We Are Growing! right?
Philip Jenkins once wrote, “If we want to visualize a typical contemporary Christian, we should think of a woman living in a village in Nigeria or in a Brazilian favela.”
His point? Christianity is on the way out of America. The vestiges of Christian centers are vacating to third world, poorer and more ignorant, countries.
He continues, “The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning.”
The intellectual atheists of America are claiming victory in their battle over “bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists.” But is it true?
I would like to look at one of their own criteria for success. Survival of the fittest.
Right now, Europe has become a bastion of secular thought. It is arguable the most secular continent on the globe, and it is shrinking at an exorbitant rate. Not it’s land mass, it’s population. Historians have declared that it is losing more people over a sustained reduction of population that is comparable to the Black Death of the fourteenth century which took one in three people.
Dinesh D’Souza proclaims “Lacking the strong religious identity that once characterized Christendom, atheist Europe seems to be a civilization on its way out.”
Is his supposition correct? That religion has something to do with it?
Russia is one of the most atheistic countries in the world, and it is losing 700,000 people a year in population stats. Their abortion rate alone outnumber their live births two to one!
Japan, one of the most secular countries in Asia, expects to lose 30 million people in population stats within the next few decades. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, similar stories. America, likewise, is seeing a growing trend of decreasing birth rates.
As D’Souza points out, “Sociologists Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart note that many richer, more secular countries are “producing only about half as many children as would be needed to replace the adult population.” While many poorer, more religious countries are “producing two or three times as many children as would be needed to replace the adult population.” The consequence, so predictable that one might almost call it a law, is that “the religious population is growing fast, while the secular number is shrinking.”
Many argue that the richer the country, the less children are born. But certain countries in the Middle East are being riddled with oil money - riches. Yet, the Muslims are one of the fastest reproductive races on the planet.
D’Souza goes on to point out that “Wealthy people in America today tend to have one child or none, but wealthy families in the past tended to have three or more children. The real difference is not merely in the level of income - it is that in the past children were valued as gifts from God, and traditional cultures still view them that way.”
And here is the clencher.
“Consequently, religious people develop a zest for life that is, in a sense, unnatural. They exhibit a hopefulness about the future that may exceed what is warranted by how the world is going. And they forge principles of morality and charity that simply make them more cohesive, adaptive, and successful than groups whose members lack this binding and elevating force. My conclusion is that it is not religion, but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation. Atheism is a bit like homosexuality: one is not sure where it fits into a doctrine of natural selection. Why would nature select people who mate with others of the same sex, a process with no reproductive advantage at all? It seems equally perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no higher purpose to life or the universe.”
Is hopelessness truly the future of our philosophical existence? Seems Darwin may say something about that.
Jared Williams
His point? Christianity is on the way out of America. The vestiges of Christian centers are vacating to third world, poorer and more ignorant, countries.
He continues, “The era of Western Christianity has passed within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawning.”
The intellectual atheists of America are claiming victory in their battle over “bigoted, homophobic, religious fundamentalists.” But is it true?
I would like to look at one of their own criteria for success. Survival of the fittest.
Right now, Europe has become a bastion of secular thought. It is arguable the most secular continent on the globe, and it is shrinking at an exorbitant rate. Not it’s land mass, it’s population. Historians have declared that it is losing more people over a sustained reduction of population that is comparable to the Black Death of the fourteenth century which took one in three people.
Dinesh D’Souza proclaims “Lacking the strong religious identity that once characterized Christendom, atheist Europe seems to be a civilization on its way out.”
Is his supposition correct? That religion has something to do with it?
Russia is one of the most atheistic countries in the world, and it is losing 700,000 people a year in population stats. Their abortion rate alone outnumber their live births two to one!
Japan, one of the most secular countries in Asia, expects to lose 30 million people in population stats within the next few decades. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, similar stories. America, likewise, is seeing a growing trend of decreasing birth rates.
As D’Souza points out, “Sociologists Pippa Norris and Ron Inglehart note that many richer, more secular countries are “producing only about half as many children as would be needed to replace the adult population.” While many poorer, more religious countries are “producing two or three times as many children as would be needed to replace the adult population.” The consequence, so predictable that one might almost call it a law, is that “the religious population is growing fast, while the secular number is shrinking.”
Many argue that the richer the country, the less children are born. But certain countries in the Middle East are being riddled with oil money - riches. Yet, the Muslims are one of the fastest reproductive races on the planet.
D’Souza goes on to point out that “Wealthy people in America today tend to have one child or none, but wealthy families in the past tended to have three or more children. The real difference is not merely in the level of income - it is that in the past children were valued as gifts from God, and traditional cultures still view them that way.”
And here is the clencher.
“Consequently, religious people develop a zest for life that is, in a sense, unnatural. They exhibit a hopefulness about the future that may exceed what is warranted by how the world is going. And they forge principles of morality and charity that simply make them more cohesive, adaptive, and successful than groups whose members lack this binding and elevating force. My conclusion is that it is not religion, but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation. Atheism is a bit like homosexuality: one is not sure where it fits into a doctrine of natural selection. Why would nature select people who mate with others of the same sex, a process with no reproductive advantage at all? It seems equally perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no higher purpose to life or the universe.”
Is hopelessness truly the future of our philosophical existence? Seems Darwin may say something about that.
Jared Williams
