Posted on 09/27/2005 2:30:10 PM PDT by berilhertz
September 27, 2005
The Times
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.”
I read this through a link on NRO - I would like to see how credible the religion correspondent is for the London Times publishing this without any sort of comment.
It's even more obvious the author is an idiot. What a pantload.
Not believing in God causes citizens to vote for democrats.
She's obviously pissed that God didn't make her brilliant and beautiful.
Well, look at the Jews. They're God's chosen people and you can't tell me they haven't gotten a raw deal over the centuries.
Without the belief in a god or adherence to a religion, most of those things are not considered bad or punishable. So it's a moot point.
I'll forgive the poster, since this version isn't excerpted.
yeaaaagh! Let's go back to canibalism!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1491792/posts
I see all the duplicate posts posts by the new members and I start to wonder if they know about our search feature.
The whole study embodies the logical fallacy (I forget the Latin expression) whereby the simultaneous occurrence of two events is falsely assumed to result from a causal relationship between the two events. To support its claims, the study would have to show that religious belief CAUSES the specified social problems.
Interesting. Maybe a vested interesting.
I can only imagine how thick the sheaf of left-wing associations this "researcher" has.
"The whole study embodies the logical fallacy (I forget the Latin expression) whereby the simultaneous occurrence of two events is falsely assumed to result from a causal relationship between the two events."
Post Hoc Ergo Procter Hoc -- "After this, therefore, because of this" -- Confuses cause and effect. A present observable effect is blamed on something that happened in the past with no other evidence than that one thing happened first.
Athiests are not logical, never have been, never will be.
Mmmmmm...lets see....societies that deny God....
Soviets, China, Cuba, North Korea etc...honey get the passports. We're going to Nirvana lands.
No thanks..."righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach to any people" Prov 14:34 I will take a 'One Nation Under God' always. USA was founded on Godly principles and we like it the George Washington way.
compared to . . . the Hittites? Ammonites? Canaanites?
"“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."
Oh no... you don't go there unchallenged. The above horrors occur because a society turns a deaf ear to the Creators principles. These are the fruits of a leftist, godless, secular humanist value system foisted upon us by militant liberals anything goes philosophy of destruction.
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