Atheists at risk of dying out due to belief in contraception, study claims [Independent]

Atheists at risk of dying out due to belief in contraception, study claims

Religious people are having more babies

Rachel Hosie | Monday 13 March 2017


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A new study has suggested that atheism is doomed because religious people have higher rates of reproduction.

Due to their lack of belief in contraception, religious believers are having more children than atheists, which could ultimately result in the end of atheism, the study suggests.

The findings fly in the face of popular discourse - and scientists’ predictions - which implies fewer and fewer people are religious nowadays.

But the new research claims religion is actually at no risk of dying out and the reverse is in fact the case.

Scientists from the US and Malaysia studied over 4,000 students, asking them about their religious beliefs and how many siblings they had.

They found that Malaysian atheists had 1.5 fewer siblings than the average.

The gap was narrower in the US, where students unaffiliated with any religion had 0.16 fewer siblings than average - non-religious couples had 3.04 children, whereas the average for the whole population is 3.2.

“It is ironical that effective birth control methods were developed primarily by secularists, and that these methods are serving to slowly diminish the proportional representation of secularists in forthcoming generations,” the researchers said.


Click here for the rest of the article:
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/atheists-dying-out-contraception-claims-study-a7626846.html

 

Wow.