Does religion create better or worse countries?

Rand /pol/

Rand /pol/

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The Philippines is roughly 86% Catholic Christian, has a poverty rate of 26% and a murder rate of 9.84 per 100,000 residents. Mexico is roughly 83% Catholic Christian, has a poverty rate of 40.5% and a murder rate of 25 per 100,000 residents. The Czech Republic is roughly 72% atheist, the lowest poverty rate in the EU and a murder rate of 1.0 per 100,000 residents. The "most religious" region in the US is the deep south states and border states, many of which are the poorest in the country while the least religious states are all in New England and the Pacific Northwest, the states that generally have the best HDIs, highest average incomes, lowest murder rates, etc. All this being said is there any argument for religion not being a total negative for almost every country?
 
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I think that's the wrong question. Values that propagate economic success, social harmony, and individual well being make for better countries in general. It doesn't have to be religiously sourced although that's not uncommon. Of course it takes more than values to make a country but its not a bad starting point.
 
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People turn to relegion when times/ there life is roughest. You don't see rich people/trust fund kiddies who thank god for their wealth because it was handed to them by a tangible entity. Where as the poor much rather blame a abstract concepts ,God, for their problems. You can obeservese this in the balck community as they blame Whitey/White supremacy for their short comings even if 70% of it could be fixed by policing/gate-keeping their own community.

In short it is a symptom of a problem and not the direct outcome.
Edit:fixed my drunken/grammar mishaps
 
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Mexico, Philipines, and Czech Republic are completely different societies from different countries with very different problems. They'd need to have more than the religion in common to make an apt comparison.

Say, the most religious country of Latin America is Paraguay and the less religious is Uruguay. Paraguay is only a little bit more violent than Uruguay and some stats give them the same level. They are also in similar level of poverty.
 
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Irrelevant.

When religion has an unchallangeable monopoly on information and legality, thats when shit gets bad for the societies involved due both to how much advancement inevitably gets stifled by those looking to protect their own powerbase, how much society as a whole comes to distrust the rule of law when one can escape consequence simply by clinging to religion and the religious institutions. Also such a toxic hegemony inevitably winds up inspiring resistance and revolution against it that will usually prove to be just as toxic in action, and just as repressive should they gain power.

However the same thing can be said and has been repeatedly demonstrated through history for political dogmas such as communism and fascism. Shit in the soviet union and nazi germany especially matches all I said above as the party's official narrative effectively took the place of religion, with priests and imams replaced by various party bureaucrats and officials who transcended the laws of the peasants and who controlled information that was distributed.

Religion can happily work in tandem with advancement, progress, and prosperity. Setting aside the examples of western europe and murica during the 18th-20th centuries, in the Islamic world the closest they came to being on the up and up, be it the Ottoman Empire or the Abbasid Caliphate, was when overt religious fanaticism was barred from being given the power to stifle all non religious thought and legality. People were still plenty religious, but the actual real world concerns and ambitions of princes and merchants and scientists were able to be fully explored without being violently shut down and suppressed by an overruling religious body that either feared the attack on their power or wanted to monopolise any advancement for themselves. Besides this, the Catholic Church was for most the middle ages the main patron of sciences and was happy to see any advancement of society until it got too mired in wannabe authoritarianism and fundie antics.

Basically so long as religious bodies are not given ultimate power over the distribution and advancement of information and the laws of a nation, religion can be perfectly benign in a nation. Same way any philosophy can
 
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Marco Fucko said:
>implying not believing in something is a religion
Listen I have disdain for fedora tippers too but you can't just run around calling shit a religion, you're not a middle school writing student.
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It's not a religion, but it's an active belief you have to hold. Atheism isn't shrugging your shoulders and not caring/not knowing, it's making a definitive statement and holding to it.
 
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Marco Fucko said:
>implying not believing in something is a religion
Listen I have disdain for fedora tippers too but you can't just run around calling shit a religion, you're not a middle school writing student.
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I said "belief system", ie. a series of assumptions which shapes the behaviour and mores of a person or society. A religion is that, but it's also a codified, ritualized structure in a way that atheism is not.

My point is that all societies are built upon a series of assumptions and so singling one particular type of belief out from others is disingenuous; Catholic beliefs paired with political control of a society led to the Inquisition in the same way that Soviet and Maoist beliefs (which are inherently atheistic) paired with political control of a society lead to gulags, slavery, starvation and mass executions.
 
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I don't think whether a country has a base religion makes them better or worse off, people make gods/religion in their own image in a sense, so whatever they prioritize in basic beliefs is gonna reflect in religion- But also people are going to seek out spirituality even when there's no organized religion or instances where they reject it (people worship all kinds of dumb shit without even realizing it or framing it in a religious context) I think that's what makes humans special as a species.
In that way it's a lot like vices, where in the energy cultivated away from a bad habit just gets substituted by another bad (or even good) habit. I don't think denying organized religion is ever going to make the need to fulfill that habit suddenly stop, nor will it make bad values suddenly disappear.
 
Exigent Circumcisions said:
I said "belief system", ie. a series of assumptions which shapes the behaviour and mores of a person or society. A religion is that, but it's also a codified, ritualized structure in a way that atheism is not.

My point is that all societies are built upon a series of assumptions and so singling one particular type of belief out from others is disingenuous; Catholic beliefs paired with political control of a society led to the Inquisition in the same way that Soviet and Maoist beliefs (which are inherently atheistic) paired with political control of a society lead to gulags, slavery, starvation and mass executions.
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I mean I was basically just ribbing you. This is a @Ron /pol/ thread, I didn't expect serious discussion.
 
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HeyYou said:
It's not a religion, but it's an active belief you have to hold. Atheism isn't shrugging your shoulders and not caring/not knowing, it's making a definitive statement and holding to it.
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Atheism is the absence of belief in this particular set of superstitions. Everything beyond that is personality, idiosyncrasy, nonsense.
How is "Nah, that'd sounds a lot like horseshit" a definitive statement? "Holding to it"? Until evidence arises, you mean? How do you consider
the empty space where a belief could be to be a belief in itself?

Anti theism is a definitive statement. It's held and maintained. If evidence showed up, you don't care because these gods are capricious and gross, you aren't gonna subscribe no matter what.
 
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Sofonda Cox said:
Atheism is the absence of belief in this particular set of superstitions. Everything beyond that is personality, idiosyncrasy, nonsense.
How is "Nah, that'd sounds a lot like horseshit" a definitive statement? "Holding to it"? Until evidence arises, you mean? How do you consider
the empty space where a belief could be to be a belief in itself?

Anti theism is a definitive statement. It's held and maintained. If evidence showed up, you don't care because these gods are capricious and gross, you aren't gonna subscribe no matter what.
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"Nah, that sounds like horseshit" is a definitive statement. I'm not ribbing atheism here, especially considering I am an atheist. Like mentioned, atheistic beliefs were codified into law in several 20th century countries and used to control.

I'm talking specifically about fedora tipping atheism here, because there are absolutely tons of atheists who would refuse to accept evidence of God if it did appear. But just like there's plenty of sure in their ways but harmless Christians, it's the same for atheists. It's simply that the first step is completely believing in a stance, which for atheists is "God is completely made up and not real".
 
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