Great Post! Even as a devoutly religious person, I think you're squarely spot on with several of your observations. For example, this is a fantastic thought, and eloquently put:

Can religion as we have come to know it exist in a world of Gods? Or is the real “end” of religion the beginning of something heaven-like?

I don't necessarily agree with this point:

Fundamental cause 2. is gone and isn’t coming back. Sciences explanatory reach is here to stay. Religion will continue to lose all ground when it comes to explanation.

Science is AWESOME - but it is also flawed. Not necessarily the process, but we make mistakes in our assumptions all the time. The prevailing winds of science change constantly. I'm not saying this to discount science - or say we should only live by faith - but simply that science is not perfect either. In our quest for answers through the scientific method, we make mistakes and assumptions that only come to light later.

I love this:

On a personal level, I feel as though religion has always been a dream of our species. We have used religion to dream of the impossible. As I state above, we dream of the infinite, but it has always been far out of our grasp.

I have seen in my life and in the life of others when, instead of religion inspiring us to dream the impossible, it has stifled progression. For example - some people disagree with ALL stem cell research because SOME stem cells come from embryos. That to me is sad. So much that could be good for humans is stifled because of the vocal religious beliefs of some. Religion should inspire us to seek out ALL knowledge. You discuss the New Atheist. Perhaps I'm one of the new believers. I believe in a God that wants me to... no... EXPECTS me to learn all I can, to seek out knowledge and do as much good for as many as possible.

I guess this is my way of saying - I don't think religion (and I come at that from a decidedly Christian angle) and science need to be mutually exclusive. I believe they can coexist. Science has explained so much - and perhaps in a few years it will explain everything. Until then, I suppose I will hold to exploration and faith. Thanks again for a great post.

Great post. I agree with you on the different foundations of religion, and also how they have been or how they might be eliminated over time.

I have always thought of religion and science as two sides of the same coin. When humans developed self and environmental awareness, we probably had many questions about the world and how it worked. With our early beginnings, and specifically, the beginnings of civilization, much of humanities time revolved around crop production. It makes sense that many early religions tried to appease the sun, atmosphere, and the seasons.

Religion's function is to help explain the world which we cannot explain, and as a result, offer comfort when there are so many unknowns. It evolved as a tool of comfort, but obviously came with many terrible side effects, the worst being a violent divider of people. Over the past century we have revealed so much about the universe that there are less questions to be answered, and less need to use religion as a guiding post. As a result, we see a trend towards new atheism and a new sense of spirituality, or connectedness with one's self, while religious systems become less able to offer the comfort it once did. Religion will suffer even more when we finally answer the questions of extraterrestrial life and possibly the origins.

However, it seems to me that as long as there are questions that have yet to be solved by science, humanity will find a use for religion. This is why I say "two sides of the same coin." As long as there exists some "unknown" about the Universe, religion will have an applicable place; somewhere to hide where it can't be disproved until science has a look. Similarly, as long as there are unknowns about the Universe, science is the only useful tool to really uncover the mystery. As soon as the entire universe has unfolded before our eyes, and once science has solved everything, religion disappears. But so does the need for science. I don't believe we will ever come to this point because surely the Universe extends beyond what we currently perceive as possible, and its complexities may develop infinity.

I always considered the greatest irony to be if there is a god, that they are a scientist who simply discovered a way to program or create a universe.

I know that many animals can feel surprise and shock and also curiosity, but are there any other animals in which awe has been observed? From the perspective of someone who knows very little about animal behaviors and how human behaviors have developed, it seems like awe or at least reverence plays a role in the development of religions or the desire to worship something greater than oneself.

"Regardless of culture people attribute agency to the supernatural. This is despite the fact that nothing supernatural (perhaps by definition) can be empirically observed,".

I don't think science should make theological claims. People attribute agency, period. What happens after is that we observe that much of that is amenable to observation.

For example the non-existence of global floods (19th century). The inefficacy of intercessory prayer (2006). The non-existence of a single human breeder pair (2011). That the universe to 10^22:1 or in other words 100 % must be a result of a spontaneous process (as per curvature measure of initial energy; 2012). That the LHC completion of the Standard Model means any ideas of souls/afterlife/rebirth would need 10^3 times the energy they are allowed from QED precision measurements (2013).

The same goes for the description of abrahamistic religions in point 1-3, I don't think science should be limited to the observation of those. Religions started AFAIK out as attributing agency spurred by our ability to see patterns and imagine agency. Often looking for human analogs.

Granted, some religions grappled with explanation, some with death, some with destiny. But I don't think we can model religion on those specifically.

As for eternity, I think Sean Carroll's latest summer school in cosmology was enlightening. The absence of eternity, which LHC may imply (not quite 3 sigma for a quasi-stable vacuum), may be necessary to get rid of Boltzmann Brains. Eg the problem isn't that quantum mechanics isn't spontaneously spawning things, like universes from the quantum void, the problem is that it does so too eagerly, like BB fluctuations out of a thermal vacuum. Meaning, magic is not even on the horizon today, the real problem is that nature is too "creative".

As always, this is a very interesting post. It has raised a few questions for me.

Why do humans seek relatedness and purpose?

In evolutionary terms, there are explanations of how humans with a natural tendency to seek community relationships and cooperate with others would have a survival advantage over others that did not worry about relating to others and mutually benefit each other. Further along that vein, if you would find a way that you could uniquely benefit your group by having a specific purpose, perhaps as a specific kind of hunter, learning how to defend against threats, being particularly adept at memorizing terrain and resource locations and so on, then having a purpose would make you valuable to your community for survival.

Pairing this desire with curiosity and our musings of religion results in this idea that we're here because a higher being wants us to be here and gets some value out of our existence. At the very least, we exist so that we can help others learn about religious ideas that we've discovered so that they can appreciate the ideas and benefit from what we've learned.

So what does this mean for our future? Will we find satisfying purpose in our lives from something other than religion? Can we appreciate our role in evolution, species survival and intellectual evolution?