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Evolution and the 'Wisdom of Crowds'
An anonymous reader writes "An essay by a developer of recommendation systems makes a case for why so many people have trouble grasping Darwin's theory of evolution. Downplaying its conflict with religion, the essay suggests that evolution is in a specific class of "equilibrium seeking" concepts that tend to be extremely counterintuitive to most people. The hypothesis is supported by the observation that so many people reject the notion that evolution-like systems such as Wikipedia, prediction markets, and recommendation systems can actually be effective. Particularly fascinating is the description of his surprisingly simple algorithm for competing in the Netflix prize contest."
The hypothesis is supported by the observation that so many people reject the notion that evolution-like systems such as Wikipedia, prediction markets, and recommendation systems can actually be effective.
While there may be many that reject that these systems can be effective at all, I'd suggest that there's many more that would actual argue that while these systems do work, they aren't necessarily the best or only method that is effective.
The "Wisdom Of Crowds" put George W Bush in power, twice. Had Americans believing Saddam caused 9/11 and was a threat. Then of course there is religion..
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Is a great theoretical concept, but unfortunately it only makes sense in the context of assuming that everybody really thinks for themselves. As soon as the media enter into the equation the crowd becomes as manipulatable as the most stupid upper limit that can still be sold a bill of goods. If that's > 50% then the equation no longer holds, no matter how much the rest invests in staying educated. You'd almost have to filter out media bias somehow because otherwise anybody with an agenda and some money to burn will come out on top. Witness politics, marketing of unnecssary goods and services and so on.
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> Comparing it to evolution, an edit of Wikipedia might be considered equivalent to a genetic mutation. A
> mutation, of course, is non-directed...that is, "random." It could be bad or good, but most of the time
> it is bad.
IMNSHO this is simply untrue. If this is true Wikipedia is dead for long: it never keeps a large, visible "pool" of "genes" (different version of the same article) that the "nature" (viewing public) can "select", and the "nature" simply is too busy to "select" them anyway. They have many version of the same article, but there are not many who will go into the version and select to revert to one of those. To me, the success of Wikipedia is that those who don't know much about a subject will normally refrain from editing the subject, so most edits are actually of a rather high quality. It is a social behavior, not an evolution behavior.
Who rated this funny? Insightful, rather.
Every other developed country in the world has a significantly higher number of people who prefer the scientific version to the religious one when it comes to the origins of the species.
When it comes to evolution, the USA is closer to Turkey than the west-european nations. In fact, in a lot of Europe, Creationism/"Intelligent design" are almost unheard of. (AFAIK, and I just live there..)
Not only that, but the USA is the only country in the western world with a declining preference for evolution. So much for enlightenment.
So yes, this has everything to do with religion. And not just religion, but religion as it's often practiced in the USA. If you were to poll European Christians versus American ones, you'd have the same difference, or probably an even bigger gap.
You know, just because in 80% of countries around the world there just isn't any discussion, that does not make it a given that evolution wins.
... creationism is the truth. The fact that there can even be discussion about this without violence in America is a very rare thing.
EVERY muslim university preaches creationism (even more stupid than that : young-earth creationism)
Most Indian universities preach creationism
and most Chinese also believe in creationism
That's 50% of the world where there isn't any discussion
But you're cowards, so simply lamenting that the universities of ankara or teheran or baghdad for example preaches creationism, you just don't do. Because doing it, might get you actually hurt.
As the parent mentioned, the "Wisdom of Crowds" put Bush in power. Honestly, it seems to me to be nothing more than overhyped bullshit pushed alongside "Web 2.0" and other over-hyped concepts that are filling the current bubble with hot air. People love to cite Wikipedia as proof of the wisdom of crowds, but let's stop and analyze that for a moment:
Who controls the content of Wikipedia articles? Is it a large crowd of seemingly random contributors each imparting their own bits of wisdom? Or is it a small set of contributors providing the base of an article with a few mostly minor revisions submitted by random people passing by? In my experience, it's the latter. Usually a small set of people, no more than 3 to 5 which make the core of a Wikipedia article.
These same people are also generally the ones that cultivate the article and keep it consistent and well editted. Occasionally these same few people come to disagreements and end up in "edit wars" in which they call in another set of few members interested in judging to judge the issue. There's no "crowd" at work here, it's a lot of small groups of vested individuals who have interest in a particular domain and an efficient way of contributing and collaborating in that domain.
There may be hundreds of such groups, but they typically stick to their domain or they become edit whores and stick to minor revisionary work on a large amount of articles. Either way, I don't see much of a "crowd" once I break it down and look close, much less a wise crowd. Have you ever noticed that different subsections of Wikipedia have their own "feel" or "identity"? Maybe the particular manner of phrasing or the type of consistency shown throughout that sub-section which differs somewhat from another unrelated domain. This is largely a result of edits by the aforementioned small group of vested individuals. Each group leaves their own tint which colors a section and gives it life.
Wisdom of Crowds? No. Small, intelligent groups of people focused on achieving a well defined goal? Yes. If you really want to test this "Wisdom of Crowds" concept, take a look at SomethingAwful.com or any of the various large web forums and learn of the "Wisdom of Crowds". Even there, it's generally a very few amount of people contributing intelligently with the rest just being meaningless drivel. This meme needs to die.
That's a big logic jump you made. Not all religions ban the teaching of evolution. Pope John Paul II never condemned evolution. Catholic schools throughout Europe teach evolution without any conflict of interest.
Religion and science are not viewed as polar opposites. They do disagree on several points but that does not mean anyone with religion is against scientific teaching. Darwin himself was obsessed with the Bible.
I never get used to these constant resurrections
"Conventional wisdom says that the primary reason why so many people do not accept Darwin's theory of evolution is that they find it threatening to their religious beliefs. There is no question that religion is a big part of the reason behind the large number of people who reject evolution. But I am convinced that just as often, the cause and effect is reversed: people hold onto their fundamentalist religious beliefs because evolution by natural selection -- the strongest argument against an Old Testament-type creator -- is so counter-intuitive to so many."
Honestly, I find these kinds of statements to be a bit off-base. I really get the feeling that Creationism and Evolution/Darwinism are artificially pitted against each other as if one or the other has to "win."
The interesting thing is that there is absolutely nothing in either of the standpoints that cannot coexist with the other. I would say that the consistant framing of them being exclusive is what causes resistance (from both sides, most likey) when it isn't even needed.
If one wants to get anyone to believe in a scientific theory they are having difficulties with, framing it as, "you should believe this because what you believe is wrong and you are stupid," is not really going to win anyone over. Especially when one could easily take the stance of, "here's why this theory makes sense, and really it doesn't have anything to do with what you may or may not believe."
I've seen no strong theology that would rule out that evolution did not happen. Creationism is about a supernatural force overseeing things--it says nothing specific about how things actually happened. (And, I think, most theologists will agree that Genesis is highly metaphorical.)
So, bottom line is, if science-minded people want others to "see the light" on this one, stick to the facts and leave the religion-bashing alone. Making people defensive generally is not an effective way of getting an idea across.
What's a sig?
The success of wikipedia has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution.
1. It is not like a 1000 monkeys typing randomly on a type writer came up with the wikipedia.
2. The content of the wikipedia is controlled more so than most people think. There are editors, there is peer review etc.
3. You don't find a million slightly varying copies on a single topic which are then "naturally selected"
A wikipedia has as much value as shouting out a question in a packed stadium to receive the answers from a million people. Most of those who will bother to answer are those who will know something about the subject and most who won't answer are most likely those who don't know enough about the topic to comment.
How is this in any sense similar to evolution?
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."
Historically, some of the worst atrocities have been carried out in the name of God. While your idea has merit for a very young civilizations, religion as a means of social control became obsolete as soon as secular law was invented. Since then it's only been abused to manipulate and extort people, at least on a scale that has any impact on society as a whole. (Exceptions made for those small groups who actually practice what they preach.)
Evolution is a pretty slow process... I guess 3000 years or so isn't quite long enough to breed out the religious nutjobs.
=Smidge=
The defenders of the theory of evolution often get as hot under the collar at any challenge to it, as your stereotype fundamentalist gets at having his or her religion challenged. People instinctively see that as more of a sign of **religious** faith in evolution than pure rational, empirical faith in evolution.
Mod me down for calling it as I see it if you want, but don't even try to deny that many of the advocates of evolution aren't as faithfully passionate about it as their creationist counterparts. I know the excuse, that "science is under attack in America." If it is under attack, it is under attack by many things, not just religion. Just take a serious look at how Watson is being treated over his comments about race and genetics. Even most scientists are unwilling to consider the possibility that *gasp* if evolution be true, not all races are created equal, and that some might be statistically inferior to others. We don't live in a perfectly rational world, live with it.
That's a wild-ass guess. There are many alternatives that I find far more convincing, if you read "The God Delusion" there's a chapter devoted to a few alternatives.
One very simple alternative is that children are genetically disposed to believing their elders for obvious survival reasons, as a side-effect if you get a child to believe in your tribal religious system during their formative years for the rest of their life they are more likely to act in the best interest of your tribe. Seems to match history far better in the sense that religious groups have always been eager to be highly immoral in their dealings with outsiders.
So my question is: Even if there is no God, and you are an atheist, is it possible that a world containing religious people is actually a "better" society than a world full of atheists?
Well, we've never had a world based on reason to compare with but it seems clear that a religious world has produced a very small minded us against the world mindset. Read the Old Testament; personally I can't imagine living in that kind of brutality. Rape, murder, theft and slavery are all perfectly fine as long as they're directed at Them, not Us.
I do not just think that. And yes, for the moment this is not going to happen in (most of) America.
muslims inside england use terror to avoid evolution in biology lessons :
http://forums.muslimvillage.net/index.php?showtopic=37975
in france:
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/02/france-muslim-anti-evolutionist.html
This is in Turkey, the most moderate muslim nation existing (where both islamists and atheists massacre eachother, creating a balance) :
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/17book.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
If you thought Christians are trouble when it concerns evolution, you're in for a rude awakening. Christians don't kill you. Don't threaten you. And they don't gang up on your family just because you don't "respect" creationism. Muslims do.
And I don't mean it as an offense, this being /. and all ;-)
According to TFA, the "Wisdom of Crowds" WRT Wikipedia is: "If I can't do better than this, I won't touch it". So, the very definition of the "Wisdom of Crowds" (and I agree with you that "Wisdom" is a very innapropriate term) is that "an active minority drives the inactive majority".
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
I think the main problem with people's understanding of evolution is the fact that it is not taught very well in schools, and people get the strong idea that evolution is a random process. I also think it is a problem with the timescales involved, which are hard for the human mind to grasp.
That's true of humans in general. Religions don't have a monopoly on arrogance.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
What is happening today to the common man is that he/she is getting immune to technology, which leads us to the possibly false premise that the lay person understands technology any better than say, evolution. Given this assault of seemingly illogical and complex information (which completely undermines a person's ego, mind you), religion provides a very convenient framework to make life simple, seemingly secure, and less fragile. Religion is hence, more of a survival tool for a society that shields away a person's insecurities. For that matter, that is the reason why societies and families formed in the first place, which is to increase the probability of our survival and proliferation. For the common man, religion and society practically mean the same thing, and hence interchangeably attribute the positive aspects of one with the other. This is also why they are willing to put up with the restrictions and rules of religion, just as we do for society's laws and restrictions!
I wasn't trying to take a position for or against birth control. I was trying to say that families who believe in having large families tend to grow. Families who believe in having small families don't tend to propagate their ideas or beliefs as rapidly. And if your parents are sterile, you will be too.
>Christians don't kill you. Don't threaten you
There is a theatre production by the Reduced Shakespeare Company where they do the entire bible in 90 mins or somesuch. *Everytime* I have seen it there have been jossling, abusive Christians outside telling me I was going to hell for watching it. I've also numerous reports of people killing in the name of Christianity. I think we need to be clear on this, all religions, whether Muslim, Christian or whatever have extremist factions and that's where the problems are. the mainstream ones are generally fairly laid back.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Welcome fellow Belgian. It's horrible to see how we've been conditioned in excusing ourselves for statements which "potentially could be read in a racist way" because of the constant idea we are "against multiculturism" and are overly sensitive to "cultural differences".
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
The only reason people do not accept Evolution is because they cannot believe that apes are our brothers. Partly because of mis-placed egotism, and mostly because of religion. After-all if we were made in "god's image" to "rule over all beasts", then it Evolution is an unacceptable concept.
_
\\/ are accustomed' - First Lensman
Are you kidding me? Calling Darwin's theory a theory of random mutation show how little you understand of it, because you emphasize the wrong half of his theory. There's basically two parts about Darwin's theory: (1) mutation and (2) selection. Most people consider the first one as most important, but nothing could be further from the truth than that. It's SELECTION that is the keyword here. The mutation part is merely the "fuel" that feeds the selection "engine". In fact, the mutation doesn't even need to be random at all. Let me say that again:
... to have a Darwinian evolution at work. It doesn't have to reflect the biological method of evolution at all. At its core you only need (1) mutation (2) selection. Once you have that, you have Darwinian evolution. I believe it was Richard Dawkins who coined the term MEME to apply Darwin's theory to cultural evolution! Though it is has entirely different mechanism than biological evolution, it still consists of mutation and selection. Not all variants work equally well though: sexual mutation seem to work better than asexual mutations , cultural evolution is much faster than biological evolution, because the latter can only pass information between generations what is very slow. The evolution of mankind in the last few thousands of years are mostly cultural driven.
The mutation in Darwin's theory does NOT have to be random!
Although random mutation is perhaps the most effective way compared to its complexity. It surely is the most simple way for nature to "implement" it. And most of the time it results in very good "fuel". About your example: although the mutations are made by intelligent designers, some designs are rejected and some accepted (to be built further upon). The mutations are not random, but the selection is still in place. That's good enough.
So if you don't want to call Darwin's theory a theory of evolution, call it a THEORY OF NATURAL SELECTION instead.
Keep in mind: you do not need DNA, big gene pools, parallel mutations, sexual mutations,
"With the 'default' society with no religion, a system of natural selection would have existed within the tribe. While there may have been stronger individuals within that tribe, the 'religious' societies produced stronger tribes as a whole."
I disagree. Natural selection doesn't mean "strong people beat up weak people", it means things become more efficient at survival. In the case of humans, who only survived in groups, this would mean groups would evolve toward cooperation. A group of cooperative people has a better chance of success than groups where the weaker half are in fear of being trashed by the stronger half. The latter would only discourge the weak from contributing to a system that did not protect them. Thus evolution would tend toward cooperative groups with or without religion. I believe the Golden Rule, 'do unto others as you would have others do unto you' probably preceeds religion by a long shot. In fact, since humans tend to react, then use their brain to justify what they did, I suspect religion was invented to justify the Golden Rule.
"Wisdom of Crowds" systems produce good results because there is a feedback loop, and elections don't have that feedback.
To sift the wisdom from the noise, there has to be some method of determining which are 'good' inputs and which are 'bad'. With Evolution, the feedback is easy to understand, bad mutations die/fail to breed/whatever, good ones get more food/sex/whatever and are more likely to reproduce.
An election has no such feedback. There is no good method of looking at the individual inputs from the results and pruning out the bad ones or promoting the good ones. Nobody gets to change their mind and alter their vote when they see the results, because for each election, the candidates change. The crowd isn't able to look at Bush v Gore and apply the results to Bush v Kerry, because Gore != Kerry. Only once in the last hundred years have the candidates been rematched (Eisenhower vs Stevenson in 1952 and 1956), so only one has meaningful feedback been applied... and even then it's not very good feedback as the first election was Eisenhower vs Stevenson and the second was President Eisenhower vs Stevenson, which is a different case even if you don't look at increased age, policy shifts, running mate changes, etc.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
And now you have an extremely secular culture, far beyond most of the rest of the world.
Do you really think you're an atheist because of some great factual insight on your part, or because you grew up acculturated to an extremely atheistic society? How can you consider yourself any better or wiser than the American kid who gets sent to Jesus camp?
http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2007/02/france-muslim-anti-evolutionist.html Oooh, a lunatic fringe group sent a handful of copies of a book to some education institutions.
How dare they.
Are you one of those US people who lives in the fantasy world where the middle east is invading Europe ? You might want to book a ticket on one of those cruises if that's the case, you'll make lots of like minded friends (and I heard psychiatrists weren't allowed on board so everyone is perfectly safe).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
No, you can't say that a world of atheists would be a better or worse world, since a world of people who don't believe in God isn't really different from a world of people who don't believe in pink unicorns or celestial teapots. Saying what someone doesn't believe doesn't tell you enough about what they do believe.
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
"Historically, some of the worst atrocities have been carried out in the name of God."
Well, let's not forget Stalin, Hitler, Communist China, and others. Shining examples of people not controlled by "nutjob" religious ideas, eh?
They were all in the idealogical line of Rome, which killed Christians for not worshipping Ceaser. Atheists are capable of the worst atrocities by making Gods of themselves.
"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." Historically, some of the worst atrocities have been carried out in the name of God
That's simply not true. This charge has been parroted by the anti-religious people, and it completely ignores the historical record.
Let's compare the post Roman world to the pre-Roman world. Prior to Christianity, the world believed in conquest without justification. IF someone had more stuff than you, you sent in an army and took it. Then you brought home a bunch of loot, and were rewarded for it. Look at all the Roman celebrations of conquest - called "triumphs." In the ancient world - if the people were not of your country, it was desirable to kill them and take all of their stuff.
Julius Caesar was no bible thumper, but under him, the Romans practiced a particularly vile form of ethnic cleansing in Gaul. Imagine the outcry today if someone wrote a book bragging that they killed over a million people. That is what Caesar did, and it made him MORE popular, not less. And then there all the lesser cultures that have been wiped our destroyed. Read about emperors of various ancient empires having all of the children killed, burning cities to the ground, and so forth. It was the advent of religion and the idea that people had souls which ultimately drove the idea that everyone had some sort of natural rights.
Similarly, Islam spread as quickly as it did in the middle east because of its promises of fairness and lower taxes to the people.
Both religions, carrying with it a divine proposition against killing, act as a natural brake against social forces that otherwise glorify it.
The last time we had an organized group of people that held the ancient view of empire, we called them the most evil people that had ever lived. The NAZIs didn't kill out of a belief in God - rather, they just felt that conquest and ethnic cleansing were part of the natural order of things, and they fused ancient roman values with modern ideas about evolution to back them up. Even today, extreme racists reject christianity (particularly in American prisons), precisely because of its moral condemnation against genocide and other racial killings.
This is my sig.
Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson do not make up all of Christianity. Just like Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il and Stalin do not make up all of atheism. But if we were to play by your rules: I find it very difficult to think a world with Pol Pot and Stalin is better than one without them. For that matter, I think these two have killed more people this century than all of Christianity has in the past 500 years. So, using your logic, it seems to me that the world would be a better place without atheism.
Just adding up the body count should convince anyone that religion is a bad idea for humanity.
I think that statement has just been shot to hell!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
1. Hitler was not an atheist. I don't know why this myth keeps coming up so often. His religious beliefs are unclear, but he referred to "God" at various times, and there seems to be no evidence of him actually being an atheist.
2. The claim is not "some people who happened to be theists also did bad things", but rather that "people did bad things in the name of their religious belief". If you want to counter that, you need to show how someone's lack of belief caused them to do bad things.
I think the reason is simply that many people cannot intuitively comprehend the vastness of time, or at least they don't dedicate the time to really try. My own personal opinion is that for many people the concept for God is simply a placeholder for this line of thinking. Viewed from a typical human's perspective, the time that evolution has taken to produce life as we know it today, is functionally the same as pure infinity. To them infinity is associated with God. Talking to them about "change over time" doesn't make sense, because in their intuitive understanding of time, the time of kings and knights in Europe was extremely long ago. And everyone knows that animals and people were basically the same back then.
To stretch this line of thinking--I sometimes wonder if the United States is not hampered by its relative youth. The entire history of the white culture of this nation fits into about 500 years. Whereas for the rest of the world, 500 years is not that long ago in their history. In places, people are still fighting over things that happened more than 500 years ago.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"That's pretty much what I tell people when they start preferring religion to science - they are the same thing!"
More precisely, they are both attempts by people to make sense of the world around them.
But they do not work the same way, nor were they meant to.
"Do you really believe God was too stupid to create a universe that didn't have to be held together with magic? Studying science is studying God's work, and thus you are in fact learning about God."
I read a rather eloquent way of saying the same as the above, though I forgot who I'm quoting: "Religion tells us about what God did. Science tells us about how He did it."
The problem with the above is that religion and science should and were intended to offer different answers to different questions. They fulfill different needs and expectations in the way that reason and faith do or the way philosophy and spirituality do. None of the aforementioned pairs are truly opposites any more than science and religion because they too are human endeavors to extend limits of ideas that aren't always so tangible or approachable to everyone.
Unfortunately, there are those on both the faith/religious side and on the reason/rational side who either can't or won't tolerate other world-views that well. These are the folks who have good intentions, but they end up applying answers found in their faith to questions better left to science (think "creation museums").
The other side of this paradigm is more common on Slashdot where we find really good "reasons" not to believe in God and "proof" to back it up.
I would have to agree with you.
Mainly because I believe the real problem is the people who think their way is the only truth.
I'm a strong atheist, and have only become more so in the past few years. I (like everyone else) sometimes find myself angry at others for their beliefs. However, I try my best to stay calm and logical any time a heated discussion comes up. When we let ourselves get angry, it only builds barriers that become harder and harder to break down.
The best thing to do is to step back, and imagine yourself in the other persons shoes. See it from their perspective. Only then can you give a calm and useful explanation for why you see it differently.
The people who let their emotions get the best of them are the people that are going to suck no matter what religious views they have. Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Atheist... It doesn't matter, as long as you have a reason for believing what you believe, and let other people have their own reason for believing what they believe.
" Well, no . Japan, Holland, Canada, and a slew of other nations have a lower instance of religious belief, and a lower rate of crime, lower infant mortality, etc."
...and higher suicide rates. ...Japan and Canada anyway.
"Even within the USA, the Bible Belt states (actually the Red States in general) have higher infant mortality rates, lower productivity rates, higher crime rates, worse education systems, along with being worse-off in a range of other criteria."
Congratulations to NYC, Chicago and Los Angeles! You are now "Red, Bible Belt states". ;-)
"It isn't a stark difference--I'm not saying they're in the dark ages--but the difference is easy to spot if you look at the data."
Just for a moment, imagine that we live in a world where numbers don't tell the whole story.
...and then snap out of it. We're already there.
"And in one way or another, we're all atheists."
...as is each and every tree, rock, and banana slug are all atheists too. One significant difference is that they have no doubts about their atheism. ...even when they near the end of
their respective existences.
People are supposed to be different because of what we believe and the small matter of being capable of believing at all.
...not because of what we do not believe.
"Is the world worse off because people don't believe in Thor anymore?"
Not that many people believed in Thor to begin with. It's a rather smaller number today, but they might even have a website.
Apollo on the other hand... There was a thunder god.
That's one crucial difference between science and religion: everything the Pope says is religiously significant, whereas a scientist's statements only matter to the degree to which they can be tested and supported. Even most scientists are unwilling to consider the possibility that *gasp* if evolution be true, not all races are created equal, and that some might be statistically inferior to others. Scientists are quite willing to believe all sorts of things, provided they can be objectively proven. They're just not willing to take someone's word for it.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
> 2. The claim is not "some people who happened to be theists also did bad things", but rather that "people did bad things in the name of their religious belief". If you want to counter that, you need to show how someone's lack of belief caused them to do bad things.
I think that the Stalinist purges and repression in China both qualify. They both see theism in general as something to be wiped out and it's not hard to find out that religious folks were a significant contingent of those "undesirables" they purged.
If you need more documentation, there's plenty available on who all was getting purged under Stalin and why. There's also plenty of information about what's going on right now in China. I believe the US State Department has reports on it which should be available via a bit of Googling.
Someone else pointed out that Stalin once studied to become a priest, but he sure as hell abandoned that later on. Hitler I wouldn't use as an example of an atheist, sorting out his real beliefs from his politics is a mess, but in at least one citation I'm aware of, he claimed to be using religious prejudices to advance his cause and hoped that Christianity would later die off naturally, even though he didn't want to kill it actively (he was too busy playing people off against one another). More than anything, Hitler was into eugenics and the alleged supremacy of his 'race'.