51–60 of 100 posts
It'd be interesting to see a study on that, because I think uncertainty (about anything) ... is a space in the human psyche that is filled by Religion.
Religion isn't the only thing becoming extinct in those nations. Go to Wikipedia and search for "Demographics of X " where X is a nation from the list given in the above-linked article: Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland. (Nation/ Total Fertility Rate) (Australia/ 1.97) (Austria/ 1.41) (Canada/ 1.58) (Czech Republic/ 1.49) (Finland/ 1.85) (Irela…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It not religion per se that's becoming extinct in these nations, it's just some form of Christianity (usually, a very moderate and modernizing form). Detailed demographical studies show that fundamentalist religion (e.g. born again evangelicals and devout Muslims) is definitely on the rise, and associated with by far the largest fertility rates.
In addition, I think it's misleading to count "no affiliation" as "no religious beliefs." What about new-age spirituality, alternative spirituality, etc.? Those typically don't show up in these kinds of studies, but they do qualify as religious beliefs.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no way to make a table on hn :( But in general better education leads to more wealth, more time spend in schools and those who have college degrees are less likely to be religious and they are less likely to have children (the price of kids is low if they can help out on the farm, very high if you have to raise them in a modern society). I don't know a good solution to this, but I suppose the problem with fi…
Look at fertility in France. It's not because people here are highly religious, for sure. Instead, the government simply put lots of programs into place to support family raising -- high-quality free daycare, long school hours (so both parents can get back to work and mothers don't have to sacrifice careers), hefty tax breaks per child, medical care (for birth & pre/post natal, but also pediatric care). And (a bit mo…
Those programs don't actually make raising kids cheaper. They just time-shift the payments, much like a loan would do.
Remember, govt programs are paid for by taxes. Those parents are being taxed.
Oh, and if we're going to argue for using govt money to buy kids, shouldn't we put the process out for bid? I'm sure that we could get high-quality kids for less from other suppliers.
The authors have a very simple model of the dynamics of religious adherence, which amounts to saying: people convert from one (ir)religious position to another in numbers proportional to some function of (1) the fraction of the population currently adhering to each position and (2) some measure of how attractive each position is. They assume that #2 is constant over time. They choose a particular (reasonably plausible) form for the dependency on #1. They have a couple of free parameters, which they adjust to make their predictions fit reality as well as possible. They plot a few graphs, which show their predictions fitting tolerably well.
They observe, quite rightly, that their analysis implies that on not-terribly-long timescales whichever position is more attractive will dominate completely. They fail to observe that since at present neither religion (any, or all collectively) nor irreligion is completely dominant anywhere, the attractivenesses must in fact be varying over time, and that future changes to that parameter make an enormous difference to their model’s predictions. They fail to consider the possibility that their model (even if generally adequate) may break down badly for small-minority positions. (If so, its predictions about extinction of any position could be very wrong.) They fail to consider that differences in personality, experiences, etc., may render (ir)religion differently attractive to different people, which could entirely change their model’s predictions near the edges. (That is, once it starts predicting that either religion or irreligion will go extinct or nearly so. That is, exactly the situation the headline describes.)
They do (and frankly this is the only interesting bit) consider the effect of clustering effects: a person’s conversion probability may depend not on the overall popularity of the "old" and "new" positions but on their local popularity: people are affected more by their friends, family, neighbours, colleagues, etc. They find that provided people aren’t completely isolated this doesn’t make a huge difference to the overall prediction of the model.
I don't think the paper gives much more reason to anticipate the extinction of religion than we already had. (Opinions vary as to how much that is...)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It not religion per se that's becoming extinct in these nations, it's just some form of Christianity (usually, a very moderate and modernizing form). Detailed demographical studies show that fundamentalist religion (e.g. born again evangelicals and devout Muslims) is definitely on the rise, and associated with by far the largest fertility rates.
In addition, I think it's misleading to count "no affiliation" as "no religious beliefs." What about new-age spirituality, alternative spirituality, etc.? Those typically don't show up in these kinds of studies, but they do qualify as religious beliefs.
Evolution has had about 150 years, religion has had multiple thousands of years. In my opinion its just a matter of time before religious belief becomes a minority everywhere.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correlation != causation.
Yes, but so what? "Correlation != causation" != "no relationship so we can all just stop thinking about it". Whether it's causative, reverse causative, or two things caused by a shared third factor that may also have other effects, there's a there there that can't be waved away by a trite, fashionable two words and a math symbol. Careful reading of the "bottom line" winestock posted will show that (s)he actually unde…
This is incorrect. Winestock:
> Bottom line: Lack of religion is either non-adaptive from a fitness perspective, or it is strongly tied to traits which are themselves non-adaptive.
A third possibility, one of many, is "Lack of religion and a fertility rate less than 2.0 occur co-incidentally in seven countries". Given that we have only examined nine countries of a possible 195 (or so), I think that this third option is at least possible.
I've always thought religion would become less and less prevalent. Being non-religious was extremely rare before evolution was discovered and now its growing in popularity since we now know more, i think that trend will continue. Evolution has had about 150 years, religion has had multiple thousands of years. In my opinion its just a matter of time before religious belief becomes a minority everywhere.