NationStates Jolt Archive

As reported in The Times today, this article from the Journal of Religion and Society: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf

Well worth taking the time to read it, and examine the graphs closely.

Basically, all the technologically advanced 'Western' nations were compared on a range of criteria, such as prevalence of violence, STDs, abortions, life expectancy, etc, and were assessed for their societies' belief in God, frequency of religious observance, acceptance of Evolution, and so on.

And the result?

Secular societies are in no way more dysfunctional than religious ones. In fact, on numerous indicators, the reverse is the case - the more moralistic the society, the greater the social dysfunction. America scored particularly badly across the board.

Essentially this buries the argument that secularism is amoral.

America has a higher crime-rate then Europe and its population is generally more religious. What dumbass didn’t already know that?

Tactical Grace, I hereby give you a Royal Title to all the Cookies in the Land.

*hands Tactical Grace a Royal Title to all the Cookies in the Land*

I think it's official that Greenlander needs to see this, being the primary source of NS's threads about the decay of society because of declining religious virtue.

Please note a minor problem in the summary:

<snip> Secular societies are in no way more dysfunctional than religious ones. In fact, on numerous indicators, the reverse is the case - the more moralistic the society, the greater the social dysfunction. America scored particularly badly across the board.

Essentially this buries the argument that secularism is amoral.

Actually it nicely proves the opposite:

That Secularisim is neither Moral nor Immoral, but Amoral meaning that, by definition somthing which does not hold to any particular Religion's vision of Morality cannot have any "moral" (or "immoral") qualities whatsoever - that's up to the individual Believer.

So, in short: Secular Society is nicely amoral, but also nicely humanistically Ethical - meaning it is not totally f*cked up and wanting to kill everybody elsefor being "Immoral".

Happy Dancing will commence! :D

Wow. So out of any number of the numerous legal, cultural, political and demographic differences between the U.S., England and Scandinavia.. someone decided religion was the cause of our higher crime rate, based on gallup polls..

Am I supposed to be impressed or something?

Wow. So out of any number of the numerous legal, cultural, political and demographic differences between the U.S., England and Scandinavia.. someone decided religion was the cause of our higher crime rate, based on gallup polls..

Am I supposed to be impressed or something?
No. This just disproves the hypothesis that you have to be religious to be moral.

Wow. So out of any number of the numerous legal, cultural, political and demographic differences between the U.S., England and Scandinavia.. someone decided religion was the cause of our higher crime rate, based on gallup polls..

Am I supposed to be impressed or something?
Exactly. Just because two factors exist at the same time, it doesn’t mean one is responsible for the other.

No. This just disproves the hypothesis that you have to be religious to be moral.

Perhaps if they had interviewed felons, and found them to be more religious than the average citizen, they may have something there. But crime tends to occur among a relatively small percentage of a society, who usually have multiple arrests to their credit.. It's possible that a secular county would have a smaller base of felons.. it's equally possible to have a largely-churchgoing country with an active criminal underground. But the study doesn't address this, does it?

although my personal opinion is also that a religious belief is not necessary for social stability,
and acknowledging that i couldn't open the lin and have therefore not read the article,

i still want to note the following:

i belief that it is highly questionable to try to make the degree of secularism the only factor for moral stability in a country, as your introduction implies the article to do.

i think that many other factors, such as (the non-religious parts of) culture,history,the society's structue, etc etc etc. i think those are more important than the mere question of religion.

Wow. So out of any number of the numerous legal, cultural, political and demographic differences between the U.S., England and Scandinavia.. someone decided religion was the cause of our higher crime rate, based on gallup polls..

Did you read the thread title? He said there was no link between religion and social stability. That means that he is not blaming religion for America's high crime rate. Especially when irresponsible capitalism and irresponsible gun ownership are obviously the causes. ;)

Did you read the thread title? He said there was no link between religion and social stability. That means that he is not blaming religion for America's high crime rate. Especially when irresponsible capitalism and irresponsible gun ownership are obviously the causes. ;)

The author of the study decided to study religion specifically, and only religion.. so.. why conduct an entire study linking religion to crime if you didn't believe in more than a simple corellation? And why fail to list religious nations like Greece, which has a low crimerate, or focus on the U.S, which is an outlier for any number of reasons( and where atheists and theists trust evolution at the same rate somehow, by their numbers)? In any case, I have no beef with the OP, just the premise of the study.

As reported in The Times today, this article from the Journal of Religion and Society: http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2005-11.pdf

Well worth taking the time to read it, and examine the graphs closely.

Basically, all the technologically advanced 'Western' nations were compared on a range of criteria, such as prevalence of violence, STDs, abortions, life expectancy, etc, and were assessed for their societies' belief in God, frequency of religious observance, acceptance of Evolution, and so on.

And the result?

Secular societies are in no way more dysfunctional than religious ones. In fact, on numerous indicators, the reverse is the case - the more moralistic the society, the greater the social dysfunction. America scored particularly badly across the board.

Essentially this buries the argument that secularism is amoral.
ahahahahahaha!

http://www.hlj.me.uk/good%20good.gif


nice one TG :cool:

The author of the study decided to study religion specifically, and only religion.. so.. why conduct an entire study linking religion to crime if you didn't believe in more than a simple corellation? And why fail to list religious nations like Greece, which has a low crimerate, or focus on the U.S, which is an outlier for any number of reasons( and where atheists and theists trust evolution at the same rate somehow, by their numbers)? In any case, I have no beef with the OP, just the premise of the study.
Read the study :D

Did you read the thread title? He said there was no link between religion and social stability. That means that he is not blaming religion for America's high crime rate. Especially when irresponsible capitalism and irresponsible gun ownership are obviously the causes

objection, your honor.

the study seems to say that their is no positive, proportional correlation bewteen religion and social stability.

but at least tactical grace's last paragraph
In fact, on numerous indicators, the reverse is the case - the more moralistic the society, the greater the social dysfunction.
indicated that the study drew the conclusion that there is a negative, anti-proportional correlation, therewith establishing a link between the two.

The author of the study decided to study religion specifically, and only religion.. so.. why conduct an entire study linking religion to crime if you didn't believe in more than a simple corellation?

because people like to claim that religiousity has a positive social impact on a culture, and that seemed like a statement worth testing?

And why fail to list religious nations like Greece

Because they already had a G for their chart - Germany.

I guess.

The author of the study decided to study religion specifically, and only religion.. so.. why conduct an entire study linking religion to crime if you didn't believe in more than a simple corellation?
Perhaps because other people do? Such as the people who claim that religious societies are better?

Because they already had a G for their chart - Germany.

I guess.

Okay this will be random and off topic, but I have to know. Did you pick your nation name because of a wierd book about a kid seeing a shrink because he thinks a horse named Equus is God? I recall something about Straw Law?

Perhaps I'm insane. But I'm also quite curious. :p

The guys own links don't agree with him. Suicide rates, The most secular, the highest, the most religious (Catholics in Central and South America) the lowest. America and Canada, right in the middle.

http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicideprevent/en/index.html

This guy went out of his way to write an essay of opinion, and then tried to back it up with vague data tables and references to data that do not say what he says it does.

Overall, a waste of my time reading it. He referenced this one, but he must not have read it...

http://www.americanvalues.org/ExSumm-print.pdf

America has a higher crime-rate then Europe and its population is generally more religious. What dumbass didn’t already know that?

Actually, the notion of a higher American crime rate is largely (though not entirely) myth.

I should point out that I am atheist, and I agree with the general argument of this article. I only criticize relatively minor specifics.

In particular, I want to criticize the notion that America has a higher crime rate (overall) than Europe. America actually has a lower rate of property crime (burglary, robbery, etc.) than most developed/developing European countries, and we have similar rates of violent crime, including murders not committed with a gun.

In other words, we have the same number of stabbings and other murders. Then we have about seven times more murders with a gun. The analysis seems to point to the combination of gun-availability and a gun-culture in America as a cause. (It is not clear that these murderers would simply find another weapon if guns were not available... but it is no more clear that they would not.)

Thus, it seems unlikely that our higher rate of "murders by gun" is related to our religiosity, while other types of violent crime are relatively constant across similar countries, and property crimes are actually lower in the United States.

Source: Lynch, James. "Crime in International Perspective." In James Q. Wilson and Joan Petersilia, Crime: Public Policies for Crime Control, pp. 5-42.

Interesting... it's a start, but I agree with the author that much more research does need to be done in order to fully understand if there is or is not a correlation. I will say that a devloped religion with a moral code is not needed to have a moral society, that part seems self evident in any case.

Perhaps if they had interviewed felons, and found them to be more religious than the average citizen, they may have something there. But crime tends to occur among a relatively small percentage of a society, who usually have multiple arrests to their credit.. It's possible that a secular county would have a smaller base of felons.. it's equally possible to have a largely-churchgoing country with an active criminal underground. But the study doesn't address this, does it?

There have already been polls like that: atheists make up a disproportionately low percentage of convicted criminals.

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 developing 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 developing democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes
outstandingly so.

Colour me unsurprised.

<snip>
Overall, a waste of my time reading it. <snip>
Colour me unsurprised. Obviously not enough biblical citations to make it worthwhile hrm?