The Inevitable Growth of Atheism: Six Predictions

August 19, 2015 by Daniel C. Dennett and Linda LaScola

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6) Some people will remain religious just because it's their nature. They have an innate sense of a benign "presence," just as some people have an innate love, amounting almost to addiction, of music. Religion, that "binding together" element that has been present since our human beginnings, will finally be unbound from attempts to explain science and form governments. It will probably survive as an irresistible attraction for some people, and as long as religions don't abuse their members, or enforce ignorance on their children, we should tolerate them and even protect them as minority groups.

Proviso: Could anything turn the declining curve of religion around? Yes, unfortunately. A global plague, a world war fought over water or oil, the collapse of the internet and power grid, or some as yet unimagined catastrophe could throw the remaining population into ignorance, misery, and fear, which is the soil in which religion flourishes best. And then we'd have to start rebuilding civilization all over again.

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8/19/2015 4:00:00 AM

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