Travels arround the internet bring something for the New Year! An interesting Guardian article follows.

People's fascination for religion and superstition will disappear within a few decades as television and the internet make it easier to get information, and scientists get closer to discovering a final theory of everything, leading thinkers argue today.

Philosopher Daniel Denett believes that within 25 years religion will command little of the awe it seems to instil today. The spread of information through the internet and mobile phones will "gently, irresistibly, undermine the mindsets requisite for religious fanaticism and intolerance".

Check out the rest of the article here.

Sadly—even as an atheist and someone enthusiastic about science I think they are wrong.

Alvin Toffler predicted in the 70s that as soon as the masses have a medium where they can choose from an huge number of information "channels", TV or otherwise —that people will start limiting their viewing to those channels that support their viewpoints and world views.

Toffler described the YouTube phenomenon before Al Gore invented the internet.

John—what's that phenomenon called? The comet tail or something like that?

In the 18th century, the philosopher Denis Diderot invented the Encyclopedia in the hope of ending all ignorance, and superstition. He was a leading figure in the self-named "Enlightenment" from which much of modern atheism springs. Now modern intellectuals have forgotten his name and work and pin their hopes for their own apotheosis on the modern equivalent, the internet—on which people check their horoscopes every day and YouTube!