Societies worse off...

[rostasi]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html

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

By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards

high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according

to research published today.

According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only

unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social

problems.

The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to

provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.

It 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. Many conservative evangelicals in the US

consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires

atheism and amorality.

Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that

religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to

lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and

abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been

described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the

devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.

The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US

academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing

nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that

stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.

“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.”

Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data

from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other

research bodies to reach his conclusions.

He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide

and teenage pregnancy.

The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous

democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout

nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of

gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in

less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely

high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent

abortion rates, the study suggested.

Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it

has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most

indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than

America.”

He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared

with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian

countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder

rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he

added.

Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane

Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different

studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social

ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor

societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.

He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if

the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God

scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy

majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in

religious belief, Mr Paul said.

“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that

a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently

believe in a moral creator.

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal

disaster is therefore refuted.”

[ejp626]

“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal

disaster is therefore refuted.”

←

Maybe, though I think one really has to stretch the definition of Godless citizenry to include England, where the majority of the population is nominally Christian though also pro-evolution.

As for the reverse position, that the uniquely Christian nature of the US has led to more STD and other social ills, this seems like a completely spurious set of associations. The causal chain is much more likely to run something like the Puritanical strain leads to weak sex education in the US and thus to higher STD. There might be a connection to a particular brand of Christianity, particularly right wing Evangelical Christianity, leading to social ills, but a blanket statement about religion leading countries downward into chaos seems downright stupid.

[Guy Berger]

The article isn't exactly clear on the methodology for this study, but the results strike me as spurious. Correlation does not imply causation.

Guy

[Jim Alfredson]

Although no fan of organized religion, I gotta say that "spurious" is the best way to described that article.

[Guy Berger]

Although no fan of organized religion, I gotta say that "spurious" is the best way to described that article.

←

Just to clarify, the causal link claimed by the article may very well be true (though I doubt it), but the study in question really doesn't actually seem to say anything about such a link, despite claims to the contrary. Hence, "spurious".

Guy

[Noj]

Organized religion is divisive by design. I think this article is missing the mark, but I think it does point toward a need humanity has for a unifying notion of what it means to be a good human.

Mankind would be better off to all unite behind the things we can all agree on, rather than group ourselves the by the false, egotistical notion of having totally figured out that which cannot be perceived. The stewards of morality are intelligence and cooperation, not faith in that which cannot be proven. Deciding who is right and who is wrong about that which is impossible to substantiate is a ludicrous decision to make and a silly thing to group ourselves by. However, it seems impossible to stop people from asserting themselves as the "true" masters of that which cannot be known. People need something else to put everyone on the same page.

Therefore, mankind should establish a secular set of sacred rules to unite behind. A set of rules which no religion would argue against. The moral ideas which we can all agree upon as human beings. What moral ideas can we all agree upon?

[ejp626]

I agree with some of what Noj wrote, but I was responding to what appears on the surface to be an extremely weak article that seems to simply cherrypick data designed to make the US look bad (not that there's any shortage of that) and attribute it to religion.

I think the problem with coming up with a moral system outside of religion is that when you consider the moral rules that *everyone* would agree on, there wouldn't be enough of a system to make society function. In general people fill in the void on a sort of ad hoc basis, drawing on their own traditions (generally religious) to give sufficient support to civil society.

[Alexander]

I think the problem with coming up with a moral system outside of religion is that when you consider the moral rules that *everyone* would agree on, there wouldn't be enough of a system to make society function.  In general people fill in the void on a sort of ad hoc basis, drawing on their own traditions (generally religious) to give sufficient support to civil society.

←

I disagree. There are plenty of rules that *everyone* agrees on. Killing people is a bad idea, for example. The problem seems to be that many people think that once God or religion is taken out of the equation, all bets are off. Suddenly murder is fair game. Why not? If you're not going to hell, why not kill everyone who looks at you crosseyed? Well, that's where humanisim and ethics come into play.

[danasgoodstuff]

Didn't Bob D make this case much more succinctly and strongly?

[ejp626]

Why do we always come back to killing people when this topic comes up? Sure most people agree it's a bad idea to go about killing people. That's one prohibition out of a thousand that civil society needs to function. And please don't come back and say that the humanist version of the Golden Rule is enough to keep society going. It ain't. I'm not saying that societies have to be religious to function, but I do think secular societies with a very diverse population (with very different background ideas on how to behave) are under a great deal of strain. I think we basically bumble along, making it up as we go along, and it is astonishing there aren't more social strains than there are.

In any case, while most people agree that killing people is wrong, there are plenty of people (in the US and other societies) that carve out huge exceptions. Either they feel the State can kill people to punish them under certain conditions (particularly treason), or they feel that they can kill someone who murdered their brother or raped their sister. Or if their head of state declares war on another state. Or their territory has been invaded by another clan. The number of people who adhere to an absolute policy of no killing is actually quite a small percentage, even though the number of people who actually kill someone is quite low fortunately. I have pacifist leanings myself, but I certainly would have fought for the Allies in WWII, for example.

[Guest]

Correlation and causation are tricky.

I suppose that this kind of "study" (methodologically speaking) could also prove that countries with the highest consumption of sausages and weenies produce elevated levels of drug abuse!

That good ol' fashioned 3rd-rate science... http://www.junkscience.com/

[Guy Berger]

Maybe the cause of all these bad phenomena is merely proximity to Canada.

Guy

[Jim Alfredson]

The author obviously has a bone to pick and produced data that "supported" it. Pretty lame.

[Guest]

Let us assume for a moment that the author's thesis is correct. The corollary would be that a God-less/religion-less society is "better". A look at the "religion/God-less" societies of the past and present would cause us to see just the opposite (Mao's China, USSR, Pol Pot's Cambodia, etc etc). But then, Torquemada's Spain & the Inquisition wasn't exactly a hotbed of freedom of thought and action either...

I posit that a society that places a high degree of respect and of enforcement of individual rights is the best kind.

Meanwhile...has anyone seen my damn keys?