>I disagree with Chuck0 and Yoshie on a lot of things,
>but if someone like Bill O'Reilly reared their ugly
>head, I'd flock to their side in a heartbeat.
>Interestingly, on [ahem] another nominally leftist
>forum, I posted the same statistics for atheism vs.
>societal health I posted here a short while ago, and
>this is a [not too untypical] response I got:
>
>"Damn (snark), did God piss in your cheerios or
>something? Isn't this putting the cart before the
>horse? People turn to religion as an answer to
>questions they have about their lives; don't you think
>that might be why those who suffer the most would be
>more prone to turn to religious answers?
And that's what the text <http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/atheism.html> says:
>Of course, it is essential to clearly state that I am in no way
>arguing that high levels of organic atheism cause societal health or
>that low levels of organic atheism cause societal ills such as
>poverty or illiteracy. If anything, the opposite argument should be
>made: societal health causes widespread atheism, and societal
>insecurity causes widespread belief in God, as discussed by Norris
>and Inglehart (2004) above.