Then I began comparing the least religious U.S. states with the most religious states. The result of this ongoing analysis has been the overall finding that godless people and godless societies fare better on almost every sociological measure than religious people or religious societies.

From a speech by Phil Zuckerman titled “The Top Ten Things About Being Godless” at the 32nd annual convention of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

What else stuck out? This quote:

It’s also the more religious states that tend to have higher infant mortality rates and teen pregnancy rates. The nation’s Bible Belt is also its STD Belt. The Bible Belt states (those with the highest percentage who have strong faith in God and attend church most frequently) have the lowest rates of adults with a college education.

The speech was intended to be lighthearted and humorous which explains why Zuckerman’s reasoning seems like a stretch at times. But his findings are definitely interesting and good ammunition for the next time you need to take down a theist blowhard.

(Via Friendly Atheist)

The pairing of “Islam” and “fascism” has no parallel in characterizations of extremisms tied to other religions, although the defining movements of fascism were linked to Catholicism – indirectly under Benito Mussolini in Italy, explicitly under Francisco Franco in Spain. Protestant and Catholic terrorists in Northern Ireland, both deserving the label “fascist,” never had their religions prefixed to that word. Nor have Hindu extremists in India, nor Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka.

No really: watch the clip. Or read the quote:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And thats what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

And what scares me even more is that the majority of the Christians in this country wouldn’t see one thing wrong with doing so. The same folks who cower under their blankets fearing ‘Islamofacism’ — a buzzword that denies our effed-up neo-colonial policies as a contributing factor to the current rage against us — are completely okay with making the rest of us conform to the Jesus-loving variant* that I’ll call Christiofacism.

As an atheist with Buddhist leanings who would be one of the first victims of a Christian Society**, this scares me.

*Mind you, Jesus-loving is not the problem. The problem is when we argue that Christianity should be the single, universal moral basis for making laws.

**No, we are not currently a Christian Society or a Christian Nation. We are a society and a state with a predominantly Christian population. There is a difference. Our founders were clear about the role the state in religion and religion in the state, though they were clear that their religion guided their politics.