Will people in fifty years still believe in Gods?

[smurfitup]

I've thought about this question a lot, and, not surprisingly, so have several psychologists. While, being a hardcore rationalist, I'd like to believe that mankind will eventually come to terms with the universe's indifference, it seems unlikely that it will happen soon (if ever) for several reasons.

First of all, belief in some supernatural being has been evident in basically every culture since man has existed. This leads some to speculate that maybe belief in the supernatural is inherent to human cognition. Paul Bloom (a cognitive psychologist at Yale), for example, wrote a book and this article
about humans' predisposition to ascribe agency to objects which lack it.

Also, given how ingrained religion is in our cultural traditions and views of the world, I think we would need more than 50 years to uproot its hold on society. Sure, science has made immense progress in debunking most religious accounts of the world, but most people seem to intuitively resist these explanations and (sadly) are skeptical of scientists in general (Taraz made a post about this a while back).

And, really, if people want to believe in God, they could always come up with some sort of rationalization or short-sighted philosophy to skirt the obvious flaws in their belief-system. Religion is about experience, and if someone deeply feels God's presence, no amount of scientific evidence will convince them otherwise.