"The 2009 Global Peace Index has just been released. It's basically a ranking of how turbulent and warlike a country is.They put it together by assessing 23 criteria, including foreign wars, internal conflicts, respect for human rights, the number of murders, the number of people in jail, the arms trade, and degrees of democracy (Guardian).
You can see a world map of peace at the Vision of Humanity website, and also take a look at country rankings for 2009, as well as earlier years.
New Zealand came top this year. Hmm, New Zealand is a pretty secular country. In fact, if you eyeball the rankings, the top few countries are all pretty secular."
I checked with a reliable source in NZ who flatly states that the statistics are a bit skewed because Kiwis are actually just more lazy and find all that sitting, kneeling, praying and singing dodgy songs business on a gorgeous Sunday morning quite problematic. I can buy that.
Anyway, take heart all of you atheists and meek and mild misfits that don't believe in any of the God(s)ess(es), turns out we don't have to bomb those waffling agnostics after all!
This calls for a peace anthem!
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