
The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion - wslh
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160422-atheism-agnostic-secular-nones-rising-religion/
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bostik
About time.

Because religion often enjoys legal protection, in my eyes proclaiming to be
religious does not differ much from stating: "I am legally delusional!"

In the same vein, one can hope that eventually nations also realise that
churches do not deserve tax exemptions. They are businesses, and to be more
precise, they are in the _protection racket business_.[0] The logical
difference to mafia is miniscule.[1]

0: "Say, that's a nice soul. Would be awful if something happened to it..."

1: "Say, a nice shop you have here. Would be awful if something happened to
it..."

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coldtea
That's a rather naive, if popular, view of religion.

Probably made even more popular by the fact that in the US any kind of fringe
BS can pass as a religion, from Scientology to what have you.

And by fringe I don't mean less true in the "god exists" way (well, he doesn't
exist, at least not in any religious guise), but less historically established
and having served an important societal role.

Because religions were an early cultural framework for formulation of a code
of ethics, building ideas about society, life, etc. That we today deem some of
those ideas bad doesn't mean they were bad when they formed (or even now), or
that they didn't play an important (positive I mean) role in society's
development.

(The inverse idea is usually based on two naive beliefs: religious people were
just dupes manipulated by priests, and religion is useless since its myths
don't correspond to objective truth).

Heck, there are even evolutionary studies on the benefit of religion to human
development...

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Amorymeltzer
For those curious, they're using a Dymaxion map, also known as the Fuller
projection[1]. It's named for Buckminster Fuller, and the goal is to reduce
skew of shape and size. Notice, for example, the sizes of Greenland and Africa
as compared to their heavily-skewed sizes on the Mercator projection.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map)

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slazaro
I assume they think this is a good choice, but I disagree. It's just
confusing. Why add such friction to data display?

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Amorymeltzer
It took me a moment or two as well, but you won't get change without making
change. The Mercator was historically good for navigation, but is a poor
representation of the globe. You need only look at their last figure, with the
more granular data, to see the level and ease of detail would be lost in
Africa and Eurasia.

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TazeTSchnitzel
This is, arguably, good news.

Though I lament the rise of the people who centre their identity around their
lack of religion and go on the offensive against believers. They're not much
better than the religious. Religion is not the source of all evil.

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dominotw
Its a little hypocritical to hate religion when you yourself are part of many
religious cults. religion of family, cult of love, religion of shopping, cult
of money and success, religion of beauty and youth.

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TazeTSchnitzel
These are strange choices of 'religion' but I think I agree with your comment
in spirit. It's saddening to see people who claim to be skeptics, but whose
skepticism apparently only extends to organised religion, and not to other
harmful widely-held beliefs about the world.

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throwaway2016a
Anecdotally, these stats are probably understated. For example, when asked I
answer Catholic. In reality I am a "none" but we would skew the numbers for
Catholic in this study because I want my child to grow up knowing her
grandparents and they would disown me if I came out as Atheist. I imagine a
lot of people are in the same boat as me.

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slantaclaus
That is an atheist coordinate reference system!

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taksintikk
Cheers to that..

