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Book review: The wheel of history turns to the gods: Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?

By Alliance Alert

At Discover Magazine, Razib Khan reviews Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth by Eric Kaufmann: "The central idea of the book is derived from the fact that the endogenous growth rates of religious segments of developed societies can often be rather high. The broader implication is that history moves in cycles, and that the current age of secularism is nearing its peak, and inevitable demographic forces will see the tide retreat . . . Before we move to specifics, a few general trends highlighted in Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth. First, the simple one: the highly fertile religious nations are waxing in population, while secular regions are stagnant, or even in decline. In general Europe and European dominated societies are in the second class, along with East Asia. Basically the two regions of the world which most people reading this weblog would consider at an advanced state of modernity. In contrast, in the Islamic world, and in the more religious nations of Latin America (exclude the southern cone), Africa, and South Asia, secularism is weak as a mass phenomenon (though it has some purchase among elites in Latin America and India), and fertility is still high. Even in nations which are now sub-replacement, such as Iran, will grow in population because of demographic inertia. The young have not entered their peak childbearing years."

Full post as published by Constitutionally Correct on October 22, 2010 (boomark / email).