Reply #91: Atheism isn't a vaccine.

[Inland]

The concept that an atheist is less or more susceptible to unjustified belief is pure speculation, given the huge universe of things that one CAN believe, ideologically.

In the context of the marxist countries discussed, there's more than ample proof that atheism certainly didn't prevent the building of a huge edifice of bullshit that reached into every single aspect of their lives to ill effect. Indeed, being FOR science, being FOR rationality, isn't the same as being rational or scientific.

The marxist nations managed to reach a pinnacle based on expropriation and forced labor and quickly fell behind, providing neither material comfort nor justice, and eventually self destructing, evolving, or becoming hells. At the same moment in history, those crazy religious countries were becoming wealthy, developing things like universal suffrage and free market economies--things that actually work because they ARE based in rationality and science, and yes, a better intuitive sense of what people are actually like, what's fair, what's right, and how societies should be ordered.

As Engels said, the test of the pudding is in the eating. Atheism is clearly not a vaccine, because religion is not the disease. That's all that I'm saying and the historical record shows. Something else has got to go on. I suggest liberal democracy, but that's me.