NationStates Jolt Archive

And no, this is not from the Onion.

According to a study published in, believe it or not, The Journal of Religion and Society, and reported on in The London Times (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html), "belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems."

Here are some excerpts from the story:
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....

“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.
Now, there's a danger word in that quote above--correlate. It's been misused often in the past to make connections that don't exist, and so should be approached warily. However, the study does confirm some ideas I've had personally about the prevalence of STDs, and the rise in abortion rates and in teen pregnancies in areas where so-called Christian values hold sway. It's related to enforced ignorance about sexuality and biases against using contraception.
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.
We also fare very poorly when compared to other industrialized nations:
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.Bolding France to piss off the theocons among us. :D

I only found one suprising statistic:

...with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution.

I know there are some people in the US who are against Darwinism, but I never thought the majority of the country did not believe in evolution.

First of all, this is old news, we already have a couple threads on it. But, I just want to respond to one part of your post:
And no, this is not from the Onion.
The logic they use their is exactly the sort of logic you'd expect from the Onion.
"L00K R3L1G10N C4US3S G0NNOR34H!!11!"
Says one leading Scientistologist of the Department of Knowing Stuff in the University of Knowing A Whole Hell of A Lot of Stuff.
And looking over the study, it seems that all they did is say that:
The U.S. is more religious than other Western Countries
The U.S. has more shit that happens
And then decide that A + B = Forks, and therefore religion sucks. They might as well have said that having the letters U and M in your nations name makes your nation more likely to have abortionists.

It's a crock of shit.

The US has high rates of right-wingers who claim to be Christians. It rather screws the results.

It's a crock of shit.

The US has high rates of right-wingers who claim to be Christians. It rather screws the results.
My guess is that the results skew toward that segment of Christianity as well. It would be interesting to see the demographics of this--what are the percentages of STD and teen pregnancy among the self-identified evangelicals or fundamentalists, for instance, as opposed to the more liberal groups like the Unitarians or Congregationalists.

Oh, I thought this thread was about that Gerin Oil thing. Has anyone started a thread on that yet?

Religion isn't what causes the problems. It's when people use religion as an excuse for their twisted purpose that society gets screwed over.

The fact that certain groups of every religion try to force their beliefs onto others doesn't help either.

If it wasn't religion, these people would find another excuse.

Yawn. It's amazing what scientists waste their grant money on these days...

Religion isn't what causes the problems. It's when people use religion as an excuse for their twisted purpose that society gets screwed over.

The fact that certain groups of every religion try to force their beliefs onto others doesn't help either.

If it wasn't religion, these people would find another excuse.
The thing the research seems to suggest is that once you get religion out of the way, i.e., your society becomes more secular, then you have fewer of these social problems. It's not a cure-all, but there does seem to be some improvement.

Religion Causes Cancer!

New Research Argues that Religion is Harmful to Society
Shit, I could have told you that years ago. :p

Now, once the left realizes that they're making the same mistake [by merely subsituting "God" with "Society"], perhaps things will start to come along ;)

did they use any OTHER religious countries in their study? the US has its own unique problems few of which can be blamed on religion.

I don't know if including other religious countries would necessarily improve the numbers for religion as a social influence. First, the US is one of only a few, if not the only, wealthy industrialized country in which the majority care about religion so much, so in other, poorer, religious countries there will likely be high numbers on disease, crime, mortality, etc., which might be because of religion or might be just because they're poor. I think it's worth noting that the US has what I consider a very bad record on dealing with poverty, considering the general wealth of our economy. Maybe, when you can rely on society not to starve you, you don't need to call on god so much.

Also, even the wealthiest Islamic states don't have a very good reputation on public health, violence, drug use, disease, and mortality, although I haven't found any reliable statistics on those (though I haven't done a serious search).

I would have to read the study to see if there is data suggesting social problems get worse as religiosity increases.