"On the Biological Sucess of Faith"

Michael Blume is engaged in the scientific study of religion. (Blume ) Now he has a new article about his thoughts and research: "Religion and Demography - On the Biological Sucess of Faith". (Blume)

I think, his work is a good beginning with this very important theme. But if you think some time about all this, you can recognize the reason, why traditional monotheistic religion is good for the reproductive sucess of the believers. Atheism as a broader movement in society is only 100 years old at the moment. What was the situation of Christianity 100 years after its beginnings? A roman historian like Tacitus, who lived in the 2nd century didn't know very much about this "jewish sect", the "Christians". At that time no one could forsee, that it would be exactly this and only this religious group between the broad religious pluralism of the Roman Empire, that would have the best reproductive sucess of the next 2000 years. This was the result of selection, of cultural and genetic individual and group selection processes of the next 500 years.

So, if there is no group between the very pluralistic "group" of modern atheists that has more children than the believers of monotheistic faith at the moment, than this could mean, that we are now in this selection process (cultural and genetic individual and group selection), that will establish in the next decades and centuries a new strategy of social life, in which non-monotheistic people will have enough children as well.

At least this is the goal a lot of people who are working in family politics and beyond in our days.

Religion, fertility and modern intellectuals

"Religiousness" may be at a deeper level the "missing link" of current sociobiological theory. Because religiousness shows the best correlations with fertility in all human cultures.

I said this some weeks ago in a comment to Razib Khan's Blog. I think it is too important not to repeat here. Razib asked "Does it?" and I gave this study by Michael Blume (pdf) as an evidence for this thesis.

Even if the Templeton-Foundation and a lot of other organizations are funding very much science concerning scientific approaches to religion, this thesis of Michael Blume has not found so much attention yet in the scientific communitiy (as far as I can see).

Now I had some disagreement with Razib (in the comments: here and here), because I try to apply the mentioned thesis to world history as a whole. I like Razib Khan very much, because he is looking for truth like me in a lot of areas like me and because he knows a lot of things better than me (for example human genetics). We had some disagreements yesterday concerning some interpretations of historical processes. And the deeper reason for this disagreement - I think now - may be found in what famous Jürgen Habermas as a typical atheistic intellectual has said about himself - that he is "religiously unmusical".

Since Habermas has talked together with the former Cardinal Ratzinger (now pope Benedict XVI.) about the necessity of religion for our society (in the year 2004), this "being unmusical concerning religion" may have a new importance for the public discourse. Surley, at the state of science now we cannot "measure" the inborn or learned ability for being "religiously musical" very precise. But to speak about this is becoming important more and more, I think.

Truth may not always be "polite". All the more if it comes to religiousness and morals. So I think we cannot avoid to have sometimes a little bit "impolite" discussions about impolite truths. This has something to do with our own infertility and atheistic attitudes as well, I think. We're reasoning very "politly" about rises and declines of cultures - and in the time we're doing that, the great culture of the western world, in which we live, is declining and declining mostly by birth rates and mostly by low birth rates of the IQ-elites that we think we represent.

So, I think, there are reasons sometimes to become a little bit impatiently - even if you are in pure scientific discussions and even if you have pure scientific attitudes. I think, it IS science, that can make you sometimes impatiently and impolite. So I try to formulate the following thesis: Atheism is a force that can make people "religiously unmusical". And then people do not understand any longer at a deeper level, why people do not have enough children and why cultures rise or decline because of that.

Emotions in history

Emotions can rise high discussing the greater aspects of world history: Why rise of culture? Why decline of culture? Why first agriculture around 10.000 BC? Why cultural change around 400 AD? A lot of details have to be taken into account, if you want to get the story right.
And because history is made by the emotions of humans, it is possible, that discussion about (such) causes of history can also rise emotions. ;-)
So there were some quite interesting discussions on "Gene Expression" about those questions (here and here), that I do not want to repeat here.
But surely, possibility to continue discussion exists.

Ok, only to put an answer to Razib's last argument. Razib says: "when i say i did 'research' on the peasant's war of 1525, i mean that i took a course where we studied primary sources about that war for the whole term. i tend to, obviously, disagree with the assertion that there would have been 'No peasant's war in that scale without Luther,' but you'll have to take my word for it since i'm not going to dig up the books i have on the topic and go chapter & verse."

It is possible to say to this, that we know about peasant "revolts" all over Europe before and after the peasant's war of 1525, but never again and never before in that scale, ranging from Saxonia to Austria to Alsace, Tyrol ... . For some of the peasant leaders it was meant to be a national (mostly political) revolution. That's right. But all that couldn't have taken place without the massiv attack of Luther against the pope in Rome and his famous "Freedom of a Christian" ("Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen"). This gave the peasants the arguments and the "emotions" for longing for political and local freedoms also against the local authorities, against the nobility, against the bishops. In that scale it was never seen before, never seen again.