The Human Condition: Declining religion

By DR. DANIEL SCHNEE on January 26, 2022.

As an anthropologist I am always fascinated by how humans create systems of meaning through values and beliefs: how religion is a significant site of this activity. And, as recent statistics reveal, the number of Albertans who seek meaning through Christianity is rapidly declining.

As someone who has spent many years dealing with a variety of Christian sects and militant atheism, I happen to have a fair amount of perspective on how one finds meaning; how to gain or lose faith. The simple truth is that humans deify things: rocks, paintings, musicians, mythological figures and so on. If we got rid of all religions today, more would pop up immediately. There will never be a fully atheistic global population on this planet, ever.

So the idea that we can or must be rid of religion is as misguided as many of the religions we invent. Also, the idea that a world freed from religion would be a world of peace and equality is also misguided. This is because not all ethical and moral systems are dictated by religion, and we argue over these systems, e.g. Canada’s criminal code.

This is also true for atheism, for it is not necessarily the golden shaft of rational light shining out in the spiritual darkness as often described. A true atheist can only reject religious claims via the science, logic and reason we are capable of here on Earth. We can disprove various theological claims through archeology, chemistry, and so on, but only on the scale of our current intelligence and machinery. Absolutely no one has (or may ever have) proof that in the entire span of the universe there is absolutely no god, gods, goddesses, cloud of divine particles, some alien so advanced that they seem divine, or some such thing we could call god. To assert that we might know such a fact is to once again deify ourselves, to imagine that we are growing infinitely intelligent despite living in a universe of staggering complexity.

The truth is, no matter what one believes, the most relevant factor has always been behavior; how we treat each other. Religious converts have been won or lost on these terms, and they still are today.

Cults require a lot of negative behavior to justify their own existence. Militant atheism often makes one haughty and disdainful, since it purports to rise above religious behavior. No matter how much of what we hear coming from the pulpit is true, our behavior will most likely dictate how many people are present to hear it. Our views are heavily influenced by how others behave, and nothing draws one into a church like a good example.

The stark message is this: we are seeing a decline in the number of Christians in Alberta because there seems to be a decline of Christianity in Christians. At the very least, Christianity is starting to look less about Christ’s love, and more about yelling and threats. As such it would only make sense that people might leave it behind, paradoxically, rejecting its theology in order to uphold the very ethics and morality it preaches.

Like any religion when it is at its best, people will return to Christianity… when love, peace, and compassion return to it first.

Dr. Daniel Schnee is an anthropologist who studies Japanese creative culture.

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