I was having one of those uncomfortable conversations just the other night, the kind that you need to surf carefully because you are dealing with matters of faith, and some people tend to take things too personal. Yes, this is somewhat of my opinion, but it's also backed by facts.
There are plenty of voices who say that we are moving towards a secular society, and I can't blame them. In other words, it seems more and more that we are abandoning believing in paranormal things, and moving towards a more science based society, but this apparent shift, may be due to our echo chambers, and not so much to a macro shift.
It would be clever for us to look at populations, at their growth rates and their dominant faiths to attempt to find out if the shift is really happening or not. And, as you might imagine, the numbers don't really reflect what we perceive to be true.
You see, Nations that are mostly secular, are also the ones with the lowest birth rates. So, countries like Norway for example, which is mostly comprised by atheist and agnostics, are well under minimum replacement rates. This is not exclusive to European countries, not at all, and the numbers are easy enough to find for anyone who is curious.
So, how do these economies keep on grinding along, you may ask? Well, in one word: Immigration. Yes, politicians like to divide us on this topic, and the agendas are at full display, but truth is that in the pyramid scheme we call capitalism, a population needs to be not only replaced, but increased as to not burst the debt bubble.
The natural question is of course, who is doing the migrating? And yes, as you might deduce from the tone of this post of mine, the migration comes from countries and societies with deeply religious roots. Since, they are the ones with a human surplus to begin with.
So you see, I could all day about the pros of a secular government, and the need for objective and fair laws across the board as a result. But, the irony is that a society that is built exclusively on secular values tends to shrink in size rapidly. This may be anecdotal, but you might even know in your life perfect examples of what I'm talking about.
So when I ask myself these days, Will we ever get rid of mega churches, of religion as a whole and adopt skepticism and humanism as our core values? The answer is a resounding no. Religions will adapt, populations will be replaced, and the stories will continue, only with different characters in different books.
MenO
