We now have comforts and technology that ancient people couldn’t even dream of, yet that doesn’t keep people from finding lots of ways to be angry and miserable (something the internet has helped expose and enhance rather than alleviate). And this will continue despite the new things we’ll invent and discover in the future, as logic is just incapable of answering the fundamental questions we truly desire answers for.
This is the problem the protagonist in Superego runs into when his simple world of being an intergalactic hitman is thrown out of whack. Despite being a psychopath, he wants purpose in life, but all logic will ever tell him is that no such thing exists. But that’s not an answer anyone can ever truly accept.
So, no matter how far in the future it is, still expect people to make the usual plans for Sunday morning. Yes, as times change, we can expect some changes to organized religion — or at least for them to add words like “space” and “laser” to old things to make them sound more futuristic, as is the custom (actually, “Space Laser Church” sounds awesome).
And if one day we encounter other intelligent life — all with their own religions — that will certainly lead to… a lot of think pieces, in the least (in Superego, one group that’s successfully united numerous religions is a terrorist organization).
But if a religion has been around a thousand years already, there are probably good odds it will last a thousand more. For religion will always fill a round hole that the square peg of logic and science will never fit in, and give us a continuity as a people that, no matter how things change or weird things get, our important values stay constant.
By Frank J. Fleming