2005-09-28 09:40![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
digitaldiscipline
digitaldisciplineSocieties 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.”
[link courtesy of
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jabber]
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
:)
(no subject)
;-)
(no subject)
the thing that rankles me about this, as many other things, is that mainline christianity is a totally different breed from that evangelical crap. Mind you, I consider myself evangelical, but only because christianity has a huge PR problem exacerbated by conservative evangelicals. I _agree_ with the basic premise of the article, but the way it's put together makes it look like liberal christianity is just as bad as the evangelical stuff.
What some of us are doing, as mainline christians offended by the american taliban, is trying to fight the system from within it. it would help if secular folk would stand with us, because we would gladly stand with them if they managed to triumph without us. I don't think they can, though. Progressive people of faith are in an ironically damned middle, damned by the conservatives for not checking our brain at the door on the way into church, and damned by the secular left for not checking our faith at the door when we leave.
(no subject)
It is presented more stridently than is probably necessary, but, and I think you'll agree, stridency is the only tone of voice the conservative evangelicals are usually capable of using (if they hear it when it's directed their way, I will be moderately surprised).
The idiots get all the attention - as far as I can tell, the only expedient to changing that is a wholesale idiotectomy, because the grassroots thing doesn't change their minds, it only makes them more stubborn.
(no subject)
you are full of good words-of-the-day!!!
(no subject)
(no subject)
"Fuckbath" fits it perfectly...
-A33
(no subject)