What if there was no religion in 500 years time... (Earth, America)

[Don Penguinoini]

Science damn you! From the go god go episode in south park. In 500 years time, atheism takes over the world, how would you feel if in 500 years time everyone was atheist, including YOU,

Give and answer as if you know, from now.

I would be annoyed, VERY! My lovely hindu faith brought down by atheism.

[MidnightBlue]

In five hundred years I expect to have been dead for over 400 years, so I don't think much of anything that happens then will have any way of bothering me.

And your descendants could still be Hindus without believing that the gods were actual beings. Some people are now.

[Seyorni]

Not likely -- most people don't understand the basics of today's science. I'd say most Americans would be hard pressed to carry on an intelligent discussion about biology or geology. Many believe the earth to be only a few thousand years old. (Many can't find their own country on a map!)
People always have and probably always will prefer magical explanations to scientific.

[MaddLlama]

I'd be dead, so I doubt I'd be able to formulate an opinion about it...

[Willamena]

Originally Posted by penguino

Give and answer as if you know, from now.

Oh, you party poopers. I'll try to answer it. Okay, if I could be alive 500 years in the future, and everyone had converted to atheism, I'd probably appear to be a closet atheist. I could pull it off, too, having seen both sides of the issue and transcended both of them. I'd nod when the atheist says, "there is no God," and I'd equally nod when the theist says, "I know an image of God."

[Gentoo]

One, I have a hard time believing that atheism will completely take over the world, theism is ages old and still going strong.

But on the off chance that it does, then it does. Just another change in a world full of them.

[rojse]

I loved those two South Park episodes. Extremely funny, and were quite good satire about religion.

Perhaps we will be atheists, and instead of praising God, we will praise science and the scientific method.

To be fair, I read that in Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination, but I still like it.

In it, the protagonist meets an abandoned group of scientists live and worship all things scientific, and shout phrases like: "Praise be to science!" and "Most scientific."

[Ozzie]

Originally Posted by penguino

Science damn you! From the go god go episode in south park. In 500 years time, atheism takes over the world, how would you feel if in 500 years time everyone was atheist, including YOU,

Give and answer as if you know, from now.

I would be annoyed, VERY! My lovely hindu faith brought down by atheism.

I would have no problem with a superior race such as this. May it live for 1000 years.

[Seyorni]

As an aside, I think it very likely that five centuries from now the Earth will be a devastated ecology, devoid of civilization, with humans existing (if they exist at all) as scattered bands of primative hominids still struggling among themselves -- albeit with sticks and stones.

Science will play little part in their daily struggle.