Give it time, those "unaffiliated" ones are the low-hanging fruits in the next wave of converts.
Religion is growing overall: https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-20...
Religion is growing overall: https://www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/religious-projections-20...
It seems like when you give people education, wealth, and other opportunities, they don't go back to religion.
It's declining reasonably quickly in rich countries like Europe and the United States. Also, note that your article is outdated, the decline of religion in the US has accelerated quite a bit since 2015.
From your article:
> Europe is the only region where the total population is projected to decline. Europe’s Christian population is expected to shrink by about 100 million people in the coming decades, dropping from 553 million to 454 million. While Christians will remain the largest religious group in Europe, they are projected to drop from three-quarters of the population to less than two-thirds. By 2050, nearly a quarter of Europeans (23%) are expected to have no religious affiliation, and Muslims will make up about 10% of the region’s population, up from 5.9% in 2010. Over the same period, the number of Hindus in Europe is expected to roughly double, from a little under 1.4 million (0.2% of Europe’s population) to nearly 2.7 million (o.4%), mainly as a result of immigration. Buddhists appear headed for similarly rapid growth in Europe – a projected rise from 1.4 million to 2.5 million.
> Christians are projected to decline from 78% of the U.S. population in 2010 to 66% in 2050, while the unaffiliated are expected to rise from 16% to 26%.
Also, note that those same countries are growing in population %age and are skyrocketing economically (and joining us online, on HN) while also being religious.
People tend to selfishly forget religion (and their loved ones) in good times, but good times don't stay forever :)
In the developed world religiosity is falling but so are birth rates.
Without it, human becomes alone, depressed, savage, has shorter life-span. And less likely to generate offsprings.
Religion is not key.
Without it, people don't become alone/depressed/etc.
The offspring thing is that wealthy people/nations/communities tend to have less kids since its more expensive per kid and seen as more burdensome to their lives.
- is becoming less religious
- most in that group are becoming alone/depressed/etc.
- It's expensive and burdensome for that group to have offsprings
Then that group is essentially a dead-end and those practices will not expand to more groups. Them being rich isn't helping them.
How is that not a form of natural selection?
There is no link between belief and loneliness.
I live in a largely secular country, people are choosing to not have kids due to the environment and the general satisfaction in their lives without kids.
The same reasons (education and social security) which counter dogma also allow people to make educated choices for their lives.
Religion provides this faith.
It also cures loneliness:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/1386462
https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/A-Loneliness-...
If a group:
- is becoming less religious - is becoming more gay - is becoming less white - is becoming more literate - is becoming less starved - is becoming better at typing - is becoming worse at blacksmithing - is becoming better at curing diseases - is becoming worse at writing with a quill - is becoming more vaccinated - is becoming less likely to drive an oldsmobile. - is becoming more likely to drive a toyota. - is becoming more urban - is becoming less rural - is becoming more divided in ideology - is becoming more likely to believe in election fraud
OR (my personal hunch) - is bad at causation/correlation
> Then that group is essentially a dead-end and those practices will not expand to more groups. Them being rich isn't helping them.
>How is that not a form of natural selection?
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Why can't it be the vaccines and toyotas that are causing depression? Maybe darwin should have warned us that city birds don't mate.
Maybe its just bad causation/correlation when viewed through the lens of one facet of historical change.