Except in the Soviet Union, China, and similar quite populous countries, where the correlation is reversed - according to you. We could multiply these examples: Ireland, say, would be interesting. Your correlation of declining birth rates with "dying" societies is especially revealing, btw - given the consequences of undamped population growth, and the formerly key role of religion in regulating it. Population growth and its attendant miseries is a power center of religion, historically. That wasn't in your original assertion. But have it your way: when you can link to something that has the slightest relationship to your bizarre assertion that Mao confessed his ideology had been "heavily influenced" by Darwinian evolutionary theory, fell free to post it. Until then, it's bullshit.
I agree. Teach charitable values simply by operating their own charitable goals. Do you do charity because of how it makes you feel or more because you want to make a change? Or is it a strong intertwined motion rather than just an idea combined with a feeling. Actually, thats gotta be the best way to define charity.
Doubtful. Ten seconds in your company is enough to recognise a fanatical fundamentalist when one sees it. Of course, none of this argues the point. In fact I don't even see what the argument is. You're not an idiot, you know as well as everyone else that the poorer, less educated nations have more children, (one can hardly blame them, it's all about survival). As we move to the more educated, richer nations you find a much lower birth rate. The poor and uneducated are much more likely to be religious than us materialistic westerners, (indeed compare Nigerias 93% religiosity to Frances 13% etc). You will find that, as long as you pay attention to proper surveys, that "going to church" is hardly a main factor in religiosity statistics. That you would claim so is rather naive.
Maybe you should add the word "myth" to filter out the creationist echo chamber. http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Darwinism_encourages_communism # In fact, most 20th century proponents of communism (such as Joseph Stalin) rejected Darwinian evolution and believed it was biased in favor of The Bourgeois and Capitalism. # In fact, the soviets and other communists suppressed research into Darwinism because they associated it with eugenics, Nazism and capitalism. They went on to denounce genetics and Darwinism together as "the whore of capitalism" (продажная девка капитализма). # This claim directly contradicts the creationist claims Evolution encourages eugenics and Evolution leads to social darwinism in the way that most communists have opposed eugenics, social darwinism, racism and Nazism and have believed these ideas are the byproducts of a capitalist society. # The Bible is a clear supporter of communism because of the tenth commandment and the story in Acts 4:34 - 5:11. # Even if Darwinism did lead to communism, that has no effect on it being true. Most intelligent people are interested in believing what is true, not what leads to virtue. # The claim that Marxist philosophy (in particular class conflict theory) was inspired by Darwinism is simply impossible due to chronology. The Origin of Species was published in 1859, by which time Marx had written the works detailing his philosophical and political beliefs (i.e The Communist Manifesto, The Theses on Feuerbach, The German Ideology etc) and was working on Das Kapital, a book on economics which was relatively light on philosophy and that philosophy (e.g Commodity Fetishism) had absolutely nothing to do with Darwin's thought. Post-1859 Marx would write political economy and history, not philosophy. # The main reason why many prominent communists rejected and or denounced Darwinian evolution was because the agronomist Trofim Lysenko convinced Josef Stalin that applying Lamarckian ideas, in the form of Lysenkoism, would yield more productive crops in conjunction with mass collectivization. Even though the application of Lysenkoism caused devastating famines in both the Soviet Union and China, support for Lysenkoism did not wane until the 1960s.
Anyway, can we get back on topic? Let's clear board here and start afresh. Sam: can you differentiate the prosociality in the OP - yes, all the way back there - from reciprocal altruism? This could potentially be very straightforward, and I'm credulous enough to accept an argument that's even a little reasonable. The answer might even be in the article itself, or you could propose something new.
The best you could do is demonstrate correlation. My conclusion would go the opposite direction. I would say that more agreeable people are less likely to challenge authority, and more likely to adopt the dogma of the masses, which would lead to a larger proportion of agreeable people remaining religious. People who tend to think for themselves rub others the wrong way, are normally comfortable (or forced) to become loners or outsiders, so disagreeable people tend to clump in the irreligious camp. Since my theory actually has a rationale for the data, instead of a simple bar graph and a bit of bias, I say that my direction of causality is much stronger than yours.
The fact that no athiest group has ever established a family, community or country anywhere in the world without first belonging to a theist family, community or country says it all. Even atheists are forced to admit that unlike theistic scriptures which speak volumes about relationships, atheism says nothing at all about any prosocial concepts.
What about the generations following state atheism in communist nations? They seem to have established a community and country. I know families that are atheist. My father is an atheist. How can you say they've established no families?
Why would it? Atheism is not an ideology. Are there non-religious social ideologies that say things about pro-social concepts? (Not necessarily atheist ideologies. Interestingly, I would personally be very suspicious of any explicitly atheist ideology.)
Have you looked? You explicitly said that "atheism says nothing at all about any prosocial concepts", so I thought you had read up on it. I don't know for sure, but environmentalism, humanism, socialism, and libertarianism spring to mind. I'll look into it.
They are not religious. We're looking for pro-social concepts that don't spring from religion... aren't we?
