Young people are growing up in a culture that takes for granted that they cannot tell which news is fake, that to every fact there are alternative facts. We may have landed on the Moon. We may not. The world may be round. It may be flat. Climate change may be caused by humans. It may not. This may devastatingly impact life on this planet. It may not.
Half of Kiwis now declare they hold to no religion. No religion has overtaken Christianity. No religion is the new religion.
I’m looking forward to a drilling down of the stats, but I wager that for younger people the proportions are weighted much more against adhering to a religion. My guess: younger people will be at least three-quarters no religion.
Look at the education these young people are receiving in this world of uncertain truths. The New Zealand curriculum has little factual content. This curriculum is the outworking of Postmodernism which highlights that facts come with perspective and power. Who are you to decide what content people should learn? [We, in New Zealand, may have reached the furthest end of that particular pendulum swing – the Prime Minister has announced that New Zealand history is to be taught in schools by 2022.]
All this goes some way towards explaining why NZ leads the world in the proportion of “no religion” [not counting countries where religion was prohibited by those in power]. Agnosticism is the most rational response to a world where truth cannot be found. [Melancholy and despair is the natural emotional response – emotions that are found in NZ in spades, especially amongst the young, in Pacific islands at the end of the world where joy would be expected to be the base line].
Sure, younger people still make commitments – to people, sport, jobs, etc. But religion is about a commitment to a truth. It is not like committing to vote for the Greens rather than Labour, training to play tennis rather than cricket, or committing to become a dentist rather than becoming a lawyer, or committing to Petunia rather than Bronywn. Committing to a religion is more akin to committing to the Lunar Landing being history.
