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Reply #62: On an individual basis, or on average? [View All]

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Silent3 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Aug-01-11 11:43 AM
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62. On an individual basis, or on average?
I'm not sure how you measure "moral superiority", but statistics show that the less religious a country is, the more likely it is to have a strong social safety net, better care of the poor and the elderly. Hard for some Americans to swallow is the fact that some of the better ranking religious countries in this regard are predominantly Muslim, not Christian. (Then again, some countries like Kuwait might look good in such statistics because they have so many non-citizen workers who don't fair as well as full citizens, who I don't believe are counted in such statistics.)

Atheists generally score fairly high on measures of educational achievement, but not exclusively so -- some specific religious groups do well too in that regard. Educational achievement, however, is not a very pure measure of intelligence, in part, among other reasons, because it's tied up with the economic ability to afford education.

To the extent that I consider belief in God delusional, I consider atheists generally more clear-headed than theists, but that's a narrow area of mental health, and an area where social support for theistic delusions makes it easy to function well in society, deluded or not. For example, I think the idea of considering Kim Jong Il a divine figure is both insane and ludicrous, but while the idea is insane, I can't consider everyone raised in North Korea who falls for that idea insane. That belief would be hard to escape and is strongly reinforced in that environment, so many otherwise quite sane people are likely to succumb to it.

On an individual basis, of course, very little can be said. Individuals are all over the map in all of those areas, be they theistic or atheistic.
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