• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Future of religions

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Try and understand this.

Why are Buddhists projected to decline? Is it because they are not having children?

The topic under discussion is about Islam.

I can imagine every projected growth or loss of any particular religion, will have its own specific reasons.

Whatever it may be in the case of buddhism - the point being made here is about islam.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
Except that it is.

If group A makes more babies then group B, then it follows logically that group A's population growth is higher then group B.

True. How do you compare that with the number of conversions? How many people converted from which theology to what and what are the rates? It will be interesting to look at them.

I don't have any access to conversion numbers and don't need them either.

I guess you answered that with this sentence showing your motive so that's awesome, cheers.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
The topic under discussion is about Islam.

I can imagine every projected growth or loss of any particular religion, will have its own specific reasons.

Whatever it may be in the case of buddhism - the point being made here is about islam.

So since you dont have the conversion stats, there is no point in making the assumption that "the only reason for growth is more babies". You have made that decision without analysis so that just shows a bias.

The reason for the decline of Buddhism is conversion. You are right. Every situation and every theology has varying reasons for the demise or the growth.

Hinduism stays steady with small growth which translates to its rate in comparison to population that its because of conversion their growth rate is on the decline. Not that they are not making babies.

The reason "unaffiliated" is projecting decline is due to conversion. Not that they are not making babies.

Muslims have 2.6 rate in comparison to 2.2 which is an 18% difference but growth rate of Islamic population for the past two decades is 46% so you should do the math. Also while all the other theologies decline is because either they are migrating to the moon or they are converting to this religion of Islam slowly. Simple deduction.

Cheers.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
So since you dont have the conversion stats

I don't need them. I gave you a link to an analysis of the reasons for Islam's growth rate from pewresearch. This analysis takes all numbers into account and it confirms that conversion rates are not a factor.

Google it yourself. Every single paper that analyses the reasons for Islam's growth, explains it by fertility rates.
I gave you one link also converning conversion rates in the US.
And as you can see there, it's a flat line. The amount converting to Islam is directly offset by the amount leaving Islam. It's about the same.

So conversion rates in the US do not account for the growth of Islam in the US.

But the amount of babies they have as opposed to the rest of the population, DOES.

, there is no point in making the assumption that "the only reason for growth is more babies".

Not an assumption. Rather: the conclusion of every single study, as supported by the statistics.

Muslims literally have the highest birthrate of all major religious groups, and conversion rates have no meaningfull impact.

You seem in denial. Or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing?

You have made that decision without analysis so that just shows a bias.

No. It's the conclusion of every study that looked into this.


The reason for the decline of Buddhism is conversion. You are right. Every situation and every theology has varying reasons for the demise or the growth.

Meaning that it doesn't matter here, as the topic is the underlying reasons for Islam's growth rate.
And as you yourself acknolwedge that every situation and every theology has its own reasons, then the reasons of growth/decline of Buddhism, or any other religion that isn't islam, is irrelevant to the underlying reasons of Islam's growth.

Muslims have 2.6 rate in comparison to 2.2 which is an 18% difference but growth rate of Islamic population for the past two decades is 46% so you should do the math. Also while all the other theologies decline is because either they are migrating to the moon or they are converting to this religion of Islam slowly. Simple deduction.

Funny how you slam me for making statements without sharing evidence (while I actually did share evidence), only to then engage in exactly that yourself (and not actually sharing evidence).
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
True. How do you compare that with the number of conversions? How many people converted from which theology to what and what are the rates? It will be interesting to look at them.

I gave you a link with stats from the US which shows that the amount converting is cancelled out by those deconverting.

Did you miss it, or are you deliberatly ignoring it?

I guess you answered that with this sentence showing your motive so that's awesome, cheers.

I also explained why I don't need them. And yet, I dug up stats from the US anyway. Which you just ignored apparantly.

I guess that shows us your motive as well.

Why don't you come up with stats that show that the growth of islam has nothing to do with muslims being on top of the stats of amount of kids per breeding pair, and instead is a result of conversion rates?

Answer: because such stats don't exist, because the growth is primarily the result of population growth. As every study I've ever seen concludes.
 

firedragon

Veteran Member
I gave you a link with stats from the US which shows that the amount converting is cancelled out by those deconverting.

Did you miss it, or are you deliberatly ignoring it?



I also explained why I don't need them. And yet, I dug up stats from the US anyway. Which you just ignored apparantly.

I guess that shows us your motive as well.

Why don't you come up with stats that show that the growth of islam has nothing to do with muslims being on top of the stats of amount of kids per breeding pair, and instead is a result of conversion rates?

Answer: because such stats don't exist, because the growth is primarily the result of population growth. As every study I've ever seen concludes.

Haha. Cheers mate. Have a great day.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
True. How do you compare that with the number of conversions? How many people converted from which theology to what and what are the rates? It will be interesting to look at them.

I guess you answered that with this sentence showing your motive so that's awesome, cheers.

So let's continue this little game and see how long you'll go on ignoring it. Here's a wiki article:

Growth of religion - Wikipedia

in 2010, the Pew Forum found "that statistical data for Muslim conversions is scarce and as per their available information, there is no substantial net gain or loss of Muslims due to religious conversion. It also stated that "the number of people who embrace Islam and the number of those who leave Islam are roughly equal. Thus, this report excludes religious conversion as a direct factor from the projection of Muslim population growth."[207]


The growth of Islam from 2010 to 2020 has been estimated at 1.70%[11] due to high birthrates in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. The report also shows that the fall in birth rate of the Muslims slowed down the growth rate during 1990 to 2010. It is due to the fall of fertility rate in many Muslim majority countries. Despite the decline Muslims still have the highest birth rate among the world's major religious groups.[208][209]

According to the same study, Muslims population growth is twice of world's overall population growth due to young age and relatively high fertility rate and as a result Muslims are projected to rise to 30% (2050) of the world's population from 23% (2010).[230]



Here's another article that deals with islam's growth in Europe alone:

Muslim Population Growth in Europe

As you can see, not once does it mention "conversion" as a significant factor at all. It attributes the growth of muslim populations in Europe to two things: migration and the fact that muslims have more babies.

It even lays out several scenario's of how the growth curve would look like the coming decades, one of which is if ALL migration comes to an end. Then still it grows, because muslims make more babies.

In the article, if you do a search on "conver", it has only one occurence. And that is in the word "conversion", in context of explaining which factors were taken into account for the study:

The projections take into account the current size of both the Muslim and non-Muslim populations in Europe, as well as international migration, age and sex composition, fertility and mortality rates, and patterns in conversion. (See Methodology for details.)

So, they do take it into account. And yet they conclude that the reason for Islam's growth in Europe is due to
1. migration
2. the fact that muslims make more babies.





So, are you satisfied by now? Or do you still demand even more references, while you have given exactly none so far?
 

InvestigateTruth

Well-Known Member
View attachment 41993

View attachment 41994

View attachment 41995


Why Muslims are the world’s fastest-growing religious group

The main reasons for Islam’s growth ultimately involve simple demographics. To begin with, Muslims have more children than members of the seven other major religious groups analyzed in the study. Muslim women have an average of 2.9 children, significantly above the next-highest group (Christians at 2.6) and the average of all non-Muslims (2.2). In all major regions where there is a sizable Muslim population, Muslim fertility exceeds non-Muslim fertility.
I don't think numbers of a religion matters. What matters is, the fruit of a Religion. How much a particular religion contributes to betterment, peace, prosperity, and well being of humanity. You can have an old big tree, but useless, with no fruits or even leaves. Almost dead. You can have a smaller young tree, with lots of fruits, and beautiful.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
I don't think numbers of a religion matters. What matters is, the fruit of a Religion. How much a particular religion contributes to betterment, peace, prosperity, and well being of humanity. You can have an old big tree, but useless, with no fruits or even leaves. Almost dead. You can have a smaller young tree, with lots of fruits, and beautiful.
Being accurate always matters.

And when it comes to Islam's growth rate, certain people like to pretend that it is growing because non-muslims are converting to Islam in droves. Which couldn't be further from the truth.

As for the fruit of Islam, I consider it to be amongst the most rotten fruit among all religions - but that is for another day and thread and not relevant here.

As you can see, @firedragon is fiercly trying to undermine the fact that Islam's growth is simply due to muslims having more babies.

I think facts are important. Even if they seem trivial.
I think correcting misrepresentations, inaccuracies, falsehoods, etc is also important. Even if it concerns seemingly trivial subjects.

I think being accurate is important, full stop.
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Muslims have 2.6 rate in comparison to 2.2 which is an 18% difference but growth rate of Islamic population for the past two decades is 46% so you should do the math. Also while all the other theologies decline is because either they are migrating to the moon or they are converting to this religion of Islam slowly. Simple deduction.

Your deduction is "simple" indeed. A little to "simple". Seems like you don't really get what the difference in growth actually means and how it forms an exponential curve.

See, a higher fertility rate also results in more breeding pairs who operate on that same higher fertility rate. Another thing that influences this curve, is what the average age of the breeding pairs is. When you have breeding pairs that reproduce typically at age 22, while in another group breeding pairs typically make a new generation at age 33, then that too will heavily influence population sizes, as the generation time for the first is much less then the latter. Meaning that the off spring of the first will reach its own breeding age much sooner.

It literally means that by the time the latter produces 2 generations, the first has produced 3.


Let's illustrate with a simple example using round numbers, for the sake of example.
Let's say we have 2 christian couples with an average of 2 kids per household.
Let's say we have 2 muslim couples with an average of 3 kids per household.
For the sake of example we assume an exact 50/50 distribution of male and female.

In generation one:
- 4 christian kids = 2 breeding pairs
- 6 muslim kids = 3 breeding pairs

Generation two:
- 4 christian kids = 2 breeding paris
- 9 muslim kids = 4 breeding pairs and one that doesn't find a mate

Generation 3:
- 4 christian kids = 2 breeding pairs
- 12 muslim kids = 6 breeding pairs

And if we would factor in the differences in age by saying that the christian couple breeds every 30 years while the muslims breed every 20 years, then by the time of christian generation 3, there will be 18 muslim kids instead of 12.

Just to illustrate to you that reproduction factors that are higher then 1, experience an exponential growth, and not a steady growth of simple sommation that always starts with the same base number.

We see this in the covid pandemic as well. I'm sure you heared of this "reproduction factor" and how important it is that it does not go above 1. Because if it does, the amount of infections rises exponentially. And if this number rises 0.3%, it can actually already be enough to make all alarm bells go off and impose restrictions on society to slow it down again, before it goes completely out of control very fast (due to exponential growth).


Also, I have NO CLUE where you pulled that 46% figure from???
I'll go ahead and assume that you were simply mistaken.

As you can see in the wiki article I linked you to, the growth of muslims in the world from 1990 to 2010 was some 2%...............
 
Last edited:

firedragon

Veteran Member
Being accurate always matters.

And when it comes to Islam's growth rate, certain people like to pretend that it is growing because non-muslims are converting to Islam in droves. Which couldn't be further from the truth.

As for the fruit of Islam, I consider it to be amongst the most rotten fruit among all religions - but that is for another day and thread and not relevant here.

As you can see, @firedragon is fiercly trying to undermine the fact that Islam's growth is simply due to muslims having more babies.

I think facts are important. Even if they seem trivial.
I think correcting misrepresentations, inaccuracies, falsehoods, etc is also important. Even if it concerns seemingly trivial subjects.

I think being accurate is important, full stop.

Nice.
 

Truthseeker

Non-debating member when I can help myself
It's My Birthday!
However, that in no way indicates that the Baha'i Faith will decline (or not grow) since it is such a small percentage of that lump.
Yes, I know. I'm saying it would be nice if they didn't lump the Baha'i Faith with other faiths. It is lumped with some faiths that are on the decline. We don't know what their projection would be for Baha'is. I think even if they did, how could they know future events that might incline the people to the Baha'i Faith more, such as the establishment of the Lesser Peace or at least events that show the necessity to a lot of people to the importance of the unity of mankind.
 

Truthseeker

Non-debating member when I can help myself
It's My Birthday!
All men will adhere to one religion, will have one common faith, will be blended into one race, and become a single people.
Yeah, but it is clear from what Ali Nakhjavani said that Shoghi Effendi didn't interpret all such references to mean that everyone in the world will become Baha'is. Probably we shouldn't take this one religion literally, or maybe note that Abdu'l-Baha didn't say one common religion, but He said one common faith. It might be interpreted to mean that everybody will have a religion. There won't be people, in other words that see themselves as spiritual and not religious, or be agnostics or atheists. It is clear that all will unite during the Dispensation of Baha'u'llah also. I think that under the influence of the Baha'is people will understand their own religion better, and see adherence to those eternal spiritual teachings as the most important part of their religion, and not be so divided over different laws and rituals.

This is not like the past where when kings or other leaders adopted a certain faith, all of the people of that country were expected to follow suit. That is how Christianity became nearly universal in Europe. There are a lot of countries that are overwhelmingly Muslim because Muslims were rulers there, and though they didn't compel people under their rule to become Muslims, those under them found it expedient in a lot of cases I think to become Muslim so they wouldn't be treated badly.

In the case of the Baha'i Faith, we have the principle of the independent investigation of truth. This will continue to operate in the future, and Baha'is are enjoined to treat people of other faiths well, and not be prejudiced, or have the government discriminate against them. I don't see how in that situation all will become Baha'is or any other religion in the future after the Baha'i Dispensation. God will always test people with every new religion. If everybody is tested, I don't see everybody passing that test.
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
Where did your hatred come from? Is it Allah? If that is the case you have a brain so why not try to change your nature rather than blame another entity you dont even believe in for your own hatred.

Its strange that you are accusing someone else of deflection while you are trying your levels best to turn every single thread into "Hate Muslims" subject. Thus, it is you who is deflecting mate.
It is not against Muslims but against Bahais, because they (...ly) engage in proselytization, even more than Christians, and abuse all other religions, including Islam. (Bahaollah called his God Allah and said that he is no different from Allah).

I am not that bad a person. I am an advaitist, a believer in non-duality. That means I consider Idi Amin, Saddam, Gaddafi, Osama, Caliph Ibrahim, you and all other Muslims as Brahman, the entity that constitutes all things in the universe. Advaita does not recognize any difference even in a living being or a non-living thing. I hope you know about that.
 
Last edited:

firedragon

Veteran Member
It is not against Muslims but against Bahais, because they (...) engage in proselytization, even more than Christians, and abuse all other religions, including Islam. (Bahaollah called his God Allah and said that he is no different from Allah).

I am not that bad a person. I am an advaitist, a believer in non-duality. That means I consider Idi Amin, Saddam, Gaddafi, Osama, Caliph Ibrahim, you and all other Muslims as Brahman, the entity that constitutes all things in the universe. Advaita does not recognize any difference even in a living being or a non-living thing. I hope you know about that.

All good brother. I understand the concept of advaita though one could never be an expert in Hinduism because its more of a land than a religion. Anyway, I respect your take on life. Peace.
 

King Phenomenon

Well-Known Member
No. It is the person who said that it is your duty to make the whole world believe in Christian God and his supposed son. It is the mistake of Jesus who said nobody goes to God if not through him. He was the culprit to instigate hate. He just repeated what the society already knew and other people had already said. There is no proof of all these superstitious things - God, soul, heaven, hell, judgement and deliverance.
That is very strange. First your God / Allah would install hate in us and then we will try to correct his mistake by trying to love. What kind of unbalanced God is he? Basically, all your stories are nothing but farce. These prophets, sons, messengers, manifestations, mahdis have only fooled people.I would hate to take up a religion which wants us not to pry too hard.
I think wehat Jesus meant was get to know God better not literally go to God

Don't forget taseface now
 

King Phenomenon

Well-Known Member
No. It is the person who said that it is your duty to make the whole world believe in Christian God and his supposed son. It is the mistake of Jesus who said nobody goes to God if not through him. He was the culprit to instigate hate. He just repeated what the society already knew and other people had already said. There is no proof of all these superstitious things - God, soul, heaven, hell, judgement and deliverance.
That is very strange. First your God / Allah would install hate in us and then we will try to correct his mistake by trying to love. What kind of unbalanced God is he? Basically, all your stories are nothing but farce. These prophets, sons, messengers, manifestations, mahdis have only fooled people.I would hate to take up a religion which wants us not to pry too hard.
Oh you can pry as hard as you want about the religion and I guess you can pry into the specifics of what people believe and how they interpret metaphors if you wish
 

InvestigateTruth

Well-Known Member
Being accurate always matters.
Yes, agreed.

And when it comes to Islam's growth rate, certain people like to pretend that it is growing because non-muslims are converting to Islam in droves. Which couldn't be further from the truth.
Ok, maybe they mean, it is growing in certain countries or regions, and not necessarily in every country?


As for the fruit of Islam, I consider it to be amongst the most rotten fruit among all religions - but that is for another day and thread and not relevant here.
But Islam had its golden age too. What can we conclude from that?


As you can see, @firedragon is fiercly trying to undermine the fact that Islam's growth is simply due to muslims having more babies.
Is that true @firedragon ? :D

@firedragon , Besides that, from your personal observation, do you see the Arab Muslims are becoming more religious, strong believers or less religious, more secular?
I can say, my observation is, most Muslim people are becoming less religious. Specially, in Iran, where the majority are Shia background, mostly they became disbelievers, and many actually hate Islam. They only consider themselves Muslims by name and identity, rather than actually believing and practicing.
I think facts are important. Even if they seem trivial.
I think correcting misrepresentations, inaccuracies, falsehoods, etc is also important. Even if it concerns seemingly trivial subjects.

I think being accurate is important, full stop.
Ok
 

Aupmanyav

Be your own guru
What is there to pry, the falsehood shows in the face. ;)
Specially, in Iran, where the majority are Shia background, mostly they became disbelievers, and many actually hate Islam. They only consider themselves Muslims by name and identity, rather than actually believing and practicing.
I suppose Sunnis will gladly agree to that.
 
Top