The decrease of dogmatic religions

A study released by BBC Brazil - http://www.bbc.co.uk/portuguese/ - reveals that the religion cultivation may end up in nine countries that comprise the group of nations considered rich, six of them located in Europe, two in Oceania and one in North America.

The study was released at a meeting of the American Physical Society, based on survey data collected from censuses carried out since the 19th century in different countries and their conclusion is clear: religion can be extinguished in nine of them.

The research identified this trend of increasing in the number of people who claim no religion in Australia, Austria, Canada, Finland, Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland and The Czech Republic, which has the highest rate, with 60%.

Using a mathematical progression model, that takes into account social factors and their influence on a person to belong to a non-religious group, the survey shows that people who follow a religion will virtually cease to exist in the countries cited. In Holland, for example, 70% of Dutch have no religion at all until 2050. Today, this group is 40% of the population.

It is a trend that is increasing especially in recent decades, as noted by Richard Wiener, a researcher linked to a research Center in advanced science subordinate to the Department of Physics, University of Arizona. “In many modern secular democracies – he says – there is a greater tendency for people to identify themselves without religion.”

One point that emerges from the above news is the fact that in all nine nations mentioned the Christian religion has always been prevalent, whether in its Catholic garb, either in is feature Protestant.

As we know, this is a religion that has been characterized for centuries by its dogmatism.

The characteristics of dogmatic doctrines were examined by Kardec in the book Posthumous Works, page 181 et seq.

According to these doctrines, the soul, independent of matter is created at the birth of every being; it survives and retains its individuality after death, its fate from that moment, irrevocably fixed; their further progress is void, and she will therefore, for all eternity, intellectual and morally, which was in life. The evil will be condemned to everlasting punishment and unredeemable in hell, it stresses to them the complete futility of regret. God thus seems to refuse to allow them the opportunity to repair the harm they have done. The good are rewarded by the sight of God and the perpetual contemplation in heaven. The cases that may deserve, through eternity, heaven or hell, are left to the decision and trial of fallible men, who are given to acquit or convict.  

These doctrines also teach absolute and final separation of the damned and the elected; the futility of moral help and consolation to the condemned; the creation of angels or privileged souls free from all work to reach perfection.

The cited dogmatic doctrines have failed, however, to solve today these serious problems that interest all humanity:

1º Where does it come the innate dispositions from, intellectual and moral, that makes men born good or bad, smart or dumb?

2º What is the fate of children die at Young age? Why do they come in happy life without the work which others are subject for many years? Why are they rewarded without being able to do good or deprived of happiness without having done anything bad?

3º What is the fate of cretins and idiots Who are unaware of their actions?

4º Where is the justice of misery and birth disease, once they are not a result of any act on this life?

5º What is the fate of wild and all those who die necessarily in the state of moral inferiority, in which they are employed by the very nature, if they are not allowed to progress further?

6º Why does God create souls more favored than others?

7º Why call themselves prematurely those who could have been better if they had lived for a longer time, considering that it is not given the chance to advance after death?  

8º Why did God create angels, being perfect without work while other creatures are subjected to the rudest trials, in which they are more likely to succumb than out victorious?

Besides to not give these problems a minimally reasonable explanation, these religions have signed on dogma which, as everyone knows, cannot withstand the dizzying advances of science, leaving helpless its profitentes, what certainly contributes to the intensification of the trend pointed at the research we have referred. 

Given this, if there is not a significant changing in how these religions are presented, there is no doubt that sooner or later, materialism will eventually garner a significant slice of those who still rely on what they hear from the pulpit.