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Osiris89
2005-09-30, 12:02
This one is intersting. It claims that secular societies have less problems than theocratical ones.

"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.

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.”

Sarter
2005-09-30, 14:52
Some 'study'. All of two countries analyzed?

[This message has been edited by Sarter (edited 09-30-2005).]

SurahAhriman
2005-09-30, 16:44
quote:Originally posted by Sarter:

Some 'study'. All of two countries analyzed?



If you paid attention, it mentioned at least seven.

Yeah. That makes sense. Look at shit like divorce rates in the bible belt, compared to New England.

Twisted_Ferret
2005-09-30, 17:13
http://tinyurl.com/buhsw - source.

Sarter
2005-10-01, 01:54
quote:Originally posted by SurahAhriman:

If you paid attention, it mentioned at least seven.

Yeah. That makes sense. Look at shit like divorce rates in the bible belt, compared to New England.

Okay so they used more than just England on the 'godless' side. But the 'study' seems to mainly be a comparison between the US and other Westernized democracies. Russia and China are left out. The secular histories of those two countries coupled with their poor health records would certainly skew the results.

Here is a better link (the actual study): http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

This Gregory Paul does not consider other likely reasons why the US is different from Western European countries, such as its greater religious and ethnic divisions.

You can see that his graphs don't show an obvious trend at all, especially with the paltry 18 samples he has taken.

I don't know what a social scientist is, but the fact that he has only correlated existing data to come to a highly speculative conclusion doesn't speak much for his field of study.

If I was trying to come to the conclusion that religious countries fare worse then I would try and get more samples by looking at every country in the world and in history, and go into detail at the town/county level.

But it is fairly hopeless to try and offset all the alternate explanations. I would consider Gregory Paul to be more a philosopher than a scientist.

Elephantitis Man
2005-10-01, 02:10
It is not religious belief that damages society; it's hypocrisy. Catholic priests that molests their followers. Pseudo-'Reverend' Jessie Jackson. Your faithless, greedy televangelists. The people who pledge their lives to one another, and then break up over money discrepancies or lack of sexual satisfaction. The teenagers taking care not to make noise while they fuck in the middle of a church service. You get the idea? It is not the religion, it is the hypocrisy.

Beholder
2005-10-01, 02:48
^^^ Yet again I find myself agreeing with this man 100%.

Osiris89
2005-10-01, 03:45
quote:Originally posted by Elephantitis Man:

It is not religious belief that damages society; it's hypocrisy. Catholic priests that molests their followers. Pseudo-'Reverend' Jessie Jackson. Your faithless, greedy televangelists. The people who pledge their lives to one another, and then break up over money discrepancies or lack of sexual satisfaction. The teenagers taking care not to make noise while they fuck in the middle of a church service. You get the idea? It is not the religion, it is the hypocrisy.

Never thought of it that way...

But still, the freedom to choose your religion & secular government (ie. if you don't want to follow christian doctrine, then you can have abortion/gay marriage/eat shellfish/etc.) is still something important.