Religious substitution and the power of meaning

The Spiritual Species by Clay Routledge

• The underlying thesis of this article is that falling belief in mainline Christianity is compensated by rising belief in non-rational entities and phenomena. This has costs, because belief in religion is linked to an enhanced sense of freedom and agency.

• This reminds me of the premise of Viktor Frankl’s logotherapy, whereby people with a strong sense of meaning are far more likely to survive difficult circumstances. From this, I would infer that they would also be more courageous in undertaking difficult tasks and high risks, such as starting a comany or resisting an oppressive regime. I will discuss how this insight can be integrated into Metasophism in Chapter 12.

• Some interesting quotes and statistics from the article:

  • Just in the last decade, according to Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who describe themselves as Christian has decreased from 77% to 65%, while the number of religiously unaffiliated is up from 17% to 26%.

  • A 2003 Gallup survey found that around three-fourths of Americans endorse some type of paranormal belief — in other words, they believe in such things as ghosts, witchcraft, reincarnation, astrology, telepathy, or clairvoyance. What's more, the less people are engaged in traditional religious practices, the more inclined they are to hold alternative supernatural and paranormal beliefs. For instance, Pew found that people who do not frequently attend church are twice as likely to believe in ghosts as are regular churchgoers.

  • Such trends are not confined to the United States. A survey of Canadians found that though young adults are less likely than older adults to believe in God and Jesus Christ as the son of God, they are equally or more likely than older adults to believe in life after death, the existence of angels, and people's ability to communicate with the spiritual realm. Surveys in the United Kingdom and Sweden also show that belief in ghosts has been rising in recent decades.

  • Among Americans with aspirations to start a business, the more they believed in their ability to live a meaningful life (existential agency), the more they felt motivated to pursue their entrepreneurial ambitions. More broadly, we found that greater existential agency was positively associated with greater support for economic freedom.