Let's start the week off with some good news. What about the growing secularization of the globe, as explained and described in Foreign Affairs by Ronald Inglehart (political scientist).
We've already read about Inglehart, as well as his excellent book, Sacred and Secular, Religion and Politics Worldwide, which he co-authored with Pippa Norris (political science collaborator). This book is highly recommended. Ingleharts article argues that the symptom of existential security is religiosity in a country. A country that is afflicted by ill-being and its citizens are insecure, poor, uncertain if their government will help them financially or when they become old or sick, its inhabitants either turn towards religion or refuse to give up their religion. In this scheme, religion is a thermometer that is negatively related to social well-being.
This website contains a lot more evidence to support that hypothesis. For example, it is evident that countries become more religious during times of trouble. It also shows that societies that are more successful, as measured by combining many measures of societal wellbeing, tend to be the least religious. And that the most happy societies are also the ones that are the least religious.
Here's an example: The correlation between happiness and religion in a country, as determined by UNs 2018 World Happiness Report. These 52 countries are included.
From another post, here is a correlation between the frequency with which a country's citizens pray and its income inequality, as calculated by the Gini Index. The more religious a society is, the greater the income inequality (a measure that correlates negatively to people's feelings of well-being).
Here's the correlation between 17 Western countries and Gregory Pauls successful society scale. It uses 25 measures of societal wellbeing versus the religiousity of the society. Even excluding the U.S. which is the most religious country in the West, but also the one that is least successful, it is clear that the less religious a country is, even if they are the most successful.
These are only correlations, and they do not necessarily indicate causality or its direction. For example, one could argue that insecurity can promote religion but also that religion can promote insecurity, unhappiness and ill-being. This seems unlikely though, as insecurity can lead to increased religiosity later in life. However, Inglehart and Norris (and Inglehart in this article) suggest that existential security is a dissolver of religion. Existing sociological data does not support the claim that religion is necessary for society to function as a social glue and that society without religion will descend into despair and criminality. The religionists insist on harping on how religion is essential. This is the argument of the small people, but it's time for the little people to look at the facts.
To read the full article, click on this screenshot
Here are some quotes from the article. The thesis.
. . . Things have changed dramatically since 2007. Between 2007 and 2019, the vast majority of countries that we examined43 of 49 became less religious. This decline in belief did not occur only in high-income countries, but was widespread across the globe. Many people are finding religion less important as a source of meaning and support. The United States, long cited as a proof that an economically developed society can be highly religious, has now joined other wealthy nations in abandoning religion. There are many factors that drive this trend. However, the most important one is the loss of certain beliefs that were closely tied to maintaining high birthrates. Because modern societies no longer have to adhere to the same gender and sexual norms as the major religions, they have become less religious. Some religious conservatives fear that social cohesion will be destroyed if people abandon their faith. However, evidence does not support this assertion. It is surprising that countries with less religious leaders tend to be more corrupt and have lower rates of murder than those with more religious leaders. Religion does not encourage crime and corruption, it is obvious. This is because as societies evolve, survival becomes easier: once common, starvation becomes rare; life expectancy rises; and murder and other forms violence decrease. As security increases, so does the likelihood that people will become less religious.
Notable are the exceptions to declining religiosity. India is one of these exceptions. It is almost certain that this is due to the rise and expansion of the Hindu-centric Bharatiya Janata Party, as well as the constant Hindu osculation of Prime Minister Modi's BJP government and his Muslim-dissing. The unhappiest countries in the world are still the Muslim nations, which are some of most religious.
Two points. The first is why is this happening. There are many reasons for this change, including the rising well-being of the planet's inhabitants. Pinker was correct in this sense. The death of religion fosters rationality which fosters well-being, which, in turn fosters less religiosity. As Inglehart notes,
Influential thinkers, from Max Weber to Karl Marx, predicted that scientific knowledge would end religion all over the globe. But that didn't happen. Most people believed that religious faith was more emotionally than it was cognitive. For most of human history, survival was not certain. The religion provided the assurance that the world was under the control of an infallible higher power or powers, who promised that if one follows the rules things would turn out well. Religion helped people cope with extreme uncertainty and stress in a world that was often characterized by starvation. As technology and economic development progressed, people were able to overcome starvation, manage disease and reduce violence. They became less dependent on religion and less willing to accept its limitations, such as keeping women in the kitchen or gay people out of the closet. Life expectancy increased and existential insecurity decreased.
Inglehart suggests that younger, liberal voters have been turned off by the growing conservatism of Republicans in America, as well as the party's evangelical Christianity. This has led to them abandoning faith.
He believes that the main factor behind increasing secularization is the shift in women's roles, from being breeders (necessary back in ancient times due to high infant mortality), to limiting their number of children. Many religious doctrines still hold pro-fertility dicta. These include the Catholicism's prohibition of contraception and Orthodox Jews' view of women being baby machines. People realize that they don't have to follow these rules and their religiosity decreases.
The World Values Survey ranks countries' acceptance of abortion, divorce, and homosexuality on an a 10-point scale. Lower scores indicate more conservative views. Except in Muslim countries, this score has been increasing. It appears that there is a tipping point at 5.0, above which secularization can be accelerated.
The tipping point is located at the middle of this scale, at 5.50. Lower scores mean that more people in a country hold more conservative views and higher scores mean that more people have liberal views that are centered on individual freedom. In every country we have data, the majority of countries supported pro-fertility norms around 1981. The mean scores for high-income countries ranged from 3.44 (Spain), 3.49(the United States), 3.50 [Japan], 4.14 (the United Kingdom), 4.63 (Finland), to as high at 5.35 (Sweden), the most liberal but still below the tipping point. However, a significant change was occurring. In 2019, Spain's average score had increased to 6.74, that of the United States to 5.86, Japan to 6.17, and the United Kingdom to 6.90. Finlands score was 7.35, Swedens score was 8.49. These countries all fell below the 5.50 tipping mark when they were first surveyed. All of them were higher by 2019. These numbers are a simplified view of complex realities, but they show the magnitude of recent secularization. The trend is spreading to the rest the world with one exception. The 18 countries with Muslim-majority populations for which data is available in the World Values Survey show that their population has remained well below the tipping point. They are strongly religious and remain committed to maintaining traditional gender and fertility norms. Even accounting for economic development, Muslim countries tend to be more religiously and culturally conservative than the average.
Inglehart points out that this trend is not necessarily inevitable and could be reversed by a major disaster, such as nuclear war or a pandemic. This would increase religious belief and existential insecurity. The trend is not very rapid, though it is faster than I thought. With secularization occurring as each generation has more secular ideas replacing the one before them, the trend isn't all that fast.
One more thing to illustrate that a country does not need to be religious in order to be moral and healthy:
Transparency International, which has been monitoring the honesty and relative corruption of businesspeople and government officials around the globe since 1993, is now a global watchdog group. This watchdog publishes each year the Corruption Perceptions Index. It ranks corruption in public sector sectors in 180 countries and territories. These data allow us to examine the relationship between religion and corruption. Is there a greater prevalence of corruption in religious countries than it is in those with less religious backgrounds? It is clear that religious countries are more corrupt than those in secular countries. The world's lowest levels have been recorded in the highly secular Nordic countries. However, the highest corruption rates are found in highly religious countries like Bangladesh, Guatemala and Iraq. It is clear that religion does not lead to corruption. Low levels of economic security and corruption are correlated with high levels in religiosity. While religion once played an important role in supporting morality and public order, this role has diminished as economic development takes place. While people from religious countries tend to be more inclined to condemn corruption than those who live in less religious countries; however, the effect of religion on behavior is not as significant. While religion may make people more severe, it doesn't make them less corrupt. This is true for other crimes as well, like murder. It is surprising that the murder rate in religiously-oriented countries is more than 10 times higher than in those with less religious backgrounds. While some countries may have lower murder rates than others, countries with high levels of legal and material security are generally safer than those in poorer countries. While it is true that religion does not cause murders, both crime and religiosity are more common in societies that have low levels of existential security. Modern societies are unlikely to descend into nihilistic chaos if they don't have religious faith to hold them together. However, this may not always been true. Religion may have been an effective way to keep order and cohesion in early agrarian societies when people lived below the survival level. Modernization has altered the equation. Modernization has made it possible to create a strong set of moral norms to replace the traditional religion. The World Values Survey shows that people in secular and secure countries are increasingly giving priority to freedom of expression and self-expression. There is also a greater emphasis on tolerance of outsiders and gender equality.
All the data and the existence happy, functioning societies that are both highly religious and moral, there is no reason to believe that religion is necessary for society to function well. Religion disappears when your society functions properly. It will disappear as long as society improves, unless there is a catastrophe like global climate change or nuclear war.
The argument that religion is necessary to bind people together is not based on data, but rather because they believe in it. This is confirmation bias.
This is why it's not enough to be an atheist but also to be anti-theist. People are unable to look for other paths out of their unhappiness if they remain clinging to religion. Churches that promote archaic beliefs that cause people to be unhappy and insecure are detrimental for society. Religion does in fact hinder well-being.
h/t: Lenny, David
