Is religion healthy for society?

"Religious theists will commonly insist that religion generally, and their religion in particular, are necessary for a healthy and happy society. Some will even go so far as to claim that a secular society which is not founded on religious mythology is one where people don't have enough reasons to be good. These theists are just guessing, though; real research indicates that exactly the opposite is true.

A few hundred years ago rates of homicide were astronomical in Christian Europe and the American colonies (Beeghley; R. Lane). In all secular developed democracies a centuries long-term trend has seen homicide rates drop to historical lows. The especially low rates in the more Catholic European states are statistical noise due to yearly fluctuations incidental to this sample, and are not consistently present in other similar tabulations (Barcley and Tavares).

Despite a significant decline from a recent peak in the 1980s (Rosenfeld), the U.S. is the only prosperous democracy that retains high homicide rates, making it a strong outlier in this regard (Beeghley; Doyle, 2000). Similarly, theistic Portugal also has rates of homicides well above the secular developed democracy norm. Mass student murders in schools are rare, and have subsided somewhat since the 1990s, but the U.S. has experienced many more (National School Safety Center) than all the secular developed democracies combined.

Other prosperous democracies do not significantly exceed the U.S. in rates of nonviolent and in non-lethal violent crime (Beeghley; Farrington and Langan; Neapoletan), and are often lower in this regard. The United States exhibits typical rates of youth suicide (WHO), which show little if any correlation with theistic factors in the prosperous democracies. The positive correlation between pro-theistic factors and juvenile mortality is remarkable, especially regarding absolute belief, and even prayer.

Life spans tend to decrease as rates of religiosity rise, especially as a function of absolute belief. Denmark is the only exception. Unlike questionable small-scale epidemiological studies by Harris et al. and Koenig and Larson, higher rates of religious affiliation, attendance, and prayer do not result in lower juvenile-adult mortality rates on a cross-national basis.

Source: Journal of Religion & Society

If all this weren't bad enough from the perspective of religious theists, there is one additional factor: strong social health correlates not just with low religiosity, but also high rates of acceptance of evolution:

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 most theistic prosperous democracy, the U.S., is exceptional, but not in the manner Franklin predicted. The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developed democracies, sometimes spectacularly so, and almost always scores poorly. The view of the U.S. as a ?shining city on the hill? to the rest of the world is falsified when it comes to basic measures of societal health. Youth suicide is an exception to the general trend because there is not a significant relationship between it and religious or secular factors.

No democracy is known to have combined strong religiosity and popular denial of evolution with high rates of societal health. Higher rates of non-theism and acceptance of human evolution usually correlate with lower rates of dysfunction, and the least theistic nations are usually the least dysfunctional. None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction. In some cases the highly religious U.S. is an outlier in terms of societal dysfunction from less theistic but otherwise socially comparable secular developed democracies. In other cases, the correlations are strongly graded, sometimes outstandingly so.

It's certainly not the case that there is a direct link between acceptance of evolution and better social health; instead, it's more likely that there is a close link between acceptance of science and better social health. More acceptance of science, which means a healthier understanding of reality, will for example incline people to adopt better and more effective measures to fight STDs. They will support education and contraceptives, not faith-based abstinence education that place ideology and wishful thinking ahead of rational, scientific programs.

The study points out that there are not only no exceptions ? none at all ? to the negative correlation between theism and acceptance of evolution, but also that there are no significant religious revival movements in nations where acceptance of evolution is high. The authors conclude from this that it may not be possible in practice to combine high rates of religious belief with high rates of acceptance of evolutionary science, even if the two are not necessarily contradictory.

I would go further and suggest that what may not be possible in practice is a combination of high rates of religiosity with high rates of acceptance of science generally. There's nothing special about evolution itself except that it appears to conflict with particular religious beliefs. All of science does this, however, just not in ways that are as immediate or as easily exploitable by religious demagogues. Evolution is thus perhaps a bit like a canary in the mine: if it comes under attack, that's a sign that science generally is threatened.

I see a lot of misunderstandings and errors about atheism and atheists all over the net. People don't understand what atheism is, what the definition of atheism is, or the difference between atheism and agnosticism. People claim that atheism is a religion, that it requires faith, that it's a form of denial, that there are no real atheists, and that there are no atheists in foxholes. This introduction to atheism answers most of the most common questions and mistakes about atheism."





by Austin Cline ( Austin Cline, Guide for the Agnosticism / Atheism Site )