Quoted: All it takes is a personality or disposition that is vulnerable.

Ah.

The "defective personality" idea again.

... People that do not believe in God, don't have the right to blame Him for their woes

Quoted: Quoted: All it takes is a personality or disposition that is vulnerable. Ah. The "defective personality" idea again.

You disagree with my assessment?

Quoted: You disagree with my assessment?

Of course I do.

Quoted: Quoted: You disagree with my assessment? Of course I do.

So there aren't people who can gamble in a Casino without it destroying there lives and there aren't people who can drink alcohol without it destroying their lives? And there aren't people who can take religion on misguided Crusades or use it as the basis for race hating?

There aren't people who have obsessions with money or women who allow those things to destroy their lives?

Are you really disagreeing with that premise?

Quoted: So there aren't people who can gamble in a Casino without it destroying there lives and there aren't people who can drink alcohol without it destroying their lives? And there aren't people who can take religion on misguided Crusades or use it as the basis for race hating? There aren't people who have obsessions with money or women who allow those things to destroy their lives? Are you really disagreeing with that premise?

No. I am disagreeing with the idea that the people who get caught up in those things are somehow "defective" personalities.

Quoted: Quoted: So there aren't people who can gamble in a Casino without it destroying there lives and there aren't people who can drink alcohol without it destroying their lives? And there aren't people who can take religion on misguided Crusades or use it as the basis for race hating? There aren't people who have obsessions with money or women who allow those things to destroy their lives? Are you really disagreeing with that premise? No. I am disagreeing with the idea that the people who get caught up in those things are somehow "defective" personalities.

I gotta hear this.  Degenerate gamblers... don't have a problem?  Alcoholics are NOT defective?  

BTW, Christianity is not in decline in the US.

Name, 1990 population, 2000 population, 2004 est. population, percentage of total population, growth/decline

Christianity 151,225,000 159,030,000 224,437,959 76.5% +5%
Nonreligious/Secular 13,116,000 27,539,000 38,865,604 13.2% +110%
Judaism 3,137,000 2,831,000 3,995,371 1.3% -10%
Islam 527,000 1,104,000 1,558,068 0.5% +109%
Buddhism 401,000 1,082,000 1,527,019 0.5% +170%
Agnostic 1,186,000 991,000 1,398,592 0.5% -16%
Atheist   902,000 1,272,986 0.4%
Hinduism 227,000 766,000 1,081,051 0.4% +237%
Unitarian Universalist 502,000 629,000 887,703 0.3% +25%

Note that Islam is one half of one percent, and Christianity is 76.5%, or 14,700% larger than Islam.

Quoted: Quoted: So there aren't people who can gamble in a Casino without it destroying there lives and there aren't people who can drink alcohol without it destroying their lives? And there aren't people who can take religion on misguided Crusades or use it as the basis for race hating? There aren't people who have obsessions with money or women who allow those things to destroy their lives? Are you really disagreeing with that premise? No. I am disagreeing with the idea that the people who get caught up in those things are somehow "defective" personalities.

Well first off I said "All it takes is a personality or disposition that is vulnerable."

Not sure if that qualifies as a "defectice personality or not."

But to expand on your suggestion, would you consider "obsessive compulsive" to be a "defect"? How about habitually addictive?

Perhaps your term of "defective personality" just wasn't correct when you assigned it to what I was talking about.

So let me provide a further example.

How about someone who devotes their very LIFE to Scientology and gives away ALL of their possessions, alienates and loses all of their freinds and family as well as their individual control of their life.

Certainly that kind of person will have destroyed their life via Scientology.

What would YOU call that kind of person? Would "defective personality" be the correct term? I don't know, again it was you who assigned that term.

I only suggested it was a person with a suitably vulnerable "personality or disposition."

And clearly it is an individual thing. Not everyone exposed to, and not everyone who subscribes to, Scientology destroys their life as a result of those beliefs.

So again, it must be something about certain individuals.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

Quoted: BTW, Christianity is not in decline in the US. Name, 1990 population, 2000 population, 2004 est. population, percentage of total population, growth/decline Christianity 151,225,000 159,030,000 224,437,959 76.5% +5% Nonreligious/Secular 13,116,000 27,539,000 38,865,604 13.2% +110% Judaism 3,137,000 2,831,000 3,995,371 1.3% -10% Islam 527,000 1,104,000 1,558,068 0.5% +109% Buddhism 401,000 1,082,000 1,527,019 0.5% +170% Agnostic 1,186,000 991,000 1,398,592 0.5% -16% Atheist   902,000 1,272,986 0.4% Hinduism 227,000 766,000 1,081,051 0.4% +237% Unitarian Universalist 502,000 629,000 887,703 0.3% +25% Note that Islam is one half of one percent, and Christianity is 76.5%, or 14,700% larger than Islam.

I wonder what the per capita representation is?

Obviously as "populations" increase the numbers of those who practice various beliefs will increase. But at the same time the actual belief could be in decline.

For example suppose the population of the Earth was 100 people in 1900 (for the sake of simple numbers) and 2 of those people practiced Wotan, thus the poppulation of the Earth that followed that religion would be 2%

Let us assume that the population of the Earth in 2000 was 300 people (triple that of 1900) and in that year 3 of them subscribed to the practice of Wotan. That would be a 1/3 increase in the number of practioneers over the last 100 years but in reality it would only be 1% of the current population which would actually be a decline in the observance of those beliefs give the difference in population numbers.