Atheists have lowest divorce rate. Evangelical Christians have highest divorce rates.

[Ben Kenobi]

2) Divorce rates decline with the duration of a marriage, but much of that is explained by the effect of other, unobserved differences among couples, such as religious beliefs, which tend to preserve the good matches;

Thanks rah.

The study still shows that those who cohabit are far more likely to divorce.

[Kitschum]

As soon as atheism is brought up discussion invariably turns to Richard Dawkins and how he's apparently such an *******. I've never read anything by Dawkins and I don't see why I ahve to. Atheism didn't start with him, now did it? This is why it's impossible to talk about atheism on the internet. And now I'm doing it too.

[Blaupanzer]

The marraige rate among atheists will likely take a HUGE jump if gay marraige is ever legalized. But then Ben has moved from a man sensitive to the environment around him to a man fixed on a doctrine of the past. Ah well.

[Lorizael]

As soon as atheism is brought up discussion invariably turns to Richard Dawkins and how he's apparently such an *******. I've never read anything by Dawkins and I don't see why I ahve to. Atheism didn't start with him, now did it? This is why it's impossible to talk about atheism on the internet. And now I'm doing it too.

****, he's not even an atheist. He's a Bright. Atheists are nobody. Atheists are a random assortment of people who happen to have the one commonality that they possess no belief in God. Dawkins, on the other hand, is a blowhard who's trying to build a community out of people that don't necessarily have anything else in common. And I don't like that.

[rah]

Thanks rah.

The study still shows that those who cohabit are far more likely to divorce.

I never say otherwise. My point was that the fact that they cohabited may not be the major cause of this.

"But it's not cohabitation that causes divorce," Stern emphasizes. "Rather, the people who cohabit are simply different from those who marry right away; their matches overall tend not to be as good. In fact, our study suggests that if there were less of a stigma associated with cohabitation and more people lived together before marriage, the divorce rate would fall because everyone would learn more about their partners' annoying habits before tying the knot."

I was just offering other possibilities.

[KrazyHorse]

The marraige rate among atheists will likely take a HUGE jump if gay marraige is ever legalized.

No.

[Blaupanzer]

Just "No?"

[Theben]

That's how he rolls sometimes.

[KrazyHorse]

IIRC the percentage of atheists in Canada is ~15% (say, about 5 million people)

In the ~5 years since same-sex marriage legalization there have been ~12000 same-sex marriages performed in Canada, with a significant number going to foreign couples (mainly American) who travel to Canada for the purpose of getting legally married. So, say that ~10000 Canadian gay marriages have been performed

Divide by 5 years, get 2000 gay Canadian marriages per year. Even if all of them were atheists (which they almost certainly are not) that would add 0.4 marriages per 1000 people per annum to the atheist marriage rate, while overall marriage rates tend to be ~5 marriages per 1000 people per annum.

Note that this estimate is an extreme overestimate as:

1) Gay people are not all atheists; in fact, most are not atheists
2) The rate of gay marriages is likely (?) to go down over time, as legalization allowed gay couples who had been waiting to get married to sign up in the first few months or years

[KrazyHorse]

That's how he rolls sometimes.

Yes.

[Kitschum]

****, he's not even an atheist. He's a Bright. Atheists are nobody. Atheists are a random assortment of people who happen to have the one commonality that they possess no belief in God. Dawkins, on the other hand, is a blowhard who's trying to build a community out of people that don't necessarily have anything else in common. And I don't like that.

Like I said I have very little idea of what the Dawkster actually is or is not, but I think we have to accept "atheism" as an umbrella term for anyone not believing in (a) god, even though some sectarians insist on their own definitions, such as the spineless "agnosticists".

Perhaps Dawkins is like the Greenpeace PETA dirty, beardy, smelly, polyamorous save-the-whales meat-is-murder, did I mention smelly? smug ******* **** is to the greens. I don't know. Whatever it is, wouldn't it be better just to ignore him and ostracize him? People like him are attention whores in the worst posssible sense (they aren't attractive women who would **** anyone).

[Traianvs]

****, he's not even an atheist. He's a Bright. Atheists are nobody. Atheists are a random assortment of people who happen to have the one commonality that they possess no belief in God. Dawkins, on the other hand, is a blowhard who's trying to build a community out of people that don't necessarily have anything else in common. And I don't like that.

You might live in an environment where being atheist is not something to be ostracized for, but many others (notably in certain parts of the US or islamic areas) don't have that luxury. In that sense such a 'community' is not particularly a bad thing.

That said these aspects of his writings aren't the main elements in his atheist view. His arguments are usually quite solid, contrary to many self-proclaimed atheists. His contention is that there's a number of atheists who aren't really atheist at all.

Oh and if atheist have the one commonality that they possess no belief in God, the same applies to people adhering to a religion. In fact they too differ a great deal just like atheists, but we still call them catholics or muslims or hindus. What gives? It's merely a denomination.

I don't really understand where your problem lies exactly... He's got a big mouth yeah, but then again he's just proclaiming his view without being politically correct in the face of religious sensitivies. He accepts anyones beliefs, but doesn't accept dogmatic arguments, for which I applaud him tbh.

[Alinestra Covelia]

That's how he rolls sometimes.

This.

[MOBIUS]

IIRC the percentage of atheists in Canada is ~15% (say, about 5 million people)

Still as few as that, geez that's far more backwards than I thought...

[asleepathewheel]

You might live in an environment where being atheist is not something to be ostracized for, but many others (notably in certain parts of the US or islamic areas) don't have that luxury. In that sense such a 'community' is not particularly a bad thing.

What areas in the US would an atheist be ostracized in, in 2009?

Unless you're living in a very small town (and are therefore, irrelevant), no one gives a rip about your church attendance or lack thereof. At least that's my experience having lived in both small towns and large cities in the midwest and south. I live in Houston now, half a mile from Joel Osteen's church (surreal place) and no one that I've ever talked to has mentioned church to me or preached to me. The notion that atheists are ostracized in the US is just laughable, unless, I guess if you consider "in god we trust" to be persecution, in which case you probably deserve to be ostracized as a loon.