A world with declining population. Full of old people due to population pyramid inverted. Full of stupid, and impulsive, and likely religious zealots, as those are the only groups with fertility rates above replacement level.
there are lots of stupid, impulsive religious zealots with quiverfuls. But also a lot of wonderful, loving religious folks with quiverfuls.
I wish there were more other types who had a birthrate above replacement, but outside of religious circles, having more than 2 kids is rare and even considered uncouth.
If lots of couples have 1 or no kids and lots of people aren't even in couples, then we're going to need a LOT of people having 3 or more kids. But we aren't. Especially among the non-religious.
It could be that in the future, religion is a social trait selected for because it leads to higher birth rates.
I haven't seen a lot of introspection on this idea that doesn't quickly verge into, um, questionable rhetoric, and I'd like to see a lot more of it.
They move in similar circles, because it is ideology. But I don't think they are much sizeable even among religious.
I’ve never heard people having more than two children being referred to as uncouth. Honestly that’s disgusting.
Why could it not also have been the case in the past as well? Many religions have tenets about raising many children. Could it be that this is why religion is very highly ingrained in society to begin with?
I doubt that very much, that has not been my experience, my colleagues, or my relatives.
In fact, I wouldn't even agree with the point that religious people tend to have bigger families.
That would be pretty silly then. Most successful religions have two things, both of them based on growth. One is a means to capture people not in their religion by conversion. The other is by codifying good parenting and breeding habits. The biblical old testament is rife with teachings like this for example.
Population fade with success is not a modern problem, it is an ancient one. In the past if you didn't have a large enough population you were at risk of attack by stronger nations.
They are so stupid, yet everyone else let themselves be out-bred by them? I think if that happens in the long-term, it more or less suggests "religious zealots" have adapted better.
I'm not suggesting that all muslims are "religious zealots", but yes, growth of population sections by religion is a real thing. On the other hand atheists are expected to stay the same, or even decline. No one can say what percent of people are going to be "zealots", but you could say it's hard to be a "religious zealot" without a religion. So, it seems likely, all other things being equal, that yes, religious zealotry (and all religious activity) will increase.
[0] http://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-201...
This is an individual vs. society issue: having few kids is better at the individual level, but for society it's not sustainable unless we can figure out how to significantly extend lifespans (i.e., reduce the death rate in-line with the reduction of the birthrate).
I think it's a safe assumption that those with religious dogma and those in regions of high child mortality will continue to have many kids, one way or another. The "educated" non-religious class is probably the only one that has a real choice to make. If they keep up reproducing at 2.1x replacement level while everyone else exceeds that level, the worldwide population is just going to continue to grow and then we're in real trouble.
I'm perfectly happy to let "my society" be taken over by "the other kind" who out-reproduced me and my peers. One way or another, we'll have to stop growing as a species, and one group's excesses have to balanced out by another group's shortfalls.
Personally, I just don't see a way to avoid some kind of major collapse of society due to one or more of the many factors facing us. For this issue, I think greatly improving human longevity is absolutely necessary, and if we don't do that, we're going to have another Dark Ages of some kind.
In the end the only thing one can really do it have your own kids.