Consequent Infidel

Hi all, need your opinions.

Its quite noticable How the more a society Gets secularized, the More "selfish" people get When it come to Building a family and make the sacrifice of breeding kids , seeing How Europe for example , since it got increasingly seculaarized in the last decades suffer from disturbingly Collapsed birthrates, and thus resorting to "import" people from outside who may outnumber the natives in the future by their High birthrate, and may Cause some severe Cultural and ethnic Trouble in the future with the hosting community due to these immigrants beeing very resisting to assimilabling into the host community...as explained in this article...

How can a secular , de-religionized society maintain its people's will to Build a family and Breed, to keep nessisery birthrates? from an atheist's point of view?

AspenMama

I believe that this is a more GRD topic than a Secular Lifestyle issue. Please keep in mind, however, that this is a request for an atheist viewpoint on this issue.
--- AspenMama, SL Moderator

Vorkosigan

How do you know that decreasing religiousity is the cause of low birthrates? Don't they show up across all cultures as women exit their more traditional social roles, incomes rise, birth control becomes more widely available.....it seems that both falling birth rates and decreasing religosity are simply outgrowths of more fundamental changes.....and that neither has anything to do with the particular of how immigration policy is constructed.

Vorkosigan

Radcliffe Emerson

Why do we need to keep birthrates up? The planet is getting overcrowded now.

I have atheist friends though who have gotten married, had kids, are raising the kids to be decent.

All minus any theistic beliefs.

McNamara

I don't see how lack of religious beliefs automatically decreases a couple's desire to have children. There is no correlation that I've seen. It's probably more likely that atheists would rather have one or two children than the half-dozen or so that very religious families sometimes have, but that's different than wanting no children.

Some religions encourage people to have as many kids as possible, and to indoctrinate them into the religion to increase the number of believers. Also, people in oppressive situations may decide to have alot of kids because it's the only source of joy in their life, and they have a desire to leave a legacy behind. A first-world, secular society gives people better things to do with their lives than raising six kids. Having two kids is much more responsible than six as well, not only because it will be eaiser to devote more time and resources to the individual children, but because it reduces the crowding of the planet.

I don't want to have kids of my own, but will probably adopt kids instead. There are plenty of them out there who don't have a good home.

Shake

Why would anyone have to be "imported" as you said? What's wrong with a population actually decreasing? I'm afraid I don't understand your idea of "necessary birthrates." Necessary for what?

I must agree with McNamara. Lack of religious belief does not correlate (necessarily) with wanting fewer (or no) children. The negation is true in some cases though. Take Catholicism for example ... their condemnation of artificial birth control methods leads to larger families.

Oh yeah, and that link now goes to an article about an alleged Cold War between the EU and the US.

lpetrich

Actually, the idea that the religion business is desirable as Opium for the People is an old one. In Plato's Republic, as described in his dialogue with that name, the sacred books of Plato's society were to be banned as containing numerous bad examples, like heroes lamenting and gods laughing. In their place would be a custom-made religion/ideology that was designed to "prove" the legitimacy of the community's philosopher-rulers, one which Plato called a "royal lie".

This view was apparently fairly common; Strabo and Polybius also expressed it, and Cicero took it seriously in his book On the Nature of the Gods.

Fast-forwarding about 1500 years, Niccolo Machiavelli expressed a similar view in his Discourses; he considers the religion business good as a social cement, without it needing any truth; he applauded the ancient Roman authorities for pretending to believe in official divinations of the will of the Gods, and for punishing those who did not respect them. And in his Prince, he recommended that leaders make themselves seem virtuous, no matter how crooked they really are.

Something like this view continues to be common, though not expressed as honestly as in previous centuries.

getalong

By having and maintaining strong social values that reinforce those attributes. Assuming they are desireable in the first place.

getalong

Godless Wonder

First, I dont' think the case that secularism is the cause of low birth retes has been made. (It may be the case, but I'm not aware of the data which support this.)

Second, smeg-for-breakfast, there are already way way too many people as it is. Low birth rates and declining human population are a good thing, long term. (Short term, esp. economically, it could be bad. But long term, definitely a lower population of humans is a good thing. Either that, or we need to become much smaller humans, say 1/8th size. But then the eagles become a problem . . . )

Starboy

If there is a connection between low birth rates and anything it would be low birth rates and education. With a well educated society (this would include all members not just the men) comes the eradication of superstition, hopelessness, poverty, religion and a myriad of other social ills that plague poorly educated societies.

Starboy