morality – Rainer Ebert

atheism

Last year, a Pew Research Center survey found that Americans have a significantly less favorable view of atheists than of Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus. Only Muslims were rated more negatively than atheists. That is consistent with another survey conducted by the same institute in the same year, which found that about every second American would not be happy with a family member marrying an atheist. In a 2012 Gallup poll among Americans, 43 percent of respondents said that they would not vote for a presidential candidate who is an atheist. Simply put, Americans do not like atheists. As everybody knows who knows anything about Bangladesh, neither do Bangladeshis. Continue reading “Atheists ain’t bad people; neither are theists” →

Many of my Bangladeshi friends and relatives frenetically deny that their compatriots have sex before marriage. Amusingly, about as many unmarried friends in Bangladesh tell me that they are sexually active. I imagine that, partly due to the lack of comprehensive sex education in Bangladeshi schools, a non-negligible number of unmarried women conceive during their adolescent years. If, a few months ago, a friend in that situation had called me, and asked me whom she should talk to about her pregnancy, I would have advised her to talk to people of her age first. I would have argued that adolescents and young adults are more accepting of premarital sex, abortion and having a baby outside of marriage, and that she will more likely find support in her siblings or same-aged friends than in her parents. I would have been wrong. Continue reading “Young Bangladeshis more conservative than their elders, survey finds” →