Times Debunks Religion

TheTimes of London is showcasing a new study suggesting that religion has no good social effects:

"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."

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


In the same vein, a letter to the editor of the Toronto Star once made me laugh. It was a psychiatrist arguing that religion caused mental illness. His evidence was that the mentally ill were uncommonly likely to be religious. He proposed that religion should be suppressed as a preventative measure.

But the same evidence equally proves that psychiatry causes mental illness. The mentally ill are also uncommonly likely to be seeing a psychiatrist.

This latest study seems to me to work the same way. If I were living in a place with high rates of homicide, STD, and early adult mortality, it would probably inspire me to be more religious too. But it hardly follows that the people who are out killing each other or getting STDs are the religious.

So these findings are consistent with the thesis that religion causes social problems in about the same sense that aspirin causes headaches.

There are a lot of other problems with the study in detail: for example, the author correlates “being religious” with a literal interpretation of the Bible and with opposition to the theory of evolution. These have nothing to do with religiosity for anyone outside a fairly narrow range of Protestantism, and definitely are not meaningful for, say, a Buddhist in Japan. (Yet Japan is included in his study, accordingly, as a “secular” nation.)

As to the question at issue, whether religion has desirable social effects, I doubt it is possible to amass enough evidence to make a compelling case either way. Humans are too complex; it is not possible to eliminate other variables. But, if it were not intuitively obvious that religion does promote social cohesion and well-being, there are suggestive examples from history. How did heretofore insignificant Arab culture suddenly emerge in the sixth century to conquer half the world? How did despised Christianity rapidly conquer the Roman Empire? How have the Jews survived without a country for two thousand years?

And, as a rough and ready measure of the results of atheism and materialism versus religious faith, how do the stats on suicide, mortality, abortion, STDs, and so forth measure up between Western and Eastern Europe, the latter having been until recently officially atheist?

You tell me.


The Heritage Foundation claims:

- Churchgoers are more likely to be married, less likely to be divorced or single, and more likely to manifest high levels of satisfaction in marriage.

- Church attendance is the most important predictor of marital stability and happiness.

- The regular practice of religion helps poor persons move out of poverty.

- Regular religious practice generally inoculates individuals against a host of social problems, including suicide, drug abuse, out-of-wedlock births, crime, and divorce.

- The regular practice of religion also encourages such beneficial effects on mental health as less depression (a modern epidemic), more self-esteem, and greater family and marital happiness.

- In repairing damage caused by alcoholism, drug addiction, and marital breakdown, religious belief and practice are a major source of strength and recovery.

- Regular practice of religion is good for personal physical health: It increases longevity, improves one's chances of recovery from illness, and lessens the incidence of many killer diseases.

Footnoted at:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Religion/BG1064.cfm