Study Says Atheists Will Die Out, But That's Not Happening

We are our own enemy.

An “Atheist” vanity license plate is seen on Penn Jillette's Mini Cooper in Las Vegas.
An “Atheist” vanity license plate is seen on Penn Jillette's Mini Cooper in Las Vegas. (photo: Source: “{1}”, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons)

A new study says atheists will eventually die out because religious people tend to have larger families. I'm not sure this study holds up at all. In fact, I don't believe there's any way it's true. It's essentially the same argument as the Roe Effect which says that pro-life people tend to have less abortions than pro-choice people so therefore pro-lifers have more babies so in a few generations there will be many more pro-lifers.

Survey says....nope.

Yeah, it works to a point. We have more kids but then many of us offer them up as sacrifices to the culture of cool. I see it all the time that many good and serious pro-life Catholics keep sending their children to schools and colleges that actually seek to subvert their children's beliefs. But doing so, we're literally creating troops for the other side of the culture war. We keep sending our children to Georgetown, Fordham or Loyola Marymount and then we act shocked when our young adult turns on everything we ever taught them. And it's all for the low low price of $60,000 per year.

The Daily Caller has the details on the study which states:

A new study suggests atheists are slowly dying out simply because they have fewer babies than religious people. Though the the number of religious peoples has generally declined over the past century, because non-religious people tend to be less inclined to start a family and have lots of children, religious folks could gradually edge out atheists through simple demographic math.
Since “non-religious people are more likely to use birth control, their numbers are being overwhelmed by those who are highly religious,” the authors claim. The study defines religiosity as any religion, whether Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or other. Muslim birthrates far outnumbered all other religious categories in both the U.S. and Malaysia, and the authors further predict that by the end of the current century, “Islam will have surpassed Christianity as the world’s largest religion and will comprise over one fourth of all the persons on earth.”  
The researchers conducted the study to begin forming a “biologically informed prediction that counters the secularization thesis.” Even though the prevailing thought is that religion is dying out based on surveys of religion in America and around the world, the authors “envision a decline in secularism throughout the remainder of the twenty-first century, especially in industrialized countries.” Surveying more than 4,500 students in Malaysia and the U.S. on their religious beliefs and number of siblings, the authors proved what many already knew: Religious couples tend to have larger families than secular people.

Never mind the fact that Catholics contracept at the same rate as others. But even when we have children at some point in every life, they have to choose to be a Catholic. You can be raised in the faith but at some point you have to choose it, embrace it, believe it. Otherwise, you'll just be one of those people who says things like "I was raised Catholic but...(insert pro-abortion, go-go-gay marriage, yay female ordination quote here.)"

And right now, it takes a lot more bravery to embrace the faith than it does to say you're an atheist. Think about it, in the culture today you'd receive more flak for coming out as a believing Catholic than you would for being an active homosexual. Children are being indoctrinated by schools and the culture with a twisted view that Christians are backwards Neanderthals who hate hate hate and in their spare time curse at women in front of abortion clinics.

It's no surprise that the number of unreligious is rising. That's because it's the path of least resistance. The road well traveled. And that's the thing. We're in a culture war. It's a war over the culture. And too often we're talking politics and we should be talking culture. There are so many resources out there to help children stay on the right path. Have them read a book by Ryan Anderson about marriage, a book about the faith by Scott Hahn, or just have them read the National Catholic Register for goodness sakes.

So no, atheists aren't dying out. We're helping to create more atheists by not resisting the siren song of the culture. Christians are so inept at evangelization that we are the greatest evidence of supernatural intervention in keeping the Church alive. I sometimes think the Church has lasted 2,000 years in spite of us.