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Why is there a global decline in religious practice?

2023-09-07 20:54:00, Blog Ross Pomeroy

Since the beginning of this century, the practice of religious beliefs has suffered a worldwide retreat. According to the results from the World Values ??Survey, conducted between 2007-2019, the importance of God in human life fell on average in 39 of the 44 countries analyzed.

Additionally, the percentage of people who identify as non-religious has increased by more than 10 percent in countries such as Singapore, Iceland, Chile, and South Korea over the past decade. The decline in religious belief is even more striking in the United States.

During the years 1940-2000, church membership hovered around 70 percent of the population. With the beginning of the new millennium, it suffered a significant decline. In 2020, church membership was only 47 percent. Meanwhile, between 2007 and 2020, the percentage of Americans who were not affiliated with any religion rose from 16 to 30 percent.

Belief in and worship of supernatural beings, gods, and deities has been a fundamental aspect of human existence for thousands of years. However, the decline in the following of religious beliefs is more than obvious. But what can explain this upheaval in global society?

Technological progress is the aspect that attracts the most attention of researchers as a possible explanation. People used to turn to religious faith for answers and to solve problems. Now we have the technology.

"When people are able to use technology to predict the weather, diagnose and treat disease, and produce resources, they may rely less on religious beliefs and practices," an international team of researchers recently wrote in a published study. in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences".

But if technology is eroding people's need for religion, then why wasn't there a massive decline in religious belief during the Industrial Revolution, the Space Race, or the expansion of personal computing? Why has the decline of religion become so widespread and rapid only in recent years?

Researchers offered a hypothesis for this phenomenon: It is not technology itself that diminishes the role of religion in people's lives, but automation in the form of robotics and Artificial Intelligence, which became prominent only at the beginning of this century.

“This claim is based on recent research on lay perceptions of automation. Such studies show that people attribute abilities that border on the supernatural to automation technology. Historically, people have turned to supernatural agents and religious clerics to solve instrumental problems beyond the realm of human ability. These problems may seem more solvable for people who work and live in highly automated spaces," they write.

To test their assumptions, the researchers conducted 4 experiments. In the first, they observed the decline in religious practices between 2006 and 2019 in 68 countries through a yes-or-no survey of more than 2 million respondents: "Is religion an important part of your life?" daily?".

They then correlated this data with the amount of industrial robots in each country.

"The number of the latter was strongly and negatively associated with religion across the globe," they reported.

This relationship existed even when verified in relation to GDP per capita, telecommunications development and energy development.

In the other experiment, the scientists focused only on the decline of religious belief in the United States, comparing religion and the development of robotics in metropolitan areas between 2008 and 2016.

"Metropolitan areas with higher levels of robotics growth experienced an annual decline of about 3 percent in religious belief in each decade," they reported.

In the third experiment, the researchers observed 46,680 individuals in a community between 2009 and 2020, measuring their self-reported belief in God and their exposure to automation in the jobs they did. They found that individuals working in jobs with higher exposure to Artificial Intelligence and robotics reported a significantly greater decline in religious belief over time.

"People in jobs with high exposure to Artificial Intelligence were 45 percent less likely to believe in God, compared to people in occupations with an average level of exposure to AI," the authors write. However, the last experiment was conducted at a more local level.

The researchers monitored 238 employees within an organization, directly measuring their exposure to AI and their religious belief. Again, exposure to AI was found to be associated with a decline in religious belief. All studies are correlational, and therefore do not prove causation.

But taken together, they strongly support the authors' claim that automation reduces religious belief. "Our studies show that automation is linked to the decline of faith in many countries, whether Christian, Muslim or Buddhist, and in all regions of the world such as North America, South Asia and Oceania," they said./ " Big Think ” - Translated and adapted by CNA