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948 Comments
- cck2142, on 06/04/2009, -41/+582That's because they're too busy humping people of the same sex and killing fetuses....
Wait, I'm an atheist! - enevitable, on 06/04/2009, -29/+528I've always believed that anyone who has to claim they are morally superior is usually morally inferior.
Ethnocentrism is an ugly beast. - dizavin, on 06/04/2009, -43/+365I can't say that I'm surprised.
I mean, a lot (if not most) of religious people are willing to dedicate a huge part of their lives to discriminating and oppressing other people over trivial human traits out of nothing more than a dogmatic phrase in a holy book.
I'm siding with Ch Hitchens ristopher on this one: religion poisons everything. - alpha88, on 06/04/2009, -36/+297In other news, the Earth is round.
- Dustin00, on 06/04/2009, -3/+250You have any idea how hard it is to get a chance to kill a fetus when you spend all your time with the same sex?
- BoneheadFarker, on 06/04/2009, -29/+259Funny that...when we remove all the imaginary reasons to fight over, conflicts decrease.
- kegwin, on 06/04/2009, -27/+229Does this surprise anyone?
- Loki101, on 06/04/2009, -37/+213In other news, the decline in Pirates causes Global Warming!
- atonic, on 06/04/2009, -8/+144the article is misnamed, they mean secular, not atheist. However, I agree with the point being made. separation between church and state is a good thing for multi-faith nations.
- anthropodeus, on 06/04/2009, -5/+133anybody who believes in true science here (which should be most of you) should be slower to jump to conclusions. this could also be due to other factors. for example, as education level increases, religiousness, crime, and inclination to go to war would decrease.
- Elranzer, on 06/04/2009, -1/+119"Who has less abortions than homosexuals?! Here's an entire group of people guaranteed NEVER to have an abortion. And the Catholics and Christians are just throwing them aside. You'd think they'd make natural allies..."
- George Carlin, RIP - novenator, on 06/04/2009, -14/+109The Vision of Humanity map can be also be found at: http://www.visionofhumanity.org/gpi/home.php
- detcade, on 06/04/2009, -14/+106@boshaus, and anyone shouting correlation != causation
RTFA: "Sure enough, peaceful countries have more atheists and fewer regular worshippers. The difference is highly statistically significant - in other words it's real, not just a chance finding."
Furthermore, they didn't declare causation. "Now, there are several possible reasons for this. It could be that people living in turbulent countries turn to religion, or it could be that religion is not a good way to structure modern society." - JDBagley, on 06/04/2009, -13/+98Secular nations are more peaceful? God knows why that is. Wait...
- cmcagle, on 06/04/2009, -23/+96Full disclosure: I am an atheist. Having said that, and aside from the whole "correlation isn't causation" thing, weren't the Soviet Union and Mao's China both officially atheistic and the biggest mass murderers of the 20th century?
- Shmebber, on 06/04/2009, -1/+73...I ...what?
I'm just gonna pretend you were trying to make a joke. - inactive, on 06/04/2009, -1/+68it is the lack of belief in a god, not the belief that no god exists. there's a difference.
actively believing that something doesn't exist when there's no evidence to support the view is a bad idea
not believing in something because there's no proof of it is a good idea. - drstock, on 06/04/2009, -19/+86No *****
- mrfunktastic, on 06/04/2009, -0/+64Hmm. If that's all true, then Bush had a *****, ***** marketing department.
- Frogking, on 06/04/2009, -1/+63Atheism is a belief system if bald is a hair color.
- inactive, on 06/04/2009, -12/+73"Religion at its base is a good idea."
Accepting ridiculous beliefs based on unfounded claims and texts of dubious origin is never a good idea. - kwasmosis, on 06/04/2009, -3/+62This is kinda awkward,...I'm gay and I work at an abortion clinic...
: / - HEAVYisSPY, on 06/04/2009, -1/+52what a compelling argument. Let's kill things.
- nullx42, on 06/04/2009, -4/+54atheism =/= religion
- SumoSniper, on 06/04/2009, -0/+43DiggPiglet, having lived in New Zealand and Australia most of my life, which are both high (well, the first top) of the list, they're both countries that have hugely liberal immigration laws and thus have a massively mulitcultural population. They're also low on surveillance, I've never known anyone wait more than a couple of days for medical procedures, I've never known anyone have to pay a lot for it either. Australia is albeit, slowly going the way of the police state in some small respects (lol what bill of rights?), but overall, what I'm saying is that you're talking out of your arse.
- scottknick, on 06/04/2009, -15/+56"Nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too."
- EarlOfLade, on 06/04/2009, -6/+46Libya?
LOL, you don't know much about foreign politics, do you?
Libya is actually George W. Bush biggest success story and one that most people have no clue about.
Libya had ordered a full nuclear weapons package from Pakistan and was working with Dr. Qadr-Khan on putting the weapons together and operative. USA actually got a hunch of this and for once, Bush used diplomacy and worked with Qaddafi's son and managed to get Libya to throw out the nuke program and the terrorist training camps in return for US support and aid.
Libya is today a peaceful country, and I hate to say this, but Thank you, Bush! - inactive, on 06/04/2009, -2/+42Well put. Atheist does not have to equal elitist. To each his own.
- Liauma, on 06/04/2009, -7/+46The fact that they were totalitarian dictatorships is probably more pertinent.
- Liauma, on 06/04/2009, -2/+4142
- dijkstra22, on 06/04/2009, -6/+44Wait, why is believing in something we have no evidence for a good idea? Why is structuring morality not on thought and consideration but on faith, which creates a veil behind which one can car bomb or burn people at a stake, a good idea?
- KublaiKhan, on 06/04/2009, -7/+44Surely your own anecdotal experience with a sample size of 1 may be validly generalized to the world at large.
- Velnich, on 06/04/2009, -2/+37Please be sarcasm.
- Exodin, on 06/04/2009, -9/+44Atheist to a point, but they had to worship gods named Lenin, Stalin, and Mao...
- scottknick, on 06/04/2009, -4/+38How?
- inactive, on 06/04/2009, -9/+41Looking at the map you could also say that countries with higher percentages of Caucasians are more peaceful. So I guess we can conclude that non-Caucasians are inherently violent. Correlation is fun!
- nullx42, on 06/04/2009, -7/+39***** you, *****. Don't make fun of Casper.
- pintomp3, on 06/04/2009, -7/+38Ironic that Iraq and Afghanistan are ranked lower than the US since it was the US that invaded them and turned them into war zones. We tend to top the charts in terms of foreign wars, number of people in jail, and arms trade. And nothing says human rights like indefinite detention and torture.
- Liauma, on 06/04/2009, -11/+42This data gives me a rationalist boner.
- JoeMondo, on 06/04/2009, -13/+43Maybe because those religious people think they get bonuses in their afterlife for murdering or oppressing people who disagree with them.
Atheists know this is it/ - drstock, on 06/04/2009, -2/+31And the US is sandwiched between Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
- hoojoo, on 06/04/2009, -0/+28none of the above posts are correct. statistical significance has nothing to do with causation, no matter what the alpha value is set at. all it means is that if something is sufficiently statistically significant, the result that you are seeing is unlikely to have occurred due to chance (e.g. you just happened to pick a sample that gave a statistic which is not reflective of a parameter of the population you are sampling).
even with a very high degree of statistical significance, there may very well be confounding variables which result in atheism and non-violence to go together, without a causative effect in either direction.
this concludes today's statistics lesson. - Shmebber, on 06/04/2009, -5/+33It's not ranked by number of atheists, but by percent of population that are atheists, so the population size shouldn't be a factor.
- tmyprod, on 06/04/2009, -0/+27Goddamn, you are an idiot. He said color, not style.
- Elranzer, on 06/04/2009, -0/+27Atheism is a religion the same way bald is a hair color, or not-stamp-collecting is a hobby.
- PrimetimeFool, on 06/04/2009, -15/+41Just so everyone on Digg knows: out in the real world, there are people who are non-athiest and also don't go to church.
You want to hold this simple analysis up as a beacon of truth for how frequent religious service attendance does not correlate with a peaceful society, fine. Just don't lump the millions of us more moderate spiritual people in with the evangelicals. This whole "you're either with us or against us" attitude is unbecoming for such an staggeringly enlightened group such as yourselves. - novenator, on 06/04/2009, -4/+29IMO, Stalin wasn't so much of an atheist as fearful and threatened by the power of the church. If Russia would have been a theocracy, he would have worshipped whatever god was prevalent at the time in his quest for power.
- SumoSniper, on 06/04/2009, -2/+27No, it's a rough approximation of an oblate spheroid.
***** man, get with the times. - the2989, on 06/04/2009, -7/+31FTA:
"The idea behind the Savannah Principle is that we have a range of cognitive biases that adapted us for survival in small groups of hunter gatherers, but which are maladaptive for modern life. The controversial bit is that he goes further than that, claiming that people with high IQ can over-ride their evolutionary heritage."
In other words, we're built to judge others, as back in the stone age, it would help us distinguish enemy tribes from ours, and we'd know to not try to associate with them. It all makes sense, I guess. I have a much higher IQ than almost everybody I know, and I'm one of the most peaceful, non-judgemental people I know. I'm also Athiest. Much like George Carlin, I was religious until shortly after I hit "the age of reason". What a wakeup call that transition was! I'd almost not recommend forcing the transition on people, it's rather depersonalizing.
Oh and for *****'s sake, Digg, fix this bouncing comment box! -
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