2023-12-01

Panel

We will talk about the relationship between religion and fertility.

Kevin dollan, jonathan anomaly, malcolm collins, simone collins

MC: Just to talk about religion and fertility, when we started the Pronatalist Foundation we were looking at what causes fertility rates to decline. What causes higher fertility rates? One thing stands out more in the data. It's obvious to anyone looking at this. The single biggest predictor of an individual's fertility other than their income which plays a big role is their religious or cultural group. That's the determinant of an individual's fertility. There's a lot of little side things that contribute or detract. But because of that, it's an important topic to dig into. Kevin, could you start on this topic? In putting on this conference, how did you think about the concept of religion and fertility?

KD: The biggest challenge I see in the religion+fertility conversation is that hte people who really believe in some sort of metaphysical certain non-empirical religious belief wonder how much common ground they can have with someone who does not have a sincere faithful belief. On the other side, the difficulty I see with the people who are tech-tribe who are very intelligent engineering-mindset towards this thing is that they have this instrumental approach to it. Well gosh, religion is a valuable social technology and if we can tweak it the right way and adopt all the religious beliefs that give us the right +3 TRF bonus stats on our little video game of fertility then maybe we'll all be set. I frankly don't think that's how it works. I think religion generates sacrifice and thereby generates fertility in people who actually believe it and buy it.

MC: In many cultural groups, and in religions, you see falling fertility rates. What about modifyin gtheir culture to increase their fertility rates in a divine context? Would they be encouraged to look at that? Or would it be harder for those groups to adopt that?

KD: It seems to me that if you don't have an actual religion organized the reproduction not just of your culture but reproduction of children in a way that fits into your metaphysics then I think you're going to see.... like, shakers in a sense are very trad. They had all sorts of really I don't know old-timey religious beliefs. But because they had no place for sex or children, they evaporated. So I think you can't make it up. You can't tell someone, what if you believed things that were more fertility inducing? The problem is they don't belief that. You can't tell religious people you should believe in god because god would increase your sperm count. It wouldn't work.

JA: I had this idea for the panel a few days ago. Over the past few hundred years, especially since the French revolution, is that wealth and fertility are inversely correlated. In non-liberal societies, religious personalities and by which I mean personality traits from which religiosity comes whether you are Mormon or Muslim or Christian.. those are the best predictors between countries and within countries of overall fertility. Psychologists have argued that we are fundamentally a religious species. Religiosity has evolved and so overall T-LOESCE or pro-natal is probably evolutionarily adaptive even if it doesn't latch on to reality.

JA: At Duke, I used to do these freshmen reading groups. Every year I would assign the 2012 book "Righteous Mind: Why Good people disagree about politics and religion". As a liberal atheist, he argues we are fundamentally a religious species. Darwin had the same thought. One of the most striking resting passages in that book...

"Societies that forego the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what happens to them over the next several generations."

"“Societies that forego the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known in turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).” (Haidt p. 313)"

JA: Is religion necessary to boost fertility rates? If religion is not necessary, and I don't know, it might be, is there any proxy for it? Is there anything that we can replace religion with that might serve the same function? One possibility is that Plato and Aristotle thought there were possibilities but it tended to evolve around a political society or ethnicity. They saw political societies as biomasses that produce more and better people. They saw religion as playing a role, but not an essential role. They thought of this as reproducing and improving the societies that they live in.

MC: Framing wise.. the three different groups and perspectives here are... Kevin is mormon. Jonathan Anomaly is atheist. And we are born atheists that created our own religion. Do you feel we believe our own religion in the way that religious people believe it or are we just playing with dials?

SC: That is a good question. I grew up atheist. I am surprised by the way I "got god", to use a term from a Starship Troopers sequel. I glommed on to having a strong sense of culture and religion. Throughout my life I realized I really craved it and as soon as I had it, I was able to get over my anxieties and I was able to do so much more than I was before. When you've "got god", you have something stronger than yourself that enables you to do things that you couldn't do as an individual.

SC: Normally I would assume that religion would be about first about finding faith in a god or deity and then finding all the cultures and tradition follows. But we did the opposite: we intentionally developed a set of values and practices and then a metaphysical belief that is ... it's like the hard science fiction of religion. Like technically this stuff could be true, and then we found that the faith followed all these strange traditions that we artificially developed. When things happen, we turn to each other and say it was the future police and we believe it. It's really interesting to see how this happened. We have been evolved to have faith and lean into it. It was fun to see how that was created.

KD: Your religion is represented in the movie Interstellar? In Interstellar, the premise is that.. extremely powerful beings beyond time and space help to save humanity in its hour of dire need. Yes, future police. If you talk to latter day saints who have seen that movie, they will be like, it's flipping a few things.. it's sort of like, there's some garbling or something, but that's kind of our movie. There's a lot of in terms of the destiny of humankind to become that kind of transcendant being and the way you are involved in shepherding your descendants to that outcome in the way your ancestors were involved and this whole great time chain of being... I would just argue that I don't believe you manufactured it.

MC: We don't argue that either. It was gifted to us by the divine being.

KD: It's not so much is religion necessary or sufficient. Absolutely everyone has something that they define as what it is all about. A dangerous fraction of people answer with "nothing". It is an active belief in nihilism. That belief is what I think is behind these destructive and self-destructive character of the urban mono-culture you guys discussed. The people that I want to see succeed are the people who either have a positive answer to that question or are seeking a positive answer to that question.

MC: I would argue it's actually worse than nihilism but rather negative utilitarianism where negative emotions have negative value but positive emotions don't have positive value. At a progressive party, I mention declining birth rates and someone pipes up and asks well is it really so bad if we go extinct. They really believe the planet and universe would be better without sentient life.

KD: I don't think that is rooted in any factual or empirical analysis of anything. I think that's just pain speaking.

MC: Like you, I want to support any group who is open to a pluralistic and flourishing human species.

JA: I think we should open it up to the audience actually. Kevin, do you think there could be something that serves the role of religion that-- we know that religion is not sufficient to create the outcomes you are interested in. Go to Church now, and you will see anti-natalist talk and trans flags. It's not clear that this tradition will sustain. "Real religion has never been tried". 100 years ago, GB Shaw and others-- eugenics was part of it-- Galton-- they thought they could create a secular religion that was concerned with 500 years, 1000 years and building a great civilization. Do you think something like that could work, or does it necessarily involve a belief in god or a great chain of being and metaphysical conception?

KD: That's either the Straussian plato's great lie, or it's the Deus Ex grand inquisitor. Are you familiar with that? The grand inquisitor in Deus Ex is... he tells a story where the grand inquisitor meets Christ in Spain I think. The grand inquisitor says it would be better if you went away because we actually have the answers and your thing is disruptive and causing people psychological pain and most of them are going to hell anyway so let us shepherd them to a peaceful acquiescance. I don't think that it can be built on a foundation of lies. For one thing, if you have this thesis that the smart people need to be telling the lies and stupid people need to believe them, then who will have the babies? It's going to be the stupid people. Of course it's abhorrent and disgusting psychologically to me, but also it doesn't work.

SC: Jonny, you're an atheist. Do you plan on choosing a religion or selecting a religion? Or are you going to create something and live by that to guide you?

JA: I don't consider atheism part of my identity. I am technically agnostic. To channel Shaw... at the end of Man and Superman, one of his characters says they are actually in hell and it's act 3. He says, the fact that religion makes people happy is no more to the point to the fact that the drunken man is happier than the sober one. I think the point is that religion has to be sincere or the set of commitments whether they mimic religion or the real thing they must be sincere in order to motivate action.

SC: If you have 10 kids, you have done nothing if those kids don't make more kids. You must pass on a culture. Whta kind of culture or moral framework will you raise your kids with or what values in order to get those great grandkids?

JA: Them being part of a great civilization. I will say more tomorrow. Let's open it up to the audience.

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KD: ... most people now have to synthesize their own values from stellar hydrogen or something, and most people are completely incapable of this. I think this causes despair in dating outside of a common framework. Explain to me how having those common answers is different from having religion.

MC: When I hear people complain about community, I hear how they live in a polyamorous group house and they will be complaining about community but they live with more people than me. I think the complaint about community is a misplaced complaint. Our cultural beliefs about religion are very different. But we sort of follow the same metaphysical framework where we are inspired by a great power, and the way we culturally relate to this is different.

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Q: Never has a US president made a pronouncement asking people to make more babies. Pro-natalism is just not in the zeitgeist.

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JA: I don't think religion is a proxy for community. But I do think it's a glue that keeps community together. ... true religion usually involves supernatural belief, it doesn't have to but it typically does. More importantly, it involves a deep sense of meaning and it's meaning well beyond ourselves and beyond any material goals we might have. That's really difficult to replace. I like your point, but I disagree and I think religion is very different from everything else that binds communities or gets us to any of these procreation goals.