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Drethelin's avatar

I feel like internet access is a hugely underdiscussed element in this topic.

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Mallard's avatar

> Raised the question of how a religion that imposes costly requirements on its adherents can survive in a society like the U.S. where there is open entry to the religion industry. Why isn't such a religion always outcompeted by a new version that keeps everything else but dumps the costly restrictions

I think this begs the question of how religion outcompetes a-religion. Why isn't a system without any religious features more popular than one with religious features? After all, such a system would lack any religious restrictions.

One would need to conclude that religious have various features that are appealing. Once one concludes that, the question seems misplaced, and the solution, ad hoc. Once you know that there are various elements of religion that are appealing, but you haven't identified what they are, it's odd to assume that removing a particular element of religion would make the resultant product more appealing.

Similarly, assuming that restrictions persist because they limit interaction, seems to try too hard to describe them in a way meant to answer the question. After all, many personal restrictions don't preclude outgroup participation or encourage ingroup participation. E.g. religious Jews avoid wearing clothing with certain mixed fibers. That imposes a cost on purchases, but does little to encourage ingroup, rather than outgroup interactions. Why do these persist? And why did religions with such restrictions persist even when assimilation was hardly an option? E.g. in the ghettos of Europe, before emancipation, Jews couldn't assimilate anyway, so why didn't alternative versions of Judaism without any restrictions outcompete the stricter ones?

Lastly, this analysis doesn't seem to address the fact that religion with fewer restrictions did largely outcompete religion with restrictions, in the form of Orthodox Judaism becoming a minority relative to Reform Judaism.

It also doesn't account for the resurgence of Orthodox relative to its more liberal competitors. This can be seen in this survey: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/ which shows the oldest cohorts having the highest percentage of Reform Jews, and the percentage of Orthodox being highest among the youngest cohorts.

All in all, it doesn't seem like a very useful theory.

Another factor that may explain why religion is popular in the first place, and why restrictions persist, is that religions may offer the perception of authenticity. This may make it harder to sell people new versions of religion, the way you would sell them a new brand of toothpaste, while acknowledging that the new version is your own creation designed to appeal to them.

It would not, however explain why sometimes less restrictive versions do outcompete more restrictive versions, or why sometimes the opposite happens.

Clearly, the reality is quite a bit more complex.

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