It’s inevitable. Religion is dead, saya a recent study.
Religion will soon be dead in nine countries according to a study reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas. Is this because the people in these countries are too smart for something like religion? No. The reason that religion is dead in those countries, they posit, is not they are strong minded. Religion will die in those countries because the people there cannot stand up to peer pressure. Being an atheist, they say, is cooler.
“The idea is pretty simple,” said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
“It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.
“For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there’s some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not.”
Dr Wiener continued: “In a large number of modern secular democracies, there’s been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%.”
The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the “non-religious” category.
They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.
And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
The world is junior high school, we just live in it.
It was unclear in the study how long it would be before we are all wearing baggy pants and messy hair.
It is also unclear how the study accounts for an almighty God who might have other ideas.
March 23, 2011 at 12:53 pm
1)The countries studied: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.
2)Religion = Xianity amongst certain northern and central European peoples with perhaps limited muslim immigration.
March 23, 2011 at 1:17 pm
If it's cooler to join the majority group, then how did atheism get started and grow?
March 23, 2011 at 2:45 pm
To the Romans, Christianity was Atheism since Christians didn't worship state idols/gods (see David Hart's book The Atheist Delusion). Christianity rose in large part due to the pagans noticing that the Christians helped those down on their luck (why there are now hospitals).
In the studied countries, socialism/soft socialism is the norm. The population sees that socialism helps society's ills. Unfortunately (or fortunately), over time it is not monetarily self-sustaining.
I predict that when socialism/soft socialism collapses, people may again start seriously considering Christianity just like the Roman pagans did since society will again rely on mostly Christians (if there's no or little money in the gov't, I think (per history) that Christians will be more likely to help the population out than non-Christians).
March 23, 2011 at 6:41 pm
Is that pronounced WEENER or WHINER? Either way, it's funny. Darn my juvenile sense of humor.
March 23, 2011 at 7:37 pm
What IS it with people named Wiener, anyway?
March 24, 2011 at 1:08 am
While some people born according to the laws of nature and nature's God choose to ignore and impugn the beliefs of others, atheists cannot ignore or impugn Faith, the God-given gift of the TRUTH. TRUTH will set man free. The only atheists who truly enjoy being atheists are the atheists who impose their tyranny upon others for the purpose of proving that they are free.
March 24, 2011 at 2:09 am
I think the junior high trend is now super-tight pants. As in, your little sister's pants that you stole from her closet and now wear halfway down your rear.
March 25, 2011 at 8:22 am
Of course I´m an atheist!
I don´t believe I´m God.
Shalom
Hermann
March 26, 2011 at 1:54 pm
WOW! Someone ran some figures into a computer model. Then why can't they explain why some religious groups ARE growing? The Mormons? Ultra-Orthodox Jews?
I believe that there is a hard core stable group within Catholicism that is growing slowly, and will still be standing when the pew warmers leave/die off for good. We NEED to regroup. Does that mean the ghetto? I don't know. I hope not.