Religion = morality brought into question in social scientist's paper

[Zodiak]

mmmh, this is interesting:

"Without god - there is no ethical behaviour. Without god - there are no social bonds. The more secularization - the more the loss of ethics, the more crime & social decline." That's a belief that seems to get more and more popular today in the US. But is there a correlation?

The attached paper was written by Gregory S. Paul - a paleontologist who put aside his dinosaur bones because he got upset that no social scientist ever went to investigate wether or not there is a correlation between a religous society and a functioning society. And? Well, bad news for the bible thumpers...

"the US is the only prosperous first world nation to retain rates of religiosity otherwise limited to the second and third worlds" and
"the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy that retains high homicide rates,"

Also "A few hundred years ago rates of homicide were astronomical in Christian Europe and the American colonies. In all secular developing democracies a centuries long-term trend has seen homicide rates drop to historical lows"

On the sex front "The two main curable STDs have been nearly eliminated in strongly secular Scandinavia" whereas in the US "rates of adolescent gonorrhea infection remain six to three hundred times higher"

The article was written to stimulate social scientists to study this question in detail. Wonder if NIH under Bush would be allowed to fund this?

Enjoy the read!


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

[Hobarticus]

1. I'd LOVE to see "religion=morality"...

Sounds like a great idea! When can we start?

[Zenlitened]

2. The really talented religionists will find a way to argue...

... that there is no causality between religion and crime or disease... but that religion is the solution to all society's problems.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

3. If religion were the solution

we'd be in good shape by now, because we sure have tried a lot of them.

[cloud_chaser1]

4. LOOK AT THE PRISONS

In almost every single prison in this country , the majority of inmates either weat crosses or crucifixes on chains around their neck or tattooed on their arms, chests, backs, etc. They all claim to be Christians and if thats true, one would expect that they have studied the tenets of the Christian religion and follow them.

If they are Christians and follow the rules, what the hell are they doing behind bars? I think that the idea that being "forgiven" clears your sins away, is considered by far too many, a free pass to do whatever the hell you want and still get away with it. One Christian I talked to described the idea of Jesus dying for the sins of the world, as including not only sins committed in the past but all those sins you have not yet committed.

So, what does that tell you?

[Zodiak]

8. Just understand that not...

all prisoners in jail are in it for breaking one of the ten commandments, that is, unless I missed the one that says "thou shall not partake in illegal substances."

Our prisons are filled to the brim with drug offenders.

[NVMojo]

5. crock of shit. I was not raised with religion in my early years

and I distinctly knew right from wrong right away. It didn't take going to church to learn it. I don't go to church now. I have a conscience. Is this idiot saying I have to go to church to develop a conscience and have empathy for others? Give me a break.

[tocqueville]

7. he means exactly the contrary, read the text n/t

[Zodiak]

9. Read the paper

he (Paul) says just the opposite. In fact, the coutries that become the most secular tend to have less crime. He does not say that having religion is causative, but it is correlative.

This is ammo for our side, not some Dobson rant.

[tocqueville]

6. conclusion : is the US "model" a failure ?

<18> 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 (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. Youth suicide is an exception to the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular factors. No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developed democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes outstandingly so.

<19> If the data showed that the U.S. enjoyed higher rates of societal health than the more secular, pro-evolution democracies, then the opinion that popular belief in a creator is strongly beneficial to national cultures would be supported. Although they are by no means utopias, the populations of secular democracies are clearly able to govern themselves and maintain societal cohesion. Indeed, the data examined in this study demonstrates that only the more secular, pro-evolution democracies have, for the first time in history, come closest to achieving practical “cultures of life” that feature low rates of lethal crime, juvenile-adult mortality, sex related dysfunction, and even abortion. The least theistic secular developed democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards.

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

[Zodiak]

10. Thanks for highlighting the conclusion

A colleague of mine sent me this article today (pdf version) and I just had to toss it up on DU for general commentary.

I have also noticed (because I had to provide a link to the text, so I searched it on Goggle) that there are a LOT of sites where the right-wingers have tried their hand in debunking this study. Of course, there is selective data, accusations of bias, and, of course, smear jobs.

I have seen no one on the left examine this paper in the first few links I found.

So I figured no one here has seen it before.

[tocqueville]

16. there is no "debunking" to do...

since I have been discussing those matters separately, it's a fact :

- that the US are beating all other comparable countries regarding crime, all categories (check nationmaster)
it's the same regarding the other named factors

- that the most theistic western nation is the US. The next comparable are Ireland and Poland. Even is the crime rate is lower there, abortion rights are a real problem, at least on Ireland. The result is that the girls go to the UK to be aborted en masse.

an interesting aspect in those comparisons (not discussed here) is the "care factor" : secular societies will tend to elaborate secular social systems to take care of the poor, elderly, the sick, victims of disaster. They won't send the people to the Red Cross or to Church charity, in the FIRST PLACE since those are only complements (welcomed, but still complements). This is a far more efficient system, which the Katrina (etc...) relief shows. At the same time taking care of the disabled is a central Christian value.. Which for me is a sign of utter hypocrisy.

Besides the secular solutions are based on taxes and public services. It gives a feeling of SOLIDARITY and COHESION to the community : everybody is paying a little for everybodys welfare. Of course everybody is whining that they pay too much, but it's mostly because they think that the state isn't using the money efficiently, not on the principle in itself.

thank you for finding that study, because I think it's central to the US future :

1) or the US keeps the actual system and the problems will go on. In case of a major catastrophy or economic crisis, the suffering will be enormous. For exemple Mississipi has gone back partly to 3rd world level.

2) or the US tends to come nearer the secular European model

this should be CENTRAL for a strategic Democrat approach. What worries me is that the secular libertarian philosophy on the left (and even on the right) tend to be in practice the fundies accomplice, under a mystical smokescreen of "individual freedom"...

Many political thinkers in Europe today are fearing that after the Bush period the US will evolve by reaction into an isolationistic society still basically relying on religion as a primary philosophy.

[Zodiak]

11. Here is a powerful statement....with citations

Conclusion

<20> The United States’ deep social problems are all the more disturbing because the nation enjoys exceptional per capita wealth among the major western nations (Barro and McCleary; Kasman; PEW; UN Development Programme, 2000, 2004). Spending on health care is much higher as a portion of the GDP and per capita, by a factor of a third to two or more, than in any other developed democracy (UN Development Programme, 2000, 2004). The U.S. is therefore the least efficient western nation in terms of converting wealth into cultural and physical health. Understanding the reasons for this failure is urgent, and doing so requires considering the degree to which cause versus effect is responsible for the observed correlations between social conditions and religiosity versus secularism. It is therefore hoped that this initial look at a subject of pressing importance will inspire more extensive research on the subject. Pressing questions include the reasons, whether theistic or non-theistic, that the exceptionally wealthy U.S. is so inefficient that it is experiencing a much higher degree of societal distress than are less religious, less wealthy prosperous democracies. Conversely, how do the latter achieve superior societal health while having little in the way of the religious values or institutions? There is evidence that within the U.S. strong disparities in religious belief versus acceptance of evolution are correlated with similarly varying rates of societal dysfunction, the strongly theistic, anti-evolution south and mid-west having markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the northeast where societal conditions, secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms (Aral and Holmes; Beeghley, Doyle, 2002). It is the responsibility of the research community to address controversial issues and provide the information that the citizens of democracies need to chart their future courses.

[mainer]

12. interesting URL. Creighton's a Jesuit college!

Thanks for posting this.

[SharonAnn]

15. Hey, that's my school! Just got my alumni magazine yesterday.

Bluejays rule!

[sendero]

13. I didn't need a study..

... to tell me that religious people are no more moral (and often less so in my anecdotal experience) than atheists, agnostics, freethinkers.

Too many people just see religion as a get-out-of-jail-free card I'm afraid, or they profess to believe in something that they make no effort to practice.

I've actually had someone say to me "well I'm doing it as an insurance policy", as if god is going to accept your false pretenses over what is in your heart.

Imagine...

[AX10]

14. Here's a quote:

" 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 (Figures 1-9). The most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a “shining city on the hill” to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. Youth suicide is an exception to the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular factors. No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developed democracies."