Comment by guylhem | Hacker News Reader

Comment by guylhem | Hacker News Reader

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"If religion was necessary in the development of large-scale societies, can large-scale societies survive without religion? Norenzayan points to parts of Scandinavia with atheist majorities that seem to be doing just fine"

For the moment.

The situation in Europe is very interesting. There is a strong atheist movement, yet catholics seem to be on a comeback lately, and the mostly muslim immigrant population growing too - and at an even faster pace.

If religion says "go forth and populate the earth", and if atheist have less than 2.1 children, how long until they get outnumber and forced to chance their allegiance by the religous - at gunpoint if necessary? [nobody expects the spanish inquisition :-)]

So I would not base any conclusion on a punctual observation when you have partial derivative pointing to different conclusion in a longer timeframe.

Counter example : if large-scale societies survive fine without religion, how come there are so few of them ? Why do they have a tendency disappear in history, and be replaced by religious societies?

Also, the method of the prisoner game is questionable. The article says the amount was not insubstantial - around several days of work, but does not explain how it was chosen or how it was tested.

I would be very interested to know about the price elasticity of the acceptance rate and the price elascticity of the percentage offered.

I mean, do people in this group have a constant acceptance (fully inelastic - they always accept) or can you get to a point where they refuse because they think it's unfair?

Here's a quick example - go to any fast food join, eat normally, then when you have to leave, prepare the exact amount of cash in one side, and the tip in the other side of the table, and say to server the food was not to your taste, therefore you are leaving only a one cent tip (or a dime)

See if they take the free money, or if they feel so insulted that they refuse. Rince and repeat until you figure the amount they will accept without feeling insulted.

So I really wonder if there could be a cash amount where the remote people from this tribe would react just the same as all of us - which would just point to a calibration problem.

The most populous nation on Earth is by Western standards non-religious -- China. I do not mean that everyone is an atheist as demanded by communism. Rather, the folk "religions" that are most common (there is a large portion of the population, mostly educated urbanites, who are not believers in these either) say very little in the way of the issues you mentioned. They have more to do with granting good luck and curing disease.

Obviously this has not hurt their population.

This has not hurt the population yet, but the one child policy will certainly wreak havoc the country if it is maintained for too long.

When it will be removed (it will have to), I wonder which group will take the most advantage of it and grow faster - the "non religious by western standard" or the various ethnic groups - say in the XianJiang.

Also, the fact that an authoritarian communist country where atheism is promoted still couldn't remove the religious allegiances is interesting. The former USSR tried the same - and failed.

The one child policy does not apply to ethnic minorities.

They are therefore already taking advantage of it, but I wonder when it will be removed it the growth differential will equalize.

My guess is that it won't, and the religious represent a very significant percentage of the population - until they become the majority.

Without willing to insult anyone, I wonder if a human group growth with religion, they reach decadence with atheism - then stats again, eventually with a different religion, in a loop.

EDIT: the point is not about "cultural group" but religion. Are these minorities becoming atheist, or do they keep some religious self identification? I guess they still identify as such, even if they don't practice. Culture is hard to bring back, but religion can grow back very quickly

Equating atheism to decadence is pretty funny when you're familiar with, say, the history of the Catholic Church, almost since its inception, or the history of the religious classes of the Muslim world.

Actually, even without the restrictions of the One Child Policy, the ethnic minorities in China are disappearing as distinct cultural groups. Homogenization of culture is a powerful force.

Ironically for your point, this issue seems to be most severely affecting the Uyghurs and the Tibetans, arguably the most religious minorities in China.

>If religion says "go forth and populate the earth", and if atheist have less than 2.1 children, how long until they get outnumber and forced to chance their allegiance by the religous - at gunpoint eventually?

Well, that escalated quickly.

"if atheist have less than 2.1 children, how long until they get outnumber and forced to chance their allegiance by the religous - at gunpoint if necessary?"

So you make pretty invalid assumptions here, that we reproduce asexually into identical beings, and more than that, even including our believes. So religious parents have religious children, atheist parents have atheist children. That assumption is totally false.

I had personal contact with atheist being made in religious schools as they reacted strongly, and when others tried to force them to believe, they will find a way to prevail.

My uncle is a teacher and one of the girls in class asked him at the end of the class about God,she was curious as her parents, specially her mother, forbid this girl to know about religion. My uncle answered the question and days later had this furious mother trying her best to fire the teacher. Guess what the girl will do when grows up?

My neighbors are highly atheist, their children decided to baptize and go to church on their own. They respect their children decision.

Bad assumptions, bad conclusions.

I'm not saying there is a 100% relation between the parents beliefs and the children.

But all things equal, is a religious couple more likely to have religious children, or atheist children? Is it more than half the time ? If it is, that's enough to make assumptions, even if counter example exist.

"when others tried to force them to believe, they will find a way to prevail"

Not so. I'm quite interested by the experience of atheists in north africa - how they organize and such. In an oppressive society, atheist have to hide - they don't prevail. Religions in general have a problem with atheism, as mentioned in the article about religion from the same author that was separately posted.

I'm not taking sides here- I'm just trying to figure out the dynamic.

It seems to me that while religions can be self perpetrating, atheism is not, and in the long run, it always ends up replaced by a religion.

I just submitted

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5282707

one of Norenzayan's articles for a general readership about the issue of influence of religion on societies. I invite you to join the discussion there too.

Where I live (Prague), religion among younger people is basically non-existent.

But that won't shape history, unless these people are also having children. If atheism coincides with having <2 children, it will only be a series of disconnected blips in statistics.

Why do you assume theism is a purely hereditary trait? A strong culture can influence other people's children.

Only temporarily, i.e., until they die having had < 2 children of their own.

You seem to be begging the question.

The point is that if they influence other people's children into being atheists too, then the atheist section of the population grows.

If your argument is that an entirely atheist population would eventually die out altogether (having no other children to convert) then I misunderstood, but still that an equilibrium will be reached.

I believe you are right that the equilibrium will be determined by the conversion and birth/death coefficients. But that equilibrium may still be at the point of zero atheists! The continued existence of every group still depends on (children + conversions_to - conversions_from) > 2.0 (per breeding pair).

Furthermore, it seems plausible that conversion to a group depends positively on the dominance that group (e.g., more opportunities to be converted as you interact with random others in daily life).

So all else being equal (or unknown), then my money's on the group with the highest birth rate.

Ah, so I did misinterpret your statement first time 'round?

I was thinking that "children" may be a function of total population. At least below some threshold people may have more kids than they would otherwise out of a sense of "duty", or the desire for continuation of the species (which seems to be inherent -- people sacrificing themselves to save "the world" usually do it to safe humanity).

We'll just go with me being unclear and possibly confused on that first round.

If, in reality, people are having children out of a sense of duty to save the world from extinction due to underpopulation then I'm wondering why I didn't get the memo.

Not that they are having them for that reason currently, but it's not implausible they would start were the total human population of earth to drop below, say, 100k.

Are you trying to say that kids always follow the religion of their parents?

No - but see marshray's response - if one child of a theist couple "converts" to Atheism and then has 0-1 children, whereas the other child keeps the religion and has 2-5 children, that will not change a lot.

Though I think I would need a proper simulation now to see if it works out as I imagine it to work out... :)

As much as I like the article it really left thinking that there is much left to investigate.

Does the relative dollar amount vs the absolute dollar amount affect the ultimatum game?

How does differing income levels affect the results.

It does show the limitations of scientific study and how the studies themselves can be generalized or not having controlled and explored many possibilities that indeed may be factors.

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