In 100 Years, Will People Still Believe in God? | Michael Shermer | Big Think

In 100 Years, Will People Still Believe in God?
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One day, people will look back on humanity's religious past and laugh, says skeptic and science writer Michael Shermer. That's not merely evidenced by the fact that atheists are among the most rapidly growing minority groups in American society, but also because Islam will sooner or later experience the same kind of secular reform we've seen in Christianity and Judaism.
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MICHAEL SHERMER:
Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and Presidential Fellow at Chapman University.
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TRANSCRIPT:

Michael Shermer: I don’t think the day is coming soon when we’ll look back that people who believe in God, you know, that was a silly age, although some of us look at this that way now. But clearly the numbers are, you know — we’re not in the majority yet but the fastest growing group, the fastest growing religious group so called is the nones. The N – O – N – E – S people. Check the bock for no religious affiliation. Now they’re not necessarily atheist or agnostics or skeptics, but they are not affiliated with a religion. And so on one level, I don’t care what somebody believes as long as they leave me alone and they don’t interfere with my rights. They don’t try to kill me and bother me. I mean the JWs, the Jehovah Witnesses, they come to my door once in a while. The Mormons come to my door once in a while. It’s kind of amusing. I invite them in and give them a copy of Skeptic magazine and they’re like uh, we better call the head guy to come down here. That’s relatively harmless, but clearly we see with Islam and the problem of Islamic terrorism, religion has to be reformed. It absolutely does.

I don’t worry about the Jains or Jews or most Christians causing societal problems anymore because they’ve gone through the reformation enlightenment, age of reason, the scientific revolution. They came out the other side mostly nonviolent. And Islam hasn’t — so I think if we reform Islam and then start to wean people off belief in the supernatural altogether. You can’t do it by fiat, but we can inculcate it into people’s thinking critical thinking about everything including God. Throw God into the mix. That’s just another supernatural belief. And that’s what those of us who work in this area are trying to do. You know there are different strategies. You can be aggressive about it like Richard Dawkins and Hitch [Christopher Hitchens]. You know they’re pretty anti-theist. That works in some cases, but not other cases. Other areas people need to be reeled in slowly, gently. But that’s just a sales and marketing problem, you know. How should we sell our product best? Should we call it this or we use the red logo or the blue logo? You sort of product test those things and see what works. But we all share this overall goal. In a century or two, I think it’s possible no one will believe in God anymore or almost no one. And that will be good for society.
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[Bluefalcon]

How children are indoctrinated into religion is disturbing. You take a child who admires his or her parents and the child is convinced if he believes he will spend eternity in paradise with his family and if he doesn't believe he or she will burn for eternity in anguish. What type of loving God would torture over half of the worlds population for inheriting the wrong religion. I hope will be around for the day that we are free of religions dogma and xenophobia.

[Nulibrium]

I look forward to the day that religion is not the classic weak minded response to the overwhelming complexity of the universe.

[madman]

Not sure about god(s) but think of it this way, people no longer believe in zeus.

[marv]

the problem is that people really lack critical thinking in our society. it's really sad

[sharpshooter]

I can imagine how terrified some Christians are to hear this. It will only further their persecution complex.

[daniellassander]

The internet where religion comes to die. I find it very entertaining how fast a faith crumbles with some knowledge.

And the internet is the place where almost all knowledge can be found in just 1-2 minutes, so religions that ventures here will be dying.

[JimmyJim]

Religion is for the weak minded and gullible but most people need something to believe in.

[HellishSpoon]

Religion will not die

But it will evolve...

Kinda ironic.

[ryane]

I couldn't care less about whether or not people believe in God. Belief in God doesn't harm society, religion does.

[stephenstruble]

For some reason we never learned about cognitive bias or fallacies when I was in grade school. I learned about them in college, and some people never learn about them. I'll never understand why that is. I think being a reasonable person is one of the most important things.

[cloejarozenski]

God is an ever-changing concept. A century ago, how people thought about God was radically different than it is now. In a century from now, the way people think about God will be radically different.

[PhilSmulian]

Get someone interested in the wonder of nature through science, and they'll outgrow any dogma in not much time.

[SolarisSaber]

In 100 hundred years we will look at Christianity and Islam just like how we view Greek and Norse mythology today

[jcs]

"wean people off of Supernatural"?
Why would you want to? It's one of the best TV shows ever.

[GRiMHOLDx]

Religion will never die...
Someone will always have some type of belief in God.
The best we can hope for is that the majority will not.
Its going to be an eternal tug of war of ideas.

[JaredJanes]

One thing often left out of this argument is the fact that the secular world has yet to replace most of the core benefits that organized religion has to offer (ritual, community, contemplative practice, humility, empathy, etc.). That being said, I strongly believe all of these things can be found in a secular framework (some already are to varying degrees). Time to get to work!

[jerkwad]

It intrigues me how skeptics are never skeptical enough.

[Huyvovo]

A hundred years from now we'll study Christianity like how we study Greek mythology now.

[thoughtcriminal]

Still, remember that even though more people are becoming non-religious, the religious people tend to breed more. So getting rid of religion may be an uphill battle.

[xemy]

I partly blame the education system which is, for the most part,  totally inept when it comes to teaching people how to reason properly. Even science classes don't emphasize enough why the methods used are so fundamentally important in the quest for knowledge. WHY is the default position one of skepticism when dealing with an unverified claim? WHY is it important to test a claim in the first place? WHY should untestable claims be dismissed? I don't remember taking a single class where we explored these questions and the logic underlying them. And that risks resulting in a generation of young adults who see science as something that only scientists 'do', and not something that has any bearing on other disciplines or in day to day life. Leaving them intellectually defenseless against bullshit.

There should be whole classes dedicated to cognitive biases and logical fallacies in my opinion - it's this kind of scientific self-reflection that is sorely lacking in our schools. I didn't even know what a logical fallacy was until my early 20s...