Materialism v. VQSV

Of every 10 people in the world 3 are Christian, 2 are Muslim, 2 Hindu, 1.5 non-religious and 1.5 are something else.

The non-religious group is by far the fastest growing category.

Up from zero a hundred years ago the category is accelerating in it’s penetration of market share.

There are three major categories of non-religious types; atheists, humanists and materialists.

However all the growth is occurring in the materialism category.

Religion, even in its mildest forms, seems to get in the way of fully enjoying all the benefits of our Western materialism.

And as materialism spreads to the second world so does religion decline.

Atheists and humanists are a product of the enlightenment; rational people reasoning themselves away from fairy tales.

As we progress further into the post-enlightenment era these categories are fading.

My question is this; if we ever need to curb materialism because of global pollution or diminishing resources, will that cause a contraction of the non-religious category?

Just as an aside, one commentator claims that the jihadists of ISIS are more motivated by preventing the growth of materialism at home and less by converting the rest of the world to their faith.

Last year the Saudis introduced a law defining atheism as a terrorist offence. Now that must sit pretty hard with all their material wealth bartered from oil exports

It just goes to show that religion has always been about the control of power structures.

The Saudis just haven’t figured out that materialism is also a religion of sorts but one that is easier to control because there is no central religious authority to contend with.

Indeed, as materialism has spread in the West so has the need or motivation to question and understand. This is what I mean by the post-enlightenment era.

If pressed, I would call materialism a religion. Lacking a creator and a book of fairytales, this statement might seem sacrilegious.

But materialism requires the adoption of beliefs that aren’t questioned and that are slavishly obeyed.

It even goes one step further, to deny the mandate of other religions in the tradition of all good Abrahmic religions.

On this basis I reject it and exile myself to a shrinking minority of humanists slash atheists.

I’d better start being quiet about all this because the chief vendors of materialism will eventually get around to persecuting non-adherents in the non-religious categories after they are done with the religious categories.

In fact, the trick will be to just pretend that I’m a crap materialist. That shouldn’t be too hard.