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> Why? Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more... It would make more sense to fear people becoming less religious.

Are you just playing devils advocate (no pun intended)? Because there seems to be a rather large creationism, abstinence only sex education, and homophobia shaped blindspot in your view. There's plenty of ostesnibly legitimate stuff that religion does to damage society without needing to do anything outright illegal (but if you need illegal, then we need only look as far as systemic child abuse in the Catholic Church). I suspect that when the OP talks about being frightened, this is the kind of thing he's thinking of. Certainly this is some of the stuff that frightens me.

Of course this is not to say that religion is all bad. I know one couple, devout members of a Christian sect, lovely people and I have great respect for them. Why? Because they walk their talk and they don't feel a need to proselytize all within earshot, trying to force others to live by the same rules they do. I assume they must realise at some level that they have no right to make such a demand. I wish more religious people were like them.

I doubt that was the point the OP tried to make about being frightened by religious people. If someone can believe something without proof that was written down 2000 years ago then they can believe almost anything. That's scary to someone who isn't religious. It's just completely alien.

Not trying to step on any toes.

I agree that I probably shouldn't be projecting assumptions onto people I don't know.

For me at any rate, as a person who does not consider themselves religious in any conventional sense, I don't find the fact that someone believes something without proof to be frightening at all, in and of itself. The problem only comes when someone else uses those beliefs as the basis to impinge on my own life/liberties or the life/liberties of others who do not share their belief.

> Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more... It would make more sense to fear people becoming less religious.

Citation please.

"A 2001 review of studies on this topic found "The existing evidence surrounding the effect of religion on crime is varied, contested, and inconclusive, and currently no persuasive answer exists as to the empirical relationship between religion and crime." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_and_religion

The Nordic countries regularly feature at the top of the 'Best places to live' and 'most atheistic countries' lists. Correlation doesn't imply causation, but that should be enough to at least question your assertion.

> Citation please.

I can't make a proper citation from home but if you're really interested those guys http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Crime-Correlates-Lee-Ellis/dp... have over a 100 studies on religious people being less criminal, and a handful on religious regions seeing less crime.

Also, "varied and contested" can describe all evidence ever gathered in social sciences.

Doubling in with additional information relevant to discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4187478

the fact that many Americans are so religious is just utterly strange, and somewhat frightening Why?

Speaking as somebody from the UK I can guess one reason. In this country, and the other European countries I've visited, religious views are generally part of people's private, rather than public, lives. I no idea of the religious views of most of my friends. It's not part of the public persona of whether somebody is "good" or not. Their actions define that.

So in this context the only people who are public and outspoken in their religious views tend to be the extreme ends of the religious spectrum. Either in viewpoint (the gays are evil nutjobs) or because their religion encourages them to get out there and convert folk.

These tend to be folk that you don't want to hang out with - whether you are religious or not.

It one of those odd internal dials that I have to turn in my mental model when I visit the US - that people within the "normal" range of religious views will come up to you and talk religion.

Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more

References? By that logic more secular countries and areas would have higher crime/drug rates and lower volunteer rates... and the opposite seems to be true if anything. In the US anyway the percentage of atheists in prison is way lower than the percentage in the general population.. but maybe that meets atheists tend to be smarter criminals :-)

I'm writing this on a computer produced in China, running an operating systeem developed by a Finn, delivered to you via the world wide web which comes from CERN.

Yeah, and even the Finn moved to the States.

Unless you are one of the 1% or so of the world who uses Opera, your browser is produced by an American organization.

As is the most important and expensive chip inside your China-produced computer.

And CERN had very little to do with the WWW; more on that at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4172572

> a computer produced in China

Is it an American company that made it? Yeah it could have been produced in China because labor there is cheaper than in California. Next year it could be produced in Vietnam.

> running an operating systeem developed by a Finn

Last I checked he is an American citizen, isn't he? So +1 for America then? Would you agree? If you go by your logic, then nothing from America is from America, because most people could easily trace their ancestry to one of the ships that came America at some point.

> delivered to you via the world wide web which comes from CERN.

Ok, we can argue about the first two. This one is just silly.

> Is it an American company that made it?

No shortage of non-American computer and personal electronics manufacturers I can think of.

> Last I checked he is an American citizen, isn't he?

He wasn't for 95% of his life...

Why? Religious people commit less crime, get and stay married more, use less illegal drugs, donate and volunteer more... It would make more sense to fear people becoming less religious.

Source?

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/05/what-use-far-truth.htm...

For crime see my comment below (or above, remains to be seen).

Research in the other direction:

http://www.atheismresource.com/2010/atheist-dont-commit-as-m...

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf

http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/06/22/study-finds-people-wh...

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...

I'm from Europe and even I think this was so badly argued that I doubt your intellectual honesty here.

Afaik about american statistics, the poorer, lower class groups, are more religious -- e.g. "white trash", latinos and black ghetto cultures. So there is no overrepresentation of those, e.g. blacks, in jail...?

Honestly I think the bigger concern is a long erosion, not a collapse.

After WWII, the US had an economy so large we consumed half the oil that was consumed in the world. Our economy has grown since then but the rest of the world has too. We are down to half our percentage of energy use, and this is a general proxy for economic activity. So we are growing but developing nations are growing faster. Additionally we re incredibly dependent on oil to the extent that it would be a fair summary to say that the main job of the US armed forces is to protect international oil supply.

So the US isn't about to drastically collapse, but the role in the world is declining and will continue to decline. I think within my lifetime we will see the world shift from a unipolar model with the US as the sole superpower, to a world dominated by several major world powers.