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I read a bit of Christopher Hitchens and enjoyed it for a variety of reasons, not least of which was that he was very humorous. However, at a certain point, I could summarize his thesis as religion is idiotic, and consequently all religious people are morons. My conflict was that I had (and have) many friends who are exceedingly well educated, very intelligent by any measure, and also devout. His thesis failed observationally. I would suggest to you that calling people idiots for their beliefs is a poor way of convincing anyone of anything other than the fact that you're a prick. Just a thought. If you've any familiarity with history, you'll know folks have been confidently predicting the end of religion for centuries. Perhaps it will happen this time, but perhaps historical perspective is worthy of consideration. Final thought, what many people--including myself--find particularly annoying about the religious is the propensity of some to engage in unwanted aggressive proselytizing. Which, despite your apparent proud atheism, is exactly what you are doing

I can imagine that the most difficult thing about being an atheist vegan who Crossfits would be trying to decide what to post on my FaceBook wall THAT hour of the day.

Turns out that's exactly what Jesus predicted...funny how that works. Matthew 11:25-26 - At that time Jesus said, I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/03/17/sorry-but-atheism-is-religion.html Someone else wrote it for me.

Ok Fuk, I re-read your endless diatribe to make sure I comprehended it all and I came up with this summary: 1.)The internet is a giant crime preventer. 2.)If only all those idiots (sorry, they're not dumb, just everything they believe is) would simply come and worship at your un-church where you don't learn the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, Joe Smith, or Tom Cruise, but rather Stephen Hawkin, then the world would be full of happy and super smart people running (sorry, rolling) around enjoying no crime and world bliss. 3.)While we're at it, we should consider moving to Massachusetts where the crime rate is shockingly low. Forgive me if my summary didn't accurately portray your thoughts, for they are vast, and my simple mind couldn't begin to understand. I'll just go back to playing with rocks now.

So you look down upon those of faith, particularly those in the southern states......well, bless your heart.

I don't converse in talking points, let alone somebody else's. I'm only vaguely aware of what Reddit is and as far as I remember have never visited it. I never have, and never will, have a Facebook account. Do you? If so, you are a terrible, annoying, progressive, yoga loving vegan hipster who takes selfies while they crossfit...apparently. What was that you were saying about speaking in broad generalities? That's an incredibly tired argument that resonates only with people who have never experienced anything other than what they were brought up on. You should know that since you're not religious, but maybe you're just a very self aware exception to the rule that sees yourself as inherently negative. I know that he's recently found significant popularity so I hesitate to mention him lest I be branded a bandwagoner, but I defy you to watch an interview with Neil Degrasse Tyson and tell me he has an inherently negative perspective on life. You want a narrowly focused counter-argument to faith? Here: The foundational tale behind the Mormon faith suggests that indigenous North American peoples were a transplanted Jewish tribe that traveled here by boat, and therefore their descendants should have DNA in that lineage. Modern DNA testing has shown that not to be the case, and that indigenous American's originated exactly from where every other anthropological indicator says they did - Northern Asia. How does a Mormon rectify that in their head? Well, the church goes to great lengths to ensure they never know that, but if they stumble upon it, it usually ends up with "god changed the evidence to test your faith" or some such nonsense. You can't trust science in this one instance despite the fact that you trust it every time you use your cellphone or toss your child over your head and don't expect them to fly off into the vacuum of space. What can a logical argument possibly accomplish with a person willing to swill that down? Very little. So you change the environment by refusing to allow that stuff to go unabated and wait. Over time, as joe1234 mentioned, it becomes more acceptable to call that kind of thought out for what it is. And let me be clear. Mormonism is no more or less crazy than any other religion out there, this is just an easy example to demonstrate how futile it is to 'convert' individuals with directed logical argument. I'd prefer that the people in this world put in the position to decide when to launch enough nuclear warheads to destroy the Earth multiple times over not base their actions on this kind of thing, but that's just me. And yes, I am aware that sadly I'm in the minority.

Holy Fuk you're ill feelings toward religion are causing you to draw the conclusion you were hoping for from your statistics. Your google research could just as easily "prove" that hot weather, or the prevalence of Waffle Houses, or Nascar attendance also leads to a higher crime rate in the south. You should knock out a statistics class or two before your next research project.

I'm Shocked, Shocked I tell you that the DOD paid for that and the NFL took the money. The NFL that paragon of American virtue, and values. Excuse me , I have to sign off to kill my fighting dogs, pregnant girlfriends, punch my wife in the mouth, and perform a drive by shooting. But hey we took care of the under inflated footballs.

Well said. I'm happy to be called ignorant and delusional all day by my peers on the internet, since it doesn't happen anywhere else. Based on the fact that we're both on baseops.net, HLF, I'd wager that we have had similar experiences and success in this world. By your definition, all of us religious folk have been able to do it while devoting part of our time to a delusion, while you've been freed from that burden. I'm not sure whether that supports your claim...

A. That is why I love the Packers. You never see the "owner" with lots a camera time during the game. I think its in NFL law that TV must show Jerry Jones every game. B. NLF, take your black eye of taking millions from the gov't in the name of the troops and do something meaningful with it. Oh, please don't produce any cheerleader posters, we can't put those up in the office anymore, SARC and all. C. Brady is a cheater. I mean, really, how can he stand at the mike and say he has no idea how a ball feels. That is like a surgeon saying he doesn't know if his scalpel is good, or Tiger or "pick your pro golpher" saying he has no idea how the club feels, or the race car driver and how the car feels. You're supposed to be a pro at throwing the football, you better damn well know how you want your balls to feel. I know how I want my balls to feel! Beer is out and so am I

So now we're comparing city by city? His entire argument was to compare states to states. Massachusetts' violent crime rate is just over 400/100K people while Utah is just over 200/100K people (per FBI crime stats in 2013 listed below). So using his arguement style, statistically the non-religious of MA are 2x more than likely to commit a violence crime against me if I visit compared to the religious (mostly Mormon) folks in UT. https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/tables/4tabledatadecoverviewpdf/table_4_crime_in_the_united_states_by_region_geographic_division_and_state_2012-2013.xls And according Gallup, Utah has the most frequent church attendance: https://www.gallup.com/poll/181601/frequent-church-attendance-highest-utah-lowest-vermont.aspx As for our progressive friend, Mark1, I agree that all of these arguments are silly as I'm not aware that 'religious affiliation' is reported when someone commits a crime. However, racial status is, and it's overwhelmingly that a black or hispanic person is more likley to commit a crime than a white person is...and Asians are less likely than whites (all that Asian privilege I suppose). So yes, I'm no fan of the south in that it sucks for many reasons--petsonally I never want to live there again outside the AF, mainly due to the summer weather. But the main reason the south has a higher crime rate is because of the south's percentage of population that is made up of minorities and which demographics have higher percentages of being more likely to commit a crime. Religion has nothing to do with it. I have a feeling that North Dakota is more religious than California, yet which one has a higher crime rate? Then don't follow religion, problem solved. And if you don't like politicians making laws/policy based on religion (I know I don't), then vote Libertarian. Progressives also love to use religion to gain support for their progressives policies, more government welfare is one example. I can't stand statists, regardless of which ideology they support. Just like those on the right who want to ban gay marriage, prostitution, etc all because of 'religion'. I could care what religion a person does or does not subscribe to, just stay out of my life.

I call BS on the results....the Air Force just surveyed 500 drone pilots and 412 of them want to stay in the career field!! You obviously sampled the wrong people!! You need to do another survey until the numbers reflect what I want to hear!

Lots of correlations to pull from those statistics, which probably mean nothing. Just curious, what's the obesity level in MA vs LA? How about the number of African Americans? If you look that up, and then take those statistics literally, you'll find that minorities are fat, uneducated, and religious...and I think a few folks on here would have very strong opinions against that. There's nothing wrong in "clinging" to religion. You either believe something, or you don't. It worked out pretty well for the founding fathers.

You beat me to it . . . in my neck of the woods, we like to say, "correlation does not equal causation." - I'm sure oil has nothing to do with Norway's per capita success, Swiss success has nothing to do with being surrounded by a whole bunch of other countries (plus the U.S.) who by default provide for much of their country's defense (which frees resources for more economically beneficial outcomes), . . . I could go on - He also conflates "clinging to religion" with subscribing to Christianity; last I knew, Pakistan, Chad, Afghanistan, etc. weren't majority Christian countries, yet he somehow ties their lack of success to the percentage of those in economically unsuccessful southern American states that have relatively large populations of people who self-identify as Christian . . . but he ignores other structural and historical problems with those states HLF does an impressive job of attacking straw men. I suggest not feeding this troll. TT