RyansWorld: Atheism

'''Special Note: Please note that this scenario is meant to be read as entertainment, not as an accurate prediction of the future. Also note that the viewpoints and opinions that may come across in this scenario are not necessarily the viewpoints and opinions of the author.'''

God
Belief in God is a critical component to a religion that many believe controls people's lives. It can either be a female or a male. For 6000 years, science and technology, in the view of some, has been stagnated partly by God's will and also in part to due a Roman Catholic clergy many consider primitive who stood against, in some cases, the culture, technology and luxuries of the defunct Roman Empire.

From the 21st century onwards, people are losing faith in God and gaining faith in science and personal development as the tools of new age spiritualism.

By the 22nd century, God will be declared obsolete, most individuals will only want to obey their own will as opposed to God's will, and people will devote their time to the science of creating worlds through terraforming rather than believing in creationism. Christian fundamentalism in the United States will become a more moderate religion. Nevertheless, shunned by an atheistic majority, it will become an increasingly separated cultural group with its own unique traditions and way of life. It may become viewed by mainstream society in much the way that the Amish and Mennonites of the 20th and 21st century are viewed.

Religion
Many religions believe in the supernatural, and they are considered by some to be the "traditional nemesis of science." By the year 2100, people will no longer believe in the God aspect of religion, and embrace science, thinking for the future rather than the moment, and worshiping "liberal" philosophies like atheism and Buddhism that allow people to view their lives as infinitely changing instead of being constant.

Karl Marx, stated once that "Religion is the opiate of the masses,". Many believe that he was correct and that Religion with a God stagnates progress while people who in Ancient China believed in the religion of Buddhism. The Chinese created gunpowder centuries before their counterparts in Western civilization. Western civilization also experienced many important technological advances.

However, this vision almost came to be because the economic recession of the late 2000s almost brought the world into the Second Dark Ages where scientific research and space travel would have grinded to a halt in favor of faith-based education programs in public schools teaching sexual abstinence, homophobia on a mass level, and "traditional values" that have no place in the 21st century (i.e., the man works and the woman stays at home to take care of the children). These dark ages would have completely disenfranchised the libertarians and discouraged the liberals from participating in the democratic process of voting.

Morality/ethics
It will be realized that perhaps moral and ethical standards can be acquired logically without reference to the supposed word of a god. The democratic balance of opinion will delineate between the things some like to do that hurt others. Freedoms will be maximized and limitations minimized.

Christianity
Christianity is a moderately conservative religion that many consider to be authoritarian and male-dominated (1 Corinthians 14:33b-36) by some dissidents. It also teaches that God created the world in seven days, (Book of Genesis, Old Testament) a belief that has not yet been proved, nor disproved. Its manifesto is the Holy Bible and some consider sections of it to limit the complete potential of women and/or scientists in the world.

Once this post-modern world of the West comes to existence, Westerners will no longer seek the guidance of traditional Western religions, believing there are no "black" and "white" levels of morality in society, and that all things could have a certain shade of "gray" in morality.

Islam
Islam is a traditionally conservative religion, only recently becoming more open to Western influence, some proponents of which force women to wear veils. Islam is the second most popular religion after to Christianity. Over 1.3 billion disciples adhere to this religion.

The future of Islam is uncertain; while most people believe that Islam should liberalize itself, the fundamentalists say that Islam should revert to a further state of conservatism. Islam has never been fully unified since the days of Muhammad and some believe that it is becoming more disintegrated by the decade.

Judaism
Percentage of Jews worldwide will stay about the same as they have for centuries. Most will live in Israel. Almost all will be born there. Bibilical law will be practiced. Gentiles will be encouraged to follow the Noahide Laws, without need of anything more constricting.

Atheism
Atheism is, in some respects, similar to Buddhism, except there is no spiritualism as well as an absence of god. By the year 2100, 65% of the world will be atheist while 15% of the world will be Buddhist. Atheism will be popular in the metropolitan areas. Buddhism will replace Christianity as the de facto religion of the prosperous developed nations. Ecotopianism (technology being completely in harmony with nature) will become the religion of the formerly 'developing', now fully developed nations of Africa, South America, and parts of South East Asia.

Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion that teaches that things are always infinite. A person may never bathe twice in the same river, because the water has changed when he/she returns, and he/she also changes. And someone never meets the same person twice, because they are both changing everyday. That is why we can live with someone for the rest of our lives and we never get bored of him/her. Buddhism is a spiritual religion with no God, that deals primarily with personal development and feeling connected to everything in the world. It is a religion with no God where humanity is connected to everything infinitely small, infinitely huge, and infinitely in time, that is to say eternity (and of course the future, which is a product of eternity).

In the future, people will convert in mass droves to Buddhism.