Is religion really in decline?

A recent study by a bio-psychologist, Nigel Barber, reported in The Huffington Post, shows that religion is in decline worldwide and the pace of decline is likely to be faster in future such that by 2041 religion, as we know today, will disappear completely! By religion, he meant the blind faith of total and absolute submission to divine powers as in monotheism – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – or in multi-theism such as Hinduism, Sikhism and so forth. His study also indicates that by that time Atheism and Agnosticism will be the dominant spiritual doctrine worldwide. In fact, he claims that Atheism is already a firmly established theology in many developed countries.

Such radical and bold predictions – whether evaluated by valid statistical methods or not – will raise eyebrows of many people. How could one say with absolute certainties on the outcome of religious and non-religious population when there are so many complex issues and interleaving socio-economic and political dynamics involved? Nonetheless, it is worthwhile to look into the broad outline of the study and try to get the flavour of his reasoning behind such predictions in believers.

Worldwide there are nearly 4,000 million adherents of all religions – monotheistic and multi-theistic beliefs put together – out of the total global human population of just over 7,000 million. In other words, nearly 57 per cent of human population are now believers and 43 per cent are non-believers – agnostics, atheist and other 'unaffiliated' causes. The breakdown of the 4,000 million adherents of beliefs is approximately like this: Christianity – 1,800 million; Islam – 1,200 million; Hinduism – 900 million; Sikhism – 20 million and Judaism – 15 million and other smaller religions around the world – 65 million.

The trends in believers' number of various religions are not same. Some religions like Christianity (Protestant) and Judaism are increasing at a very low rate and in some places they are not increasing at all. Hinduism is increasing at a progressively slower rate. But Islam and Catholicism are expanding at somewhat higher rates than the world population growth rate. But behind these trends there are complex inter-connections of socio-economic conditions of the believers which influence the trends.

However, the above hypothesis of Nigel Barber has been contradicted by a political scientist Eric Kaufmann who holds the view that the proportion of religious people is unlikely to come down as believers tend to have more children than non-believers. In Roman Catholicism birth control is either banned or discouraged on the pretext that if God gives a child, who are we to stop it? In Islam similar view is held in most of the Islamic States. In some oil rich Islamic States, large families are actively encouraged as they don't want to be outnumbered by expatriate workers in their own countries. In India, family planning is despised on moral grounds. Mrs Indira Gandhi lost the national election simply because she encouraged birth control! The biotechnologist Thomas Rees concurs with Eric Kaufmann and even holds the view that religious people may even have higher proportion of population in future simply because of believers' higher birth rates.

So where is the evidence that believers' number coming down? Nigel Barber dismisses the higher birth rate evidence by saying that as world prospers the present day believers, mostly poorer people, will have less number of children as women will go out to work. The women will become materially conscious and hence will have smaller family size. There is some evidence of this in Bangladesh and India where family prosperity and comfort have become more important than the number of children in the family. In having this attitude, there must be sufficient employment opportunity and economic prosperity, not only collectively but also individually. The reverse of this attitude is in evidence in Pakistan where economy is in decline (in relative terms) and the population is soaring.

The irony is that as people become more numinous, they tend to neglect their efforts to improve their economic conditions. They even sacrifice their diminishing resources in the name of God so that they can get better returns from God. Many people go to Hajj selling their last piece of land or even borrowing money in the hope that God will reward them, preferably in this world and, if not, definitely in the next world!

So it seems there is a correlation, or to be exact an inverse correlation, between the economic performance of a State and its population growth. In Western developed countries population growth is small because the indigenous population is more involved in family prosperity than the increase in family size. Only increase in population in those countries is due to net population migration to the country and higher birth rate of the migrant population. The decreasing trend in population is also discernible in well run economies such as Singapore, Malaysia and so forth, where liberal immigration policies are not pursued.

In addition to the population increase of religious people, there is another factor that is worth considering and that is the religious conversion. When poor, down-trodden people are given a helping hand by the religious preachers, they tend to embrace that religion and enjoy the benefits. Islam is having a good run on this account. Also poor but moderate Muslim men having help and support from Islamic organisations (when government fails them) would tend to be closely associated with those Islamic organisations, who happen to be radical, but socially responsible,  Islamic groups. This trend of radicalisation of the population is evident in many Islamic countries including Pakistan, Bangladesh and many African countries.

With all these factors interacting with each other, it is difficult to make a definite statement whether the believer numbers or the proportion of believer numbers will go up or down in relation to non-believers. But one thing is certain that believers will perform relatively badly in social, economic and other fields in relation to non-believers. This is already evident in developed countries as well as developing countries. Between the countries, non-believer countries are relatively richer than believer countries.

There are, of course, some exceptions, but those exceptions have nothing to do with religion. Some believer countries such as Middle East countries may be richer than non-believer countries only because they get wealth from natural resources such as petroleum products, mineral resources etc. The gratitude of the people for getting wealth from nowhere goes to the divine authority and their religiosity increases as a result. Whether that religiosity will last for very long is an open question. As the citizens of those countries become educated and enlightened, they are likely to be exposed to modern science and technology and they may start questioning whether God has anything to do with the natural reserve they have got. At that point the tipping point for their numinosity will come.

The net outcome of this social-religious-economic tussle is that poor people – whether in developed or developing countries – become poorer as they embrace religion more and the rich people become richer as they give up religion. There are, of course, other factors which come into play in individual or collective levels. But religion singularly has a detrimental effect on individual or collective economic performance.

The numbers of believers as against non-believers depend in the final analysis on the economic performance of the individuals as well as of the State. A clear separation of believer and non-believer countries, somewhat similar to the so-called north-south divide, may arise. However, as the north is rich and educated, it is most likely to be populated by non-believers. As these northern people pursue pleasure and leisure in life, as against family expansion, the total population size is unlikely to go up significantly. On the other hand, the south, being poor and inhabited by relatively uneducated people, will see significant increase in population size and most of them will cling to one or the other religion. Thus believer number is likely to increase faster than non-believers. So there is no evidence or scenario that religion will disappear within a matter of 25 to 30 years. On the contrary, religion is likely to gain even stronger foothold on the world population.

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A. Rahman is a Nuclear Safety Specialist.