Science and globilization is probably seen as a threat to religion in many places. I certainly know from experiences in England and the American South- when a mosque is built in the community the local christians seem to become suddenly more anti-islamic.

If places such as Egypt or Indonesia see more western “secular or christian” culture invading their own culture it could very easily give the local religions a “back-against-the-wall” mentality.

Just a reminder, 10 people died over the muhammed cartoons. 10 people DIED because people were offended by a CARTOON!!!! If only there was a magic mirror we could hold up to the religious of the world that clearly shows how ridiculous they appear to the rational amongst us. Conditioning is a powerful thing.

people have been making the argument about ‘the religious shall inherit’ since the early 19th century with france’s demographic transition. if you know the history you know that the arc of history since then has been complex, with an arguable trendline toward more, not less, secularity. but most people are totally ignorant of the history, and so find the sort of logic above awesomely impressive.

i’m not interested in having discussion on issues which i found interesting when i as 18. it’s about as fruitful as the two centuries of inevitable prediction of the extinction of religion.

This makes long term outcomes in your favor extremely dubious.

1) many of the changes you mention did NOT come about through bottom up populism, but through various combinations of elite change + popular conflict, where the elites aligned themselves with one component of the populace (in the USA woman’s suffrage movement it really succeeded via its alliance with temperance, as well as early 20th century nativist sentiment).

2) some of the changes had less to do with popular will than a shift in the elite opinion as manifest through the courts. the gay marriage case is a classic example.

3) these things took decades. for example, women’s suffrage arguably took ~70 years! it’s easy to say “give them a chance” if you aren’t an egyptian copt. black people in the south have long looked to the federal gov. to protect it against the majority will, as an analogy.

all that being said, this process is inevitable. i just think we should be open and honest about its downsides, and not pretend like this is going resemble in any way the velvet revolution.

I worry about Egypt, but Ryan is right. Give them some chance. There’s nothing like having to run things to temper extremism. On the other hand Iran is still the way it is, so it’s probably wishful thinking to assume things will change the way some are. More worrisome is what will result between Israel and Egypt.

How did that change? Slow, grinding activism: years of thankless organizing, rallies and conferences and door-by-door campaigns and pamphlets and books. But they got it done, and America is a better place for it.

Give the Egyptians a chance. They’ve had a kinda-sorta grip on their country for like ten minutes.

Just another example of political correctness going amok. People in western nations are strongly averse to criticizing non-whites even if the issue is not racial in nature, in fears of getting called a bigot. As I wrote on Robin Hanson’s post Religion Gets a Bad Rep:

“…you will see people constantly excoriating ‘bible-thumping anti-evolutionary hicks,’ but see the same people defending Muslim extremism. You will have people mocking and denigrating Tim Tebow for his religious beliefs, but a black NFL player would not face the same ridicule.”