“We” will be fine no matter what. The future will still have Mormons and Muslims and evangelical Christians. Whether it has secular humanists or not isn’t our problem.
You say that like those groups aren't great at producing non-religious people.
Like a third of Mormons leave the church. Ditto for Catholics. Probably similar for the rest, but I haven't looked up all the statistics.
I'd go so far as to wager that in America today most non-believers come from religious households, with second-generation-non-believers in the minority.
Some religious groups are much better at retention than others.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews (Hasidic/Haredi) and Old Order Amish have very high retention rates, by some measures >90%.
Mainstream Catholicism has very poor retention rates – there is a quip that ex-Catholic is one of America's largest religions. However, if we look at highly conservative/traditionalist groups like Opus Dei or SSPX, the retention is much better (although I don't have exact figures).
Mormons are definitely showing signs of transitioning from growth to decline, at least in the US. However, given other religious groups I mentioned appear to be avoiding that, it may be more a story of mistakes of the Mormon leadership than anything else.
Catholic fertility is very low compared to the other groups listed. Whatever secret sauce for resisting modernity is built into evangelicalism, mormonism, etc, appears to be absent from high church denominations. Except for the hardcore traditionalists. We can expect to see more of them, as the others are bred out of existence.
> Except for the hardcore traditionalists. We can expect to see more of them, as the others are bred out of existence.
I would say conservative Catholics rather than just traditionalists.
Both SSPX and Opus Dei have larger families, and both have a strong conservative streak. But SSPX is traditionalist, whereas Opus Dei is more "modern conservative". Opus Dei is officially enthusiastic about Vatican II (provided it is "interpreted correctly"), SSPX refuses to accept it. While both celebrate Mass in Latin, SSPX insists on using the old (pre-1970) Tridentine Mass in Latin, whereas Opus Dei's Latin Masses are the contemporary Mass in Latin. Opus Dei emphasises obedience to the Pope (although Francis makes that painful in a way that his predecessors never did), SSPX insists on a duty to disobey papal decisions it believes to be erroneous
Like a third of Mormons leave the church. Ditto for Catholics. Probably similar for the rest, but I haven't looked up all the statistics.
I'd go so far as to wager that in America today most non-believers come from religious households, with second-generation-non-believers in the minority.