Many claim that Darwin forever rid the universe of divine design and purpose. Nature can explain nature without any supernatural assistance. But a growing number of thinkers are finding signs of decay in the Darwinian fortress, and predict a further crumbling of the edifice in the decades to come. If so, creation-oriented religions will gain more intellectual credibility. C ommon to all religions are social practices, institutions, and world views that lay claim to objective truths concerning the sacred, which is viewed as somehow transcendent.
Religions prescribe how people ought to be oriented toward the sacred, personally and socially.
As the plurality of religious options continues to expand in the next century, many will yield to the temptation to create their own religions by mixing and matching elements from several religions according to their own preferences, however logically inconsistent the result may be. When religion is deemed more of a personal, individualized lifestyle than an adherence to sacred tradition, it becomes something of a spiritual commodity, a consumer item. T raditional religions will continue to be challenged by neopaganism and various New Age spiritualities, which reject an authoritative Scripture and a personal, moral, and transcendent Creator. D epending on the outcome of Y2K, we may see religion continue to go on-line in novel ways. A writer recently claimed that all the activities now done in places of worship will be practiced on-line.