Why I Don't Believe - Humanity Doesn't Need Saving

Recognize that the genetic difference between you and a chimpanzee is less than .004 percent.  Recognize further that the genetic difference between you and a single-celled flatworm is less than 10 percent.  It is critical that we recognize where we came from if we are ever to attempt to understand where we are going.  We are, each and every one of us, animals.  Revel in that fact.  Revel in the fact that we are not apart from the natural world, but an integral part of it.  We are the product of billions of years of evolution and we should be overjoyed at the fact that after countless quadrillions of genetic mutations, nature has finally produced a species so advanced that it can actually ponder the significance of its own existence and its relationship to every other living thing, a species so thoughtful that it can actually appreciate the intricate mechanics of its own emergence.

In many ways, we are the eyes and mind of nature.  No other creature appreciates beauty as humans do.  No other creature looks up at the night sky and appreciates the pure aesthetic grace of the cosmos.  No other creature is moved watching a sunset.  No other creature ponders the meaning of its existence or its relationship with the world around it.  We are a truly amazing and marvelous species and it is deeply troubling to me that nearly every faith takes it as an article of faith that humans are a fallen or broken creation that requires some manner of redemption or saving. 

Are you evil?  Are you flawed?  Are you a bad person?  Are you sinful?  Do you require some manner of external force or presence to redeem you or make you whole?  To make you worthwhile?  To make you worthy of salvation or eternal life or whatever you believe lies at the end of this corporeal existence?  Are all of us evil, flawed, sinful and broken creatures?

If you believe any of the foregoing, there is a simple question I would like to ask.

Why?

Why do you believe you are evil, flawed, bad, or sinful?  Why would you believe that any of us are evil, flawed, bad or sinful?  What compels you to believe that our existence as humans requires any kind of external redemption to make us worthwhile, or to make you worthy of salvation?

Because a book says so?  Because a book written thousands of years ago during a barbaric, tumultuous and extraordinarily violent epoch in human civilization says you are?

Do those beliefs enrich your existence?  Do they increase the joy you feel on a daily basis?  Does it salve your conscience to believe that your existence is plagued by sin?  Does it enhance your appreciation for life?  For your fellow man?  Does it help to believe that your neighbor is a sinful and fallen creature?  Do you feel a greater sense of purpose and meaning by believing that your life, your very existence, is fundamentally, irrevocably flawed and that both you and humanity as a whole can only made whole through the application of some external force?

Have you ever stopped to consider the social and psychological implications of an entire society that accepts the idea that humankind is, at its most fundamental level, a fallen, flawed, sinful, depraved creature, whose only hope for peace and wholeness lies in complete and utter reliance on some invisible, unknowable force?  What kind of assumptions does this kind of belief structure lead to?  What does manner of actions spring forth from those basic assumptions?  What kind of worldviews arise as a result?

Strangely, the idea that we are a depraved, flawed, sinful, fallen creation is one of humankind's oldest and most ubiquitous assumptions.  This assumption is so prevalent, so common that it goes largely unremarked and almost wholly unexamined.  This assumption forms the fundamental firmament of all three of the world's great religions and is a critical element of nearly every faith.  The Abrahamaic faiths believe as an absolute, unquestionable tenet of existence that we, humankind, are individually and collectively, so flawed, so sinful, so corrupt, so depraved, that without the direct intervention of some “perfect deity” to redeem us, our lives are without meaning, without purpose, and that we can never be whole.  That without external redemption, we can never know peace.  This tenet of existence is absolutely paramount and utterly necessary for the Abrahamaic faiths because their entire view of salvation and redemption depends entirely on the assumption that because we are a flawed, fallen creation, we require their external guidance to attain any measure of wholeness or peace.

This assumption is simply and completely wrong.

It is Wrong.

Not only is this assumption wrong, it is counterproductive, it is harmful to our psyche both individually and collectively and it is empirically and demonstrably false.  This assumption flies in the face of our entire history as a species, a history that time and again, demonstrates in vivid fashion, the ultimate triumph of reason and peace and justice and hope over barbarism, tyranny, cruelty, hatred and oppression.

Why I Don't Believe - Society Doesn't Need Religion

Humans possess an almost limitless potential. When one compares where our species has been, what we have evolved from, and what we have achieved in a mere two hundred generations, our ultimate potential is nothing short of staggering. The single celled organisms that dominated the Earth for the first few billion years of its existence replicated themselves for countless quadrillions of generations, before finally making the leap from single celled organisms to multi cellular organisms. Individual dinosaur species lumbered across Earth's Super continent for tens of millions of years and hundreds of thousands of generations, before their eventual annihilation. Human civilization by contrast, has existed for something around six, perhaps seven thousand years. While this may seem like an incredibly long time compared to our individual lifespans, in any sort of geological, evolutionary or cosmic timescale, it is nothing but a blink of an eye. And what we have accomplished in that time span is nothing short of breathtaking.

What can humankind achieve in five hundred years? What can humanity achieve in the next thousand years? In the next ten thousand? Even if one were to assume that human civilization were to suffer a civilization-wide calamity similar to those that plagued Europe after the collapse of Greece or Rome, or that plagued China after the fall of the Han Dynasty and plunged their respective civilizations into a prolonged period of retrenchment, regression and decline, it is impossible to ignore the simple fact that after every single collapse, humanity always comes back, and when it returns, it surpasses that which came before. Even if one were to assume that human civilization might suffer a similar setback, the fact remains that the ruins of OUR civilization will live on to inspire the human species to new heights so that our progeny will eventually surpass the height of our civilization.

Such a collapse, however, is in no way imminent. Indeed, in nearly every respect, such a collapse has never looked as unlikely as it does now. The likelihood of large scale military conflict between any of the largest sovereign states is incredibly low. Indeed, the globalization of commerce, trade and information has made armed conflict virtually unthinkable as an attack on the geographic centers of a foreign nation will have drastic and incredibly far reaching negative consequences here at home. To be sure, small scale regional conflicts such as those currently plaguing the near and middle east are likely to continue into the foreseeable future, but the reality is that none of the industrialized western nations are in any way inclined to engage in any manner of hostilities against one another, mostly by virtue of the fact that modern stable representative democracies simply do not attack one another. Indeed, such an event seems even more unlikely to occur now given that modern democracies are more integrated and their fates more closely tied to one another than ever before.

The trajectory of humankind is incredibly positive. To be sure, there have been dips and bumps and setbacks, but overall, in every conceivable way, the future of humanity looks better than the past. Infant mortality rates continue to plummet. Human life spans continue to rapidly increase. Indeed, so rapid has been the extension of human life that it has nearly doubled in the last two hundred years. Literacy rates continue to rise and the education level of Earth's citizens continue to rapidly advance. To be sure, there are local variations, and progress in many areas is horribly uneven, however, it is unquestionable that mass education and literacy have fueled the exponential technological advancement that has been the driving force for humankind in the modern era. Global famine and hunger are in decline and are presently at historical lows. Given the amazingly rapid advances in agriculture and aquaculture, this seems unlikely to suffer any serious reversals in the foreseeable future. Modern medicine and vaccination have increased both the quality and duration of human life, and squelched potential plagues and infections that would have become pandemics in earlier eras. And the material wealth and well being of the human species has never been higher. We now take it as a virtually inviolable right that all human beings are entitled to the basic necessities of life, food, shelter, water, medicine. Even in war ravaged countries, invading armies actually set up camps to facilitate the provision of the material basics to their mortal enemies. Only in completely failed societies is this even a question.

Compared to any other epoch in human civilization, such compassion for ones' enemies is unthinkable. And the fact that we as a civilization possess such surpassing material well-being that we can freely bestow it upon the citizens of our political enemies when they cannot or will not do so themselves is a testament not only to or technological progress, but our moral evolution as well. The material benefits of our modern global civilization are inarguable. The basic tenets of survival, food, shelter, water, are all taken as an absolute given. It is impossible to overstate what a paradigmatic shift this is from the lives of early humans, who spent virtually every moment of every day attempting, and often failing, to satisfy these most basic needs.

The earliest humans spent essentially every moment of every day simply attempting to survive to the next.

In advanced societies, the list of necessities has grown to include indoor plumbing, air conditioning, electricity, television, garbage service, Internet and cell phone service, and a car, not to mention the fact that we have access to virtually every kind of foodstuff imaginable. A modern supermarket possesses a variety of selection that would have likely been unavailable to even a king in earlier times.

The fact that daily human survival is really no longer a question for the vast majority of citizens of advanced societies has enabled a proliferation of specialization in the arts and sciences, which has facilitated ever greater and more rapid advances in technology within those societies. Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of modern societies is that technological advancement begets not only greater wealth and material prosperity, but faster and greater technological advancement. By far, the greatest problem with this rapid technological advancement is that while it has dramatically improved the lives of nearly every inhabitant of this planet, it has at the same time created and entrenched a distinction in terms of wealth that is more pronounced than ever before.

Poverty is, of course, a relative term. And by almost any measure, those who possess cars, cell phones, Internet, cable television, air conditioning, indoor plumbing, and have access to more food than they can possibly eat, cannot, by any historical standard, be called poor, yet in relation to the almost unimaginable wealth of those who dwell atop the human wealth pyramid, we are poorer than ever. This is not to diminish the undeniable fact that life is still difficult, especially for those in relative poverty, it is simply to acknowledge that the challenges faced by most in the modern era, even the least fortunate, are less centered on the cruel reality of starvation and day to day survival, and more on the difficulties of navigating interpersonal relationships and societal obligations.

What is truly stunning, is that these remarkable advances in human well-being have occurred most rapidly in those regions of the world that have successfully removed the yoke of religion. It is virtually impossible to ignore the fact that after the collapse of the Roman Empire, Europe became mired in the Dark Ages that persisted for approximately a thousand years. Indeed, one of the only things to truly flourish during those benighted times, was the proliferation and entrenchment of Christianity. While technology, literacy, education, engineering, civics, and science foundered, Christianity reached its apex in political power, economic influence and societal penetration.

At the same time that Europe was mired in a technological, social, and civic black hole, the Middle East, flourished as the center of literacy, science, mathematics, philosophy, art and culture. While Islam was the dominant religion, the Middle East was not dominated by theocratic states like those in Europe and as a result, enjoyed a far more cosmopolitan differentiation between church and state.

Ironically, at about the same time that Europe began to separate civic and political life from spiritual life during the renaissance and began its technological and scientific march that has persisted to the present, the Middle East went in the opposite direction. Just as Christianity had been the dominant political force during the dark ages in Europe, Islam slowly became the dominant political force in the Middle East and as it strengthened its hold, the region became more and more technologically, socially and economically backwards.

Clearly religion is not necessary for social well being. And even if religiosity is not the cause of many of the ills that plague the underdeveloped world, the very fact that religion is not a necessary precondition for society, the fact that religion is not necessary to create a moral code, not necessary to establish societal norms, to establish kindness and giving as a social good, not necessary to condemn violence and crime undercuts the very notion that society needs religion at all. Indeed, the evidence clearly indicates that society does NOT need religion in the slightest. That religion is, at the very least, inversely correlated to societal well being.

One is left to wonder, if we do not need God or Religion to explain the Universe, do not need God or Religion to explain the evolution of the cosmos, do not need God or Religion to explain the origins of life, and do not need God or Religion to facilitate and just, equitable, society, do we have any need for God or Religion at all?

Why I Don't Believe - Religion is Technology

While religion claims to speak to the eternal, religion itself is demonstrably ephemeral. All religions have a beginning, and nearly all of them have already reached an end. Indeed the vast majority of theistic belief systems that have been practiced throughout human history have faded into the mists of time, forgotten by all but the scholars and historians charged with chronicling the tapestry of human history.  The confident pronouncements and eternal truths spouted by countless priests lost and forgotten.  When was the last time human beings worshipped Ceres, or Demeter, or Baal, or Asherah, or Zeus, or Zoroaster, or Ra, or Annubis, or any of the other countless discarded deities that litter the philosophical landscape? Why are these immortals dead? What cataclysm could cause theism, which by its very nature, seeks to describe, understand and commune with the eternal, to prove so temporary?

Theists have argued for centuries, that human beings, are by their very nature, programmed to seek God, that nature herself, has imprinted on all, the idea of God. This belief essentially stems from the fact that for the duration of modern history, human societies have been suffused with religion and religious practices. From this historical fact, theists infer that humans have always had religion, and that they therefore must be programmed to seek it out. This historical fact, however, fails to encompass even a fraction of human history.

Modern humans meaning human beings with comparable physiology and comparable brain development to you and I were living their lives at least as early as 195,000 years ago. These early humans were capable of building fire, making tools and shelters, speech, emotion, music, they were in almost every way, the equivalent of you and I. Yet these early humans did not possess religion as we would understand it. One of the primary markers in the evolution of religion is the ceremonial burial of the dead, yet even this practice, one shared by elephants who ritualistically pass around the bones of deceased elephants they come across, can only be traced to as early as 100,000 years ago. One has to wait an additional 88,000 years before the first traces of any kind of organized religion begins to emerge in human history.

Only after the emergence of agricultural technology and the revolutionary transition from nomadic hunter gatherers to settled tribes and states do organized religions begin to emerge.  Even these centrally organized religions had to wait until the advent of writing approximately 3500 years ago before a coherent and relatively consistent doctrine of belief could be constructed. Far from being an eternal part of human history, organized religion is an incredibly recent historical development. Indeed, the Abrahamaic Religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, can respectively trace their earliest roots to 3000, 2000 and 1300 years ago. Given the fact that modern humans have existed for at least 195,000 years, monotheism has existed for less than 2 percent of the span of human history. While polytheism has existed for far longer, organized systems of polytheistic belief can trace their roots back no further than the advent of city states enabled by the agricultural revolution, meaning that even polytheism spans no more than 8 percent of human history. Put another way, humans have spent over 92% of their entire history as a species without organized religion of any kind. Far from being an essential and inextricable part of human existence, religion is of incredibly recent and incredibly modern vintage.

Indeed, theism is best understood not as a true statement regarding the supernatural, but a technological innovation. Theism generally, and organized religion specifically, are best classified as expressions of human technological development. When asked to describe technology, most people will point to the devices that we encounter in our daily lives, cellular phones, televisions, cars, airplanes, microscopes, lasers, satellites, spacecraft, robots – those artificial constructs humans have crafted to make our lives easier or to perform specific tasks. Technology, however, encompasses far more than simply devices.

Indeed, Religion is best understood not as a statement of fundamental truth, but as a methodological technology for understanding the natural world, establishing normative social conventions and social relationships.  Just as the Dewey Decimal System is a methodological technology for classifying books based on specific criteria, Religion is a methodological technological technology for understanding physical, astronomical, geological phenomena as well as social phenomena.  Indeed, as a technological innovation, Religion is one of the most important and revolutionary technologies humans have ever invented.  It enabled humans to formulate answers and attempt to gain some measure of control over physical phenomena and forces that heretofore were wholly beyond the realm of human understanding.

Ancient humans looked up at the sky and had no understanding of what they were seeing.  They saw points of light like fires sparkling in the night sky.  They saw the glowing orb of the moon hovering seemingly just out of reach every night.  They experienced storms, earthquakes, volcanism, famine, disease, plagues, mental illness and had no means of understanding.  Ancient humans had no method for understanding the incredibly tumultultous and dangerous world around them, no means of explaining why.  The earliest religions, and all that came after, were essentially technologies invented to resolve this dilemma.  The earliest religions provided explanations for natural phenomena.  The moon was a spirit or a goddess who was chased by the sun.  The sun was a God who looked favorably on humanity.  Storms were expression of a deity's wrath.  Famine and disease were a curse on the supposedly wicked.  In this way, the unexplainable could at least be reckoned with as something other than cruel randomness.  More importantly, by intercession through a shaman, priest, priestess, oracle, witch doctor, ancient humans could at least hope to gain some measure of control over the unimaginably vast natural forces arrayed against them.

As human societies developed, as they grew more complex, larger, more stratified, Religious technology progressed, providing more definitive 'answers' to the biggest questions in life, providing justification for existing power structures and social relationships, providing a source of societal norms, and providing a common cultural understanding that enabled those who would likely be enemies with common ground on which to form a larger society.  Theists often accuse Atheists of being overtly hostile to Religion, of believing that Religion serves no purpose.  This could not be further from the truth.  Religion has served an incredibly important role in our social and historical development.  Indeed, without the advent of religious technology, human society as we know it would likely have been wholly unable to develop.

Religion provided epistemological and philosophical guidance and understanding in a world that was powerful, terrifying, and utterly baffling.  By providing a common cultural understanding and common societal norms, religious technology enabled human beings to move beyond small familial bands to form larger communities.  Religion has been invaluable in moving human beings out of tribal existence.

Religious technology, however, has reached a point of obsolescence.  This is not because people of faith are stupid.  This is not because religious technology is evil.  It merely reflects the fact that religious technology no longer provides meaningful answers to most of the questions in the modern world.  Religious technology is no longer required to answer phenomenological questions about the Universe.  The movements of the heavens are FAR better explained by astronomy than by Religion.  The movements of the seas, far better explained by oceanography.  The weather is far better explained by meteorology.  Famine and disease are far better explained by microbiology.  The origins and evolution of life far better explained by biology.  Demonic possession is far better explained by psychology.  Indeed, nearly every single subject addressed by religious technology is demonstrably better addressed by the scientific method, producing evidence, and a replicability, predictive capacity completely unrivaled by that of any religious technology.

Religion is, for all intents and purposes, obsolete.  It is unnecessary.  It is unnecessary to explain the existence or evolution of the Universe.  Unnecessary to explain or describe our world, or the life upon it.  Unnecessary to explain the phenomena we encounter every day.  Religion is obsolete in the same way that an 8-Track Player or a Fax machine is obsolete.  It is not that Religion is evil or useless, just that there are far better methodological technologies available for human use and consumption.

Why I Don't Believe - Highly Religious Societies v. Highly Irreligious Societies

Ask yourself, which of the following countries would you rather live in?

Bangladesh or Estonia
Niger or Sweden
Indonesia or Denmark
Democratic Republic of the Congo or Norway
Malawi or the Czech Republic
Morocco or Hong Kong
Somalia or Japan
Sri Lanka or England
Djboutti or Belarus
Egypt or Finland
Mauritania or Vietnam
Sierra Leone or France
Burundi or Australia
Afghanistan or Albania
Guinea or Russia
Zambia or New Zealand
Jordan or The Netherlands
Laos or Belgium
Myanmar or Cuba

If you find yourself largely picking the countries on the right hand side, there is likely a reason for that.  The countires listed above represent the 20 Most Religious Countries on the planet and the 20 Least Religious Countries on the planet.  Can you guess which side is which?  If you guessed that those on the left represent the 20 Most Religious Countires, you are correct.  One would think that the Creator of the Great All, be he represented by the Christian faith, the Muslim faith, the Hindu faith, the Bahai faith, the Jewish faith, etc., would bestow his blessing on those people who seek to follow his divine will.  One would think that the Creator of the Great All would ensure that His people are rewarded for their faithfulness.  As becomes rapidly apparent, even if one does not explicitly argue that extreme religiosity CAUSES societal misery, extreme religiosity certainly does NOT act as a panacea to prevent it.  Indeed, the economic, political and social situations of Highly Religious and Highly Irreligious Countries could not be more diametrically opposed.

The top 20 Most Religious Countries on the planet contain somewhere on the order of 599,370,000 people according to the United Nations.  The estimated per capita income of these countries varies between a high of $5,416 per person per year in Egypt to a low of $328 per person per year in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  Altogether, the approximately 600,000,000 people living in the 20 Most Religious Countires on the planet earn approximately $1.7 Trillion dollars.  This averages out to aproximately $1,200 per person per year.  While approximately the same number of people (604,555,000) live in the top 20 Least Religious Countries on the planet, their living conditions could not be more different.

The estimated per capita income of the 20 Least Religious Countires ranges from a high of $58,141 in Norway to a low of $2,785 in Vietnam.  Altogether the approximatley 605,000,000 people living in the 20 Lease Religious countries on the planet earn approximatley $14.4 Trillion.  This averages out to approximately $23,956 per person per year.  In other words, those individuals living in the 20 Least Religious Countries on the planet earn almost TWENTY TIMES MORE per year than their counterparts in the 20 Most Religious Countries on the planet.

Again, the point is NOT that Religion necessarily causes societal, merely that Religion is wholly unnecessary for material well-being, that indeed, it is inversely correllated.

Not only do citizens of highly irreligious societies live lives of far greater material comfort, their lives are much longer.  This is likely due to the alarming persistence of hunger and starvation in the 20 Most Religious Countries.  The United Nations and the Global Hunger Index have conducted a statistical sampling of countries around the world.  Of those countries where there was enough internal stability to conduct the sample, the 20 Most Religious Countries scored as follows:  1 was listed as having a moderate problem with hunger.  7 were listed as having a serious problem with hunger.  5 were listed as having an alarming problem with hunger.  3 were listed as having an extremely alarming problem with hunger.  One can only assume that those countries too unstable to even conduct a proper sample are likely suffering even more.

Of the 20 Least Religious Societies, only 1, Vietnam was listed as having any problem with hunger, and it was listed as a moderate problem with hunger.  Unsurprisingly then, the average life expectancy of a citizen in one of the 20 Most Religious Countries is 63.88 years.  The average life expectancy of a citizen in one of the 20 Least Religious Countries is over 12 years longer, at 76.04.

In addition to lack of food and money, the citizens of highly religious societies suffer in innumerable other ways as well.  Literacy in the 20 Most Religious Countries stands at approximately 59.12% of the overall population.  Literacy in the 20 Least Religious Countries stands at approximately 98.3% of the overall population.  The Press enjoys far greater freedom in the 20 Least Religious Countries than in the 20 Most Religious Countries as measured by the United Nations.  Indeed, under the United Nations Human Development Index and Prosperity Index, composite measures of individual Nations' wealth, access to healthcare, longevity, personal freedom, political freedom, etc., consistently illustrate the very trend illustrated above - that Highly Religious Societies suffer in almost every conceivable way.  the 20 Least Religious Countries scored almost twice as high as their highly religious brethren on the Human Development Index and nealry three times as high on the Prosperity Index.  While these are composite measures and involve a certain degree of subjectivity as to how individual categories should be weighted, the overall trends are stark.

Even setting aside prosperity and material well-being, the health of a Nation can also be guaged by its ability to adhere to the law.  All religions, especially those in the Abrahamaic tradition profess a deep fealty to the law.  They place a great deal of importance on adherence to the social code of conduct.  Indeed, the admonition to refrain from murder is one of the few tenets of religiosity that is shared not only by all faiths, but by all secular legal systems.  If one were to take the position that Divinity is a necessary precondition for morality, it would necessarily follow that those societies that are consciously steeped in non-belief would be far more likely to engage in murder than those societies that follow the divine path.  This is manifestly not the case.

Murder rates are notoriously difficult to obtain in states with significant internal turmoil and as a result of the ongoing strife in many of the 20 Most Religious Countries, only 12 even report basic government statistics.  Of those, the average murder rate stands at approximately 9.7 people per 100,000.  Given the civil unrest and outright warfare in many of those countries not reporting, countries like Afghanistan, Congo, Myanmar, etc., and given the strained resources of law enforcement in those countries that do, the actual murder rate is likely far higher.  Even if one were to assume a murder rate of 9.7, however, such a rate is still nearly three times higher than that in the 20 Least Religious Countries whose combined murder rate stands at approximately 3.39.

By nearly any conceivable metric, Highly Religious Countries fare far, far, FAR worse than Highly Irreligious Countries.  The point is NOT that Religion necessarily CAUSES societies to fail, causes hunger, poverty, disease, starvation, illiteracy, murder.  The point is that Religion does NOT resolve those problems.  The point is that those who argue that societies steeped in Religion are more just, more fair, more moral, are quite simply wrong.  Theists, when presented with the irrefutable fact that the most Highly Religious Societies are uniformly unpleasant, especially when compared to the Most Irreligious Societies, respond that such comparisons fail to take into account colonialism, fail to take into account the importance of poverty, and reflect nothing more than the fact that as Countries grow wealthy and stable, they have the freedom to abandon faith and abandon God.  That Atheism is a selfish and narcissistic response ot our material well-being.

Indeed.  Because what the unmitigated success of godless societies indicates is that society does not need God.  Society doesn't require God.  Not for material well being.  Not for health.  Not for wealth.  Not for literacy or education.  Not to maintain social cohesion.  Not to minimize crime.  Not to minimize violence.  What the incredible success of godless societies proves is that God is NOT necessary.  That when we are accountable to one another, we are just as capable of functioning as a society as we are when we pretend that we are beholden to some manner of divinity.

Why I Don't Believe - Religious Societies Are More Violent, Dangerous, and Unstable than Irreligious Societies

One of the most common arguments put forth in favor of religion as the provider and arbiter of human morality is that without religion, humanity is incapable of any manner of social coherence or moral code. Without God, all values become meaninglessly relative and that without some manner of divine scorekeeper, there is no code of ethics upon which humanity can possibly agree. Some variation on this central tenet of religiosity emerges in every debate between theists and atheists and is present in nearly every discussion of morality from the pulpit. So prevalent is this assumption, that any discussion of the morality begins with the presupposition of correctness of this premise.

Given that the divine is supposedly the source of all morality, and that the divine enables humankind to act in a more moral and ethical fashion, it would be logical to presume that those regions of the world where religiosity is highest would possess citizens of the highest morality and would, as a result, have a cultures with the highest levels of domestic tranquility and peace. Certainly, one would assume, those societies where a divine code of ethics guide the hands and fates of men, would have greater degrees of domestic tranquility and peace than those societies of the godless.

Individual piety, let alone the the heart of an entire nation is, of course, difficult to quantify. No person can know the mind or heart of another, let alone those of an entire people. In the absence of that kind of personal knowledge, however, there are a number of proxies that can be used to measure the overall religiosity of a society. The percentage of citizens who attend worship services regularly. Per capita donations to religious organizations. Property ownership by religious organizations. Religious self-identification of the citizenry. Religious makeup of the political class. The distinction or unification of religious and civil courts.

Based solely on self-identification, the ten least religious countries in the world are Sweden, Vietnam, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Czech Republic, Finland, France, South Korea and Estonia. The ten most religious countries based solely on self-identification are Bangladesh, Niger, Indonesia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Morocco, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Djboutti and Egypt. Self-identification, of course, is generally based on polling data, specifically, questions like “How important is religion in your daily life?” While self-identification against the importance of religion tends to correlate very strongly with a lack of religious behavior, self-identification with the importance of religion tends to correlate much less strongly with actual religious practices, such as church attendance, donation to religious organizations, etc. Self-identification, therefore, needs to be analyzed in conjunction with actual religious practices to obtain a more robust picture of a society's true level of religiosity. More on this in a moment.

When one begins to compare societies with high levels of self-professed religiosity to those with extremely low levels of self-professed religiosity, several trends become immediately apparent. First, one would think that those societies with the highest levels of religiosity would have far higher levels of domestic tranquility than the societies with low levels of religiosity. In fact, the EXACT opposite is true. Domestic tranquility is, of course, a rather nebulous concept, so to meaningfully engage the topic, it is necessary to make some basic assumptions about human nature. First, one would assume that violent crime such as assault, battery, rape and domestic violence represent a breakdown of domestic tranquility. Second, one would assume that the murder rate would represent a similar breakdown of domestic tranquility. Third, one would assume that incarceration rates signal at the very least a discernible measure of those who cannot or will not abide by the social or moral contract. Fourth, and finally, political assassinations, and or significant civil strife and armed conflict between competing political or religious factions strongly signal a lack of domestic tranquility. Domestic tranquility is an important concept, because it represents the citizenry's ability or inability to adhere to its own moral and legal standards.

Given the presumption among theists that God is the source of morality, and given that there are at least enough commonalities among the various societies of the world, I believe that we can make the following fairly broad assumptions. Neither God nor man sanctions or encourages violent crimes such as assault, battery, rape and murder. One would only assume that God, whom most theists claim represents the better angels of human nature, and is commonly associated with peace would be similarly opposed to civil strife, political assassination and internecine warfare. Given the foregoing, one would assume that those countries with the highest levels of religiosity, who clearly crave the authority of their God and expressly state their intention to follow His will, would be those states with the LOWEST incidences of violent crime, murder, rape, torture, civil strife, internecine warfare and those with the least need to incarcerate large numbers of their population for failure to abide by His guidance.

This assumption is completely and utterly backwards.

Those countries with the highest levels of religiosity are almost uniformly the countries with the HIGHEST rates of violent crime, the HIGHEST murder rates, the HIGHEST rates of incarceration, the HIGHEST incidences of civil strife, political assassination and internecine warfare. Conversely, the countries with the LOWEST levels of religiosity, presumably those with the least morality, actually have societies in which the EVILS god and man purportedly abhor are least common. Indeed, those societies with the highest levels of religiosity are almost uniformly, among the most violent, crime ridden, dangerous, and unstable regions of the planet. Conversely, the least religious states rank anywhere near the top in ANY of the foregoing categories. Indeed, they rank nearly last in every single category. In other words, the least religious states, those states which expressly DO NOT seek to follow the moral path allegedly set out by God, actually do a MUCH MUCH better job at actually fulfilling that moral path than those allegedly fulfilling it for the greater glory of their God.

To be sure, correlation is not causation, and it is impossible to say with certainty whether high levels of religiosity cause societies to become beset by crime and become more violent and unstable, or if the political and civil instability in those regions causes the increase in religiosity as a way to cope with the deteriorating condition. The correlation itself, however, should send a wave of doubt through any who want to seriously argue that God is a necessary precondition to morality. Indeed, as one begins to look through the comparison between highly religious states and irreligious states, it becomes readily apparent that religious states not only correlate very strongly with domestic criminality, violence and instability, but also with poverty, with illiteracy, with infant mortality and with foreign aggression and hostility. Even when one controls for variables like the specific religion at issue, population density, natural resources, GDP, population homogeneity, etc., the correlation between high levels of religiosity and a whole host of societal ills remains inexplicably high. Statistics coming tomorrow!

Why I Don't Believe - Religion and Social Stagnation

Europe and the Middle East and their respective eras of rapid social, technological and civic advancement as well as their respective eras of social, technological and civic decay exemplify the fact that societies where religion dominates social and political life are vastly inferior to those societies where religion is nothing more than a matter of personal taste. Without exception, those societies where personal piety is a matter of state control are among the most socially repressive and technologically backward regions on Earth. The only regions more benighted than those where religion is a matter of state are those where the state itself has crumbled.

Highly religious states routinely rank among the most oppressive states on Earth. The rulers of these benighted lands claim that their authority is a mandate from God. And in each of these states, the majority of the populace lives in desperate poverty. Disease and illness are rampant. Illiteracy and lack of education, basic infrastructure, basic social services, are either non-existent, or woefully inadequate. Technology by any measure lags far behind that of their secular counterparts. These states are the modern analog to the European states that persisted for so long during Europe's dark ages.

During Europe's thousand years of darkness, the Christian Church held a stranglehold over the levers of power. They dominated and controlled literacy, utilizing one of mankind's most amazing gifts, the gift of preserving and disseminating knowledge in the most selfish of ways. The Church used literacy almost exclusively to preserve its own institutional power. Controlling information to maintain the records of their vast property. Rather than educating the populace and teaching them the virtues of reading, the Christian Church actively worked to prevent the spread of literacy, lest some upstart use their knowledge to question the Church's hoarding of wealth and power, or question the tenets of the faith.

To be sure, after the fall of Rome, the Church was one of the few remaining bulwarks of civilization left. Indeed, it may have been the only remnant of a more civilized time. The Church, however, quickly parlayed that authority into vast political and economic power which it used to further entrench its power and subject continental Europe to nearly a millennium of wretched poverty, servitude, and social and technological decay. While the Middle East and Far East surged ahead technologically, the Christian Church actively worked to thwart the betterment of society, condemning generations of Europeans to suffering while the highest echelons of the church, safe in their palaces and cathedrals, plundered the land.

The Church did not even care that the people to whom it was supposedly ministering COULD NOT EVEN SPEAK THE LANGUAGE USED AT MASS. What possible benefit could there be to keeping the populace ignorant of the very mechanisms by which they were supposedly absolved of sin? In leaving the populace unable to understand the scriptures by which they were supposedly saved? The simple fact that the Church did not even care whether its adherents understood what they were worshiping so long as they opened their wallets demonstrates that the Church cared nothing for society or the welfare of its people. The Church cares only for its own well being.

Imagine, for a moment, where Western Civilization could be right now if instead of working feverishly to ensure their own prestige, wealth and power, the Church after the fall of Rome would have worked to educate the masses. If instead of hoarding knowledge and literacy and filling the heads of the populace with a litany of incomprehensible Latin, the churches had become centers of learning. Centers where knowledge was disseminated rather than hoarded. Outposts of education where the agricultural and technological knowledge of the ancient Romans could be used to better the lives of average citizens. Rather than a thousand years of social, economic, political and technological atrophy, the Western World could have started the enlightenment hundreds of years earlier. It is impossible to overstate the decay and societal damage that was done by the Church during the dark ages.

The same situation currently applies to the Middle East. Islam dominates the modern Middle Eastern social and political life just as deeply as Christianity dominated Europe during the dark ages. And the people who dwell in those regions have suffered socially, politically, economically and technologically for it for hundreds of years. While the Church preaches about man's evil nature and ministers to the hope for a better life in some mythical afterlife, it actively works to thwart the hopes and dreams of the man and women it supposedly cares for in this one. It actively works for the repression of women, depriving them of the right to participate as equals in social or civic life. It actively works to prevent the dissemination of information and knowledge that would threaten its power or cause individuals to question its actions. It actively fosters hatred and xenophobia of those with different faiths and values. It actively opposes technological innovation and science that might undermine its worldview.

This is not a problem unique to Islam, it is a virtually universal aspect of the pairing of the religion and power. While it is certainly true that power is a corrupting influence on any individual, the pairing of religion and power is the most vile and despicably unholy union imaginable. Religion by its very nature tends to be backwards looking, distrustful of knowledge, distrustful of science, and wary of social betterment and material well-being because religion by its very nature is more concerned with the next life than with this one. It is this very focus on the NEXT life, that makes religion so uniquely ill suited to possession of any manner of power in THIS life.

The pairing of religion and power leads to misery and societal decay. The separation of religion and power, the differentiation between the secular and civic spheres and the spiritual realm leads to freedom, innovation and advancement, because when humans are freed from the pre-defined 'truths' of long dead civilizations, they are free to experiment and that experimentation and the dissemination of that knowledge leads inexorably to advancement. As we have seen countless times, not all experiments are successful. Some are in fact disastrous. Even advanced civilizations are littered with the remnants of failed social and technological experiments. In the aggregate, however, social, political, economic and technological experimentation is like evolution, those experiments that are beneficial and useful will be adopted and preserved. Those that are malignant and harmful will be cast aside to the judgment of history.

As but one present example of the unholy union of religion and power, look at the current state of the Catholic Church. It is clear from the evidence that the Catholic Church has actively sheltered, facilitated and enabled the rape and torture of countless children. This is a monstrous crime that leaves countless thousands of decimated lives in its wake. The damage inflicted on the innocent is incalculable. Indeed, so vile are the crimes of these men that they represent the lowest of the low in our prisons. These wretched, despicable men are those who would be spit upon and shunned even by murderers and thieves and arsonists. One would think that an organization dedicated to spiritual growth and purity would be the quickest to condemn these vile human beings. One would think such an organization would do anything and everything in its power to purge such vileness from its ranks and actively turn such men over to the civilian authorities for proper punishment for their crimes. Instead, the Church has done the exact opposite.

The entirety of the Catholic hierarchy, all the way up to the Pope, the Viccar of Christ, has actively worked to relocate these predators, moving them to different locations so they can victimize others. They have actively worked to thwart investigations and prevent punishment of their members, actively worked to demonize the victims of these heinous crimes, actively worked to confuse, inveigle and obfuscate the truth. There is a vileness and corruption that has rooted itself deeply in the Catholic Church. It stems from the gross imbalance of power between priests and their charges. The Catholic Church has inculcated a culture of power over the powerless and this hideous dynamic takes its true form in the culture of pederasty that the Church has actively concealed, facilitated and enabled for hundreds of years.

That an organization so dedicated to some form of alleged spiritual purity that it would excommunicate a priest for having consensual sex with an adult male or female or engaging in adultery, neither of which are even crimes, would ACTIVELY work to facilitate and conceal the most vile and vulgar of criminal offenses against defenseless, trusting children is among the most despicable transgressions imaginable. These men are the supposed arbiters of morality. They are the supposed gateways to the afterlife and THEY are engaged in wanton criminality far greater than any of those in their flock. Such imbalances of power cannot stand. They will not stand. It is wholly unsurprising that the Catholic Church is in such disarray, that it flails about like a wounded beast, because without question, the Catholic Church is dying. And its death is well deserved. After holding all of Europe hostage for over a thousand years with its selfish ignorance and willful indifference, dismemberment is the least the Catholic Church deserves.

Why I Don't Believe - Highly Religious Societies

Conventional wisdom would hold that highly religious societies would be the safest, most stable and most moral societies on Earth. These highly religious societies, afterall, place a premium on adherence to the divine will.  They profess fealty to the supposed author of morality and the spirit of justice and righteousness that allegedly flows from Him.  It would only be natural to assume that societies in which religious virtues are highly valued would be far safer, more stable and more ethically sound than those societies that eschew the divine path. Given the conventional wisdom that morality is a fruit borne of religion, it seems utterly unfathomable that a society which does not value religious virtue could possibly produce a society more fair, just, safe, equitable and moral than those which highly value religious inspiration.  But that is exactly what the data indicates. Indeed, when one begins to look closely at the countries with the highest rates of religiosity, several incredibly disturbing trends become manifestly clear.

Perhaps the most striking commonality among extremely religious societies is their almost uniformly abject poverty. Societies in which 90% or more of the population claim that religion is an important part of their daily lives, comprise the overwhelming majority of the world's poorest countries. When averaged, the citizenry in these extremely religious societies earn an average of approximately $9.89 per day.  In stark contrast citizens in the 30 least religious societies on Earth earn an average of approximately $70.03 per day.

There are, of course, some rather glaring exceptions to this rule. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are countries whose citizens enjoy both a high standard of living and place a premium on religious devotion. What is notable about Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE and what readily distinguishes them from their desperately poor brothers and sisters of the faith, is that Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE are all incredibly tiny city states with very small populations that happen to sit atop incredibly rich reserves of one of the most precious commodities on Earth – Oil. Saudi Arabia, while larger than Qatar and the UAE, similarly, sits atop the largest and most easily accessible ocean of oil on the planet. It should be noted, however, that prior to the development of the Saudi, Kuwaiti, Qatari and United Arab Emirates oilfields, those states were almost as desperately poor as their highly religious brethren.

Of the thirty poorest countries on the planet, only two possess populations in which less than 85% consider themselves 'highly religious.'  Of the thirty richest countries on the planet, only seven possess populations in which over 70% consider themselves 'highly religious,' and in total only 48% of citizens in those countries consider themselves 'highly religious.'

It is, of course almost impossible to say whether a state's extreme religiosity is a cause of or a reaction to its abject poverty. As any statistician will be quick to point out, correlation does not equal causation.  To be sure, many of the desperately poor and extremely religious states that persist in Africa were the same states that were plundered by Europeans during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of these states continue to suffer from the self-inflicted wounds of civil war.

The woes of the extremely religious states are not limited simply to abject poverty. Extremely religious states not only constitute the overwhelming majority of the world's poorest states, but also possess the lowest rates of literacy and the lowest levels of education. Again, it is impossible to say for sure whether extreme religiosity causes or is the result of exceedingly low education and literacy rates, however, it is notable that many religions, including the Catholic Church in many of the most literate countries in the modern world, actively opposed literacy for many years. Muslim states and clerics often did the same, discouraging literacy in order to maintain their effective monopoly on religious interpretation. Indeed, dogmatic adherence to religious principles is and always has been a powerful militating factor against widespread education and literacy since it enables lay people to determine for themselves what their sacred texts actually say, thereby lessening the power of the priesthood.

Extremely religious states, are not only overwhelmingly poor and undereducated, but also suffer from widespread disease, famine, hunger and perilously low life expectancy rates. Indeed, the average citizen in one of the top ten most extremely religious states, has a life expectancy of 64.45 years, less than 16.18 years that of the average life span in one of the top ten least religious states. This discrepancy, of course, is not merely a function of religiosity, but is also strongly linked to poverty and education since poor and underdeveloped countries tend to not only have little or no resources to tend to the sick and dying, but also lack the education and technology necessary to administer higher levels of medical care. Not only is there not enough money, there aren't enough doctors.

In 2006 and 2009, the United Nations conducted a comprehensive survey of the life expectancy, literacy rate, and income of the nations of the world. Its analysis of the data generated what was named the Human Development Index, a composite indicator of the relative level of human development as measured by the education, longevity and material well-being of a state's citizenry. This Human Development Index, when mapped against a society's religiosity reinforces the very same trends that have been set forth above, namely that as a societies' religiosity decreases, the education, life expectancy and material well-being of its citizenry increase. The trend is unmistakable and tracks almost exactly with the religiosity of an individual state. Indeed, with only a handful of exceptions, whose well-being can be readily attributable to their material prosperity as a result of their abundant natural resources, extremely religious states are the worst states on Earth in which to be born.

The exact opposite is true of the least religious states on the planet. Those lucky enough to be born in largely atheistic or agnostic societies, live longer, safer, more comfortable lives and enjoy a level of education and material well-being that is literally unheard of in all but a handful of highly religious societies.

Theists I have debated, argue vociferously that religiosity has nothing to do with the well being of these societies, that the irreligiosity of more wealthy, more literate, more healthy states is simply a byproduct of human arrogance, that since these societies are decadent and wealthy, they are unaware of or do not see the need for God. They criticize affluent societies for their excesses and perceived moral decay. One can hear variations on this theme in he diatribes against American consumerism, against television, against pornography, against sexual freedom, against reproductive freedom, against drug and alcohol use, against the 'coarsening' of culture and our supposed immorality. This theme is so prevalent in religious dogma that one need only watch the Trinity Broadcasting Network or listen to a sermon for a few minutes or listen to the Vatican lament the wretched moral decay of the modern world before one becomes well versed in the iniquity of our craven civilization. Indeed those who eagerly await Armageddon and the end of the world regularly cite those things listed above as signs of the coming apocalypse.

But is the modern world really so immoral? Is it so mired in lust and sin and gluttony and filth and crime? Are irreligious societies truly so morally bankrupt? Once again, the answer is clearly no. Guess which societies are the most generous and donate the most money and time to charitable organizations, most of which are concerned with bringing food, shelter, medicine and economic assistance to less advantaged societies. It is once again, the irreligious nations that donate most generously and most ardently to disadvantaged societies. Who are the recipients of this largesse? The most impoverished, and ironically, the most religious citizens on Earth, are the recipients of massive amounts of aid from those, who, one would think, would have no incentive whatsoever to give anything at all. Afterall, they don't know God. They don't have anyone watching them. They don't have anyone keeping score. They don't have anyone to provide them with morality or ethical guidance. Extremely irreligious societies are the most generous societies on Earth, willingly giving of their own material wealth, not out of a sense of divine duty or a desire to reap rewards in some afterlife, or even for any tangible geopolitical gain, but out of genuine human compassion. Why then do these countries behave so ethically even while they turn their back on the supposed author of morality? How can they possibly justify helping their disadvantaged brethren and giving unto the least of us when they don't have a parable telling them to do so or the threat of divine sanctions if they do not?

Even more distressing than the generosity of the irreligious, is their appalling overall adherence to the rule of law. One can only assume that God abhors crime. Regardless of the religion in question, all religions condemn theft, robbery, rape, murder, insurrection, rebellion, etc.. Violence, except when specifically sanctioned by God, is considered taboo under nearly all mainstream religions. There are of course, exceptions, and some religions treat women and other ethnicities as lesser creatures, but presumably despite the express words of these texts, I believe there is some agreement among even the most religious minded of my brothers and sisters, that rape, robbery, murder and naked aggression are immoral and are to be condemned. One would therefore assume that the most religious societies would be relatively free of such criminal and civil strife, that their adherence to the principles of morality set forth by the Almighty would guide them safely and morally through troubled times. One would conversely assume that those irreligious societies, those that knowingly shun the word of the divine and shun the path of morality He sets out would enter a moral morass and would thereby engender a society filled with violence, crime, rape, robbery, murder, aggression, hostility and horrors.  Such a society, one would assume, would be only one step above the Hobbesian war of all against all.

Again, this is simply not the case.

Far from being cesspools of criminality, murder, rape, robbery and despair, irreligious countries again, fare FAR better than their religious brethren. Indeed, irreligious societies are far safer, suffer far less violent crime, far less rape, far less murder, and far less civil strife and violence than extremely religious societies. Counter intuitive as it may seem to theists who believe morality is impossible without God, allegedly Godless societies place a far higher value on preventing and punishing criminality than extremely religious societies.  These Godless heathens place far more emphasis on engendering civic virtue in their citizenry and as a result, not only suffer far, FAR lower rates of violent crime, but also dramatically lower rates of property crime as well.

Look at the list of countries with the highest levels of religiosity and take note of the first images that come into your mind. Doubtless, poverty will be one of the first, but beyond that, one of the striking images that will pop into the head of anyone that watches television is that each of those countries are known as highly militant, highly volatile, highly violent. Images of men brandishing machine guns, RPGs, explosions, piracy. These societies are largely failed societies, societies where the glue that binds us together has broken down. While it is, as always, impossible to say whether religiosity is a cause of or reaction to such strife, the incredibly high correlation between these extremely religious societies and their abject poverty, lack of education and high levels of internal strife is troubling to anyone who posits the theory that morality is a gift from God – especially when the EXACT opposite holds true in the most irreligious societies.

Beyond even the internal strife and lack of domestic tranquility that plagues extremely religious states, one would assume that a Godly state, one whose people follow the divine path, one that adheres to divine morality, would engage its neighbors in peace, would not engage in acts of aggression or hostility. Unfortunately for the theist, reality rudely dispenses with this theory as well. Compare those extremely religious societies with those who have knowingly and expressly turned away from God and ask yourself which group of states makes war against its neighbor?

The answer should be obvious by this point.

By nearly every metric imaginable, extremely religious societies are far worse off than irreligious societies. Whether one is analyzing gross domestic product, education, literacy, life expectancy, political freedom, economic freedom, individual freedom, freedom from political terror, from hunger, starvation, freedom from disease, freedom from war, freedom from civil strife, the simple fact is that irreligious societies possess these qualities in FAR greater abundance than highly religious societies. Those societies where over 90% of the populace describe themselves as highly religious constitute over the overwhelming majority of the poorest, least educated, least healthy, least prosperous, least free, least safe and most aggressive societies in the world. In contrast the countries with the lowest levels of religious identification, constitute a large proportion of the most prosperous, highly educated, materially wealthy, free, safe and peaceful societies in the world.

Why? Why is it that those Godly societies that should be the most morally upright, the most righteous, the most resistant to the darkest impulses of man, seem almost uniformly to be those MOST susceptible to them?

Why is it that those Godless societies that should be the most susceptible to the siren song of violence and hatred seem almost uniformly to be those LEAST plagued by man's darkest impulses?

It is important to remember that correlation does not equal causation. Innumerable things are highly correlated by not caused by one another. The fact that the overwhelming majority of poor countries are also extremely religious is not the same as saying that the overwhelming majority of poor countries are poor because they are extremely religious.

What is fascinating, however, is that those countries that are now highly irreligious, were once highly religious. Indeed, several centuries ago, those highly irreligious societies were just as religious as the extremely religious societies that persist today. The rates of baptism and religious tithing in countries like France, England, Germany, rivaled or even exceeded those of the exceptionally religious countries in the modern era. What is particularly interesting, is that during the period of highest religiosity in Continental Europe, literacy, life expectancy, education, and gross domestic product were not only significantly lower than Continental Europe under the far FAR less religious Roman Empire, they were also significantly lower than the literacy, life expectancy, education and gross domestic products of societies in the Middle East.

This period in European history, in the popular vernacular, is referred to as the dark ages. This moniker connotes the fact that written history, which had been rich in the centuries prior and was again rich in the centuries after, was virtually non-existent during the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance. While society was not completely stagnant during this period, it is difficult to argue that society had not taken a significant step backwards in virtually every conceivable metric. This same period of time is known in the Islamic world as the Golden Age. During this period, the Islamic world was the center of mathematics, science, literature, art, philosophy, and engineering.

In Europe, religiosity was at its apex. The state and the church were essentially a single entity. Monarchs sought the blessing of the Church and would fight wars on its behalf to obtain it. In most European countries, the Church was the largest property owner in society. And while the Church lived at the height of its power, prestige and glory, the commoner, the peasant, the artisan, lived on the verge of starvation, in abject poverty, scratching out an incredibly difficult living in the midst of the ruins of an earlier, brighter age.

At the same time, thousands of miles away, the Islamic world was approaching its zenith. While Islam was incredibly potent and powerful, it was not inextricably intertwined with the state as it was in Europe. The Islamic world, in contrast to Europe, was remarkably cosmopolitan and secular. It indulged in philosophy in a way that Europe would not or could not for another three centuries.

At some point, however, the trajectories of these two civilizations began to shift. The Crusades would radically alter both the Middle East and Europe and cause the paths of these two great civilizations to essentially switch places. Given the fact that the Crusades spanned two centuries, it is incredibly difficult to ascribe a single motive to them, for there were many different and competing motivations for each subsequent wave. Obviously, interest in the plunder and spoil of war was an obvious motivating force, and just as it had motivated the Gothic tribes to invade the Roman Empire, so it obviously motivated the Crusader armies to plunder the richer cities of the Middle East. And just as the Roman Empire had been dumbfounded by the tenacity of their 'barbarian' invaders, the Islamic world was stunned by the ferocity of the Crusader armies. Forced to expend great amounts of resources defending itself, and culturally rocked by the seemingly endless Crusaders, the Islamic world began a long slow process of religious retrenchment.

While Europe, gradually moved towards a path of greater secularization, greater individual freedom, less interest in the supernatural and religious order that had governed it since the fall of Rome. The Middle East gradually shifted towards a path of greater integration of church and state, greater control of the individual, and heightened interest in following the dictates of scripture. In Europe, this shift led to radical new philosophies of governance, agriculture, art, science, mathematics, metallurgy, this surge of new ideas and philosophies is known as the renaissance, and dramatic innovations in all manner of fields began to revitalize European societies. In the Middle East, the reintegration of Church and State led to the demonization of philosophy and a gradual retrenchment and fear of modernity. The Middle East became increasingly isolated and introspective, gradually retreating inside its borders.

What is truly interesting is that low overall standards of living, of life expectancy, gross domestic product, literacy, art, technology, science, are not simply present in extremely religious societies, but actually follow the spread of extreme religiosity. What is even more interesting is that the reverse is also true, that as societies become more secular and less interested in religiosity, life expectancy, literacy, art, science, technology and gross domestic product tend to increase. This hints that the obviously correlative relationship between religiosity and societal stagnation and decay may represent something more than simple correlation, but may hint at causation.

As I have said ad nauseum, such a position is ultimately unknowable. There are no reliable measures of gross domestic product or literacy rates from any part of the first millennium.  There are few reliable measures of gross domestic product or literacy rates for much of the second millennium either.  The information is of course, a thousand years old and much of it is second hand, hearsay, self-serving and anecdotal. Nevertheless, that information dovetails exceptionally well with the pattern that persists into the modern world.

Regardless of whether the relationship between societal decay and stagnation and religiosity is merely correlative, or causal, the fact remains that the notion that some manner of religiosity and deity worship is a necessity for morality and moral behavior is simply not borne out by the facts. In reality, the MOST irreligious societies on Earth, those that expressly and knowingly state that they DO NOT follow any divine authority are the MOST civil, law abiding, peaceful, literate, well educated and giving societies on Earth. They PRACTICE what the divine preaches – to treat thy neighbor as thyself. The question that remains, is that if God doesn't motivate them, if the divine scorekeeper and the threat of eternal damnation and or eternal paradise doesn't motivate this morality, what does?