Dying faith: Is religion going extinct?

Science questions the emergence of religion.

A recently published study questions the origins of moralizing religions and their eventual downfall.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - In a study titled "Increased Affluence Explains the Emergence of Ascetic Wisdoms and Moralizing Religions," researchers Nicholas Baumard, Alexandre Hyafil, Ian Morris and Pascal Boyer investigate the correlation between the rise of moralizing religions, such as Christianity and Buddhism, with economic development, population sizes and political complexities.

In layman's terms, the study was designed to help researchers discover if religion was the result of the elite's discomfort of the lower class populations' swell to dangerously uncontrollable numbers.

As evolutionary psychologist Dr. Nicolas Baumard, at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris told Daily Mail, the rich lived slowly. They enjoyed their lives in comfort and had children later in life - and fewer of them.

While the elites lived their comfortable, slow-paced lifestyles, the lower classes lived fast and died young. As the poor population began to swell, the upper class realized they had to do something to keep the lower classes in check.

He explained the elite promoted moralizing gods to keep sexually active and aggressive lower classes from usurping them, but Dr. Baumard believes the spread of affluence can lead to the death of religion.

Dr. Baumard explained: "As more and more people become affluent and adopt a slow strategy, the need to morally condemn fast strategies decreases, and with it the benefit of holding religious beliefs that justify doing so. If this is true, and our environment continues to improve, then like the Greco-Roman religions before them, Christianity and other moralizing religions could eventually vanish."

In the study, Baumard and his colleagues claim the poor, who did not have access to as much food as the rich, had different psychological outlooks, which made them both predictable and dangerous to the elite.

"You are clearly at a disadvantage if you follow a slow strategy when others follow a faster strategy - if you are faithful when others grab sexual opportunities, if you forgive when others avenge, if you work when others have fun."

Dr. Baumard described how the disadvantage to the elite was fought by morally condemning the pace of the lower classes. According to the study, the higher classes adopted then promoted new religions that pushed slow morality and punishment for anyone who steps out of line.

"The same idea could also explain the gradual decline of moralising religion in wealthier parts of the world such as Western Europe and the northern parts of North America," he explained.

Over the course of the study, researchers realized the promotion of preexisting, moral religions boomed during the "Axial Age" and it conveniently converged with affluence. In the end, researchers discovered political issues and population size have nothing to do with the Axial Age

Researchers simply found that economic development was to blame for the Axial Age's timing, but ultimately a rise in he upper class will not result in a fall of moralizing religions.

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