[Vision2020] Atheism to Defeat Religion By 2038?

[Art Deco]

 Atheism to Defeat Religion By 2038
Posted: 06/05/2012 5:00 pm

 Countries with the best standard of living are turning
atheist<http://www.amazon.com/Atheism-Will-Replace-Religion-ebook/dp/B00886ZSJ6/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1338665874&sr=1-1>.
That shift offers a glimpse into the world's future.

Religious people are annoyed by claims that belief in God will
go<http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201107/why-atheism-will-replace-religion-new-evidence>the
way of horse transportation, and for much the same reason,
specifically
an improved standard of living.

The view that religious belief will give way to atheism is known as the
secularization thesis. The specific version that I favor (1) is known as
the existential security hypothesis. The basic idea is that as people
become more affluent, they are less worried about lacking for basic
necessities, or dying early from violence or disease. In other words they
are secure in their own existence. They do not feel the need to appeal to
supernatural entities to calm their fears and insecurities.

The notion that improving living conditions are associated with a decline
in religion is supported by a mountain of evidence (1,2,3).

That does not prevent some serious scholars, like political scientist Eric
Kaufmann (4), from making the opposite case that religious fundamentalists
will outbreed the rest of us. Yet, noisy as they can be, such groups are
tiny minorities of the global population and they will become even more
marginalized as global prosperity increases and standards of living improve.

Moreover, as religious fundamentalists become economically integrated,
young women go to work and produce smaller families, as is currently
happening for Utah's Mormons.

The most obvious approach to estimating when the world will switch over to
being majority atheist is based on economic growth. This is logical because
economic development is the key factor responsible for secularization. In
deriving this estimate, I used the nine most godless countries as my
touchstone (excluding Estonia as a formerly communist country).

The countries were Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany,
Japan, Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These nine countries
averaged out at the atheist transition in 2004 (5) with exactly half of the
populations disbelieving in God. Their gross domestic product (GDP)
averaged $29,822 compared to $10,855 for the average country in the world.
How long will it take before the world economy has expanded sufficiently
that the GDP of the average country has caught up to the average for the
godless countries in 2004?

Using the average global growth rate of GDP for the past 30 years of 3.33
percent (based on International Monetary Fund data from their website), the
atheist transition would occur in 2035.

Belief in God is not the only relevant measure of religion, of course. A
person might believe in God in a fairly superficial way without religion
affecting his or her daily life. One way of assessing the depth of
religious commitment is to ask survey participants whether they think that
religion is important in their daily lives as the Gallup Organization has
done in worldwide nationally representative surveys.

If fewer than 50 percent of the population agreed that religion was
important to them, then the country has effectively crossed over to a
secular majority. The godless countries by religiosity were Spain, South
Korea, Canada, Switzerland, Uruguay, Germany and France. At a growth rate
of 3.33 percent per year it would be 2041 before the average country in the
world would be at an equivalent level of affluence as these godless
nations.

If national wealth drives secularization, the global population will cross
an atheist threshold where the majority see religion as unimportant by
2041.

Averaging across the two measures of atheism, the entire world population
would cross the atheist threshold by about 2038 (average of 2035 for
disbelief and 2041 for religiosity). Although 2038 may seem improbably
fast, this requires only a shift of approximately 1 percent per year
whether in religiosity or belief in God. Using the Human Development Index
as a clock suggests an even earlier arrival for the atheist transition (1).

Is the loss of religious belief something fear? Contrary to the claims of
religious leaders, Godless countries are highly moral nations with an
unusual level of social trust, economic equality, low crime and a high
level of civic engagement (5). We could do with some of that.

Sources
*1. Barber, N. (2012). Why atheism will replace religion: The triumph of
earthly pleasures over pie in the sky. E-book, available at:
http://www.amazon.com/Atheism-Will-Replace-Religion-ebook/dp/B00886ZSJ6/
2. Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2004). Sacred and secular: Religion and
politics worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Barber, N. (2011). A Cross-National test of the uncertainty hypothesis
of religious belief Cross-Cultural Research, 45, 318-333.
4. Kaufmann, E. (2010). Shall the religious inherit the earth? London:
Profile books.
5. Zuckerman, P. (2008). Society without God: What the least religious
nations can tell us about contentment. New York: New York University Press.*


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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