Is religion harmful to society?
My point of view on religion is pretty clear: I’m an atheist, and I have some fairly strong feelings against organized religion, especially the people who lead organized religious cults, as well as the more ardent followers. However, due to my personal history, it’s easy to discount my point of view as simple ’sour grapes’. What’s not so easy to discount, however, is independent scientific study.
A recent study on religion and society, titled: Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health
with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous
Democracies, claims a strong correlation between influence from major organized religions on society and an increase in the rate of homicide, STD’s, teen pregnancy, etc.
Here’s a few short quotes from a commentary on the study:
“… To summarize it, a study in the Journal of Religion and Society compared religious belief in eighteen democracies (measured by how many of its citizens express absolute belief in God, how often they pray, and how often they attend church, etc.) with indicators of how well those societies function (as measured by rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion, child mortality, etc.).
The researcher, Gregory S. Paul, found a striking correlation, that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics.
And the good old United States is the outlier in both categories, the US “which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of atheists and agnostics) – also has by far the highest levels of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.”
…
But the study does seem to thoroughly debunk the widely-held and often-repeated notion that religion is necessary for a good society. In paragraphs 3 through 8 of the study, Paul refers to a number of political figures, from Joe Lieberman to Pope Benedict XVI to Tom DeLay, all of them singing the same tune: that belief in God is the prerequisite for a civil society. Paul shows that notion is utterly, provably false.
Why the Pope would promote religion is obvious. Whether Lieberman and DeLay are simply pandering to their audience, or trying to actively preserve a voting bloc that will respond to authority rather than reason, I’m not qualified to say.”
Now, there’s a whole bunch of criticisms that have been leveled at the report, so let’s hit those quickly before the fundamentalist apologists show up:
- The author of the study is dinosaur paleontologist rather than a sociologist: a fair criticism, but easily factored out by examining his methodology rather than his resume
- The study does not explain the correlation: of course not, and it never set out to do that. The study simply shows that a correlation exists.
Let’s talk, instead, about what we do see in the study: there’s a correlation between religiousness and social dysfunction. What does this mean? It could mean any one of a number of things:
- Religion causes homicide, STD’s, abortion, and child mortality. (I know, I know, but bear with me here)
- That people who experience this sort of thing tend to turn to religion more often than those who do not.
- That there is a separate, common cause that underlies both rising violence and religious impulses.
Any one of these things, or several others, is possible. The point is, we don’t quite know yet. But what this study does show is that there’s something here that definitely deserves further study. To dismiss it out of hand, as many religious-based organizations have done, or to refuse to talk about it and study it further because it skirts dangerouly close to the usual ‘taboo’ subjects around religious influence on society, is a mistake.
And now, let the hate mail come. Unlike the author of the commentary linked to above, I always ‘relish the hateful mail and other retaliation I might receive from those loving, gentle people who model themselves after Christ.’
October 24th, 2005 at 3:00 pm
Now, I’m not exactly what you call a lover of organized religion, in fact, quite the oposite. But this study seems to define the US as one country, when that’s really not fair. The United States is to diverse to just clump into one category. It is my observation that most of the organized religion in the US as described in the study takes place along the bible belt and looses strength in the big cities, where I might add most of the crime takes place. I know that’s not exactly shattering evidence that destroys the study, it’s just one chink I’ve observed in it. I do agree with Katsu though, in that this merits further study. The problem is that the “voice” of organized religion is rarely logical when it comes to approaching studies of this kind. So all we’ll get is people shouting “Blasphemy!” and instead of having an unbiased team conductinng the study, we’ll have a bunch of atheists with an agenda against organized religion, so the study will be just as worthless as the arguments against it.
October 24th, 2005 at 9:58 pm
So all we’ll get is people shouting “Blasphemy!” and instead of having an unbiased team conductinng the study, we’ll have a bunch of atheists with an agenda against organized religion, so the study will be just as worthless as the arguments against it.
If I keep getting any more men-induced woodies this week, I’m gonna have to immerse myself in hetero-porn for the next ten years….
October 25th, 2005 at 12:03 am
I have no idea how the previous statement gave you a woody, and now that i think about it … I don’t want to know. I need to go shower now.
October 25th, 2005 at 5:20 am
Man, I think it’s a waste of time to hate like that, dawg.
October 25th, 2005 at 8:47 am
Luniticus:
Good point, although the same could be said of pretty much any country included in the study. Hell, even in this tiny island, there are areas that are more or less religious than others, and its likely the crime rate varies.
As a skeptic, I know full well that ‘correlation does not neccesarily equal causation’, otherwise the world would be full of studies along the lines of: “Every morning when I wake up to brush my teeth, the neighbor’s dog barks, thus the dog barks because I brush my teeth.” However, strong correlation can often be an indicator of an undrlying cause for both phenomena, and that’s what needs to be studied more closely.
For example, your comment that violent crime tends to rise in big cities, which tend to be less religious than smaller cities, doesn’t neccesarily mean that the more religious, the less crime, as there are many other factors to consider, such as the fact that crime rates will naturally rise along with the population, simly due to there being more people. The same problem exists with this study, of course. Sociology is complicated stuff, because there are just so many variables.
What is harder to dismiss is the observation that many of the countries that are consistently ranked as the best places to live, the countries that have th ehighest repsect for human rights, civil rights, and human dignity, are also among the most secular countries. This, to me at least, is a fairly strong indicator that Not only is strong influence by organized religion not neccesary for a fair society, but in fact it may be detrimental to this goal, since pretty much all religions, and especially the judeo-christian sects, are exclusive by nature, separating people into saved/not saved, thus introducing social inequality into the mix as a matter of course, whether they mean to or not.
I’ll admit to being biased, of course. Personally, I’d love to see a report stating conclusively that religious influence does indeed cause social problems. However, I dont’ think that having the study done by a ‘bunch of atheists’ necesarily invalidates it, if and only if their methodology is valid, which is something that can be judged separately and objectively by anyone, religious or not. Is it more likely that a group with an agenda would produce a biased report? Of course. But biased reports are not that hard to find out once you start critically examining the methodology, and that’s what will happen. Due to the very nature of religious thought, it’s most likely tht any further studies in this vein will, indeed, be produced by atheists, or at least agnostics, since most religious groups don’t really encourage questioning and and examination on this kind of level. However, if the methodology is sound on the study, then the fact that it was done by atheists or anyone else is pointless, and trying to dismiss the study on that point alone would be a fallacy.
The final truth of this matter remains to be found out. I’m just glad that studies like this one exist, if only to keep the conversation open and challenge general misconceptions.
October 25th, 2005 at 9:10 am
[...] While the debate on my previous entry continues, I’m gonna go ahead and poke the hornet’s nest a little more by pointing out this particularly scary poll I ran into: 51 percent of Americans say God created humans in their present form, and another three in 10 say that while humans evolved, God guided the process. Just 15 percent say humans evolved, and that God was not involved. [...]
October 26th, 2005 at 1:01 pm
I didn’t say a study made by a bunch of atheists made the study invalid, I said a study by a bunch of atheists with an agenda against religion made it invalid, it is a very big difference.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:25 am
For me as a Christian and was molded by my parents what a christian should be, religion is absolutely not harmful to society. My faith to God keeps me to do the right thing. And love it. A person may be monetarily poor with no own house to live and no food to eat on a regular basis, but if he has GOD, family and friends, as well as values that he hold dear, he is WEALTHy. In whatever tribulations and ambiguities, if we have GOD in our everyday life, no doubt we can surpass every trial on our way, as we will be greatly protected, for we have Him with us.