The Dark Side of Faith... ?

[Ken Carman]

Within the start of this thread you will find a link to an article called "The Dark Side of Faith," Here is part of what the "study" concluded...

Paul ranked societies based on the percentage of their population expressing absolute belief in God, the frequency of prayer reported by their citizens and their frequency of attendance at religious services. He then correlated this with data on rates of homicide, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy, abortion and child mortality. He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. — 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.

Please read the whole article, if you can, and be careful of the pop ups. They're kind of a pain load time if you have slow dial up like I do.

The question is, of course, how valid do you feel this is. Bogus science? Valid? Interesting but inconclusive?

To see the rest of the article CLICK HERE.

[Starboy]

There was no reference to the actual paper itself. I would have liked to read it. Also it appears from the commentary in the article that only the US was examined. Certainly one could look at Europe, South America, South Africa. Also it would have to be normalized for other factors such as wealth, education and economic opportunities, race and ethnic background. In the case of Europe one could look at it over time since it has had a radical decrease in religiosity over the last several decades. The studies conclusions are not surprising however it is only a statistical study. "There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics." - Mark Twain.

Starboy

[Ken Carman]

Quote by: Starboy There was no reference to the actual paper itself. I would have liked to read it. Also it appears from the commentary in the article that only the US was examined. Certainly one could look at Europe, South America, South Africa. Also it would have to be normalized for other factors such as wealth, education and economic opportunities, race and ethnic background. In the case of Europe one could look at it over time since it has had a radical decrease in religiosity over the last several decades. The studies conclusions are not surprising however it is only a statistical study. "There are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics." - Mark Twain. Starboy

Woke up this morning and found THIS in my E-mailbox...


I haven't had time to read it yet.

[RickSp]

This paper has also been discussed in a previous thread. Societies worse off 'when they have God on their side'

While I am very suspicious of this sort of single conclusion regression analysis, at the very least it does call into question the presumption that religion is always a positive factor in society.