GloryB

While I was reading the section on Hindu, I noticed a post talking about similarities between stories in Hinduism, Christianity, and Greek mythology. I was wondering if anyone here feels that today's current religions will become tomorrow's myths. If so, will new religions that we see as more cults, like Scientology, take over as the modern day religions?

GloryB

PhoenixReborn13

Religions, as institutions, are just cultural expressions of a peoples' understanding of God. Asking this is like asking if humanity will ever evolve and embrace new ideas.

So long as humanity remains closed-minded and clings to old ideas and old traditions, I do not expect religion to become mythology, so to speak. The Catholic Church has been around since Christ, and still exists. Judaism's been around much longer.

I think religion will continue to, over time, stray from its founders intentions, but there are always people that are naive and will embrace their religion, whatever it evolves into.

SithLord

I disagree. It's already happening. The number of people being raised ina world where we no longer need a mythical God to explain how things work is growing every day.

It's simple cause and effect. Eventually there will be no need (cause) to believe God created all this as we will understand how it happened ourselves. If you look at it from a scientific point of view we are really just a few major breakthroughs away from having a LOT more answers than we have today.

For example.... once we have a true method of dating objects that chrisitans can't poke holes in how long do you think the ridiculous stories of genesis will hold water when we start dating several million year old fossils?

Religion would just become stories to tell the kids.

__________________
"Relax, I'm here to offend you" - SithLord

Belle

Myths are the stories that capture imagination and offer simple explanations for otherwise unexplicable events.

Maybe we don't believe the ancient Greek myths anymore, but we invent new myths all of the time, just the same. There are hundreds of thousands of urban legends, conspiracy theories, and stories that many, many people believe, despite lack of evidence - just look at the front page of a tabloid and you can see what I mean. For some reason (and I've yet to find a scientific reason for this) humanity wants to believe... in something that is mysterious and inexplicable.

Will Christianity become mythology? For some, it already has done so. However, I don't think that will happen for most devout Christians - not in this lifetime, at least - because too many people continue to embrace the mysterious and refuse to hear any other explanation.

__________________
No matter where you go, there you are. ~ Buckaroo Banzai

Grant

For Christianity to be come mythology, one or more of a few things need to happen:

A) Christians are all murdered all Bibles are burned
B) Christians are given a good reason to believe what we experience is natural
C) We're lying and we're not experiencing anything in the first place
The list probably goes on for a long time...

__________________
Hey.

Grant

We don't embrace mysteries. We embrace the lack thereof (that sounded really sophisticated, huh?). I speak for myself and majority of the Christians I know, of course. I'm sure there are some oddballs among the oddballs.

Now for a slightly off-topic tangent:
People always tell me to "open my mind". Why do we open our minds?

*penetrating stare*

To close them again... but on more well-formulated ideas.

I'll be the first to tell you, its hard to question the foundation of your life and only thing you can really relate with. It took me forever to consider the possibility that Christianity is just a myth. Am I biased? Yes! What am I supposed to say? "No... I'd love to have spend the last couple years of my life talking to myself for no good reason!"

However, I'm confident that not biased enough that I would altar/ignore facts or events just to continue believing Christianity.

Well I evantually opened my mind and considered all the possibilities, did some research, and wound up closing it back around Christianity, but for better reasons than "My mommy said so."

Back to the quote: Its not that I refuse to hear any other explanation, its just that the explanation I DO believe is the most logical (in my opinion obviously).

-T-

__________________
Hey.

George

Yeah but the secular world wouldn't let Christians live it down if they ever found proof which the Christians couldn't refute.

If we had absolutely undeniable carbon dating that all scientists agreed on what would Christians do? To be honest that's not a far fetched as it sounds. The answer to a reliable dating method could be something really simple. We've stubmled onto bigger breakthroughs pretty easily. Remember life saving penecillin (sp?) being discovered from moldy bread?

I have to agree with Sithlord. If reliable dating were discovered a huge chunk of the Christian faithful would suddenly find themselves with a lot of questions for their religious leaders. And that's just one breakthrough! What happens when scientitts break the DNA genetic code and find out just how it evolved to it's present state?

__________________
What's that? You haven't Gone Green yet? What are you waiting for?
Got a question? Need help figuring out how something works here?
Send me a Private Message.

Grant

Why are you confident that the world IS as old as our current methods say it is? Like SithLord said, "Christians can poke holes in them" (not exact quote)

Hmmm... what would I do if it was proven that the world is jillions of years old? First, I would investigate the possibility that God used evolution to create us (ask R3NNiS for more info on that). If that proved to be doodoo, I would seek out an explanation for what I've thought was supernatural.

Personally, I can't lie to myself, so I wouldn't pretend that God exists with reason to believe otherwise.

My loyalty is with truth and logic, and then Christianity. So far, the two have proven to be one and the same in my honest opinion. If they can't be one and the same, then I would of course chose truth and logic over religion.

-T-

EDIT: A lot of Theists would be hard-headed and push it away. I can definately agree with that.

__________________
Hey.

Mocopo

The Christian movement is way too strong in other countries to ever become a myth. As for other religions, Mormons are probably gonna end up taking over the world some day O_o, theyre extremely productive with their missions. Muslims are very close behind them, with mosques on almost every street in the UK nowadays. In a matter of ten years i think Great Britain went from 5,000 mosques to over 30,000.... if im not mistaken. Many ancient Eastern religions are indeed dying out tho. Hindu and Buddhism arent practiced for their beliefs in diety any more, but instead for the way of living. Most African religions were never bigger than a single tribe anywayz, and as for the Jews..... i honestly dont really understand how theyve been able to stay alive all this time. 14 million Jews in the US, 7 million in Israel, and the other 7 million are scattered around the globe.
But there seems to be a battle for the souls between Muslims and Christians on the horizon... Mormons not being included in that, btw. In the end, i think theyll win tho....

__________________
shnaps, Jesus rocks....

melissajean85

I believe that there is a lot of things in this world we cannot explain. We are not meant to learn everything. Miracles have happened and are happening even as we speak, and I'm sure some people will try to come up with some scientific theories to explain it, but no one will really know the answer. No one can explain all things on this earth. A person can spend their entire life searching for answers and only learn a small fraction about the workings of this world.

I think that all the things that are happening in this world with the war in the middle east and the approaching end times, and the strength in the belief of God will be forever remembered for thousands of years to come, but never will it become a myth. No matter how many years pass, how many changes this world will go through, Christianity will not die. I believe that evil has grown and will grow more and more as time goes by until the return of Christ, but never will it overcome the belief in the one true God.