False. France is very atheistic / secular. About 50% of the US population are biblical creationist fundamentalists. Your ignorance is showing.
According to the https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/fr.html, France is 83-88% Roman Catholic, 2% Protestant, 1% Jewish, 5-10% Muslim, 4% unaffiliated. That's very high.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html is 52% Protestant, 24% Roman Catholic, 2% Mormon, 1% Jewish, 1% Muslim, 10% Other, 10% atheist.
So while USA is ~78% Christians, France is up over the 80% mark.
Moridin said:
When the religious scriptures themselves promote certain actions and beliefs, then it has everything to do with religion. Cultural apologetics can not save you.
True, but people have enough common sense to pick and choose the ones they want. The bible says you're not allowed to lend money at interest, but that's how our entire western economy works. Religious people in the west don't follow that rule. Religious people in the middle east do follow that rule, and their economy is totally screwed. Would I blame the scripture for that, or would I specifically say that people in the middle east are idiots because they follow that rule?
Bush is performing new crusades in the middle east and claims that god has told him to do it. The same goes for Blair. QED
You're right. I was wrong on this one.
It is certainly motivated by secular values. We could say that they discovered it because religious dogmatism got removed.
Possibly, but isn't France a very socialist place even though it's mostly christian? Refer to the CIA link at the top. Not only that, but aren't most libertarians atheists, just like the socialists in Sweden? It seems like religion and socialism are independent of one another. You can be a socialist christian, a socialist atheist, capitalist christian, or capitalist atheist.
1500+ years of fundamentalist religion ensures that everything that is "wrong" with "arab culture" (if such even exists; you seem to arbitrarily assume this) comes from Islam. This is easy to understand if you learn the history and read the Qur'an and the hadiths.
That's certainly true in the middle east, where extremism is the norm. My point is that Muslims living in the US or Canada or France or wherever are often normal people with normal world views. To assume that all Muslims act like Osama Bin Laden is like assuming all Christians act like Pat Robertson. Similarly, most atheists are just normal people with normal lives. You only hear about the crazy Christians who speak directly to god, crazy Muslims who want infidels out of the holy land, and crazy atheists who say "for the love of good." Their insanity does not represent the entire group. I can't say with a straight face that 80% of Americans and French are hopelessly retarded just because they have some religious views that Pat Robertson agrees with.
There is almost a universal correlation. The most democratic states in the world are secular / atheistic, such as Sweden, Norway, Canada and so on and they have the highest living standards. Countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and so on are the most Islamic states, and consequently, have the lowest standards of living.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ca.html is also a very religious country. It's religious to the point where Catholic schools are publicly funded. I attended Catholic schools from k-12. For each "public" school, there is a Catholic school within a few blocks; they're usually on opposite sides of the street and facing each other.
Islam creates suicide terrorists because their religious scriptures support and glorifies it. I'm afraid that your personal ideology of cultural relativism gets in the way of facts.
The Christian scripture also promotes martyrdom, but you don't see a lot of Christians doing that these days. Whenever you walk into a church and see stained glass pictures of religious people, remember that most or all of those people are martyrs.
christian martyrs (wiki article)
What exactly is this so called "Arab" culture? What is Scandinavian culture? What relevance do they have?
They have everything to do with this. If religious people in country X have completely different values than people of the same religion in country Y, you have to assume the difference is due to regional cultural differences. If their values were based entirely on religion, people of the same religion would universally agree with each other on everything. Looking at how there have been many religious
schisms in history, it's unlikely that religion causes universal agreement on certain issues.
Ask yourself this: Where are the Buddhist suicide bombers?. They have been tortured and invaded by the Chinese, so according to your logic, they should be blowing themselves up by now. I'll tell you the answer: Buddhism does not glorify martyrdom the way Islam does. This is a fundamental disproof of your entire argument.
I could ask you that same question about Christians. If Christian texts glorify martyrdom, then why don't we have more Christian martyrs?
Enforcing science and reason will. Both racism and nationalism are substitute for Messianism and basically dogmatic religions in their own right.
This creates a paradox in which enforcing science is the new dogma and new church. Holier than thou *******s will always be that way. It used to be that other people were not as holy as you, then it was that other people are not as well mannered as you, and eventually it will be that people are not as scientific as you, or that their rational abilities are not as rational as yours. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
There is a growing consensus within the scientific community that the existence of the supernatural can be scientifically disproven. In fact, 93% of the members of the national academies of science and royal society are atheists.
And again there's nothing wrong with being an atheist. You can believe whatever you want, but it seems ridiculous to think that your belief is the solution to everything. That's what every fundie believes, and so far they've been wrong every time.
