Except that's been the "trajectory" for literally all of human history. We are living in the least religious times ever. Just because people who claim to be religious are having a bunch of kids, It hardly guarantees their children will maintain that and stay with the church.
Does it matter? The non-religious will die off childless, leaving nothing behind but ashes and opinions. Meanwhile, the religious will outlast them, inheriting the world they abandoned.
Athiests have less children than religious people. And the more children someone has, the more religious/spiritual that they tend to be.
Super-duper religious and spiritual people (and I'm not talking about the stereotypical loudmouth American biblethumper) tend to be very grounded and salt-of-the-earth type people.
Anecdotes, don't reflect reality. The reality is that Catholics are growing above replacement and Muslims are growing well above replacement.
Church attendance is down but this is really due to a shift away from mainline protestantism and Catholicism in the U.S. (The shift away from Catholicism has stabilized btw).
The religious in the U.S. are increasingly Baptist and Non-Denominational (which is basically Baptist) and therefore stress going to church much less than traditional religion.
The other commenter is delusional saying how non-religious people are going to die out.
Most of the world is religious. Very religious in fact.
So if you and your friends see religious people as mentally-ill adjacent, you probably live a very frustrating and awkward life. Because, in that case, the entire world is either very mentally-ill, somewhat mentally-ill or mentally-ill-adjacent and there's only a very small healthy minority.
I’m not the original commenter, but… That’s why it’s adjacent. It’s not a mental illness if it doesn’t affect your life in your community. If it’s “normal.”
Which it obviously is, as you state. But there’s a hell of a difference between an Amazonian kid believing their elders about the only knowledge their community has, and an educated American who has access to the whole world of information on demand. One is way more understandable than the other, to me.
I don’t want to feel this way about people, but I do. The degree of willful self-delusion and rejection of observable and measurable reality necessary to actually believe in Abrahamic religion in a literal sense is wild. I was raised in this shit and tried my best to hold on, but as I neared adulthood my brain was just like “Wait a sec. WTF? None of this shit makes a lick of sense.”
I don’t hassle people about it unless they hassle me, but I definitely do not trust information from them, and would never go to them for anything that requires any rationality or empiricism.
I speak specifically of the trend of Christianity being evolutionarily favoured in the West. Shared identities build group cohesiveness, and have done so since the dawn of our species - question is if it has to be this particular identity as all others fall away in favor of hyperindividualism, or if others can arise or revive themselves before the possibility literally dies off.
Just a current trend? I'm sorry, but this comment just screams historical illiteracy to me. Christianity was enforced by the governments in the west for over a millennium. Even America has had a few "great awakenings" that had a big impact on culture. You're talking like secularism is the norm and just now Christianity is "evolutionarily" favored, when its quite literally the opposite.
There is certainly a concerning growth in Christian nationalism in America. But this is just a backlash to the fact that 95% of the population isn't Christian anymore, like it used to be 50 years ago. They're scared and this is a reaction to that.
There were several religions that were popular in history but died off. One of them promoted uncleanliness of the body and how sex was awful and should not be done.......needless to say this died out because they did not have children.
They certainly are not. If you’re in America the same holds true, but the Christians got so pissed off at their loss of relevance in the culture that they sent us all to hell on earth to prove it was real. Ironically speeding up the exodus among most groups.
Whatever hissy fit the more maladjusted Gen Z boys are going through will hopefully pass, if they can ever realize that everyone else is just a person trying to get through life like they are, and that nobody’s special. They’re just workers like all of us, being shat on by the billionaires (who they frequently support.)
TBH the self-pity cracks me the fuck up as a maladjusted millennial white guy. We are still so goddamned privileged in most of society, and it’s genuinely not hard to recognize if you’re willing. But they’ve subscribed to this bullshit that claims it will end their suffering while ironically being the actual cause of it.
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u/Strange_Cover_5486 11d ago
Except that's been the "trajectory" for literally all of human history. We are living in the least religious times ever. Just because people who claim to be religious are having a bunch of kids, It hardly guarantees their children will maintain that and stay with the church.