Can Christianity Save Us?

Many people believe that our modern problems are due to abandoning traditional religious and moral beliefs, and that those problems would be solved by returning to those beliefs. Is this true? Can we solve the problems of the modern West by restoring its traditional religious and moral framework?

No.

First, let’s be clear that modernity hasn’t been a disaster. Modernity has given humanity unprecedented peace and prosperity. The problems of modernity come from its successes, not its failures. By solving old problems, modernity created new ones.

Modern problems can’t be solved with traditional beliefs and practices, because modern problems didn’t exist in the past. Traditional religion never had to deal with modernity.

Of course, if you believe that traditional religion and morality are eternal verities, then you would expect them to solve the problems of the modern world. But you would also expect them to have prevented the problems of the modern world.

What are the problems of the modern world?

Before we can define the problems of the modern world, we need to talk about values. Problems are defined by values. Without values, there are no problems. And if someone has different values, they might not agree on whether something is a problem.

Religions and ideologies have value assumptions baked into them. The values are typically implicit, not explicit, but they are there. A religious person might not care if modern civilization collapses, because he is concerned with the kingdom of heaven and the afterlife, not with what happens on the Earth. So, it might be somewhat unfair to judge religion as a solution to earthly problems. However, religious people often claim that religion can and does solve earthly problems.

I will define the problems of the modern world based on my own core values. I will not attempt to justify my values in this essay, or explain where they came from. Even if you disagree with them, you might find it interesting to consider the problems and solutions that are based on them.

I have two core values: one for the individual, and one for the collective. The collective could be a single country, Western civilization, or all of humanity.

• Reproduction: For the individual, the core value is reproduction. This is the objective purpose of individual life: to produce descendants.
• Civilization: For the collective, the core value is civilization, which is the collective home of our descendants.

I will define modern problems relative to this value theory.

Note that we can identify problems with respect to natural norms, such as reproduction and stability, without adopting those norms as subjectively normative. An organism that doesn’t reproduce has failed at its natural purpose. That judgment does not require that we subjectively want the organism to reproduce. A civilization can be judged with respect to the natural norms of stability and progress: that it does not collapse, and that it expands knowledge and agency. Again, we can judge a civilization with respect to those norms without subjectively valuing the civilization. So, even if you reject my values, you can still identify problems with respect to natural norms.

The problems of modern civilization can be divided into two categories: individual and collective.

Individual problems are psychological and biological:

• Psychological: alienation from reality and natural purpose
• Biological: failure to form pair-bonds, failure to reproduce

For civilization as a whole, there are many problems. I consider these three to be the most important:

• Finite resources, pollution, environmental destruction
• Dysgenics and overpopulation
• Mass immigration into the West

Can Christianity solve any of these problems?

No.

I am focusing on Christianity, because that is the traditional religion of the West. However, the arguments apply, with minor modifications, to other traditional religions, such as Islam.

Some people will find it confusing that I view low fertility as an individual problem and overpopulation as a civilizational/global problem. Yes, those are both problems, from different perspectives. The individual purpose of life is to reproduce. For modern civilization to be sustainable, it must control population eugenically.

What is good for the individual is not necessarily good for the collective, and vice versa.

Traditional religion and morality don’t distinguish individual good from collective good. That is a major limitation, because problems exist at different scales, and from different perspectives.

Does Christianity make people less alienated from reality and natural purpose?

No. Christianity is a delusion that alienates people from reality and natural purpose. It tells people to focus on inner goodness and faith, and to live for an eternal reward that comes after death. This does not ground people in reality, nor does it orient them toward their natural purpose of reproduction.

Christianity could help to sustain people who are already following a traditional way of life. It can protect an established and functional way of life from skepticism and pessimism. But it can’t reorient someone toward their natural purpose after they have gone astray. Instead, it gives them a false purpose to strive toward.

Also, Christianity doesn’t propagate very well in the modern world, where it has to compete with porn, video games, entertainment, social media and internet ideologies.

Does Christianity motivate people to form families and have children?

No, not really.

Christianity does not explicitly promote reproduction. “Be fruitful and multiply” is in the Bible (Genesis 1:28), but it’s not a core value of Christianity or the other Abrahamic religions. It’s not in the ten commandments. Jesus said almost nothing about it. Saint Paul, who played a very important role in defining Christianity, had a somewhat negative view of sex and marriage (see 1 Corinthians 7).

Christianity was much more concerned with controlling sexuality than with promoting reproduction. It even promoted celibacy as a superior way of life. There is no purpose to this life in Christianity, other than being good and faithful.

Once people have adopted a modern way of life, Christianity has little effect on reproduction. For example, Portugal and Poland are two of the most Christian countries in Europe, and both have very low fertility. Their religiosity does not cause them to reproduce.

Traditionalists will say “That’s not real Christianity!”, in the same way that communists say “That’s not real communism!”. There may be some truth to that protest, but it doesn’t address the issue. If Portugal and Poland were once truly Christian, but their religion has degenerated and become fake, that raises the question of why it degenerated. Presumably, it degenerated because it could not compete with modern memes for the same mental territory, so it retreated and became less consequential.

Belief in God does not cause people to reproduce. In the past, reproduction was a natural consequence of sex. It was lust that made people reproduce, not God. Christianity denigrates lust. In the past, preventing sex outside marriage was much more important than promoting sex, because people naturally want sex. So, traditional religions focus on policing sexuality, not promoting sex. It is only with the advent of modern birth control that promoting reproduction becomes necessary.

Modern low fertility is a consequence of the industrial and sexual revolutions. It is not caused by the decline of traditional religion. The industrial revolution freed women from their material dependence on men for survival. This weakened the pair-bond. The sexual revolution was mostly caused by effective birth control, such as the latex condom and the birth-control pill. It was also partly caused by material progress, and the ability of women to work outside the home. Given the conditions of modern life, lust is no longer sufficient to cause reproduction.

Christianity has no explanation for modern low fertility, nor any solution to it. It does not have an accurate theory of human nature, so it cannot explain the effects of modern civilization on human behavior. It does not explicitly value or promote reproduction. Instead, it gives people a fake purpose: obeying God and seeking an afterlife in paradise. Pursuing this fake purpose is not an adaptive life strategy.

Does Christianity provide any solutions to the problems of finite resources, pollution and environmental destruction?

No. Those are mostly new problems, so Christianity has no solutions to them. Traditional religions are adapted to the agricultural civilization of the past, not to modern civilization. Agricultural civilization depends on renewable resources. Modern civilization currently depends on nonrenewable resources. It has a much greater potential to generate pollution and cause environmental destruction. It is not stable.

Christianity encourages an optimistic attitude toward the bounty of nature, not a realistic one. More generally, Christianity is not concerned with the long-term existence of civilization or even humanity. Christians often have an apocalyptic view of the future: that God will eventually intervene in history. Since Christians defer responsibility for the world (and many other things) to God, they do not accept our collective responsibility for the world and its future.

Does Christianity provide a moral justification for eugenic population control?

No. Christianity is blind to the problems of dysgenics and overpopulation, and it views eugenics and population control as evil.

Christianity views human beings as miracles from God. For that reason, it is hostile to scientific theories of human nature, including the theory of evolution. This blinds Christians to the realities of nature and human nature. It also creates a moral obstacle to solving problems that arise from nature and human nature.

In the past, eugenics and population control were handled by nature, through war, disease and famine. Thus, Christianity did not need to promote them. Religion often provided a fake justification for war, which reduced the population and freed up resources for the survivors. Religion also helped people to cope with the difficulty of life under conditions of scarcity. Christianity does not help us to deal with the problems of abundance, nor does it help us to sustain abundance.

Again, traditional religions evolved in the past, under the conditions of agricultural civilization, when the genome and the population were regulated by war, disease and famine. Traditional religions are not adapted to modern civilization.

If we want a peaceful, prosperous civilization with low child mortality, then we must replace war, disease and famine with eugenic population control. We need to regulate our population and genome ourselves. Traditional religions will not help us to do that.

Does Christianity provide a moral justification for closing the borders to immigrants?

No. Christianity promotes open borders. There is no Christian justification for turning away poor people if you are comfortable and well-fed. Both Christians and wokists signal their holiness by supporting altruistic social policies. Christianity and wokism both require that we import poor immigrants until our societies collapse. Both assume that this will somehow work out. Both demonize people who suggest otherwise.

In the past, large-scale immigration was difficult. People could not afford to travel long distances. Feudal economies could not incorporate new people as workers and consumers, in the way that modern economies can. There were geographical and cultural barriers to immigration. There were occasional mass migrations, but those were typically invasions, which were resisted by the native population. When they occurred, they often destroyed and replaced native people and cultures. Mass immigration is a modern problem, so it has no traditional religious or moral solutions.

Christianity is a false foundation.

Religion can help to perpetuate adaptive traditions, such as marriage. However, if the religion is exposed as a delusion, then the justification disappears, and the tradition might be abandoned. Even if the religion persists, a tradition could be modified so that it fits the religious prescription, but is no longer functional.

Both things happened to marriage. Traditional marriage has been either discarded or modified to suit people’s preferences. We have retained the ceremony, but discarded the functional aspects of marriage, such as the prohibition on extramarital sex. Even if people choose to get married, the marriage is essentially meaningless. Those who get married often do not reproduce, even if they place religious significance on marriage. It has become a hollow custom.

See The End of Marriage for an explanation of the functions of marriage.

You could blame the loss of traditional marriage on the decline of religion. That is one of the reasons for it. However, religion was a false foundation, which prevented a rational theory of human nature. If we had understood the functions of traditional marriage, we would not have thrown it away — at least, not without a replacement.

Instead of restoring old delusions and traditions, we need to replace them with a rational worldview and way of life.

✦ ✦ ✦

Modern civilization is not a failure. It has given us peace, prosperity and long life. However, it has also created new problems. Those new problems can only be solved with rational thought and action. Traditional religions might have solutions to the problems of the past, but they have no solutions to modern problems.