what does theism actually DO?

One of the problems about talking about "theism" is that there isn't really such a thing as "theism". Rather the world is/has been full of theisms.

Teotlism, Shinto, Hellenic Paganism, Atenism, and Judaism are all quite different.

-CryptoLutheran

>And yet a lower rate than those of non-religious persuasion, and a higher morality rate at the same time. I covered all of this.

I'm using same-cultural comparisons, and atheists / non-religious are lumped together.

In the same culture, atheists have the same wealth / infant mortality rates as the religious - but half the birth rate.

See:

God’s little rabbits: Religious people out-reproduce secular ones by a landslide | Bering in Mind, Scientific American Blog Network

and

Interview with Eric Kaufmann, Author of Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

So on the decline in The well Developed World, on the Increase overall.

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Are you referring to religiosity?

I think it's almost certainly on the increase everywhere. You just need to group the categories correctly (atheists and weakly / culturally religious) versus (devoutly religious). The second group is strongly outbreeding the first because of birth control, abortion, marriage versus single lifestyles etc.

So-called "mainline" and liberal churches and denominations are in decline and their membership is becoming more inclined to atheism. At the same time, very strongly religious denominations are increasing (Mormonism, fundamentalism, orthodox Judaism, the Amish and related communities).

I think it's important to think about how we all can help build a world where the strongly religious can get along with one another, respect one another, and live together in peace. Because demography is destiny!

light upon light said:

Well, atheists in advanced technological societies have half the birthrate of the religious. That's a simply enormous difference in fertility and cannot be ignored! Part of that is the enthusiasm with which atheists embrace the behavior values of the sexual revolution, which is strongly negatively correlated with live births.

So what I expect to happen is a drastic decline in atheism as atheistic subcultures remove themselves from the gene pool through memes like "childfree", "antinatalism", "right to suicide" and the like.

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I wish you were joking, but apparently you are not. We've been entangled in this discussion before, but it bears repeating:
Overpopulation is the reason behind almost every aspect of the most daunting environmental disasters in existence, and will most likely be the cause that kills us all eventually.
Huge families were necessary in the past, when less than half of your children were likely to reach adulthood and producing as much offspring as possible was your best chance of actually having an heir to carry on your traditions. But with the advent of modern medicine, all of that changed, and mankind exploded like a swarm of locusts - with similarly disastrous consequences for everyone involved.
Oh, sure, perhaps we might struggle on a little longer than those mindless insects, turning the collapsing ecosphere into a prosthesis for our own survival, squeezing out a bit more nourishment before the catastrophe catches up with us. But an ever-increasing species (or even one that remains at current population levels indefinitely) will as surely die as the aforementioned locust swarm.

I consider it positively IMMORAL to have more than two children. I have heard people defend their selfishness by pointing to the fact that most of the population growth takes place in developing countries, and populations are shrinking in "the West". But how does that negate the fact that they are nonetheless contributing to a global population growth that will destroy us all, and thousands of other species along with us?

Coming back to your original observation about religious conservatives "outbreeding" non-theistic progressives: this presupposes that these children will grow up to share their parents' views, but more often than not, that is not the case. Especially not in a society where a free exchange of ideas and a wide range of information on other world views is still possible.

Coming back to the original question, I'd distinguish between spirituality (which seens to be an instinctive urge embedded deeply within our collective mind), and theism (which describes a specific way of conceiving of the world).

Theism is an outgrowth of our spiritual need, but it is neither the only possible outcome nor the default setting. Unfortunately, we still tend to think of theistic world views first on account of our own cultural imprinting, just as the term "religion" instantly conjures up images of Christianity for most Westerners.

Spirituality is far more general and open-ended than that, however, and linking it so inextricably to god-concepts strikes me as an enormous disservice. Even the natural sciences and the humanities are an outgrowth of the spiritual impulse, as they are part of the quest to understand more, to draw closer to the sublime Enormity of the as-of-yet-unknown.
Personally, I feel that we need a new approach to spirituality. Secular western culture has so far ignored this fundamental aspect of our existence, and it's been to everybody detriment, not only by strengthening reactionary and outdated world views, but also by creating a void that was more often than not filled by quasi-religious political ideologies. Even consumerism has become a quasi-religion, promising eschatological fulfillment if you just open your purse and spend in the sparkling temples of commerce.


Theism, however, strikes me as a quaint and archaic way of conceiving of reality, no more sustainable than notions of a flat earth, a physical paradise resembling Cockaigne, or a literal bearded man sitting on a cloud.

The earth is a temporary home that needs to be discarded.

A mass extinction event will happen. We need to have populations off planet and populate the solar system.

I love nature but unless we move animals,plants etc...to new biospheres off this rock it will all wither and die.

Who knows maybe biological life will all die out As unsustainable and all that will be left is computer AI.

SeventhValley said:

The earth is a temporary home that needs to be discarded.

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No.
Even in a scenario where earthborn life starts to seed space, just as fish once started to populate dry land, an organism is never an isolated entity that can be transplanted from its original context without immense repercussions. Much of the trouble we are facing now in terms of environmental degradation stems from homo sapiens's inability or unwillingness to comprehend ecological interconnectivity. We keep on cutting into our own flesh, all based on the false "man vs. nature"-dichotomy.
Maybe our distant descendants will one day be a species that is adapted to living on another planet, or even in space. But mankind is a child of this world, and pretty much relies on the ecosphere.

A mass extinction event will happen. We need to have populations off planet and populate the solar system.

I love nature but unless we move animals,plants etc...to new biospheres off this rock it will all wither and die.

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The mass extinction event will most likely mean the end of our species and thousands of others, yes. It will not mean the end of life on earth, however. This planet has survived worse things than us (though not by much worse), and it's only our bloated sense of self-importance that makes us feel that we're not just destroying ourselves (as if that wasn't bad enough), but ALL life.

Jane,

I'm simply describing reality, not giving a moral dimension to it. The non-religious are not reproducing, and the religious who are reproducing are not the ones who have been converting to atheism in large numbers.

If we want to have a discussion regarding what "should" be, that would be interesting, but isn't what I was talking about.

But how does that negate the fact that they are nonetheless contributing to a global population growth that will destroy us all, and thousands of other species along with us?

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I think it's entirely an open question whether population growth will "destroy us all". Best estimates right now are that population growth is coming to an end on its own in the next couple decades. And people have been claiming for 50 years that we are about to run out of food, etc. in the next decade, and it's never happened.

That said, we certainly need to stop wasting fossil fuels on an unsustainable consumerist lifestyle, and bring our lifestyle footprint into harmony with the reality of the limitations of the planet.

Jane_the_Bane said:

No.
Even in a scenario where earthborn life starts to seed space, just as fish once started to populate dry land, an organism is never an isolated entity that can be transplanted from its original context without immense repercussions. Much of the trouble we are facing now in terms of environmental degradation stems from homo sapiens's inability or unwillingness to comprehend ecological interconnectivity. We keep on cutting into our own flesh, all based on the false "man vs. nature"-dichotomy.
Maybe our distant descendants will one day be a species that is adapted to living on another planet, or even in space. But mankind is a child of this world, and pretty much relies on the ecosphere.


The mass extinction event will most likely mean the end of our species and thousands of others, yes. It will not mean the end of life on earth, however. This planet has survived worse things than us (though not by much worse), and it's only our bloated sense of self-importance that makes us feel that we're not just destroying ourselves (as if that wasn't bad enough), but ALL life.

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I would argue that it is not bloated. Everything is inherently meaningless. Everyone is free to assign meaning to whatever they want.
Getting money from upcharged loans,helping the poor,saving the earth,destroying it are all only meaningful if someone decides it's meaningful to them. Saving or destroying the earth, theism and atheism are all inherently meaningless.