Study suggests religion in Ireland could become "extinct"

Religion is set for extinction in nine countries, including Ireland, if present trends continue, according to a new study.  

The study found a steady rise in those claiming no religious affiliation in those countries.

However, the study is contradicted by demographers who say that religious groups are set to “inherit the earth.”

According to results, reported at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas, in the United States, religion will all but die out altogether given current trends in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Switzerland.

The study used the concept of nonlinear dynamics and census data from the nine countries in question to arrive at their conclusion.  

According to scientists, the idea suggests that social groups that have more members are going to be more attractive to join, and it posits that social groups have a social status or utility.

One of the team, Daniel Abrams of Northwestern University, put forth a similar model in 2003 to put a numerical basis behind the decline of lesser-spoken world languages.  Some of the census data the team used date from the 19th century.

The team then applied their nonlinear dynamics model, adjusting parameters for the relative social and utilitarian merits of membership of the "non-religious" category.  

They found, in a study published online, that those parameters were similar across all the countries studied, suggesting that similar behaviour drives the mathematics in all of them.  

And in all the countries, the indications were that religion was headed toward extinction.

However, other scholars such Dr Eric Kaufmann and Philip Longman have predicted that, far from heading for extinction, religion is set to make a comeback.  

According to this thesis, growing birth rates among religious believers, and falling birth rates among secular couples are set to dramatically shift the political and demographic make-up of 

the West.

Dr Kaufmann, author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?  Demography and Politics in the 21st Century says, "Secular populations are static and heading for decline.  Religious populations, however, are multiplying.”  

A major reason for this, Dr Kaufmann argues, is that "the more religious people are, the more children they will have.”  And those with particularly strong beliefs "are breeding faster than anyone," he adds.

Dr Kaufmann points out that evangelical Protestants in the US have doubled their share of the white Protestant population during the 20th century, mostly through population growth rather than conversion.

Overall, religious women have above-replacement fertility, while overall non-religious women tend to have below replacement fertility, Dr Kaufmann.

Figures suggest that, in spite of the secularisation of the young, the proportion of non-religious Americans is projected to peak at 17 per cent soon after 2050, much earlier in the major cities, because of low secular fertility and religious immigration.

Meanwhile, Philip Longman, author of The Empty Cradle, also predicts that religious people are set to dominate the latter half of the 21th century.  

According to Longman, religiously minded generally have bigger families than do secularists.

He points to US figures that show that 47 per cent of people who attend church weekly say that the ideal family size is three or more children, as opposed to only 27 per cent of those who seldom attend church.

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