I concluded a recent post by suggesting we may shortly answer the question of ‘why the penis is shaped like that’. Whilst not necessarily reneging on that suggestion, I’d like first to tackle the question that has been bothering me and a large number of fellow atheists. Why is it that the number of “believers” is growing so much faster than the number of highly rational non believers? Well, simply put believers breed faster than non believers, and religiosity is high heritable. I’ll let Evolutionary Psychologist Jesse Bering take up the story, a story in which Bering relies heavily on German sociologist Michael Blume’s research into reproduction and religiosity.
“. . . Blume’s research . . . shows quite vividly that secular, nonreligious people are being dramatically out reproduced by religious people of any faith. Across a broad swath of demographic data relating to religiosity, the godly are gaining traction in offspring produced. For example there’s a global-level correlation between frequency of parental worship attendance and number of offspring. Those who “never” attend religious services bear on a worldwide average, 1.67 children per lifetime; “once per month (worshipers)” and the average goes up to 2.01 children; “more than once a week (worshipers)” 2.5 children. Those numbers add up – and quickly.
Some of the strongest data from Blume’s analysis, however, come from a Swiss Statistical Office poll conducted in the year 2000. These data are especially valuable because nearly the entire Swiss population answered this questionnaire – (95.67%) – which included a question about religious denomination. “The results are highly significant,” writes Blume: “Women among all denominational categories give birth to far more children than the non-affiliated. And this remains true even among those (Jewish and Christian) communities who combine nearly double as much births with higher percentages of academics and higher income classes as their non-affiliated Swiss contemporaries.”
In other words, it’s not just that “educated” or “upperclass” people have fewer children and tend also to be less religious, but even when you control for such things statistically, religiosity independently predicts the number of offspring born to mothers. Even flailing religious denominations that place their emphasis on converting outsiders, such as Jehovah’s Witnesses, are out reproducing nonreligious mothers. Hindus (2.79 births per woman), Muslims (2.44), and Jews (2.06), meanwhile, are prolific producers of human beings. Nonreligious Swiss mothers bear a measly 1.11 children.
Blume recognises, of course, the limits of inferring too much from these data. It’s not entirely clear whether being religious causes people to have more children, or whether – as is somewhat less plausible but also possible – the link is being driven in the opposite direction (with people who have more children becoming more religious). Most likely it’s both. Nevertheless Blume speculates on some intriguing causal pathways tied to the fact that religious people have more children. We know from twin studies, for example, that the emotional components of religiosity are heritable. “Religiosity” refers to the intensity of feelings about religion, not the propositional content of particular beliefs. (In other words, one identical twin might be a screaming atheist, while the other is an evangelical pastor, but they’re both hot and bothered by God.) So Blume surmises that any offspring born to religious parents are not only dyed in the wool of their faith through their culture but also genetically more susceptible to indoctrination than are children born to nonreligious parents.
The whole situation doesn’t bode well for secularist movements, in any event. Evolutionary biology works by a law of numbers, not rational sentiments. Blume, who doesn’t try to hide his own religious beliefs, sees the cruel irony in this as well: “Some naturalists are trying to get rid of our evolved abilities of religiosity by quoting biology. But from an evolutionary as well as philosophic perspective, it may seem rather odd to try to defeat nature with naturalistic arguments.”
As a childless gay atheistic soul born to a limply interfaith couple, I suspect, perhaps for the better, that my own genes have a very mortal future ahead. As for the rest of you godless heterosexual couples reading this, toss your contraceptives and get busy in the bedroom. Either that or, perish the thought, God isn’t going away any time soon.
From “God’s little rabbits” in ‘Why is the penis shaped like that?’ by Jesse Bering, Corgi Books, London 2012