06.30.06
Secularism and demography
Jack Miles on Dennett. The threat of fundamentalist demography is not much of a defense of religion. Let’s face it: the erosion of secularism by resurgent religion would be a world historical catastrophe.
The problem with Dennett’s critique is the failure to understand religion. But I fear monotheists don’t understand religion any better.
Fertility rates in the relatively secular blue states are 12 percent lower than in the relatively religious red states, according to Philip Longman in the March/April issue of Foreign Policy. In Europe, a similar correlation holds. As Longman writes: “Do you seldom, if ever, attend church? For whatever reason, people answering affirmatively . . . are far more likely to live alone, or in childless, cohabitating unions, than those who answer negatively.” For the most secular cultures in the world, Longman predicts a temporary drop in absolute population as secular liberals die out and a concomitant cultural transformation as, “by a process similar to survival of the fittest,” they are demographically replaced by religious conservatives.
A reproductive differential of this sort, of course, does not prove the truth of the patriarchal religion that Longman sees positively correlated with it, and Daniel C. Dennett would be the first to point this out. But the sense of siege that haunts the eminent philosopher’s “Breaking the Spell” may owe something to a background anxiety that though his side, the skeptical side, may have the best arguments, it is dying out anyway.
The spell of Dennett’s title is the spell of religion, which “must be broken and broken now.” The first hundred pages of his book are titled “Opening Pandora’s Box,” and he casts himself, rather amazingly, as Pandora in person. Ready or not, here she comes: “Those who are religious and believe religion to be the best hope of humankind cannot reasonably expect those of us who are skeptical to refrain from expressing our doubts. . . . They claim the moral high ground; maybe they deserve it and maybe they don’t. Let’s find out.”