The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion | Hacker News Reader

The World's Newest Major Religion: No Religion

news.nationalgeographic.com

51 pointswslh28 comments

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..."

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...

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

2: https://xkcd.com/977/

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

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.

It was confusing to me too. Maybe they should list the reason they used that map in the caption

I wanted to comment on that as well. Very cool to see. I really hope the Fuller projection goes mainstream.

"Fuller argued that in the universe there is no "up" and "down", or "north" and "south": only "in" and "out". Gravitational forces of the stars and planets created "in", meaning "towards the gravitational center", and "out", meaning "away from the gravitational center". He attributed the north-up-superior/south-down-inferior presentation of most other world maps to cultural bias.

"Fuller intended the map to be unfolded in different ways to emphasize different aspects of the world. Peeling the triangular faces of the icosahedron apart in one way results in an icosahedral net that shows an almost contiguous land mass comprising all of Earth's continents – not groups of continents divided by oceans. Peeling the solid apart in a different way presents a view of the world dominated by connected oceans surrounded by land.

"Showing the continents as "one island earth" also helped Fuller explain, in his book Critical Path, the journeys of early seafaring people, who were in effect using prevailing winds to circumnavigate this world island."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_map

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.

Those people are just annoying. The most extreme religious people can be actively harmful to society/their children.

That's not a property exclusive to the religious.

It is definitely a property exclusive to religion. Religion has immense power to instill core beliefs in a person. And core beliefs are the absolute center of our thinking.

Seems like this is a core belief of yours...

The same can be sad for the most extreme atheist people -- communists for example were not particularly religious, nor were the Nazis.

I always thought the Nazis were actually strongly Christian. That might not be your best example.

Edit: it appears I am partially right. After reading a few pages of the apparently thousands of pages on the subject I've concluded religion and the Nazis is a very nuanced and complicated topic and one which I am not qualified to speak to.

>I always thought the Nazis were actually strongly Christian. That might not be your best example.

They never had any strong affiliation with any religion.

Also, not sure about that "partially right" thing. The situation was complex, indeed, but complex in general against christianity, not in favor of it.

Wikipedia's 10-mile high summary is pretty accurate:

There was some diversity of personal views among the Nazi leadership as to the future of religion in Germany. Anti-Church radicals included Hitler's Personal Secretary Martin Bormann, Minister for Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Neo-Pagan Nazi Philosopher Alfred Rosenberg, and Neo-Pagan Occultist Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Some Nazis, such as Hans Kerrl, who served as Hitler's Minister for Church Affairs, believed Christianity could be Nazified into "Positive Christianity", by renouncing its Jewish origins, the Old Testament and Apostle's Creed, and holding Hitler as a new "Messiah".

Nazism wanted to transform the subjective consciousness of the German people—their attitudes, values and mentalities—into a single-minded, obedient "national community". The Nazis believed they would therefore have to replace class, religious and regional allegiances.[4] Under the Gleichschaltung process, Hitler attempted to create a unified Protestant Reich Church from Germany's 28 existing Protestant churches. The plan failed, and was resisted by the Confessing Church. Persecution of the Catholic Church in Germany followed the Nazi takeover. Hitler moved quickly to eliminate Political Catholicism. Amid harassment of the Church, the Reich concordat treaty with the Vatican was signed in 1933, and promised to respect Church autonomy. Hitler routinely disregarded the Concordat, closing all Catholic institutions whose functions were not strictly religious. Clergy, nuns, and lay leaders were targeted, with thousands of arrests over the ensuing years. The Church accused the regime of "fundamental hostility to Christ and his Church". Smaller religious minorities such as the Jehovah's Witnesses and Bahá'í Faith were banned in Germany, while the eradication of Judaism by the genocide of its adherents was attempted. The Salvation Army, Christian Saints and Seventh Day Adventist Church all disappeared from Germany, while astrologers, healers and fortune tellers were banned. The small pagan "German Faith Movement", which worshipped the sun and seasons, supported the Nazis.[5] Many historians believed that Hitler and the Nazis intended to eradicate Christianity in Germany after winning victory in the war.

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.

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.

What do you mean by "cult of love"?

In light of the rise of political christianity, the rise of militant atheism is both expected and culturally justified.

I don't think so. I prefer people simply not identify. I don't prefer associating with other atheists just because they are other atheists. I rather loathe proselytizing evangelizing atheists they irk me as much as the young adults in white shirts black slacks and black ties.

Now, I welcome an ebb in Christianity and Islam. As well as the expansion of atheism, I just prefer soft atheism over the more Religious-like atheism. It's antithetical to being an atheist.

I consider my protests and vocal opposition to christianity being enforced on my family from my family, and my vocal opposition to its ongoing role in politics as a defensive tactic.

I am often labeled as being on the offensive, and it'd be nice to talk about this line more (when is it offense, when is it defense).

I think they are mainly found in areas where being atheist is still "edgy". With the decline of organised religion, those people will probably go away on their own.

Although I sympathies with your first point this claim "Religion is not the source of all evil" really dims down the evil.

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.

That is an atheist coordinate reference system!

Cheers to that..

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