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Furthermore, it discounts how religious and conservative a lot of latino immigrants actually are.

That's largely a myth, as far as I can tell. They are culturally religious, not evangelical, and generally not that conservative. I once thought this way too, but more and more I'm finding that it seems to be more of a stereotype than reality. If you come from a poor, sparsely educated country, you tend to be conservative and religious. But once you get some education and some wealth, that tends to get cured fast.

Religion doesn't mean shit when it comes to politics if one party has historically shit on your culture. Non-white voters are solidly ~70% democratic voters at the moment. And if you look at latinos, they're more religious than whites, but less religious than African-Americans. Not exactly good news if republicans think that somehow religious latinos will save them.

Not that republicans can have any claim of being righteous, either. Their entire platform is essentially being the antichrist. It's actually mindblowing how many religious folks can map the republican platform onto their religion, when they two couldn't be further apart.

According to the same site under "% of Jews who identify as" about 90% identify as white.

The answer to your question is "no". Most Jewish people even ashkenazi do not identity as white. Pew research link

Talk about hyperbole. But you sound pretty serious about your feelings, so let me address each of your points one at a time.

1) We've been evolving into omnivores for at least a million years.

Not quite. Homo sapiens has been evolving for about 250,000 years, give or take. And we evolved into omnivores mostly because gathering plants and fruits was easier, safer, more reliable, and a more dependable source of food. Meat from hunting was a high-risk-high-reward method of feeding oneself; while more caloric-dense, hunting took days, risks, and many people to do, and many times the hunters came back empty-handed. Evolving into omnivores allowed us to diversify our diets, giving us a greater chance of survival.

2) You can't just decide you're going to be strict vegetarian and not expect to have health problems related to that.

Says who? There's plenty of research supporting the benefits of vegan diets. As long as people watch what they eat to make sure they're consuming appropriate amounts of vitamins, proteins, and lipids, it really doesn't matter what diet they consume.

3) How about instead of screwing with people's diets, we create a timeline to eliminate fossil fuel use entirely, and stick to it?

No complaints. Maybe eliminating fossil fuel use entirely is a bit of a stretch, especially given our dependence on plastics and petro-chemicals, but a significant reduction needs to start now. But when thirty-six percent of the food we grow is fed to livestock, you're fooling yourself if you think that you can do that while advocating for meat consumption.

4) Also how about we stop destroying existing forests and start re-planting them?

Great idea. But then, where will we get the farmland for animal feed?

5) And start controlling our population growth, seeing as how the planet can clearly and objectively only support so many humans at once?

Well, good luck convincing everyone on the planet to stop procreating. Though, in a pure sense of supply-and-demand economics, it's our ability to improve agriculture production that allows us to sustain our population. After all, humans can't live if we can't grow food to feed them. Probably the most important man that nobody's ever heard of is Fritz Haber. It's his invention of the industrial production of nitrogen fertilizer that allowed the population of the planet to quadruple in one hundred years.

6) Why do we need 10 BILLION people alive at the same time? Can we get the nutjob 'quiverfull' religious types to knock it the hell off?

While -some- religious groups have population growth greater than average, most do not. The most influential variables in the United States are youth, fertility, and immigration. So, feel free to complain about the Mexicans, but the religious nutjobs, not so much.

Now that I've addressed your points, I'll take just a moment to make a few of my own. We eat far more than we need to. Given how many resources it consumes, as the parent article references, reducing our meat intake is not a bad t

I was skeptical, but the Pew center corroborates your claim for the period from 2010-2015.

People always talk about the small percentage of Muslims that are terrorists. Less spoken about is, depending on the country, up to 62% of all Muslims say suicide bombings against civilians are often or sometimes justified. Among Muslims in the US and western Europe, 13-35% support suicide bombings at least some of the time. Large majorities of Muslims support Sharia Law to be the law of the land (and large percentages support then having it apply to non-Muslims as well). From country to country, support for stoning as a punishment for adultery runs from 25% to over 75%, and at least 6 countries with large Muslim populations they support the death penalty for leaving Islam.

It's still not fair to paint everyone with the same brush, but support for extremism is a major problem in the Muslim faith, and it's not limited to a small minority. (And no, there's not parity with Christian support for their nutjob fanatics).
And you know what's sad? I think things don't have to be this way, and think we can move past it. But that begins with acknowledging the problem, and for refusing to stick my head in the stand and pretend this issue doesn't exist, I'll be painted as an evil racist.

Grow up?

Are you aware that there are 2.2 billion Christians in the world?

Maturity has nothing to do with faith. But it may have something to do with disrespectful speech.

Here are some facts for you to find disrespectful. For whatever reason, Christianity, especially Evangelical Protestant membership, is declining and religious none's are increasing. I suppose it's because we live in a fallen world and the rapture is upon us? You know Christianity wasn't the first group of nuts to have prophecies about the end of the world right? None of those prophecies have come true yet... the Mayan calendar even ran out!

Google fires James Damore for writing a conservative memo.

Liberals: It's a private company, they're not obligated to respect his free speech rights.

The NFL fires Colin Kaepernick for kneeling during the anthem

Liberals: THEY VIOLATED HIS RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH!!

Another example was the gay wedding cake case. A private company refused to bake a cake saying "I support gay marriage" because the owners were religious types who didn't support gay marriage and they got sued out of business with the left cheering it on.

Now I'm sure someone will say "gay people are a protected class and white cisscum male like Damore are not".

Curious how the left keeps adding more protected classes like trans people. I.e. the protected class notion had some validity post civil rights but the left have basically added all the groups other than white ciscum males to the protected class category.

And then they act surprised when white cismen start acting like an identity group too. Actually I'm surprised it doesn't happen more.

The left in the US have a peculiar 'build a majority out the minorities' strategy which depends on them siding against white cisscum males and with every other group. I'm not really sure this is viable - e.g. what do the left do if one of their protected groups takes a stand against another. Which basically guaranteed. Black in the US people are less likely to support gay marriage than whites, a poll of UK muslims found zero tolerance for homosexuality. In fact gay rights is something which is almost exclusive to majority white, judeo christian based societies like the US and Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There's no real reason to believe that importing lots of people from outside those countries into them will make the country more 'progressive'. And yet the far left continue to say that once white people are a minority will 'true revolution' be possible.

https://www.theguardian.com/co...

Of course this sort of rhetoric is hardly likely to make white people decide to vote democrat and stop worrying about immigration.

If one party is plotting to make you a powerless minority, aren't you more likely to vote for the other? Even if the other party nominates someone who is a bit non politically correct as its candidate? In fact given PC means becoming a powerless minority, maybe Trump's non PC-ness is a feature.

I've got lots of family there and think nothing bad of the Midwest. I'm proud of my background. And I certainly don't think they're "dumber than people on the coasts". But what they are is a hell of a lot more religious on average, and strong religious beliefs can trump intelligence any day of the week. That doesn't mean (and I never said) that all Midwesterners think that way. However, 64% of white evangelical protestants believe that "humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time."

When nearly 2/3 of a demographic believes stupid shit like that, I have a hard time saying that they have horse sense over the "educated" and "informed" coasties.

1.6 Billion odd Muslims are convinced their religion absolutely prohibits killing people except in self defense.

Less than this. A significant fraction of Muslims believe that leaving Islam should be punished by death. In the country with the world's largest Muslim population, Indonesia, it's only 18%. (Still frightfully high: that's people who support killing people for believing the wrong thing.) In the country with the world's second-largest Muslim population, Pakistan, it's 76%!

If such a large fraction of Muslims support the death penalty for mere apostasy, how many more do you think support killing people in other circumstances short of self-defence?

(See these survey results.)

A survey in 2011 found that only 72% of Muslims viewed suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilian targets as never justified. The pew poll in 2013 had similar results, I could not find more recent results on muslims' views but I doubt they've changed much. I challenge you to find any poll of Christians that that think the actions you listed above are never justified below 95%. More then one in four muslims are nuts while less then 1 in 20 Christians are, everyone has crazies, islam is the only religion that encourages the craziness.

I'm afraid you have an overly optimistic view of Islamic conquest. Let me give you a link to help you open your eyes a bit: http://www1.cbn.com/churchandm...

One sees there a plethora of massacres, genocides and mass killings done by Muslims. Where they alone in that? No, Christians did their share (Buddhists far less, if one is honest), however, far LESS than Muslim conquest has done.And mostly, in regard to the crusades and other fights against Muslims, it was *in response* to the conquest of Christian grounds and land. Meaning, if the Muslims hadn't INVADED and CONQUERED Christian lands and countries, they wouldn't have had such a reaction neither. I couldn't find any specifics on the conquest of Spain to demonstrate unambigiously that the killings done by Muslims there is 'less' than those of Christians, but in any case it seems rather overly naive to think Muslims didn't kill off civilians and innocents at all, when they clearly had no problem doing it everywhere else.

But, regardless, I'm willing to gleen over all that, since it's in the far history, and during those times violence was rampant everywhere. It's of little use trying to convince whomever was 'the bloodiest' hundreds of years ago. Of far more concern is, how Muslims react NOW, in current times. And in this respect, it does not bode well.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/0...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

As one can see, a majority of Muslims in Muslim-countries, and even a significant large proportion of Muslims in Western countries have ideas and beliefs that are antithetic with the mores, rules, and values of Western democracies. We're not talking about terrorists here, we're talking about *radical views* hold *by* Muslims, which is much broader then straight out terrorism, but still - even more so, I would claim - a danger to the continuation of Western democracies with their values derived from the Enlightenment.

It is THAT which is *really* worrying, though less visible and less openly violent than beheadings of ISIS. Unless there is a drastic reformation of Islam, such as has happened to Christianity, I claim the following: Islam is unreconcilable with, and a danger to, Western, democratic values based on the enlightenment, and, if we do not (re)act against this, it will - in the long term - mean the end of our era. It's clear as daylight, you can not have or maintain our Western system if Muslims continue to flood in (or breed and propagate faster and more in the Western countries than the original populace) while remaining as insensitive to integration and incorporation of our values as they are today (and ever have been).

Note that I'm not talking about race. Race is not the problem. I'm also no racist. Raise Blacks, Berbers, whatever, up from infancy in ones' own culture, and they ARE and BEHAVE like one of us. I'm saying it's the culture and mentality that is the problem. 40% of British Muslims want the Sharia to be the supreme law, trumping any other laws. 40%!! That's HUGE. That's like, a thousand times more and higher than when you would ask an original, born-and-raised Brit. I find it peculiar that the danger of this is not more than apparent to the left. If you take in a million refugees, as German did, and 40% of them wants to introduce sharia-law, one has to be blind and stupid not to see how this will create tensions and huge societal problems for your own civilisation and society. Yet, the West turns a blind eye. It's incomprehensible. It's like cultural suicide, and we're doing it to ourselves, like a bunch of lemmings.

Even the 'moderate Muslim' should be worried, in fact. At least those who wanted to escape from sharia law and the oppression of their home countries. If this keeps up, I foresee the end of our current Western model by the end of the 21ste century, if not sooner. This is not Islamophobia, it's just an observation and logically deduced analysis.

That would require more than 50% of the population to be extremists.

Read it and weep.

If you are claiming that the majority of Muslims are extremists, then the word extreme loses it's meaning.

That would require more than 50% of the population to be extremists.

Read it and weep.

No, all of Islam is a problem, not merely the fundamentalists. While at a given moment only a "small" minority of several hundred million are fundies, anyone else, even someone whose parents and grandparents were civilized people who didn't give a damn about religion and visited churches/mosques only for weddings and funerals, may have a mental crisis, hear a sermon, follow a fashion (the recent revival of Islam is just that, a fashion) or the like, and start reading the Koran.

And since, unlike the Bible, the Koran presents an unambiguous message, that person will think "if the God commands to murder unbelievers, perhaps I should do so".

It's not that the Bible doesn't contain juicy passages. Are you approaching a town of another tribe? You're supposed to give them an ultimatum. If they refuse, you need to murder them all. If they surrender, you murder only the elderly and infirm, make the men your slaves and take the women as wives. Except for a few tribes which happened to be neighbours of Israel at that time -- you need to murder them all without even offering them to surrender.

But whenever the Bible says A, in another book it will say B, then in yet another both C and D. Thus, it is relatively easy to persuade a rational person that the demands of their holy book are only a parable and it's "only the spirit that counts".

The result? The majority of muslims believe their savage medieval law is given by god and needs to be forced upon everyone -- while I don't exactly hear about many christians or jews demanding adulterers or those who question their parents should be stoned to death.

96% of adult Hindus in the US have college degrees.

36% of adult Christians in the US have college degrees.

http://www.pewforum.org/2016/1...

Source for the BS statistic: the arse of the bigot known as Pamela Gellar.

Ah, yes, I too wish, we had something more reliable. But we don't. Pew Research, for example, has very detailed information about world-wide Muslims' preference for Sharia. They cover many different countries but, for some reason, not the US — their detailed, 8-page collection of statistics about American Muslims does not contain the one particular bit, which they have for so many other countries.

It is almost as if Pew wished to hide something...

But, hey, if your only objection is to the source of data, which you suspect of bias, what is your ball-park estimate? Say, it is not 51%, but only 40%... Does that change anything I said above?

Below is the link to the more recent study: http://www.pewforum.org/religi...

Funny how people are quick to point out "the negative impacts that occur in some religious communities" without saying much about the positive. Some religious communities (it can be hard to separate the religion from the community) are clearly doing something right.

I can't find good current stats on household income by religion, but this 2009 survey breaks it down pretty well.

Hindus come out on top, as they have for some time now: evidence that the more gods you believe in, the more successful you are in life. Or maybe it's something to do with the number of pirates - the data is slim. In any case, religions are recipes for life, and some of them seem to still be pretty good recipes, much as /. would hate to consider such a thing.

If religion is a recipe for life then, in this analogy, all the world's religions involve animal products. I'm now a vegan. ;-)

While you're arguing that the number of gods and happiness per annum are related, I hope you are familiar with http://www.tylervigen.com/spur...

Otherwise you'd have to accept as fact that the divorce rate in Maine is controlled by the per capita consumption of margarine. Worse yet, bedsheet deaths and ski profits are linked. Any argument against my position would also undermine your god(s)=Mo$$$ argument as well.

Please note: if you have any argument against mine, I appreciate the time you spend writing up a rebuttal. I would love the feedback as it either helps me go to your side, or refines my argument. Regardless, it helps me see your side better.

Funny how people are quick to point out "the negative impacts that occur in some religious communities" without saying much about the positive. Some religious communities (it can be hard to separate the religion from the community) are clearly doing something right.

I can't find good current stats on household income by religion, but this 2009 survey breaks it down pretty well.

Hindus come out on top, as they have for some time now: evidence that the more gods you believe in, the more successful you are in life. Or maybe it's something to do with the number of pirates - the data is slim. In any case, religions are recipes for life, and some of them seem to still be pretty good recipes, much as /. would hate to consider such a thing.

From the Pew Research Center, slightly tangential, but relevant:
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/0...

The Future of World Religions: Estimated Change in Population Size 2010-2050:
Muslims: 73%
Christians: 35%
Hindus: 34%
Jews: 16%
Folks Religions: 11%
.
.
Buddhists: -0.3%

Full report here: http://www.pewforum.org/2015/0...

From the Pew Research Center, slightly tangential, but relevant:
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/0...

The Future of World Religions: Estimated Change in Population Size 2010-2050:
Muslims: 73%
Christians: 35%
Hindus: 34%
Jews: 16%
Folks Religions: 11%
.
.
Buddhists: -0.3%

Full report here: http://www.pewforum.org/2015/0...

The fact is that America is no longer a conservative country. For example, for the first time in history there are more "nones" (people with no religious affiliation) than any other voting block. That statistic is never going to go back down, ever. That's clearly not the sign of a conservative country.

I'm not sure that this is the best metric of a "conservative country," but where do you get this data from??

Here's the history of Gallup polls on religion for example. According to them, in 2015, 38% of people identified as Protestant, 23% as Catholic, 9% as other Christian... that's 60% Christian right there. The "None" only accounted for a measly 17%. Pew polls put the number more at 70% Christian in 2014, with only 23% unaffiliated.

Moreover, when you start looking down that Gallup Poll list, you find stuff like, "Do you believe in God?" 1944 - 96%, 2016 - 89%. A downtick for sure, but hardly the sign of lack of religious belief.

"Do you believe in heaven?" 1968 - 85%, 2011 - 85%
Hell - 1968 - 66%, 2011 - 75%

Belief in angels is still up there in 2016 at 72%, which is a little lower than it was in the early 2000s, but about the same as it was back in the 1970s.

And heck, 73% of Americans believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, including about 1/3 of your "unaffiliated" no-religion group.

Now, there are other polls that put the numbers a little lower. The Harris Poll for example only puts belief in the virgin birth at 57%, with 68% saying he is the Son of God.

Religious belief and attendance is down more than ever before in history. There are fewer churches and places of worship in this country than ever before in history. Religion is dying off here, both figuratively and literally.

Is church attendance down? Yes. And the percentage of folks who say religion is "very important" in their lives is down (though still the MAJORITY of Americans, according to polls). But given that the majority of Americans still seem to strongly subscribe to religious beliefs, including significant numbers of your "unaffiliated" folks, I'd hardly say it's "dying off" yet.

I have absolutely no idea where you get your idea that there are more "nones" than any other voting block. It may be true that the majority of Americans no longer attend church every week, but it's still a highly religious country.

the fact is that America is slowly but steadily moving towards more liberal social and political systems, not away from them. It's been doing this since the late 50's, but has sped up a bit considerably the last decade or so.

I agree with this, though to go back to your previous point -- the number of people identifying as "Evangelical Christians" has been fairly constant over the past few decades. It hasn't even declined as much as the other general religion numbers. So... it's not like the true "conservatives" (in terms of religion) are going away... it's more like the people in the middle are becoming less concerned about religious values holding sway over their lives. But there's still a rather huge contingent of people with far right values (certainly larger than your "none" contingent), and that block isn't going away anytime soon.

Pot is now fully legal for recreational use in multiple states with more coming (count on it). That's not the sign of a conservative country.

We MIGHT just be getting back to the level of acceptance of recreational/medicinal drug use enjoyed in the 1900-1930 era or so. If that's "liberal" and "progressive" to you... well, gosh, that's great!

See this Pew survey. Search for "Penalty for Converting to Another Faith". Globally, it's not as bad as the GP says, but it sure isn't good; Egypt in particular is horrific.

Evolution v Intelligent Design - a small subset of Republicans, perhaps 20%. And many Evangelicals don't vote (and some still vote Dem)

Unfortunately, this is quite wrong. The numbers you get depend heavily on how you ask the question, but recent polling suggests that a plurality of Republicans (48%) believe that humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time vs. only 27% of Democrats. About a third of *all* adults in the U.S. hold this position. If you ask whether God created humans in their present form, it's closer to 40%, and has been for decades. You can find other polls here showing similar results.

Regardless, overall popular support turns out to be less important than one would hope. What matters more is who's politically involved -- who votes in primaries, who runs in school board elections, who causes trouble when politicians vote the "wrong" way. The Republican party is also much more disciplined than the Democratic party, so you'll regularly see the Republican-controlled House and Senate voting in lockstep against even against ideas that have majority support among their base. (Gun control laws are the most recent example.)

Perhaps, but very many "normal" Muslims believe that Muslims who change their religion should be executed : http://www.pewforum.org/2013/0...
(Look for "Penalty for Converting to Another Faith")

There's not really a huge difference between the ISIS and many other Muslims. They want the same thing, and approve of the same methods. They just disagree on the targets and who gets to be Caliph.
See: http://english.ahram.org.eg/Ne...
That guy is like one of the bishops of the Sunnis.

Technically every story about the future is made-up.

So let's hear some alternate stories. Like maybe the UK saves itself from the migration swarm flooding into Europe of unskilled, uneducated, military-age men who don't share European values and will be a drain on the welfare system. Maybe they'll stop bringing in people who think marrying your first cousin is a good idea. Maybe they'll do that and still let in the smart people. Maybe.

It's like blaming Christians when someone shoots an abortion doctor.

Not really, no. A truly terrifying proportion of Muslims hold insane, dangerous, beliefs.

Islam is absolutely not the equivalent of Christianity.

I agree.

Where we would probably disagree: how pervasive is mental illness?

Most Muslims in North Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan would be considered 'extreme' by North American standards.

It is unfortunate that the PC crowd has managed to divide Muslims into two simplistic categories: the tiny minority of violent crazies and the vast majority of peace loving, liberal, progressive, democratic, tolerant Muslims.

That is pure fantasy. For example, only 22 percent of Muslims in Afghanistan believe honor killings are never acceptable, according to Pew research.

http://www.pewforum.org/2013/0...

Actually, Pew research center says that yes, about 70% of Americans claim to be some flavor of Christian, but only about 7% of the remaining population claims affiliation with any religion at all, and of those only about 1.9% are Jewish and 0.9% Muslim. That's not nothing, but it's really stretching the definition of "significant", they're outnumbered by both Atheists (3%) and Agnostics (4%)

http://www.pewforum.org/religi...

Numbers, party platforms, and laws, however, do tell the full story: government is in bed with Christian churches in much of Europe. You have to be utterly blind not to see that.

Got any specifics? I'm well aware of the historical connection of the church to everywhere, but my point was even if the Queen of England was fucking the Pope, more people will still vote for an Atheist leader in Europe than the US. And they don't force their religion onto their currency.

You asked for good places to live in the US and were concerned about religion being "public policy". And I responded that religion is much less "public policy" in the US than in Europe, and that even when Americans are religious, they tend to be quite tolerant.

In some places. The US is a vast nation so it varies from place to place.

You want to talk about Christianity in politics? Note that even on gay marriage, Germany (one of the more "progressive" European countries on gay rights) has always been behind the US.

Nice. You chose Germany because it is the one country that is behind the US, but ignored the other dozen that are in front?

Well, as a gay man, I'm glad I emigrated from the "sophisticated and progressive" European culture to the "barbaric" American culture.

I'm glad you are happy, but that doesn't mean that progressive (not 19th century US progressive) policies don't improve lives.
Any minority group should be well aware of the that.

Since you are not from the US and to help you put this into perspective, I pointed out that religion is much less "public policy" in the US than it is in Europe, both according to party platforms and according to spending.

Well this maybe one of those things were the numbers don't tell the full story.

Numbers, party platforms, and laws, however, do tell the full story: government is in bed with Christian churches in much of Europe. You have to be utterly blind not to see that.

I don't know what these countries spend on religion, but having been to most of them, I know it is as not important as some parts of the US if you don't go along with it.

You asked for good places to live in the US and were concerned about religion being "public policy". And I responded that religion is much less "public policy" in the US than in Europe, and that even when Americans are religious, they tend to be quite tolerant.

There have been many Athiest leaders in many countries, but 53% of Americans say they would never vote for one,

You want to talk about Christianity in politics? Note that even on gay marriage, Germany (one of the more "progressive" European countries on gay rights) has always been behind the US.

That is barbaric, and not progressive using any definition of the word.

Well, as a gay man, I'm glad I emigrated from the "sophisticated and progressive" European culture to the "barbaric" American culture.

It's not
as atheist
as you think.

I know it's hard to believe isn't it? Pew Forum must be some right-wing organization intent on pushing an agenda right?

Wrong.

Here's the PDF with their methodology, sample sizes and a ton more. Read and learn: http://www.pewforum.org/files/2013/04/worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-full-report.pdf

But virtually every Christian condemns abortion clinic bombings, where a terrifying number of global Muslims support terror, Sharia theocracy, death for apostates, punishment for homosexual activity, the abolition of freedom of expression in the name of suppressing images they find offensive, etc.

See: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... , http://www.pewforum.org/2013/0... , and virtually any other similar survey.

What you're saying has merit, and I'm sure that's part of the situation.

However, we still need to bear in mind that we're dealing with a whole lot of Muslims here of which more than two thirds believe Sharia law should rule, or where a third believe people should be killed for leaving Islam, or where almost half believe adulterers should be executed.

These are the kind of people we're not just allowing, but welcoming into our countries.

Source (PDF warning).

More foolishness... Let's try reality, not idle speculation, for a change.

The average Muslim takes their religions as seriously as the average Christian these days.

That's actually wrong. Factually wrong, although it's an argument that being repeated all around against all data. As you can see, the "average" Muslim believes in capital punishment for Apostasy (leaving the faith of Islam) and more than the average believes that stoning to the death should be the penalty for adultery.

The data comes from the PEW research centre, not some nut-job right-wing organisation. Should also be noted that the extremist Muslim majority countries couldn't be analysed, so the real situation is even worst: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/0...

If scholar just means "one who studies", then obviously anyone who studies a religious text for a long time BECAUSE they're a believer is by definition a scholar. I don't think that's what you mean.

If we change "scholar" to "scientist", it's quite clear that scientist is not synonymous with atheist. Pew research found that "just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power". Besides, many would say that science requires repeatable experiments, and many truths simply aren't repeatable (e.g., history).

"Those add nothing to the discussion and are worthless."
No, because opportunity costs are a thing.
Having a fanciful belief that something works leads to a lot of wasted effort and energy that could be more usefully guided toward something that is accomplishable.

Oh, re your point about "move closer to Democracy"? You realize that as recently as 2011, "democracy" would have cheerfully banned gay marriage?
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/0...
Understand that "democracy" isn't a bunch of enlightened hipsters with progressive views deciding policy around their non-dairy lattes. Democracy can be ugly, reactionary, and easily manipulated.

I will certainly concede a lack of knowledge on Greek religious culture, and as long as your characterization is accurate (and I have no reason to doubt it) I would guess Greek religious tendencies have more to do with a strong religious culture than their economic woes. They are certainly not unique in the world, although they are fairly unique in the developed world.

TOTALY anecdotical, but from personal knowledge (for Russia and other Slavic countries): It is the young people that return! Old people are influenced by communism - either as fanatic communists (so fanatic Atheists) OR still afraid that "the monster may return, lets keep our heads down, stupid young people should not expose their belief". Keep in mind that those Slavic states are Orthodox also.

Here is the first study I came across detailing the demographics or religious belief in Russia. It appears that in 2008, 53% of 16-29 year old Russians believe in God, compared to 69% of ages 70+. It also showed that the religious beliefs of ages 16-69 are pretty constant, it is only those ages 70+ which are more religious. So I guess we can both see what we want to see from those stats, since even though there is a sharp drop-off for those under 70, there is no additional drop-off for the millennial generation.

It is odd that belief in God was inversely related to belief in the afterlife. I have no idea what to make of that.

hey most certainly do not "DIS-believe" in GOD(s) since they aren't sure GOD(s) DOESN'T exist. EACH Agnostic fill the full spectrum from assuming GOD(s) probably exist and assuming GOD(s) probably don't exist. But what ALL OF THEM lack is KNOWLEDGE BASED faith in a deity, or else they would not self-identify as agnostic. They would instead identify themselves as religious but still harbor some doubts, which probably describes most religious people.

When discussing religion, I guess I use the word "belief" as meaning religious belief. So lack of devotion to a deity is the same as lack of belief. So in this context the opposite of belief is not dis-belief, just lack of belief. I hope that adds clarity to my original statement, since I don't disagree with most of your more precise statements in the above quote.

I do disagree with the "EACH" qualifier you added in the second sentence though. Many agnostics believe there probably are god(s), they just have no idea what qualities they may have. Many agnostics also believe there is the same probability of god(s) existing as there are of unicorns being real. For instance I self-identify as both an atheist and agnostic (as most atheists educated in the subject do), so obviously I am on the latter end of the spectrum. And while this is purely anecdotal, every agnostic I have met who doesn't also claim to be atheist has been someone who has admitted to not putting much though into religion.

The problem is most Agnostics/"Atheists" can't even define themselves, i.e., what the terms mean TO THEM.

This is simply a product of trying to label complex beliefs with simple terms. Labeling all atheists or agnostics the same would be just as inaccurate as labeling all Christians the same. Or perhaps even labeling all religious beliefs as the same. To give just one example my mother and father are both Methodist, but they have very different opinions on the Bible's literalness.

I don't have time to rebut your whole post, but one part is simply, factually, untrue:

"...the majority of the planet does not even believe in the Judeo-Christian concept of God..."

According to http://www.pewforum.org/2012/1...
31.5% of the world's population are Christian
0.2% are Jewish ...and 23.2% are Muslim.

=
54.9% of the world believes in the Judeo-Christian concept of God.

Muslims, Jews, and Christians may not get along very well, but they all quite clearly are worshiping the same monotheistic entity conceptually. Hell, their prophets and holy books overlap.

Look at it yourself before moderating me down: http://www.pewforum.org/religi...

Since you mention myths, I will have to inform you that "Christian law" is precisely one of those myths as well. Christian law and Unicorns both fall into the same category. There is Old Testament Mosaic Law which was specifically ruled not applicable to Christians and isn't even a usable codified legal system. I guess you could say Catholic Canon law was a legal system as it was a codified system; but it wasn't a fully formed legal system for a state. And of course Protestants would have something to say about that being made the law of the land.

On the other hand Sharia is a codified Islamic Law with 4 schools of jurisprudence. Islam the religion and Islam the political and legal system have been totally integrated since its beginnings with Muhammad. Many Muslim majority countries have Constitutions that state that all laws are based on Sharia or can't conflict with Sharia. Depending on which school of jurisprudence, Sharia has a penalty of death for apostasy (leaving Islam), blasphemy and of course the ever famous stoning for adultery. While the percentage of Muslims in the United States that want Sharia to be the law of the land is low, there are many countries where vast majorities of the population want Sharia to be the law of the land.

Here is a Pew research poll about Muslims beliefs about Sharia that got famous rather recently with the whole Bill Maher/Ben Affleck/Sam Harris debate. It shows that, while the percentages of Muslims in some countries that want Sharia to be the law of the land is low, there are many countries with very high percentages that desire this. And in counties that do, there are often high percentages that feel death is the appropriate penalty for apostasy and blasphemy. And this poll didn't even include Saudia Arabia or Iran because you cannot conduct a poll there - places where full Sharia law is the legal system of the country and it would likely mean imprisonment or death for Muslims to disagree.

I have no disagreement with you that in the United States has zero chance of this happening, and I don't know of any Muslim here that would want that (although the percentages locally are not zero - and we get immigrants from places like Somalia who do hold these extreme beliefs). But while these percentages collectively are not a majority of Muslims, they do represent that hundreds of millions of Muslims world-wide do favor an Islamic state and death for insulting the Prophet among other extreme beliefs.

But it gets rather tiresome constantly hearing the "dangers" of folks like Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Pat Robertson. I don't think Huckabee belongs with the other two as he is generally pretty reasonable. But none of these "dangerous" people are calling for an overthrow of the United States to be replaced by some type of Christian theocracy under the rule of a non-existent Biblical Law.

The difference between Christian terrorists and Muslim terrorists is that the majority of Christians worldwide do not support imposing a system of Christian law on their society. Some do, certainly (these guys: http://www.allaboutworldview.o...) but nothing like the fraction of Muslims in most Muslim-majority nations: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/0...

In the US, proponents of Biblical Law are powerful (http://www.theocracywatch.org/biblical_law2.htm) but have relatively little influence in the face of American secularism. But if Christian terrorists in the US started killing gays, say, I would damned well expect proponents of Biblical Law to stand up and make clear that even though they are in favour of lawfully killing gays (as per Deuteronomy) that they are opposed to unlawfully killing gays.

In the same way, since a very large number of Muslims support Sharia law, and since Sharia law in at least some of its variants imposes a death penalty for blasphemy, I don't think it's unreasonable to ask supporters of Sharia law (that is, a sizable fraction of ordinary Muslims) to stand up and say, "By the way, even though we support laws that would put blasphemers to death, we don't support people who do it freelance like this, in part because they killed people who weren't blasphemers but just bystanders. If we just had Sharia law we could kill the blasphemers cleanly and with much less collateral damage, and we would totally support that, but not this messy ad hoc stuff."

Being against violent religious zealotry is not racism. I believe on reflection you would rather agree with that than be a fool. Religion is not race[*]. The most you can go for is labeling it xenophobia, but as we see below, there is excellent genuine foundation for being highly suspicious of whether huge numbers of Muslims are civilized at all.

And I see you have absolutely nothing to say about the substance of GP's post, which is that a study found that majorities of Muslims who favor sharia law also favor murdering "apostates" who "abandon Islam", in Malaysia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and "Palestine". I'll make it easy for you. Just turn to page 55 in the highly detailed 2013 Pew study.

Sure, one has to be careful that their brush does not colour too universally. For example (page 46), only 17% of Muslim Turks who favor sharia believe apostates should be murdered, and only 12% of Turks favor making sharia the law of the land (as opposed, for example, to 91% of Iraqis and a whopping 99% of Afghanis.

[*] In fact, there is anthropologically only one human "race" in existence in the modern world.

That's why there were raids at 149 locations this morning in Australia too. It's only one...yep. And that's why if you go look at the studies on "who supports fundamentalism" and "jihad to install islam" you'll find that in western countries 8-25%(sometimes more) support the use of violence to do so, that includes suicide bombings.

Just a few links:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories...
http://pewresearch.org/assets/...
http://www.pewforum.org/upload...

Hi yeah this isn't the only one but here is one poll. Other polls have had more issue-by-issue breakdowns.

Unfortunately there are indeed Muslim countries in which the majority of people support killing apostates, yes. (Afghanistan, for instance.)

That doesn't make Chrisq's bullshit any less unreasonable, though. Muslims in Western countries tend not to be like that.

You have to bear in mind that following Muhammad's example, as they have done throughout the world, they will apear friendly and attempt to undermine societies until they have sufficient forces for a violent uprising. Lets hope that when it happens it will go the way of Spain, not Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, and many more.

Look at statistics like the fact that more European Muslims have joined Islamic state than their country's armed forces (it may be true in the US also, I don't know) and you get an idea of what these "peaceful" muslims in the west think.

Unfortunately there are indeed Muslim countries in which the majority of people support killing apostates, yes. (Afghanistan, for instance.)

That doesn't make Chrisq's bullshit any less unreasonable, though. Muslims in Western countries tend not to be like that.