That depends on how they make choices.  If they base choices purely on their quasi-religious dogma, then no, they are not any better.  If they base their choices on rational thinking, then they are better.

Better is, of course, subjective.

I'm usually totally fine with deists, pantheists and liberal theists for this very reason...they don't use their religion as an objective decision making tool.

On the flip side, I don't like irrational atheists (ghosts, alien abductions, homeopathy, etc) any better than irrational theists.  I'll take a mostly rational theist over a mostly irrational atheist any day of the week.

Well Luminon, if there is no actual evidence, then I am going to throw in that what you have in mind is a belief.

That much being said, if the evidence is not there, that does not mean that nothing is there. At the cutting edge of science, there are often competing theories that are waiting for someone to find the evidence needed to sort them out.

As an example, let me suggest the idea that alien critters somehow played a role in life on earth. OK, perhaps. However, there is plenty of evidence that whatever might have happened was not really a dramatic thing. If they did drop by and tweak a few parameters, they certainly did not do so in such a big way as amounts to the having carved their initials in our DNA.

Past that, the Sci-Fi author Larry Niven has written extensively on a scenario where there was a gigantic alien intervention on the Earth of about 2.5*10^9 years ago. If anything like that is the case, then there will be no evidence which will ever be found on this world.

If you want to look that stuff up the google search would be “tales on known space”. In that case, the smoking gun comes when we have colonized a couple of dozen star systems (don't bother asking how we do that) and it turns out that alien DNA is just to close to Earth DNA to not be part of a bigger picture.

At one point in my life, I did dedicate some time to buddhism ( I've rejected it now) and originally liked some of the ideals. But like any other organization, what can appear on the surface and what can appear underneath were two different matters. One thing about it, some of the big guru type monks that love to promote and push all of their books onto the public turn out to be complete and total frauds that do not practice anything that they preach. Search for Seung Sahn for instance, and he is one of many. Let's take the Dalai Lama for example, the guy that travels all over the world and lives in total luxury, but loves to tell everyone how the material things are not important. But I bet that he loves rubbing shoulders with all that Hollywood glitz and glammer. Also remember this, the ruling powers of Tibet, before China, might have been a Paradise for the Lamas and the elite ruling power, but rest assured that it was a theocracy equal to Iran and Iraq. Punishments that included cutting out tongues and gouging eyes were involved under the rule of "Enlightened" Lamas. Granted, China has certainly not been a good thing for Tibet, but I wonder if some of these people that are screaming for the freedom of Tibet are aware of what that would mean. It would mean giving the Dalai Lama total control over it again and implementing a primitive theocracy. But, all of that aside, Buddhism more or less teaches people a few things that sound good on paper, but to get to the core of it all, they are another religious cult that seems to scorn natural desire and seems to try and push back some of our basic emotional drives that make us human. It might work for some people but I find it to be just as bad as any other organized religion.

My thoughts exactly Ken. I like the title of Hitchen's chapter in God is not Great called "There is no Eastern Solution". I know that alot of this interest in Buddhism, springs from people that have become very discouraged by the trappings of Christianity. But it is no better. There seems to be some sort of common belief that because a tradition can claim to be thousands of years old and draw inspirations from the "ancients" that it must somehow have a handle on the truth.  Like Christianity, much of their teachings are inherently contradictory and not really grounded in rational thought. Right after I had abandoned my own Christian religious upbringing, I wasted time on buddhism for a little while. I spent hours being told to figure out "What is the sound of one hand clapping" and "Does the dog have Buddha nature" before I realized what a waste. Go to any Buddhist retreat, and you find a self-appointed, all-knowing guru that is always right and students are always wrong. They will tell you to be of the world and not in the world, but then they tell you that how deeply attached that you have to be to the world. It is just another movement that pretends to scorn materialism and selfish behavior, all the while it's leaders practice materialism and are selfish natured. If the Dalai Lama had so much compassion for the less fortunate, why does he charge such huge amounts of money to speak to them ? Kind of like when I see these Hollywood celebrities in interviews talking about how prestige, money and materials are meaningless to them. Funny how easy they can say that, when they have plenty of prestige, money and materials.