[Splendour]

There's so much misinterpretation of history and history taken out of context in this thread.

One person stated that a skeptic nation has a better chance of functioning than a Christian nation....He needs to check out the most liberal republic of all time...the rise and fall of the Weimar Republic...

Then we've got Hopey's little laundry list...First of all Hopey the Mongols weren't atheists...they believed in multiple gods, goddesses and demons and had an extremely high number of taboo practices...They managed to seize power thru their superior military tactics. i.e. horsepower...Atheism had nothing to do with their successful conquers...
The Japanese aren't Atheists either...They are a combination of Shinto/Buddhist for the most part. They marry Shinto and they bury Buddhist. A merciful country known as the United States of America bailed Japan out by helping to rebuild them after WWII...I daresay you could go to Japan today and find Japanese amazed at Americans doing this since Japan never handled any surrendering enemies in such a gentle fashion in their whole history prior to WWII...take a look at the Bataan Death march or how warring Shogunate factions handled conquered enemies...Not to mention how the U.S. bailed out Germany following WWII through the generosity of the Marshall Plan...