by Donald Weaver, David Ellis, Robin Tessier, Dewan Singh, Michael Salsa, Alice Rihani, Kearabetswe Mokuene, Jeffery McFadden, Donald May, Kiran Koya, Shakir Hussein, Jason Hamstra, Christopher Hamstra, Adaure Iwuh, Mikiko Ellis
Google Trends seems to suggest that interest in God is climbing while interest in religion is falling. Between 2004–2008, interest in both was about level, but in 2008 (the start of the so-called Great Recession) there began a distinct increase in interest in God and decrease in interest in religion.
Starting in 2016, the year Donald Trump became President of the United States, the rise in interest in God stopped. It fell by about 25 percent over the first three years of Mr. Trump’s presidency. In February 2020, when the gravity of the threat from the coronavirus pandemic that began two months earlier finally dawned upon a fearful world, interest in God recovered those lost 25 percent in just two months.
The decline and eventual fall of religion is conceivable because: First, while religious doctrines may be divinely inspired, they are humanly devised and therefore Man-centric,not God-centric; second, culture has outgrown them; third, the policy and practice of evangelism as the means of growing an organized religion is, ultimately, counter-productive; and fourth, the scriptural and inner-spiritual admonition to be blind to our differences renders religion, its doctrines, and its evangelism moot, at best.
If there is an alternative, we propose it must arise from three core spiritual principles discernible in the divinely inspired hearts of all organized religions: Judge not, know thyself,and follow the Golden Rule. These core principles are timeless and will be recognized and (by and large) practiced by our post-human successor as steward of the earth.
