Will religion become extinct?
POSTED BY: Niki2
UPDATED: Sunday, February 9, 2025 18:58
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This caught my eye because we've been posting about religion. I don't necessarily agree with it, but I found it an interesting theory:Quote:
Organized religion will all but vanish eventually from nine Western-style democracies, a team of mathematicians predict in a new paper based on census data stretching back 100 years.
It won't die out completely, but "religion will be driven toward extinction" in countries including Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, they say.
It will also wither away in Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland and Switzerland, they anticipate.
They can't make a prediction about the United States because the U.S. census doesn't ask about religion, lead author Daniel Abrams told CNN.
But nine other countries provide enough data for detailed mathematical modeling, he said.
"If you look at the data, 'unaffiliated' is the fastest-growing group" in those countries, he said.
"We start with two big assumptions based on sociology," he explained.
The first is that it's more attractive to be part of the majority than the minority, so as religious affiliation declines, it becomes more popular not to be a churchgoer than to be one, he said - what Abrams calls the majority effect.
"People are more likely to switch to groups with more members," he said.
Social networks can have a powerful influence, he said.
"Just a few connections to people who are (religiously) unaffiliated is enough to drive the effect," he said.
The other assumption underlying the prediction is that there are social, economic and political advantages to being unaffiliated with a religion in the countries where it's in decline - what Abrams calls the utility effect.
"The utility of being unaffiliated seems to be higher than affiliated in Western democracies," he said.
Abrams and his co-authors are not passing any judgment on religion, he's quick to say - they're just modeling a prediction based on trends.
"We're not trying to make any commentary about religion or whether people should be religious or not," he said.
"I became interested in this because I saw survey data results for the U.S. and was surprised by how large the unaffiliated group was," he said, referring to a number of studies done by universities and think tanks on trends in religion.
Studies suggest that "unaffiliated" is the fastest-growing religious group in the United States, with about 15% of the population falling into a category experts call the "nones."
They're not necessarily atheists or non-believers, experts say, just people who do not associate themselves with a particular religion or house of worship at the time of the survey.
Abrams had done an earlier study looking into the extinction of languages spoken by small numbers of people.
When he saw the religion data, his co-author "Richard Wiener suggested we try to apply a similar technique to religious affiliation," Abrams said.
The paper, by Abrams, Wiener and Haley A. Yaple, is called "A mathematical model of social group competition with application to the growth of religious non-affiliation." They presented it this week at the Dallas meeting of the American Physical Society.
Only the Czech Republic already has a majority of people who are unaffiliated with religion, but the Netherlands, for example, will go from about 40% unaffiliated today to more than 70% by 2050, they expect.
Even deeply Catholic Ireland will see religion die out, the model predicts.
"They've gone from 0.04% unaffiliated in 1961 to 4.2% in 2006, our most recent data point," Abrams says.
He admits that the increase in Muslim immigration to Europe may throw off the model, but he thinks the trend is robust enough to withstand some challenges.
"Netherlands data goes back to 1860," he pointed
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It has stood the test of time so far. If people are willing to let their children blow themselves up over religion(with all the science out there already) I don't see how any new human advancement can ever change that....unless Jesus comes down from the clouds and asks us all to be nice...religion will continue to produce assholes like YOU. Now, hit the bong and kneel before Zod. Sure I know the paper was about nine-western countries...where is the fun in that?
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Stupid post, as usual. You might have had a topic worth discussing if you'd just stopped at the first half. How can religion produce me, given I'm against organized religion?
Of course we know about you...you defeat yourself every damned time.
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off 
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Stupid posts do not exist.That, minds too small to comprehend the genius contained within do exist, is true. It is a shame they are not as elusive as bigfoot. Minds this closed should never be seen or heard, at least not in this dimension. peace out.
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Religion is very clearly on the sharp rise.Reports of its death were greatly exaggerated.
Note the date. This is classic contrarian logic: Pinpointing basically the exact low in religious affiliation.
Now that we have more access to more religion, we appear to become more religious rather than less. The reason is simple: More freedom of choice. You have far more Buddhists on this board today than you would have had in WWII, because everyone has access to all the information they need. If you didn't have access to Buddhism, you would never become a Buddhist. Someone who might follow Buddhism but couldn't follow Christianity when given only two options, Christianity or Atheism, might choose Atheism. Given more options, they are likely to make a different choice.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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Will religion become extinct?
God willing.
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As times become more unsettled, more and more people will turn to religion to ease their suffering.
The more I get to know people the more I like my dogs.
...and he that has no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one. Luke 22:36
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And the Creek don't rise.
Hardware I use to think so but now I think that religion arises in the absence of religion. Just like govt.
That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:
Will religion become extinct?
God willing.
I about lost my keyboard to that LOL!
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Europe is a bit screwed up right now, morally and otherwise, so I wouldn't look to their trends as something to emulate.
I think that humans were basically hardwired to believe in something, to seek truth in what they see and experience, to ask cosmic questions like why we're here etc. Some people may not appear interested in these things at all times, but I think if push came to shove even the people who are normally uninterested in such things would look for something to believe in, to hope towards. Maybe not everyone, but most people.
No, I don't think that religeon will come to an end. The point about more info being out there made sense, that if people know about lots of theories and religeons they have more choices so we see a wider variety of afiliations.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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