[ExI] atheists/religion

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2020 at 8:25 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 11, 2020 at 11:46 PM Rafal Smigrodzki via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> >> And yet Romans, just like the Greeks, did not go extinct.
>>>
>>
>> > ### To the contrary, the specific Greeks and Romans who lost their
>> faith and stopped procreating did actually go extinct.
>>
>
> Obviously. But most Greeks and Romans did NOT stop procreating, and
> although they may have switched their religious franchise from one to
> another unfortunately very very few lost their faith.
>

### Let me rephrase your statement to make it coherent - "Fortunately for
the survival of Greeks and Romans, enough adopted a procreation-enhancing
faith".

---------------------------------


>
> > *Just to be clear - I am a good atheist, won't pull a John C. Wright
>> and convert but neither do I deny that devout followers of some religions
>> are better at procreation than atheists. It's a simple statistical fact.*
>>
>
> I don't know what statistics you're talking about but I do know that in
> general very few people lose their faith, at most they just move from one
> form of utter nonsense to a slightly different form of utter nonsense,
> that's it.
>

### This is not true at all. Religious affiliation statistics in multiple
formerly Christian and Moslem countries clearly show increasing numbers of
atheists, non-believers, spiritual believers and the like, and a reduction
in orthodox practitioners, and a concomitant drop in fertility. Major
religions provide a social structure that promotes fertility, this is how
those religions became major in the first place. As the religious fervor of
the adherents wanes (i.e. they no longer treat their faith seriously, they
only go through the motions, if at all), the structure unravels and no
longer stimulates fertility. Former adherents die out, to be replaced by
various reborn or new faith ones. The wheel of destiny grinds on.

-------------------------------


> And most don't even do that. The statistics that affect the birth rate of
> a country are it's GDP, the emancipation of women, and the availability of
> birth control; the higher they are the lower the birth rate. The simple
> statistic that you're looking for is that free rich women with birth
> control just don't have lots of babies.
>

### "Emancipation" of women is just a term for apostasy. Birth control is
practiced when religion becomes too weak to prohibit it. Some correlates of
GDP (Internet access, television, single family dwellings, increased family
mobility, compulsory schooling, etc) reduce fertility and religiousness,
probably creating positive feedback loops that disrupt fertility. Either
way, the defeat of major religions spells doom for the population.
 ------------------------------

>
>
> And it makes little difference what any religious franchise says about the
> matter, just look at Ireland and how ineffectual the Catholic church's
> orders to have as many children as is biologically possible have been. In
> 1965 Irish women had slightly over 4 births during their lifetime, but by
> 2017 that number had dropped to 1.8 although the church's orders never
> changed. But what had changed are the economic conditions, as late as 1990
> the GDP of Ireland was less than 50 billion but by 2017 it was 382 billion
> and for its size Ireland is now one of the richest countries in the world.
> And it's a fact, countries full of rich people just don't have many
> children.
>

### What changed is that the Irish women stopped believing in god, stopped
going to church, stopped belonging to groups where procreation is
celebrated rather than scorned. The Catholic church does not matter anymore
because the Irish do not believe in god, and yes, the Irish are dying out.
This is not a coincidence.

Rafal
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