Shall the religious inherit the earth?
by Eric P. Kaufmann · first published 2010
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My favourite book of the past few years, Eric Kaufmann's "Shall the religious inherit the earth", points out that some religious minorities, often quite extreme ones, are much better at having children, and are likely to spread at the expense of the mainstream. This cultural difference in family…
on “In the U.S., more immigrants with children are still in their first marriage” ↗Eric Kaufmann, a sociologist, wrote a book on this. It’s called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? and basically argues that high birthrate cultures eventually win out against secular childfree or child-limited ones. I find it to be pretty convincing. People tend to create projections of the future…
on “The Economics of Falling Populations” ↗You should read books by Eric Kaufmann, specifically "Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth". It predicts exactly as you say, that countries will continue to become more religious, not less, the current trend of secularization is but a short lived burst in history. Irreligion is a demographic/social…
on “Taiwan Is Running Low on a Strategic Asset: Engineers” ↗…just some random substacker - that's Paul Morland who wrote Tomorrow's People. TBH that book was rather bland and milquetoast. The same argument he makes here is made at book length by Eric Kaufmann in "Shall The Religious Inherit The Earth", which is very good.
on “Is liberalism digging its own demographic grave?” ↗You might be interested in a book called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? by Kaufmann. Basically a lot of it comes down to birth rates and cohesiveness of culture. Another good one is A Secular Age, although it's on a much longer timeline. It tracks the shift of Christianity…
on “The Spread of Christianity Animated” ↗Birth rates have a much larger effect on society than I think people realize. I recently read Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? by Eric Kaufmann. It makes a pretty strong argument that contrary to the widespread assumption that everyone will just become an atheist, the world will actually become more religious, almost entirely…
on “We Expect 300k Fewer Births Than Usual This Year in the US” ↗Check out a book called Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? It’s looking far more likely that traditional approaches to these questions will become more popular with time, simply because the people that have kids don’t have the opinions you’ve mentioned here.…
on “I Want a Wife (1971) [pdf]” ↗…religiously unaffiliated will slowly but steadily decline, from 16.4 percent of the world’s population today to 13.2 percent forty years from now. University of London professor Eric Kaufmann, in his book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, speaks of “the crisis of secularism” and argues that the shrinkage of secularism and liberal religion is inevitable.
on “America’s Epidemic of Empty Churches” ↗> my theory is that selection will remove memes (behavioral/thought/cultural patterns) that cause childlessness from the meme pool much faster. The sociologist Eric Kaufmann wrote a book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, arguing that traditionalist religious groups (such as ultra-Orthodox Jews and the Amish) will become demographically dominant in the long-term (decades and centuries) due to their greater fertility…
on “Humans Haven't Stopped Evolving” ↗…those changes haven't gone away, and are unlikely to disappear. We don't know how many of those changes will endure, and how many will turn out to just be "a phase". Eric Kaufmann argued in his 2010 book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? that social/religious conservatives are likely to win out in the long-run due to having a higher birth rate.
on “My Objections to “We’re All Gonna Die with Eliezer Yudkowsky”” ↗…differences in outcomes between those states which adopted a parliamentary system versus those which retained a presidential (or should I say gubernatorial) one. I mentioned before Eric Kaufmann. His book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? suggests that religion will triumph over secularism in the long-run due to a higher birth rate. If, over the next 500 years, the world never gets significantly less secular than it is today, I think…
on “Scholars asked Harvard President Claudine Gay for her data. She said no.” ↗…the new ideas that have replaced them actually will "scale" for the long-run. Look at the demographic collapse of secular progressives, while countercultural religious conservatives breed like rabbits – Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?, as Eric Kaufmann's book asks
on “The Intellectual We Deserve (2018)” ↗…minority groups, which seems extremely dangerous. It historically blends right into overt bigotry and sectarian oppression. Basically, I'm repeating the contention of sociologist Eric Kaufmann's book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth–that in the long-run religious (ultra-)conservatives will dominate due to high birth and retention rates. It isn't "fearmongering", because that assumes one is presenting a takeover by religious conservatives…
on “The world has probably passed peak pollution” ↗…that’s not an argument that reality prefers Western progressivism (whose demographics aren’t that great either), that’s an argument that reality prefers the Amish and Kiryas Joel (see Eric Kaufmann’s “Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?”)
on “PRC elites voice AI-skepticism” ↗…a few centuries, and secular people will be outnumbered by ultra-Orthodox Jews, and the Amish, and radtrad Catholics, and Mormon polygamists, and so on. That's the thesis of Eric Kaufmann's 2010 book Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? – and I believe, on the whole, he's right. [0] https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/kiryasjoelvilla...
on “India's surprise baby bust is a warning to the world” ↗