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Perhaps this is another tier in the complex lack of coincidence that makes the less religious countries "better". There is very little about atheism that can lead one to extremism. This can not be said of religion. That does not mean all theists will end up extremist by any means or that no atheist ever will. Quite the opposite. But the pathway from A to B is massively different between the two and there is a reason our media is not populated by stories of the actions of "extreme atheists". At most the only thing they populate is the New York Times Bestseller lists.
"Extreme" is very obviously relative to a given social norm i.e. an average, so it is no surprise that it's essentially always used pejoratively by the other side. The truth (if it exists) is entirely irrelevant. To be against slavery in 1500 is definitely extreme, to be for slavery in 2016 is definitely extreme.
I have to agree with Fish & Chips and Ariete. Also love the confirmation bias in some replies (I don't want to single anybody out). The OP is about populations, not individuals or truth. At a country level, there is likely a negative correlation between "importance of religion" and "success" although that depends how you define those two terms. There is strong evidence about the role of education, including in Schwadel (2014), cited by CTODominion for different reasons. Whether that means the prescription is to try to reduce the belief in God is a huge stretch. Once you take a lot of people out of poverty (economic, cultural or otherwise), many of them will attribute a lower importance to religion in their daily lives. That doesn't tell us anything about how smart or how right those who still believe in God are.
Most educated atheists today subscribe to some type of scientism, usually some variation of logical positivism.
These are the ones who posit that religion's hows have been falsified by science, like you, and that religion's whys are cognitively 'meaningless' so not even worth addressing in the first place. In reality, neither religion's hows nor whys are disprovable by science.
The reason why many think that the hows of religion can be addressed by science is because science, under the (mis)guidance of positivism, has been extruding into metaphysical domains for which it is fundamentally unequipped, for example in the study of origins.
Despite the fact that it's an obsolete doctrine, positivism has been acting as a type of pall over all knowledge, crudely blotting out the evidentiary and rationally intuitive inferences to a theistic world view, or to an agency basis for existence.
In my experience, those who understand the limits of science and the obsolescence of logical positivism aren't using "God of the Gaps" reasoning. They are merely opening themselves up to suppressed knowledge. This is the same knowledge discussed by the pioneers of rationalism, such as Descartes, Kant and Leibniz, who considered belief in God inseparable from the foundations of reason.
Jeezus Christ. (excuse me). I thought you actually understood what you were talking about - I was momentarily seduced. But you don't even understand the concept of a generalized population characteristic, indeed simply "a population characteristic", which was quite properly described as an apparently linear correlation, with the notion of falsifying a universal proposition (which yes of course can be disproven by an n of 1).
I guess the technique of verbosity barrage and philosophy of science dillettantism usually works, huh?
Still, your need to validate your own religiosity with must be crushing. Of course you're the n of 1!
The rest of your comments, fair shakes. (Except science may well be equipped to address the study of origins insofar apparent origins may not be actual, in fact an origin may not be required at all). Stick with the ground of being. Which was a cop out anyway, but it saves face I guess.
Jeezus Christ. (excuse me). I thought you actually understood what you were talking about - I was momentarily seduced. But you don't even understand the concept of a generalized population characteristic, indeed simply "a population characteristic", which was quite properly described as an apparently linear correlation, with the notion of falsifying a universal proposition (which yes of course can be disproven by an n of 1).
I guess the technique of verbosity barrage and philosophy of science dillettantism usually works, huh?
Still, your need to validate your own religiosity with must be crushing. Of course you're the n of 1!
The rest of your comments, fair shakes. (Except science may well be equipped to address the study of origins insofar apparent origins may not be actual, in fact an origin may not be required at all). Stick with the ground of being. Which was a cop out anyway, but it saves face I guess.
This post is a mess. You need to be clear on what you're criticizing and why.
In other words, probably not a linear relationship. In my experience, theists are overrepresented at both extremes of accomplishment, among those who are poorly educated and among the most brilliant, typically innovators or outside-of-the-box thinkers.
The general idea is that those in the former group represent people who are religious because they lack scientific education. The latter group represent people who are intelligent enough to see through secular presuppositions and realize the limitations of science.
The link, in blue, is the falsifying evidence. That is all that is needed to disprove a universal claim. The section that follows, that talks about a non-linear relationship, is anecdotal. It is set apart from the above and speculative. Notice the terminology.
I had a good two or three goes at trying to understand the rest of your post. In conclusion, I think I'll leave it as it is.
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