Study: Religion Going Extinct in Many Western Countries

Why Does It Still Dominate Our Politics?
By BooMan | Sourced from Booman Tribune
Posted at March 23, 2011

We know that languages die out. We also know that religions die out. How many people believe in Zeus or Poseidon or Apollo? But could we see religions as a whole die out in modern societies?

A new study predicts that that is exactly what is going to happen in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland. The list is notable because in includes the two countries most similar to the United States. Both Canada and Australia were founded, mainly, by British settlers. How could it be that they are readying to bury Christianity and we've handed over one of our two viable political parties to a fundamentalist version of that religion?

I mean, Big Oil and Big Money operate in Canada and Australia, too. So, why haven't the dollars gone to the mega-churches in those countries? It might have something to do with political efficacy. It is easier to capture a major party in the United States than in Canada or, especially, Australia.

Still, it's astonishing to think that Christianity may soon be extinct in Canada at the same time as it is morphing into something so powerful in our country that it can destroy reproductive choice and the teaching of biology, geology, and sex education.

We're not inherently more religious than Canada. We just have a political system that allows financial elites to enlist religious fundamentalists in their service. In other words, religion has tremendous utility in our country.

"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.

I don't care what people believe. I think the single best thing about our country is that we are allowed to believe whatever the hell we want. I don't believe in mixing religion and politics, even to promote agnosticism. But I think it is fascinating how our political system actually encourages a form of religious fanaticism that is actually in the process of completely dying out in counties much like ours.

Could simple electoral reform destroy organized religion in this country?

Generation X More Loyal To Religion Than Previous Generation

A recent survey analysis reveals that Gen-Xers are more likely than Baby Boomers to remain loyal to religion.
Christie Nicholson reports. August 28, 2010

Research published this week reveals a surprising trend among the American Generation X—the group who came of age in the late 1980s and 1990s and are known for their rejection of all things conventional. It appears that in comparison to the Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers are significantly more loyal to religion.

Scientists analyzed survey responses from more than 37,000 people between the years 1973 to 2006. Their results are published in The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. They found that Boomers are 40 to 50 percent more likely to abandon their religious faith, than Gen-Xers.

Interesting to note, from those surveyed, the number of Americans with no religious affiliation doubled in the 1990s and continues to increase through the first decade of this century.

The researchers attribute this drop off to the Boomers who were likely to have abandoned religion in young adulthood perhaps due to the rejection of organized authority or what the researchers call the “1960s effect.”

So what’s up with this newfound loyalty in the younger Generation X?

Well the authors note that it probably has to do with the expansion of the “religious marketplace” in recent decades, and suggest that instead of this trend watering down religious faith, they say that more choices is influencing the increase in affiliation and commitment to religion.