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The Future of Religion

This is a PAST event. See "Meeting Notes" section for audio, video, documents and other information.

Original event date/time: Friday July 28th, 2006, 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm

A discussion of the future of religion per "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason" by Sam Harris.

Abstract:

Worldwide, Islam is growing rapidly. Christianity, while growing in absolute terms, is growing slower than the world's population growth, meaning it is losing ground -- as is nearly every other religion except Islam. Christianity is still the largest, with about 2 billion adherents (in hundreds of denominations). Islam has about 1.3 billion adherents, but is growing rapidly and should overtake Christianity in about 3 decades. Is Islam the religious future of the world? Is Islam clashing with the (Christian) West?

In 1993, Samuel P. Huntington wrote "The Clash of Civilizations". In his view, at the largest possible scale, the world is organized into "civilizations" largely along religious lines: with the Christian Western civilization, the Sinec (Confucianist) civilization centered around China, the Orthodox civilization centered around Russia, the Animist civilization in sub-Saharan Africa, the Hindu civilization centered around India, and of course, the Islamic civilization centered around the Middle East being the major civilizations of the world. Some view his observations as prophetic, given the daily headlines we have today. Others disagree, and say he is just being racist or enthnocentric. What do you think?

To discuss this, come to our discussion group, Friday, July 28, 2006, 6-8 PM, at Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl Street in Boulder. We meet at the Upper Room North, which is upstairs to the left and keep going to the back of the floor where the table is. We meet every month to discuss the future.

Here's some stuff you might enjoy reading online before you come.

The Clash Of Civilizations
Samuel P. Huntington, Foreign Affairs. Summer 1993, v72, n3, p22(28)

Waiting for the other shoe to drop: How inevitable is an Islamist future?
Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the world has been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Over 25 years later, however, the world is still waiting, trying to figure out where, when, and how it will happen: Where will the next Islamist takeover occur? Equally as important: Will that lead to a chain reaction of Islamist takeovers throughout the region?

Theocracywatch
Theocracywatch.org claims Christian "dominionists" are taking control of the Republican Party here in the United States.

Why Religion Must End
Interview with Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason"

The Great Divide: How Westerners and Muslims View Each Other
After a year marked by riots over cartoon portrayals of Muhammad, a major terrorist attack in London, and continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, most Muslims and Westerners are convinced that relations between them are generally bad these days. Many in the West see Muslims as fanatical, violent, and as lacking tolerance. Meanwhile, Muslims in the Middle East and Asia generally see Westerners as selfish, immoral and greedy - as well as violent and fanatical.

I orginally compiled this data on November 15th, 2005 (about 8 months ago). It should still be essentially correct.

The table above shows absolute numbers, but not the growth rates.

Here's the growth rates:

"Total" represents the growth rate of the world population as a whole. Religions that are above "Total" are growing, religions that are below "Total" are shrinking, as a percentage of world population, even if they are growing in absolute numbers.

Islam is the fastest growing major religion, so let's zero in on Islam.

Growth of Islam if current growth rates do not change:

The 2137 prediction is unlikely to come true because AI/robotics will be invented by then or something else will happen that will break the trend.

Here's a table of European countries and their Muslim populations (which I got from Dennis Gartman by way of John Mauldin):

Here's the data I used above (in CSV format so you can load it into your spreadsheet program):

http://www.waynerad.com/religion.csv

The original source of the data is the World Christian Database at http://worldchristiandatabase.org. I simply combined some of their publicly accessible data into a single spreadsheet. If you pay them and subscribe to their site, they promise even more detailed data for you.

If you look at other websites, such as Adherents.com, you'll find similar data.

http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html

They agree for the major religions, but for minor religions the numbers are different and the way the religions are categorized are somewhat different. Adherents.com ranks 'Nonreligious' at 16%, that is the biggest difference.

I didn't see any other website with growth rate data so that's why I used the World Christian Database.

This is a past event.

Meeting Notes:

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Future Salon Friday night!

I have to say, this was one of the more difficult discussion topics.

I thought one of the best insights came towards the end of the meeting, when the point was raised that when you question a person's religious beliefs, the usual response is that they dig in their heels and believe even more strongly! In other words, challenging religious beliefs tends to polarize, rather than move towards mutual agreement.

Because of this, Sam Harris's main point that religious beliefs should be challenged, because some of them are dangerous and can threaten world peace and stability, is wrong -- that doesn't work in practice.

Everyone brought up a lot of other good points, such as:

• The need for many people to have a system of concrete rules to follow.

• The need for many people to have a religious framework in which to make moral judgements

• The fact that most conflict in the world is "tribal" in nature -- and while there is often a correlation between tribes and religion, it's not necessarily so.

For example, in the United Arab Emirates, Muslims and Christians get along fine. Conversely, Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims are both Muslims, but don't get along.

For next month, we're going to look at the first topic -- How direct confrontation tends to polarize, and how can people actually learn to understand each other and get along. Conflict resolution, in other words.