Thread:User talk:Armondikov/"You'll grow out of your rebellious phase."/reply (12)

I don't think it would "die over night" or at all. I think that religion, whether people are told they 'need it' or not, fills a very core place in human existence, that most of us have. When you are an atheist, you have to work harder to fill that, usually by *reading* and *thinking*.

Science cannot give us answers to a host of questions like: "why are we here", "how should we behave", "what is the meaning of life/my life". You and I, we either don't care about those questions, or we answer them by contemplating them, listening to other people's answers, etc. But "intellectuals" (for lack of a better term... contemplatives?) are not the norm, they are the exception. Religion fills that space.

There are several, hum, not really "studies", cause i think that implies something more scientific... but "examinations" of modern religion and one finding is that there is a large collection of people who are "incidental atheist like people" (never go to church, but would not really self-identify as atheist, cause they just don't really care), who are turning to things like aliens, and conspiracy, and what in religious studies, we started calling "Technological mythology" that fills a similar path, but isn't religious per say.

We are, biologically, going to quest for things "religious-like". It's what we are. meme or not.