[jacquesm]

Quite well except for a certain continent. In NL churches are being sold for peanuts because they're empty on Sundays. As the last generation that went to church regularly dies the church makes one last effort at value extraction: real estate price increases are being liquidated.

In the USA and Canada it is still very much a popular thing, no idea how long it will take to get to the point where people realize they're being had.

Religion can have positive effects in people's lives, but at the same time organized religion is used for vote marshalling and politics, it's just another power structure and a business to boot. This goes for most religions, not just for Christianity.

Personally I'd be fine with an englightened version of Islam, one that formally recognized the rights of women and that did away with the most antiquated and damaging aspects of the religion. Of course a push to effect that would result in even harsher pushback from the fanatics, for fear that such a strategy might succeed.

[cholantesh]

Speaking as an ardent secularist, I hope at least some of the older churches are being preserved for their historical value.

>Religion can have positive effects in people's lives, but at the same time organized religion is used for vote marshalling and politics, it's just another power structure and a business to boot. This goes for most religions, not just for Christianity.

The relationship between the House of Saud and the Wahabbist establishment in Saudi Arabia demonstrates this. It's absolutely chilling stuff that is woefully unexamined for its importance to the making of the modern world.

[nsxwolf]

There is zero incentive for an enlightened version of Islam. They're winning the population game and losers (the rapidly secularizing West) don't get to dictate terms.

Catholic Africa is growing and will possibly step in to replace the West after it goes majority Islamic.