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Comment by pfdietz | Hacker News Reader

The assumption that religion is something that people stick with is dubious, though. In the absence of coercion people will tend to abandon religion. Look at what's happening to Christianity in the US.

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I thought the same, but real life experience shows that in my country (Romania) there is an increase of religion with age, especially for women; in other words, most women start being religious when they age and these days most of the religious traditions are maintained and transmitted by old women. I know many women that were secular in their 20-30, become religious at 50 and are regular churchgoers at 70. My mother used to be a secular feminist engineer 40 years ago, she is none of these today.

As a country we were over 50% secular 30 years ago, the last census tells over 90% declared to be religious (census is wrong, but how wrong?).

Weren't churches a huge factor in deposing Ceausescu and an end to the Soviet influence, as well as the support of populace in hard times before the regime's fall? I'd imagine that would put religion in some favorable light in Romania in particular.

https://www.hungarianconservative.com/articles/politics/chur...

Edit: capitalization

No, top priests were actually collaborationists. The anti-Ceausescu coup d'etat was done by a hard-left, atheist group (public face being Ion Iliescu).

The classic adage: "If you are not a liberal when you are young, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative when you are old, you have no brain" :)

Romania is an interesting case from a demographic point of view. Many, many factors at work in that very old part of the world.

Highly recommend you study history a bit more. If you truly think religion only “sticks” in the presence of coercion… well there’s a lot of history that would be hard to understand.

“Coercion” might be a strong word, but there’s many form of “very strong incentives” applied in most religions. Not being included in the group and face critically harsher survival conditions by not participating in the religion is a form of that for instance.

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