Is contemporary atheism sufficient to sustain a civilisation?

[abaris]

The cold comfort is when you have rights, but no heat in the winter.   What they have is actually rather warm comfort, just a smaller, and less formal, set of rights.    

Poverty emiserates far more than lack of assurance of political rights.

Agreed, and when you're both poor and without rights, what's that then? That's what the majority of China is all about. Outside of the shiny cities and the global press getting one orgasm after the other over the golden opportunities there. Apart from the fact that even in the cities workers are expolited without having any workplace regulations to speak of. Human trash, expendable, to be replaced with fresh meat when the old one reached it's sell by date.