Somebody's got some 'splainin' to do...

[mareserinitatis]

I found this one via Pharyngula.

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today

Comments

[pammalamma]

I think the conclusions are really myopic. What about all the genocide seen in secular nations like China, the USSR, and Cambodia? That didn't happen here. Furthermore, England is doing "well?" Have they not heard about all the crime in London? Why do they just write off England's social ills? They don't address population shrinkage or a lot of other measures I would care about. I think it's just an issue of homogeneity. If religion is allowed, then usually there is more than one religion, which causes conflict. Also, they're just looking at raw statistics, and not who is affected by these ills. Are more religious people than non-religious ones getting STDs, and so on?

Here's another analysis of other data: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Religion/bg1992.cfm

[mareserinitatis]

Quotes from the article:

"The study compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution." (I sort of bristle at that because I don't know that the two are mutually exclusive.) Regardless, they were only comparing industrialized nations.

As far as the criteria:

“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.

“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”

[tomysky]

Fascinating stuff! I'd be very interested in more studies like this.

What's confusing to me about this is that religion--especially of the Judeo-Christian bent--was, to my understanding, the foundation for education, elder care, making things accessible to the disabled, and many, many other good social things... which are not present in many other societies.

And, really, I would not be surprised if "religion" is a negative force. In fact, that would make a lot of sense to me. It has certainly proved true over the centuries. It is not religion that makes men better (if anything, it allows them to justify their vices)... but Judeo-Christian tenants of faith lead to much happier/healthier societies.

My two cents.

~Luke