With All The Love A Great Religion Can Muster

Here's some food for thought for all the religious letter writers of the world, determined to hold back the inevitable, and/or (at least in their own lives) maintain the charade of "belief" for as long as humanly possible:

As someone who has an interest in human history, it seems fairly clear to me that we are naturally moving away from the silly and childish superstitions of our past.

We no longer believe in leprechauns, dragons, unicorns, centaurs and a whole host of imaginary creatures that our ancestors took fairly seriously. Even those who still believe in the existence of gods believe in gods who are far less active that those of the past.

Not so long ago in history, we believed gods were responsible for what we would now consider mundane things such as lightning, the tides and the sun crossing the sky. Now, we have, for the most part, gone from dozens of gods directly manipulating the world around us to a single god who has no discernible impact on us or our environment.

I should point out there are exceptions. Many people still believe in astrology, homeopathy, ghosts, ESP and many other beliefs that, to the best of our ability to detect them, have no basis in reality and thus present no good reason to believe in them. On the whole, however, we are far less superstitious than we used to be, and that trend has been continuing for a long time.

My conclusion, therefore, is that our belief in gods will just naturally disappear over time, much as our belief in leprechauns naturally disappeared over time.

The concerted efforts of determined individuals and groups may speed that up or slow it down. But the trend appears irreversible.

And that, as they say, is all she wrote.