Folks of faith fail in fellowship, findings fanfare

[Twin_Star]

Finally, someone has proved statistically that thinking God’s on your side is a load of steaming supposition.

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.”

SOURCE

 

[austen27]

Would an alternative interpretation not be that there is a greater social and moral polarization in the US than in other countries? I don't imagine that American Church goers are more likely to commit crimes - I would have thought the reverse was true.

 

[Pietro_Mercurios]

Would an alternative interpretation not be that there is a greater social and moral polarization in the US than in other countries? ...

That kinda sounds like that ther Marxist dialects. That's commie talk, bub!

 

[rjmrjmrjm]

The article is rather one sided, it only quotes America for example vs Britain. What about Islamic Republics, Red China even India? Does it link with christianity or is it pertinent to other religions?

I also don't like the focus on sexual diseases as if a country with more STI's is somehow less moral than other countries. Look at poor African nations, many christian, many islamic, many pagan.

There article simply does not support itself very well, there is no link explicitly made between religion and increase in crime. Couldn't you just say that it's more likely to be the poor education (worse than britain), high consumerism and 'me me me' society (more than europe) that is just as responsible?

 

[mossy_sloth]

I also think this article is a bit skewed. Take for example, Sweden, which has a very large religious population (between 75-85% of the population belonging to the Church of Sweden depending on which website you look at) but has an extremely low crime rate. How does this fit into the above model? Surely there is more to studying the causes of crime than looking at religion as rjm points out above.

Also, how does this compare to the article on
THIS THREAD HERE
which discusses the paradox that america has such a high religious population without seemingly adhering to the tenets of christianity? Now I don't know how valid that is, but it (among other things) indicates to me that the link noted in the article above is tenuous at best.

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Again showing a relationship doesn't demonstrate a link with them (like linking the decline in pirates to the rise in global warming).

Things like murder rates are reliant on a number of factors which tend to be contingent on (often "accidental") historical factors. Greater rates of crime tend to be the result of inequality and poverty and the British welfare state tends to level this out. Equally murder and suicide rates are connected with gun ownership - this is enshrined in the US constitution hwereas guns are outlawed in the UK. This wasn't a religious decision but arose i the UK because we had a low levl of gun ownership in the first place and a series of unpleasant incidents which led to the complete ban (in what some would argue was a kneejerk politcal decision).

And the UK has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in Europe so it doesn't stand up there.

However, there have been studies to show that where abstinence is enforced young people hav sex a year or so later but they are then far more prone to not have safe sex resulting in a rise in STDs and pregnancies. So you could show a link there possibly.

Overall I am unconvinced.

 

[krobone]

Of course, consider the 'preacher's daughter' syndrome, where extreme social/sexual suppression merely whets the appetite for forbidden fruit.

Personally, I don't think religion makes a whole lot of impact on morality, either for good or ill. There are plenty of believers out there ready to sin, just as there's agnostics/atheists who are generally pretty good people.

 

[barfing_pumpkin]

Folks of faith fail in fellowship, findings fanfare

Interesting. If you note that all the non-prepositions in this title begin with the letter 'f', and that 'f' is the 6th letter of the alphabet, you get:

666 666

Sorry. Utterly pointless, I know. It's just that I'm prone to outbursts of spontaneous numerology.