(May 24, 2015 at 11:38 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote: The world is not the exclusively the first world. I'm pretty sure most countries in Latin America and all the countries in the middle east are more religious than Ireland. Equally sure am I that communist countries are less religious than Sweden.
No, they're not - in my experience at least. Communism never actually eliminated religion - atheism might have been the official party line, but impoverished masses flocked to churches anyway. It's not like hypocrisy, or cognitive dissonance ever bothered religious folk much.
Poland, for example - where I grew up - is at least as religious as Ireland - even though polish catholics are becoming much less conservative nowadays (largely because after communism fell, churches lost most of its romantic, anti-establishment image), still at least 95% of the population declare themselves religious.
Let me make this prediction - Polacks will not legalize gay marriage for a looong time to come. And when they do - there's going to be a lot of kicking and screaming.
Most people from surrounding (ex)communist countries I've met declared themselves religious as well. Even in Russia (or USSR before) Orthodox church has always been present and influential. Eastern Europe is Europe's "Bible Belt" and I doubt this will change anytime soon.
"The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one." - George Bernard Shaw
