Religion to die out... (in nine nations)

I read this article the other day about a study that predicts religion will completely disappear in nine nations in which the study was conducted. The nine nations studied were: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Switzerland. Incidentally, these are primarily European nations which have had a declining interest in religion for many decades now.

The article says that this study came to its conclusion by considering "the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the 'non-religious' category." Similar to peer pressure, people are more likely adapt to their society's consensus on broad topics. If this is the central factor used to develop this argument then it is rather weak, because many western societies prior to the twentieth century (but still in the Christian era) had placed tremendous social and utilitarian merits on Christian religious affiliation. So there are other factors or events that can fundamentally reverse these kinds of trends because we now see the reverse trend in many western societies. There is no model to explain how the counter cultural movements begin and why they are successful.

If you look at the "religious views" category on your friends' facebook profiles, you will find that most have not provided any information or some have even used some obscure or non-traditional religious category. I personally have not provided information in this category. I think that the researchers of this paper would have categorized me as not giving a religious category based on weighing the social and utilitarian benefits. I think there is some truth to their research, but for Christians - many of us have another reason for this "unreligion" that we exhibit.

This article reminds me of Voltaire's prediction: "One hundred years from my day there will not be a bible in the earth except one that is looked upon by an antiquarian curiosity seeker." Voltaire died in 1778 C.E.

For those who are interested in seeing another point of view on the topic, specifically on the trends of Christian religion world wide, I would highly recommend Philip Jenkins' book The Next Christendom.