Why atheism will replace religion

[hiyymer]

hotbed of tolerance

I heard Steven Pinker making the argument once that human kind is becoming less violent, because there was a study done that showed that the crime rate in Europe in the middle ages was much higher than it is today. The crime rate estimated was about the level of some backwater cesspool of a country today. The problem is that Europe WAS a backwater cesspool at that time. We know that Islam was the ascendant culture with advanced medical and military technology, a very active and open intellectual life, and very stable laws and public administration. I wonder what the crime rate was in Baghdad at the time. If you look at what is going on in the parts of the United States which have been under economic stress for the last 20 years, you can only imagine where we are headed. At some level that's why religious fundamentalism freaks us out. It is the foreboding of loss of our privileged ascendancy. It's not beliefs. It's economics.