Comments on: Belief in God makes Society Worse Off?

By: Jeffrey Giliam

Jeffrey Giliam — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 20:10:44 +0000

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.

By: Jim Cobabe

Jim Cobabe — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 18:25:55 +0000

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.

By: John Mansfield

John Mansfield — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 12:59:18 +0000

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.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 02:47:05 +0000

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.

By: J. Stapley

J. Stapley — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 02:41:11 +0000

I think this ties into John F.’s post. Economically developed cmmunities are generally less religious, less obese, safer…and have smaller birth rates.

By: J. Stapley

J. Stapley — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 02:39:31 +0000

Clark: Shouldnâ€™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.