First of all, before I respond to your post: we probably have a different viewpoint on this because I live in Europe and I assume you live in the US, right? So things are different over here in Europe, just to let you know. I heard bad stuff about the Christian community in the US but we don't have the same kind of batshit crazy religiosity over here in Europe. Things are more moderate and calm over here, you know what I mean?
Now to your point... no, of course there are Christian people. And Christian leaders and they try to influence society, the values and lawmaking with their religion. Look at the abortion laws that came into place just recently. That's definitely the result of a Christian ideology. I don't disagree with that. But things changed a lot. Again, we probably have a different viewpoint because you live in the US and I think it's a different experience over there but generally speaking, more people become atheist over time - even in the US. There are polls and studies that confirm this.
Explore the geographic distribution and demographics of America's major religious groups.
www.pewforum.org
Again, it's a slow process because Christianity is rooted deeply into western society but change is happening. There are more atheists with every new generation. You can see this in the study I've just linked. The younger the people are, the more likely it is that they are atheist. That's a fact. But as I said, I understand your perspective, having Trump in the white house must be terrible and scary. Especially if you consider the relations to white supremacy groups and his hateful rhetoric. But I also know that the whole anti-establishment mindset played a huge role in his election and people simply didn't want to elect someone who represents the elite, like Hillary Clinton - without realizing that he is the elite and he is basically the swamp which he promised to drain. They trusted a conman and it backfired badly. So yeah, are the people who voted for him smart? I don't know.
But things aren't as bad as you think. As I said before, when all the old people died, society will look different. It probably would look different already if you lowered the voting age to 16 years. Look at the European election: the green party was overwhelmingly popular in many countries. And young people played a huge role in this election.
I personally don't believe in these apocalyptic nuclear scenarios. I don't think there will be another nuclear war but if we ever develop a Superintelligence like Skynet and they would whipe us from the planet, well - too bad. Sucks I guess, right? I couldn't judge them.
I agree, a lot of people think negatively of LGBT people. But then again, the majority of these people are simply old and grew up with conservative values. Give it some time. In the last 20 years, the public opinion of homosexuality changed drastically:
In Pew Research Center polling in 2001, Americans opposed same-sex marriage by a margin of 57% to 35%. Since then, support for same-sex marriage has steadily grown.
www.pewforum.org
We are on a good path. I don't think we live in a romantic perfect planet, no. I explained it over and over again in this forum: this society fucking sucks. This world sucks. Humans suck. But are we improving? Objectively speaking: yes. Does it mean we both have no reason to suffer? No. Of course we suffer. But apparently we're a minority. Most people on this planet don't consider suicide and they will never have a reason to kill themselves. We're the losers in society. That's just how it is, let's face it. Life isn't fair and I agree with you, this place here fucking sucks and life isn't worth living. But nontheless, I'd rather live in 2019 than in 1919. You know what I mean? Because back then, I would have died in a concentration camp. And we didn't have any awareness of transgender people. Like, we knew they existed but they weren't nearly as accepted by society and by the medical community as they are right now. Yeah, I will die on this hill: 2019 is better than all other years we had in the past. And I'm sure I can justify this when talking about a global scale.
Now, let me dump some facts before I end this post.
Increasing education levels:
See all our data, visualizations, and writing on global education.
ourworldindata.org
Within most OECD countries, the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with tertiary attainment is moderately to considerably higher than the percentage of...
www.universityworldnews.com
Regarding wars:
We may be living in the most peaceful time in human history, depending on how you measure: Reality Project Episode 2.
towardsdatascience.com
Is the world becoming more peaceful? Recent decades have clearly been more peaceful than average. A number of people argue that this peaceful period is more than a temporary phenomenon and actually represents a consistent decline in war over the past two centuries. If so, we could reasonably...
oefresearch.org
Again, this is a slow process but concepts like the EU and the increasing globalisation of the planet by the way favor peace. It's unlikely that there will be another incident like WWI and WWII. But ever since these wars stopped, the rate of wars and violence decreased drastically and if they happen, they don't happen in such a large scale anymore.
Wealth inequality:
Global wealth grew significantly over the past two decades but per capita wealth declined or stagnated in more than two dozen countries in various income brackets, says a new World Bank report.
www.worldbank.org
Of course the wealth gap is increasing. Poverty is declining but the richest people are outpacing this by an extreme margin. As you can read here:
Things are particularly bad for women, who consistently earn less than men and are usually in the lowest paid and least secure forms of work.
www.weforum.org
So I give you that, wealth inequality is a huge issue and it's gonna be even worse in the future with the upcoming automation of society and the replacement of humans in the workplace. This should be the priority right after climate change. I don't disagree with that. Like, you're talking to a socialist, don't worry.
Regarding your last point, to you understand how science works? Scientists are probably the least influential demographic group in society. Just look at climate change, nobody is listening to them, despite the fact that we know about this issue for decades. And they don't make any money researching facts that burden oil and coal companies. They're usually the ones who bribe people for disinformation. And scientists surely aren't getting any of that.
A relatively small number of fossil fuel producers and their investors could hold the key to tackling climate change
www.theguardian.com
They have an interest bribing and intimidating people.
I hope I addressed all of your points, I invested a lot of time responding to your post.
