Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

[DC Al Fine]

I just read "Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth" by Eric Kaufmann. A review/synopsis can be found here: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/shall-the-religious-inherit-the-earth-by-eric-kaufmann-1939316.html

Kaufmann asserts among other things:
1) Fundamentalism as we know it is actually a relatively new response to secularism.
2) Fundamentalists are choosing to outbreed seculars and moderates, often by huge margins.
3) Fundamentalists set up parallel structures and social activities encouraging very high retention rates. (Ex: An Episcopalian just stops going to church while an Ultra-Orthodox Jew abandons his friends, family, and even his identity)
4) This will result in the culture wars being won in the long run by fundamentalists

He cites Israel, where the Ultra Orthodox were a tiny minority in the 1940's and now constitute  over 1/3 of Jewish kids entering school.

I too can illustrate this behaviour. I attend an orthodox Calvinist church. The conservative women there eschew birth control and have 6+ kids. The liberal/moderates (by our standards) like have 3-5 kids. Meanwhile I can't think of a single secular who has/wants more than two children.

It is very easy to see how over the course of a couple centuries our cultures turning more and more reactionary in response to these demographic changes. Thoughts?

[Robert California]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

[Yelnoc]

I don't think it is a good idea to extrapolate current demographic trends far into the future, particularly not when talking about amorphously-defined groups such as religious fundamentalists (as opposed to, say, gender or nationality).

[DC Al Fine]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Cathcon, Kaufmann uses fundamentalist to describe a variety of groups, which in my opinion is incorrect. Here are some groups he considers "fundamentalist" by his definition:
1) The Amish
2) Orthodox Calvinists
3) Traditional Catholics
4) Wahabi/Salifst Islam
5) Independant Baptists
6) some Mormons
7) Ultra-Orthodox Jews

I'm not sure what you think of the Catholics who don't use birth control and want to return to the Latin mass, but their demographic future is quite bright.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

There's no room for "mainline" Protestantism either way, is there?

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

The future?

Then again, there's no way to determine if hostility or increased influence from religion on governmental affairs will come as a consequence of this, especially in America.  It's probably just wishful thinking to believe it's even remotely plausible that fundamentalists will collectively change their worldviews and respect how people live their own lives, but you have to take each study as they come.

If Kaufmann's predictions are right, though, then I certainly don't see a great future for anyone.

[TJ in Oregon]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Cathcon, Kaufmann uses fundamentalist to describe a variety of groups, which in my opinion is incorrect. Here are some groups he considers "fundamentalist" by his definition:
1) The Amish
2) Orthodox Calvinists
3) Traditional Catholics
4) Wahabi/Salifst Islam
5) Independant Baptists
6) some Mormons
7) Ultra-Orthodox Jews

I'm not sure what you think of the Catholics who don't use birth control and want to return to the Latin mass, but their demographic future is quite bright.

How do they define "Traditional Catholics"? Are they referring to those who reject the Second Vatican Council and/or use only the Tridentine form of the Mass or simply all Catholics who believe in the Church's teaching on personal morality (including birth control). Those two groups are decidedly not the same with the former being an extremely small number who are often in an apostasy and the latter being ~15% of American Catholics.

[DC Al Fine]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Cathcon, Kaufmann uses fundamentalist to describe a variety of groups, which in my opinion is incorrect. Here are some groups he considers "fundamentalist" by his definition:
1) The Amish
2) Orthodox Calvinists
3) Traditional Catholics
4) Wahabi/Salifst Islam
5) Independant Baptists
6) some Mormons
7) Ultra-Orthodox Jews

I'm not sure what you think of the Catholics who don't use birth control and want to return to the Latin mass, but their demographic future is quite bright.

How do they define "Traditional Catholics"? Are they referring to those who reject the Second Vatican Council and/or use only the Tridentine form of the Mass or simply all Catholics who believe in the Church's teaching on personal morality (including birth control). Those two groups are decidedly not the same with the former being an extremely small number who are often in an apostasy and the latter being ~15% of American Catholics.

I don't know. There is surprisingly little about Catholicism the book. I'll hazard a guess and say that given that the book is almost entirely about demography, eschewing birth control would be enough to count as a traditionalist Catholic.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

There's no room for "mainline" Protestantism either way, is there?

Probably not, not outside such little Stanley Hauerwas-style self-consciously subcultural communities as there may be.

[afleitch]

What's ironic is that if you look at literature from the 80's, early 90's and I'll really need to dig out the links on these if they are online, the hopeful religious in America predicted that this would be the case now; that the great evangelical revival of the 1980's would produce Jesus loving offspring. It didn't happen. The idea that religious groups will 'outbreed' the rest of society is both slightly perverse, misinformed and extremely naive when it comes to how secularisation actually occurs.

[Hatman 🍁]

Not all evangelical kids will remain conservative evangelicals. It only takes maybe 25% of them to join the "dark side" to even things out (just a number I pulled out my ass). But, many children rebel even in strict up bringings. What will happen if they're LGBT for example? That's nearly 10% right there. Most of them will flee the nest.

Meanwhile, secular children are less likely to rebel and become evangelical. Rebel, sure, but not be socially conservative. More likely to be Libertarian I suppose.

But who cares? The future will be dark for many other reasons. Climate change being the biggest.

[k-onmmunist]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

why is secularism bad?

[useful idiot]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

There's no room for "mainline" Protestantism either way, is there?

Probably not, not outside such little Stanley Hauerwas-style self-consciously subcultural communities as there may be.

Expand on that.

[DC Al Fine]

To touch on Hatman & Afleitch's points, Kaufmann is talking about the sort of people who would view modern evangelicals as too "in the world". These sorts of groups set up their own parallel structures (schools, social events etc.) so that children's entire social lives and identities are built around the faith, resulting in extremely high retention rates.

You are exactly right about the evangelicals, but the difference is that the other groups don't expose their children to "the world" like evangelicals do. These groups are extremely strict, so it's likely that you don't even run into these types at all in their daily lives, that is how separate they are from the mainstream.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

why is secularism bad?

The short answer is that it tends to be simply a profoundly uninteresting, I'd go so far as to say soul-crushingly boring view of the world (or set of views of the world) aesthetically speaking, not necessarily on the individual level but certainly on the level of civil society, but I can elaborate later if you'd like. (useful idiot, I can expand after I've got something to eat and ensured that the building I live in isn't about to fall down.)

[afleitch]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

why is secularism bad?

The short answer is that it tends to be simply a profoundly uninteresting, I'd go so far as to say soul-crushingly boring view of the world (or set of views of the world) aesthetically speaking, not necessarily on the individual level but certainly on the level of civil society, but I can elaborate later if you'd like. (useful idiot, I can expand after I've got something to eat and ensured that the building I live in isn't about to fall down.)

Why is a world that separates religion from political discourse 'uninteresting?' I mean do you want liberal democracies to not be secular? It wouldn't be a very safe world for you Nathan.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

why is secularism bad?

The short answer is that it tends to be simply a profoundly uninteresting, I'd go so far as to say soul-crushingly boring view of the world (or set of views of the world) aesthetically speaking, not necessarily on the individual level but certainly on the level of civil society, but I can elaborate later if you'd like. (useful idiot, I can expand after I've got something to eat and ensured that the building I live in isn't about to fall down.)

Why is a world that separates religion from political discourse 'uninteresting?' I mean do you want liberal democracies to not be secular? It wouldn't be a very safe world for you Nathan.

You're referring to state secularism, which is obviously the correct response to the fact that most countries aren't monolithically one religion anymore. I'm referring to secularism as a social worldview. Sure, there are plenty of salubrious side-effects in there and I'd never claim otherwise, but I've yet to be convinced that it's worth it, particularly when we consider that the same process is driving religion in those areas where it maintains power completely off the deep end.

[k-onmmunist]

i'm just not a fan of organized religion having large amounts of power - the ideal for me would be the individualization of spirituality/faith i guess.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

i'm just not a fan of organized religion having large amounts of power - the ideal for me would be the individualization of spirituality/faith i guess.

That makes sense, I suppose, though I'm not sure I agree, since some form of social structure is fairly integral to religion as I understand it.

Also it may help to mentally substitute 'disenchantment' for every instance of 'secularism' or 'secularization' in my previous posts, since that's probably the proper term for what I'm trying to describe.

[k-onmmunist]

i'm just not a fan of organized religion having large amounts of power - the ideal for me would be the individualization of spirituality/faith i guess.

That makes sense, I suppose, though I'm not sure I agree, since some form of social structure is fairly integral to religion as I understand it.

Also it may help to mentally substitute 'disenchantment' for every instance of 'secularism' or 'secularization' in my previous posts, since that's probably the proper term for what I'm trying to describe.

depends. i'm  technically religious but not affiliated, though i would probably fit in with the unitarian universalists, being a pantheist.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

i'm just not a fan of organized religion having large amounts of power - the ideal for me would be the individualization of spirituality/faith i guess.

That makes sense, I suppose, though I'm not sure I agree, since some form of social structure is fairly integral to religion as I understand it.

Also it may help to mentally substitute 'disenchantment' for every instance of 'secularism' or 'secularization' in my previous posts, since that's probably the proper term for what I'm trying to describe.

depends. i'm  technically religious but not affiliated, though i would probably fit in with the unitarian universalists, being a pantheist.

Hence 'as I understand it'. It should also be remembered I'm a scary agrarian collectivist, so I have a tendency to think this way in general (which is kind of weird since I don't actually get out much...).

[Chief Justice PiT]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

why is secularism bad?

The short answer is that it tends to be simply a profoundly uninteresting, I'd go so far as to say soul-crushingly boring view of the world (or set of views of the world) aesthetically speaking, not necessarily on the individual level but certainly on the level of civil society, but I can elaborate later if you'd like. (useful idiot, I can expand after I've got something to eat and ensured that the building I live in isn't about to fall down.)

Why is a world that separates religion from political discourse 'uninteresting?' I mean do you want liberal democracies to not be secular? It wouldn't be a very safe world for you Nathan.

You're referring to state secularism, which is obviously the correct response to the fact that most countries aren't monolithically one religion anymore. I'm referring to secularism as a social worldview. Sure, there are plenty of salubrious side-effects in there and I'd never claim otherwise, but I've yet to be convinced that it's worth it, particularly when we consider that the same process is driving religion in those areas where it maintains power completely off the deep end.

     I've never been a fan of secularism myself, as I see the popular conception of irreligion as being sort of a negation of a significant element of cultural variety. Even though I am explicitly atheistic, I also experience a varying level of attachment to both Catholicism and Paganism (odd combination, I know), because they existed in my "cultural background", broadly defined.

[afleitch]

Interesting idea. I'd assumed for the last year or so that within a generation we'd be living in a secular, irreligious, decadent wasteland. However, it appears the opposite will happen. However I'm not extremely into the evangelical stuff myself (as one can see by my username) so I'm not quite sure how to take this either.

Both of these options are horrible. The future is going to be awful.

why is secularism bad?

The short answer is that it tends to be simply a profoundly uninteresting, I'd go so far as to say soul-crushingly boring view of the world (or set of views of the world) aesthetically speaking, not necessarily on the individual level but certainly on the level of civil society, but I can elaborate later if you'd like. (useful idiot, I can expand after I've got something to eat and ensured that the building I live in isn't about to fall down.)

Why is a world that separates religion from political discourse 'uninteresting?' I mean do you want liberal democracies to not be secular? It wouldn't be a very safe world for you Nathan.

You're referring to state secularism, which is obviously the correct response to the fact that most countries aren't monolithically one religion anymore. I'm referring to secularism as a social worldview. Sure, there are plenty of salubrious side-effects in there and I'd never claim otherwise, but I've yet to be convinced that it's worth it, particularly when we consider that the same process is driving religion in those areas where it maintains power completely off the deep end.

I don't argue for superstitious beliefs to be banished from public life or cease to be of any personal relevance to those who adhere to them. Everyone is a little superstitious. What is important is that someone's superstitious belief is never used as justification for the state sponsored or socially driven marginalisation of people. Superstition and religion, even if marginalised in law can still cause social communities and structures united by that superstition (and by extension united against the counter to that; either reason or another superstition) to 'act out' against people who are designated the 'other' group. That can cause these groups harm.

I am personally secular. Supersitition plays almost no part to my life. I don't worship, I don't subscribe to gods, religion, ghosts, spirits, divination, cards, horoscopes, ouija, UFO's, pixies or 'energies.' The idea that I therefore have a 'boring' view of the world without these things made me chuckle. The world is far more exciting for me, far more colourful and far more honest without these things in it. I can look at the stars without thinking someone made them, or think that when they move in the sky it affects my mood and fortune, or that the gods placed the heroes there, or that light I can't identify might be an alien spaceship, or that a shooting star needs to be wished on. I can appreciate their beauty and their awesomeness entirely within the confines of science and reason. Indeed it makes them even more impressive because I know there not up there for 'me.' They are not putting on a show just for me. I can take inspiration from that. I could write a poem about it if I wanted to. I can create moods and create art from those moods. I feel enriched. And when the morning comes I see the sun and know without it that nothing on this planet could be here without it and the sun wouldn't be there unless billions of years ago a star exploded. I don't 'worship' the sun but as I've often said on here if I had to show reverance to anything it would be the sun. Knowing this, what happens when I then consider superstition? It's cheap, almost tawdry and deeply unfulfilling.

[Tokugawa Sexgod Ieyasu]

I'd submit that the sort of harm you're describing happens in every time, in every country, with every excuse known under the blue sky and still others just waiting to be invented appended to it. Democracy is one of the few things that seems to help. Of course 'reason'* also would, since not behaving this way or at least not as frequently as one would otherwise is a feature of most people's definition of 'reasonable', but it's more that I lack the requisite optimism about that than the requisite cynicism about the way people behave when governed by 'traditional' worldviews, which is sometimes awful, sometimes benign, sometimes admirable, and usually kind of stupid.

Sometimes I wish I could have that outlook. Instead contemplating those possibilities just makes me feel rather lonely, which is probably the worst feeling in the world other than intense hunger, which it also makes me feel. Then again, I have a fairly...extensive...personal history here, and on a lot of these issues.


*This word is in scare quotes not because I'm trying to be snide but because my point about it has to do with the word itself, which I think informs how we view the concept.