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September 27, 2005
Societies "worse off" when they have God on their side
That's me in the corner, that's me in the spotlight
Losing my religion
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.
It would seem under these circumstances that it's religion attacking society, rather than the reverse.
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.
Statistics do seem to bear this out. This chart from the Guttmacher Institute offers one piece of evidence:
U.S. teenagers clearly have higher pregnancy rates, birthrates and abortion rates than adolescents in other developed countries.
US teens also have higher incidences of sexually transmitted diseases than England, Canada, France and Sweden. This phenomenon most likely stems from having more sexual partners and less frequent condom use.
I'm not in any big hurry to purge religion from society. I think it in fact does have it's place. To me, the problem is less about people relying on religion for their own structure. It's about foisting and forcing that structure on the rest of us.
There is an ironical component to this that can't be ignored, however. The fact that these sorts of closed religious practices yields exactly the opposite results of it's intent says a lot about the ineffective nature of guilting people through God.
Posted by Carla at September 27, 2005 03:10 PM