My pet theory is that as science slowly chips away at things unknown that eventually faith based religions will be replaced with knowledge based religions. If you believe god created everything then wouldn’t studying everything from the subatomic realm to galaxy’s and black holes be the best way to appreciate this god? Imagine physicist monks that spend equal time meditating and studying string theory. And the biggest sins? Myths, ignorance, wishful thinking.
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He’s only responsible for Roman Catholic Christians. Then you’d have to go visit the so-called leaders of other Christian doctrine - meaning the Protestants and their sects, as well as the branches of Catholicism.
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Have you read Neal Stephenson’s Anathem? It’s been a while for me, but your description mentally took me to that book. It’s good, if you enjoy his (quite verbose) style.
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I love the idea, but am afraid you’re committing one of those big sins.
Though I am against dismissing oral history / myths outright. You can learn a lot if you know how to read them. 
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No I haven’t. I will give it a look. Thank you.
I know 
I’m not planning to start or join such a religion. Religion is not my cup pf tea. Just saying I think there will come a time when people that need religion as part of their lives will find faith based religion outmoded. They will stop fighting science and just accept that in it’s purest form science could be described as the study of gods creation. Funny thing is that many of the early scientists were monks studying gods creation.
Would knowledge based religion do any better? Would there be logical laws against good luck charms or praying when one has drunk too much?
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Bah, too many Christians to keep track of!!!
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Anyone who’s done DMT knows that’s the future of religion 
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I want to meet the machine elves but have never found a good source for DMT.
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The time will come again when that is true, I should think. There are far too many religious sites in the world that doubled as astronomical or other observatories. The main argument in the film The Agora was that science and religion were not divided until Christianity came along and decided dogma was more important than truth.
Look how much science and math was explored in the medieval Muslim world, or how much the Chinese did during the same time period while practising state-enforced religion.
Officially atheist countries behind the Cold War era Iron Curtain could be behind in some areas of technology too. It’s the dogma and totalitarian aspects that pull science down. Why seek the truth when the official line is it’s already found?
ETA: autocorrect
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Well said.
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I think you’re making a category error here. Science and religion are largely orthogonal to each other. Science is about How Things Work, whereas religion is about What It Means To Be Good.
I’ll admit it’s confusing as both fields are making the same category error (albeit in opposite directions) and both end up looking just as ridiculous.
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Yes, but they are more than that today. Religion tries to explain how the world works and science tries to tell us how to live healthier and happier lives. But I think we are agreeing that the two should have no problem coexisting. My musings are just on how that might look in the distant future.
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Some religion does, not all. Just like all atheists aren’t assholes like Dawkins.
The problem I see is that a lot of the rationalist, atheist, “religion is teh bad” types have a huge fucking blind spot about what science actually is and what it can and can’t do. Instead they end up as a cult of science and if you don’t agree with them for whatever reason you must be some organic vegan coffee-enema anti-vaxxer who wants everyone to starve to death because you hate GMOs (to pick a example entirely at random). Of course, the other side of that debate is just as bad because they are organic vegan coffee-enema anti-vaxxer who wants everyone to starve to death because they hate GMOs.
Reason gets lost in the middle.
Meh. I just think if you remove the Cult of God you’ll get the Cult of Science and we’ll be back where we started. THe more things change…
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Agreed. Technically I am an atheist but most atheist are so… dogmatic and absolute that I just don’t want to associate with them if even just in name. They usually have such strong, faith, that what they think is right.
Me, I don’t currently have any reason to believe there is a god as defined by the popular religions. But I also don’t have any proof that such a being couldn’t exist. If I find new evidence that such a being exists. Cool. I have no ego in proving or disproving if such a being either exists or it doesn’t.
Yes, I agree. Farther up I wondered if in time a cult of science would ban things such as good luck charms. I believe good luck charms have zero affect on the world and yet have had more than a few. Intellectually it’s just a thing to me. But on an emotional level such object can be calming to have with you.
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Same here. The only rational position to take is to be agnostic and say we don’t know, but I’m an atheist because I have faith there is no god.
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If asked I usually say I am agnostic since it’s a bit less rigid. But if you held a gun to my head and said I had to say what I really think regardless of facts/dogma/whatever I would have to say I don’t think there is a god. But I just can’t commit to saying there can’t be such a thing. Too much of this universe is undiscovered. Heck, much of the lower ocean is undiscovered. Lack of proof doesn’t prove something isn’t out there but it does seem silly to believe in such a thing before some proof comes along.
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I say I’m an atheist. We have an agreement - I don’t believe in God and She doesn’t believe in me.
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This is the biggest issue I have. I class myself as an atheist, but I think it’s antithetical to claim that the issue is eternally and completely closed and still insist that the scientific method is what we need to go on.
If the existence of god(s) hasn’t been proven, we must also be willing to admit that it hasn’t been falsified, either.
I don’t like to say I am agnostic, because given the evidence available, I do not believe in the existence of such being(s). However, if I were to be presented with sufficient evidence that had been sufficiently analysed and it indicated otherwise, I would hardly be supporting the aims of science or rational thought if I did not revise my theory.
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This ^^^^^^^^ me 100%.
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