Recently, when one of my friends forwarded me statistics about religion in the USA I was surprised to see that almost ~16% of people don't like to affiliate themselves with any religion. After ruling people's minds for centuries I think slowly religion is losing its grip on people. At least the trend in the USA points in that direction. It's not surprising, but one wonders what can be the reasons behind this shift? Organized religion is at its best nowadays as far as aggressiveness is concerned. Money is not a problem for them. All these organizations are very rich and powerful and their network is huge. They have a large dedicated workforce, and all resources are at their disposal to propagate their views (including TV, the internet, or any other modern tools of social or personal communication). So, technically they have all the physical requirements that are necessary to become a successful enterprise. Even after all this, their share is on the decline. However, even now with all this decline religion is the major force that divides or unites groups. It polarizes people's opinions as most people still like to associate themselves with some religion. All organized religions ruled this world unconditionally until progress in science and technology started helping people to figure out things on their own and the dependence on religion started reducing. I don't think the fierce competition between different religions, violent conflicts between them, the conservative nature of these organizations, and their unwillingness to change are the only reasons for this decline. These things have been there since religion started but its growth was not affected because of these factors.
Religion is a product of the intelligent human brain. There was a time in our civilization when there was a lot of confusion and a lot of questions about things happening around people. There was not a single force that could unite people of that time. There were no proper tools to find any answers to their questions and at that time organized religion and the concept of God came to their help. It provided them with believable answers based on the existing knowledge of that time and everything was attributed to God and its powers. Either with aggressive marketing or the use of force, everything was settled, people were content, and most of their doubts were either cleared or suppressed. To keep its hold on the masses slowly religion got converted into an organized institute with rigid rules and requirements. It also became big, very big so these rules were necessary to run the organization smoothly. But at the same time, there were always skeptics and nonbelievers who thought differently or didn't believe in all these explanations offered by religion and its books. Some of them developed their own philosophies which slowly developed in other religions. Some challenged the concept of religion and God itself. Some of them survived but mostly they perished or got executed.
This whole process continued for many centuries. One after another many religions came, and with that came fierce competition and a tough race to recruit more subjects. Once they got recruits then they needed to retain them and this started a conflict between different religions. They were fighting for the same lands and people. The competition became tough and conflicts became serious. So serious that many times it resulted in mass killings and riots. Just because of differences in their beliefs people killed each other, wiped out civilizations. This exposed the ugly and cruel side of religion. Groups of people who claimed that their religion and God taught them love, peace, and compassion started killing others just because others didn't believe in the same source who delivered this message. But still, this didn't reduce the popularity of religion because the hold of religion was very strong. People needed something to identify themselves. They needed some common identity to feel part of a group and society. Because of the emergence of many religions, people got divided depending on which religion they follow. This conflict is still going on where there is a continuous struggle between different religions to expand their base and this is what we see around us today.
At the same time, the rise of science and technology caused a major dent in the belief system of all religions. It helped people to find reasons and logic behind many things that were supposed to be divine. Initially, organized religion tried to stop this from happening but the evidence was too overwhelming to suppress. This slowly started to bust the bubble of false beliefs created by religion to some extent. Then there was an explosion of knowledge due to the revolution in communication techniques. Ultimately, at the end of the twentieth century, this revolution virtually brought the whole world together. Atheists, skeptics, and nonbelievers formed their own societies. In the modern world, it was not that easy to prosecute them or eliminate them. Slowly they also started sharing their own doubts, own ideas and there was an audience for them. Many of their questions sounded very logical, their concerns and doubts sounded very rational and they all demonstrated one thing very clearly, one doesn't need any religion to be a good human being. I think the result of all this is that 16% of people don't want to associate themselves with any religion. They have their own set of ideas and are fine without any particular belief system. One can see that this trend is all over the world. Unless organized religion and its gatekeepers recognize this trend and mend their ways this trend will continue. It's a very small dent right now but I am sure they must be concerned about it getting big and if they don't change anything I am sure it is going to get big. More and more people will move away from religion. To counter this trend I think they will either become more aggressive in preaching (the most possible action according to me based on the history of organized religion) or they will try to adjust to the changing environment of today's world (which is very unlikely to happen). It will be interesting to see which direction organized religion takes.
Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.
(Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing)
Reference:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_United_States
2. http://www.examiner.com/article/rise-of-the-nones-us-religious-affiliation-at-lowest-point-ever
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