Let’s play a fun game, shall we?
We shall!
We’re going to travel into the future with these responses and we’ll see how folks imagine they’d react to a very personal conundrum.
How would you react if you traveled 1,000 years into the future and found out your religion was extinct?
Check out what AskReddit users had to say about this.
1. Atheism it is!
“Probably become an atheist.
There’s no room in Judaism for the extinction of the Jewish faith.”
2. No problem.
“It wouldn’t matter to me, because my belief system is an internal set of values, not a social group.
People should live their own best life, not me forcing my beliefs on others.”
3. Nothing lasts forever.
“Somewhat religious Buddhist here.
I wouldn’t be surprised if that happened. People nowadays has become less religious now. Probably less in the future
Also, the philosophy of Buddhism is based on realism, which is what make it sounds cold in some situations. Like it teach me to treat d**th as neutral natural occurrence. It happened to everyone at some point but I’m gonna cry my heart out when that happens to my loved one anyway.
I would try to enjoy my time at that moment. It’s the future 1000 years later! I probably couldn’t care less about no one is a Buddhist anyway. How’s the tech evolve? How the society functions? Are we still using democracy to rule? So many intriguing questions pop up in my head.
To sum it up, I’m cool. Nothing last forever, not even my religion. I might do research on how and why it’s declined though.”
4. Time to start over.
“My religion is the historical reconstruction of a once living faith that went extinct already so I guess I’d just have to start all over again.
If there was virtually no one willing or interested in carrying on these traditions I’d be pretty bummed and even more concerned about humans’ relationship with nature than I am now.”
5. Uh oh…
“I’m Muslim and it’s actually a sign of the end of times that there aren’t any Muslims left so I would very quickly try and get back to present day.”
6. Conflicted.
“I would be both throughly unsurprised, and devastated.
It’s a central belief of my religion that this is not the last religion to come, and that humanity goes through predictable cycles of growth: when humanity is at its lowest point, and people have grown away from their religion and are behaving immorally, then God sends the next Messenger, who brings new teachings to revitalize the world, and so on and so forth.
It’s more than likely that that cycle will be repeated again, but I sincerely hope that the future believers will not sink as low as they have in the past. I hope that humanity will learn from our collective past, and behave better.”
7. Slipping away.
“I wouldn’t even be remotely surprised.
As a Christian, I feel that religion is slowly going away year by year.”
8. Sad…
“I’d be sad, but not surprised.
Hellenic Paganism is not a really popular religion in the first place, and is actually really demonized. Most people don’t even know that modern day paganism exists. It was nearly extinct for centuries until the recent revival. It’s still really small but it’s growing.
To be honest though, I wouldn’t revive it if it was d**d in the future. I don’t think the hellenic gods would really thank me for it.”
9. Interesting.
“I am from India, and Hindu, so my scenario is entirely different from others here, who are of Abrahamic religions I assume.
In our case, what we now consider as Hindu religion for last few hundred years actually is the collective name for the native traditions, cultural practices and beliefs in the subcontinent as a whole. And hence, the difference between “religion” and “culture” in our case is very vague even today. The concept of religion and faith here was entirely different here from that in the Middle East and West, prior to the arrival of religions of foreign origins to the subcontinent.
So back to your question: as I said the native culture( with all the modifications that have happened with time) of the subcontinent since past several thousand years has been now called as “Hinduism”, if you say this religion has gotten extinct, it means native Indian (or subcontinental culture) itself has gotten extinct.
South Asia’s native culture itself will become non-existent, and hence it would become a totally different world, and there is no way to know what could be the culture in that case, coz culture and religion here are interwound here and are often the same. So, Indian/South Asian the entire native culture itself won’t exist anymore in the question you have asked.
So what could happen: there might be an entirely different culture in South Asia, something which has no similarities with what we know today. And very likely that entirely different culture too would have gotten the name “Hinduism” as well if rest of history plays out exactly as it actually did (coz the name came only some centuries ago, after arrival of middle eastern religions, so that South Asian belief system can also be grouped and separately identified as Islam, Christianity, Judaism are).
My reaction to this would be like this is a parallel universe, where Hinduism is entirely different religion from one in real life.
If by ” religion has got extinct” you mean no one believes in God, but everything else remains same …….then it would be so similar and yet so different to what we actually have. I would think this to be a very interesting case and would like to see how it works.
The last case is Hinduism having gotten extinct beacuse Abrahamic faiths have run it over and now everyone follows Abrahamic faith. Now this is the only scenario I would be very upset and unhappy about. As I see this as a complete loss of identity.
This scenario has actually happened in parts of the subcontinent: the parts which we call “Pakistan” and “Bangladesh” today.”
10. Disillusioned.
“Not all real, structured, serious sects of Christianity believe in an end times event when and if Christianity meets its end.
I am one such Christian, and while a complete d**th of the faith would leave me disillusioned, it doesn’t conflict with my interpretation of the text.”
11. Pretty cool.
“It’s said within the Buddhist tradition that the teachings will eventually be forgotten, as they have in the past. The teachings are to be continuously rediscovered and forgotten again over time.
If Buddhism disappeared in 1000 years, I wouldn’t be surprised. I also wouldn’t be surprised if 10,000 years from now the Buddhist teachings resurfaced again, perhaps with a different name and different aesthetic. The idea is that religious teachings are oriented around a conception of something transcendent.
The religion itself is not the most valuable, but that transcendent thing which the religion points towards holds all the value. Religions are continuously changing over time (Judaism originally included animal sacrifice) but the tendency to seek out something which transcends us is an aspect of the human condition.
This tendency will always be present, so I think the forms it takes aren’t of much importance.”
How do you think you’d react if this happened to you?
Talk to us in the comments and let us know.
Thanks in advance!
