Tyler Cowen: evaluation

Transcript context

…It would be a good thing if that happened. Why do you believe that? And what’s the crux of your disagreement with the supposed expert opinion that holds the opposite position? Well, first, let me say, I am myself a nonbeliever. You could say I’m an agnostic, but tending toward nonbelief. But it seems to me, religion is a very special form of cultural capital. It’s people’s most fundamental beliefs about the world. People will believe in something. And for much of the West, I see Christianity, and to some extent, Judaism, as having had a very special role. The notion that we should just cash in on that and all become secular, and not be sure what we believe in — I see a great danger in that. If you visit a place like England, where church attendance is remarkably low, people are extremely secular, that strikes me as unhealthy. Secular societies tend to fall into much lower birth rates. They don’t reproduce themselves. That’s one of the most damning things you can imagine, actually, about a society. Religion, even adjusting for income, has predictive power over the birth rate. It’s one reason why America still has a stable or a typically growing population, along with immigration. And American religion has stayed remarkably strong for our level of income. It seems almost obvious to me that’s a positive. This paper by Jon Gruber using instrumental variables — religion tends to make lives better: more social capital, more cooperation. But that’s, I think, secondary to the bigger-picture question: What do people believe in? Do those beliefs encourage self-replication of the basic society or not? And America’s doing a good job on that, mostly because of religion. Is religion one of the few remaining sources of durable cultural diversity in an increasingly connected world?…

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