Atheists are Just Moral as Christians!

The human development index rates countries by standards of living. Let's look at the top 10 countries with the highest standards of living.

1) Norway 0.965 (=)
2) Iceland 0.960 (=)
3) Australia 0.957 (=)
4) Ireland 0.956 (↑ 4)
5) Sweden 0.951 (↑ 1)
6) Canada 0.950 (↓ 1)
7) Japan 0.949 (↑ 4)
8) United States 0.948 (↑ 2)
9) Switzerland 0.947 (↓ 2)
10) Netherlands 0.947 (↑ 2)

By atheism rates:
Norway: 72%
Iceland: 23%
Australia: 25%
Ireland: 5%
Sweden: 90%
Canada: 30%
Japan: 65%
USA: 10%
Switzerland: 27%
Netherlands: 44%

The country with the highest atheism rate in the world also has the highest standard of living in the world.



Conclusion:
Ranging from 5% atheist in the top 10 to 90% atheist in the top 10 standards of living, it is safe to say that belief in Christianity has very little effect, if any, on standard of living.

New Point
While I'm at this, I'll go ahead and examine the supposed morality advantage of Christian countries.

Colombia, the country with the highest murder rate by far in the world also has the highest Christianity rate in the world: 98% (90% Roman Catholic, 8% Protestant denominations).

Sweden, the country with the highest atheism rate in the free world (where the government doesn't distort the statistics), doesn't even make the list of the countries with the top 70 murder rates.

The United States, the most powerful Christian country, comes in at 24.

Stats don't lie. Personal obervations do.

Thus
It's important to look at religion through evidence in forms of physical objects and statistics instead of constructs of relationships and sensations produced by the mind.

 

Positive correlation doesn't prove cause and effect. Too many confounding variables.

 

Positive correlation doesn't show that something causes something but it does show that something doesn't cause something.

Here, the positive correlation shows that christianity or religion doesn't cause morality and by extension that one does not need to be religious to be happy or have good moral values.

 

...no it doesn't. It says Norway has the highest standard of living rate and Sweden has the highest atheism rate.

 

If stats don't lie, then you're saying we can prove God statistically.

As Benjamin Disraeli once said, "There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."

Do you know the definition of statistics?

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.

 

By the way, the equation used to find the HDI is: [x - min(x)]/[max(x)-min(x)]

That's about as accurate as using a left Reimman's sum to evaluate the area under a quadratic curve; and given the precision of the discrepancy of the results being around 0.001%, it could be rationally deemed too inaccurate for such a statement.

 

I agree with you, but you have a rather flawed means of proving this. The HDI is not based on morals, how could one even measure that? It measures health, education, and economy.

 

What about looking at religon by what it teaches?

 

athiests are far more moral then christians

the very notion that through begging forgivenesss from a non existant god allowes you to be forgiven for crimes proves this
christian morality is non existant cause they believe they can commit any crime say a few magic words & wala everythings a-ok
while athiests on the other hand live withtheyre conceince livewith theyre acions & take full responcibility for them
hell christians even go as far as claiming "i didnt do it, it was gods will, blame him"
oh she murdered her baby oh well that must have =been gods will
hell i even taled to 1 preist who said it was gods will that his sister was raped to make him a better christoan.. it was also gods will to make the rapist rape his sister
& gods will when she killed herself
all this just to make him believe?
it wasnt the rapist raping it was god.. it wasnt his sister being raped it was god
theres no such thing as crime
its all gods will

unless your a non christian then every thought every action..ALL ARE SIN

morality..yea right

 

soaringeagle is right.

You don't see atheists blowing up buildings or abortion clinics, do you? You don't see atheists who march in the streets with signs saying "God hates fags" or "God wants fags to die".

In fact Christianity is in charge of more death than any other ideology in history, communism being second. Crusades, Inquisitions, annihilation of the Native Americans, not to mention the imperialist fashions of Christian nations in Europe from the 1500s-1950s. And let's not all forget that Hitler was a Christian. And what are the roots of anti-semitism (both anti-jewry and anti-arabism)? Christianity of course! What religion put the Greco-Roman world in the dark ages of superstition and chaos? Christianity!

So how many people has Christianity killed?

http://exchristian.net/exchristian/2002/10/how-many-people-have-been-killed-by.php

You tell me? Do Christians come anywhere close to being as moral as atheists? Honestly how many openly atheists murderers have you seen? Or "Reason Wars" (as oppose to Holy Wars) to kill the supersitious religious? None.

And last time I heard murder is universally considered the greatest immorality......though murder and hate isn't the only thing Christians have done!

 

Oh, my bad.
The HDI part is meant to show that you don't need religion to be happy.

And the second part of my post is where I go into morality.

 

George Bush is blowing up buildings. He claims to be Christian, like nearly all other politicians, but statistically he's probably not. He has an IQ around 130 and 90% of Americans with an IQ of 140 or over are atheists. Coincidentally, 90% of the general American population is religious.

 

Bush has an IQ of 130? That seems too high! Do you have a sources to back that up?

Sure he went to Yale.......but that doesn't mean he is that smart. 110 at the most (which is already pretty smart.....but he went to Yale and that can explain a couple things).

 

id say thats a published 130
all his school & medical records are sealed
his speaches were analized,
every word hes said while in office
& compared to speaches from many many sources,
& the experts estimated his iq from that at around 68-70

keep in mind he probly only reads them not writes them
and the number drops even lower
borderline retarded

 

his SAT score of 1206 gives him somewhere between 125 and 129
his IQ-type tests that he took to apply to Air Force Officer Training School put him between 120 and 130
and a historiometric study in the science journal Political Psychology gives him an estimated 125

so hes definately somewhere between 120 and 130 and probably at about 127 based on an average of all 3 studies

 

All the atheists I know are SHADES kinder and more altruistic than any so-called Christian.

I happen to believe that nations with more atheists are likely to have less crime, less war, more health care, more education and an overall better satisfaction and quality of life than those with a majority of religious nuts or even those nations who believe health care and education should only be better for those who have more money.

As if money is what determines human worth... it's sickening.

 

What are you worth? $1,000,000

You're getting pissed over semantics.

 

I'm at least worth a sheet of acid and a high-priced hooker.

 

Were you guys that were giving the anti-Christianity talk directed at me? Because believe me, I'm not pro-Christianity, I just knew a few good statistic quotes and felt compelled to use them. :tongue:

But the bottomline is this; morality, by definition, is relative. What's moral to you is different that what's moral to another, each with an equally justifiable position.

 

Not if you're talking to an objectivist