Comment on [deleted]

DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• Hjalamanger@feddit.nu ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  What’s right and wrong had changed a lot since most religious text were written, for example:

  If a man practices homosexuality, having sex with another man as with a woman, both men have committed a detestable act. They must both be put to death, for they are guilty of a capital offense.

  From leviticus 20:13 (aka the Bible)

  Doesn’t really sound like it belongs in the most holy book of the biggest religion on earth*. But I guess that precisely what’s in those holy texts doesn’t really matter but what matters is more the overall picture and the fact that religion unites people. My personal guess is that the religions practiced today will last as long as our civilization, even if their holy texts get really outdated

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  * Disclaimer: this is my opinion and I’m a non-religious teenager from Sweden. I’m aware that most people probably don’t find it as weird as I do even if they don’t want to kill homosexuals

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• IJustWentPsycho@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It’s just shocking to me how many people still strongly believe religions like Christianity and Islam when it has been more than a thousand years.

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  • Acamon@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I can’t remember the theories name, but I came across a suggestion from a historian (or sociologist? Or something…) that if you have to estimate how long a cultural feature will last, your best guess is “roughly as long as its existed for”.

    So the pyramids at Giza are over 4000 years old. If we lack any specific knowledge of reasons ( predicting the stone erosion, or knowing that bombing is likely in the area soon) then all we can know is that they have lasted a long time, so probably could last a good bit longer. And if we guess random ages, they will average out to a middling number (just like if you roll a lot of d6s you’ll average out 3.5). The could be destroyed next year, but that’s an extreme outlier, and they could last 40,000 years but that’s also an extreme. So something around the 2000 - 6000 mark would probably be a good bet.

    Similarly, Facebook has been around for 20 years. If the company collapsed next year, that’d be possible but unlikely. They could last into the next century, but again, most companies don’t. So guessing in the 10-30 years would be safe.

    Obviously, it’s just a huge “rule of thumb” but I found it interesting. So instead of being surprised that Christianity is still here, twenty years past its second millenium, it’s more realistic to assume that you’re seeing it somewhere near its midpoint, rather than at an extreme. So we’re likely to have Christians for another few thousand years!

    Tl:Dr if something has lasted a thousand years, it’s likely to last a good time longer.

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    • IJustWentPsycho@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Tl:Dr if something has lasted a thousand years, it’s likely to last a good time longer.

      But will that something stay the same “size” in, let’s say, a thousand years?

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      • Acamon@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Any particular thing will change, and if you look more specifically at the factors and data predeciting that, then you can make a more accurate guess about that change. But that’s pretty difficult for big, unpredictable things that we don’t have a lot of examples of (like “massive world religions”).

        Current data is that Christianity has been on massive exponential growth since the 1800s. There were 2.4 billion in 2020 and that is estimated to go up to 3.3 billion by 2050. So if you’re looking at growth rates, forecasts etc, Christianity is only going to get bigger.

        But obviously, a lot of that growth is due to general population growth. And make some pretty big assumptions about world development, ‘progress’ and waning religious belief you could believe that Christianity will boom and then shrink. But there’s not a lot of evidence for that currently. And that’s why I brought up that general guideline, we don’t have any reason to believe that Christianity is going to disappear anytime soon, and we don’t have any evidence that it’ll be here in 10,000 years. So, if I was an immortal onlooker, and I had to make a bet, I’d guess it’d be around for another few thousand years.

        Maybe it would help if you explained more about why you think it’s surprising these religions are still around after thousands of years? Religions and cultural items like that don’t generally get ‘superceded’ by new inventions (as happens with technology), instead they general adapt and change to the needs of the culture that uses them. Christianity is the 2000s is massively different from even 500 years ago, let alone 1500 years ago. And in the 3000s it’s more likely that Christianity will be around, but significantly changed, than that it has faded away.

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• someguy3@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  to suggest why you think the situation should be any different.

  Generally as science advances we have answers to how the universe works. I can understand religion a thousand years ago, but today? Not really. And the understand the fanatics even less when they oppose scientific fact.

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