According to a study done last year by the United Nations (no idea why they did this but they did), almost 6 Billion people have a cell phone in the world. That's about 1.5 Billion more people than those who have access to clean water! (same study) So if even half of those are smart phones, then that means that 3 Billion people can access the entire wealth of human knowledge thus far, and the other 3 billion can talk to their friends about it.
All those people having access to all of that knowledge has created a vast population of the worlds people who feel that we no longer need religion anymore, or at the very least that they don't. So you have more and more people around the world calling themselves Atheist, Agnostic, or only loosely religious. What do those even mean though? Surprisingly all of those terms don't mean what they are commonly associated with. They are actually more broad terms that can cross the paths of each other, and with religion. For example I consider myself Agnostic, and Atheistic, yet I also have a professed faith in Christianity. How is that possible? Allow me to explain.
Atheist is a very broad spectrum word. Everyone thinks that an Atheist cannot believe in any god whatsoever, however that isn't true. The beginning of the word atheist was in Ancient Rome. The original Christians and Romans would call each other Atheist simply because they did believe in the other's deities. Neither group was non religious in any way, just not each other religion. On top of that only Atheists known as Explicit Atheists outright reject any notion of their being any possibility of a god or other supernatural entities existing. Most other Atheists have decided that unless evidence presents itself somewhere other than ancient texts then they themselves have judged the existence of a deity or spiritual being as being unlikely.
Agnostic, especially in religious circles, is thought of as a person who doesn't care about the existance of any god, and believes that if one exists at all then it won't really matter anyway. However, just like the word Atheist, this word covers a broad spectrum of meanings. The word Agnostic comes from the greek words a' (meaning without) and gnosis (meaning knowledge). It translates literally to mean without knowledge. Greek history is where philosophy and intrinsic study began. They used the term a'-gnosis (loosely) to define when they did not posses the knowledge or evidence to determine whether or not something was true. That is what a true agnostic will say. That there is not enough convincing proof to determine whether or not any god, spirit, of supernatural entities exist. If there is proof, then they are willing to question and change their belief system to match that proof. There is of course a spectrum ranging from believing in a god but not believing you can prove the non-existence of said god, to those that believe there is no god and you can't prove the existence of one.
So, let's go back to my statement that I myself am an Agnostic, Atheistic, Christian. Using the real meanings of the words Agnostic and Atheist you can see how that is possible. Personally I believe that without direct contact/intervention from God you can't prove his existence; therefor, making me Agnostic. As a Christian I believe that the Judeo-Christian God is the God, and that statement makes me both an Atheist, and a Christian at the same time.
Theistic is a word that is fairly understood, but just in case here it is. It simply means to have faith that there is a higher power (god, spirits, ect.). There are thousands of books written about all of the different theistic belief systems in the world. Some of the largest are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. There are literately thousands of them though, and even within the larger ones there are many different interpretations of their religious material. So much so sometimes, that two denominations of the same religious faith can look like two different religions.
So with all of that explained I suppose I should go back to my original question. How does religion fit in with the modern world? It's difficult to say really. Technology, science, and logical reasoning dictates to a lot of people that there can't be a god. While other say that because of our discoveries it only points to the existence of one, because nature can't be so complex in randomness. Obviously I don't have the answer. Truthfully no one does. Dead people are the only ones who could definitively tell us whats beyond life, and they aren't talking. I think really, that we live in the greatest time for religions. We have constant access to religious and non religious materials of all kinds. We are the generation of humans (so far) with the greatest capability to truly decide for ourselves what we believe. Therefore, I think that religion still has a place. As long as humans understand all, or at least the biggest, options out there then they can choose what is right for them.
Agnostic, especially in religious circles, is thought of as a person who doesn't care about the existance of any god, and believes that if one exists at all then it won't really matter anyway. However, just like the word Atheist, this word covers a broad spectrum of meanings. The word Agnostic comes from the greek words a' (meaning without) and gnosis (meaning knowledge). It translates literally to mean without knowledge. Greek history is where philosophy and intrinsic study began. They used the term a'-gnosis (loosely) to define when they did not posses the knowledge or evidence to determine whether or not something was true. That is what a true agnostic will say. That there is not enough convincing proof to determine whether or not any god, spirit, of supernatural entities exist. If there is proof, then they are willing to question and change their belief system to match that proof. There is of course a spectrum ranging from believing in a god but not believing you can prove the non-existence of said god, to those that believe there is no god and you can't prove the existence of one.
So, let's go back to my statement that I myself am an Agnostic, Atheistic, Christian. Using the real meanings of the words Agnostic and Atheist you can see how that is possible. Personally I believe that without direct contact/intervention from God you can't prove his existence; therefor, making me Agnostic. As a Christian I believe that the Judeo-Christian God is the God, and that statement makes me both an Atheist, and a Christian at the same time.
Theistic is a word that is fairly understood, but just in case here it is. It simply means to have faith that there is a higher power (god, spirits, ect.). There are thousands of books written about all of the different theistic belief systems in the world. Some of the largest are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. There are literately thousands of them though, and even within the larger ones there are many different interpretations of their religious material. So much so sometimes, that two denominations of the same religious faith can look like two different religions.
So with all of that explained I suppose I should go back to my original question. How does religion fit in with the modern world? It's difficult to say really. Technology, science, and logical reasoning dictates to a lot of people that there can't be a god. While other say that because of our discoveries it only points to the existence of one, because nature can't be so complex in randomness. Obviously I don't have the answer. Truthfully no one does. Dead people are the only ones who could definitively tell us whats beyond life, and they aren't talking. I think really, that we live in the greatest time for religions. We have constant access to religious and non religious materials of all kinds. We are the generation of humans (so far) with the greatest capability to truly decide for ourselves what we believe. Therefore, I think that religion still has a place. As long as humans understand all, or at least the biggest, options out there then they can choose what is right for them.
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