I was conversing with yelekiah on another thread the other day and it made me wonder what kind of religion or spirituality will we have on earth in the future. We discussed the way that astrology plays a part in our world. For instance, we have moved out of the age of aquarius and into the age of pisces. Next we will move into aries and so forth. Will we delve deeper into the spiritual world or will we create another god? I am curious to find out what you guys think about where our world will be on this topic.

Since it's all speculation I would say my hope would be that people will find a way to personal inner peace with out the need for churches and old books to tell people how they should be and what is right and wrong morally. I would hope that in the future that people will stop feeling that their personal beliefs aren't enough to try to control others and also to judge others who don't believe as they do..........but I can only hope........

Certainly don't have the answer, but hopefully we'll get closer to a less dogmatic form of worship. Faith can do amazing things, but sadly unneccessary oppression is included on the list of things it can do. Maybe we'll come closer to understanding "God", or come to realize why the various religions are different and simply accept that or move towards a new wave of unification.

I think that in the future we'll simply believe what we believe and hopefully not try to shove it down each others throat. I think that the larger world religeons will take a lesson from the new age faiths and paganism. They will probably be less specific, (not Baptist, southern baptist, methodists), but, more along the idea of "Christian". I think that the larger religeons will become less secular and a little more inclusive. Lind of like the Buddists. You might follow one tradition of Buddism but, you would not say that some other tradition is evil.

Most importantly, all people, no matter thier religeon will know that Judaism is the one true faith!!!! I only say that because I'm a Jew! LOL Have fun!

the future will likely show what the past has shown us about the nature of humanity. "spirituality" will continue to act as way for people to grant themselves a mental construct of security and stability in the face of the unknown. as what the unknown changes, the common definitions of these spiritual things will change.

humans are always looking for an easy answer and such there will remain bunk peddlers for a long time.

after the biological disaster in the 2130's, there will be a very successful "humanist" movement, but with "ritual" elements, sort of like the unitarians, but more general and more formalized at the same time. The fifty year period in which mankind has to prepare for the Great Debacle in 2180 will be enough to prepare us to survive, but we will be permanently scarred by the events of that 50 year period. Most of our time will be spent on practical things and survival.

Curiousity great queston, It would be amazing IMO if religon would grow after all its natural, To miss that everything evolves and becomes more of itself is the greatest tradedy of religon , there has been great advancement in all areas except for religion, I say let it grow and I have a hunch it'll be of a benefit , why the need for religion ? how boring?? namaste sheri

I wanted to take a minute to thank all you guys for your thought provoking answers. There are still a few more I am looking foreward to hearing from.
When talking to yele I really began to think about the evolution of thought processes and that if life has taught me anything it's that the one thing certain about change is that it happens. You can either adjust to it or you can live in the past. It will happen reguardless.
I feel as though we are already coming to a new way of thinking. We are learning what is real and what is fantasy and we can distinguish between the two. We as humans are still gullible but we can now question without fear. This concept is nothing new really, history always repeats itself and conscience awakenings occur every hundred years or so. Usually in the first part of a century.
I think in the future, people will control their own spirituality and make their entity tailored to their needs and many others will be nonspiritual. But I think the image of a god will be history and so will the books/manuals that come with it.

To quote Ken Wilber:
"The leading edge stage today would be a self that goes beyond ego and beyond individuality. But maybee 2000 years from now, that will be the very thing that the evolutionary pioneers are trying to overcome.
Today's heaven is tomorrows hell---that's evolution
"
If we were to look at religion and spirituality as an evolving phenomina of human consciousness, we need to look at what has happened before us and look to what is being replaced today.
2000 years ago a man led many to the promised land, since then Buddha then Mohommed, have appeared.
Is this process evolutionary?
We appear to be embarking on a unique postmodern spirituality wherin each one of us is in a religion of one.
The question begs though, does this have the capacity to bind us into a true global culture?
Is the end of religions realized when we obtain this end?
Histroy has shown us that we, as a society, can not be united under the flag of religion.
Is human evolution, now shifting to an alternative to reach such an end?
The real significance of this surge in spiritual experience will depend on how we make sense out of the experiences themselves."

Elizabeth Debold

Good question.

IMO, we will eventually become like every other society before us. We will have our period of prosperity, and then in a remarkably short space of time, our entire civilization will collapse, leaving another to rise up and take its place.

Though of course, in our modern, global world, the collapse of one nation may affect the others to the extent that the entire world is unable to cope, throwing us into a time of never-before-seen darkness. Or it might not. I suppose you could make the assumption that each nation would hold each other up, and if one starts to collapse, another would step in to support it.

Then of course there is the biblical view (well, one of the views anyway) that our world will self-destruct before any of this happens, and Jesus will return and save the day.

I firmly believe one or more of these events WILL happen, though unlike Gideon, I don't know if it'll happen in 2130 or earlier or later.

That's just my thoughts on the matter.

Regards, PA

I'm going to be the wet blanket here...

I actually don't care about religion in the future. I'll be to busy being dead to care... and I'm not having any children so it's not like I'll have a "lineage" to worry about. X)

Um, er...actually, depending on who you talk to, we just finished, or are near the the end of the Piscean Age and are moving into the Aquarian (the ages move backwards through the zodiac). Remember "This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, etc?" They were singing about now. The phrase "New Age" refers to the Aquarian Age as well.

While the Piscean Age was characterized by exploration and domination, the Aquarian Age promises to favor partnership and eclecticism. All the trappings of the New Age movement--East/West confluence, goddess worship and female valuing, breakthroughs in communication technology--will be heightened in the coming millennium. The One World idea and pretty much everything in Star Trek is fundamentally aquarian as well.

you don't understand-i've been dreaming about this future on and off for decades. what happens, is that toxic levels of corrosive substances are released into the environment. around the mid to late 2130's is when the impending disaster is detected. they have about 50 years to prepare. strangely enough, the entire human race is rescued, with the exception of a few elderly persons, and those sensitive to the toxins. in the 50 year period, a virtual miracle happens: they will build gigantic "tunnels" in the arir connecting condo's, malls, and other large buildings.for the first time, world governments cooperate, evacuating rural area residents to high concentration population centers. The toxin rots exposed metal surfaces, and renders unshielded machinery and renders cars, airplanes, etc, including bombs, totally inactive. there is some kind of carlike vehicle, i think electric powered. by 2180, the deadline, everyone has been evacuated to the mass shelters.not a utopia, but not an apocalypse either. I was hoping someone would remember me posting about this on other threads, and would mess with me.nothing to do with any books i've read, either.just dreams, or remembrances? time on the astral plane does not flow like here, so it may be an earlier incartion i'm remembering, but in the future.

or just you being creative. write a book. maybe it will be published. maybe it will be made into a movie. maybe it will become the foundation for a religion.

Hey, I'm not saying it isn't going to happen. You might be having visions of the future somehow. i'm not one to discredit it. I'm not going to suddenly start saying 2130 is the year. Someone I used to work with (strangely eccentric, but nice guy still) believed the world would end in November last year, and was telling me and others to get ready for the end.

A year on and we're still here.

But that's not the point either. I'm just saying in the future sometime.

Regards, PA

just very vivid realistic dreamsi don't remember many of them clearly. i finally had one recently where i found out who i "was". the character is Gary, who, believe it or not-is a social worker, many of whose "cases" are still related to post-debacle stress syndrome. the year is maybe 2203, plus or minus. i don't remember calendars, but it is slightly after 2203
gary "is" much younger than i, i believe in early thirties. The dream was very mundane, about gary's adventures on a payday friday, as he walks home through tunnels, visits the bank, and runs into friends, etc. I do write, and have very few very minor published writings, but I haven't written about the gary dreams. i've been encouraged to.i don't think that many people would be interested in reading a book about a mediocre future (neither apocalyse, nor utopia, remember?) they want either gloom and doom or the opposite.the future in my dreams is very organized. there was a brilliant group of politicians that worked with scientists to escape the effects of the debacle. wanna hear something weird? while typing my earlier post, I had a waking "flash" that there would have protestors who refused to evacuate. I remembered that they died, but, the toxin's effects on humans is much slower on living beings than on metal and machinery. and weirder, there never was another world war. the early 22 century was riddled with political strife. it ended with the debacle. a borderline happy ending if at all. but it was all strangely humanist. if i were writing a book, i suppose i would make it a parody on organized religion, with the scientists and politicians being worshipped as gods later on. i made that up just now, it wasn't part of the dream sequence.but it would sell books to throw something like that in.

This dream squence sounds strangely familier. I don't want to turn this into a dream thread but, about a year or so ago I too had a dream about the future. It isn't quite as elaborate as yours Gideon but very simular. It took place under ground & people were being evacuated from the top. I was in a small town and I was in a gift shop of some kind. I remember I was looking through the windows in the shop and there was a lake behind it and a farm house next to it. The person that owned the gift shop lived in the house. They left and went over to there house and never returned. I want to see what happened and that's when it went underground. I remember people were color coded I don't know if it was a class thing or what. I remembered the colors were gold, green, red and white. The next morning I called my sister who has a book on dreams and we tried to interpret it the best we could. I know that mine was probably just a regular dream but it felt real and I can actually still feel the emotions I felt during the dream and I remember the whole thing quite well today. Just wanted to share that.
Back on topic, I noticed that some of the recent posts sound a little doom and gloomy. Not that there's anything wrong with it. I think it's very honest and thought provoking.

Cavalier, I have never heard that the zodiac goes in reverse. The age of aquarius began in the late 60's early 70's and we are now into pisces. It's kind of funny how we all interpret the signs of the zodiac differently. I see pisces as the seeker of the why and the how. The day dreamer that ponders lifes mysteries. That is kind of what's happening in the world today. Everyone is questioning the status quo searching for the truth beyond the stars so to speak. Most of us know that there are things around us that we can't explain away easily. Pisces is helping us to open our minds and search for the answers beyond what we could only imagine 50 years ago. Our technology is advancing so rapidly that we can hardly keep up with it. When we transfer into aries we will put what we have learned into action. As the adventurer aries will comand and conquour the unexplored territory in this case spiruality and religion it will create a path for the human race, then taurus comes to plant the seeds of knowledge into fertile minds. You see it's all in the way you percieve it.

Hey Curi, now I'm curious where you're getting your information. Every source I know says these ages last over 2000 years a piece. The zodiac doesn't go in reverse, we progress through ages that way though; has to do with the long term effects of the wobble of the earth as we move around the sun. What you're talking about sounds more like a transit, maybe, and those are unique to each individual. Maybe Pluto cycles?

ya never know, eh? i remember an important isaac asimov book about underground life like that, but mine was above ground, just inside.i don't remember color-coding, per se, but maybe based on occupation. like on star trek: engineers are red, admin gold, etc. in my dream sequences i remember walls covered with red carpeting, perhaps a safety device. the indoor areas were huge. i remember the bank in particular. the hallways where my apartment was are very ;omg and thin. i think we had little go-kart looking electrical cars to go back and forth, but i remember gary walking most of the way "home".i believe the red area was government employee housing, since gary works for some govt agency. batchelor quartere-in the dreams he is not married: a small apartment, compact, complete one bedroom. there is an entrance to a small foyer, and two unconnected apartments open on it. the other person was a complete stranger, and gary hardly ever sees him.

Give or take minor details, if science becomes as prominent as what most people think it will, I have no doubt this is what will happen. Not the God thing though. Just a Crusade type mentality as those who do not wish to relinquish their belief in God are persecuted for believing what is perceieved to be outmoded and outdated god/s.

It is inevitable that people will eventually use science for that purpose (assuming, as I said, science becomes as prominent as most believe it will).

Regards, PA

i dunno about most people but i plan on worshipping the PS3 in the near future lol

If you can find one. I wonder what the evolution of these games will be in the future? Just a thought.