Source: Bet On It
by Bryan Caplan
“Larry Iannaccone and his co-author Rodney Stark once wrote that the belief that society is getting less religious says ‘less about empirical fact than it does about secularization faith — a faith that, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, sustains the conviction of many social scientists that religious institutions must soon decay …’ In short, belief in secularization is just a religion. Larry’s critics were, unsurprisingly, not pleased. To tell people that their non-religious beliefs are just a religion is an insult. Why is it an insult? There isn’t any nice way to answer, so I’ll be blunt. It is an insult because the way that people form religious beliefs is so intellectually irresponsible that their conclusions are almost guaranteed to be false.”? (04/20/26)
https://www.betonit.ai/p/why-religious-beliefs-are-irrational-4cc