A group of leading atheists is very puzzled by the continued existence and vitality of religion. As biologist Richard Dawkins puts it in his new book The God Delusion, faith is a form of irrationality, what he terms a “virus of the mind.” Philosopher Daniel Dennett compares belief in God to belief in the Easter bunny. Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and now Letter to a Christian Nation, professes amazement that hundreds of millions of people worldwide profess religious beliefs when there is no rational evidence for any of those beliefs. Biologist E.O. Wilson says there must be some evolutionary explanation for the universality and pervasiveness of religious belief.

Actually, there is. The Reverend Ron Carlson, a popular author and lecturer, sometimes presents his audience with two stories and asks them whether it matters which one is true. In the secular account, “You are the descendant of a tiny cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half billion years ago. You are a mere grab-bag of atomic particles, a conglomeration of genetic substance. You exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a meaningless universe. You came from nothing and are going nowhere.”

In the Christian view, by contrast, “You are the special creation of a good and all-powerful God. You are the climax of His creation. Not only is your kind unique, but you are unique among your kind. Your Creator loves you so much and so intensely desires your companionship and affection that He gave the life of His only son that you might spend eternity with him.”

Now imagine two groups of people—let’s call them the Secular Tribe and the Religious Tribe—who subscribe to these two worldviews. Which of the two tribes is more likely to survive, prosper and multiply? The religious tribe is made up of people who have an animating sense of purpose. The secular tribe is made up of people who are not sure why they exist at all. The religious tribe is composed of individuals who view their every thought and action as consequential. The secular tribe is made up of matter that cannot explain why it is able to think at all.

Should evolutionists like Dennett, Dawkins, Harris and Wilson be surprised, then, to see that religious tribes are flourishing around the world? Across the globe, religious faith is thriving and religious people are having more children. By contrast, atheist conventions only draw a handful of embittered souls, and the atheist lifestyle seems to produce listless tribes that cannot even reproduce themselves.

Russia is one of the most atheist countries in the world and there abortions outnumber live births by a ratio of two to one. Russia’s birth rate has fallen so low that the nation is now losing 700,000 people a year. Japan, perhaps the most secular country in Asia, is also on a kind of population diet: its 130 million people are expected to drop to around 100 million in the next few decades. And then there is Europe. The most secular continent on the globe is decadent in the quite-literal sense that its population is rapidly shrinking. Lacking the strong Christian identity that produced its greatness, atheist Europe seems to be a civilization on its way out. We have met Nietzsche’s “last man” and his name is Sven.

Traditionally scholars have tried to give an economic explanation for these trends. The general idea was that population was a function of affluence. Sociologists noted that as people and countries became richer, they had fewer children. Presumably primitive societies needed children to help in the fields, and more prosperous societies no longer did. From this perspective, religion was explained as a phenomenon of poverty, insecurity and fear, and many pundits predicted that with the spread of modernity and prosperity, religion would fade away.

The economic explanation is now being questioned. It was never all that plausible anyway. Undoubtedly poor people are more economically dependent on their children, but on the other hand, rich people can afford more children. Wealthy people in America today tend to have one child or none, but wealthy families in the past tended to have three or more children. The real difference is not merely in the level of income. The real difference is that in the past children were valued as gifts from God, and now they are viewed by many people as instruments of self-gratification. The old principle was “Be fruitful and multiply.” The new one is, “Have as many children as enhance your lifestyle.”

The prophets of the disappearance of religion seem to have proven themselves to be false prophets. Even though the world is becoming richer, religion seems to be getting stronger. The United States is the richest and most technologically advanced society in the world, and religion shows no signs of disappearing on these shores. China and India are growing in affluence, and the Chinese government is not exactly hospitable to religion, yet religious belief and practice continue to be strong in both countries. Europe’s best chance to grow in the future seems to be to import more religious Muslims. While Islam spreads in Europe and elsewhere, Christianity is spreading even faster in Africa, Asia and South America. Remarkably Christianity will soon become a non-Western religion with a minority presence among Europeans.

My conclusion is that it is not religion but atheism that requires a Darwinian explanation. It seems equally perplexing why nature would breed a group of people who see no purpose to life or the universe, indeed whose only moral drive seems to be sneering at their fellow human beings who do have a sense of purpose? Here is where the biological expertise of Dawkins and his friends could prove illuminating. Maybe they can turn their Darwinian lens on themselves and help us understand how atheism, like the human tailbone and the panda’s thumb, somehow survived as an evolutionary leftover of our primitive past.

Dawkins' Atheistic Tantrum

Hard-core Secularists enjoy a certain air of objectivity. They promote the idea that people of faith speak from the heart-which is to say, not from the mind-whereas undogmatic secularists speak only from reasoned thought. These Secularists consider themselves to be thoughtful and fair, whereas theists are hopelessly biased. But is this true?

Or could Secularists be even more biased by their presuppositions? The following quotes from Richard Dawkin's just released God Delusion sheds light on this assumed objectivity.

From the last paragraph of Chapter One:

"It is in the light of the unparalleled presumption of respect for religion that I make my own disclaimer for this book. I shall not go out of my way to offend, but nor shall I don kid gloves to handle religion any more gently than I would handle anything else."

From the very next paragraph-the beginning of Chapter Two- Dawkins respect doesn't last long!

"The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully....It is unfair to attack such an easy target."

Evangelizing Non-believers

No, we don’t mean Christians who evangelize atheists to become Christians, but precisely the reverse.

We mean atheists evangelizing Christians (especially the luke-warm), mild theists and deists, and fence-sitting agnostics to become atheists.

Richard Dawkins, Samuel Harris, and Daniel Dennett are out to make converts—of the entire western culture (on both sides of the ocean). They don’t just disbelieve. They are anti-belief. Their goal is to wipe religion off the historical map for good. Hence the release in recent years of a spate of books filled with in-your-face atheism. They are at war with religion, and these books mark the opening battles.

Richard Dawkins makes clear that they plan a takeover of the public square. In a recent Wired Magazine article he states: “I’m quite keen on the politics of persuading people of the virtues of atheism….The number of nonreligious people in the U. S. is something nearer to 30 million than 20 million….That’s more than all the Jews in the world put together. I think we’re in the same position the gay movement was…a few decades ago. There was a need for people to come out. The more people who came out, the more people had the courage to come out. I think that’s the case with atheists. They are more numerous than anybody realizes.”

Read the entire Wired Magazine article by Gary Wolf, “Battle of the New Atheism.”

Benjamin Wiker

The New Demography of Depopulation

"In countries - both modern and less developed -throughout the world, birthrates and fertility rates have fallen at an astonishing rate. Because of extremely low fertility, Europe has already begun losing population and is projected to fall from 725 million today by approximately 100 million people or more by mid-century, and continuing thereafter. Japan will fall from over 125 million to just 110 million. In less developed countries the fertility rate is about 2.7 and falling fast; about 25 such countries are already at or below replacement level.

Among the modern nations, only the United States is an exception to the trend, as it is likely to grow from about 285 million to about 410 million people by mid-century because of higher fertility and continued robust immigration."

Russia: Health Ministry Considers Solutions To Population Decline

A dramatically declining population is one of the most acute problems facing Russia today. The country's official population, now around 143 million, is shrinking by 700,000 every year. By 2050, some experts predict that the country's population could be as low as 120 million.

The demographic crisis has not only economic, but geopolitical implications. In the future, Russia, whose land makes up 30 percent of Eurasia, may simply have too few people to control its territory.

Send your letter to the editor to feedback@tothesource.org.