On Mar 25, 2011, at 6:05 AM, turquoiseb wrote: Now *this* is a study I'd love people to get into discussing here, if they can do so without rancor. ( OK, I know that's a lot like saying "Here's a bone I'd like this pack of wild dogs to appreciate without fighting over," but one can hope. :-) It's a study based on data from nine countries, collected over decades (some of it dating back 100 years) about religious affiliation. "Running the numbers" shows a steady increase in the number of people declaring themselves as having "no religious affiliation," which will come as no surprise to many. What is surprising is the *rate* at which this is increasing, and the explanation that the study authors have for why it is happening.
The bottom line of the study is in the first sentence: "A new study claims that religion may be on the way out in some parts of Europe, largely because it isn't as useful to adherents as it once was." I love this because it's exactly what I was trying to get at a few days ago when asking believers in the non-existence of free will to give me a pragmatic reason WHY they believe this. "What," I asked (although possibly in different words), "would be the benefit or utility of believing in this theory?" Revealingly, as far as I could tell, not a single non-free-willer proposed a single reason. My contention is that they can't think of one, and that the reason is that believing that free will does not exist has no relative utility.
I currently live in a country that has the second-highest population declaring "no religious affiliation," and I completely understand why. The Dutch are probably the mostpragmatic people I've ever met. They would instantly get the term "relative utility." They adopt lifestyles and practices because they have some utility; they provide some kind of pragmatic, real-world payoff. They reject practices that have no utility. 40% of them feel that religion has no relative utility. Therefore why bother with it?  |
