The evangelism techniques of unspecified “religion” are actually pretty ineffective. Religions have a poor record of converting new believers who are already adults; religions spread by being the religion of the oppressor (so that the oppressed can join and gain more political power), focusing on children, and/or the precursor memes of the society that one is evangelizing in already point towards some of the religion’s tenets. What religions do have are thought patterns and social sanctions that prevent one from thinking too far outside of that religion (i.e. dark arts epistemology). Religion is good at retaining people who are already converts, not making new ones.
Let’s take Christianity as an example. One of the reasons that it was successful in the Roman Empire was that a lot of the underlying themes of Christianity fit well within the wider Greco-Roman culture. Greeks/Romans were already exposed to concepts like dying/rising gods, virgin births, the concept of hell, martyrdom, etc. before Christianity. Even the etymology of the word “evangelism” has deep roots to Greco-Roman military culture. Another thing that (orthodox) Christianity had going for it was that it was marketed by Christians as an “ancient” religion tying its heritage to Judaism; Greco-Roman culture was especially suspicious of new gods or novel religions.
Even so, Christianity around 300 AD was about the same size as Mormonism is today. What prompted the true spread of Christianity was gaining the political power of the Roman Empire with Constantine’s conversion, in essence becoming part of the “cultural language” of the Roman Empire. Meaning that anywhere Roman culture spread, Christianity spread as well. This is why Christianity is relatively unsuccessful in parts of the world that aren’t directly or indirectly descended from the Roman empire (India, Japan, etc.). Even for atheists in the west, Christianity is part of our cultural language, so many converts to Christianity are simply confusing familiarity and veracity.
Continuing with the Mormons: Their evangelism is actually failing in the first world, so they are moving their evangelism efforts to the global south like many other versions of Christianity. Which makes sense in a way, since economic inequality seems to make people more susceptible to religious belief.
EDIT: I would also like to point out that another persuasion technique is storytelling. People seem to temporarily assume the morality of characters they read in stories. The LW community sort of already has this with HPMOR.
This is why Christianity is relatively unsuccessful in parts of the world that aren’t directly or indirectly descended from the Roman empire (India, Japan, etc.).
One counterexample is South Korea, which is about 30% Christian, and where Christianity seems to have spread largely peacefully.
Christianity’s fairly common in sub-Saharan Africa, too, which did get colonized by European powers but which I think is fair to call culturally independent of Rome if India is. Conversely, North Africa was under the direct jurisdiction of the Roman Empire for a lot of its history, and it’s now overwhelmingly Muslim (though small Christian minorities still exist; e.g. the Egyptian Copts).
religions spread by being the religion of the oppressor
This is highly questionable sociology. It would be as true to say that religions spread by being the religion of the oppressed—i.e. people taking on religious identity and practice in opposition to dominant societal forces. This is, for example, how Iraq became majority Shi’i.
But frankly the claim is so vague and value-loaded as hardly to be a claim about the world. “The oppressor”? C’mon. It really just boils down to “boo religion.” Your comment has many good points, but too much of it is like this, which means that the interesting parts get lost.
Even so, Christianity around 300 AD was about the same size as Mormonism is today.
Yes, in raw numbers, but the world population was approximately 5% of what it is today, so the comparison is flawed. A significant proportion of the world’s population was Christian in 300 AD. The growth is particularly impressive when you consider the much greater difficulties in communication in those days. The article you link is particularly dishonest because it lists various advantages that early Christianity had over present-day Mormonism, but neglects to consider all the many disadvantages. That isn’t fair.
This is why Christianity is relatively unsuccessful in parts of the world that aren’t directly or indirectly descended from the Roman empire (India, Japan, etc.).
In what way are, say, Scandinavia and Russia descended from the Roman Empire? Never part of the Roman Empire, never colonised by a country in the Roman Empire. In what way are the Philippines an indirect descendant of the Roman Empire that doesn’t also apply to India? Even more fatally for your argument, look at England. Christianity died out there after the Romans left and the country went pagan, but then the new people converted to Christianity. It’s only after they became Christian that the Anglo-Saxons started seeing the Roman Empire as part of their cultural heritage. It looks to me like your causation is precisely backwards.
Why was the ruler of Russia called Caesar? Because a some culturally Roman guy conquered them, as in JQuinton’s narrative? No. Rather, because they converted to Christianity, and so they greatly respected the (Eastern) Roman Empire and saw it as part of their world, and so their rulers started calling themselves Caesar to invoke that heritage. In other words, they took to the Roman (Byzantine) cultural heritage because they became Christian, they did not become Christian because they had Roman or Byzantine heritage.
Even for atheists in the west, Christianity is part of our cultural language, so many converts to Christianity are simply confusing familiarity and veracity.
There’s something strange going on here; they’re claiming a huge effect size (six times the compliance rate in the letter test) after 15 minutes of gaming, which doesn’t seem to pass the giggle test to me. And if you crunch the numbers on compliance, the most likely totals look to me like 6 of 31 vs. 1 of 29, so they must have some huge error bars.
I can’t properly analyze this without access to the original paper, but there’s definitely a suspicious odor about it. I’d like to have seen a longer-term follow-up, too.
(That said, people temporarily assuming some of the mentality of characters in media does tally with my experience. And the OSU study looks a lot better.)
The evangelism techniques of unspecified “religion” are actually pretty ineffective. Religions have a poor record of converting new believers who are already adults; religions spread by being the religion of the oppressor (so that the oppressed can join and gain more political power), focusing on children, and/or the precursor memes of the society that one is evangelizing in already point towards some of the religion’s tenets. What religions do have are thought patterns and social sanctions that prevent one from thinking too far outside of that religion (i.e. dark arts epistemology). Religion is good at retaining people who are already converts, not making new ones.
Let’s take Christianity as an example. One of the reasons that it was successful in the Roman Empire was that a lot of the underlying themes of Christianity fit well within the wider Greco-Roman culture. Greeks/Romans were already exposed to concepts like dying/rising gods, virgin births, the concept of hell, martyrdom, etc. before Christianity. Even the etymology of the word “evangelism” has deep roots to Greco-Roman military culture. Another thing that (orthodox) Christianity had going for it was that it was marketed by Christians as an “ancient” religion tying its heritage to Judaism; Greco-Roman culture was especially suspicious of new gods or novel religions.
Even so, Christianity around 300 AD was about the same size as Mormonism is today. What prompted the true spread of Christianity was gaining the political power of the Roman Empire with Constantine’s conversion, in essence becoming part of the “cultural language” of the Roman Empire. Meaning that anywhere Roman culture spread, Christianity spread as well. This is why Christianity is relatively unsuccessful in parts of the world that aren’t directly or indirectly descended from the Roman empire (India, Japan, etc.). Even for atheists in the west, Christianity is part of our cultural language, so many converts to Christianity are simply confusing familiarity and veracity.
Continuing with the Mormons: Their evangelism is actually failing in the first world, so they are moving their evangelism efforts to the global south like many other versions of Christianity. Which makes sense in a way, since economic inequality seems to make people more susceptible to religious belief.
I think rational (i.e. effective) evangelism would model something more, well, effective, like advertizing/marketing or hostage negotiation.
EDIT: I would also like to point out that another persuasion technique is storytelling. People seem to temporarily assume the morality of characters they read in stories. The LW community sort of already has this with HPMOR.
One counterexample is South Korea, which is about 30% Christian, and where Christianity seems to have spread largely peacefully.
Christianity’s fairly common in sub-Saharan Africa, too, which did get colonized by European powers but which I think is fair to call culturally independent of Rome if India is. Conversely, North Africa was under the direct jurisdiction of the Roman Empire for a lot of its history, and it’s now overwhelmingly Muslim (though small Christian minorities still exist; e.g. the Egyptian Copts).
This is highly questionable sociology. It would be as true to say that religions spread by being the religion of the oppressed—i.e. people taking on religious identity and practice in opposition to dominant societal forces. This is, for example, how Iraq became majority Shi’i.
But frankly the claim is so vague and value-loaded as hardly to be a claim about the world. “The oppressor”? C’mon. It really just boils down to “boo religion.” Your comment has many good points, but too much of it is like this, which means that the interesting parts get lost.
Yes, in raw numbers, but the world population was approximately 5% of what it is today, so the comparison is flawed. A significant proportion of the world’s population was Christian in 300 AD. The growth is particularly impressive when you consider the much greater difficulties in communication in those days. The article you link is particularly dishonest because it lists various advantages that early Christianity had over present-day Mormonism, but neglects to consider all the many disadvantages. That isn’t fair.
In what way are, say, Scandinavia and Russia descended from the Roman Empire? Never part of the Roman Empire, never colonised by a country in the Roman Empire. In what way are the Philippines an indirect descendant of the Roman Empire that doesn’t also apply to India? Even more fatally for your argument, look at England. Christianity died out there after the Romans left and the country went pagan, but then the new people converted to Christianity. It’s only after they became Christian that the Anglo-Saxons started seeing the Roman Empire as part of their cultural heritage. It looks to me like your causation is precisely backwards.
Russia is a poor counter-argument, given that the ruler of Russia was called Caesar.
No, Russia is an excellent counter-argument.
Why was the ruler of Russia called Caesar? Because a some culturally Roman guy conquered them, as in JQuinton’s narrative? No. Rather, because they converted to Christianity, and so they greatly respected the (Eastern) Roman Empire and saw it as part of their world, and so their rulers started calling themselves Caesar to invoke that heritage. In other words, they took to the Roman (Byzantine) cultural heritage because they became Christian, they did not become Christian because they had Roman or Byzantine heritage.
I thought the link went to The What-You’d-Implicitly-Heard-Before Telling Thing on Slate Star Codex.
There’s something strange going on here; they’re claiming a huge effect size (six times the compliance rate in the letter test) after 15 minutes of gaming, which doesn’t seem to pass the giggle test to me. And if you crunch the numbers on compliance, the most likely totals look to me like 6 of 31 vs. 1 of 29, so they must have some huge error bars.
I can’t properly analyze this without access to the original paper, but there’s definitely a suspicious odor about it. I’d like to have seen a longer-term follow-up, too.
(That said, people temporarily assuming some of the mentality of characters in media does tally with my experience. And the OSU study looks a lot better.)