#3 is significant. One of the ways we can know whether a belief worth its salt or not is to see whether proponents of those beliefs are hypocrites or not. Obviously if even Christians commit abortion at higher rate than atheists, then why bother believing that God opposes abortion. The same way if atheists change mind on their death bed, it'll tell something about humans' true nature.
I think #2 is the main reason why we have so many strange beliefs. If people accuse you of murder, wouldn't you want to convince everyone that you're not? If say, in trying to convince people that you're not a murderer you murder everyone that don't believe, wouldn't that make people turn believers?
The same way there are many political interests and there are many politicians that want to maintain the beliefs that somehow their political idea is sent by God. Politicians care less whether “christian economy” or “shariah economy” or whatever economy will pull us out of recession. They care that the people believe whatever theory they promoted.
People will not change their believe and can do just fine in believing whatever they wish unless their beliefs start affecting their life significantly and negatively.
Nobody believe that the sun raise in the west. Doing so will significantly affect your life. However, believing that the earth is flat or that the sun circles the earth is fine unless you're a sailor or astronaut respectively.
For most part of the world, believe of something decide out life far more than facts. Who care what happened in a pulsar billions of years ago light years from now. Beliefs that somehow those stars affect our life, do affect whether people will go to war or not.
Beliefs that those pulsars shows that the earth can't possibly be created 5000 years ago tell people that maybe other things their religious leaders say are false too. If religious leaders are wrong in predicting when the earth was created, maybe they're wrong to when they said that we can't have sex outside marriage.
What matters is not whether what you believe is right or wrong What matter is whether you are right or effectively right (despite wrong) on what actually decide your profit.
Say I believe the king is supported by God. Say I am wrong. Say God doesn't support that king. Well, I wouldn't make a huge mistake. The king, while not supported by God is supported by a huge army.
Most common people do not need to know the truth that his king is not supported by God. Not like they can change it or in business of changing it.
It's just like you're doing fine to presume that the gravity is constant if you don't build skyscraper. It's like you are doing fine to believe that the earth is flat unless you're a sailor. You too would do fine believing that God points emperor, if you're peasant.
A prime minister, however, has issues. Yu Fei and Yuan Chong Quan died in the hand of the emperor. The emperor, knowing well that he's not supported by God, understand that he needs to kill generals that are too popular to stay in throne, and hence acting ungodly.
Yazid, knowing well that he would lose throne unless he killed Muhammad’s descendants, did just that to secure his throne. Most of Sunni muslins simply swear loyalty to Yazid, knowing full well that they'll die if they do not?
Not believing in God is a luxury only those with significant power to challenge rulers can afford, at least in ancient time.
The same way being religious means you conform to societies' norms better and for most people, that's just fine.
The thing is, in democracy, we are like prime ministers. We can change society. And hence, simply believing that God, rather than ourselves, decides the government, simply won't cut it. And cracks start showing up in blind faith
Atheists Are At Least Effectively 99% Correct
I don't know if there is a true religion. I know that 99% of all religions are human made bullshit. There are so many religions they can't all be right. Maybe not even one.
I don't believe in Zeus, Ama Terasu Omikami, Kwan Im, Kwan Kong, Brahma. Maybe Jesus/Allah/Yahweh/whoever more popular now is real. Who knows. One thing that I do know is I don't know. What are the chance I am way smarter than all those people that believe in different gods than I do?
I do not know if God really wants us to follow religious doctrines. What I do know is that 99% of religious doctrines can be explained as ways one human do to get other humans do what he wants.
In other word, you don't need God to have religion. You don't even need to read the scriptures, whose most religious followers don't even bother reading anyway. You need only to see what typical humans want and you can correctly predict what religious doctrines they would believe in.
So may be God exist. That still makes atheists 99% correct. After all, monotheism is just one more God than atheism.
Back to marriage. There is a way to know whether marriage is good for you or not.
Look who are in control or create marriage rules.
In ancient time the alpha males create rules. So marriage was good for alpha males. We got Sultan having harem, etc.
In modern western civilization, voters, majority of which are single males, make the rules. So marriage was good for majority of single males that couldn't compete with alpha males.
In US, if you got strings of women chasing you, then marriage is not for you because you can only pick one. The fact that you got to “forsake all others”, “commit half of your life time income”, a phrase nowhere said in the bible is good for all other single males that don't get women yet.
I do not need to read the bible to know what Christians want. I just look at interests of middle class single males and I can predict that lifelong monogamy marriage as defined by the state will be what Christians want most men to get into. Why Christianity? Because Christians live in democratic countries. So Christianity coevolve with democracy. The same for hindu in india. They are also monogamous.
In other word, if you want to see what the prevailing religious doctrines are and what the effects are, just think like an atheist. You will be correct 99% of the time, at least.
Gender Pay Gaps Favor Women
It depends on the job.
For normal job, the pay is equal or higher for women. That's because women get paid for maternity, etc. Also men are not protected by government's intervention, which can be thought of as some form of extra payment with certain market value.
For man’s job, like becoming sperm donor, I think men are paid more than women. There isn't simply any opening for women for that kind of job.
For women’s job, women are paid WAY more than men. What are women’s jobs? Well, jobs suitable for women. How do we know a job is suitable for someone?
One best indicator is the pay. Hence, women jobs are jobs where women are paid way more than men. Those are:
1.Spouse. Alimony from men to women is way higher, on average, than alimony from women to men. We can think of marriage as a contract whose payment is an option for golden parachute kind of thingy.
2.Prostitute. I would pay to be gigolo. Yet women easily get paid for doing similar job.
3.Porn stars. Women are paid 3-10 times more than men. Men would pay to be in porn or have to actually promote the movie. I know a guy that did that by going all the way from countries where men is under appreciated and make $5k per month fucking many many women and put them on porn. I wonder why men don't unite and claim the guy is being exploited and can't possibly do this degrading and demeaning job consensually.
4.Strippers. Women are paid 3-10 times more than men.
5.Web cam artists. $3 a minute. You kidding? I studied programming for years I don't earn anywhere near that. Women with the right boob and pretty face easily earn that.
6.Selling virginity. Anyone wants to buy my virginity for $16 million? I am sure there are plenty of boys that would love to sell their virginity for $16 million or even $1 if the girl is attractive enough. Yet pretty women easily sell their virginity to attractive men for $16 million. How do I know the client is attractive? Women prefer the rich and anyone that can pay $16 million must be rich.<
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The key here is the job selection and talent.
If women works as social scientists promoting nonsense, obviously they won't get paid as much as anyone that can flip burgers. At least the latter contribute something positive to society. The only one that wants to pay them is government that just wants to get bigger.
Another is talent. You'll get paid low if your job don't match your talent whatever the job is. So women that lift boxes would get paid way less than men that lift boxes unless that woman is as strong as men. Also ugly women will be better off demanding criminalization of women’s jobs rather than actually doing that high paying job. In fact, the more a job pay women more than men, the more likely ugly women will demand that the job should be criminalized.
There are Very Few Women Programmer
Why aren't there more man's prostitute than women's prostitute? Simple. Prostitute is such a good job many wants to pay WOMEN for it. Those who can't get that good job are forced to be programmer.
Just kidding.
Basically, we all want to be sex object. For men, that means being rich. One way to be rich is to be a VERY good programmer.
Women don't get much sexier no matter how good they are at programming. So men have much higher “pay off” to learn programming than women. It's biologically set pay off.
This comic explains this better than I do:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1890#comic
Prostitution is Never a Good Career
Welfare Parasites Can Support More Children than Billionaires: Big pink elephants 1 - How Governments Plan to Pimp Out Your Daughters and Enslave Your Sons to Voters. Page 9