I agree with joeyboots. Though religion is losing its footing in places like the US and Europe, some of the most populous countries (India, Nigeria, Brazil) are super religious, so due to increasing birthrates in those places, religion is nowhere near gone.
@Lucasc how could you possibly say it's sad NOT to see religion go? Even if you personally aren't religious, I challenge you to name a time in history when a society dominated by atheism didn't devolve into mass genocide. And before you cite the track record of organized religion, name a society where religion was widely practiced but NOT FORCED that was chaotic and/or destructive.
@MasterKenobi I'm assuming you're referencing the USSR, which preached agnosticism at the end of its days. However, Norway now has more people who don't believe in God than do, and is consistently ranked as one of the best nations in the world in all aspects (quality of living, life expectancy, etc.) Meanwhile, Protestantism was certainly not forced in Germany before the Nazi regime officially took power - instead, people were fueled by a de facto anti-Semitism. Now, I'm not saying religion is bad or agnosticism is good. I'm just saying you should probably do your research before making absurd comments on a JetPunk quiz.
i live here and i am not surprised. The cost of living here is very high, and the school system does nothing but pump out depression, not to mention the pycology system is terrible
@MungoJerry funny how people will make uninformed JetPunk comments to support their worldview... (seriously, I tried to find some actual data about the most depressed countries, and while China -- a famously agnostic country -- and India -- a famously religious country -- continued to pop up, Norway was nowhere to be found!)
@MasterKenobi The Czech Republic is a society that's been majority atheist for decades, and it's not practicing genocide.
This whole debate is kind of stupid, though. Atheism does not preach genocide by nature of it not preaching anything at all, and the genocides you speak about are much more a result of communist dictators happening to be atheists. Stalin didn't starve people because of his lack of belief in God, he starved people because he was a bloodthirsty tyrant who wanted to devastate the people of a region that was slightly resisting him. *Anti-theism* does preach genocide, but that's as different from atheism, as not voting is from bombing voting booths.
@MasterKenobi Your second question is also kind of dumb. To my knowledge there have not been many societies were religion is widely practiced but not forced, because for a large part of human history religion has been forced by the vast majority of complex societies, particularly because controlling religion is a fairly easy path to controlling the populace.
Still, there have been a good few majority religious societies that have seen terrors. As benzeller brought up, Nazi Germany is a pretty glaring one. One that comes to my mind is the early Ottoman Empire, which didn't force religion (at least not yet), but continuously raided the Balkans to kidnap boys for conscription. The Warring States of Chinese history was pretty brutal, and at the very least the Legalist states (including the Qin Dynasty) refused to connect power to religion while still allowing the people to practice ritual. Then there's the Rwandan Genocide, certainly not alone in civil wars without religious disputes…
@MasterKenobi At the same time though, a lot of these atrocities I've brought up in religious societies have nothing to do with religion, but that's kind of my point.
Even the most loyal of believers seriously struggle to fully adopt the practices and morals they hold holy, and there are many more people who don't know their religion's teachings, or are only somewhat interested in following them, despite still being believers.
To dilute the peaces and conflicts of human history down to religious vs. atheist gives people way too much credit by thinking that they will follow the teachings they believe, against their own interests or habits or impulses, and in societies woven by countless threads of which religion is only a few.
I myself don't care whether religion grows or collapses, so long as it doesn't come with violence… But to characterize atheists as inherently violent and religious folks as naturally peaceful is a misrepresentation of both, and moreover of people as a whole.
When you say "I don't know anyone who ....", think about it for a minute. You're really saying something about yourself. People who DO go to church could say the exact opposite.
So? You think I think that everybody's experience of the world and in the world is exactly the same as mine? Or that I can not make an objective observation?
Yeah- I immediately started with the Southern states because I knew I would hit a lot of them. Once I was 2/3 of the way through, I realized I hadn't gotten the number one answer yet and then remembered it wasn't anywhere close to the other states.
I was clueless to what the number one answer was. I started getting the southern states right away due to a lucky guess, and had no idea what the top dog state was
Texas and Florida do have distinct cultures - broadly speaking. But leave the cities in both states, and you're entering Deep South territory that flies the Stars and Bars proudly and where many believe that another secession might be necessary again one day to protect culture and heritage. Kind of like rolling back the clock a few decades.
Back 40+ years ago Atlantic Magazine ran a cover article called "The Seven States of Texas" or something like that, making the point that there were a number of distinct cultures (social, political, religious, cultural, etc.,) that co-existed but did not mix in Texas. And, if I remember correctly, that prompted a number of letters from readers from Texas who complained that this article unfairly stereotyped Texans. I guess the lesson to take from that is that some Texans look at any outside commentary as biased. And maybe they're right.
Texas from around I-35 east is the South, or basically as Southern as it gets. It's not the same South as the Carolinas or Tennessee, but neither is Arkansas or Louisiana, and no one would doubt their Southern credentials. Dallas and Houston, and even Austin, resemble other big Southern cities like Atlanta or Charlotte more than anywhere else (Austin is a bit different but is most like an overgrown New Orleans, Asheville, Nashville, or Athens/other college town). Once you get further west than I-35 though, things start to get much more Western/Southwestern than the eastern chunk of Texas.
I think the sheer population size of Texas makes it difficult for the state to qualify. Utah's population is about 3 million, so it ranks first because around 1.5 Utahans to church. Texas, on the other hand, has around 27 million people, so it's a lot harder to get to that 51% (or 40% to make the list). There are a lot of big cities in Texas, where people are less likely to go to church.
Many Americans are passively religious. They don't go to church or read the Bible but they'll tell you they're christian. In the South especially you are assumed to be christian by default.
51% is quite a lot if you really think about it. That means you can find half the state of Utah in church any given Sunday. That doesn't even include the people who go to church on Christmas and Easter.
51% seemed low to me for Utah, but on reflection it's about right. Also, Mormons wouldn't really go to church for just Easter and Christmas (in fact Christmas church services don't exist at all)--they'd either go weekly or not at all.
Hahaha I actually made this quiz a month ago today. If you go to the list of the rest of my quizzes, it'll say "created 11-18." I got the email that it would be featured two days ago, and that's when I got the picture and the format changed a bit (you can see what it used to look like on my other quiz about the lowest percent church attendance). This is my first feature though and I'm really excited!
Bad news how? Details please. Q5 believes that we should be considered "lucky" since the numbers are going down. I would content the opposite, that many of our problems in the US are due to people being too into themselves and not looking for ways to humble yourself and serve others. Guilty here, but working on it.
Is there a correlation between this and US News best state rankings -
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings (ranks health care, education, economy amongst other things)? 5 out of 10 are at the bottom of the table and with the notable exception of Utah (#7), the rest are all ranked below 25?
Correlation - yeah, probably. Causation - probably not. I doubt the fact that many attend church causes the states to be worse. It could be the high percentage of rural population, which causes worse health care, education, and economy, as well as promotes a tight-knit oftentimes religious community in those small towns
Not surprised by any of the states, but surprised by the percentages. The depiction of these states (especially ones like Arkansas and Mississippi, which lack major cities) is that everyone is a Bible thumper. Would have expected the number to be comfortably over 60% based on perception. Interesting.
According to the Washington Post, the rankings are 50. Hawaii, 49. Nevada, 48. Mississippi, 47. Alabama, 46. Florida, 45. South Carolina, 44. West Virginia, 43. Louisiana, 42. North Carolina, 41. Arizona, 40. New Mexico. Only half of the states match, whereas the number one state, Utah, is 24th in the nation on IQ, making it statistically average.
Well quizmaster23, you could also argue that people in those states have had less exposure to left-wing indoctrination by academia. Whether you are religious or not, or have attended a higher learning institution has no bearing on IQ. In fact, some of the smartest people out there who have sought to disprove Christianity and the existence of God, end up becoming some of the most fierce apologists for Christianity. Either way, your comment here does nothing but to insult others, and shows a lack of tolerance on your part.
This whole debate is kind of stupid, though. Atheism does not preach genocide by nature of it not preaching anything at all, and the genocides you speak about are much more a result of communist dictators happening to be atheists. Stalin didn't starve people because of his lack of belief in God, he starved people because he was a bloodthirsty tyrant who wanted to devastate the people of a region that was slightly resisting him. *Anti-theism* does preach genocide, but that's as different from atheism, as not voting is from bombing voting booths.
Still, there have been a good few majority religious societies that have seen terrors. As benzeller brought up, Nazi Germany is a pretty glaring one. One that comes to my mind is the early Ottoman Empire, which didn't force religion (at least not yet), but continuously raided the Balkans to kidnap boys for conscription. The Warring States of Chinese history was pretty brutal, and at the very least the Legalist states (including the Qin Dynasty) refused to connect power to religion while still allowing the people to practice ritual. Then there's the Rwandan Genocide, certainly not alone in civil wars without religious disputes…
Even the most loyal of believers seriously struggle to fully adopt the practices and morals they hold holy, and there are many more people who don't know their religion's teachings, or are only somewhat interested in following them, despite still being believers.
To dilute the peaces and conflicts of human history down to religious vs. atheist gives people way too much credit by thinking that they will follow the teachings they believe, against their own interests or habits or impulses, and in societies woven by countless threads of which religion is only a few.
I myself don't care whether religion grows or collapses, so long as it doesn't come with violence… But to characterize atheists as inherently violent and religious folks as naturally peaceful is a misrepresentation of both, and moreover of people as a whole.
"Of course I left out the Panhandle, and a lot of people do... Carthage, this is where the South begins."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JREkqCvLzSo
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings (ranks health care, education, economy amongst other things)? 5 out of 10 are at the bottom of the table and with the notable exception of Utah (#7), the rest are all ranked below 25?