Being outbred by the religious

[CapnAwesome]

I'm curious what effect you see the religious outbreeding the non-religious having. It's easy to say that they are outbreeding the non-religious, in a chicken little, "the sky is falling," sort of way, but what is the pragmatic effect? Following on Germans' point, there is a well documented link between affluence and birth rate; the more affluent one is, the less babies one is likely to have — regardless of religious belief. Whether religious belief in and of itself has a significant impact upon fertility rates, and how much, is unclear from this data as it does not appear to adjust for confounding factors like socio-economic status, education level, race, and so on.

Moreover, it's important to ask what is being done with those numbers. Five children scrabbling to survive working for $18,000 a year are likely to have less effect than one university professor, regardless of her salary. One wealthy liberal will have more effect than a hundred struggling fundamentalists, who themselves are saddled with the cost of that high birthrate in terms of raising their brood. (In the U.S., a low-income family with four children will spend $700,000 raising them to maturity, or 18 years worth of income; a middle-class family raising two children will spend $470,000 or 6 years of their income. There's a reason poor children start work earlier than more affluent children. The differences result in fewer educational opportunities and so on. Perhaps the religious will have more children, but if those children are condemned to occupy the lower rungs of the ladder, what of it?)

There is a theory from psychology which has had an enormous impact on me over the years, known as Vroom's Expectancy Theory. Basically, the theory states that it takes more than the desire for some change or result to motivate a person to make the changes desired or bring about the result. Vroom's theory suggests that motivation requires both that the individual possess the instrumental utility or means to achieve the goal, and that the person must be aware that they possess the means to achieve the goal. I'm not sure whether this is a part of Vroom's theory, but I would add that knowledge that one's situation without the change is unpleasant, and that one's situation after the change is pleasant, and being aware of the difference affects motivation. (This is often a major goal in psychotherapy, helping the person to become aware of how their behavior is contributing to their unhappiness, and developing an existential anxiety with respect to the continuance of those behaviors.) The subjective difference between one's current distress and one's anticipated relief must be greater than whatever subjective distress one experiences in making the change in order for the person to follow through in changing. (Changing is usually stressful in and of itself, and if that stress is greater than the anticipated reward, the attempt will likely be aborted. Another aspect worth noting is how quickly or visibly the reward materializes; if a change in behavior doesn't result in a reward rather quickly, the person will also likely abandon the change.) The question then becomes, even if the religious have greater numbers than the non-religious, are they likely to have greater impact or power than the non-religious. Whose efforts and effects in the world have the better chance of succeeding? That's a question which, in marketing, is referred to as reach. How much reach do those numbers have?

It's been my impression, or hunch, if you will, that the greater numbers are balanced by negatives which correspond to those breeding in greater numbers, so the overall effect is more or less in balance. I think this makes sense from an ecological perspective. The human species has evolved to display a range of behaviors dependent on the environment. Where having babies is the best way to exploit the environment, they will have babies; when having few children and investing in them heavily is best, that's what humans do. The latter is the general form of our reproductive strategy; we succeed by quality rather than quantity, as say, in bacteria. The question is whether religion itself is a dependent variable on its own that alters the overall behavior of the species with respect to the see-saw of fertility? I don't see that the question has been answered, but I didn't dig into your material very deeply. My impression was that the larger question was not answered, and that some faulty assumptions such as those under-girding eugenics and social Darwinism are uncritically embedded in the analysis.

First off I want to thank you for the reply. Although I think these forums are full of intelligent people often times they (and myself more than most) just don't care enough or are too lazy to really put a lot of thought into their replies. Not only that but it actually got me thinking rather than the normal series of rote replies with answers practically pre-placed up my ass and ready to pull out at a moments notice.

Really I don't think that this topic has been explored well enough to provide satisfactory answers to the questions raised. There is a link between religion and high birthrates (strictly within individual countries or geographical areas, not the fallacious comparison between Third World Countries like Afghanistan and Europe that Germans tried to pretend I was making.) This exists everywhere. Every statistic that I've ever seen on the subject confirms that the religious breed more. However lower income people also breed more and are more religious on average. It's possible that religion indeed has nothing to do with breeding rates as some people claim. To really study it you'd have to eliminate variables like education level, income level, etc and make a real study that just focuses on religion vs non-religion. I've never actually seen such a study and am not sure that one has even been done, but as I said before every single statistic that is available suggests that indeed the religious breed more.

That being said this thread was not meant as a call for secular people to have more kids. I don't think it's a realistic idea considering that the planet is approaching (or perhaps already at unsustainable population levels already.) Continuing to win the war of ideas should be the focus of the secular community. However the real fear is that sheer numbers may overwhelm good ideas. Especially considering the value that we put on Democracy. Perhaps we have all the good ideas in the world and are simply outvoted by the ignorant religious, who decide to impose their values on the rest of us. To a minor extent you see this in the United States already and you certainly see it in the Democratic countries in the Middle East (and India as well, for both Hindus and Muslims) At that point sheer numbers could very well prove our undoing. Of course it's difficult to speculate on the future and I'd like to believe that indeed even if secular people are out bred the conviction of our ideas and power of our influence will win the day, so to speak. However it's easy to look at the sheer numbers and be very pessimistic.