The deeper reason why birthrates have fallen

With birthrates fallen below replacement rates in many, mainly northern countries, what came first, the fall of religion and lowering the value of having children, or the worship of machines, technology, and ideas?

I do not reject religion, but the deeper reason for lowering the value of life has been the false duality perpetuated over the last several thousand years by religion and philosophy, in considering material life as an illusion and spiritual life as reality. It is the false duality I reject, not religion.

The fact that traditional Christians are strongly against abortion was the gift of brilliant rationalizations of life put forward by religious philosophers, which saved religion and material life from turning into a celibate monastery, which was the real ethos of the religious Founders.

Philosophers took up the same worship of non-material ideas, concepts and formulas, following Plato, and to a lesser extent Aristotle, which was also the result of the false duality of separating the material and the body from the spiritual and the mind. This has now expanded to the worship of machines, artificial intelligence, and endless technology.

Nietzsche did feel that something was wrong, he saw the false duality, but he did not see the laws of nature leading to religion and science, and to the evolution of material life to real Godhood, which was the “God” only hinted at, symbolized, or experienced in the Inward Path to the God Within of traditional religions. There was no need to reject religion or to try to kill God, but here was a need to conservatively transform religion and philosophy.

That was the narrative of the history of devaluing life, which has led to present birthrates falling below replacement levels.

Here is the good news. What religion and philosophy ruined, religion and philosophy can save. Theological materialism transforms the Inward Path of traditional religions in the Outward Path of material evolution to real supermaterial Godhood. This can bring back the value of real life over artificial life, this revives the value of perpetuating life, but religiously, scientifically, and meritocractically choosing higher life in evolving toward Godhood, the sacred goal of life.