The Next Stage in Our (Religious) Evolution

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religion is ever-evolving (much like nature)

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Nature's evolution is imperceptible to ordinary observation. Fundamentalists can deny its occurrence for that reason. One can say the same thing of religions, most religions, without the ridicule that fundamentalists inevitably attract. That is because religions, on the whole, do not evolve. Good religion and evolution are incompatible. A religion that is seen to change with its environment is seen as unprincipled; 'evolving religion' is a contradiction in terms.A few religions do 'evolve', or, to be less polite, trim their sails according to prevailing winds, and suffer as a consequence. Catholicism, Mormonism and JWism are the obvious examples, obvious from checking their histories, or even current publications. Calvinism gave up some of its absurdities in the first centuries of its existence, but it has remained the same since, its leaders of a few centuries ago having the same influence now. But these are exceptions. Hindus do as Hindus did, Buddhists do as Buddhists did, Muslims do as Muslims did, more or less. Protestants cite and quote the views of John Wycliffe, 'the Morning Star of the Reformation' who wrote almost 700 years ago, and actually compete in attempting to simulate the early church. No change there. Religions can be said to be the most static phenomena of all, bar the laws of physics.

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Do you think any religous texts will have survived

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Why would they not survive, assuming that there is no totalitarian world government that destroys every last copy of a text or texts? If one means to ask if people will cease to believe in texts, is there any present and significant trend in that direction? Religious texts continue to have consequences in many ways, in politics, in legal matters, in health matters, in practical everyday events. Admittedly, some of these consequences may seem mind-bogglingly inappropriate to those who do not share confidence in a particular text, but the fact is that scriptures of one sort or another are taken as seriously as ever, and still by a majority, outside China, anyway.

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Yes, you are right in that I meant it in the context of catholic -> protestant -> mormon

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That is not what I wrote, is it, which I very much hope you don't find disappointing. There is suspicion here of associating two religions that in truth are diametrically opposed.That is a chronology, but nothing more. The arrows do not represent the truth, if any sort of development is implied. Protestantism (less Calvinism) was the statement (re-statement of the gospel, pro testamentum, according to Protestants) that mankind is justified by faith. This flatly contradicted the Vatican, that was set up by a Roman emperor, and maintained by others far more interested in pelf than the next world, to propagate the notion that justification came only courtesy of the emperor's tame priests. Rome then perceived with the greatest alarm a loss of control of its meek and muzzled populations, an instinct that has never completely disappeared, even now.Every single Reformer (and Calvinists too, who could not resist jumping on the bandwagon) described Catholicism as of the Antichrist, and their own beliefs in no way a development of Catholicism. The immediate response of the Vatican to attempt to murder them clearly demonstrates that they were all agreed upon that point. Many moderns of course don't like to read that, because they are just as afraid of Protestantism as the Vatican was (and is). It's just that murder is not so easy now, in Western countries, anyway. (Christians are quite often murdered in Islamic and other non-Western countries.)Mormonism was a re-statement of the Catholic view that justification is by works, and may have been a response to the comparative failure of Catholicism in the USA. So Mormonism may be 'modern Catholicism', though of course both religions have been forced to 'modernise', or catch up with science, democracy and Protestantism. So you can have Catholic -> Mormon as a quite likely historic development, but not much more than that, other than Catholic -> JW. And Catholicism is really a recycling of the Pharisees who attempted to circumcise the Galatians, whom Paul called 'dogs'. Nothing new under the sun, as the prophet wrote.

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It's only been about a thousand years since Christianity has really been on the world stage, whereas it's been even shorter for Islam. If you want an example of what I'm talking about, look at Judaism- it's 6,000 years old and yet only makes up 3% of the world's population.

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Who is to say that Christianity did not begin 6000 years ago? Abraham was justified as righteous by faith, which makes Protestantism the only Abrahamic religion. If Judaism is right, then Christianity is imaginary; and vice versa. One can't say that Christianity exists as a valid belief and that it began 2000 years ago (where you get 1000 years ago, I don't know).

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Hinduism is a subversion of this though- it's a little older than Judaism yet makes up about 20% of the world's population.

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Do you know what the word 'subversion' means? The most ancient texts of Hinduism are indistinguishable from those of any ancient religion- and remember that religious instinct is the universal feature of ancient civilisations, according to archaeologists. Those texts are very general and unsophisticated, often adoring nature, as the Vedas do. It is after the date of Moses that Hinduism develops into more than that (and in ways that at times look very similar to the OT).One could say that it is feasible that Christianity was the first modern religion, that has influenced all others. It has certainly influenced all new arrivals in the last 2000 years, and a completely new religion, one that does not either claim to be 'real' Christianity, or to be its legitimate successor, seems unlikely in the future. One often sees new corruptions of Christianity, claiming to be Christianity, that are usually of passing influence because they are plain silly, on the whole. The internet is probably the major vector in this process today, though even the 'respectable' media, press and TV, can be just as silly with an alleged academic as any semi-educated guy with an idea and a computer. Edited by ochaye, : No reason given.

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So you readily admit that some evolution in religion has been observed.

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Can you not read advanced English? What do these things- '' mean? I assume that you are not malicious, and simply misunderstood.Biological evolution implies advance. Catholicism has changed at the expense of credibility. Rather than increase in population, as with biological organisms, the reverse occurred and is ongoing. The present leader of the Catholics has sensibly been talking about a slimmed down Catholicism in the future, even as he makes almost simultaneous, mutually contradictory statements about his own religion. He is fully aware of his impossible position, that is exacerbated by the long-held belief of the faithful that Rome represented the eternal, the immutable. A religion that is seen to change with its environment is seen as unprincipled; 'evolving religion' is a contradiction in terms. A deity who changes his mind is hardly worth following, and the Vatican tries hard to cover up this fact with its casuistry, as do the lesser cults.

Understanding through Discussion.

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No, it doesn't

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It does.

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Hi ochaye, seems we have a communication problem.

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Only the one who failed to answer or even quote the crucial question has a problem, which may have nothing to do with English comprehension.There is, moreover, no accuracy about biology, so I will read your output no further. Should any other reader suppose that this poster has made a constructive comment on any relevant matter, do raise it.

Skepticism takes careful aim and blows its brains out.

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It's as well-written as you'd expect from him.

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Quite so. Novelists know a trick or two.

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I think that the modern age, with convenient transport, communication, and unprecedented levels of literacy will serve to stop the evolution of language cold.

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There's no sign of it so far. There is a noun newly 'verbised' every week! There's another! And much of it today is due to incoherence and mental torpidity, not education and intelligence.Language has always evolved, i.e. adapted to be useful in new environments, and language experts are agreed that this will always be the case. The rate of change varies, it is true, but this has been quite closely correlated with economic and social change, as one would expect.

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claims of miraculous happenings are subject to a much higher level of scrutiny

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Look, if the Vatican says it's a miracle, it's a miracle, and nothing you or I say will make any difference.

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In my view religions are universally based on ignorance and deception

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In whose interest?Edited by ochaye, : No reason given.

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the connection between geographically distant populations means that language is extremely unlikely to "speciate" into incompatibility, or spawn isolated populations.

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Even within one country, all people do not understand each other. Take a young dude from the Bronx, a dear old lady from a Sussex village, put them on an island for mutual co-operation, and they probably won't understand each other much, even tho' they both speak the same language, supposedly.

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Usually the interests of the deceiver.

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You don't say. Who might that be?

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why the dude from the Bronx can understand other dudes from the Bronx, and the old lady from Sussex fits right into Sussex. I think that technology allowing easy and frequent long-distance communication will reduce such things tremendously.

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When will the dude and the Sussex lady communicate?

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It varies depending on the situation.

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It does? Or is this all in the imagination, a shot in the dark?

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Why would you be under the impression I was referring to a specific individual?

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I haven't the least idea about who was referred to. I'm getting the feeling that I will never find out.

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My point is that their social circles *can* communicate.

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That isn't your point, is it. Your point is that you think that the modern age, with convenient transport, communication, and unprecedented levels of literacy will serve to stop the evolution of language cold. But the likelihood of middle class English matrons chatting to dudes, or, probably, to any other sort of ghetto for more than a brief encounter, is so low as to be amusingly unimaginable. So speciation, that has already gone a long, long way despite modern progress over several centuries, is unlikely to be diminished now. All of us to a degree live in little ghettoes, each with its own argot, though sometimes we may inhabit more than one. The more populated Western society gets, the more easily will people be unaware that cultures outside their own even exist. Americans are infamous for that already, or they were before 9/11.

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All you are trying to do is demand unreasonable proofs.

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I'm asking for evidence to support an allegation made, a serious allegation of deliberate deception. People will ask, "Where is the moral fibre of skeptics?" if there is not either such evidence, or a retraction. That wouldn't do, would it.

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the Dark Ages

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How many English speakers were there in the Dark Ages?The accusation that religions are the result of deliberate deceptions has been abandoned, de facto.Edited by ochaye, : No reason given.

LOL!