To Fill a Religious Vacuum


It's a fun time, at least an entertaining time, to be a fan of commentary on religion. While I have grown tired of reading commentary by atheists who mostly plough old ground, commentary by Christian keeps getting changing. The search is on by pundits for what to do about declining numbers and where the faith's problems lie. There is a constant parsing of the various ways Christianity can side-step the approaching bulldozer of declining numbers. The link is a long narrative of disagreement. One side says the successful way forward is to hammer home the old-time religion. Paganism cannot stand up to the Bible that theory goes. The link author, however, thinks this is naive. The new paganism reflects new ideas in the culture and is not so easily defeated he writes. His solution, oddly enough, is to rally around prolife because it is universal in its righteousness.  The interesting thing about making "prolife" the poster of Christianity is that it is a fork in the road from the old, "Read the Bible. You are going to hell if you don't stop sinning."

The link author points our correctly that when there is a vacuum in religion, something fills in. In all of human history, there have been vacuums. New gods and religions have filled in. Even the Old Testament God needed a replacement. Now another hole is growing. The rising number of "nones" is figuring out what will replace Christianity or what new Christianity will replace the old. We know from human experience whatever replacement this turns out to be it, too, will be replaced in time. 

Perhaps there are things about the human brain that will remain there for as long as there are humans and we can use these to generalize about the future of religion in the West. I think there will always be a set of humans who believe there is another unseen and invisible world. (I'm not one of those but I'm OK with this group if they don't come into my space.) Of those who believe in this unseen world, there will always be some who think it is inhabited by an invisible being. The unseen being will approve of its human subject because that is the reason the brain created it. Today it's "God loves me." This variety of gods all approving of each person seems like a version of paganism to me. 

Human experience tells us also there will be those who do not believe the unseen world exists except in the minds of other humans. This group, atheists, will remain the enemy of those who believe. Those who fill the vacuum will remain angry at those who live happily with the empty space.  

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