So, faith is bad? Color me shocked.

[Vakruz]

"God would be an atheist: Why can't we all be Japanese?"

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that not too many people in this guild would be terribly surprised by the conclusions drawn by this article, but it's at least interesting, and gratifying, to see it backed up by concrete data.

Discuss?  

[I cyclone I]

wow. Thats very interesting and yes why can't be jap's that why i can draw better  

[Napoleon_Danneskjold]

Not that I take issue with the conclusions, that study has an innate problem- it studies only "18 prosperous democracies," leaving out the very very bad places that have a whole helluva lotta atheism, i.e. North Korea and China (causation is of course dubious).

Just to warn ya before ya go taking this out to the bible thumpers, 1 or 2 of them might actually have a brain.  

[Vakruz]

Hm. You make a pretty good point. The correlation's still strong enough to at least turn heads, though, if nothing else.  

[Kurai Keiro]

Napoleon_Danneskjold

Not that I take issue with the conclusions, that study has an innate problem- it studies only "18 prosperous democracies," leaving out the very very bad places that have a whole helluva lotta atheism, i.e. North Korea and China (causation is of course dubious).

Just to warn ya before ya go taking this out to the bible thumpers, 1 or 2 of them might actually have a brain.

Well, comparing the situation in China and a democracy would result in some uncorrelated results because there are alternate causalities for bad things in China. More so, if you think communism is the problem, then communism caused atheism, not the other way around. All humans have the potential to do bad, and I think that religion just amplifies that potential.  

[Dark Pieman]

Faith and poor morals aren't directly related, it's just that they're both factors of unintelligent people. Blame the education system in the US - some teachers in schools actually believe in a god. I don't have a problem with people believing in or even worshiping gods, but when these people are seen by a nation's children as figures of intelliegence and reason, that can't be good.

One has to remember that the USA is a country founded relatively recently, and entirely by religious fundamentalists, exiled from England because of their extremist beleifs!