st Well,I disagree,I'm sure that Charles Darwin would not have expected that religion would not have such a impact on society in the 21st. century.I think that a thousand years from now men and woman will still be talking about a god.Like Einstein said" never forget about stupidity."

Personally, I think that Christianity and Judaism might die out and Islam stop due to general cultural tendencies. I have read something about lifetimes of cultures, and there's always alternating three of them. I think, empirical, rational and irrational, or something like that. I don't say that precisely, but you get the idea. The era of philosophers with a lot of ideas made up without technology to prove it, that could be rational civilization. Then there is of course the Christian era, (irrational) which is pretty much about to end.

I think the new civilization will be based on practical experience. It will be not only about real solutions and science, but also about the experiences of paranormal and metaphysical, that will be made more tangible than ever. That will in some sense undermine religions, which thrive on ambiguous interpretations of religious text. In a certain sense, occultism will flourish but hopefully New Age movement will also diminish. They too rely upon vagueness and feel-goodism of not knowing exactly what they do.

I can personally see that in my village how the new generation of Christians is different. Of course, most of them are dumb and uneducated, desperately unable of abstract thought. But they're not all obedient and none are aggressive or fire and brimstone raining. I think they enjoy an ocassional counter-faith argument from me, certain other philosophies that I introduce to them, and generally a totally different approach from me. Otherwise they wouldn't invite me all the time, right? I think even they must be subconsciously bored of the routine and aware how little knowledge can Bible tell them.

All right, and I add that I have put my picture on public forum because
- that is my photo I'm the least ashamed of
- I sometimes like things getting more personal.

Your village?? Are you living in an ancient hamlet or something? It's just that in America we don't call places villages anymore unless maybe you're in a tiny place in Maine or something.

You make good observations on Christianity.  To say the bible is irrational is an understatement. It is such garbled convoluted nonsense that I'm AMAZED anyone other than the mentally ill can actually take it seriously. 

You must remember that it's really only been for less than 100 years that Christianity no longer has the element of force behind it.  If you go back around 100 years and before there was tremendous peer pressure to be Christian and if you weren't often times your peers treated you like garbage! Now we are free of that and people are leaving the CULT of Christianity EN MASSE!! 

You have FAR FEWER people who take Christianity seriously than ever before. Even clergy have expressed more doubt than they ever have before!  Check the following sites out to see why Christianity is crashing like a rock and why the survey showed Christianity will be gone from the U.K. in 100 years:

http://www.evilbible.com/

http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/

 

But look at how the Bosnians were victims of genocide just because they were Muslim.  Many thousands were killed before the U.S. finally intervened.  So it CAN happen and if things get much worse in Europe you can look for it to happen again.

There aren't white Europeans who are converting to Islam (or very few) so they are still maintaining their secular ways and they will still fight for their values.  It's not like they'll all just give up and let their countries become Saudi Arabia!

In light of Sharron Angle's crazy comments that 2 cities in America had Sharia law the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan spoke out.  That town is 30% Arab but not all of them are Muslims.  He said NO ONE is asking for it there.  In fact only 3 countries in the middle east have Sharia law according to him.  That seems a little low but he would know better than us.

P.S. If you lay off the Prozac then maybe you won't have the death wish!

Well, municipality then, if you want. It has about 1500 inhabitants, but it's stretched wide and far along the road. It contains a lot of fields, brooks, forests and some cows or goats. I don't know when it was founded, but the first church and brewery was there around 1645 CE. Churches remained, the brewery not The city under which it administratively belongs has first written record from 1444 CE. Is that ancient enough?

That is easy to understand, they don't actually use intellect, they use emotions. That's a whole different side of a brain. With emotions everything gives sense, because their sense is subjective, emotion is intrinsically meaningful and rewarding, regardless of objective reality. When Christians read Bible, they don't think about the text, they replay emotions imprinted in their brain and related to the biblical stories and concepts. I think analysis of brain activity would confirm that. Critical thinker and Christian would use different parts of brain when reading the same passages in Bible.
I used a similar principle when I taught my brain to drug itself by certain special musical genres and sound properties. Yeah, for me the music I like is a drug.... or religion if you want. It has perhaps some unpleasant side-effect of mild hearing damage, but everything has it's price.
 

Today I was on local religious meeting. There was a preacher from across the country. I was curious if there will be any crazy talk from him to write down. But actually, I found out he is right. Almost everything he said, I know as an esotericist and can agree with that. He was talking many facts, a lot about life style, psychosomatics, work on yourself and the world. For example, he spoke against the popular mistake, that "accepting Christ to your heart" makes you saved and there's nothing more to achieve.
As an esotericist, I know that what Christians call getting "born again" is an important milestone, an initiation in development of the personality and it will NOT happen by joining a cult or having emotions, it's a process of gaining and demonstrating certain degree of self-control. Christianity stole this concept and makes people "born again" en masse, while they really are not. There's just a few millions of such people in the world today. So even if people become Christians, they don't become any better. So I gladly welcome that this old man came over here and explained them how far they're from perfection and how to do something useful, instead of just waiting for the judgement day. You know, the old generation is happy that they can gather together without Communists persecuting them, and the new generation mostly follows the parents.

Really, that man for the first time I saw ellegantly circumvented the biblical demonization of mankind. He emphasized, how people should BECOME like Jesus, not saviors, but otherwise perfect in his image, you know, love, brotherhood, understanding, courage, study... As Jesus said, people shall do greater wonders than he did. I imagine that a fundie would preach of fire and brimstone, how we were kicked out of Eden and how the Satan is guilty of the crime of wanting to become like God, so people shouldn't even think of becoming godlike.
But no, that all-Christian preacher spoke about man's inherent divine potential and how we are supposed to manifest it in the world best personal qualities, and how he helped to made a completely industrially destroyed region a nicely forested land, that might one day become recreational area. That is all esoterically and objectively very correct and all backed up by evangelia of apostles. Thanks to my studies I was able to understand him completely. And I say, this is Christianity as apostles intended it, good for the world.
I'm not sure if local Christians understood half of what the preacher said, but there was no opposition, he is apparently a prestigious person. I also praised him a lot to my Christian fellows.

 

But don't get me wrong, I don't think that religion will completely disappear any soon, it has a social function. You know, many people can't think for themselves, they need to follow a leader and have emotionally and spiritually oriented cults. But this emotional manipulation must be humanistically motivated, based on the field of Positive psychology with good storytelling. 

How thorough was the search for Jesus? My sources claim he reputedly lived and died 24 years earlier than the history says. Couldn't anyone possibly destroy the records? What if Jesus was so unlike the description in Bible, that he was only recorded in heretical writings of mystical jewish sects? As you know, heretical writings don't get copied by the ruling regime, which exposes them to tooth of time and it's almost as effective as outright burning them.

Well.. I am an esotericist. I have no idea why there is no historical proof of Jesus, my sources are not quite historical.
But that is not important. What is important, is the censorship of Bible which replaced the teaching of reincarnation with an equivalent of Tartaros and Elysium. Since that moment Christianity stopped giving sense and being useful, it became a tool for scaring people with fire and brimstone. Even more important is the fact, that all the Masters of wisdom work for practical goals, like bringing new methods and trends into politics, ecology, economy, society and so on. I read Benjamin Creme because I study public administration and Creme's publications and esotericism in general inspire me. Lack of evidence for historical Jesus doesn't concern me, I'm more moved by less or more contemporary worldwide appearances of Christ-like person. Once the necessary work will be started, I mean, the world will start moving away from self-destruction towards sustainable society, then any disguised Christs or saints or whoever will be able to reveal their identity if there are any. The greatest questions of mankind will be not only answered, but also proven to scientists. Until then, you know what to do, there's a world to save out there.

I don't know how about Zeus, but Hercules is considered real by my sources. I mean, he wasn't a strong dude as legends say, he was a spiritual teacher (8000 years ago, if I remember) and the legend about him is a symbolic story of personal development. I mean, the 12 trials of Heracles are the symbolic lessons of life. Some esoteric book by Alice Bailey can explain these, but her books are for years, I haven't yet read this one.

Yes, and I heard that local Turkish people have a business going on mount Ararat, they reputedly build arks there to attract archeologists, which brings new life to local economy