Well, Joseph Campbell felt that humanity had sort of exhausted all of the classic religious myths and that mankind needed new myths...not really to survive I think but sort of to find it's way. Science and technology, which many fundamentalists seem to fight against, are in many ways our dominant religion now. It provides us with basically the same things the Gods appeared to provide mankind except with more dependable results. We know now that we don't need to sacrifice a calf for our crops to grow or our women to produce a child. We understand what is in the heavens because we've gone there and gazed down with a God's eye view of our blue green globe.

I don't much trust a lot of these folks that say "God has spoken to me and I am supposed to __________" insert whatever you'd like. It always makes me want to stab them in the ass with a sharp object and when they ask why I did that I get to say "Well, God spoke to me and said you needed to have a sharp stick shoved up your ass."