Cults will rise and fall, as they do today and have done for millennia, but only those that can metamorphose into socially benign organizations will be able to flourish. Many religions have already made the transition, quietly de-emphasizing the irrational elements in their heritages, abandoning the xenophobic and sexist prohibitions of their quite recent past, and turning their attention from doctrinal purity to moral effectiveness. The fact that these adapting religions are scorned as former religions by the diehard purists shows how brittle the objects of their desperate allegiance have become.
Will those descendant institutions still be religions? Or will religions have thereby morphed themselves into extinction? It all depends on what you think the key or defining elements of religion are. Are dinosaurs extinct, or do their lineages live on as birds?
Cf th Slate Romney piece below.
Also, I think this will look more and more like a campaign against women as well as a campaign against religion.
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