Religion and Dysfunction
“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 … None of the strongly secularized, pro-evolution democracies is experiencing high levels of measurable dysfunction.” Within the United States “the strongly theistic, anti-evolution South and Midwest” have “markedly worse homicide, mortality, STD, youth pregnancy, marital and related problems than the Northeast where … secularization, and acceptance of evolution approach European norms”.
Comment by Andrew • Thu 10 Nov 05, 12:19 pm #
I found the article quite funny, I haven’t seen so many logical mistakes in such a short piece for some time.
Now class, let’s all repeat together:
“Correlation does not imply causation.”
Comment by tim • Thu 10 Nov 05, 3:17 pm #
BTW how can anyone’s rate of belief be higher or lower? If I only believe in God 10 times an hour will that stop me committing all these sins, or do I need to keep it down to 5 times an hour? Or what?
Comment by Angus • Fri 11 Nov 05, 12:44 pm #
To me it seems more of an agenda-pushing exercise rather than a genuine epidemiological “let’s-adjust-for-counfounders” process. Realistically, you’d need to conduct a study like this in one state or even city and have some pretty strict matching criteria.
So, yeah, what Andrew said.
Comment by Nato • Tue 29 Nov 05, 11:11 am #
Tim, the idea is that they rate the belief of the country, rather than the individual. So you get countries with 10% of people believing in God, having a lower rate of belief than one with 20% of people believing in God