Is contemporary atheism sufficient to sustain a civilisation?

[downbeatplumb]

Ask China.  They seem to be doing fine.

Ask the chinese workers and the majority of the population. Are they doing fine? Is that a model to strive for?

IS it a civilisation and is it working? Most of human history has been unfair especially in theocracies so it is doing at least as good as those.

[Whateverist]

(from a religiousite viewpoint)

how is believing in a false religion less sustaining than believing in The One True Faith ??

Good point, though I always get those two mixed up anyway.

[purplepurpose]

Its a big tendency nowadays to do not fix your own sad life and try to think about how to fix global problems.

[abaris]

Most of human history has been unfair especially in theocracies so it is doing at least as good as those.

Sorry, but that's a shit argument and often heard before. Others did it too, so it's OK then. It's not doing good for the population at large and that's the only thing I take offence with. Presenting it as an example of a working society. In fact, China represents the worst of both worlds. Unchained capitalism and an oppressive political system.

[purplepurpose]

Most of human history has been unfair especially in theocracies so it is doing at least as good as those.

Sorry, but that's a shit argument and often heard before. Others did it too, so it's OK then. It's not doing good for the population at large and that's the only thing I take offence with. Presenting it as an example of a working society. In fact, China represents the worst of both worlds. Unchained capitalism and an oppressive political system.

In a documentary chinese guy got 2 years in work or slave camp, just because he went on a public protest because some goverment official illegally kicked him out of his house to build there luxuary apartaments for himself.

[Anomalocaris]

Most of human history has been unfair especially in theocracies so it is doing at least as good as those.

Sorry, but that's a shit argument and often heard before. Others did it too, so it's OK then. It's not doing good for the population at large and that's the only thing I take offence with. Presenting it as an example of a working society. In fact, China represents the worst of both worlds. Unchained capitalism and an oppressive political system.

In China, which has living memory of famine and mideval standard of living, optimality is indicated by the speed of improvement to economic security and the general standard of living, not the asthetics of political and capitalist systems.   So what they have would hardly seem like an unsatisfactory world, and certainly a far better world than one in which well tamed capitalism is further embellished by free elections held between famines, and colossal and unrelieved natural disasters against a background of general poverty.

It is the fact that western political opinion maker finds it inconvenient to register the fact that the first criteria of any successful system to the developing world is the ability to deliver rapid improvements to standard of living, and not to please western political and economic asthetics sensibilities, that made the western world so tone deaf and unable to anticipate why what it advocates so often fail elsewhere.

[abaris]

Oh, good. They're doing better than North Korea. Sign me up then.

[abaris]

In a documentary chinese guy got 2 years in work or slave camp, just because he went on a public protest because some goverment official illegally kicked him out of his house to build there luxuary apartaments for himself.

Exactly, and that's what I miss in all this China this and China that hyperbole. The abject poverty of the largest part of the populations. Cold comfort that they don't starve such as during Mao's cultural revolution. They still have next to no rights and that's but one of the reasons why our corporations treat China like the promised land.

[account_inactive]

Sorry, but that's a shit argument and often heard before. Others did it too, so it's OK then. It's not doing good for the population at large and that's the only thing I take offence with. Presenting it as an example of a working society. In fact, China represents the worst of both worlds. Unchained capitalism and an oppressive political system.

In a documentary chinese guy got 2 years in work or slave camp, just because he went on a public protest because some goverment official illegally kicked him out of his house to build there luxuary apartaments for himself.

Care to provide the documentary or an article?

[Simon Moon]

Is contemporary atheism sufficient to sustain a civilisation?

The OP is a malformed question.

Atheism is nothing more than not believing theistic claims.

Atheism is NOT a worldview. It has no doctrine, or anything else that could possibly even be a method for "sustaining a civilisation".

Asking if atheism (modern or otherwise) is sufficient to sustain a civilisation, is really no different than asking if not believing in ghosts, or aliens visiting earth is sufficient to sustain a civilisation.