RyansWorld: Waning of Christianity

'''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.'''



Through a viewing-the-past only form of time travel, sometime in the mid 21st century, historians and field researchers find that Jesus of Nazareth was a carpenter with a wife (Mary Madgalene) and a son (Judah of Nazareth). Jesus of Nazareth being a lifelong bachelor, childless, and the son of God are found to be exaggerations, lies, and half-truths spread by superstitious officials of the Church during the Middle Ages. One of the components for this time travel method would be 90 Facebook Nintendo's Oculus VR devices working in unison with 9 ultra-powerful super computers.

Indeed even the myth of 'the virgin birth' is found to have arisen through a mistranslation of 'young woman' as 'virgin'. A prominent businessman and political leader in Europe now proclaims that he is the direct descendant of Jesus, and that "not everyone is God's child." His message is wildly unpopular and helps to hasten the downfall of Christianity with the large-scale riots that occur in predominately Caucasian (white) countries on Good Friday 2028. The Catholic and Protestant sects of the church will try their hand at reunification but the damage has already been done to the Christian faith. Communion wafers given out since 2024 have zero calories, zero carbohydrates and are gluten-free. Despite the falling number of Christians, the number of christenings is still high and baby-naming ceremonies are becoming more popular as parents look to mark the birth of their children.

On Easter Monday 2028, Israel will vote itself out of existence due to the terminal decline in religion. The Palestinians will take over the politics of the former Zionist nation of Israel and rename the country The Secular Republic of Israel.

Summary


The christening of Prince George provided the opportunity for newspapers all over the British Commonwealth to remind us all of the waning of Christianity in Western civilization. This, and the fact that churches are losing attendance annually for other reasons - a trend that was already well evident at the turn of the millennium - finally spell the downfall of the 2000-year old Christian faith. Few churches remain, many have been converted to apartments, tourist centres and pubs, wine cellars and 'themed' Casinos. With a terminal fall in Christianity, Easter and Christmas lose their trappings of religious significance - though in North America a holiday season still occurs, at Kurzweilmas (formerly known as Christmas), with present giving days on each of the twelve days of Kurzweilmas, each day sponsored by a different industry, and a two week try-a-new-diet season over the Easter holiday period gains in popularity.

Some people will cite the movie The DaVinci Code, as a turning point in public opinion about Christianity. Historians with access to modern research tools (like Wikipedia) will be able to show other factors, including scandals of clerical child abuse, and increasing secularization through advertising were more powerful forces in that direction. While Christianity is waning towards extinction, they first try to collaborate with the nanny states of the future. This would be instrumental in re-focusing the fashions of the day back into emphasizing modesty instead of sex appeal.

Intriguingly, a computer generated graphical presentation of forces showing how Christianity tends to hide things and keep people happy and ignorant is shown to have an almost identical structure to a graphical presentation of forces showing how movies and advertising affects people.

Aftermath
Very few people will believe in the Christian God by the year 2050; with young people citing that they can be more enlightened on Wikipedia, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Instead, many people will choose to be either atheist, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh and even Jain. People in the more sparsely populated regions of the world will replace Christianity with Buddhism while people in the more densely populated regions will adopt atheism as their 'religion'.

The Buddhism/atheist divide will further complicate North American politics along with the politics of the United States of Europe and in the Eurasian Union. Spiritualism will become a meaningless social construct as people become more rational and less religious in their daily lives.

Which religion would you convert to if Christianity collapsed? Judaism Islam Buddhism Atheism/Agnoticism Other