Hot, Bad & Unpopular Takes

[Former President tack50]

Not sure if either REALLY counts as a "Hot, Bad [or] Unpopular Take," but I have been on a World War I kick lately:

1) The Central Powers, in a vacuum, were completely justified in going to war, and Germany's over-the-line actions once the war broke out (took "the best defense is a good offense" to an extreme, for example) overshadow this simple fact WAY too much in our retelling of the Great War.  The Central Powers may have wanted a war, and they may have clearly been the overall "worse actors" in this conflict (I would agree with both), but Austria-Hungary had every right to go to war with Serbia, and Germany had every right to back them up ... until conspiracy theories are proven.

2) Germany was much more impressive from a military standpoint in WWI than they were in WWII, regardless of the fact that Hitler was able to conquer much of Europe.

I remember reading once (in AH.com I think) a post that claimed that while in WWI the central powers were roughly even with the Entrente in terms of resources, manpower, etc; in WWII the Axis powers were vastly outnumbered by the Allies. The fact that Hitler managed to conquer most of Europe was almost a miracle in some way (the bad kind of miracle of course).

[Former President tack50]

As the world continues to secularize (is that a word?), TRUE atheism - being defined as the belief that the Universe had no “Creator” and there is no higher intelligence/consciousness outside of our physical Universe - will plateau at about 10-15%, especially as materialism loses favor among physicists in favor of the emergent Universe theory in the coming decades.

Will the world actually keep secularizing though? The more religious places (especially África, yo a lesser extent Middle East, South Asia) are the ones growing fast while secular areas (China, Western Europe) are declining.

I'm certainly seeing a big decline of secularism unfortunately. And research backs that Up

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/pf-04-05-2017_-projectionsupdate-00-07/

http://www.pewforum.org/2017/04/05/the-changing-global-religious-landscape/pf_17-04-05_projectionsupdate_changepopulation640px/

In fact pretty much all religious groups are expected to decline or stagnate as a percentage other than muslims (Christians and jews Will be stagnant, everyone else on decline)