Episode Details

NOTE: This episode has a companion guide with graphs, links, and stats—don’t miss it! https://technopuritan.com/new-religions/

What if most new religions don’t fail — and the ones that follow a few simple rules have a 93% survival rate and over 50% chance of becoming major world religions?

In this episode of Based Camp, Malcolm and Simone dig into original research on new religious movements founded since the 1700s. When you filter for groups with a unique metaphysical framework + a real written (or recorded) corpus, the numbers are already surprisingly high. Add an explicitly pro-natalist framing and something beyond ordinary materialist reality, and the success rate becomes almost absurd.

They break down:

* Why humanist/secular projects almost always die

* Why “silliness” actually protects a religion

* Why probable scams have some of the best survival rates

* Succession systems that work (and the ones that kill movements)

* Hard vs soft religion and fertility

* What this means for anyone trying to build a durable culture or tradition today — including their own techno-puritan project

If you’re interested in cultural survival, fertility, intentional community, or just love weird religious history, this one’s for you.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m e- extra excited to be here with you today. This is probably gonna be one of my favorite episodes to do, one of the most interesting that I have researched, because I conducted a lot of original research for this episode and found something really, really fascinating.

[00:00:14] So if we’re just going to jump to the punch, if you just go into the academic literature and say, of new religions, cults, whatever you wanna call them, what percent of them survive? They’ll say one in 1,000 or one in 100,000, right?

[00:00:30] Octavian: Yeah.

[00:00:30] Malcolm Collins: Yes. But if you actually look at those studies, what they’re generally looking at is, like, somebody got mad at their local pastor and started, like, a small schism or something like that.

[00:00:39] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:00:40] Malcolm Collins: If instead you narrow it down to only books with a unique... Or not books, but, like, ways of seeing things with a unique metaphysical framing and a full written corpus this would be, techno-puritanism would be an example, like, Mormonism would be an example, Scientology would be an example. The Nation of Islam would be an example.

[00:01:00] When you narrow it down to that, if you look at ones founded around the world from the 1700s till today, over a third of them end up surviving at least 100 years, and at some point having over 100,000 members.

[00:01:18] Simone Collins: That’s... N-

[00:01:19] uh.

[00:01:19] Malcolm Collins: no. Now, if we narrow down the list further, so I’m gonna put two more coffee outs on here that are gonna make it even crazier.

[00:01:26] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:01:27] Malcolm Collins: Take out all of the ones that are I’m gonna say, like, humanist. Like, techno-puritanism would not fall into this by any measure of the, But, but you know what I’m talking about. Those weird humanist religions that were founded in, like, the 1920s and then became a craze for a bit.

[00:01:41] If you take those out and you take out any that do not have an explicitly pro-natalist framing, right? Like, it- Oh ... they, they grow through conversion rather than kids.

[00:01:51] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:01:51] Malcolm Collins: You now get a 93% survival rate, and over a 53% rate of becoming a major world religion. And-

[00:02:03] Simone Collins: Does this include, like, al