Essay: 2022 is the WORST year in the history of atheism
2021 was a HORRIBLE year for atheism and now this!
See also: 2021 is the WORST year in the history of atheism
The atheist population mostly resides in East Asia (particularly China) and in secular Europe/Australia primarily among whites.[1] See: Global atheism
During economic recessionary times, the fertility rate of a population often drops and this occurred during the 2007/2008 recession.[2] As can be seen in the sections below, China and Europe are not doing well economically and things look rather gloomy in terms of the future. And the atheist population already has a subreplacement level of births (See: Atheism and fertility rates).
Professor Eric Kaufmann, who teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London, specializes in the academic area of how demographic changes affect religion/irreligion and politics. Kaufmann is an agnostic.
On December 23, 2012, Kaufmann wrote:
| “ | I argue that 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious.
On the other hand, the secular West and East Asia has very low fertility and a rapidly aging population... In the coming decades, the developed world's demand for workers to pay its pensions and work in its service sector will soar alongside the booming supply of young people in the third world. Ergo, we can expect significant immigration to the secular West which will import religious revival on the back of ethnic change. In addition, those with religious beliefs tend to have higher birth rates than the secular population, with fundamentalists having far larger families. The epicentre of these trends will be in immigration gateway cities like New York (a third white), Amsterdam (half Dutch), Los Angeles (28% white), and London, 45% white British.[3] [4] |
” |
Regarding the Western World as a whole and the growth of the religious population in the West, Kaufmann wrote:
| “ | ...this paper claims that the developing world will not only never catch up, but that, ironically, it is the West which will increasingly come to resemble the developing world. Committed religious populations are growing in the West, and will reverse the march of secularism before 2050. The logic which is driving this apparently anti-modern development is demography, a shadowy historical force whose power multiplies exponentially with the modernisation process. Demography is about raw numbers, and, in an age of low mortality, its chief components are fertility and migration.[5] | ” |
Contents
China and atheism
See also: Atheism and China
China has the world's largest atheist population and practices state atheism.[6][7] China has one of the highest rates of atheism in the world.[6][7] According to a 2012 Worldwide Independent Network/Gallup International Association (WIN/GIA) poll, 47% of Chinese people were convinced atheists, and a further 30% were not religious. In comparison, only 14% considered themselves to be religious.[8]
East Asia contains about 25 percent of the world's population. China's population represents 20 percent of the people on earth.[9]
Razib Khan points out in Discover Magazine, "most secular nations in the world are those of East Asia, in particular what are often termed “Confucian societies.” It is likely therefore that the majority of the world’s atheists are actually East Asian."[10] See: Asian atheism and Global atheism
China is experiencing economic hardship and a growing Christian population
- China’s official growth figures are bad enough to be believed, The Economist, July 28, 2022
- China property sales could plunge by one-third, analysts say, as crisis deepens, The Guardian, July 2022.
- Inflation, interest rate hikes and China lockdowns hitting Asia’s growth outlook, The Japan Times, July 27, 2022
YouTuber's Graham Stephan, who has experience in realty, published the video: China’s ENTIRE Economy Is About To Collapse. The argument against an imminent financial collapse is given at: Will the Bubble Still Not Pop? A Discussion of China’s Economic Future
Germany's DW News published a video entitled: Can China's economy afford a war with Taiwan?
There was already a risk that the Chinese Communist Party would be overthrown and the end of state atheism would cause the already explosive growth of Christianity in China to be further turbocharged (see: Future of atheism in China and 2021 was a bad year for China).
In 2020, The Economist published an article entitled Protestant Christianity is booming in China which indicated:
| “ | As for China’s Christians, their numbers continue to grow. The government reckons that about 200m of China’s 1.4bn people are religious. Although most practice traditional Chinese religions such as Taoism, and longer-standing foreign imports such as Buddhism, Protestant Christianity is probably the fastest-growing faith, with at least 38m adherents today (about 3% of the population), up from 22m a decade ago, according to the government’s count. The true number is probably much higher: perhaps as many as 22m more Chinese Protestants worship in unregistered “underground” churches, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Notre Dame. As China also has 10m-12m Catholics, there are more Christians in China today than in France (38m) or Germany (43m). Combined, Christians and the country’s estimated 23m Muslims may now outnumber the membership of the Communist Party (92m). Indeed, an unknown number of party members go to church as well as local committee meetings.[1] | ” |
To see the magnitude of the explosive growth of Christianity in China, look at this graph about the growth of Christianity in China in a DW news story about Chinese Christianity (DW is a mainstream news outlet in Germany).
For more information, please see: East Asia and global desecularization
See: Atheism and the coronavirus pandemic.
See also: Internet atheism and the coronavirus pandemic
The coronavirus pandemic started in atheist-controlled, communist China that allowed thousands of COVID-19 infected people to leave China during the early stage of the pandemic when the world was not aware of it.[12] China has state atheism. In terms of world's countries, China has the largest atheist population in the world (see: Atheism and China). Most of the world's atheists are East Asians (see: Asian atheism and Global atheism).
As can be seen via the link below, several atheist websites did very poorly during the coronavirus pandemic and lost a large amount of their traffic since the early part of 2020.
Please see: Internet atheism and the coronavirus pandemic
On the other hand, there were major Christian websites that saw their web traffic substantially grow during the coronavirus pandemic (See: Christian websites and the coronavirus pandemic).
Europe is experiencing economic hardship
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Russia has a large Russian Orthodox population.
News Stories: Europe's economy is experiencing hardship
- Blistering heat threatens a European economy that teeters on the brink, CNN, July 23, 2022
- Putin’s new gas squeeze condemns Europe to recession and a hard winter of rationing, CNBC, July 2022
User: Conservative's essays
See also
Notes
- ↑ A surprising map of where the world’s atheists live, By Max Fisher and Caitlin Dewey, Washington Post, May 23, 2013
- ↑ Economic recession and fertility in the developed world, Popul Dev Rev. 2011;37(2):267-306. doi: 10.1111/j.1728-4457.2011.00411.x.
- ↑ London: A Rising Island of Religion in a Secular Sea by Eric Kaufmann, Huffington Post, 2012
- ↑ 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious, Tuesday, April 30, 2013
- ↑ Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century by Eric Kaufmann
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Top 50 Countries With Highest Proportion of Atheists / Agnostics (Zuckerman, 2005)
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 A surprising map of where the world’s atheists live, Washington Post By Max Fisher and Caitlin Dewey May 23, 2013
- ↑ "Global Index of Religiosity and Atheism", Gallup. Retrieved on 2012-11-28.
- ↑ The Growth of Christianity in East Asia
- ↑ Most atheists are not white & other non-fairy tales, Discover magazine
- ↑
- Top 50 Countries With Highest Proportion of Atheists / Agnostics (Zuckerman, 2005)
- A surprising map of where the world’s atheists live, Washington Post By Max Fisher and Caitlin Dewey May 23, 2013
- ↑ To Confront China After Coronavirus, We Must See the Bigger Picture, National Review
- ↑ 10 projections for the global population in 2050 By Rakesh Kochhar, Pew Research Forum, February 3, 2014
