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posted by on Thursday April 20 2017, @01:08PM   Printer-friendly
from the natural-enemies dept.

Government restrictions on religion and social hostilities involving religion increased in 2015 for the first time in three years, according to Pew Research Center's latest annual study on global restrictions on religion.

The share of countries with "high" or "very high" levels of government restrictions – i.e., laws, policies and actions that restrict religious beliefs and practices – ticked up from 24% in 2014 to 25% in 2015. Meanwhile, the percentage of countries with high or very high levels of social hostilities – i.e., acts of religious hostility by private individuals, organizations or groups in society – increased in 2015, from 23% to 27%. Both of these increases follow two years of declines in the percentage of countries with high levels of restrictions on religion by these measures.

Among the world's 25 most populous countries, Russia, Egypt, India, Pakistan and Nigeria had the highest overall levels of government restrictions and social hostilities involving religion. Egypt had the highest levels of government restrictions in 2015, while Nigeria had the highest levels of social hostilities.

Global Restrictions on Religion Rise Modestly

Does this reflect your personal experience ?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @03:09PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 20 2017, @03:09PM (#496877)
    • Statism is a religion. Just consider the hymns, the pledges of allegiance, the holidays, the pageants, the origin myths, the sacred symbols, and the irrational reverence coupled to one's own sense of identity, etc.

    • Democracy is a sham; it's not different from a dictatorship: One group is dictating to another group.

    • The natural progression towards liberty is one of increasing decentralization: One warlord is ripped apart into 2 warlords; 2 warlords are ripped apart in to 4 warlords, and so on, until there is nothing but individual pitted against individual, each one finding that there is more profit in agreement in advance rather than in ambush.

      Let's not forget that technology is the enabler of such progress: For instance, the gun is known as "The Great Equalizer"—there is no such thing as a peasant when every man sports a foreboding sidearm (is it any wonder that the Universe's creatures tend to be constructed with lethal weapons such as teeth, spines, pincers, fists, and injectable or projectile poison?).

      • Logistically, a restrained monarchy seemed intractable, until the nobles realized that they could employ a new technology: A written document describing the constraints, which could be disseminated amongst the literate nobles.

      • Logistically, a representative democracy seemed intractable, until the population realized that they could employ a new technology: A written document describing the constraints, which could be mass produced and thereby disseminated amongst the literate little people, who would thereby be able to check the decisions of their representatives.

        The innovation of the voting booth, and the wealth (including literacy) required to pay for such things, should not be discounted in understanding how it came to be.

      • Logistically, a pure democracy seemed intractable, until the population realized that they could employ a new technology: A network of supremely capable computing devices, which could cheaply collate their votes on any particular topic.

      Yet, this leaves us at a dead end: One group dictating to another group. The insight here is that imposition has taken us as far as we can go; a new plane of organization must be reached before things can be improved further.

      • Logistically, law customized to each individual seemed intractable, until the population realized that they could employ a new technology: Some kind of system for encoding, calculating, and interpreting contracts between individuals, allowing for "law" to be defined as the collection of all such contracts.

      Of course, the "government" as it exists today will be the tool for enforcing such contracts, but eventually...

      • Logistically, a market of competing contract enforcers seemed intractable, until the population realized that contract enforcers comprise an industry like any other: The technology used for establishing contracts between individuals was also suitable for constructing relationships to enforcers, thereby allowing all parts of the market to exist under a culture of contracts, and thereby find their shape according to the most fundamental process in the Universe: Evolution by variation and selection, a process which finds workable solutions even to problems that nobody knew existed.

  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 21 2017, @04:11AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Friday April 21 2017, @04:11AM (#497226) Journal

    Evolution by variation and selection is a process that modern societies seems to try do away with at any price. Better let it work and keep a minimum level for those that fail.

  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday April 21 2017, @03:37PM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Friday April 21 2017, @03:37PM (#497455) Journal

    Logistically, a pure democracy seemed intractable, until the population realized that they could employ a new technology: A network of supremely capable computing devices, which could cheaply collate their votes on any particular topic.

    You assume too much capability or ignore the complexity of the problem.
    Collation is the easiest problem in voting.

    What is hard:

    1. a single vote per person
    2. a vote that's freely expressed = a vote not influenced by coercion (duress) or incentive (bribe) (other than the dis/advantages that the voted issue will bring once its enters in reality
    3. a vote which, once expressed, cannot be modified or repudiated

    The first two requirements are divergent in eVoting: first requires the voter's identification, the second imply the voting act privacy. While they are easy to satisfy in the real world, its not the same in eVoting.
    The second and third requirement are divergent as well in evoting - a voter must be able to control her/his vote was not modified (while stored) without being able to show to anyone the way s/he voted (otherwise the second requirement will be violated).

    Sorry, but we aren't yet at the stage of such sophisticated protocols which would allow reliance on only "supremely capable computing devices" - a paper trail of one sort or another is still necessary.

    See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems [wikipedia.org] as a start and, if curious, see where it will lead you.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford