That conclusion does nothing to support or contradict the common idea that the Czech Republic is the most atheistic in the world. The census data does not ask, “Do you believe in God?” but only in what religious organization a person claims membership.

It seems especially cold that religion’s extinction would be predicted not by an impassioned atheist or a humanist weary of the aggression perpetrated in God’s name, but by a trio of physicists and mathematicians who are altogether neutral about what their study suggests.

According to a study titled “Modeling the Decline of Religion,” by midcentury, more than 90 percent of Czechs will be nonaffiliated, a member not of any creed or physical church but rather the larger group of the irreligious.

Already, according to the last census, nearly 60 percent of Czechs disavow religious affiliation.

Daniel Abrams, from the Department of Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics at Northwestern University, had already used a similar method to plot the projected life-spans of languages in the world, and in this study used nonlinear dynamics and a “simple mathematical model” to explain a different social phenomenon, that of religion.

The study used census data dating back 100 years in nine secular democracies: Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland . If found that religious nonaffiliation is “growing rapidly,” implying an unstable co-existence of religious and irreligious segments; more than 90 percent of Czechs will not adhere to any religion by 2050

The paper, in fact, is filled with mathematical formulas that would seem complicated to laypeople, but they were used to express sociological theorems.

“These are two effects sociologists report as important influences in driving social change,” Abrams told The Prague Post. “The first one is the majority effect. That’s the idea that more people are likely to switch to a group with more members. But people are also more likely to switch to a group of higher personal utility, I mean, not just the agreement of spiritual beliefs but also social advantages, political or economic advantages from joining a group in some countries.”

The Czech Republic led the pack of nine countries the study examined, using census data stretching back 100 years. However, Abrams acknowledged a gap in the country’s census data between 1950 and 1991, meaning its predictive power was the weakest among the countries studied. Nevertheless, the team felt confident in being able to draw a conclusion.

That conclusion does nothing to support or contradict the common idea that the Czech Republic is the most atheistic in the world. The census data does not ask, “Do you believe in God?” but only in what religious organization a person claims membership……

As for the study itself, Halík dismissed it as “rather stupid,” and rattled off a long list of times in history when religion was predicted to die off. Thomas Woolston, for instance, the English deist who in the early 18th century predicted Christianity would be dead by 1900. Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, wrote the same prediction to Voltaire.

“This study is absolutely not serious,” Halík added. “We can predict by statistics the behavior of animals, but not religious trends. Religion was declining in the 18th century, but in the 19th century, there was the great awakening in America, and religion became more popular again. It goes up and down.”

Read More: http://www.praguepost.com/news/8141-study-religion-dying-out-among-czechs.html

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