"In the face of this, the optimist and, if I am correct, anyone who believes in a perfect God, must deny that what we are seeing is progress. I suppose religious people will note the decline of spirituality. Others will find secular ways in which our lives have become less meaningful. But if we were starving, we would hardly have the time to worry about such matters. I for one, think that improvement of the world is a real and noble [sic]."
People may believe that increased religiosity leads to increased happiness, decreased crime/increased morality, etc...but there is not only no evidence for this, there is actually evidence against the idea.
Multiple studies have found that correlation between religiosity and economic growth is tenuous with some variables and inversely correlated with others. It seems clear that poor people tend to be more religious, but is that a coping mechanism for poverty, or an effect due to their willingness to live more modestly and selflessly? Also, an interesting recent study found that although religiosity correlates to a greater disagreement with sexual "sins", it inversely correlated to disagreement with general dishonesty and integrity in government:
...says that religiosity, both on the societal and individual level, is far less likely to discourage thoughts about giving the government false information, accepting bribes while in public office, buying stolen goods or avoiding a public transportation fare. In these cases, people tend to be deterred less by religious beliefs and rituals than by secular laws that apply to believers and nonbelievers alike.Furthermore, religiosity was probably greatest in the time of Middle Ages Christendom. And yet more people died of famine and disease then than now. More babies were born, but the death rate was staggeringly higher. Was god more generous when more people believed in god and/or worshipped god? Sure doesn't seem so, does it?
One of the most contradictory issues in the Bible is whether or not god protects/blesses "his" people or whether or not god "chastens" them (including swallowing them up in the earth, during Moses' day, and more recently, allowing them to go through the Holocaust, or more mundane examples of God's abandonment) more because they are his own. See, for instance, those passages that seem to contradict one another as to whether a righteous man will flourish, on whether wealth is good or bad, on whether god destroys the righteous (his own) or just the wicked.
The issue of god "chastening" his own is even touched on by Mormons. See for instance even the book of Mormon:
And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him. (Helaman 12:3)The US is the most prosperous and religious western democracy...but it also has the shortest life expectancy, the highest murder rates, the highest abortion rates, the highest teen pregnancy rates, the highest STD rates...of any western democracy! Why? Tucker Carlson talked about this study, and here is an interview with the author, Gregory Paul.
Unscrewing the Inscrutable blogger DarkSyde wrote three very readworthy blogs: "I Am A Believer", "Why I'm An Atheist", "What it Feels Like to Be An Atheist". I strongly recommend reading the last one first to get a sense of how atheists view living in a society with high religiosity, to get a perspective on how atheists do not all hate god, or the idea of god...etc. And see this post by The Mighty Middle on how a lot of atheists perceive Christian theology--as absurd. The absurdity springs from the concept of a god who would create men with freedom, thus enabling them to choose to do things that they are not pre-programmed to do like robots, and then the god creates rules for them (by the way, freedom does not require a choice of "good and evil" in this sense, some animals make choices without us humans having attached moral value to their training), knowing full well they will break them, then gets so mad god decides blood is all that will assuage his anger...and so kills a part of himself--his "son". Etc. Read on there for more.
PS: If you're particularly blasphemous, you can read what The Huge Entity has to say about the staff of god.
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