The World Gets More Religious Because The Poor Go For God

[stromboli]

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2016/may/26/the-world-is-getting-more-religious-because-the-poor-go-for-god

The so-called “masters of suspicion”, Nietzsche, Marx and Freud, all thought that religion would wither and die in the 20th century. Others enthusiastically backed the secularisation hypothesis. Intellectually, the enlightenment had punctured it below the waterline and it was sinking. Religion was dead. Except, of course, the reverse happened: it flourished. In 1900, the year that Nietzsche died, there were 8 million Christians in Africa. Now there are 335 million. And the growth rate continues to accelerate. God wasn’t dead. God was reborn. Indeed, far from being the century in which religion went away, for both Christianity and Islam, the 20th century was numerically the most successful century since Christ was crucified and Muhammad gave his farewell sermon on Mount Arafat. By 2010, there were 2.2 billion Christians in the world and 1.6 billion Muslims, 31% and 23% of the world population respectively. The secularisation hypothesis is a European myth, a piece of myopic parochialism that shows how narrow our worldview continues to be.

But every now and then the secularisation thesis gets a shot in the arm by some little local news. This week, it emerged in a survey that people with no religion now outnumber Christians in England and Wales. And it’s true, of course. We are getting less religious in the UK. This is not exactly because atheism is having some hipsterish Hitchens-esque revival, but more because we in the west are less and less a society of joiners. And religion begins not with the metaphysics but with the taking part â€" belonging preceding believing. Which is why the communitarian spirit of religion is declining in places where liberal individualism thrives. And why religion itself thrives in places where liberal individualism fails. That’s the real clash of civilisations: the shopping centre (now moved online) versus the temple, a battle between those who are wealthy enough to think in terms of the first person singular and those forced to think in terms of the plural collective. There are only two globalisations: God and mammon. And they will never fully be reconciled. Imagine no religion, sang the man on a white Steinway with a net worth of $800m. Imagine no possessions he also sang. Though he obviously found that one a little harder.

In fact, God’s prospects look a lot better than mammon’s. Projections from the Pew Research Center show that by 2050 Christians will have grown to near 2.9 billion and Muslims to 2.8 billion. With the oil price still low, the property bubble reaching pop, and many economists predicting yet another stock market crash, I’d say that God is holding up pretty well against his old enemy. Moreover, even the heartlands of the new atheism are not future proof against religious revival. On boats throughout the Mediterranean, growing numbers of religious poor are risking everything to make the journey to Europe to share in the wealth we have long been hoarding. In the Calais refugee camp, for example, it feels obvious that this is also a battle between makeshift cardboard churches and mosques and a secular France that is totally puzzled by the resurgence of religious values it has sneered at for centuries. From the favelas of Brazil, to the Mothers’ Union of the sub-Saharan Bible belt, to the archipelago Islam of Indonesia, the poor go for God. And they have more children. Europe will be 10% Muslim by 2050.

Christianity is currently dying in Europe and the US may gradually follow suit. Pew Research predictions have US Christianity declining from three-quarters today to two-thirds in 2050. But Christianity has been around for centuries, and it remains by far the largest ideological collective the world has ever known. This hasn’t died at all. It has simply shifted its global centre of gravity south and east. And the future is China. What has died in Europe is the cosy link between church and state that was first established by the Emperor Constantine. And good riddance. For this link confused the issue, long associating God with the ruling class. With that gone, God is once again released to have a preferential option for the poor. Don’t let this local atheist lull fool you. Religion remains the future.

Ah yes, the Opium of the masses.  Education and a higher standard of living leads away from religion, poverty and want leads toward it. People without power seek it through some manufactured ideology that grants them a stellar afterlife because the present one sucks so bad.

Everyone wants to feel empowered and seek after empowerment in different ways. Money is power, knowledge is power and lacking either of those, belief in a glorious reward takes the place of real entitlement and real power.

And I'm afraid I have to agree with the article. Sad.

[marom1963]

Glory in the afterlife is the booby prize for the disenfranchised. Hey, how many alcoholics and drug addicts on the mend get caught up in the same crap? They replace their drug of choice w/the drug called "salvation."

[Hydra009]

The secularisation hypothesis is a European myth, a piece of myopic parochialism that shows how narrow our worldview continues to be.

Christianity is currently dying in Europe and the US may gradually follow suit. Pew Research predictions have US Christianity declining from three-quarters today to two-thirds in 2050.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_irreligion

Yep.  Totally just a European phenomenon.

[stromboli]

The numbers may or may not add up, but the point of my posting this is to show that the poor gravitate to religion because they get their entitlement from it.

[Hydra009]

Yeah, and I agree that the poor gravitate to religion.  There's definitely an inverse correlation between religiosity and wealth.  Or religiosity and education.  Hell, a country's percentage of internet users somewhat aligns with the irreligion map.

Religion thrives where people don't have access to contradictory ideas.  It's little wonder that religion is on the decline in the West and still going strong in repressive, poor, uneducated, and/or theocratic countries.

[stromboli]

Yeah, and I agree that the poor gravitate to religion.  There's definitely an inverse correlation between religiosity and wealth.  Or religiosity and education.  Hell, a country's percentage of internet users somewhat aligns with the irreligion map.

Religion thrives where people don't have access to contradictory ideas.  It's little wonder that religion is on the decline in the West and still going strong in repressive, poor, uneducated, and/or theocratic countries.

Lol. True story bro. 

[Baruch]

The numbers may or may not add up, but the point of my posting this is to show that the poor gravitate to religion because they get their entitlement from it.

That is just what Nietzsche said ... and why like Ebenezer ... he opposed doing anything for the poor.

[Munch]

Yeah, and I agree that the poor gravitate to religion.  There's definitely an inverse correlation between religiosity and wealth.  Or religiosity and education.  Hell, a country's percentage of internet users somewhat aligns with the irreligion map.

Religion thrives where people don't have access to contradictory ideas.  It's little wonder that religion is on the decline in the West and still going strong in repressive, poor, uneducated, and/or theocratic countries.

Religion has always depended on a caged audience to thrive. Before the internet was a thing, information was restricted and we only got taught through schools, colleges, university or self education, which meant cults could plug themselves into communities to push their "teachings".
Take the humble country village in England, far from anything besides a pub or local shops, the only thing that brought that village together were church preaching on Sundays, perfect time to drill in fears about death and gods wrath there. But then the internet age happened and people began to look at things online, read the truth about what the church's really about, read news reports, stories from people around the world, and now the sunny image of the church isn't so sunny.

The spread of free information like the internet, not bias information like in newspapers, is why more people are abandoning religion, this is why in just one generation, Ireland went from a deeply religious country, to one now accepting gay marriage

[stromboli]

A good example of the dichotomy is our current theist residents. The internet is a soup of information, but they choose to concentrate on apologist sources over more objective or secular sources. But the number of people with access to the internet generally favors objective study, or at least I hope so. Ideally, as the internet becomes more available and easier to link into, the greater numbers will expose more to alternative ideas.

[Baruch]

Well of course the Irish and the British are insular ;-)

Atheist Forums is like the bit of British culture you didn't mention ... the pub.  Do you think that the English villagers didn't discuss the real McCoy ... and the vicar's last sermon, at the local pub?  And they didn't have to pay $40/month to an ISP, just their tab to the publican.

[stromboli]

Well of course the Irish and the British are insular ;-)

Atheist Forums is like the bit of British culture you didn't mention ... the pub.  Do you think that the English villagers didn't discuss the real McCoy ... and the vicar's last sermon, at the local pub?  And they didn't have to pay $40/month to an ISP, just their tab to the publican.

I can relate because I've been in a pub or two, although Scottish rather than British. I guarantee the Scots are an outspoken bunch.

[Baruch]

I can relate because I've been in a pub or two, although Scottish rather than British. I guarantee the Scots are an outspoken bunch.

Part of our difference between the US and GB ... is that they socialize at the pub ... but we go to the bar just to get drunk or pick up girls.

[marom1963]

I can relate because I've been in a pub or two, although Scottish rather than British. I guarantee the Scots are an outspoken bunch.

Oh, pedant alert! You shouldn't have done that. The Scottish are British. You meant English. British is a nationality. Scottish and English are ethnicities. I apologize, but I am a dreadful pedant. The English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, and Northern Irish are all British. Each of the preceding are ethnicities.

[Baruch]

Oh, pedant alert! You shouldn't have done that. The Scottish are British. You meant English. British is a nationality. Scottish and English are ethnicities. I apologize, but I am a dreadful pedant. The English, Scottish, Welsh, Cornish, and Northern Irish are all British. Each of the preceding are ethnicities.

Unless you are a Celtic fanatic, in which case the Romans, English, Normans and other unwanted immigrants are simply counted as illegal aliens.