One Of The Main Functions Of Organized Religion Is To Increase The Evolutionary Fitness Of The Tribe

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Fertility is positively correlated to religiosity. As a group, religious conservatives have more children than than liberals. And not just fertility, but the integrity of the family unit and every positive outcome of that is also positively correlated to religiosity.

Across the street from us, there is a family that belongs to the Laestadian revival movement inside the national Evangelic-Lutheran Church of Finland. The movement was founded by Lars Levi Laestadius, a Lutheran pastor in the Swedish Lutheran Church in Lapland in the early 19th century. The movement started out as temperance movement to help Sami congregations in which alcoholism was a serious problem. The movement has congregations in mainly Sweden, Norway, Finland, Russia, Canada and the United States. Our neighbours are the best neighbours we have ever had. They're helpful and friendly. All their ten children are well-adjusted. Their lifestyle is an abundant source of benefits to society. An upper middle class religious conservative family of twelve. There's nothing better. I feel like a freeloader in comparison.

I'm Lutheran Atheist. I'm not a believer and I would personally never want to be part of any tight-knit community that enforced ideological conformity at any level. At the same time, I recognize there can be no such thing as a society of atheists that has long-term viability. Modernity in combination with no religious motive to have large families or families in the first place is killing fertility everywhere. Liberalism makes societies too soft, weak and overly tolerant. European countries are doing too little to eradicate the growing Islamic extremism in their streets. The most conservative nations within Western civilization seem to be the most resistant against Islamic extremism often preached in mosques funded with oil money from the Middle East. The northwest of Europe is the weakest in this regard. I have certain suspicions as to why.

There are 100,000 Laestadians in Finland among a population of 5.6 million. I wouldn't mind if there were ten times more of them. There are particularly many of them in Northern Ostrobothnia close to the Swedish border in the northwest. The regional capital Oulu is a hotbed of high tech. The population is relatively young. Mentally and economically the region is the closest counterpart of Texas in this country - minus the Southern charm but also some of the bad aspects of it.