let’s call him Mr. Pink, once told me that in the future modern religions will be relegated to the position of mythology in our society. He said as our society becomes more educated the number of atheists will grow. He went on to tell me that according to a survey of the National Academy of Sciences less than 6 percent of its members have any sort of religious belief. He says education breeds skepticism, and that religious faith is a byproduct of a lack of knowledge.
I found all of this quite alarming. However it begs the question, does his argument have merit? Mr. Pink seems to believe that this future without religion is a bright one, that if we move past our arcane belief in a higher power we can move ourselves closer to an Utopian ideal. We would be freed from fear and be allowed to evolve as a society. He was not wrong about the National Academy of Sciences, in fact there is evidence that the proportion of atheists is highest amongst the highly educated particularly those educated in the sciences.
Can this be true? Is atheism a foregone conclusion for our society? Will we benefit from a lack of faith? As someone who is religious and highly educated in the sciences, I would like to say that faith is still firmly seated in our cultural psyche. It is not something that can be discarded so easily. It is not something that we would all be better off without. Faith enriches us all. It fills in the human experiences with beauty and life. Many people do miraculous things because of their faith. People often display the most compassion when they are acting with faith. Yet, I do see a trend in our society. I see people manipulate the faiths of others to advance malfeasant agendas. I see many examples in our society of crimes committed because of some person’s interpretation of their faith. And I see many of my colleagues choose to shirk their religious beliefs in the place of a personal ethic and compassion towards those whom we share this earth with.
So I ask the readership who collectively has had experiences and ideas that go far beyond my simple perspective, will religion go extinct? Will we be better for it?
I believe its impossible to live without faith in something. Those who “lose their faith” just replace it something else, such as the belief in math or logic, often coupled with scientific progress. There is no evidence for these positions, it takes just as much if not more faith than religion. Faith will always be an essential component of human nature. We were built that way (Blaise Pascal-http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/show/10567).
That said, in my viewpoint, religions such as Christianity are causing their own decline by their retreat into anti-science stances. Every mega-church in the greater Spokane area that I’ve visited preaches against evolution. Furthermore, they claim the Bible is infallible and without error. Educated people know better.
Why wouldn’t educated people chose another faith?
Ar own Prabu published the the pew survey of scientist, 51 percent have a belief in either God or a Higher Power. So, still in this age a majority of scientist have some sort of belief. You friend was mistaken on that count. Is Atheism a foregone conclusion? Many like to say so and point to Europe and its gradual loss of faith. But they are stumped to explain how faith and religion are so strong here in America. There is a good debate among scholars as to which is the future, America or Europe. So, far the countries that have started to joined the more technologically advanced countries in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America have not seen a drop in religion. Some anthropologist theorize that Europe lost it faith mostly out of State supports for religion and State Churches. In places without state support, religion seems to thrive. It is way to early to say what will be the direction of religion and faith, and you friend seems to go more with a hope and belief rather than science in his claims.
Pearce mentioned faith is becoming less ingrained in our cultural psyche. I don’t think that religion will go extinct, but it may be that those who choose religion will do so, not because it is the culturally accepted thing to do (i.e., “I am a Christian because I live in a Christian nation”), but because it provides meaning to their lives in a unique way.
Mr. Pink might be operating on the assumption that more education necessarily equals a decline in faith. This may not be true. Granted, more education may lead to more critical questions about certain aspects of religion — especially the fundamentalist types of religion — but I am not convinced that criticism must be a negative thing. A person’s faith may come out stronger as a result of critically engaging the big questions. I am looking forward to reading this article on the same subject: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/08/study_says_more_education_doesn_t_mean_a_loss_of_faith
Mr. Pink was referring to members of the National Academy of Sciences, not all scientist as a whole. Also he went on to say that a higher proportion of atheists were highly educated not the other way around. As far as everyone else’s comments regarding faiths firm place in our future, I am heartened to hear your conviction, I too hope that we remain a people of some sort of faith far into the future. I hope lively debate and critical evaluation helps our faith evolve into something even more enriching to the human experience.
Religion and Society
It is not possible to have a society without a religion.
Imagine for a moment a world where the ability to articulate memories, experiences of the present and hopes for the future somehow vanished. No more writing. No more reading. No more talking. No more listening. No more sharing our hopes; dreams; as well as what makes us cry, laugh, and so on…only meaningless sounds. No way to symbolize our thoughts into coherent speech patterns and being able to communicate meaningfully with another human being.
Can you imagine this kind of world: a world with no language? Would you want it.
Religion is like language. It is essential for the ongoing stability of human culture. No matter secular it becomes. There is after all secular based religions (not all religious expression is supernaturally based).
My point being is simply human nature is incurably religious…
We strive at making sure the sacred and the ordinary are harmonized while also being distinct. Sometimes the Sacred is experienced as being a Persona with a Will of its own.
The word religion is related to a Latin root which means reunite. The idea of the religious quest is to reunite one self with the sacred. What a religion does is offer ritualized methods on how to best manifest and symbolize it (hence the essence of what human language is as well). It is no accident that the Christian Church was for so many years a place were literacy was a cherished value when much of the world was illiterate (this was before the invention of the printing press). Liturgy and language are like a yin to yang relationship.
The main reason why human nature is incurably religious (this doesn’t prove there’s a God but it is part of the argument for God’s existence): the main reason is because we’re habitual creatures yearning to be reunited with truth, a sense of justice, love, community, and so on. All this is classically the domain of religion. Yet…such values also transcend into other enterprises as well. Religious nature is habitual nature.
Just as it is impossible to have society without an economy, language, community and the like: is the same reason why religion is needed for a human society to be cultured.
Even the scientific method is a ritual that mirrors what it means to be incurably religious.
To answer the question: given that society would cease to be human if religion vanished…society would not be better off without religion. In fact, society cannot be if religion was not part of it. Human nature is habitual and this is the part of us that would suffer the most if tomorrow we woke up to find religion had vanished.
The research Mr. Pink cites is actually the work of Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham not a survey of NAS scientist, but in 1998 they sent a group of what they determined as leading scientists about personal belief in God. The had about 50% response and that was where the 7% figure Mr. Pink cited came from. The most recent Pew research on NAS scientists is where the 51% figure comes from. It is newer and more complete and less bias than the Larson and Witham survey.
Now is there a cultural bias in the scientific community? Two years ago the current head of the NIH was appointed, Francis Collins. Dr Collins is a committed Christian and he had to face NY Time Op-Ed pieces questioning his being qualified because of his faith. Noted Atheist like PZ Myers called him a clown for being a Christian. Now to anyone familiar with the quality of his scientific work, this came as a shock. He directed the mapping of the Human Genome Project and his work in genetics is among th best in the history of science. Yet he face opposition for being a Christian.
The opposition to him also led to many scientists to start to reevaluate their own stance to religion. (not convert, but to soften toward religion in general) Most who have work with Dr Collins know him as a leading light in the scientific community and to have the Atheists oppose him for simply being a Christian was too much.