In 200 years they will say: Irrational and women hating creation memes all died in the 21st Century, and the people became truly civilised.
I'm afraid they will also say "pigs learned to fly", but I admire your optimism
Religion may become extinct in nine nations
61–70 of 100 posts
Re: Religion may become extinct in nine nations
#62Religion 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…
Let's look at a few others, then.
USA: 2.1
UK: 1.9
Spain: 1.5
Portugal: 1.4
Denmark: 1.9
A better explanation is "Western nations have low fertility rates".
Re: Religion may become extinct in nine nations
#63Even the great Hari Seldon was unable to accurately turn mathematical models into true predictions of human society without the intervention of R. Daneel Olivaw.
No you have the wrong way round. Daneel (all though started with Giskard) was unable to accurately turn mathematical models intro true predications without Hari Seldon.
Re: Religion may become extinct in nine nations
#64This is the best news I've read all morning.
I'm always amused by evangelistic atheism.
"Militant" or "fundamentalist" atheism are pejorative and wildly inaccurate, but I definitely think "evangelistic" atheism aptly fits the "New Atheist" movement. The precise term is probably "anti-religion", though.
Most of the irreligious in these nine nations are probably more apathetic or agnostic than actually atheist, much less evangelistic atheist.
Re: Religion may become extinct in nine nations
#65I'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.
What do we know? That one species can evolve into another? Never been remotely proven. That one species can adapt itself to its surrounding. Sure that happens. It doesn't change its species though. "Macro" evolution just doesn't happen nor can it be proven to have happened.
And you're basing your claims of no evidence on...? I study evolution and genetic variability in populations of a certain algae, and have data from the last 20 years from across the country (not the person who took it 20 years ago though) to say that a population doesn't evolve would be absurd. What about genetic drift? What about species isolation? What about changes in a population that prevent sexual reproduction with the rest of the species? The truth of the matter is, there is a plethora of data supporting evolution.
Re: Religion may become extinct in nine nations
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is horseshit. he birthrates of Muslim women in Europe have been falling significantly for some time. In the Netherlands, for example, the TFR among Dutch-born women rose between 1990 and 2005 from 1.6 to 1.7. In the same period for Moroccan-born women in Holland it fell from 4.9 to 2.9, and for Turkish-born women in Holland from 3.2 to 1.9. In Austria, the TFR of Muslim women fell from 3.1 to 2.3 from 1981 to 20…
The post you're replying to argues that Muslim immigration has raised fertility rates, and your numbers confirm that opinion. Even the falling Muslim fertility rates, after 15 years, that you mention are far above the "native" rates (2.9 as opposed to 1.7 in Holland, and you call the idea that Muslims raise fertility rates "horseshit"?!). The rates that you cite for Germany show a Muslim population that, even after 4…
zeteo Muslim immigration into France accounts for the high fertility.
The second development to note is that INED, France's National Institute of Demographic Studies, has done some detailed research and concluded that France's immigrant population is responsible for only 5 percent of the rise in the birthrate and that France's population would be rising anyway even without the immigrant population.
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Analysis/Walker/2008/04/30/Walke...
Re: Religion may become extinct in nine nations
#67Religion 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…
Care to show some numbers to support your argument?
Here:
Nation Total Fertility Rate
------------------------------------
Iceland 2.14
* Ireland 2.10
* New Zealand 2.10
USA 2.01
Norway 1.98
* Australia 1.97
France 1.97
UK 1.96
Turkey 1.92
* Finland 1.85
Denmark 1.74
Luxembourg 1.70
Sweden 1.67
* Netherlands 1.66
Belgium 1.65
Estonia 1.63
* Canada 1.58
Greece 1.50
* Czech Republic 1.49
Portugal 1.49
Spain 1.47
* Switzerland 1.46
Germany 1.42
* Austria 1.41
Italy 1.41
Hungary 1.33
Where is the correlation?
Re: Religion may become extinct in nine nations
#68Religion 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…
At the risk of sounding ignorant, I ponder correlation or a relationship, but furthermore whether the relationship has something to do with intelligence.
In my observation, intelligent people breed less. Intelligent people are also less associated with religion.
Could we also be looking at a list of countries with highest intelligence per capita?
Re: Religion may become extinct in nine nations
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Correlation != causation" is a warning sign not a stop sign. If we find a correlation, then that's a sign that we should look deeper. So far , the evidence says that lack of religion is tightly connected with a drop in fertility. If something other than lack of religion is causing the drop then the best place to look for it is by checking those factors that are most common to the irreligious and least common among t…
"Correlation != causation" is a warning sign not a stop sign. I might add that for social causation issues like this, longitudinal data (studies of changes over time) are often much more informative than cross-sectional data (comparisons of different subgroups at the same time). You and the original submitter posted longitudinal data, studied by researchers who have a data model that they are further investigating. T…
A study which also attempted to model societies that weren't trending towards religious extinction be a lot more useful (the states were most likely chosen for readily available data rather than being selected due to being exceptional in their levels of religious disaffiliation). Right now I'm seeing a correlation between "nations which make detailed census data available in convenient form to academic researchers" and increasing levels of religious disaffiliation and low birth rates.
The same model would probably fit quite well to countries where there's a marked trend increase in a specific religious affiliation, like Indonesia where dominant and growing Islam may hypothetically be decades away from making other affiliations extinct. Does Indonesia have a correspondingly much higher fertility rate? Actually no (~2.28), especially not if you control for other variables like poverty and infant mortality that are known to be correlated with high fertility rates. And it's dropping.
Re: Religion may become extinct in nine nations
#70These nations have always been prosperous and secularized- this doesn't exactly sound like startling use. The decline of religion as a social institution in these countries will not forestall the existence of bigotry, irrationality, and folly- those are all inevitable problems of human nature.