The Vatican is by far the smallest State in the world, being just over a hundred acres in size. It plays at being a real State by issuing its own stamps, but it has no proper citizens (just transient employees of the Catholic Church), few public services (Italy provides it with police and water) and no real economy (though it does have a novelty ATM machine that issues instructions in Latin).
But that does not matter, because the toy Vatican State does not generally interact with other real States. Instead, an entity called the Holy See, which is the central government of the worldwide Catholic Church, masquerades as a State and deals with actual States from its base in the Vatican.
This distinction is very important. It is the openly religious Holy See, and not the theoretically civic Vatican State, that swaps diplomats with actual States, and that has Permanent Observer status at the United Nations and other bodies. But the Holy See does not have any citizens, or any defined territory, and all that it governs is the religious affairs of some citizens of actual civic States…
An atheist running for President of the United States today faces roughly the same level of prejudice from voters as a female candidate would have faced in the 1940s while women workers were being sacked to make way for returning soldiers.
I am an atheist because I reject the idea that gods exist, in the same way and for the same reasons that I reject the ideas that that the earth is balanced on the back of a sea turtle, that homeopathy is more useful than a heart transplant, that Rapunzel wove her hair into a ladder or Rumpelstiltskin wove straw into gold, that stepping on a pavement crack will break my mother’s back, that a deposed Nigerian prince wants to email me several million dollars, that Uri Geller can bend spoons with his mind, that I am in danger from vampires or zombies or broken mirrors, or that I am protected by angels or leprechauns or horseshoes….
The best six countries to live a long happy life are Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Austria, Sweden and Australia. If you live in one of these places, you can expect to have sixty or more ‘happy-years’ of life. ‘Happy-years’ are calculated by multiplying happiness levels by life expectancy.
The idea of gods is bad for society, because it spreads irrational dogma that causes good people to do bad things. This affects three practical areas of our lives: the quest for knowledge, treating people fairly, and civic society.