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

[SLCPUNK]

[Times Online] 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.?

[pilferk]

Any links to the ACTUAL study?

I'm curious about how they drew their conclusions.  There are so many other contributing factors (education level, social factors, diversity of population, economic status) involved in some of the things they draw correlations with, I wonder if they took it all into account.

Or if they just drew a false correllation.

Hmmmm......

[Jamie]

Although there are a lot of assumptions made in this study, including that these problems are directly caused by religion, which there really is no proof of, I agree with the jist of the study. Religion is not a vital factor in building a prosperous nation, and is responsible for most major international wars. If people wish to worship in private, all power to them. But that is where their beliefs belong, in private.

[Izzy]

Any links to the ACTUAL study?

I'm curious about how they drew their conclusions.? There are so many other contributing factors (education level, social factors, diversity of population, economic status) involved in some of the things they draw correlations with, I wonder if they took it all into account.

Or if they just drew a false correllation.

Hmmmm......

Lol - they see a correlation and claim cause and effect, which is poor science at best!

Though don't think for a second i don't agree with them, religion is nothing but a problem

[pilferk]

Any links to the ACTUAL study?

I'm curious about how they drew their conclusions.? There are so many other contributing factors (education level, social factors, diversity of population, economic status) involved in some of the things they draw correlations with, I wonder if they took it all into account.

Or if they just drew a false correllation.

Hmmmm......

Lol - they see a correlation and claim cause and effect, which is poor science at best!

Though don't think for a second i don't agree with them, religion is nothing but a problem

EVERYTHING is a problem if taken to an extreme.

Extremists, no matter what they're extreme about, are a bad thing.

See, IMHO, Religion isn't bad or good.? It just sort of is.? It's the application, as with all things, by the person practicing it that can be "bad or good".

I find it hard to believe, personally, that belief in God and organized worship of him/her/it (depending on your particular brand of worship), itself, causes the things they draw corellations with.? ?I think other factors are heavier influences.? But, without seeing the study, itself, and their methodology, it's tough to say, or poke hole in, their validity.

I also think it's interesting that they don't "draw the line", seperating out particular faiths.  I mean, I understand WHY they don't, from a PC perspective.  But, really, the faiths are so radically different in beliefs that it's tough to lump 'em all together.

[SLCPUNK]

Any links to the ACTUAL study?

[pilferk]

Any links to the ACTUAL study?

Stupid box with a red x (I'm sure it's the firewall, here).

I'm assuming that's a no.

I HATE when articles do that.

I found it though....

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.html

FYI, the journal is a multi-faith work (yearly, it looks like) from Creighton University.

It's LONG...but it doesn't look like much of a "study", really.? More like a paper.

I'll grind through it tonight and tomorrow......

Edit:

Here's the abstract on the paper:
""Large-scale surveys show dramatic declines in religiosity in favor of secularization in the developed democracies. Popular acceptance of evolutionary science correlates negatively with levels of religiosity, and the United States is the only prosperous nation where the majority absolutely believes in a creator and evolutionary science is unpopular. Abundant data is available on rates of societal dysfunction and health in the first world. Cross-national comparisons of highly differing rates of religiosity and societal conditions form a mass epidemiological experiment that can be used to test whether high rates of belief in and worship of a creator are necessary for high levels of social health. Data correlations show that in almost all regards the highly secular democracies consistently enjoy low rates of societal dysfunction, while pro-religious and anti-evolution America performs poorly."

That, to me, indicates he did little to consider contributing factors when making the comparison...maybe when I finish the paper I'll find I'm incorrect. But, having a pretty well founded bit of experience with abstracts (given I pull data for docs and then review the abstracts based on that data for data accuracy as part of my job), I'm thinking he would have at least mentioned that consideration in passing.

[Mr. Dick Purple]

Anything in the wrold that has inted to be used in porpuse of good has its evil side, therefore everything it's also bad, so I think more than benefits to society it's to question what can we do for society to work without blaming any outside effect. 

[Buddy J.B.]

There's no point of these threads, there have already been thousands of them made. I don't give a damn what "Times online" thinks, they're a bunch of degenerate-scumbags that need to get a life.

[Prometheus]

lol spic

[Axls Locomotive]

There's no point of these threads, there have already been thousands of them made. I don't give a damn what "Times online" thinks, they're a bunch of degenerate-scumbags that need to get a life.

if there was no point in this thread then you wouldnt have posted YOUR point...you posted so there must be a point in you posting, therefore the thread does have a point...if you get my point

[Dr. Blutarsky]

I am not making any particular point in my response.

Thank You 

[lynn1961]

Sounds like a lot of bullshit to me.  However.... and how do I say this?  I love America, but I think, as a whole, we're really "uptight" about stuff, probably based on religious mores.  I think that sometimes that causes more rebellion.  There's a lot of fundamentalist mentality in our country and, truthfully, I think that fucks people up.  I believe in God, but there's so many man-made rules within religious institutions, and strict rules, that make no sense to me.  Maybe I'm more of a "60's hippie freak".        I believe in "free your mind" and "love one another".    There's so much prejudice and hate, in the name of the Bible.   

[Where is Hassan Nasrallah ?]

i think religious beliefs are important for a society.
they are what structured our world.
i dont think we wouldt have achieved that without gods, but it helped and made it faster.


and... relilgion is usually just an escuse for the atrocities.
god is just an escuse for al quaida.
god was an escuse for the inquisition.

in the end we fight for simple reasons : hatred of the other, money, survival, power ....

it could be god, like it could be capture the flag.

[pilferk]

The more I read of this guys paper, the more it becomes apparent that his paper is coming up with false correlations.

He leaves out things like differences in government, law, population size, density and diversity, and a whole host of other factors that are quite different between the US and the countries he compares us to.  His only data point seems to be the religious penetration in, really, our educational system mostly (the creationism/evolution debate).  And even that data is making some far flung leaps of logic.

Quite frankly.....IMHO, not great research.  There's no real way to isolate the "cause" that he's asserting is creating the effect, nor is he taking into account other, ancillary, connections.

[Walk]

Saudi Arabia has very low crime. They cut the hands off of criminals! 

[Where is Hassan Nasrallah ?]

Saudi Arabia has very low crime. They cut the hands off of criminals! 

too bad we don't cut the head off of stupid people :ok:

[Axls Locomotive]

Saudi Arabia has very low crime. They cut the hands off of criminals! 

too bad we don't cut the head off of stupid people :ok:

  you literally walked right into that one

[Walk]

Hey, you know what they call me... 

[Queen of Everything]

I think it depends which god.