Why are least religious countries much better than religious ones? (believe, service)

[Frogburn]

Originally Posted by Roflguy2012

Hey, City-Data Forum!
Well, I am a religious person and I have a lot of atheist friends. So, one of these days, I and my friends were discussing this:

According to them, the more people pray, the less prosperous they will be. And the less they pray they'll be more successful. For example, people in the Scandinavian countries, Japan, Western Europe which are majority atheist have a higher standard of living than those in religious countries such as India, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Angola, etc...

Now I ask: why so? shouldn't it be the other way around? Doesn't God love those poor people?

PS: sorry for my grammar/vocabulary, English is not my native language.

This is an old post. But the thread is born anew.

The premise is flawed. It's like asking why in the United States only Southern cities are prosperous like Atlanta, Miami, and Austin and Northern cities all have a much lower standard of living like Detroit, Cleveland, and Gary.

Notice the question did not pick a poor Southern city like Jackson, Mississippi not pick a more prosperous Northern city like New York City or Chicago or Seattle.

Likewise, the wealthiest nations Muslim and Catholic (such as Qatar and Luxembourg and The Republic of Ireland). Some of the poorest countries are communist atheist nations like China and Vietnam.

Economist judge the wealth of nations in terms of his wealthy its citizens are not by GDP but by per capita GDP.

By nominal per capita GDP the IMF ranks Catholic Luxembourg as the richest nation on earth.

By purchasing power parity GDP the IMF ranks Muslim Qatar as the richest nation on earth and Catholic Luxembourg as second. Ireland is in both cases ranked by the IMF as richer than the Netherlands, USA, and Japan. And only a small percentage of Ireland statistically identifies as atheist.

Japan is not predominantly atheist by the way. Only a fraction of Japanese are atheist. Most Japanese are into the Shinto and Buddhist religions and the Japanese pray at shrines offering burning incense.

[Shirina]

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

It's a load of garbage and sad that you praise someone who hates God and the Bible.

1 John 2:15

Just when I thought we were making a *wee* bit of progress, here you are, saying this.

Oh, I get it.

I get it all too well.

What you just said has *nothing* to do with my post. Nothing whatsoever.

It has nothing to do with me "hating God and the Bible" either.

You just can't stand the fact that someone gave me a compliment on a post that refuted every last sentence you've said. So ... it becomes an imperative to abandon and ignore *everything* I've said so far (which I know you read) and start spewing this kind of nonsense again.

I sat here, despite the pain, Jeff ... despite the pain and the extra morphein I had to take to finish that post ... and wrote a veritable novel so that you could understand my position better.

Only to see now that it was a thorough waste of time.

How ... discouraging.

Okay then ...

[lukas1973]

Originally Posted by Frogburn

This is an old post. But the thread is born anew.

The premise is flawed. It's like asking why in the United States only Southern cities are prosperous like Atlanta, Miami, and Austin and Northern cities all have a much lower standard of living like Detroit, Cleveland, and Gary.

Notice the question did not pick a poor Southern city like Jackson, Mississippi not pick a more prosperous Northern city like New York City or Chicago or Seattle.

Likewise, the wealthiest nations Muslim and Catholic (such as Qatar and Luxembourg and The Republic of Ireland). Some of the poorest countries are communist atheist nations like China and Vietnam.

Economist judge the wealth of nations in terms of his wealthy its citizens are not by GDP but by per capita GDP.

By nominal per capita GDP the IMF ranks Catholic Luxembourg as the richest nation on earth.

By purchasing power parity GDP the IMF ranks Muslim Qatar as the richest nation on earth and Catholic Luxembourg as second. Ireland is in both cases ranked by the IMF as richer than the Netherlands, USA, and Japan. And only a small percentage of Ireland statistically identifies as atheist.

Japan is not predominantly atheist by the way. Only a fraction of Japanese are atheist. Most Japanese are into the Shinto and Buddhist religions and the Japanese pray at shrines offering burning incense.

GDP figures are mostly not very meaningful. Especially not if you look at GDP per capita for smaller countries. In the case of Luxembourg many people from Belgium, France and Germany work in Luxembourg and contribute to the GDP of Luxembourg. But that doesn't make the residents in Luxembourg twice as rich than people in the adjacent countries like the GDP per capita figures sugest.
A better measurement to look at the material affluence of the people is an index of actual individual consumption:

GDP vs. Actual individual consumption (EU=100):

Luxembourg: 264 vs 137
Ireland: 177 vs 96
Switzerland: 162 vs 128
Norway: 160 vs 133
Germany: 124 vs 123

Luxembourg is a rich country, yes, but it's not that unbelievable rich than those GDP figures sugest. The reason for the inflated GDP figures for Ireland are the precence of a few HQ from well known international corporations. The material affluence of the people in Ireland seems quite average.

BTW, Luxembourg is a catholic country, but the Luxembourger aren't particularly religious. Overall countries with a higher percentage of strongly believing people are of course poorer.

[Shirina]

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

In other words, pedestal postering. You say nothing here to refute my point.

You never made a point. All you did was jump up and down and scream, "I'm not a fascist! I'm not!" But then further down in this very post, you clearly demonstrate in no uncertain terms precisely how you *are* a fascist.

You suck at this, Jeff. Seriously. You do. Debate is not your forte. You constantly step on your own landmines -- which is why my posts to you are so long.

You're wrong on so many levels, in so many ways, and from so many angles that it takes me all damn day to point out the hundreds of flaws in your logic.

It really gets tiresome ... and futile ... and pointless. Anyone who says, "I'm not a fascist!" and then two paragraphs down starts flapping their gums about how gays should be banned from marriage because it offends your "beautiful God-created institution." In other words, everyone else, regardless of their beliefs, must submit to *your* interpretation of *your* religious text.

WHICH IS FASCISTIC, Jeff ... that is what fascists do! Eh, never mind. That's the problem with fascism. Those who donned a swastika never saw the extermination of Jews to be wrong, either. It's okay to take the rights of others way ... just as long as fascism leaves *your* rights alone.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

More of you saying something that is not really saying anything. If not wanting Christian businesses to have to be forced to embrace homosexuality means fascist then you have a warped definition of the term.

Not that you'll give a damn or acknowledge the difference since you have no ability for nuanced thinking, I'll try to explain this ... again.

A business operates in the public sphere. In other words, it isn't an exclusive club where only certain people are allowed to use its services. If a baker hates gays *that* much, he could always go that route. Turn his business into a club, have an admissions fee, charge yearly dues, create membership requirements such as needing to be heterosexual and proclaim the place absolutely gay-free (kind of like how the Nazis proclaimed certain regions of Germany to be Jew-free, if we want to start making historical parallels.)

But a business might be owned privately, but it serves the public -- and there are laws about discriminating against members of the general public. You'll just have to deal with it ... the same way *every other* racial, ethnic, age, or gender specific bigot who thinks he has a right to discriminate by bringing his or her irrational prejudices into the public sphere -- you grit your teeth, smile, serve them, and hope they leave as quickly as possible.

But if you're asking for the right to discriminate against who you serve as a business, you're not going to get it -- and that is not fascism my completely misguided friend. Not *every* edict by the government that you don't like is fascism. That is called keeping the peace.

The moment this issue came up, every bigot and libertarian came out of the woodwork demanding the right to discriminate against *anyone* for *any* reason. Guess what happens when *that* happens? Ever hear of the Watts riots in L.A.? Do you think that people are going to quietly accept a reversal of 151 years of progress in regards to state-sanctioned discrimination so that we have a return to "colored" and "white" water fountains and bathrooms? Yeah, then who uses which bathroom will get REALLY complicated, won't it, Jeff.

Because that's what will happen. All because of your small-minded, irrational, fear-based, gay-hating, religiously-inspired xenophobia of someone *different* than you are.

A law will *never* pass targeting a specific group -- i.e. a law that allows businesses to *specifically* discriminate against gays. It won't happen. The only way it would even pass Constitutional muster is if we allowed it to be a discrimination free-for-all ... and that's when the rioting will start, the neighborhood race wars will start, the gang wars will intensify, civil unrest will foment like a steaming volcano, and you'll turn this country into a very unpleasant place to live.

All because of *you*. Not that you give a damn. I'm sure you'd rather this country burn to the ground and thousands die in racially-motivated murders and revenge killings thanks to the government letting everyone's hatreds, prejudices, and bigotry out of the cage to run rampant in our neighborhoods.

You know NOTHING about history or how civilization works. All you care about is your little bubble of security, your pathetic comfort zone inspired by your hateful little god who himself is so terrified of homosexuality that he thought murdering them in cold blood was the only option for them.

You *should* be quite ashamed of yourself, but I know you're not. You're incapable of feeling shame. All you care about is getting your way no matter the cost to *everyone* else.

You are the biggest fascist on this board. Period. If you don't like it, you'll just have to eat it. Here, have some salt. It will help mask the taste of that bitter pill you're going to swallow.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

The irony is atheists DO want everyone to be forced to submit and embrace secularism and the LIE of evolutionary THEORY.

For the love of all that's good and decent in this world, Jeff ... could you even POSSIBLY write something any stupider than that? I mean, are you TRYING to make yourself look like a complete idiot or are you seriously trolling now?

How in the HELL does evolution affect your life? How can anyone be MADE to believe in evolution? Obviously all the facts in the world make no difference to those benighted by ancient mysticism and silly creation myths involving dirt and ribs. God himself could tell you that evolution is true and you'd spit the word "theory" back in *his* face.

Not that evolution has ANY relevance to this whatsoever ... and if that's an example you're going to use for secular fascism, well, it only demonstrates that a) you have no case and b) you're desperate and c) you're running out of steam.

In other words, you ain't got sh ... well, I can't say that word. And such foul and disgusting language would undoubtedly tarnish those delicate little eyeballs of yours.

Evolution doesn't make you do anything. Evolution doesn't tell you what you can or can't do. Evolution doesn't limit or grant choices. Evolution isn't an issue of morality. Evolution doesn't affect or determine a person's lifestyle. Evolution just sits there as an idea to be accepted or rejected ... and then you go on with your life.

So until you can tell me just what freedoms you've lost due to evolution, do me a favor and stop wasting everyone's time with stupid arguments, Jeff. STUPID arguments.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

Stay out of my territory, and I'll stay out of yours. Unfortunately, gay marriage crosses into my territory.

MARRIAGE DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU, JEFF ... AND IT DOESN'T BELONG TO CHRISTIANITY!!!!

Do I have to scream it into your face before you understand that fact?

Or are you just so myopic and unaware of what actually goes on in the rest of the world that you fail to understand that ... wait, holy crap! People have been getting married for thousands of years before even Judaism even existed, much less Christianity.

For you to sit here and tell me that marriage is "your territory" (LOL! I feel like we're in a gangland movie) is like me trying to take credit for the invention of the automobile. Yeah, never mind people have been driving around in cars for a century before I was even born. How does *that* work? Time travel?

Your religion doesn't even hold the legal strings for what a marriage is, which just goes to show you how IRRELEVANT your religion actually is. That's why I can walk into a Justice of the Peace or even petition a ship's captain to marry me to my husband and enjoy ALL of the rights and privileges of marriage in this country. I don't need the blessing of a priest or pastor, I don't need the permission of any church, or the sanction of any particular religion.

BUT ... if I walk into a church and tell a priest or pastor or rabbi or whatever to marry me to my husband and fail to obtain a marriage license from the government, guess what happens. NOTHING! Yeah, that's right. I get to enjoy NONE of the rights and privileges of marriage in this country. In fact, the government won't even recognize the marriage as being legal.

How do you like THEM apples, Jeff? Your religion matters not one single iota when it comes to marriage unless your religion means something to you, but the *government* will marry anyone regardless of religion or lack thereof, and only through the *government* does one obtain the rights and privileges of marriage. So you know precisely where I think you can stick your incredibly fascistic notion of "marriage being my territory" because it isn't, and I'll cross into it and dance a *** there if I want.

Because this bears repeating at least once more:

MARRIAGE DOESN'T BELONG TO YOU, JEFF, AND IT DOESN'T BELONG TO CHRISTIANITY!!!

Or you can hop on a plane to India and tell the billion or so Hindus that their marriages don't count because they didn't have the blessing of your vain little god ... including all of the Hindus that were married for the two and a half thousand years before Judaism was a sparkle in Abraham's eyes.

I swear before long I'm going to need a Cray supercomputer just to calculate all the ways in which you are 100% wrong in just two sentences. TWO sentences, Jeff, and look how many keystrokes I had to type to explain all the which-ways you're just plain, dead bang wrong.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

It takes a beautiful God created institution and perverts it.

Now you're just being a bigot and I'm not going to even indulge this ugliness any further than this one sentence.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

This has nothing to do with allowing gay couples to be allowed to have full rights and benefits of a partnership. The push for gay marriage was really the push to FORCE all of society to embrace it as natural and normal.

Don't flatter yourself.

No one gives a damn what you think. Don't you get it? The gays are allowed to marry now and that's all that matters. You can sit and stew in your own huffy-puffy juices now, for all anyone cares. Do you REALLY think that all of the homosexuals out there who are now happily married are now sitting around scheming because they just can't *stand* the idea that a bunch of haters, bigots, and religious fascists don't like them?

Nope. They're flouncing along now, married, living their lives -- going about their business, and if people like you even enter their minds anymore, it's *only* because YOU won't leave THEM alone.

You're the miserable, crotchety people still butt-hurt over the fact that you lost, and you'll say or do ANYTHING now to justify your silly, childish anger. Go stomp your feet somewhere else. No one ELSE is interested in watching you.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

Well such threads really served no purpose other than Christian bashing, but I made it clear that I did not support their rhetoric like the Arizona pastor.

Oh right, of course. It was just Christian-bashing. That's all it was. I mean, it's not like, perhaps, maybe, possibly, we atheists are a little concerned about the growing number of powerful people with horrifically fascistic, anti-freedom, holistically bigoted, Nazified views on what our nation ought to be like ... that has NOTHING to do with why we discuss those issues.

No, it's just for the fun of bashing Christians. Uh huh.

You're an idiot, Jeff. Plain and simple. There's not much more I can say about a response so gut-wrenchingly DUMB as that one.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

Which I did, but of course, you would never give me credit for that.

Okay, here's your credit. Whoops! You just lost it for claiming those threads are just there for Christian-bashing. Sorry. 1 - 1 = 0.

And ... since you said that, does that mean you can admit, now, that when you post threads about gay marriage, you do it just to bash gays? Hmm? It's the same concept, isn't it. Because it is.

Or are you going to demonstrate your predilection for hypocrisy in this argument, too?

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

Nonsense. I certainly wouldn't support throwing atheists in jail. OTOH, your side had no problem with a Christian being imprisoned because she would not accept gay marriage,

BULL! Nice spin doctoring on that issue, but it's still BULL!!

She wasn't thrown in jail because she was a Christian. She didn't get hauled out of her church and arrested simply because she believed in God. She was thrown in jail for deliberately and knowingly obstructing the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses even after they were made legal in her state. It was part of her job, and even after repeated warnings, she refused to vacate her position AND refused to conduct the business of the court as she was SWORN to do.

So don't hand me any spun-up nonsense about how poor Kimmie was thrown in jail for her beliefs. Boo hoo hoo! Because that's not what happened. If she cared so much about her beliefs, she would have resigned her post, because her *beliefs* would have been more important than her job. Instead, she SAT THERE and deliberately acted as an obstructionist while refusing to carry out her SWORN duty to the court.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

or seeing businesses destroyed because they would not accept it either.

LOL! If you want to see businesses destroyed, just wait until the rioting and civil unrest starts. Because that's what will happen if laws are passed that allows businesses to start discriminating again like they did back in the 50's and 60's.

Not that you understand such things, being all wrapped up in your religious security blanket, oblivious to how the world actually works ... and why.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

Submit or BE PUNISHED. That's secular fascism right there! So now you are sounding quite hypocritical to me.

*snicker* Secular fascism would have arrested Kim Davis simply for being a Christian. Period. Nothing else. They would have arrested her for owning a Bible, attending a secret church, praying to a forbidden God, or something along those lines. Secular fascism would have banned Christianity outright -- or at least any outward displays of it. Churches would be converted into community buildings, crosses would be taken down, Bibles burned ...

Yet despite the fact that 85% of Americans identify as being Christian, despite the fact that the Christian right owns several cable channels and Fox News has become a propaganda outlet for Christian extremism, despite the fact that atheists can't REALLY hold elected office (even though the law says they can, they can't), despite the fact that atheists have to scrounge for pennies to have one cheap show on a cable access channel while Christians have mega-empires worth billions and own massive media power, despite all of this and more ....

You'll still sit there and complain because one silly girl was thrown into prison for breaking the law. Yeah, I forgot ... the right to practice your religion should be INFINITE! With no restrictions AT ALL!

Well, unless you're not a Christian, in which case, you should have barely any rights at all. I mean, even an atheist putting up a billboard or renting a few signs on the side of a bus creates such horrible OUTRAGE among Christians that it makes national news -- and Fox News actually holds an on-air symposium about whether or not atheists should have the right to express their opinions (do we even need to ASK that question in this country?!?). Of course, Fox didn't bother to invite any actual atheists to speak on behalf of atheists at this so-called symposium, either, such is the high regard atheists are held in the eyes of the Christian right.

And still you whine.

Whine ... whine ... whine.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

See, you are too biased to see the problem objectively. Because YOU think gay marriage is wonderful and good then you think it is silly that we won't bake cakes for them. I've tried to make comparisons to something that you would find offensive and wrong, and your side just refuses to address that point.

As I said ... I understand how things work much better than you do, apparently. All YOU can think about are those ridiculous wedding cakes. Such a myopic, short-sighted understanding of society.

I've explained why I hold the opinions I do regarding this issue. Several times. Allowing open discrimination will create a very ugly country to live in. And it won't just be gays who feel the sting of discrimination. Everyone will. SOME people won't stand for it. There WILL be violence. There WILL be property destruction. People WILL die because of this.

Or doesn't that matter to you? Just having to make a goddamn wedding cake for a gay couple ... that's all that matters, right? And if we allowed such a thing, sure, a few Christians can exclaim "whew!" and not have to bake those awful cakes for those nasty, evil, non-person animals who shouldn't even be marrying in the first place, we can watch a century and a half of struggle to improve race-relations in this country circle the drain as all the bigots, racists, and haters start discriminating based on race, gender, ethnicity, nationality, and all the other protected classes.

Because, as I said, you will NEVER get a law past the Supreme Court that calls for open discrimination against a specific group of people. You'd have to allow ALL forms of discrimination, and that will cause A LOT of collateral damage just so you can "stick it to" those horrible gay people.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

Typical. You won't face me in PM because u need your own cheering section here. I've dealt with much worse than you. That tends to happen when you are a member of team Satan and a slave to death.

Okay, first of all, I don't say this often because it can sometimes lead to a deletion, but surely, mods, don't you think Jeff deserves it just this one time?

Jeff ... for Christ's sake, just shut up ... will ya?

Your behavior hear is just ridiculous.

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

I wish you would tell your atheists friends that volume doesn't equal victory. So many times, ya'll claim to have run me off when the reality is that I simply don't have time or energy to respond to everyone.

I'm not going to tell my atheist friends anything. It is their privilege to post whatever they like in response to our posts. People are as free to disagree with me as they are with you.

Perhaps instead of getting angry at ME because people compliment my posts, you should instead work on improving yours.

There are plenty of Christians here, Jeff. But you'll never ask yourself why they never seem to leap to your defense or publicly, at least, compliment you. Why is that, I wonder?

Is it all MY fault because a few ... how many, 2 or 3 ... atheists said something good about my posts? Is that the reason why none of the other Christians here seem willing to take your side and stand with you?

Or maybe it's because even THEY find your interpretation of Christianity repugnant and stay away.

But I'm not going to apologize because I receive compliments. Nor am I going to slink off to a PM so we can shout at each other in a proverbial vacuum. It's not like I'm ever going to convince YOU of anything, anyway. Not when I work for team Satan (LOL!). So what would be the point?

If you can't handle the fact that you can't seem to draw in the other Christians on this board, that's up to you to do something about.

One last thing. Don't think for a moment I didn't notice the abrupt change in the tone of your latest post, the one to which I'm currently responding. Before the other atheists chimed in and complimented me, you were far less hostile and belligerent ... you didn't use such melodramatic fluff like claiming I'm a "member of team Satan and a slave to death." That kind of giggle-worthy rhetoric was completely absent before.

But now it's back in full force ... all because you lost your head when two or three other atheists chimed in and complimented my post. Yep. I noticed. It's too bad, too, because I was just about to retract my claws and be more civil towards you. But instead, the fact that you didn't make Homecoming King made you go all bonkers ... and I had no choice but to keep my claws firmly in place.

That's ALL on you.

[Rafius]

Originally Posted by jeffbase40

Nonsense. I certainly wouldn't support throwing atheists in jail. OTOH, your side had no problem with a Christian being imprisoned because she would not accept gay marriage,....

She wasn't jailed for not accepting gay marriage. She was jailed for breaking the law...and rightly so.

[badlander]

Originally Posted by Rafius

She wasn't jailed for not accepting gay marriage. She was jailed for breaking the law...and rightly so.

And the judge was a devout Christian who does not agree with the concept of SSM. So Jeff claims that Kin Davis was sent to jail because the judge was also a Christian and supported traditional weddings but for some reason he did his duty in supporting the law?

[Shirina]

Originally Posted by Frogburn

This is an old post. But the thread is born anew.

The premise is flawed. It's like asking why in the United States only Southern cities are prosperous like Atlanta, Miami, and Austin and Northern cities all have a much lower standard of living like Detroit, Cleveland, and Gary.

Actually, the premise is quite sound as a number of studies have indicated. There is, in fact a correlation, if not a causation, between the religiosity of a nation and its relative standard of living.

As a general rule, the more religiosity the nation has within its culture, the lower its standard of living.

The United States is a glaring exception and is the *only* nation that has the same amount of religiosity as many uneducated, impoverished Third World nations.

One of many examples I can give is that religious nations tend to have FAR more laws than non-religious nations as religious nations often attempt to legislate morality. This means that the population of these religious nations have far more laws to run afoul of thus increasing the prison population (while decreasing the freedom index of said nation).

America, for instance, has one of the highest per capita prison populations in the world, most of it centering on drug use.

America's legal system is hopelessly entangled with Judeo-Christian Biblical law and, more specifically, Puritanism.

Puritanism was an exceedingly harsh religion that focused on trying to keep people from sinning by criminalizing everything from laughing on a Sunday to a wife nagging her husband too much. This kind of nonsense was what led to the Salem Witch Trials among other lunacy laws such as criminalizing sodomy and interracial marriages.

The idea behind Puritanism, unfortunately, is that all of the emphasis was placed on the criminal and the prosecution thereof and very little emphasis was placed on the innocent. Thus laws were often brutal and carried stiff penalties for even minor crimes to prevent sinning (and angering God), and if innocents are harmed in the process of carrying out justice, well, such is the cost of doing business.

That attitude is still quite pervasive in the justice system today, especially regarding drug use. While other nations have de-criminalized drug use or, at least, moved toward rehabilitation rather than imprisonment, the US still simply tosses addicts in jail where they fend for themselves until their sentences are up, at which time they usually beeline to their favorite dealer to get back on their drug of choice.

Quite often, a high-functioning adult with a good job, children, a mortgage, etc. who is a productive member of society can be caught with a small amount of marijuana and subsequently put in prison for 3 to 5 months ... but doing so often causes this adult to lose his job, obtain a criminal record making it difficult to find a new job, the kids may be fostered out, and if the adult is renting, said adult will be released from jail only to find himself homeless due to being evicted for non-payment of rent. (You need a really good support network to maintain your lifestyle even during a short prison term and not everyone has that).

The harm the prison sentence caused to this adult's life was hundreds of times more damaging to society than the crime itself. Smoking a joint now and then is far less harmful than having another unemployed person on the welfare roles trying to find a job with a recent criminal record, with the kids in foster care and uprooted from what was once a good home, and a spouse who may not be able to meet the bills on a single income. All because this adult was caught with a few ounces of Mary Jane.

Non-religious nations are often more aware of problems like this and take steps to rectify them. But in religious societies, there is always pressure to just arrest everyone and put them in prison because to do anything less is being "soft on crime." That's the Puritan way.

The same logic holds true for narcotic pain medications. The Puritanical justice system in America cares little if people who actually need these medications cannot get them. In their minds, it's better to be in abject misery than to be addicted -- which is patently untrue (suicides of chronic pain sufferers is a hidden epidemic in this country). Yet lawmakers continue to make accessing these drugs ever more difficult because all they really care about is removing these drugs from the hands of addicts and junkes.

If true chronic pain sufferers are left in the lurch with no pain medications so they walk out into their back yard and put a bullet in their brain, oh well. Again, such is the cost of doing business. At least we're keeping the meds out of the hands of criminals -- and fighting sin! Yes, it really does all come down to sin even when the religious lingo has long ago been phased out. The wording is different, but the motives, methods, and unfortunate results are still the same.

In many respects, it comes down to the expression first used by Arnaud Amalric during the sack of Béziers in 1209. Fearing they would kill orthodox Catholics as well as those "evil" heretic Cathars, one of Amalric's lieutenants asked, "How can we tell the difference?"

Amalric is famous for saying, Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.

"Kill them all. For the Lord knoweth them that are His."

The more modern expression is, of course, "Kill 'em all and let God sort them out."

A justice system still in place with heavy religious roots like America's, especially roots in an extremist subset of religion such as Puritanism, very little progress is made in truly fighting crime. Jails simply become revolving doors for constant repeat offenders and recidivism is very high. Quite often, spending time in prison actually hardens a person and introduces them to the criminal underworld, where they are more likely to stay and associate once they are set free. Some criminals are actually "institutionalized" and simply can't survive in the outside world, so they commit crimes just so they can go back.

Other nations with less religiosity tend toward actually trying to rehabilitate prisoners and don't view crime and punishment as a matter of revenge. The United States, after all, is the *only* Western nation that still executes criminals -- is there a correlation between that and America having a very high degree of religiosity? Almost certainly. Religion takes a very dim view of criminal behavior -- even immoral behavior (by the standards of their religion) often causes such fear and anger that behavior against it becomes irrational. The massive campaign to ban gay marriage is an excellent example of said religiosity blinding half the nation with regard to the rights of others.

In other words, when religion is involved, the believers actually think their rights are not only infinite, but take precedence over all other rights no matter what they are or who is harmed, persecuted, discriminated against, or unfairly treated. This can, and does, create an entire group of people who are considered second class citizens.

All of these reasons and many more (far too many to actually discuss here) cause overly religious nations to quite often be horrific cesspools.

I often jokingly say, "Thank God for our secular laws" because without them, America would be just another cesspool of religious intolerance, unfair and often bigoted laws, and open persecution of those not marching in lockstep with fundamentalism. All one has to do is look to places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan to see what happens when religion, especially fundamentalist religion, begins making the rules.

[mordant]

I think that the sky-high percentage of the US population that's in prison is mostly explained by the book, The New Jim Crow, more than by religion as such. In just the same way that the South (largely successfully) recast the Civil War as a "noble lost cause" that had little to do with racism, the advances of civil rights in the 1960s had to be offset by the creation of a new rationale for the underclass, hence the so-called "war on drugs" and the demonization of the poor, minorities and nonconformists. People who are incarcerated (and often, if they are felons, permanently stripped of the right to vote or, in practice, to work at other than menial jobs) are disproportionately minorities.

Of course we can mount a pretty good argument that religion has a role to play even in that.

And it is a fair point that authoritarian, punishing, strong-father religious notions have relegated rehabilitation and reconciliation and restitution to a little-explored backwater of our penal system, when they should actually be front-and-center. If you're okay with relegating most of the planet's population to infinite punishment for finite and often trivial offenses, of course you're okay with ruining someone's life and destroying their hopes over carrying a couple ounces of weed.

But all that is ever so much easier to do if you can conceptualize the miscreants as members of the Hated Other, as not really having full membership in the family of man. And religion is good at otherizing and hate-mongering.

[Frogburn]

Originally Posted by lukas1973

GDP figures are mostly not very meaningful. Especially not if you look at GDP per capita for smaller countries.

The GDP of a city, state, or country is basically equal its city, state, or national income.

Per capita GDP is basically a math average in attempting to mathematically glean the level of equality of economic distribution of wealth in a country.

So, contrary to your insinuation, that small countries like Qatar, Luxembourg, and Ireland have higher per capita GDP's than the United States and China the two nations with the largest GDP's on earth indicates quite a lot.

In the case of Luxembourg many people from Belgium, France and Germany work in Luxembourg and contribute to the GDP of Luxembourg.

And many people from Mexico work in the United States. If the United States and Luxembourg had zero jobs to attract foreign workers then foreign workers would not seek employment and paychecks in these countries.

But that doesn't make the residents in Luxembourg twice as rich than people in the adjacent countries like the GDP per capita figures sugest.
A better measurement to look at the material affluence of the people is an index of actual individual consumption:

GDP vs. Actual individual consumption (EU=100):

Luxembourg: 264 vs 137
Ireland: 177 vs 96
Switzerland: 162 vs 128
Norway: 160 vs 133
Germany: 124 vs 123

Luxembourg is a rich country, yes, but it's not that unbelievable rich than those GDP figures sugest. The reason for the inflated GDP figures for Ireland are the precence of a few HQ from well known international corporations. The material affluence of the people in Ireland seems quite average.

As I stated earlier--and I've learned this taking a course in Developmental Economics at a secular, state run university in Milwaukee--that economists look to the per capita GDP of a nation to gauge how rich (average) the citizens of a country are.

For example, if in Qatar, Luxembourg, and Ireland its 20 people respectively produce $100 in goods and services, and in each nation respectively 2 individuals receive $20 each as a portion of that $100 and the rest of the 18 people receive a $3.33 portion of that $100 those 18 people are richer than the average citizens of China and the USA.

Wherein in China and the USA its 20 people respectively produce $10,000 in goods and services, and in each nation respectively 3 individuals receive $3,324.00 each as a portion of that $10,000 and the rest of the 18 people receive a $1.50 portion of that $10,000.

BTW, Luxembourg is a catholic country, but the Luxembourger aren't particularly religious. Overall countries with a higher percentage of strongly believing people are of course poorer.

Then Luxembourg, Ireland, and Qatar should have poorer people than China and Vietnam both countries currently run by communist atheists.

As it is Ireland and Qatar have no Skid Row such as LA does. And metro LA has a GDP roughly equal to that of the Netherlands. With the City of LA being run by liberals and Democrats and during a period a black Democratic President antagonistic to Christianity sat in holy reign for 8 whole years. Yet liberal run LA's sprawling Skid Row has been described as the United States only Third World City, with people living in what economists term "absolute poverty."

In terms of purchasing power of money Qatar is regarded as the richest nation on earth even by US left wing media. And Qatar is not only religious but it is run by both Islamic law and an absolute monarchy.



Consumption in and of itself does not indicate a person or country is richer. If that were the case every midrange rapper blowing his money on jewelry bling, buy expensive cars, and buying a home larger than Warren Buffet would be richer than Warren Buffet. It would also indicate that during the US housing bubble, citizens living off credit, derivatives scams constructed in the financial markets, as well as the current Chinese housing bubble, that consumption driven by debt necessarily indicates a person or people are wealthier than a person or people that practice greater fiscal discipline and banking systems that avoid moral hazards. Ridiculous.

[Frogburn]

LA's Skid Row:


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A4tSjJsBMYU
HOMELESSNESS ON SKID ROW IN LOS ANGELES!!


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Af5ftyv6O8E
A day on SKID-ROW


Compare to Muslim Qatar run under Islamic Law and by an absolute monarchy:


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=b_ZuXbOtBbo
Qatar: A tiny country asserts powerful influence

Compare Qatar to Camden, New Jersey:


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rJLf4TYtytQ
NBC's 30Rock report: Camden NJ, America's poorest city fights crime & poverty





So, a little vid, possibly a bit dated, giving brief descriptions of the 5 wealthiest nations on earth at the time of its making.


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LTTHh4bPn6I
Top 5 Richest Countries in the World