Not in its current form of non-discriminating individualism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J26gmUBoIQ

That video doesn't really speak to me. Seems like hollow pontificating.

Ask China.  They seem to be doing fine.

Whatever "contemporary atheism" is supposed to mean, you're actually asking whether CA minus atheism can sustain a civilisation. The atheism part is simply a lack of belief and is irrelevant. Of course it can't sustain anything, just like not believing in Santa can't sustain a civilisation.

Sustaining a civilization takes an economy, a social.compact, and willing participants.

I'm not sure belief or its absence really affect that sustainability.

(August 14, 2016 at 3:35 am)Thumpalumpacus Wrote: Sustaining a civilization takes an economy, a social.compact, and willing participants.

I'm not sure belief or its absence really affect that sustainability.

What he said.

Is contemporary not collecting stamps sufficient to sustain a stable society?

(August 14, 2016 at 2:19 am)Minimalist Wrote: 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?

(August 14, 2016 at 8:08 am)abaris Wrote:

(August 14, 2016 at 2:19 am)Minimalist Wrote: 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?

Actually, majority of Chinese population and worker probably thinks they are doing fine, in the sense that the majority of the really thorny problems which truly troubled their and their ancesters' sleep since time immemorial no longer troubled them.   When a society with long memories and a ingrained tendency to measure the present by the past experiences the lifting of the majority of citizens from almost medieval poverty, hunger, susceptibility to natural diseaster to modern standards of living within one generation, they tend see that as a great and positive good vastly more impressive on a practical scale than the rights, or airy talks of imaginary gods, with which already wealthy, but slow growing, societies amuse themselves.

(from a religiousite viewpoint)

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