Over the history of man, many religions have come and gone. The strength of many religions has waxed and waned. Will the current religions stand and prosper in the distant future [say 2000 years from now]. what strengths do the current "big" religions have that will serve them well in sustaining themselves in the future. Or will new religions rise and gather more followers than the current religions. Or will atheism be the leading "religion" in the distant future. Any thoughts ?
Atheism will prevail. Scientific advances will eventually prove religion wrong much as it already has. And the more atheist there are, the less children there will be that are brainwashed with all this hoopla when they are young.
we are witnessing the death throws of religion. Ever since the enlightenment people have realised that they don't need to invent invisible agents to answer complicated questions, all they to do is think about it. As scientific understanding increases it pushes out, By it's very nature, The need for a god. Even the religious are becoming less religious. Ask a priest if he believes adam and eve existed, if noah built a boat or if a talking snake tricked adam in to eating an apple he will more than likely say it's a metaphor. Even the priest doesn't really believe it. and it's only a small gap between not really believing it and rejecting it entirely.
I don't see another 2000 years in the future of mankind. The rate we are killing each other and our planet, it will be a miracle to last another 200 years.
I don't think anything will be around in 2000 years. I think religion proper will be consigned to a very small portion of the world populace. I think human beings will always be probing ontological questions, though I think for some it will be, as it is now, more salient than for others; through crisis (as Camus discusses in The Myth of Sisyphus; see also Kierkegaard, Montaigne, even the ancient genius Heraclitus) or nature, some will always have a thirst to seek answers to meaning itself, while others don't place these concerns at the center of their lives - daily life is adequate enough, and dying as a reasonably happy person is all that matters. The former, while rejecting religion, will nevertheless carry the passion formerly ascribed to faith to personal philosophy or psychology. I believe the art endemic to religion - the "theater," meaning no disrespect to people of faith, will continue to speak to people generally, and it will morph from organized religion to other forms. The Reformation was met with the Counter-Reformation, with the Church's return to deeply moving rituals, to "theater"; Stalin's Soviet Union replacing Russian Orthodoxy with the cult of personality, the "Great Man" to speak to a person's apparent need for salvation from outside oneself. These archetypal yearnings, this atavistic call, will never die, in my opinion. I don't even know whether shucking such yearnings entirely is healthful. From my experience, we wholesale reject those archetypes kind enough to speak to us at considerable personal risk. They are us.
In 2000 years? One possibility is that an alien life form with higher intelligence discovers the earth, and some humans decide to worship them. During difficult times, the aliens may have to eat some of the humans, but they will spare those that follow them.
It doesn't have to be 2000 years, somewhere far away in the future where things could possibly be radically different. Are gods aliens? Dictionary says Alien : A lifeform not native to the planet Earth. maybe we are already worshipping aliens.
You realise there's practically an overpopulation crisis right now? Trouble is, modern medicine and scientific advancements have led to people living longer, and less deaths from preventable circumstances. I think that there will always be a religion of some form. A lot of people need to grab onto something for comfort in difficult situations or understanding. Science has dispelled so many of religions myths which has caused religion to reevaluate and evolve into something less literal and more metaphorical over the last 100 years. I believe the religions of the future will follow suit and people will believe in a simple set of guidelines.
I pretty much concur with this. Then again the human race has always found a way to survive as such even though things seem like they're heading into turmoil a bright new solution could be just around the corner. Mankind has so many problems that I'm pretty sure people have believed they were staring down the barrel of a gun hundreds of years ago. I do agree with your point about humans need to grasp something to fill a whole inside of them ,for whatever reason.