Various media outlets have noted a study that predicts that in nine countries religion is set for extinction:
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.
What is the basis for such a peculiar prediction? The study is based on a similar model that 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.”
So what’s the connection between the social utility of a common language and the decline of religion? Well, there isn’t one. Once you get past the complex formulas and the applied math jargon (dynamical systems, perturbation theory) it turns out to be a rather silly conjecture based on models that have no connection with how humans actually behave (e.g., people don’t stop believing in God simply because it makes them popular in school). Additionally, the model is premised on the assumption that each person in a country is equally influenced by every other person in a country. Even the authors of the study don’t believe that is true:
“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”.
Um, yeah, it suggets that science journalists will report on just about any nonsense and that gullible bloggers (like me!) will link to it.
What is most interesting is that no one seems to have asked the obvious question: If religion goes extinct in societies where non-religious affiliation is more socially useful than religious affiliation, wouldn’t it also follow that religion would reach a saturation point in societies where religious affiliation is more socially useful than non-religious affiliation?
Can you imagine the panic that would result from a conclusive mathematical model that predicted America would soon be 100% religious?
(Via: Rod Dreher)
March 23rd, 2011 | 10:38 am
Yeah, I haven’t read the paper (just looking at your blog post), but as a Czech Christian I don’t put much trust into it. Yes, Czech republic is probably one of the least religious countries in Europe (and thus probably one of the least countries in the world), but there is no reason to believe that religion will be on further decline here. There is virtually no reason no pressure to be member of any religion unless you really believe in it (actually, there are many reasons why not to be). Just looking at the absolute numbers doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
March 23rd, 2011 | 10:44 am
Yes, you’re entirely right that this fits the profile of “rather silly conjecture based on models that have no connection with how humans actually behave”.
If such models actually did reflect the complex reality of social life — and making the shaky meta-scientific assumption that religion can be wholly and adequately understood as a natural phenomenon — there’d be no members of most minority religions around today — e.g. Zoroastrians should have been long absorbed into the majority religion of their cultures, or in modern Western secular(izing) nations should be gradually disappearing.
One issue that the model appears to have forgotten to account for — and I’m not suggesting this by way of proposing an improvement to what I consider an ultimately quixotic enterprise — is that, as (among many other authors and texts) Finke and Stark noted in The Churching of America 1776-2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, religious groups that tend to demand quite a bit from adherents do seem to do better tan those which accommodate themselves to prevailing culture.
Much more could be said — there are so many things of different types and orders wrong with the “study” itself, and the inferences drawn from it. This could of course, supply a good teachable moment for weaning people away from one level sophisticated but another shoddy thinking about religion
March 23rd, 2011 | 11:11 am
“people don’t stop believing in God simply because it makes them popular in school”
All too often, they do.
March 23rd, 2011 | 11:13 am
I think this model overemphasizes national identity-I would guess that for example, for a Canadian in British Columbia, Americans from Seattle etc are much more likely to be an influential part of their life & “culture” than Canadians in Quebec. Plus, in this Internet age, global communities online have increasing sway on people’s views. We don’t live in little nation-bubbles like this model seems to suggest!
March 23rd, 2011 | 11:23 am
I’m skeptical of the study, but I don’t think it should be entirely dismissed. I think a lot depends on what one means by “religion.” Is it really true that the US is a highly religious society, because 90 percent of the American people say they believe in God? Maybe. But I know plenty of people who affirm belief in God, but who never go to church, and for whom serious engagement with prayer and the teachings of the Christian faith is just not a part of their life. Are they religious in a meaningful sense? Hard to say.
America’s churches were (relatively) full in the 1950s, but were people then meaningfully religious? Or were they simply conformists who fell away when there was no social pressure, active or passive, to participate in religious observance? Pope Benedict has been admirably realistic about Europe’s situation, saying that there is and will continue to be a massive falling away from the faith, but those who remain will really believe, and be prepared to be a countercultural witness. Maybe in the future, their faith will be something to build on. I believe man is religious by nature, and that all these people who call themselves godless will unavoidably find something to fill the God-sized hole in their hearts. It will fail, and then where will they be?
Anyway, the atheist physicist Sean Carroll has a line that helps illuminate this issue. He writes:
Unsuccessful theories are never disproven, as we can always concoct elaborate schemes to save the phenomena; they just fade away as better theories gain acceptance.
He’s talking about why scientific explanations for natural phenomena have displaced God in the imagination of many modern people. Most people who believe in God do so not because they have seen the dead raised and the blind see, but because they believe on the authority of others that Jesus did these things. I came to believe in Christ as an adult in part through mystical experiences in prayer that I didn’t even know could be answered, but also because belief in Christ seemed plausible to me, because people whose opinions I respected affirmed Christian belief. I cannot imagine being a Scientologist, for example, not only because I find its doctrines ludicrous, but more fundamentally, I don’t know anyone who is a Scientologist, and find it impossible to imagine someone I take seriously affirming Scientology’s claims.
Is it so hard to imagine Christianity fading away in cultures where many people find it as impossible to believe as I find Scientology — especially if those unbelievers are people (e.g., scientists, professors) who are seen as having a lot of authority within those particular cultures?
This is not the same thing the scientists behind this study are claiming, but I think it’s related.
March 23rd, 2011 | 11:50 am
Trends in religion aren’t really useful for future forecasting. The same was said in the 1920s and 1930s – church attendance was dropping and soon the buildings would be vacant – but remember the religious revival of the 1950s?
March 23rd, 2011 | 12:18 pm
I am surprised at the model. It sounds like it predicts what has already happened which is not very useful. However, the broad trends do not apply once the numbers get too small. Other factors become dominant. Which? Well, that depends on the individuals. And then we have Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers or Nassim Taleb’s Black Swans.
March 23rd, 2011 | 12:43 pm
[...] around the Interweb courtesy of the BBC, Joe carter over at First Things gives this garbage the treatment it so richly [...]
March 23rd, 2011 | 1:53 pm
Is there a link to Rod Dreher? Is he blogging again somewhere?
March 23rd, 2011 | 2:07 pm
Peggy Is there a link to Rod Dreher? Is he blogging again somewhere?
Unfortunately, he’s not blogging anywhere, though he occasionally has articles at Big Questions Online: http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/search/apachesolr_search/rod%20dreher
Of course he has a standing invitation to blog here at FT.
March 23rd, 2011 | 10:40 pm
Yeah… the researchers seem to assume choosing which language to speak is comparable to choosing which religion to believe in (or not). Although some people have pretty strong ties to their language and the cultural identity it represents, I really don’t think it’s true that that tie is as strong as someone would generally feel to a religion. I’m not aware, for example, of any wars ever having been fought over language, or of any language martyrs. But I guess when your study tells academia what it wants to hear, you’re free to overlook such methodological problems.
March 24th, 2011 | 3:31 am
Oh, there have been plenty of language wars in Indian subcontinent in 20th Century.
Indeed, language was the leading factor in the war of Bengladeshi Independence in 1971.
In 50′s and 60′s a lot of Indian states were re-organized on linguistic basis with a lot of accompanying agitation and violence and martyrs.
March 24th, 2011 | 4:29 am
Not to mention the Basques and the Catalans in Spain.
In Europe, language and natinality tend to be synonymous and when Ficte said that “frontiers should depend, not on dynasties and treaties, but on language and nationality,” I rather fancy he only included “nationality” to balance the antithesis.
Even in so placid a country as Belgium, tensions between Walloons and Flemings led to the establishment of virtually autonomous regions.
March 24th, 2011 | 6:37 am
Thanks Peggy. I’m not blogging again. I am not permitted to, under terms of my employment. I did have a blog at BQO, but senior management at the Foundation where I work decided to take the website in a different direction — one that did not include blogging. I hope one day to return to blogging, and I appreciate your interest in my work.
March 24th, 2011 | 11:35 am
The biggest issue I have with this paper is not whether or not religion may really go extinct, but that the researchers so irresponsibly perverted math and science. Can you please take a look at what I wrote? I linked it to my name.
Thank you.
March 24th, 2011 | 12:19 pm
[...] had a predetermined conclusion. Stuart at Theology in the News mentioned it and linked to Joe Carter’s article via Rod Dreher at First Things. He points out that the conclusion can be turned on [...]
March 24th, 2011 | 12:29 pm
[...] had a predetermined conclusion. Stuart at Theology in the News mentioned it and linked to Joe Carter’s article via Rod Dreher at First Things. He points out that the conclusion can be turned on [...]
March 24th, 2011 | 7:36 pm
I’m not so sure about that. After reading Soul Searching (Smith & Denton), American Grace (Putnam & Campbell), and now Bibby to fill in the Canadian picture, the similarity with language probably isn’t a bad one. In other words, religious belief and behavior without content or importance would likely follow the same trends… and THAT seems to be largely the situation in N.A. (and I’d guess Europe) at present!
“(e.g., people don’t stop believing in God simply because it makes them popular in school)”
Why not? If their beliefs have lost real content and importance, as noted above, it comes down to utility. If utility begins to wane, bye bye it goes.
“If religion goes extinct in societies where non-religious affiliation is more socially useful than religious affiliation, wouldn’t it also follow that religion would reach a saturation point in societies where religious affiliation is more socially useful than non-religious affiliation?”
Does it not? Islamic countries for example. Even America and Europe were once heavily Christian, even if a good portion of that was only ‘cultural’ in nature.
Christian apologists need to get busy and find/get good inroads to our churches. The churches must be convinced they need it. God’s universal church will ultimately prevail, but the N.A. and European churches may well fall for a time if we do not.
March 26th, 2011 | 4:23 am
[...] Carter provides some good perspective on what he wryly calls a “peculiar prediction”. blog comments powered by [...]
March 26th, 2011 | 10:11 pm
Social trends always change. Personally I am more interesting in a religion that is true, than one that is popular. To me, Jesus has shown himself gracious and true.
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