The Future of Religion
What will Religion be like 100 years from now?

Evolution will drive Most Religions to Extinction

Everything is evolving, including religion. So which religions will survive - and if they do survive, what will they evolve into? Or will they all become extinct? Who will still be here in 100 years, or 1000 years or 100,000 years from now? Will people still be praising Jesus in the year 102,005? (Assuming we make it through the Y100K computer meltdown where all the software using 5 digit dates all crash) As with any evolutionary process, when the environment changes, the organisms have to adapt. This is true not only for living organisms but for social and religious organisms as well. During the Dark Ages religion was stable for very long periods of time. But those days are gone and the human race is in the middle of a huge evolutionary jump. New technology is changing how we understand things and how we process information. The Internet, which we call the Sacred Router, is causing an acceleration of knowledge. Information from around the world can be researched in seconds allowing people who discover new things to associate with like-minded people everywhere. If not for the Sacred Router the Church of Reality would not exist. What effect will the Internet have on religions? No matter what religion you are a member of, there is at least an implied assumption that what you believe in is actually real. There may be some exceptions but if you ask most people if what they believe in is real, they would say, "Yes it is!" And there is some presumption that if they became convinced it were not real, then they would (eventually) stop believing in it. What is different today, as compared to centuries ago, is that you have a lot more information and tools available to test and see if what you believe in is real. And more and more people are putting their faith to the reality test. For example, the Jesus story. I never believed it. But I did assume that it was at least based on some guy who actually did live around that time. As it turn out, I was wrong. I now know that Jesus to be 100% fictional and to have never existed in any real form whatsoever. I found that out by researching on the Internet and discovering things that I didn't know. These are things that I probably would never have found in the pre-Internet days. I found out that there were dozens of fictional figures who predated the Jesus story that had all the same elements of the life of Christ. They already had a God as father, virgin mother, mass slaying of children, miraculous healings, raising people from the dead, being crucified, and rising from the dead on the third day. The writers who made up the Jesus story didn't even make it original. They plagiarized the fiction of the times. With this kind of information becoming more available, it puts pressure on fiction-based religions to explain themselves and raises doubts about if the underlying narratives are in fact true. If Christians, for example, figured out that Jesus wasn't real, would they still believe in him? I would hope that most of them would not. Thus, if a religion is based on fiction then this information age becomes a threat to their religious foundation. I would think that if Jesus goes away then Christianity goes away with it.

 

Evolution of the Church of Reality

As with other religions, the Church of Reality will also be affected by the changes in technology. But unlike other religions, evolution is our friend. That's because the Church of Reality has several advantages that other religions don't have. These include: We are not Stuck in the Past - Most religions are stuck in the past. They rely on a fictional event that happened ages ago and they look backwards in time to a fading memory of a story that becomes less real with the passing of time and the advent of technology. The Church of Reality looks towards the future, the Sacred Direction, We have no fictional cross to bear. We are Reality Based - Reality based means that we believe in what is real. And if what is real changes, we change with it. What we really mean here is if we believe something that is wrong, and we discover that we were wrong, we change our minds. We adapt to reality because we are committed to that. Fiction based religions facing the reality that their fiction is wrong will either cease to exist, adapt to reality, or find better ways to force their fiction upon their enslaved cult members. We are the Natural Religion - Our religion is built on the rock of reality, to use a biblical metaphor. When the waves come and wash away the fiction, we will still be here. Reality isn't something that is going to go away, it is like a beacon that always leads us back to the way things really are. As we understand ourselves and the world we live in, we develop a lifestyle and a belief system that is a natural progression of who we are and all the good things we work to become. In the end there may only be one religion, and that religion will be the Church of Reality. If other religions are going to survive, they are going to have to evolve into something that is more realistic, and many religions are. I remember seeing the Dalai Lama being interviewed on the Larry King Live show on CNN. Larry King, a Jew raised Atheist, was extremely respectful of the Dalai Lama referring to him as "His Holiness" and "The Living Buddha". But the Dalai Lama had evolved and was clearly uncomfortable with accepting supernatural titles even though it had been a tradition for thousands of years. I believe he has become a realist because he played down the "Living Buddha" and said, "I'm just a monk trying to do the best job I can for my people." This is the kind of evolution that all religions are going to have to go through to survive in the era of the Internet. The Internet brings the tools of information to the people allowing them to extract reality that used to be lost. In this age of reality what better way for a religion to survive than to embrace reality, which is what the Church of Reality is founded to do.