Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'

[denny]

Interesting article from last September, which I ran across while looking up information about crime statistics in various countries:

"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."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1798944,00.html

Comments

[denari.livejournal.com]

I don't like organised religion, but it does seem to me that the study is a bit unfair. It seems to be comparing rates of homicide and the rest in the UK Vs US which are higher in the US. Then because they have more christians in the US that equates to the fact that religion causes higher rates of bad stuff? It seems a tenuous step to state that it's religion's fault. Guns might have more of an effect, and the fact that there are more isolated areas (hillbilly country) where you're cutoff from the larger society.

[bluecassandra.livejournal.com]

If you do Psychology at uni, they beat into you that "Correlation doe snot imply causation".
Which is a really quick way of scoffing at these things.

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion

Christian-endorsed abstinence-only "education" strikes again…

[denari.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, I'd forgotten they were crazy enough to think condoms are a bad idea...

[mooism.livejournal.com]

If the correlation is true (I share denari’s scepticism) I would expect it to be caused by Bad Things In Life prompting people to get religious.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

That's an interesting point. Somebody else has already pointed out where a lot of the issues they were focussing on are coming from though, the fallout from 'abstinence only' sex education is fairly obvious as cause and effect goes.

[fellcat.livejournal.com]

'abstinence only' sex education

Nononono, the quotes go the other way around: abstinence only "sex education".

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

I think I remember some discussions of this a few months ago, when the report came out. IIRC, it boiled down to the US being an outlier on both religion and murder,STDs, etc, and that skewing all the figures. So shows that the USA is unusual in various ways, but not really strong evidence on the effects of religion.

Can't remember where I saw the report being picked apart - might have been crooked timber (http://www.crookedtimber.org/), but I'm too lazy to go look.