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> This is why many assumptions about the future are simply incorrect. For instance people think humanity will become more secular because it has through most of

> This is why many assumptions about the future are simply incorrect. For instance people think humanity will become more secular because it has through most of our lifetimes so surely that trend must continue on into the future? But secularity is inversely correlated with fertility. And has been for the many generations over which humanity has gotten more secular. > So all that we're going to see happen is secular folks disproportionately remove themselves from the gene pool while religious folks take an ever larger share - now think about what the children of this new gene pool will, on average, be like. But for generations that hasn’t been what has happened, despite the correlation between religiosity and fertility not being a novel thing that developed this century? Why could that be? Because religion isn't a genetic trait. Fertility of populations and popularity of ideas and practices have some interaction, sure, but not in the simplistic “spread of a genetic lineage determines spread of culture and ideology” way you are trying to push here.

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somenameforme 1y ago
Two things I'd say here. First, is that the 'hereditary' nature of religion is even stronger than I assumed. 84% of adults (quite relevant as we skip the rebellious teen years) who were raised in e.g. a completely Protestant home are Protestants themselves. That bumps up to 89% in households where their parents regularly talked about religion! The relationship is likely even stronger for more 'rigorous' religions such Islam or Haredi Judaism, religions which also correlate extremely strongly with fertility. The second thing is that you're likely dramatically overestimating the secular population. Gallup has been polling people on religion since 1948. Here [1] are those data. As recently as 2004, the percent of people with no religion was in the single digits, so the overall relevance was low. And the inverse correlation between secularity and fertility is also quite new driven by a rather large number of new factors - antagonistic attitude towards gender roles, the embrace of non-marital sex largely enabled by the introduction of the birth control pill in 1960, and so on. So in general, we're entering into relatively uncharted waters, but it's not hard to see what lies ahead as consequences of fertility decisions lag behind those decisions themselves by ~60 years. [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/10/26/links-between-childhood-religious-upbringing-and-current-religious-identity/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/10/26/links-betwee... [2] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx

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somenameforme 1y ago

Two things I'd say here. First, is that the 'hereditary' nature of religion is even stronger than I assumed. 84% of adults (quite relevant as we skip the rebellious teen years) who were raised in e.g. a completely Protestant home are Protestants themselves. That bumps up to 89% in households where their parents regularly talked about religion! The relationship is likely even stronger for more 'rigorous' religions such Islam or Haredi Judaism, religions which also correlate extremely strongly with fertility. The second thing is that you're likely dramatically overestimating the secular population. Gallup has been polling people on religion since 1948. Here [1] are those data. As recently as 2004, the percent of people with no religion was in the single digits, so the overall relevance was low. And the inverse correlation between secularity and fertility is also quite new driven by a rather large number of new factors - antagonistic attitude towards gender roles, the embrace of non-marital sex largely enabled by the introduction of the birth control pill in 1960, and so on. So in general, we're entering into relatively uncharted waters, but it's not hard to see what lies ahead as consequences of fertility decisions lag behind those decisions themselves by ~60 years. [1] - https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/10/26/links-between-childhood-religious-upbringing-and-current-religious-identity/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2016/10/26/links-betwee... [2] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1690/religion.aspx