Atheism: A Dying Belief?

[Angra Mainyu]

Just to add a point: even if the percentage of people raised as atheists who become theists is about the same as the percentage of people raised as theists who become atheists, or even if atheists never reproduce (which would be odd), atheism would not disappear unless the percentage of people raised as theists who become atheists drops to zero (no evidence that this will happen) ..

To put some numbers, if, say, just 0.1% of the children of Christians grow up to be atheists, atheists never, ever reproduce, and Christians make up at least, say, 10% of the world's population, there would be at least 0.01% of atheists in every generation.

If the global population is at least 6500000000, that would mean 650000 atheists per generation.

So, atheism would still not disappear in that scenario, regardless of how fast theists breed.

Real numbers probably wouldn't be that bad for atheism, but the point is that even in an extremely negative scenario, atheism would have a lower bound.

Of course, one can conceive of scenarios in which atheism disappears, but there is no good reason to believe that that's happening - at least, not based on the arguments/evidence presented here so far.

To clarify: I meant 650000 atheists at any given time - as long as those percentages remain steady. The essential points are the same, though.

[seer]

I'm not questioning the numbers, but rather, I'm pointing out that I see no good reason to conclude at this point that atheism is a dying breed, for the reasons explained in my previous post.

You seem to miss my points, so let me summarize (for more details, please read my previous post):

1) A lot of atheists live in China and Japan. Even if the number of Chinese and Japanese as a proportion of the world's population drops, it's still a lot of people, and they're not being outbred where they live as far as one can tell.

2) Nearly all atheists in the West come from Christian families. So, even if Christians have more children than atheists, and even if atheists have very few children, if previous trends continue (or if they don't change so much), there will be plenty of atheists who will be not the descendants of atheists, but of Christians.

I think there are other reasons to think that atheism will not disappear in the long run, but not reasons that I could persuade a Christian of, so I'm trying to use two that (I hope) Christians won't likely dismiss on faith.

I don't actually think that atheism is going to be completely gone. But the trends are certainly in the opposite direction. You sould watch the link, it is quite interesting.

[Teallaura]

Again we seem to be using two kinds of numbers depending upon what we are arguing. If we are Christian and we want to argue that Christianity that is a growing faith, we include Catholics and anybody who ticks 'Christian' on a form regardless of spiritual practice. If we are Christians and want to argue the world is going to hell in a handbasket and Christians are a small persecuted minority in today's evil secular society, we point out that most people who call themselves 'Christian' probably aren't. I just wish you'd make up your mind.

One's population and the other is efficacy. Pop includes identifiers 'cause they're hard to sort out anyway. Efficacy would be the 'activist' portion. Same distinctions are made in most populations at some point or another. How many atheists are there? That number will include weak and strong as well as a bunch of agnostics that merely identify as atheist. How many activist atheists are there? That number will weed out almost all of those who are perfectly willing to check atheism on a survey but have zero intention of ever letting the family find out.

Welcome to the wide, woolly world of demographics.

[Teallaura]

To clarify: I meant 650000 atheists at any given time - as long as those percentages remain steady. The essential points are the same, though.

You're silly. Three posts, two pretty long ones, in order to make a point no one was disputing. Titular hyperbole aside, no one really thinks atheism is gonna be bred out of existence.

[seer]

The fact that you're not taking into consideration is that the offspring of Christians or Muslims can be atheists.

In the case of Muslims, that's probably very rare (see my first post in this thread), but that's less common with Christians.

To use an obvious example: I'm an atheist. I was raised as a Catholic. My father was probably a Catholic, and my mother went from Catholic to (probably) agnostic. My grandparents were apparently all Catholic.

The point is that Christians parents does not only give you a Christian offspring.

In fact, a few centuries ago, atheism was a lot rarer in Europe than it is today, and Christianity a lot more common. The increased frequency of atheism and decreased frequency of Christianity did not result from faster breeding among atheists than among Christians, but from Christians having atheist offspring.

That's where the evolutionary analogy fails (well, there are some mutations in the evolutionary process too, but nothing like the likelihood that Christian parents would have daughters or sons who will become atheists).

On the other hand, it seems to be true that in Islam, that change from one generation to the next appears to be much rarer, so while we can't predict the end of atheism, we can predict that there will probably be a greater percentage of Muslims in the world, at least in the short and medium term.

ETA: If you're suggesting that atheism would disappear because theism will be favored by selection, you would have to assume that atheism and theism are mostly the result of genetics, which does not appear to be the case.

While a predisposition to acquire the beliefs of one's parents (or those present in the environment) already exists in humans, and maybe a predisposition to assume purpose, that's not the same as a "gene for God" (most people in most past civilizations didn't believe in God, but some other entities), or a gene that eliminates atheism.

Well this is why you should listen to the link. Kaufmann makes the point that with religious Jews and Christians (he points to Israel, Australia, London and the US to a lesser degree) where the children are actually more religious than the parents. That it is a trend.

And if materialism is correct what do you have left but genetics? Didn't Dawkins make the point that DNA just is and we dance to its music?

It is the fundy Jew, Christians and Muslims that are propagating the most and there is no evidence that the adult children of any of these groups are abandoning the faith of their fathers (he actually touches on this in the talk). He shows that this is not happening - it may be happening to the liberal wing of these faiths.

And perhaps it is just in our make up to desire hope - something atheism just does not offer.

[Seasanctuary]

It's a good thing atheism is less reliant on being what mom and dad said was true.

[seer]

It's a good thing atheism is less reliant on being what mom and dad said was true.

How does that follow?

[Leonhard]

I've decided to watch his presentation. Though its ignited one of my pet peeves as this is one of those idiotic recordings where the camera is focused on the speaker AND NOT ON THE SLIDES!!!!!!!! Everytime he's refering to a slide showing demographic change, all we see is him pointing at something off camera. Who's bright idea was this?

[seer]

I've decided to watch his presentation. Though its ignited one of my pet peeves as this is one of those idiotic recordings where the camera is focused on the speaker AND NOT ON THE SLIDES!!!!!!!! Everytime he's refering to a slide showing demographic change, all we see is him pointing at something off camera. Who's bright idea was this?

Well they are all non-believing liberals - what would you expect? ; )

[Leonhard]

Well they are all non-believing liberals - what would you expect? ; )

I've actually seen this most often in recordings of presentations about apologetics so don't be so eager to jump onto the high horse Seer.

Alright, it was an interesting talk. He started out by explaining basically what his book was about, namely that the world seems to be growing more religious and that some of the paradigms common in sociology that wealth leads to secularism might be a flawed view. He charts the development of ultra orthodox religious movements and cults and how their birth rate seems little affected when they immigrate. He does agree that if you grow in wealth then your birthrate tends to fall down, so its not this that he's attacking. He argues that if you're in a world shunning sect and you basically resist getting absorbed into the culture then your birthrate won't be as affected. The movements he cites are things like Amish, Mennonites, Mormons and Quiverfull (who are literally planning to outbreed the seculars to) on the Christian side, as well as certain ultra orthodox jewish movements in Isreal. He points out that its not the evangelical movement (referring to Christians) that are the source of this.

Its also these groups that don't have much of a drop off rate, which he explains in two ways, firstly because these groups are enormously tight-knit. Not being a Quiverfull member, or radical muslim doesn't just cost you a part of your personal identity, it also costs you your family, friends and connections. So people in these groups have an enormous incentive to staying there, and he seems to refer to statistics that show that second generation members has very little secularization. The second way is by something called the Cultural Defence Theory. Basically some of these groups by virtue of being immigrants have racial/ethnic/cultural differences that reinforce their church attendance, because that becomes part of their social identity. He points out some interesting and counter-intuitive aspects of these movements, such as that the harshness of the cultural differences, for example that women aren't allowed career jobs and strict ritual laws, actually makes it harder for people to leave, since they help isolate these people from the 'wordly things'.

Some of the downsides seem to be that these groups (at least in Britain and Israel) live mainly on welfare, so how this would affect nations as a whole if they were to dominate would be an interesting question. He also doesn't see the ultra orthodox jews taking over Israel, and argues that actually they seem to rather want to be a subculture within a secular jewish state. If they were to grow to dominance he argues that they'd have to do something about their birtrate. I don't remember him arguing why, but I guess its a hint at a economic disaster of having a whole nation of unskilled laborers.

Interestingly he points out that the reason we don't have a much more secular Britain or America today is due mainly to pure immigration of Catholic poles and latinos, and that's the main reason why church attendance in Britain has remained relatively the same between 1998 and 2005.

My own thoughts? It was an interesting talk, though I think this is still a bit too controversial and will probably need to be hashed out between sociologists. I don't know if I'm gonna get his book, since I'm a physics geek and not a demography geek, and at any rate beyond knowing statistics I'm not really qualified to evaluate it. He doesn't seem to argue that these groups will actually take over society, and replace secular states with theocracies. It might with some countries, but I'm dubious that something like that will happen to the US or Europe in general. For trends so long is really hard to predict anything. As for the OP, he mentioned atheism only once with a reference to the New Atheists of and their claims that America will look like Europe in a hundred years. His argument is that it might not. As for atheism I'm not convinced this will make much of a difference, a response to increased radicalization also tends to be people coming out as atheists. The whole New Atheist movement was a reaction to 9/11 and a lot of secular action is activated whenever Christian fundementalists try to insert anti-evolution propaganda into school books. Paradoxically more Christians and Muslims might also mean more atheists.

Hopefully a more religious world won't lead to much of a problem for the continued practice of Science and such things as free speech and liberty. However if he's right then we'll have to question expectations that the world in a hundred years will be mostly secular, maybe not.

Interesting talk, thanks for showing it Seer.

[Angra Mainyu]

I don't actually think that atheism is going to be completely gone. But the trends are certainly in the opposite direction.

And by “in the opposite direction” you mean towards less atheism.

It's possible. I don't know whether it's true, though, and arguing from birth rates is not enough to establish it.

But in order to establish that the trend is towards less atheism, they would need to take into consideration not only the fact that reproduction among atheists is below replacement rate, but also how many people raised as theists (especially, Christians) become atheists as adults.

I'm not saying that it's not happening. Just that it's not been established that it is.

You sould watch the link, it is quite interesting.

I read the article, and would read the paper if available. I might watch it if I have more time.

Well this is why you should listen to the link. Kaufmann makes the point that with religious Jews and Christians (he points to Israel, Australia, London and the US to a lesser degree) where the children are actually more religious than the parents. That it is a trend.

Since we're talking about religious parents, that the children are “more religious” does not mean a greater proportion of them is religious (we're already talking about religious parents), so it's probably that they give religion a bigger role in their lives, overall.

That does not tell us much about whether the higher reproductive rate of non-atheists is enough to reduce the number of atheists; for that, you would need to know how many people not raised as atheists (and that includes those raised as mainstream and/or liberal Jews and Christians) become atheists.

So, while that indicates a trend towards greater religious commitment on the part of some religious groups, it doesn't really tells us where atheism is going.

And if materialism is correct what do you have left but genetics? Didn't Dawkins make the point that DNA just is and we dance to its music?

I don't know what “materialism” is, but the point is that all beliefs are hard-wired into our DNA. That simply wouldn't be possible (too much information to encode, and again lack of information about the specific situations an individual will have to deal with).

That's why we have a considerable learning capability, which is also an evolved trait, but it's not a trait that fixes a belief, but rather, allows us to acquire beliefs depending on the conditions of the environment.

It is true that we have inherited some predispositions for having some beliefs, but most of them aren't of that kind.

I suppose you could say that atheism would disappear as it provides a reproductive disadvantage.

But that wouldn't take into account that atheism is more likely to be the result of our belief-acquiring mechanisms, mechanisms which probably can't be suppressed or modify to the point of eliminating atheism without greater reproductive disadvantages.

It would be a misunderstanding of Dawkins' position - and generally, modern biology's position, since what you bring up is not controversial in science – to think that beliefs are determined by genetics alone.

There are different components to some belief, and genetics are only part of the story.

It is the fundy Jew, Christians and Muslims that are propagating the most and there is no evidence that the adult children of any of these groups are abandoning the faith of their fathers (he actually touches on this in the talk). He shows that this is not happening - it may be happening to the liberal wing of these faiths.

That's correct.

But that would result in an increase of fundy Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

In fact, it may be happening in Islam in general, but that wouldn't mean that Christianity or Judaism (considering all versions, not just fundies) are on the rise, or that atheism is on the decline.

It may well be that, say, liberal or even mainstream Jews and Christians are having enough atheist daughters and/or sons to prevent the decline of atheism.

What we can tell is that Islam is probably growing, since Islam seems to have a very high retaining rate.

And perhaps it is just in our make up to desire hope - something atheism just does not offer.

Hope for what?

In any case, it may be true that people have a predisposition to sometimes believe what they want to be true. That may be a side-effect of some adaptation; what do I know?

But clearly, that is not always the case. I would want to live forever in a nice place, or get superpowers, but that's not going to make me believe I will, nor will it give me hope that I will.

Still, there are atheists who do believe in an afterlife, either by means of reincarnation, or some other plane of existence (whatever that means); the point is that they do have a religion that includes afterlife beliefs, even if their religion happens to be atheistic.

My point is that if you're talking about an afterlife, atheism may not give hope for that, but it doesn't necessarily get in the way, either.

That said, I'm not sure I'm allowed to debate those matters outside the Apologetics or debate subforums; also, for reasons of time, I'd rather not get involved into atheism vs. theism (or vs. Christianity, etc.) debates on TW, except perhaps for one-on-one debates, which are more manageable, so I'd rather leave it there.

[seer]

I've actually seen this most often in recordings of presentations about apologetics so don't be so eager to jump onto the high horse Seer.

Alright, it was an interesting talk. He started out by explaining basically what his book was about, namely that the world seems to be growing more religious and that some of the paradigms common in sociology that wealth leads to secularism might be a flawed view. He charts the development of ultra orthodox religious movements and cults and how their birth rate seems little affected when they immigrate. He does agree that if you grow in wealth then your birthrate tends to fall down, so its not this that he's attacking. He argues that if you're in a world shunning sect and you basically resist getting absorbed into the culture then your birthrate won't be as affected. The movements he cites are things like Amish, Mennonites, Mormons and Quiverfull (who are literally planning to outbreed the seculars to) on the Christian side, as well as certain ultra orthodox jewish movements in Isreal. He points out that its not the evangelical movement (referring to Christians) that are the source of this.

Its also these groups that don't have much of a drop off rate, which he explains in two ways, firstly because these groups are enormously tight-knit. Not being a Quiverfull member, or radical muslim doesn't just cost you a part of your personal identity, it also costs you your family, friends and connections. So people in these groups have an enormous incentive to staying there, and he seems to refer to statistics that show that second generation members has very little secularization. The second way is by something called the Cultural Defence Theory. Basically some of these groups by virtue of being immigrants have racial/ethnic/cultural differences that reinforce their church attendance, because that becomes part of their social identity. He points out some interesting and counter-intuitive aspects of these movements, such as that the harshness of the cultural differences, for example that women aren't allowed career jobs and strict ritual laws, actually makes it harder for people to leave, since they help isolate these people from the 'wordly things'.

Some of the downsides seem to be that these groups (at least in Britain and Israel) live mainly on welfare, so how this would affect nations as a whole if they were to dominate would be an interesting question. He also doesn't see the ultra orthodox jews taking over Israel, and argues that actually they seem to rather want to be a subculture within a secular jewish state. If they were to grow to dominance he argues that they'd have to do something about their birtrate. I don't remember him arguing why, but I guess its a hint at a economic disaster of having a whole nation of unskilled laborers.

Interestingly he points out that the reason we don't have a much more secular Britain or America today is due mainly to pure immigration of Catholic poles and latinos, and that's the main reason why church attendance in Britain has remained relatively the same between 1998 and 2005.

My own thoughts? It was an interesting talk, though I think this is still a bit too controversial and will probably need to be hashed out between sociologists. I don't know if I'm gonna get his book, since I'm a physics geek and not a demography geek, and at any rate beyond knowing statistics I'm not really qualified to evaluate it. He doesn't seem to argue that these groups will actually take over society, and replace secular states with theocracies. It might with some countries, but I'm dubious that something like that will happen to the US or Europe in general. For trends so long is really hard to predict anything. As for the OP, he mentioned atheism only once with a reference to the New Atheists of and their claims that America will look like Europe in a hundred years. His argument is that it might not. As for atheism I'm not convinced this will make much of a difference, a response to increased radicalization also tends to be people coming out as atheists. The whole New Atheist movement was a reaction to 9/11 and a lot of secular action is activated whenever Christian fundementalists try to insert anti-evolution propaganda into school books. Paradoxically more Christians and Muslims might also mean more atheists.

Hopefully a more religious world won't lead to much of a problem for the continued practice of Science and such things as free speech and liberty. However if he's right then we'll have to question expectations that the world in a hundred years will be mostly secular, maybe not.

Interesting talk, thanks for showing it Seer.

First Leonhard, I was only joking about the liberal thing, I too have seen it often from my side. Your review is concise and to the point, not much to argue with here. One of my purposes in starting this thread was to kind of stick it in the eye of the so called new atheist movement. Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, Stenger, et al who are pronouncing the death of religion - the "End of Faith." Not only is this suggestion premature it may never become fact. Human beings are a deeply religious race - it is in our DNA so to speak. You may attribute that fact to some necessary function of the evolutionary process, I would not (or least not only to that). Perhaps, with all its warts, religion is necessary for human survival and flourishing. Anyway, like I said - it was an excellent review.

[Oolon Colluphid]

I'm familiar with Kaufmann's ideas. There's a piece about him in the current 'New Humanist'.

However, I don't think it's necessarily the case that atheists produce more atheists, and believers produce more believers.

My mother's parents were both very committed atheists, yet my mother is very religious (as is my father) and I'm agnostic. I realise that's just anecdotal, but it does illustrate the point.

We have a problem with Muslim fundamentalists in the UK, but they aren't immigrants from severe Islamic regimes. Their parents often were immigrtants who came to the UK to escape from all of that. But their sons and daughters are much more radical than they themselves are. Hanif Kureishi has a good book about it - 'My Son the Fanatic'. I believe it's been made into a film but I haven't seen it.

I don't think we can easily predict what the next few generations are likely to believe with any accuracy. Childhood indoctrination (of any sort) does not inevitably lead to inherited beliefs.