Your'e new here. Just a heads up - playing fast and loose with words doesn't fly when discussing sticky subjects. You are still referencing and basing your arguments on things I didn't say.
Actually, that's the most popular method for discussing things on this forum.
I'm not going to go do this research right now but I think it'd be pretty easy to plot out an exponential decrease in overall quality of life in areas with a larger amount of religious people.
Think about it. Religions tend to believe that many things are "wrong" and this tends to take away rights and freedoms from huge swaths of the population. The closer you get to that, understandably, the lower the general quality of life will be (Islamic states for instance).
This was the point in my first post here. Yes, the data is there, and it seems to suggest a relationship between religion and quality of life, but I will repeat: there are numerous other contributing factors that need to be considered. Furthermore, it cuts both ways: The immense wealth and liberty that we enjoy in the Western World is very much indebted to the religiously fuelled idealism and ambition that accompanied the Protestant Reformation. Something else that significant complicates your hypothesis is that religions are diverse, and that not all kinds of religion will produce identical societal effects.
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Originally Posted by polak
Actually the more I think about it, the more I believe there is a very large and strong link between religious states and quality of life. Maybe it's the lower quality of life (and the lack of access to information that comes with that) that leads to religious following though.
This is true, and this also is part of what I was getting at earlier. There are stronger forces at work than religion in many cases. I think most pertinently, liberty, free enterprise, hedonism, and individualism have had a significantly greater impact on quality of life than the decline of religion.
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Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
Sorry but I have never bought that, he's a religious man but he's like so many others also very reasonable and science minded.
I'm not sure either way. What I am sure of is that - if he is an atheist - we wouldn't get an honest answer to the question until after his time in public life comes to a close. At the very least, not until after the next election.
But again, the concern comes down to belief impacting action, and you're right, he is science-minded and doesn't allow faith to impact his policy-making.
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GO FLAMES GO.
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Originally Posted by Azure
Typical dumb take.
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Sorry but I have never bought that, he's a religious man but he's like so many others also very reasonable and science minded.
The thing about guys like Dawkins is that they cannot comprehend how an intelligent person could possibly believe that there is a god. Therefore, in their minds, Obama, Clinton, Kennedy, Lincoln and all other intelligent people must be atheists whether they admit it or not.
It's an obnoxious mindset, but it's one that I consciously need to force myself out of from time to time.
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The thing about guys like Dawkins is that they cannot comprehend how an intelligent person could possibly believe that there is a god. Therefore, in their minds, Obama, Clinton, Kennedy, Lincoln and all other intelligent people must be atheists whether they admit it or not.
This has always frustrated me about Dawkins. For all his strengths, he still presents himself as incredibly—almost unreasonably—narrow minded with regards to his rather general understanding of "religion". He is a terrible philosopher and a dreadful theologian, and yet he likes to pretend that he knows what he is doing when discussing such matters.
A little off topic, but I found this episode of BBC's "The Big Questions" from 8 May 2011 only recently. It features Dawkins, biblical scholar Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, and Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner in a discussion about the modern function of the Bible. The exchange is pretty engaging (for the record: Stavrakopoulou is exaggerating some of the scholarly skepticism, and Bishop Nazir-Ali is equally guilty of exaggerating her position as "sensationalistic" and "extreme"), and it demonstrates pretty clearly what I am talking about: In it, Dawkins can't seem to overcome his own very obvious biases to even grasp the literary importance or function of the Bible that extends beyond religion.
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Dealing with Everything from Dead Sea Scrolls to Red C Trolls
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Originally Posted by woob
"...harem warfare? like all your wives dressup and go paintballing?"
Dawkins is/was basically an intellectual troll. I have no respect for his debating style at all. He is to atheists what people like Tucker Carlson or Michael Moore are to conservatives and liberals respectively.
I see him more as a performer than anything. Unfortunately, that is what sells books and TV appearances.
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haha yeah, mind you if I had to list my favorite atheists I don't think Dawkins would be in the top 10.
Dawkins is in my top 10 (though more for his work with biology and evolution), but I'd say Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens tie for first place with me. Nothing Hitchens did was ever boring.
I thought that Obama grew up as agnostic, not an atheist. I think his parents were both agnostic. And, when he moved to Chicago as a community organizer and started working with the black churches, that's when he went from agnostic to Christian.
