Belief in God makes Society Worse Off?
There’s an interesting new study out suggesting that Societies are worse off ‘when they have God on their side’. Why might that be? I suspect that the study will be controversial. And it may be refined. (i.e. what other things are going on that may correlate stronger) However it often does seem that religious communities want to pretend that problems aren’t present that are. Or worse hide problems rather than dealing with them so as to make it appear they are outwardly religious. It was a problem oft mentioned in the New Testament and I suspect is a problem all peoples face.
Religious people tend also to prejudice certain “moral” values over others (like social justice). It’s easy to preach hell fire against sinners; much harder to right some of society’s most pressing ills (poverty).
Comment by Ronan — September 27, 2005 @ 4:50 pm
1. It’s easy to preach hell fire against sinners; much harder to right some of society’s most pressing ills (poverty).
And then we have this regarding sin and poverty:
(D&C 49:20)
Comment by manaen — September 27, 2005 @ 5:06 pm
But come on, the study seems to claim that there is a link between higher murder rates in the US than in Britain and American religiosity.
As Jesse pointed out on the other thread, the Times Online article ignores the fact that there is a difference between correlation and causation.
Perhaps the allegedly higher dysfunctionality rate of American society as described in the report is solely attributable to non-believers in the US. As illogical and unlikely as that sounds, it seems as likely as what the article implies the study is saying, i.e. that a belief in God is actually detrimental to society.
Comment by john fowles — September 27, 2005 @ 5:08 pm
Granted, I haven’t read the actual study, but if that article is even remotely acurate, the study is pure crap. What sort of experimental design could they cook up to produce such lunacy? Note to self: this is why I studied chemistry.
Comment by J. Stapley — September 27, 2005 @ 7:35 pm
J. Stapley and John Fowles: there could absolutely be any number of explanations for the correlation they discuss. In a comparison among developed countries, anything distinctively American will always correlate with high murder rates. So religiosity does, but so does watching American football, owning SUVs, not believing in evolution, not believing in global warming, etc. Causation is impossible to trace out here.
Comment by RoastedTomatoes — September 27, 2005 @ 7:47 pm
The vocabulary lesson for today: ecological fallacy.
Comment by Jared — September 27, 2005 @ 8:14 pm
The problem is whether you can correlate it with changes. That is as say Italy’s religiosity changes, do other changes come with it? As particular states change, do other things change. The problem with even that is that what changes religiosity is typically changing many other things. i.e. why do people become less religious?
It does seem a difficult thing to figure out. And of course the MSM isn’t exactly the best place to look to a solution. But I did think it thought provoking.
Comment by Clark Goble — September 27, 2005 @ 8:40 pm
BTW anyone interested in the actual study can read it here.
Comment by Clark Goble — September 27, 2005 @ 8:49 pm
Oh, and Pharyngula has a good discussion as well. I do think it fair to ask why places even within the US that are so religious are simultaneously so screwed up. I don’t mean Utah. I mean places like Louisiana, Mississippi and so forth. Shouldn’t religion, properly lived, at least lead to people finding solutions to these issues?
Comment by Clark Goble — September 27, 2005 @ 8:52 pm
Clark: Shouldn’t religion, properly lived, at least lead to people finding solutions to these issues?
hmmm…not much of a historical precedent, I think. If I had to guess about causation, I would say that the poorest parts states are the most religious. Economic depression translates into poor education, crime, drug use, obesity, etc. Consequently, I think that one could reasonable infer that religiousity causes obesity.
Comment by J. Stapley — September 27, 2005 @ 9:39 pm
I think this ties into John F.’s post. Economically developed cmmunities are generally less religious, less obese, safer…and have smaller birth rates.
Comment by J. Stapley — September 27, 2005 @ 9:41 pm
One might also say that those who are comfortable have less reason to be religious. The old Nephite cycle. We see it on our missions also. Where are you likely to be more successful? Among the rich or the comfortable middle class? Or those with troubles in their life. It seems that as we are comfortable we’re quick to forget God.
Comment by Clark Goble — September 27, 2005 @ 9:47 pm
Just to complicate things, the Times also reported last week that “[v]iolent crime has doubled in Scotland over the past 20 years to a level comparable with crime-ridden cities such as Rio de Janeiro.”
“According to the UN study, 3% of Scots had been victims of assault. The second highest figure was recorded in England and Wales at 2.8%, compared with 2% in America and 0.1% in Japan.”
Scotland must be getting religion.
The scatter plots in the Paul report don’t show much other than that the U.S. is an unusually religious nation. Nearly all of the plots show unorganized clouds of data with the U.S. at one end for some problems (homicide) and in the middle for others (suicide). A couple plots that did indicate interesting correlations across many nations were Figures 4 and 7, which show an increase in child mortality and youth abortions with increasing belief in God and church attendence.
Comment by John Mansfield — September 28, 2005 @ 7:59 am
The study findings are problematic for me because they totally contradict my personal experience and observation. I don’t know where these people gathered their data, but it obviously was not from the places where I have lived.
It may be that Utah is a strange exception. As far as I know, crime statistics in this place are very low, and “religiousity” would score very high. The only figure I could see that might be an issue is teen pregnancy. I can imagine why this particular datum was regarded as a “quality of life” indicator. Perhaps it would be more significant to correlate with the number of unwed mothers, though I can see that the study was biased against expressing their criteria in terms that religious people would be more familiar and comfortable with, in favor of “secular” terms more fitting to academics.
Comment by Jim Cobabe — September 29, 2005 @ 1:25 pm
While the results of this study don’t really “prove” much of anything, it certainly does “disprove” the idea put forth by so many religionists that atheism and agnosticism inevitably lead to immorality and chaos. Surely this study argues fairly persuasively against that.
Comment by Jeffrey Giliam — October 19, 2005 @ 3:10 pm