[Vision2020] Religion and morality

[Ralph Nielsen]

Britain

September 27, 2005

The Times (London)

Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

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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.?


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