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"Atheist" is not the correct way to describe Australia. It's certainly secular, in that the government is constitutionally prohibited from interfering in religious activity, or establishing a church, so unlike many European countries there has never been a state sponsored church. Also, religion is generally viewed as being a "private" matter, so doesn't generally play an overt role in the daily lives of most.
But a clear majority of people do report a religious affiliation.
Wikipedia says this...
Roman Catholicism (25.3%)
Anglicanism (17.1%)
Other Christian (18.7%)
Buddhism (2.5%)
Islam (2.2%)
Hinduism (1.3%)
Other religions (1.2%) No religion (22.3%)
Not stated or unclear (9.4%)
edit: thread title doesn't seem to fit completely... and the most religious the least successful.
I don't think its a coincidence, what do you guys think?
Reading through this thread and examining what you've written so far, I think what has happened is that you've fallen for a number of popular misconceptions about the status of secularism and religion in science, ethics and sociology.
If you're not in academia, this isn't your fault, for the most part, because there is an echo chamber media that is foisting the impression upon the general public that atheism is inherently more scientific and logical, and that this is the inexorable direction of the future. What is actually happening in academia is very different. For example:
• College graduates are now more likely to identify with a faith than the general population.[1]
• Naturalist theories of knowledge are falling into intractable problems.[2]
• Scientific fields such as quantum mechanics are overturning naturalist assumptions about the structure of reality.[3]
• The modern synthesis in biology is being radically overhauled in a disorderly and fragmented way.[4]
An important detail you are not being told is that the vocal proponents of secularism today, such as Krauss, Richard Carrier or Sam Harris, appeal to antiquated theories about the nature of scientific knowledge that date back to the 1920s. On top of that, media commentators who give them press lack the training to understand that these views have long devolved into obsolescence.
This brief discussion articulates the same points in a different way:
"If there is a battle for science that is being won by secularism, that would only be in pop culture. In popular culture, you have to say that Dawkins, and the Krausses, and others, they get a lot of popular press in the media. They really do seem in some ways to be winning the media war. But that isn't what's really happening in the academy."
"And I have great confidence in time that this is going to straighten itself out. One of the great things I appreciate about science is that it's self-correcting. When it goes off the track, eventually it comes back online because it has to deal with the recalcitrant reality out there that is the way it is regardless of how we think of it."
They always try to enhance the myth of nerdy Asians and stupid Africans.
Its not a myth that the average East Asian has a higher IQ than the average African, its a fact
And again if you think that blue dots on a chart is "racist", you should check the definition of racist again.
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