Most of us - those of us who aren't taking great pleasure in thinking ourselves smarter than the unwashed masses - would like to see religion disappear. Those of us who are convinced that every religion is based on false premises would prefer a world without belief in God. It would be great if people were rational and thoughtful and faced the universe without a need for superstition.

But it doesn't matter very much what we want. A disappearance of religion isn't going to happen. And there are some positives about religion. At least some of the faithful derive comfort from their beliefs, and some of them behave more humanely because they feel that God wants them to.

So the most we can hope for is a gradual transformation from religion to doubt to agnosticism and atheism. I see signs of this happening. But I don't think the human animal is built to be as logical in matters of philosophy as he is for approaching practical, everyday problems logically.