Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'
rigneyclan
Posts: 289
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article571206.ece
Might be old news here, but I just found it today. pretty interesting.
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.”
Might be old news here, but I just found it today. pretty interesting.
7/16/06 7/18/06
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
But save some for me, mkay?
http://www.myspace.com/illuminatta
Rhinocerous Surprise '08!!!
Me too.
"Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! ~ Emma Goldman"
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
-Oscar Wilde
that was pretty funny
And I try to make this kind and clear
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
Cuz I don't need boxes wrapped in strings
And desire and love and empty things
Just a chance that maybe we'll find better days
Finding salvation through Jesus kinda takes away the personal responsibility , does it not ??
Maybe He/She/It isn't insane.
But definitely second guessing itself with the "creation" of man.
Free Will is a bitch.
And that failure's no success at all."
"Don't ya think its sometimes wise not to grow up."
"Cause life ain't nothing but a good groove
A good mixed tape to put you in the right mood."
Have you heard of St Anthony's Fire ???
Definitely insane !!!!!
From this to positing religion = harmful to society is a bit of a leap. Correlation does not imply or equal causal relationship. Not religious myself, but religion can be shown to have a positive unifying effect on society. But in any case, the influence of religion is not all good or all bad. That again depends on your subjective opinion of good and bad of course, but religion is a big structure and influence to our and other societies. It goes both ways.
It's silly, on the level that "religion causes war" implying that no religion would mean no war. Equally silly is the notion that religion destroys societies. We wouldn't have society today if that was the case. But one is free to not like the influence of religion and so on in our society. An opinion I will share to a large extent.
Peace
Dan
"Every judgment teeters on the brink of error. To claim absolute knowledge is to become monstrous. Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty." - Frank Herbert, Dune, 1965
Are you kidding me, comparing the USA the most powerful nation in the world with a third world country would be better? Of course they are going to compare it to other western nations.
I mostly agree with what OutOfBreath said.
hm, soulsinging disappeared, right? Weird.
naděje umírá poslední
no, i said comparing western europe to the other third world countries would be better. and im not sure saudi arabia, for instance, is a third world country. there are a lot of islamic theocracies who believe god is on their side... see how their crime rates stack. any elementary statistician will tell you large results skew research. for instance, you poll 100 people. if bill gates is one of them and the other 99 are unemployed, you're still going to get an "average" income of about $100 mil... is that accurate? of course not. so the crime rates of the us are going to skew this research becos it clearly has a lot of crime and western europe does not. but even if you add in other countries, the US soaring rates will skew the results. so take the us out and see if these other countries that are god-driven fare better or worse. otherwise you're just essentially making an arbitrary decision that since the us has higher crime, it is attributable to religion. that's bad statistics.
the united states has a lot of problems, but im not entirely sure they have a whole lot to do with religion.
huh?
I see what you're saying, I misunderstood you. I think they won't be able to proof religion is the cause, it will only be correlation.
edit: where were you dude, you just disappeared.
naděje umírá poslední
i got a time out
and yeah, math stuff is not my strong suit so i dont explain myself very well when discussing it. i think if they want to prove something, they need to compare western europe to places like saudi arabia and iran which, whatever your views on their method of governance, have pretty low rates of crime from what i understand. otherwise, you could, for instance, take the us and compare it to africa and "prove" that a christian society causes more wealth than primitive animistic societies.
Hail, Hail!!!