God laughs

 I thought I had heard or read it all. I have a large library of books that I have been reading for 40 years. Surely, all the arguments that could be made have been made and I have seen them? Surely not! Why? Because, apparently, God laughs – God laughs a lot, and it is God's intention to constantly surprise us; just when we think we understand reality we find we don't. Hence the title of Dante's masterpiece: the Divine Comedy.

What am I talking about? I am talking about an idea and research I have never seen before. I am talking about the astounding research of Dr Michael Blume, a researcher at Jena University in Germany (www.scilogs.eu/en/blog/biology-of-religion/content/about). He recently did a paper featured in the Sunday Times that looked at the birth rates of atheists and believers (or theists) across 82 countries. I say 'believers' here because he looked at a whole raft of religions and sects, and within them found significant differences, but for the central thrust of what he found the message is clear: that there is a downside to being an atheist, namely, that over time one's genes are more likely to die out!!! Yes, correct – you have it – the irony – from an evolutionary perspective non-belief, atheism, renders one liable to obsolescence and extinction! How ironically funny is that?

This is highly gratifying for people like myself who have a belief in God and are sick to death of the aggressive parrots of atheism suggesting not only that belief in God is some kind of sickness, but that the atheistic life style is somehow progressive and superior. In fact, it turns out to be quite the opposite.

What Blume measured was the birthrate of avowed believers and atheists. He found that those who worshipped more than once a week averaged 2.5 children, and those who never worshipped averaged 1.7 children. Clearly, to average 1.7 children is to fall below the replacement number needed to sustain the human race.

I did a brief calculation on this, not being a mathematician – so feel free to dispute the figures – but if we take five generations and assume each atheist couple beget more atheists (a big assumption – I myself have atheistic parents but do not accept their beliefs), then at 1.7 children on average this produces by the fifth generation 14.20 children in total. On the other hand, five generations of 2.5 children produces 97.66 children. This is startling – and to me a vindication of theism, because it is fundamentally a vindication of hope, of faith and actually of life itself.

Reasons given why atheists are less productive or, should we say, less reproductive, are, to quote Blume: “The research suggests that the key fact is simply that the more religious people are, the more children they tend to have. This is because most religions place a high value on child-bearing, suggesting it is a holy duty. Without religion, by contrast, atheists often see far less point in having children and so have smaller families or none at all.” In short, we reach the point with atheists which is that life has no point, so they don't bother procreating. An individual atheist may disguise this – may have twelve children – but the big numbers over time don't lie: atheism is against life, and even against its own favourite theory of evolution, because there literally is no future in it. Religious belief clearly give a competitive advantage in the struggle to survive.

Professor Jesse Bering, director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University, Belfast, who has just published "The God Instinct", a book on the origins of religion, observes: "As a childless gay atheist I suspect my own genes have a very mortal future ahead. But for any godless hetero-couples reading this, toss your contraceptives and get busy in the bedroom. Either that or, perish the thought, God isn't going anywhere any time soon."

Ideas and research clearly don't change beliefs – they just lead the opposition to more furious activity to prove their point. And all the while, God laughs – and the children keep on coming!