>> I'd wager more and more of their kids will break away from a religion/belief system that appears increasingly absurd and stifling as the rest of the world moves on.

In the west, increase in secularity has only affected the groups of people who would've been nominally religious (i.e. religious in name only). People who attend religious services on a weekly basis (a much better measure of religiosity) has stayed consistent. This is still a notable shift in religious demographic, just not the kind your portraying.

Further, outside the west, much of the world has kept or has increased their religiosity as they modernized. The belief that modernism produces secularism was abandoned by sociologists of religion some time ago after it was evidentially false (E.g. India is the most religious country in the world and still a modern state).

The fact you can't see value in religious systems adhered to by billions of people over thousands of years speaks less to those systems than your lack of understanding them.

> In the west, increase in secularity has only affected the groups of people who would've been nominally religious (i.e. religious in name only). People who attend religious services on a weekly basis (a much better measure of religiosity) has stayed consistent.

False: It was 50% in the US 70 years ago. It's about 30% now. This is a decline of 20% in absolute terms, or a 40% decline in relative terms.

Weekly church attendance is under 15% in basically all of Western Europe -- https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religiou... (note that this show US attendance at 36%, but it's also comprised of data 6-15 years old).

> The fact you can't see value in religious systems adhered to by billions of people over thousands of years speaks less to those systems than your lack of understanding them.

Plenty of things were done by huge fractions of the world population for thousands of years that deserve questioning. Authoritarianism; oppression of minorities and women; routine warfare with neighboring groups; belief in witch doctors, etc. This line of argument isn't a very good one.

> https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2018/06/13/how-religiou...

10% of Germans claim to go to church every week? I've got friends, relatives, and acquaintances all over the country and of all age groups, and I don't know a single person who would even remotely qualify. That's at least a hundred people. Plugging that into the PMF of the binomial distribution gives me a likelihood so minuscule I should consider buying a lottery ticket. I call bullshit. That research is bunk.

Even the churches themselves only claim their weekly attendance is about 3.3m[1] - that doesn't even mean the same attendees every week.

It follows that the actual number must be below 4%.

[1] https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/gottesdienste-laaaangweilig-1...

I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or enhance my point. If it's the former, note I said: "It's probably lower than this-- research indicates that people overstate their church attendance in surveys" and also pointed out the data is somewhat old.

> I'm not sure if you're trying to argue with me or enhance my point.

My intent is neither. It's merely tangential.

That really says more about your social circle than anything else. Your assumption of statistical representativeness is (quite naturally) completely off. Depending on which part of my social circle one would talk about 10% would have been far too few.. At least a couple of years back. It’s getting better though ;)

> Depending on which part of my social circle one would talk about 10% would have been far too few.

Depending on which part of the pizza you take, it's not going to have any pepperoni. In other words, if you intentionally take a non-representative sample, unsurprisingly your sample is not going to be representative. I don't really see the point you're trying to make.

10% of Germans cannot be weekly churchgoers when there's at most ~4 million weekly attendees overall. It's obviously impossible. A number lower than 5%, preferably ~1-2%, I can easily square away with that number and my own, not intentionally cherry-picked, sample.

If I hadn’t gone to study in a reasonably sized city, my only social circle would have far beyond 10% weekly churchgoers (I’d guess roughly half).

My point is: you seem to have grown up in a very church-removed part of the country (if I had to guess either big city or east Germany). That is where your biased sample comes from. It’s most certainly not representative, and if you claim it to be just because you don’t sub select, then you are at best ignorant and at worst intentionally dishonest ;)

My family is from a rural area of Hesse (Waldeck-Frankenberg), spread over many small towns and villages. Very down-to-earth folk. Of course they're religious: lots of them go to church, but certainly not anywhere close to weekly. The vast majority will only go on major christian holidays, a smaller number occassionally when they make up their mind on a weekend. I don't doubt that if I asked, my relatives would however know some people who show up every sunday without fail. Same story for others I know in the former west: my Bavarian acquantainces, others in the south. I don't think there's a German state besides Bremen where I don't know someone.

Currently I live in Berlin - I don't think the situation in the northeast needs explaining.

Is your point that I must be wrong and that ~4 million weekly attendees in fact means 10% of Germans do attend church weekly? Cause if that's the kind of mathematics we're doing this conversation is pointless.

You started with

> I've got friends, relatives, and acquaintances all over the country and of all age groups, and I don't know a single person who would even remotely qualify. That's at least a hundred people.

that basis is what I objected to. I never made a claim to the actual numbers. There I'd tentatively agree with you, in that I'd suspect, that it is less than 10% of the population that goes to church on a weekly basis. But that's a "if you force me to pick" statement not something that I'd put high stakes in. Especially since the link that you reacted to is for data from 2008 to 2017. And... back in 2008 I'd not be surprised _at all_ if >10% would have gone to church weekly.. And yes we can quibble about whether missing church a couple of weeks per year should still allow yourself to count as "goes to church weekly" and whatever. I really don't care about the particular number. I care (or really was triggered momentarily and hit the reply button ;)) about your assertion that the 10% number _must_ be wrong, _because_ you yourself don't know "a single person that _remotely_ qualifies". (which given your place of origin I also doubt, but whatever)

I think the future of religion in the West – and eventually probably much of the rest of the world as well – is countercultural (ultra-)conservatives such as ultra-Orthodox Jews (Hasidim and Haredim), the Amish, conservative Roman Catholic groups such as traditionalists (SSPX/etc) and Opus Dei, Quiverfull Protestants, Salafist Muslims, etc.

Many of those groups (1) have high birth rates (large families starting at a young age), (2) have high retention rates (>80%, sometimes even >90%) generation after generation. There is no good reason to suppose that (1) or (2) are going to stop any time soon, and even they do for some of them, they are unlikely to do so for all.

I don't think we should expect these groups to follow the same secularising trajectory as mainstream religion. These groups have evolved a cultural immunity to the temptation of defecting to secular modernity which the religious mainstream failed to evolve.

Give me a break. The trend towards less religiosity in advanced societies is almost as hard and fast a rule as the demographic transition itself. The US has been a laggard, but recent surveys show a very, very fast decline in religious beliefs, profoundly so among the younger generations.

India is modern?

France is modern. So is the USA, Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada, and others.

But India?

“Indian exceptionalism” is a prevalent notion among the middle/upper class of India - i.e. the quality of life in India is comparable to other countries. You’ll hear it most from the people who have servants taking care of their household chores (but never the servants themselves). There are also common excuses thrown around like “it has only been 75 years since colonialism” and “the British stole everything”.

I was born in India, grew up in the US, and remember many visits back to the motherland where a relative would extol the virtues of “coming back”. I also remember getting sick all the time, abhorrent public restrooms, sitting in traffic for hours, etc.

Anyone from an actual modern country would agree with you on this, but many Indians living in India would not.

It's not hard to understand why repatriation is economically attractive. People who have worked in the West for a decade or two live like kings in India because their accumulated savings goes so far. This huge difference in purchasing power and labor cost is, of course, a characteristic of a developing nation.

The potential problem is: you've spent a big chunk of your adult life living in a developed nation, and despite your massively enhanced purchasing power, you are returning to a developing one, with all the concomitant physical discomforts and social ills.

But social ills are only a problem if you acknowledge them, and physical discomforts are largely solved with a money bubble, so... there we are.

Something doesn’t sit right though, no? You can’t fix horrendous pollution regardless of the amount of money you have and the differential of the modern/developing economies yields. You might have a bigger garden but the city won’t have a biking lane. You might be able to afford private health care but if you rely once on public care (ie: you get into an accident somewhere) then you are screwed.

It’s more expensive to live in a non-developed country than a developed one. Now a close to developed country might be an interesting choice since the prices are still low but the quality is fairly similar.

I feel like "social ills are only a problem if you acknowledge them", while not wrong, really downplays the differences.

Having spent more time of my life in more developed countries, I find that a lot of little behaviors that are normal back in India really grate on me which aren't as big of a thing in, say, the US.

Basic things like behavior on public transport, over in the US you can generally seem to rely on people standing to the sides of the door in a rough line until people have stepped off, while in India you have to push your way through the crowd trying to push its way in. It's hard to get used to those sorts of things, and many of them aren't meaningfully addressed by simply being wealthy (since similar behaviors carry over to, say, shopping).

Plus, it's even worse for women, who really can't just not acknowledge social ills in India as they can have a significant influence on their safety.

I had this discussion with several Indians and I don’t get it. It’s not that India is just far from any modern country by any definition, they are also significantly far from developing countries and I’d say they are the worst Hindu/Buddhist country out there. Polluted, Over-crowded, Underfunded infrastructure, Unreliable services, etc.. Many neighboring countries have figured out this stuff even though they still don’t have the job market of modern countries.

They do seem to be improving on the infra. front. But compared to China, they are walking with a turtle’s speed.

Much of the world not including China right? Even if we consider highly religious sub populations (and Uighurs have never been hardcore Muslims even during the Qing dynasty), the entire country is trending toward spiritual but non-religious, just like Japan. Much SEA is similar until maybe Indonesia and the Philippines. Buddhism is setup very much in the form of spiritualism rather than strict religious practice.

> India is the most religious country in the world and still a modern state.

Have you been to India? It's a wonderful, fascinating place but it is emphatically not a modern, developed nation the way France or Japan is.

I would bet a good amount of money that there is a strong correlation between religiosity and lower socioeconomic status within India.

Everybody likes to imagine their woo is special, but it's not. As humanity slowly drags itself out of the nasty, brutish, and short natural way of things, we lose the need for primitive beliefs.

Which belief system is more absurd, one which the adherents maintain or gain in population, or one which they go extinct?

Which one is more fit to the environment?

If you have a point to make, feel free to make it.

All belief systems are equally absurd.

Some people just don't have the time to reexamine their values. If you want society to be efficient, you're going to have to have a belief system of some sort.

seems like a circular argument

Sounds like one of those "having no belief system is a still a belief system" type arguments...

To worship is part of being human.

If people don't find anything else worthy of worship, then they simply worship themselves.

"To worship is part of being human."

Proof for that? I don't deny is has been a big part of much of human existence over the millennia, but there's zero evidence it's a necessary part of our very being.

How would you design experiments to test its necessity?

Why would you need to? I've never worshipped anything in my life as far as I can tell, yet I'm pretty sure I'm a functioning human being.

It's not about need, it's about ambition, a trait often lauded here.

the proof is that spiritualism and religion have independently formed in every culture and every far flung corner on Earth. Easter Island had religion. Inuit had religion. Australian natives had religion. If humans ever settled on Antarctica they would have religion.

You get that in a Cracker Jack box or what?

It's not an argument at all. It's an inane series of leading questions intended to create the illusion of an argument.

I think these religions and belief systems are adapting to a more sensible take, but I think the dogma demanding children will be scuttled. The humanist/Jesus/profit teachings will become rectified against human experience and philosophies of consciousness and drift toward core messages of peace and community while the dogma and rhetoric of pulpit interpretations of sin and judgement should subside.

I think the identity will remain but the substance will change.

There are some really cool discussions on YouTube about the definition of God and the nature of consciousness that are quite compelling and unifying.

Anyone who actually reads the New Testament closely will see that modern American evangelicalism is not especially closely related to what those texts actually say. (Obvious example: the texts don't claim "inerrancy" anywhere.)

It follows that Christianity evolved into its current form from the NT as its starting point.

Further evolutions and shifts should be expected (though some of them may look like explorations of very ancient paths not taken, like a drift away from inerrantist literalism and back towards things like Origen's opinion that the NT writers may well have made factual errors).

> The problem with those high-fertility groups is that they usually come with a lot of baggage - specifically they require belief in the made-up nonsense that tends to fade away as the demographic shift advances. So, they may maintain higher fertility rates, but I'd wager more and more of their kids will break away from a religion/belief system that appears increasingly absurd and stifling as the rest of the world moves on.

Honestly... I've simply not seen this. There are many religious people in prominent positions, you just don't know about it. In my fairly traditional catholic parish, we have families where mom and dad are catholic, their five kids are catholic, and their 40 + grandchildren are as well (some are now adults and having kids of their own). And all successful, doctors, nurses, engineers, etc. The idea that religious == stupid or baggage or whatever is simply at odds with history. You're conflating the Duggars with otherwise normal people that just have different views.

You’ve responded to a quote which is largely stating that high fertility religious groups won’t spawn rigidly religious off spring by arguing with some anecdata that religious folks aren’t always stupid.

I think they're working with the premise that intellectuals are less likely to be as religious or more likely to think for themselves, leading to breaking off

"...you just don't know about it"

Oh, I see, ignore the data and instead believe in your hidden truth. Got it. Thanks for the help, all this time I've been going around making reasonable conclusions based on evidence, like an idiot.

Early life indoctrination is working and will keep working, especially with such an established institutions as world religions. Don't try to fool yourself.

How do you explain the fall of religion in places like Europe? It's not like early life indoctrination has been outlawed or even generally accepted as being wrong.

That's what I thought myself about after I posted the comment. Turns out it was a lack of faith in those whose job was to indoctrinate. Same happened in Soviet Union in 60s, and the very next generation became immune.

All the evidence points to the opposite. If you have some evidence or a series of logical statements, I will listen. But I'm not going to take your word for it when it directly contradicts all evidence.

Maybe you then care to bring your evidence?

A few recent surveys that show a significant, increasing and undeniable reduction in religiosity in the United States, particularly among the young people you claim are being successfully indoctrinated...

"In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace" https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decli...

"Religion and Congregations in a Time of Social and Political Upheaval" https://www.prri.org/research/religion-and-congregations-in-...

"U.S. Church Membership Falls Below Majority for First Time" https://news.gallup.com/poll/341963/church-membership-falls-...

Those are not proofs of indoctrination infeasibility, just that in US religious indoctrination isn't working anymore. I believe it is mostly because schools and parents became more secular and unreligious. Same happened with ideological indoctrination in USSR 1980s.

On the other hand, left liberal indoctrination works fine in US right now, as we can see. Same with imperial indoctrination in today's Russia.

That is a decline in those specific religions, not in religiosity.

If you look at all religions ("a belief in something absent evidence"), religiosity hasn't moved an inch.