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Topic: The Extinction of Religion? (Read 1604 times) |
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MoEnzyme
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The Extinction of Religion?
« on: 2011-03-23 09:47:15 » |
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Living in midst of the one of the most religious western nations (US) which constantly reacts to the worldwide Islamic jihad, I'm skeptical that this news has much worldwide significance. So religion is losing it's appeal in a handful of nations. I'd like to see a raw percentage of worldwide populations, so religiously disaffected. I bet it's tinier than ever. Maybe someone else in the CoV can look it up if they are so interested. I hate to be the buzzkill for my fellow godless Americans, but seriously - look at what is going on around you and I'm sure you'll see this story as more of the exception than the rule.
-Mo
Religion may become extinct in nine nations, study says
A study using census data from nine countries shows that religion there is set for extinction, say researchers.
By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News, Dallas
22 March 2011 Last updated at 03:31 ET
The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation.
The team's mathematical model attempts to account for the interplay between the number of religious respondents and the social motives behind being one.
The result, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, US, indicates that religion will all but die out altogether in those countries.
The team took census data stretching back as far as a century from countries in which the census queried religious affiliation: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.
Their means of analysing the data invokes what is known as nonlinear dynamics - a mathematical approach that has been used to explain a wide range of physical phenomena in which a number of factors play a part.
One of the team, Daniel Abrams of Northwestern University, put forth a similar model in 2003 to put a numerical basis behind the decline of lesser-spoken world languages.
At its heart is the competition between speakers of different languages, and the "utility" of speaking one instead of another.
"The idea is pretty simple," said Richard Wiener of the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, and the University of Arizona.
"It posits that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.
"For example in languages, there can be greater utility or status in speaking Spanish instead of [the dying language] Quechuan in Peru, and similarly there's some kind of status or utility in being a member of a religion or not."
Some of the census data the team used date from the 19th century
Dr Wiener continued: "In a large number of modern secular democracies, there's been a trend that folk are identifying themselves as non-affiliated with religion; in the Netherlands the number was 40%, and the highest we saw was in the Czech Republic, where the number was 60%."
The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the "non-religious" category.
They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.
And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.
However, Dr Wiener told the conference that the team was working to update the model with a "network structure" more representative of the one at work in the world.
"Obviously we don't really believe this is the network structure of a modern society, where each person is influenced equally by all the other people in society," he said.
However, he told BBC News that he thought it was "a suggestive result".
"It's interesting that a fairly simple model captures the data, and if those simple ideas are correct, it suggests where this might be going.
"Obviously much more complicated things are going on with any one individual, but maybe a lot of that averages out."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12811197
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I will fight your gods for food,
Mo Enzyme
(consolidation of handles: Jake Sapiens; memelab; logicnazi; Loki; Every1Hz; and Shadow)
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Fritz
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Re:The Extinction of Religion?
« Reply #1 on: 2011-03-23 12:22:18 » |
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Since the religions of the world in time immemorial have been practicing eugenics to ensure like minded individuals as foder for the doctrine; I have to assume that the minds of individuals and the memes of society ensure the religiosity is inculcated within us and not immutable. The attached clip and the link are just a contemporary example that I think represents the actions, intent and consequence of religion from the start.
We are stuck with this 'puppy' or 'doGidness' by natural selection.
Cheers
Fritz
The church preaches eugenics: a history
of church support for Darwinism and
eugenics
http://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j20_3/j20_3_54-60.pdf
<snip>‘… much an expression of his religious faith
and his Protestant commitment to human progress
as it was a scientific endeavor. Teaching Sunday
School at the College Street Congregational Church
and teaching university students zoology, geology,
and anthropology served in complementary ways
to fulfill his Christian obligation. … [t]he Christian
Darwinists of George Perkins’s generation found
the idea of human “creation” by means of natural
selection self-validating. …<snip>
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Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains -anon-
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