Atheists at risk of dying out as religious people are having more babies | Hacker News Reader

Atheists at risk of dying out as religious people are having more babies

independent.co.uk

2 pointsrandomname29 comments

I thought this was laughable when it hit the front page of Reddit a few days ago, but I honestly never thought it would crop up here. The notion of religion as an inherited trait, and the notion that somehow atheism (rather than socioeconomic status) is the driver of less childbirth are utterly bizarre and wrongheaded.

religion as an inherited trait is a fact. I wonder what can you have meant.

Really? Where on the chromosome do the "religious" genes lie? Even if you mean "inherited" as in "taught by parents"... you realize that not all atheists are born to atheists, right?

> Really?

yes!

> Where on the chromosome do the "religious" genes lie?

we both know the answer to this.

> Even if you mean "inherited" as in "taught by parents"...

we both know that this is what's meant.

> you realize that not all atheists are born to atheists, right?

yes, I realize that.

I have no idea what you meant, or what you mean, but looking over your two posts I realize that's because you haven't actually said anything other than your claim.

Anything to back it up? Concrete please, not incredulity or parsing my posts.

> not incredulity

100% of the incredulity in this discussion came from your post:

> Really? Where on the chromosome do the "religious" genes lie? Even if you mean "inherited" as in "taught by parents"... you realize that not all atheists are born to atheists, right?

Both you and parent would do better providing citations to back up your assertions. I suspect however that the person you are responding to may have an easier time of it.

I'll do that.

Edit: 1 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15745438

http://www.apa.org/monitor/apr04/beliefs.aspx

Those percentages speak for themselves, and they're not screaming "heritability". They speak to a strong environmental element, but that aspect seems to change over time. Mind you, environment is more than just parents.

religion is inherited now?

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