Religion is bad for the country

[essentialsaltes]

A study just published by the Journal of Religion and Society correlates the rate of religious belief and participation with various social and societal ills among eighteen nations of the world. The author, Gregory S. Paul, a freelance scientist and scientific illustrator, describes the results of the study:

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.

Now, correlation ain't necessarily causation, and one could point to any number of other things that are unusual about America that might be alternative explanations for our extreme results: we're rich, we're fat, we're racially/ethnically mixed & stratified. But such explanations would have to also explain why other religious nations (e.g. Portugal, Italy, Spain and Ireland) also do comparatively poorly on these social yardsticks. That too could perhaps be explained away; After all, dagoes are lazy and micks are drunkards.

But we have to bend over backward just to make the religious countries come out smelling as good as the more secular countries. So I still want to send out a hearty FUCK YOU to all the people who continue to assume and proclaim that atheism leads inevitably to moral degeneracy, ill-considered movie sequels, the heartbreak of psoriasis and divine meteor strikes.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Which leads to my second thought regarding the study. What constitutes a religious society? As Kaye answered, the study seems to focus on Christianity. (I wouldn't be surprised if the study's authors are displeased with the present Bush administration and characterize our country's politics as being "too Christianized". Not that they may not be right on both counts. But the study feels too partisan.) But I'd venture to say that the abortion rate, the STD rate and other results are less in Iran, Pakistan, Kuwait, etc. Of course, these countries don't have published statistics of these things. Why? Because they are religiously controlled countries and I wouldn't be surprised if abortion was outlawed there and sex is rarely publicly talked about. Yet these are religious countries. How do these religious countries manage to have such lower rates of crime and sexual problems? They brutally punish those who break religious rules and they censor the media that is not in line with their religious values. (Though this isn't just something religions do, Communistic China, claiming an atheist bent, does the same thing.) So it seems the problems the study indicate as a result of religiosity are a small price to pay to have a heterogeneous society. "But wait!" you say, "Secular societies are able to have a homogeneous society without all the bloodshed. Its only religious homogeneity that imposes its will on the people." Perhaps, though there can't be a truly secular society. There can be secular governments, but they will constantly face the balancing act between what they see as valuable with what religious groups see as valuable. Take the example of France in its continuing problems of allowing girls to wear headscarves to school. France prides itself on being the secular society par excellence, but when faced with the head scarf issue they were forced to become insensitive to Muslim values. It seems common sense for us to just let people wear what they want to wear, but France's secularism works only because its society is secularly homogeneous. When values conflict, the French man will put aside his religious values for the secular one. That seems reasonable to him. But for the Muslim girl, the value of her headscarf is higher than the equality of the French citizen. She is following God's law, not France's. So I think there just can't BE a secular society that does not allow for religious freedom and as a result religious interaction with the government and society leading to secular values being stepped on occasionally. And as a result of that, should the study have some merit, all the resulting problems associated with religion. ---- Steven Marc Harris