X-Message-Number: 31473
From: Mark Plus <>
Subject: Re: religion declining
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 08:33:51 -0700

In Cryonet #31469, 2Arcturus writes:


>Religion is not on its way out. Just, perhaps, in a major transition period. No
wonder to most of us the ancient religions no longer seem functional in today's
societies. But that does not mean *no* religion could be.


Sometimes things do fundamentally change. Nonbelief in religion has grown 
dramatically in the past century, as you can discover by studying the statistics
in the following table and doing some arithmetic:

Annual Table of World Religions, 1900-2025
http://www.wnrf.org/cms/statuswr.shtml


The figures seem consistent with the pie charts Gregory S. Paul and Phil 
Zuckerman published in their Edge article, "Why the Gods are Not Winning":

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/paul07/paul07_index.html


>And it should be noted, on this list, all the heavily secularized societies 
mentioned in the article are *much more* anti-cryonics than "religious" America.


I don't know how you measure "anti-cryonics." Assuming you could, how do you 
separate the religious versus secular factors from other considerations like 
egalitarian ideologies, distance from cryonics facilities, anti-American 
attitudes affecting the perception of cryonics in other countries and so forth?


"Around 2010 the world will be at a new orbit in history. . .  Life expectancy 
will be indefinite. Disease and disability will nonexist. Death will be rare and
accidental -- but not permanent. We will continuously jettison our obsolescence
and grow younger." F.M. Esfandiary, "Up-Wing Priorities" (1981).
http://www.box.net/shared/static/ay9lub60ha.pdf
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10948503/Up-Wing-Priorities


Mark Plus



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