nib95 said:
I mean, you see it. As less and less people properly follow religion you get dysfunctional or less traditional family values, people being less charitable, more materialistic, more self centred, more sexually motivated etc.
This is what is frightening to me, anyway. He thinks that the less religion there is, the more amoral society is. What does that say about the highly atheistic countries like Denmark or Sweden, which have extremely productive societies, extremely low crime rates and, on average, people live longer than here? America, by contrast, is one of the most evangelic countries, and its crime rates are outrageous. Same for most muslim countries. Often devastating poverty, crime, international crimes against humanity. There is absolutely no correlation between the more theocratic societies being safer, providing happier lives to people, or anything of the sort. To the contrary: data suggests
the exact opposite.
And then there's the problem with what nib95 determines is "moral drift." By what definition are we going to ping for "traditional family values"? If he's like most muslims and christians, he thinks homosexuality is wrong. If not, it's because he's arbitrarily deciding to ignore what is in his holy books. And why should that be a value we pursue? Thankfully, I haven't seem him advocate laws getting passed to that effect, but it is extremely easy to envision why religion becomes a huge problem to society. Because it's any number of religions independently pursuing their fucked up vision of what morality means, based on a highly amoral God whose idea of morality is often Hitler-esque. And why should they have any say in what I say or do?
I mean his list goes on. "More sexually motivated"? This is bad? We're humans. We're products of evolution. By definition if we weren't sexually motivated something would be terribly wrong with our species. If anything, the archaic medieval systems of sexuality suggested in Islam and Christianity is hugely damaging to healthy sexual behavior. We know just how bad the preaching of abstinence-only education has been in America, for example, and have statistics to back it up. And yet Evangelicals will doggedly follow the creed because their God tells them so. And yet... somehow, people being "more sexually motivated" is proof to nib95 of a deteriorating society? Why? Because his fucked up religion says so, based on a pedophile prophet who himself was involved in sexually abhorrent practices.
If any one of billion other religions are right where yours are wrong, you immediately have a huge problem with how you're arbitrarily deciding society is declining without
your religion. And if any one doesn't believe at all, watch out: they surely live less happy lives.
Except, as with my original point, they don't. Highly atheistic countries are on average massively more likely to have happier populations who lead longer, more productive lives.
